Posted on 04/23/2024 7:45:33 PM PDT by nickcarraway
This week, as Jews worldwide gather around the Seder table to celebrate the first nights of Passover, college campuses are closing their gates and moving their classes online in response to — and in anticipation of — vitriol and violence toward Jewish students during pro-Palestine demonstrations.
The Crimson reported on Monday that the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee was suspended for “violating student organization rules”— but that doesn’t mean that student organizing efforts will suddenly cease. It’s likely that, like on campuses across the country, the opposite will occur.
While inflated accusations of antisemitism on college campuses may undermine the ability to call it out where it actually exists in the pro-Palestine movement, the antisemitic scenes unfolding at Columbia University — and now other campuses, too — are as blatant as ever.
The ongoing demonstrations are led by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (whose post-Oct. 7 statement makes the PSC’s words seem benign) and conducted in partnership with an organization called Within Our Lifetime and a few other campus groups.
WOL’s demonstrations at Columbia this weekend were advertised as “Flood Columbia For Gaza,” seemingly referencing Hamas’s name for the Oct. 7 massacre: “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.”
WOL’s membership isn’t exactly full of social-justice-oriented peaceniks. Their stances are openly pro-violence, and their protests have been consistently attended by several “activists” who pleaded guilty to violent antisemitic hate crimes. Saadah Masoud, a prominent WOL protester and repeat antisemitic hate-crime offender, upon being arrested for assaulting a Jewish man at a rally, said to detectives, “All this for one Jew?”
I’m sure he’s “just an anti-Zionist,” though.
With people like this organizing on and around campus and actively collaborating with my classmates, I would not feel safe to wear my Star of David, much less to openly share my views, regardless of their content.
The situation on Columbia’s campus is far more severe than the antisemitic incidents we have seen thus far at Harvard, but I worry that similar circumstances could soon make their way to Cambridge. Such a threat warrants urgent reflection from our campus’ organizers.
Pro-Palestine groups must acknowledge that proud extremist antisemites are joining campus protests at universities much like ours, and confront the fact that their hateful and violent theories of change are seeping into on-campus advocacy.
These extremists do not care about promoting peaceful coexistence and ending the onslaught on innocent civilians in Gaza. They are there because these protest spaces have opened a conduit that is permissive of violent extremism and overt eliminationist antisemitism. It seems student organizations have allowed it, or at the very least, turned a blind eye in the name of coalition-building.
That said, the students who were arrested for their specific encampment protest within Columbia’s gates — while their words and choices may be objectionable to some — were largely non-violent. Even the police said so.
But non-violent is not the same as non-hateful, and a peaceful act does not negate overt antisemitism and intimidation of students on Columbia’s campus.
Here, two truths can exist at once. The decision to arrest students in the encampment by Columbia’s president was an overreach of police power and did no good for campus tensions. Still, many student organizers, including at Columbia, have lost their way and are damaging their movement.
If organizers on Harvard’s campus want to be an effective force for a just future for Palestinians, they must take careful note.
As the war continues, too many students are succumbing to vitriol, disdain, and manichaean ideologies. At best, these organizing approaches fail to move past loose theoretical language about settler-colonialism and liberation. At worst, they come across as condoning mass violence and calling for the elimination of Jews from the region.
The chaos at Columbia — which blurred the lines between student and non-student protestors and unleashed a whirlwind of antisemitism reminiscent in tone to the “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, V.A. — is a prime example.
If they are dedicated to peacebuilding, pro-Palestinian campus organizations — as they determine the goals of their movements, how to frame their rhetoric, and with whom to build coalitions — must reckon with an irrefutable fact: Over seven million Jews live between the river and the sea, too, and they sure as hell aren’t going “back to Poland,” where over 85 percent of the Jewish population was murdered in death camps.
Simplify their existence to settler-colonialism all you want, and the fact still stands.
A lasting ceasefire, Palestinian liberation, and any positive future in the region will not come from demonizing and attacking Jews and Israelis. It will not happen through eliminationist slogans and events where “Zionists are not welcome.” Boycotting Starbucks probably won’t do it either.
Until that reality is fully recognized in the ethos of pro-Palestine student organizations, their voices and demands will fall on deaf ears. They will be co-opted by violent and hateful extremists, making administrators all the more emboldened to repress their non-violent demonstrations.
On our campuses, we have the unique privilege of astoundingly diverse and intelligent student bodies. Our goals are best served when we treat other people with respect, afford our opponents dignity, and foster conversations across deep disagreement.
Pro-Palestine student organizers must commit to these values. Otherwise, they risk repeats of the failures at Columbia, undermining their movement and making their Jewish peers unsafe in the process.
Matthew E. Nekritz ’25, an Associate Editorial editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Cabot House.
I heard on the radio that a year at Columbia is about $90K....WHERE does all this money come from? Who is paying for the tuitions of these Hamas Pallies and what degrees are they attempting?
A real journalist would be sussing THAT story out
America does not need these propaganda mills of hatred. Close them down. Let all these college buildings house “newcomers” so beloved by these Leftist freaks.
<< during pro-Palestine demonstrations. >>
Let’s be clear, they’re pro-Hamas. They’re not even pro-ceasefire anymore, taking their cue from Hamas after they recently rejected two reasonable offers. The activist coalition of jihadis and wokies is all about the annihilation of America and Israel.
The Real Mike Rowe
@mikeroweworks
For a guy who runs a foundation that sends young people to trade schools all over America – trade schools where I’m pleased to report, no one is calling for the extermination of Jews – today’s headlines are once again offering another excellent reason to consider redirecting whatever financial support you might earmark for the Ivy League, to the mikeroweWORKS Foundation. Why? Because the Ivy League has truly lost its mind.
Consider the latest madness at Columbia University, where the president, Minochuhe Shafik, has announced a new round of remote learning - effective immediately - in response to a noisy rabble of thugs and bullies calling for the eradication of Israel.
If I had a kid at Columbia, I’d be livid. It’s simply mind-boggling that the president of this university would rather consign her students to another crucible of remote learning, than permanently expel the protesters. I mean, seriously, what does it take to get expelled from Columbia? These creeps are on camera, literally screaming into the faces of Jewish students.
“They yelled at us to go back to Poland, said we have no culture, and chanted, ‘Strike, strike Tel Aviv,” said one terrified student. Followed by, “Burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” “Go Hamas, we love you, we support your rockets, too.”
In a now-infamous image, one demonstrator appeared before a group of counter-protesters holding Israeli and American flags with a sign pointing in their direction that read, “Al-Qasam’s next targets.”
That’s what you get for $68,000 a year at Columbia – an administration who cowers in the face of thugs and bullies, and a university president who would rather make your kids try to learn off campus, than take a truly hard line with those students calling for the murder of Jews. For the love of God, expel them. Calling for murder is not protected speech.
In the meantime, mikeroweWORKS is accepting applications for our next round of work ethic scholarships. Deadline is the end of the month. It’s worth noting that the careers we’re training people for cannot be taught, or preformed, remotely. It’s also worth mentioning that we accept donations year-round and spend the money we take in with great discretion. You can apply for a scholarship, or donate, at http://mikeroweWORKS.org.
The reality facing America is these neo Marxist radicals will paint themselves with any facade to advocate their radical violent agenda. That is destroy America and capitalism.
Student Organizers have learned.
They have learned that college administrators are cowards and that left-wing groups can spread terror on campuses with little fear of consequences.
From our, and Europe's energy bills. The end result of the Arab oil embargo and subsequent price hikes.
They tend to be emotional "thinkers" rather than logical.
So they are easily led into violence, a two year old temper tantrum.
They have no idea those using them will kill them in the end.
While there are always exceptions to the rule, every Muslim is Hamas to some degree. Even women and children.
They are indoctrinated by what is written in Arabic and in true translations of the Holy Koran.
This needs to be required reading in all high schools and colleges.
Every Jew and every American, well for that matter, every European needs to read a true translation of the Holy Quran or Koran.
Then they might understand why this is happening and why it will never stop happening. IMHO these are probably the most accurate translations, and they are FREE.
So far it has been there for over 30 years.
No chance.
Anarchists etc. cheered Lenin from jail.
And soon found themselves in front of Chekist firing squads.
Exactly. But they still cheered Lenin to the end.
That is the self-destructive pathology of the Left.
And why NormieCon copes like “they will be destroyed themselves” are completely lame, and irrelevant.
.
“While inflated accusations of antisemitism on college campuses”
Yep, calling for half of the Jews to be killed is ‘inflated’, since a REAL anti-semite would call for ALL Jews to be killed.
BTTT
YOU are! 'Students' simply borrow the money from Uncle Sam, then illegally elected Democrats 'forgive' the loans.
In a way, my question was rhetorical, but there is another aspect I suspect is operative here. A huge number of foreign students here on student visas paying international and out-of-state tuitions on STUDENT VISAS, all in a circuitous process. That process being 1)Student Visa, 2) H1-B visa, 3) Green Card and finally 4) Citizenship.
My point on this is that we don’t need these added people here. International study should be used to get educations HERE and then go HOME to help their own country, not back door their way into staying here and getting citizenship.
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