What began as legitimate and even understandable student protests on American college campuses against the killing in Gaza has quickly transformed into something much more sinister.
Instead of “Give peace a chance,” as anti-Vietnam War protesters used to shout in the 1960s, it’s “We are Hamas,” “We will annihilate Israel,” and even “Kill all the Jews.”
This descent into pure anti-Semitism has been rapid and frightening. A generation of students with little understanding of history, no understanding of the complexities of the Middle East conflict, and no firm principles beyond the obsessive simplicities of wokeness have been easily swayed by rampant nihilism.
Protest leaders claim they are pro-Palestinian. In fact, they are pro-Hamas, with all the evil baggage that entails.
A leader of the so-called “Gaza Solidarity Camp”, established by illegal students at Columbia University in New York, openly says on social media that “Zionists do not deserve to live.”
What began as legitimate and even understandable student protests on American college campuses against the killing in Gaza has quickly transformed into something much more sinister. (Pictured: in Georgia).
Protest leaders claim they are pro-Palestinian. In fact, they are pro-Hamas, with all the evil baggage that entails. (Pictured: Columbia this week.)
A leader of the so-called “Gaza Solidarity Camp”, established by illegal students at Columbia University in New York, openly says on social media that “Zionists do not deserve to live.” (Pictured: Emory University).
Columbia is the epicenter of hate, but its venom has spread not only to other Ivy League universities but to less prestigious educational centers across the country.
Campuses are now flooded with shouts and banners reading: “October 7 10,000 times”, “Boycott the genocidal Zionist apartheid state”, “The Holocaust was no big deal” and “Only one solution, the Intifada revolution” .
This is not an anti-war movement. It is a pro-war movement that seeks to intimidate Jews and destroy Israel.
It is a movement generated by ignorance and prejudice, always a deadly combination that leads to nothing good.
Many of the protesters have no idea what they are singing. No concept of the Holocaust. There is no knowledge of an intifada.
Privileged upper-middle class white students at universities that cost at least $75,000 a year to attend don keffiyehs in performative protest to show solidarity with people they know nothing about.
At the University of Washington, a protest was canceled, hilariously, because the participants were “too white,” which says everything about the self-indulgent and pampered student elite behind these protests. They are the useful idiots of Hamas.
After weeks of shouting ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ they still have no idea which sea or which river.
They are also unable to define Palestine (although they are not alone in that). They are examples of the rot that is taking over American academia.
There is no doubt that they have been influenced by radical faculty professors, where rational debate and diverse opinions are now a rarity. However, no matter what evil emanates from their mouths, they pay no penalty.
Of course, like all Americans, they have First Amendment rights. But the issue is not freedom of expression. It is criminal conduct that the first amendment does not protect.
A double standard applies here too. Universities have strict codes of conduct. No wonder they wouldn’t allow white supremacists’ “free speech” on campus. So why are the disgusting tropes of anti-Semites tolerated?
Columbia is the epicenter of hate, but its venom has spread not only to other Ivy League universities but to less prestigious educational centers across the country. (Pictured: University of Texas).
Jewish students are bullied, threatened and harassed on a daily basis. How could it be otherwise, given the relentless anti-Semitic filth being shouted and scrawled on banners at universities across the country? However, no one is doing much about it.
The university authorities, as always, are useless. At Columbia, Jewish students were told to stay away and use remote learning.
A university rabbi was forced to tell Jewish students to go home because the university could not guarantee their safety. A Jewish professor had his ID deactivated, apparently because he wanted to organize a counter-protest.
We have been here before. When the Nazi poison took hold in Germany in the early 1930s, Jewish academics and students were prevented from entering universities, or simply advised to stay away. We know where this leads. Which makes the universities’ inaction even more inexcusable.
Yes, there has been a stronger response to camping and bullying at some universities, such as Austin, Texas, and Emory, Georgia, where rubber bullets and Tasers were used.
But camps are often allowed to re-emerge and protests continue as before.
Furthermore, what is needed is not heavy-handed law enforcement, although there will be times when that is necessary, but for universities to announce that any student who utters anti-Semitic obscenities and displays offensive banners now ubiquitous on so many campuses will immediately stop be students of that university and never be readmitted again. In addition, those suspected of intimidation and harassment will be handed over to the police.
That might give some reason to stop and think about what they’re doing.
Now is the time to get tough because the poison is spreading beyond campus. The FBI reports that anti-Semitic incidents are at “historic levels.” Jews make up only a small proportion of the American population, but once again they are victims of the majority of hate crimes.
Who would have thought this would happen again? Or that, given what we know now, official responses would be so pathetic.
Ironically, although their ignorance means they will have no idea about this, the protesters are defending the Jewish State of Israel.
After the horrors of the Holocaust, Jewish leaders determined that there had to be a Jewish homeland open to all Jews, and to which all Jews could flee for safety in extremis, should anything resembling a Holocaust happen again. appear.
Even Jews in Western democracies who thought they would not need such a homeland took solace in the fact that it existed. This was especially true of American Jews who always thought that the only country they would be safe in, besides Israel, was the United States.
Safe havens, like New York City, with the largest Jewish population of any city outside Israel, would suffice. Israel was an insurance policy they probably wouldn’t need.
As the scourge of anti-Semitism receded in the years after World War II, some progressive Jewish leaders even wondered aloud whether a distinct Jewish homeland was really needed.
Ironically, although their ignorance means they will have no idea about this, the protesters are defending the Jewish State of Israel.
No one is surprised that now, even in the United States, radical Muslim leaders are calling for the destruction of Israel, backed by students from the country’s most elite universities and, therefore, those who will possibly (and terrifyingly) lead the country in the future. coming years.
America’s Muslim population can only grow, while Jews will be a shrinking percentage of the total population.
Violent Islamism has a strong footing in many Western democracies today and its influence is likely to strengthen. Suddenly, that Jewish homeland seems more necessary than ever.
This unfortunate story still has a way to go. Pro-Hamas protesters have strong allies on the left of the Democratic Party. They will come out in force when the Democratic convention arrives in Chicago in August.
Chicago, of course, was the site of the most violent Democratic convention in history in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, when Mayor Daley’s somewhat robust police force confronted radical protesters attempting to disrupt the convention.
I’m not saying we’re in for such a bad repeat, but it won’t be pretty on the streets of the Windy City this summer.
The President, to today’s protesters, is ‘Genocide Joe’. They will come out to pressure Democrats to end their support for Israel the same way they wanted the party to end its support for the Vietnam War all those years ago.
Vietnam involved the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of young Americans to fight a massive war on the other side of the world, which ultimately cost more than 55,000 American lives. That gave the protests a special advantage and relevance. Israel involves none of that, which is why it doesn’t have the same spice for most people.
But pro-Palestinian sentiments are the force that is emerging in the Democratic Party, with all the attendant anti-Semitism we are currently witnessing.
There can be no compromise with such forces, whatever the superficial attractions of winning the youth vote by pandering to students who know nothing. We will see if Biden rises to the challenge and remains steadfast in her determination to support Israel.