Hamas appears to be throwing its support behind the anti-Israel protests roiling Columbia University and other campuses across the country as students at other elite universities say they will ramp up their efforts to create their own encampments similar to those at New York City.

In a statement on Telegram, a person identifying himself as Hamas Political Bureau official Izzat Al-Rishq expressed support for the protests at Columbia and other universities.

“The American administration, led by President Biden, violates individual rights and the right to expression, and arrests university students and faculty members because of their rejection of the genocide that our Palestinian people are subjected to in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the neo-Nazi Zionists, without the slightest sense of shame about the legal value represented by the students and university professors,” the post reads.

The post — translated from the original Arabic with online translation tools — continues, saying that “The Biden administration, which is a partner in the brutal war on our Palestinian people, does not want to acknowledge that it is before American public opinion that discovered the truth about the Nazi entity and sided with human values ​​and decided to stand on the right side of history.”

“Today’s students are the leaders of the future, and their suppression today means an expensive electoral bill that the Biden administration will pay sooner or later,” the post concludes.

The statement comes as students at elite universities across the country are preparing to set up protest encampments of their own.

In a draft of a press release obtained by the National Review, students at Princeton said the goal of their protest is to “put pressure on the Princeton University administration to divest and disassociate from Israel, and to call attention to the University’s active contribution to ongoing genocide and human rights catastrophe.”

In an open letter published in the Daily Princetonian, a group of faculty and staff expressed solidarity with the Columbia University students and may join some of their students at their own university if the encampment goes forward.

“We, Princeton University faculty and staff, affirm our solidarity with and support for the Columbia University and Barnard College students who are continuing to demand that the university divest from Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ongoing occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and other Palestinian land,” the faculty and staff write.