Noura Erakat

Who Is Noura Erakat?

Let’s start with the official version. Noura Erakat is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University, jointly appointed in the Department of Africana Studies and the Program in Criminal Justice. On paper, she is a credentialed and expert voice that news channels and international panels love to host. But what does she actually do with that platform?

Noura Erakat has spent almost a decade using her academic credentials as authority for a consistent project: questioning Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, attributing legitimacy to organizations the United States designates as terrorist, and dismissing documented accounts of mass rape by Hamas on October 7th as “Zionist lies.” Her inflammatory record calls into question her continued support by Rutgers, as well as the ramifications that could have on its student body.

What Has Noura Erakat Said About Terrorism and Hamas?

It is a reasonable question to ask a human rights attorney who teaches at a federally funded university if they condemn terrorism and Hamas. The answer for Noura Erakat, based on her documented public record, is: not really. What she has done instead is substantially more troubling.

• March 2025 – on Instagram, Erakat eulogized Hossam Shabat, who had been identified as a Hamas sniper, alongside his “official” work as an Al-Jazeera journalist.
• October 2024 – on AJ+, Noura Erakat appeared to discuss the killing of Yahya Sinwar, the chief architect and commander of Hamas on October 7, questioning Israel’s account of his death. She also posted in tribute to him after his death, saying he was an “immortal legend.”
• October 10, 2023 – in an article for Jadaliyya, she described the 3-day previous attack as a taking of “aim at the apartheid and colonial regime” and gave legitimacy to the terrorist organization responsible, complaining that “Palestinians have been blamed for their own suffering for democratically electing Hamas to lead.”
• October 7, 2023 – On the day Hamas murdered roughly 1,200 people and took over 250 hostage, she posted on X that Western shock at the attack reflected an expectation that Palestinians simply “die quietly.” In a another post on the same day, she drew an equivalence between Palestinian terror prisoners in Israeli jails and the Israeli civilian hostages – elderly people, children, young women – being dragged into Gaza at gunpoint.

• June 2023 – On X, Noura Erakat reposted content from the Palestinian Youth Movement calling for the release of Walid Daqqah, who had been convicted of facilitating the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli soldier. The post presented his detention as an injustice. His conviction was not mentioned.
• May 2023 – After the death of Khader Adnan, Noura Erakat published a tribute in Jadaliyya and posted on X calling his a “life of compassion and resistance.” Adnan was a senior figure in Palestinian Islamic Jihad – a Foreign Terrorist Organization designated by the United States under 8 U.S.C. § 1189. Erakat’s tribute contained no mention of that fact.
• January 2016 – In a post on X, Noura Erakat called Rasmea Odeh “an icon in Chicago.” Odeh had been federally convicted in the United States for her role in a 1969 PFLP bombing that killed two Israeli university students and wounded nine others.
• March 2014 – In an article for the Hamas-affiliated Quds media outlet, Erakat argued that Palestinian strategy should not rely on legal frameworks alone, but should fold in popular, political, and  armed resistance.

Erakat has shown herself to be a human rights attorney who has praised a PFLP bomber, eulogized a PIJ leader, legitimized Hamas, and never clearly condemned the targeting of civilians on October 7th.

What Did Noura Erakat Tell the UN Security Council?

On October 6, 2025, one day before the second anniversary of October 7, Noura Erakat was given a slot at the United Nations Security Council‘s Open Debate on Women, Peace, and Security. She used the weight of her audience to deliver what was, in effect, a Hamas statistical brief disguised in the language of international humanitarian law.

1. Genocide accusation: Erakat accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and framed Israeli military operations as a deliberate campaign targeting Palestinian women’s reproductive capacity and long-term survival – a specific legal charge requiring proof of specific genocidal intent, which she presented instead as self-evident.
2. The hourly death claim: Erakat stated that “one woman and one girl have been killed every hour for the past 730 days.” The source for this figure is Gaza-based health ministry data, an institution governed by Hamas.
3. Fertility infrastructure: Erakat claimed that damage to facilities including the Al-Basma Fertility Clinic constituted evidence of a deliberate effort to prevent Palestinian reproduction.
4. The 300% miscarriage claim: Erakat asserted that miscarriage rates had increased by 300 percent and that famine had been confirmed in Gaza. No independent peer-reviewed source for either figure was offered to the Council.
5. On Hamas disarmament: Erakat characterized ceasefire frameworks requiring Hamas disarmament as mechanisms for permanent occupation rather than conflict resolution, saying “the terms of the current proposal are setting up Palestinians to live under permanent occupation.”

Her speech is a useful case study in how statistics sourced from a terrorist-governed bureaucracy can be laundered through a law degree and academic affiliation, and then presented to the world’s most powerful diplomatic body as though they were neutral findings.

What Does Noura Erakat Think of Israel and Zionism?

Noura Erakat does not hint at her views on Israel. She states them directly, repeatedly, and on increasingly prominent platforms. The progression of her rhetoric over the past four years is not a radicalization arc – it is an escalation of confidence because nobody has made her stop.

• February 11, 2026 – on X, Noura Erakat repeated unsubstantiated claims that Israel was “evaporating” Palestinians using weapons expelling “energy exceeding 3,000 degrees.”

• October 23, 2025 – at the Gaza Tribunal in Istanbul, Noura Erakat spoke in a segment titled “We Charge Nakba: Colonial Genocide of the Palestinian People.” She declared that “every survivor deserves accountability,” a phrase that inverted Holocaust language to accuse the Jewish state of perpetrating genocide.
• September 23, 2025 – on X, Noura Erakat posted that “Israel is waging a holocaust in Gaza” and that “Denazification is the remedy.”

• July 2023 – on X, Noura Erakat described Israel as promising a “fascist future that threatens the whole world,” accompanied by hashtags labeling Israel “apartheid” and “settler-colonial.”
• April 2025 – on X, Noura Erakat referred to Israeli lawmakers as “genocidaires” who held UN seats only because of a “complicit ruling class,” insinuating the existence of a Jewish world cabal in classic antisemitic conspiracy theory rhetoric.
• April 2022 – in a webinar, Erakat stated that “Zionism is a bedfellow of Nazism and antisemitism.”
• May 2021 – after a CNN appearance, Erakat posted the interview to X saying: “When folks tell you the problem is Hamas rockets, remind them Zionist settler colonial expansionism is the cause not the effect.”

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of antisemitism, adopted by the U.S. Department of State, specifically identifies “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” as a contemporary example of antisemitism. Noura Erakat’s public record shows she meets the definition in question.

How Has Noura Erakat Helped Fuel Campus Encampments?

Noura Erakat has also been a documented participant in the campus encampment movement that swept American universities in 2024, promoting protests that called for the globalization of armed intifada while accusing Israel of genocide.

• April 26, 2024 – Noura Erakat shared an image from the Princeton encampment and referenced personal ties to Students for Justice in Palestine, the organization whose national umbrella (NSJP) has faced congressional scrutiny over its financial and operational links to Hamas-affiliated entities.
• October 2023 – in posts on X, Noura Erakat encouraged protests against alleged Israeli genocide and promoted occupation-style demonstrations as solidarity actions in the weeks immediately following October 7, while Israeli families were still identifying bodies.

The practical effect of a tenured law professor publicly promoting these encampments provides institutional legitimacy to movements that have made Jewish students at universities across the country measurably less safe, physically and psychologically.

Which Organizations Has Noura Erakat Built Her Career With?

Noura Erakat has spent years building and maintaining a network of organizational relationships that share a single coherent goal: the economic isolation, legal delegitimization, and the eventual dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state.

• Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement – BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti has stated publicly and on multiple occasions that BDS’s structural demands – right of return for Palestinian refugees, end to the occupation, full equality for Arab citizens – are deliberately designed to make a Jewish-majority state demographically impossible.
• Jadaliyya – Erakat co-edits Jadaliyya, published under the Arab Studies Institute, which is an online publication for anti-Zionist academic writing. It has published content by figures across SJP, BDS, and FTO-adjacent networks, including Susan Abulhawa.
• CODEPINK – in March of 2026, Erakat joined CODEPINK (a grassroots feminist organization whose goal is, among others, to oppose United States “imperialism”)  on a trip to Cuba. Of course, discussion couldn’t remain limited to the situation at-hand, and she drew a direct parallel “to Palestine where similar violence target a people to compel their surrender for the sake of pillage, theft, and destruction on behalf of a racial and economic supremacist class.”

Conclusion: Why Does Rutgers Still Have Noura Erakat in the Classroom?

Noura Erakat has spent over a decade publicly praising convicted terrorists, legitimizing Hamas as a governing sovereign, denying documented rape of Jewish women, calling for the “denazification” of the Jewish state, and promoting campus movements that have made Jewish students measurably less safe. She has done all of this while holding a joint appointment, co-editing an internationally distributed publication, and being granted access to the United Nations Security Council podium.

Rutgers University receives federal funding and is subject to Title VI. Its own policies prohibit the creation of a hostile environment on the basis of religion or national origin. Federal grant conditions also prohibit using university resources to advance the interests of designated terrorist organizations. The question is whether Rutgers, and the federal agencies funding it, have an obligation to examine whether her views are consistent with their legal obligations.