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Metro


WHO IS MANOLO DE LOS SANTOS? LEADER OF HAMAS-CHEERING RADICAL NYC GROUP HAS TIES
TO CUBA

By Jack Morphet and Chris Nesi

Published May 6, 2024, 4:56 p.m. ET

The head of a radical activist group who urged anti-Israel protesters at
Columbia University to channel the deadly Black Lives Matter riots of 2020 is a
career agitator who spent “years” in the socialist haven of Cuba, The Post can
reveal.

Manolo De Los Santos, the 35-year-old leader of the Midtown-based nonprofit The
People’s Forum (TPF), came to The Bronx from his native Dominican Republic at
age 5 and has made a career of spurring protests on the streets of New York
City.

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He first traveled to Cuba in 2006 and was there as recently as March to demand
an end to the US blockade against the socialist state which has been in place
since 1962.

3
Manolo De Los Santos, 35, leader and de facto mouthpiece for The People’s Forum,
a radical anti-Israel group that encouraged the takeover of Hamilton Hall at
Columbia University. LP Media

As TPF’s executive director and de facto mouthpiece — a role he’s held since
2018, according to his Facebook — the writer, organizer and public speaker is as
known for his zealous support of left-wing causes as he is for his repugnant
public statements.

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De Los Santos, who declined to speak to The Post when approached outside his
Hell’s Kitchen home Monday, has in the last year alone hailed Hamas’ Oct. 7
terror attack as “heroic,” called for Israel to be “erased from history” and
eagerly welcomed the impending “defeat” of the “US empire.”

He has been a longtime advocate for Cuba, which he first visited as a teenager
with a progressive religious group called Pastors for Peace and which he was
later based out of for “many years.”

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When he wasn’t denouncing “US hegemony” from the shores of Cuba, De Los Santos
was causing trouble across the Big Apple, participating in numerous disruptive
street protests and giving provocative speeches laced with incendiary
anti-Israel rhetoric.

“When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel, when the state of
Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single
most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism in our
lifetime,” De Los Santos said in January in front of a cheering crowd in a
now-viral video.

His remarks were so vicious that South Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY)
denounced the speech as “Nazi rhetoric,” and called for Goldman Sachs, whose
philanthropy arm used to direct funds to TPF, to cut ties with the organization
— which also has links to the Chinese Communist Party.

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3
De Los Santos has longstanding ties with Cuba, first visiting as a teenager in
2006 and spending “many years” there later as a home base. X/@manolo_realengo

“Thousands of Israelis were massacred, maimed, mutilated, abducted, raped, and
tortured at the murderous hands of Hamas,” Torres wrote, referring to the
ongoing conflict in the Middle East. 

“[Hamas] espouses the kind of genocidal ideology that The People’s Forum has
been caught promoting as ‘the final blow,’ which is strikingly similar to Nazi
rhetoric about a ‘final solution,’” he continued.

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Shortly after, De Los Santos penned a defiant missive on the TPF website in
which he refused to apologize and dismissed the media’s labeling of his words as
hate speech as “a propaganda trick by the apologists for genocide.”

3
De Los Santos was one of 10 protest group leaders busted on Jan. 27 on a day of
anarchy around the city during which demonstrators shut down part of the
Brooklyn Bridge and attempted to “flood” JFK Airport in Queens.
Instagram/@peoplesforumnyc

Less than two weeks later, on Jan. 27, De Los Santos was among 10 protest
leaders cops busted on a day of anarchy across the city in which hundreds of
anti-Israel demonstrators descended on Manhattan, partially blocking the
Brooklyn Bridge and attempting to “flood” JFK Airport in Queens.

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In between street marches and railing against the evils of capitalism, De Los
Santos uses his extensive social media presence — which includes more than
31,000 followers on X — to post glory shots of Hamas members accompanied by
reverent missives lauding the terror group’s actions.

On Oct. 7, the day Hamas launched its bloody terror attack against Israel that
killed more than 1,200 men, women and children, De Los Santos shared a Hamas
propaganda video showing terrorist paratroopers gearing up for the cowardly
assault against the Jewish home state.

A few weeks later as the battle in Gaza raged on, he posted an image of Hamas
fighters raising automatic weapons in celebration.

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“Victory to those who resist Zionism! Victory to those who fight as the bombs
fall in Gaza! Victory to those who defend their people from Israel’s war crimes!
Victory to all who mobilize, march & act in solidarity with Palestine!
Resistance until Victory! Palestine will win!” he wrote accompanying the image.

What do you think? Post a comment.

Reached by email late Monday afternoon, De Los Santos didn’t directly address
any of The Post’s questions about what if any role he played in fomenting campus
unrest at Columbia.

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Instead he offered a deflective statement rejecting characterizations that the
campus protests were violent, blaming the police for being the true “source of
the violence.” 

He also praised student demonstrators for their “courage” in risking
“suspension, expulsion, arrest, loss of housing and so much more.”

“They are seeing their own schools and tuition money supporting an ongoing
genocide and doing everything they can to stop it.”


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Filed under college protests ,  columbia university ,  hamas ,  Israel-Hamas war
,  protests ,  radicalism ,  5/6/24
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