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Students protesting against Israel’s war with Hamas are “useful idiots” enabling a murderous terror organization dedicated to killing Jews, Gov. Chris Sununu said Thursday.

“This is a war… this isn’t a policy dispute. This isn’t some geographic border discussion. This is one group, a terrorist organization called Hamas that wants to wipe out every Jew on the planet. That’s like their written goal and they don’t shy away from that at all,” Sununu said during an appearance on Drew Cline’s WFEA radio show.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters have appeared on the campuses of the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth College, as well as at town council meetings and city halls. Chanting “Long Live the Intifada” and “U.S., Israel, Go to Hell,” they’ve expressed their anger over both the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, and the existence of the nation of Israel itself.

They are part of a national movement that began soon after the Oct. 7 terror attack, when Hamas members and Gaza civilians swarmed across the border into Israel and murdered, raped, and injured thousands of Israelis. Hamas still holds an estimated 128 hostages, among them five American citizens.

On May 1, a dozen protesters were arrested at UNH while trying to set up an illegal encampment on the campus. There were arrests at the Dartmouth campus in Hanover as well.

Sununu said the college students taking part in the protests are being used by groups with hateful intentions, like the Palestine Solidarity Coalition at UNH.

“They’re kind of using these students, as I would call them, useful idiots, frankly, to promote, ‘Oh, we’re just freedom fighters. This is genocide against Gaza.’ No, it’s genocide against the Israelis and it has been for 50 years now…” Sununu said.

There are numerous radical groups organizing the protests tied together by extremist ideology, and a willingness to work with governments hostile to the United States, according to research by the Network Contagion Research Institute.

Shut It Down for Palestine is an umbrella organization for several radical left-wing groups created on Oct. 11, days after the Hamas attack. Also known as SID4P, the group includes The People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition, International People’s Assembly, Al Awda NY, National Students for Justice in Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, and it has working ties with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a Marxist group dedicated to overthrowing the United States.

According to the NCRI report, the individual groups are part of an influence network tied to Neville Roy Singham, a far-left businessman who has allegedly disseminated Chinese Communist Party propaganda.

“The People’s Forum, IPA, and ANSWER Coalition serve as the conduit through which CCP–affiliated entities have effectively co–opted pro–Palestinian activism in the U.S., advancing a broader anti–American, anti–democratic, and anti–capitalist agenda. These three far–left SID4P Convenors are part of a network linked by close financial, interpersonal, and ideological ties to Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans, a power couple within the global far–left movement with close ties to the CCP,” the NCRI report states.

Sununu said Thursday the college students getting caught up in the protest movement are easy targets for bad actors like SID4P groups, in part because they know so little about the history of Israel or the Middle East.

“When you don’t have good education in the classroom, the vacuum gets filled by social media and propaganda with these kids,” Sununu said.

Sununu isn’t alone in his view that the protests are being fueled by antisemitism. A Fox News poll released Wedensday found voters oppose the protests by a nearly 60-40 split. Large majorities of voters on both sides of the political aisle also decried the protests as both “pro-Palestinian” and “anti-Israeli.”

“About 6 in 10 voters say the protests are pro-Palestinian (62 percent) and anti-Israeli (58 percent). All other descriptions of the protests are under 50 percent, but not by much: anti-war (49 percent), antisemitic (46 percent), anti-American (43 percent), and pro-Hamas (42 percent),” according to the Fox News poll.

UPDATE** FOX NEWS RESPONDS BELOW

How does Ralph Peters feel after walking away from Fox News?

“Free.”

“I just feel a great burden has been lifted because I got to the point where I hated going into the Fox studios because of what Fox had become,” the retired Army colonel and longtime Fox military analyst said in an interview on Friday.

“To paraphrase an old line, ‘I didn’t leave Fox News.  Fox News left me.’”

Peters first made the announcement two weeks ago in an email to his Fox News colleagues in which he claimed the network was “assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers.”

“Over my decade with Fox, I was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed,” Peters said at the time. His view of the network hasn’t improved since his departure:

“As a brand new second lieutenant four decades ago, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And that doesn’t go away ethically or morally when you take your uniform off,” Peters said today.  “I had to leave. It wasn’t a bold choice on my part. I did my duty by leaving when Fox began undercutting the Constitution, which in my view it is currently doing.”

When he made his announcement in mid-March, Peters specifically called out “prime-time hosts” as the worst perpetrators (“people who have never served our country in any capacity”). Some of his critics complained at the that he didn’t name names. Friday, he did:

“You saw this recent flap with Laura Ingraham, attacking the Parkland School shooting survivors, attacking the kids?  My rule always has been ‘it’s just fine to pick a fight with someone more powerful than you, but you don’t pick on the weak’. What Laura Ingraham did was despicable.”

Peters denies that he has a vendetta against Fox News.  “I don’t want to see Fox destroyed. I think somebody needs to go in and reform it.”

“Fox News was always a valuable conservative voice…it provided conservatives an outlet on television, a counterbalance. But over the last year and a half with the rise of Trump, Fox News has become nothing more than a propaganda outlet for the Trump administration.”

UPDATE: Fox News reached out to Inside Sources through a spokesperson:

“There is no truth to the notion that Ralph Peters was ‘blocked’ from appearing on the network to talk about the major headlines, including discussing Russia, North Korea and even gun control recently. In fact, he appeared across both networks multiple times in just the past three weeks.”