Anti-Israel Protester Arrested in Columbia, CUNY Raids Declare Oct. 7 Terrorist Attack ‘Happiest Days of My Life’

An anti-Israel protester arrested during unrest on the campuses of Columbia University and City College once said the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack was one of the “greatest days of my life,” police sources told the Post – to give details of the violence of other people arrested. pasts continued to emerge Thursday.

Rudy Ralph Martinez, 32, was among 282 protesters and agitators who were handcuffed and led away when New York police encountered unruly crowds during a crackdown on tent encampments at the two schools Tuesday night.

Martinez, who was arrested on CUNY’s Harlem campus for burglary, is a serial protester on the anti-Israel front, according to police sources.

He was filmed praising Hamas at a protest in New York in December, with a video circulating on social media.

“One of the happiest days of my life,” Martinez said with a smirk as he described the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

“Long live the resistance,” he added, according to the clip.

Martinez, who cops say may currently be employed at CUNY after recently graduating, has a “long history” of protest-related arrests dating back to California in 2012, sources said.

In the Big Apple alone, Martinez’s criminal record includes a string of arrests for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, obstruction and failure to disperse, according to sources.

He was not the only serial protester.

One of the agitators arrested inside Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall has a long history of protest-related violence — including an incident that reportedly left a police officer seriously injured nearly a decade ago.

James Carlson, 40, who was handcuffed on the Ivy League campus for burglary, is a “long-time figure in the anarchist world” and anti-government “extremist circles,” sources said.

He faced a series of charges, including suspicion of attempted lynching and aggravated assault of a police officer, following a violent political protest in San Francisco in 2005 that seriously injured a police officer in the head. head, NYPD sources said.

In that incident, Carlson was accused of trying to set a patrol car on fire before he and others attacked the officer. The outcome of the prosecution in this case was not immediately known.

Most recently, Carlson — who also goes by the pseudonym Cody — was accused of burning a Jewish protester’s Israeli flag outside Columbia University on April 21, prosecutors said.

During the ordeal, cops say one criminal took the 22-year-old victim’s flag, another threw a rock at the victim and a third attacker set the flag on fire .

Police charged Carlson Wednesday with criminal mischief, criminal possession of stolen property and arson stemming from the incident. Cops are still looking for the other two suspects.

Carlson was released on his own recognizance at his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday and is due back before a judge on June 20.

He was also involved in protests in January that blocked entrances to the Holland Tunnel and the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges, sources said.

Another protester arrested at CUNY, Jacob Isaac Gabriel, 27, also has a series of protest-related arrests under his belt.

Gabriel often shows up to Big Apple protests dressed in Black Bloc gear — a tactic protesters use to protect their identities with masks or ski helmets, law enforcement sources said.

He was also reportedly among hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters who stormed the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the sources said.

His criminal record includes recent charges of resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, refusing to move, offenses against public administrators, fighting and trespassing, according to sources.

The new details emerged as police sources revealed that more than 40% of protesters arrested during campus unrest were not actually students – a day after Mayor Eric Adams warned that “outside agitators” were radicalizing young people.

Of the 282 protesters evacuated during the massive NYPD operation, 134 of them had no affiliation with either school, according to NYPD sources.

“A preliminary look at the numbers is only the beginning of the analysis process, but it appears, however, that more than 40 percent of those who attended Columbia and CUNY were not from the school and were outsiders ” Adams told NPR of the numbers. .