Hamas detonated a bomb at the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, killing nine students and injuring about 100 more.

The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas, is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islamist political organisation with a military wing, the Qassam Brigades. It has governed the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip since 2007.

The Hebrew University bombing, also called the Hebrew University massacre, was carried out by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on 31 July 2002 in a cafeteria at the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The attack killed 9 people, including 5 U.S. students, and injured about 100. It was carried out by an East Jerusalem-based Hamas cell whose members are serving multiple life sentences in Israeli prisons for that attack and others. The attack, which sparked a celebration in Gaza City, was condemned by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and several countries.

Mount Scopus is a mountain located in Jerusalem with an elevation of 826 meters (2,710 ft) above sea level. Between the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, it was an internationally protected exclave of Israel within Jordan, as it was geographically part of Jordan's East Jerusalem, but politically part of Israel's West Jerusalem. It is home to the main campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Hadassah Medical Center. Since the collapse of the City Line in 1967, the area now lies within Jerusalem's Israeli municipal boundaries.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is an Israeli public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, it is the second-oldest institution of higher learning in Israel, having been founded 30 years before the establishment of the State of Israel but six years after the older Technion university.