Pro-Palestinian protests grow angrier, more violent, and more hateful as they spread across America

April 22, 2024 • 10:00 am

Over the last two weeks, demonstrations by pro-Palestinian protestors have spread across America, most notably on college campuses like Yale and Columbia, but also in many cities, where protestors block bridges and streets. And the protests have grown more intense and more hateful.  The inevitable chanting has become darker, morphing from hatred of Israel into hatred of Jews. In some places (see below), violence against Jews has erupted as well. Sentiment among protestors is shifting from defense of the Palestinian people to approval of Hamas and Iran—and of violence and terrorism.

The four pieces below from Commentary and The Free Press (click each to read) discuss this trend. As Seth Mandel notes in the first piece, the protests, unlike those of the Sixties which were against the Vietnam war, now seem to be calling for war.

At Columbia University, the protestors, who were booted off campus, with many suspended and arrested, have returned, and a rabbi connected with the school has told Jewish students that, for their safety, they should go home and stay there. Nemat Shafik, the President of Columbia, has canceled in-person classes for today, with all classes becoming virtual, while New York’s mayor Eric Adams has condemned the antisemitism being emitted around Columbia. But in general, campus authorities have done little to quash illegal acts by protestors (even Shafik has apparently decided to let the protestors occupy the campus illegally).

As one example, about a month ago we were hearing chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “Globalize the infitada,” words that are fairly threatening but can be twisted by ideologues to imply that they’re not really calling for violence. Now, however, the articles below recount chants and words like these, which allow for no innocuous interpretation.

“Their god is CAPITAL and God is our Witness.” [a sign in a Chicago protest referring to the supposed money-grubbing of Jews]

“Never forget the 7th of October”. “That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10 more times, not 100 more times, not 1,000 more times, not 10,000. . . The 7th of October is going to be every day for you.” [yelled to Jews at Columbia]

“Iran you make us proud.” [from NYC]

“Yemen, Yemen, make us proud; turn another ship around!”  [widespread]

“Resistance by any means necessary!”  [this has been around for a while but is spreading]

“Go back to Poland” [shouted to Jews at Columbia]

“Uncultured a** b****es, go back to Europe. You have no culture. All you do is colonize.” [from Columbia, reported in The Jerusalem Post]

“Zionism will fall, brick by brick, wall by wall, Israel will fall”. . . . “US imperialists, number one terrorists.” [ibid]

“Say it loud and say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here.” [Columbia]

Fuck Israel, Israel a bitch / Bitch we out here mobbin’ on some Palestine shit / Free Palestine bitch, Israel gon’ die bitch / Nigga it’s they land why you out here tryna rob it / Bullshit prophets, y’all just want the profit [“blasted at Yale” as recounted by Sahar Tartak]

“We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground” and “Hamas we love you. We support your rockets, too.” [from Jonathan Lederer’s piece below]

“Al-Qassam make us proud, kill another soldier now.” [Al-Qassam is the military arm of Hams, and the soldiers refer to the IDF]

“There is no god but Allah, and the martyr is Allah’s beloved!” [like the above two, overheard by Lederer]. Arabic slogans are becoming increasingly common, and I suspect that many Americans who shout them have no idea what they mean.

You can read all the article below in a short while, as none of them is long, but all are scary. Click each to read, and I’ve given just a few words excerpted from each. At the bottom of the post I proffer a few of my own thoughts.

An excerpt from Mandel’s piece:

Yesterday’s protests at Columbia highlighted a key difference between the left-wing protests of generations past and the current demonstrations: While both cheer America’s enemies, the 2024 version is ostentatiously, undeniably pro-war.

. . .“Never forget the 7th of October,” they shouted at Jews at Columbia last night. “That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10 more times, not 100 more times, not 1,000 more times, not 10,000… The 7th of October is going to be every day for you.”

This kind of enthusiasm for the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, complete with sexual torture and the dismemberment of young children, is important to note for several reasons, only one of which is that it highlights these protestors’ uncontrollable urge for the Mideast war to go on forever. It’s also notable because it’s honest: The Hamas-a-thons all around the country have been clear about what their participants want. Screeching bloodlust so explicit it would have made Nazis blush has become the ticket to ride in progressive activist circles.

. . . At yesterday’s Capitol Hill hearing on anti-Semitism at Columbia, Rep. Ilhan Omar said the ongoing protests shouldn’t so much be characterized as anti-Israel vs. pro-Israel but anti-war vs. pro-war. She was right, but not in the way she intended. Israel’s supporters never wanted this war. President Biden never wanted this war. But for the anti-American and anti-Israel demonstrators on college campuses and all around the country, war is all they desire.

 

From Bari Weiss’s piece, a summary of the other two pieces and a call for action:

Students—all of us—have a right to protest. We have a right to protest for dumb causes and horrible causes. At The Free Press, we will always defend that right. (See here and here, for example.)

It is not, however, a First Amendment right to physically attack another person. It is not a First Amendment right to detain another person as part of your protest. And while Americans are constitutionally protected when they say vile things, like wishing upon Jews a thousand October 7s, we are certainly free to criticize those who say them. We are also free to condemn institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth who have abandoned that mission, and who stand by and do nothing meaningful to stop scenes like the ones of the past 48 hours.

The students who support terror have given in to madness. Refusing to condemn them is madness.

There are courageous students who see that madness clearly. Please read these essays by Jonathan Lederer and Sahar Tartak.

Lederer was brave enough to assemble a group of Jewish students in the middle of the fracas at Columbia:

On Saturday night, the situation on campus hit a new low. Amid multiple protests both inside and outside of Columbia’s gates, my friends and I decided to show our pride yet again, as we have on so many occasions since Hamas began its war.

For an hour, 20 of us stood on the sundial in the middle of Columbia’s campus with Israeli and American flags and sang peaceful songs such as Matisyahu’s “One Day” and “V’hi She’amda”—a much-needed ode to the hope and perseverance of the Jewish people in the face of enemies who seek our destruction.

Even as we sang lyrics such as “We don’t want to fight no more, there will be no more war,” we were met with hostility. Masked keffiyeh-wearers came to us face-to-face, trying to intimidate us. They chanted, “Fuck Israel, Israel’s a bitch!” We were told, “You guys are all inbred.” They threw water in our faces. These groups are not fairly described as “pro-Palestine.” They are active supporters of Hamas and they say so explicitly: “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” one group chanted by the gates of my school. “Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets, too.”

One keffiyeh-masked protester came up to my friends and I and held up a sign with an arrow pointing toward us that read: “Al-Qassam’s Next Targets.” Al-Qassam is the military wing of Hamas.

. . . At least two solid objects were thrown at me from close range, one of which hit me directly in the face and the other in the chest. Finally, I succeeded in grabbing my flags and ran to rejoin my friends. We ended up being chased out of campus and told to “go back to Poland,” a poignant reminder that even in America, antisemites wish to condemn Jews like me to our ancestors’ tragic fate.

Tartak is “visibly Jewish,” and ran into trouble when she went to a pro-Palestinian demonstration at Yale with a “visibly Jewish” friend. (She’s okay now).  There are videos in this piece and the one above.

I was stabbed in the eye last night on Yale University’s campus because I am a Jew.

By April 20, the students’ encampment had grown to roughly forty tents, sleeping bags, umbrellas, and a stereo. On Saturday night, a student in a Class of 2026 group chat encouraged Yalies to come and show their support for Yalies4Palestine. As a student journalist for the Yale Free Press, I went to check it out. Other reporters from the Yale Daily News were already on the scene.

I should say here that I am a visibly observant Jew who wears a large Star of David around my neck and dresses modestly. I went over with my friend Netanel Crispe, who is also identifiably Jewish because of his beard, black hat, and tzitzit.

When we approached the anti-Israel protest accompanying the tent encampment to document the demonstration, we were quickly walled off by demonstration organizers and attendees who stood in a line in front of us. No one else documenting the event was blockaded this way.

In every direction we moved, demonstrators stood in front of us, arms linked, yelling along with the crowd. (Watch this video and ask yourself if this would happen to a student who did not look visibly Jewish.)

. . .Before too long, the protesters encircled me in addition to the human blockade. Their arms linked, and they danced in a circle around me so that I was pinned between them, the human blockade, and a wall. Some other demonstrators noticed this and joined in on the taunting.

They pointed their middle fingers at me and yelled “Free Palestine,” and the taunting continued until a six-foot-something male protester holding a Palestinian flag waved the flag in my face and then stabbed me with it in my left eye.

*******************************

Why have the protests intensified and grown from anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian to open calls for eliminating Israel and killing Jews? Why, as Mandel asks, do the protestors now seem to desire war, and apparently a war not just on Israel, but on the entire West? Truly, it is a call for a globalized intifada, and apparently one meant to destroy all Enlightenment values of the West and restore Islamism.

I have no firm answers except to say it appears to be a concatenation of several factors exacerbated by the war between Israel and Hamas. For one thing, Israel is winning and will win, and that must anger the protestors no end. (Not to mention the help that the U.S. is giving Israel, defending it against Iran’s attack and now giving $17 billion to help defend Israel.) There is a faddishness of the protests, too, with some students simply going along with what seems to be the dominant political ideology on campus.  And the dominance of that ideology can surely be laid largely at the door of DEI on campus, which sees Israel as composed of white oppressor-colonialists, not as another oppressed minority.

Calling the police on illegal protests certainly riles up the participants, for one commonality of all “progressives” is a hatred of cops, and when the cops come it will appear to be a vindication of the protestors’ ideas. (They’ve just started arresting protestors at Yale.)

And behind it all is money, money from people or groups I don’t know of but are surely funding groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Within Our Lifetime, the two main groups, both well funded, behind campus demonstrations. (Didn’t you notice that all the tents on the Columbia campus were the same? Who bought them?) SJP, for example, has over 200 branches on American campuses, and a national headquarters that surely coordinates and plans demonstrations. Who funds them? Could money be coming from Iran or other places in the Middle East, who sense, along with the American groups, that this is their moment to strike? Who knows?

What do the protestors hope to accomplish with these raucous demonstrations? People who are inconvenienced are naturally ticked off, and those people are not likely to buy into the slogans above. There may be a small effect in persuading Biden to pressure Israel about the war when he sees both American Muslims and young people becoming more sympathetic to Palestine and more critical of Israel. But the demands of the demonstrators—mainly for colleges to divest from everything Israeli (especially armaments)—aren’t going to be met.

Palestinian students, of course, have a personal interest in the war, but many of the demonstrators (most of the ones I’ve seen in Chicago) are not Palestinians, but Americans or non-Palestinian foreign students.  It may well be true that what we’re seeing is the biggest example of college virtue signaling yet. But of course what starts on campus spreads to the rest of America, as we saw with DEI.

While it may be true that only a fraction of the protestors really believe in the things they are chanting, it takes only a small group of dedicated believers to leverage change, and in this case it’s change for the worse. For it’s not only the existence of Israel that’s at stake, but the Enlightenment values behind the American project.  Already many academic institutions are threatened by these protestors, and what is next? One can hardly call Columbia these days an “academic institution.”

If “globalizing the intifada” is truly a goal of many protestors, then it’s time, as Bari Weiss said, to stand up against the madness. Too many Americans who despise the goals of these protestors remain silent, for they don’t want to stick their heads above the parapet. But if ever there’s a time to do that, it’s now. If not now, when?

The hatred is not limited to American protestors. This is in Ottawa:

92 thoughts on “Pro-Palestinian protests grow angrier, more violent, and more hateful as they spread across America”

  1. Fanon

    Marcuse

    Freire

    Say Their Names

    … also forgive their students’ higher education financial debts m’kay, thanks.

  2. For the bigger issue of anti-enlightenment ideology, I recommend Douglas Murray’s recent 270 page book, “The War on the West”.

    1. Oh, and not bring them up short when they break school policies, or the law, only emboldens them.

  4. I’m waiting for President Biden and Senator Schumer to strongly condemn these flagrant displays of antisemitism. I also am interested in who is funding the protests. A potential Pulitzer awaits for an inquisitive investigative journalist.

      1. It’s the State Governor, not the President, who calls in the National Guard or the State Police to assist the civil authority, at the request of a mayor. The President’s role, through the Dept. of Defence, is to call up the Guard into the regular army for deployment abroad or, in an insurrection where the Guard is participating, to deploy the Army itself.

        This isn’t on President Biden or any federal authority, other than to be Comforter-in-Chief in charge of thoughts and prayers.

    2. I hope you’re not correct (about festering rot being brought to the surface). I remember similar things being said during the Trump Administration with respect to the maga hat wearers. My immigrant friends were troubled and fearful back then. Ugly breeds more ugly. That is for sure. I wish everyone would take a collective breath!

      1. But they’re the “diverse and inclusive” folks….

        Makes the John Birch Society look like nursery school amateurs.

      2. Decades ago I realized the slogan “No Peace Without Jesus” meant “Bow to Jesus or we will hound you until you die.” Are those who call Islam a “religion of peace” any less fanatic than their Christian counterparts?

        1. By all observation of current events it is hard to see that as a sincere question, especially since the only available answers are, “Less than” and “not less than.” But since every question deserves an attempt at answering, I would say the modern religion of peace as practiced by its extremists is much more fanatical and dangerous than extremist Christianity in the last 500 years, maybe the last 900. And even during Christianity’s extremist phase it didn’t have aviation and the internet to spread itself around. Also during its bloodiest phase it was, as now, fighting against an Islamist caliphate that wanted to destroy it. But that’s ancient history.

          1. “No” is the only available answer to my rhetorical “any less fanatic” question. It was indeed less than sincere. As Gore Vidal put it, “There are depths of insincerity I have yet to plumb.”

        2. Painting Christians with the anti-semitism or fanatic brush is historically accurate but I find it unhelpful here. Elevating the conversation to the human tendency to denigrate, exile, and murder “the other” would be also be accurate but doesn’t take us very far unless we apply that principle to suggested action to counteract the tendency. We seem to be afraid of our children when they band together and misbehave … from our point of view. Here, they are behaving righteously, from theirs. Adults need to get a grip and educate young adults on the way the world really works and on ways these young adults can work with people of diverse perspectives to fully understand then peacefully work to solve the problems they’ve identified..

          1. Not all points of view correspond with reality. Not all protesters are young adults. The way the world really works is the problem: many would rather die than think; the desire to consort with friends overrides sanity; and the aggressive cow the timid. Problems can’t be solved by a refusal to identify them.

  8. So much talk about the free speech clause of the first amendment (which I wholeheartedly support). What about this one?

    “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”

    Is that somehow less important?

    1. Somewhere along the way, “good trouble”, the idea that civil disobedience in assemblies that disturbed the peace and broke the law (noise, bonfires, sit-ins, trespass, obstructing traffic and critical infrastructure) was justified, and you showed your moral fibre by expecting to be arrested and jailed, underwent a metamorphosis. It became unpeaceable occupations of public and private property along with intimidation of (in this case) Jews that you expect and demand will not be punished or even criticized. You dare them to even just try.

      The police have decided to sit out the role they were expected to play in “good trouble” as it reflects badly on them politically when they get out the batons and fire hoses. Why should blue-collar cops care what happens to Columbia and the likes of anyone there, from the president on down to Ilan Omar’s daughter? Columbia Yale, and all the rest of you, heal yourselves.

      1. Holding was supposed to end at the end of the first paragraph. Sorry to appear to be screaming.

      2. Leslie, in my bluer than blue state, some Seattle community leaders condemned the cops for protecting Seattle from rioting youngsters in 2020. Using water was too harsh. Even in June. They protested and rioted for months, consequence free. All over the country. What lesson did that teach these young adults? Then we used the FBI to hunt down and arrest red adults who protested and rioted… once … for doing the same thing. Threw them in prison, some for many years. Lesson: rioting for blue valued justice is condoned. Rioting for red valued justice is punished.

        1. Yes. Supporting the orgy of riots in 2020, and pretending that all of the extremist narrative was true, was a cardinal sin by Democrat politicians/mayors/governors.

  9. I wonder if so much of the Palestinian hatred of Israel is rooted in simple envy and jealousy. Islamism and Islamic theocracies do not work…they result in backward and violent societies. Having a nation with liberal, secular values right next door that is so much more successful must be humiliating in the extreme, as deep down they know they could never build such a society.

    So rather than recognize the superiority of a liberal nation state, founded on Enlightenment values, they want to cure their humiliation by destroying their more successful neighbors. Improving their lot by making changes to their worldview never seems to enter their dense skulls.

    This explains to me why Gaza never became a “Singapore of the Middle East” despite having billions of aid money showered on it. Engaging in such a constructive project requires hard work, knowledge, and a desire to build rather than destroy. Like a sullen teenager who refuses to study (because he is afraid of failing), and who instead becomes anti-social and “fights against the man”, the Palestinians seem constitutionally unable to do anything other than blow stuff up.

    1. I’ve seen this exact same idea before, but never as well expressed. +1, bravo, and you da man!

    2. Very well put. An additional motivation among many of the Palestinian Arabs is no doubt a kind of cargo cult: they imagine that if they take over everything “from the river to the sea”, they will then magically receive the qualities of Israeli society—a European standard of living and social provision, advanced agriculture, a high-tech sector, Nobel Prize level scientific research, etc. etc.

      As for the campus enthusiasts of “global intifada”, their
      simpler motivation is explicable by the psychology of early childhood, summarized in the phrase “the terrible two’s”.

      1. NOT if Hamas have their way. Their charter is to keep the populus DOWN where they belong, grovaling at the feet of their not so great God.
        Subservient and faithful. The rewards of the west are only for their masters, Hamas.
        If the utube report of the elderly lady renouncing Hamas and calling them out to come and get her is true, there maybe is some hope.

      2. Thay had some of that when the Israelis vacated Gaza years ago, highly advanced greenhouses capable of producing lots of high quality fruit and vegetables and what did the Palestinians do? They destroyed every last greenhouse. They are beyond redemption in my opinion. They really are “philistines”.

    3. Exactly.

      Was going to elaborate around the huge contributions to humankind made by those surrounding Israel, but didn’t.

    4. JV: No wonder a certain group of campus kids support them so much. They feel a sense of affinity. These students are not the ones who are studying so that they build bridges, design the next generation of quantum computers, or do anything else to build something that benefits society. All they can do is tear down what is already built; the only thing they are maybe able to build is a DEI curriculum plan, but even then they would likely need to plagiarize someone else’s work.

      1. Well let them begin with dismantling the world changing sanitation systems so they can sit around chanting bigotry in their own shit.

      2. I am mindful of the British TV Michael Palin / Terry Jones series “Ripping Yarns” humour I would add, where in one episode “Murder at Moorestones Manor “ if memory serves where the father discussing his miscreant son says “what he needs is a damn good thrashing with a green bamboo cane, that would cure him” hm, some students come to mind. I would like to subject them to five minutes from my RAF Regiment Drill Instructor when under training as a cadet back in 1961. He could reduce grown students, or so they thought to a blubbering mess without any physical violence. Those were the days, Some could not cope and went home to mummy!

  10. Several of the Columbia protesters have been outed and profiled in the NYPost…..they are NOT from poor families:

    https://nypost.com/2024/04/19/us-news/ups-execs-daughter-other-millionaires-kids-busted-in-columbia-anti-israel-protest/

    And there is also this:

    https://nypost.com/2024/04/22/us-news/columbia-professor-and-outspoken-israel-supporter-shai-davidai-says-hes-been-barred-from-the-main-campus/

    https://nypost.com/2024/04/22/us-news/police-storm-yale-universitys-campus-with-riot-gear-as-hundreds-of-students-stage-anti-israel-protest/

  11. And there is this:

    “This is INSANE! I hope Columbia is sued into oblivion for this gross misconduct. Wow.

    Columbia University professor @ShaiDavidai
    entered campus today only to find his CUID had been deactivated. The university’s COO was standing by and informed Shai that it was deactivated because the school “cannot guarantee his safety.”

    So instead of shutting the pro-Hamas mob, the university decided to deactivate a Jewish professor’s ID!?”

    https://twitter.com/emilykschrader/status/1782427672091431074

    1. Remember, DEI shit have nice cushy jobs. Power, sitting in an air-conditioned office all day, no calluses. They are privileged, in exactly the same sense that they decry privilege in others. They are, therefore, afraid of islamic violence (even though they’d never say so), and hence would never call out the pro-jihad crowd–too much to lose. And it’s easier to cancel a victim than to confront a mob. And to hide behind the “cannot guarantee his safety” pretext.

      They, like all powerful people, could not possibly care less what happens to other people (though they do, occasionally, pretend that they care, at least for certain sub-classes). As I read somewhere recently, “The first imperative of power is to maintain itself in power. Therefore, it is always necessary for intelligent people to resist power.”

      End DEI. Now.

  12. Good grief are we headed for another Kristallnacht? A couple things – anti-semitism that has always been in the west, a superiority and love of bullying bolstered by the “gott mit uns” mentality of bad ideas current universities promote mixed in with a dash of the inevitable descent into madness that happens in all movements when the fringe take over. In this case the fringe grows, fuelled and supported by the bad ideas fostered for years. And let’s not forget that the reporting by the west is lazy and biased so people who are also lazy and biased don’t get the truth.

      1. Yes and no. Kristallnacht was not a spontaneous outburst of rage, it was organized from high up in the hierarchy, and the Gestapo/SA/SS had to do practically all the dirty work by themselves, as they did not manage to incite normal people to a pogrom as they had intended to.

  13. Forward Panic: a psychosocial state in which the interactional energy of attacking the weak feeds back into itself and pushes the attacker forward into overkill.

    When a mob goes from unruly to violent, it’s partly fueled by a contagious sense of righteousness and anger accumulating and exploding into the formation of the group as a weapon. So far, nobody has been killed.

    They need to keep breaking the chanting minions into individuals. It’s already out of control.

  14. News flash. Student activists at Ohio State University have set up tents on the university lawn in protest. Asked what they are demonstrating about, a spokesperson explained: “We are camping in as a gesture of solidarity. We are in solidarity with the students at the U. of North Carolina who were in solidarity with the students at Boston University who were in solidarity with the students at Yale who were in solidarity with the students at Columbia, who were arrested for camping on their lawn.” When asked what the original camp-in at Columbia was about, the spokesperson replied: ” I”ll have to get back to you on that. I think a river was involved, but maybe it was a lawn.”

      1. No, it is a News Flash I just invented, serving the public as a volunteer Onion.

  15. I don’t see a Kristallnacht around the corner. I am concerned about a Kent State. The violence spills into the surrounding city, metropolitan police get involved, it keeps escalating. The worst outcome would involve military presence.

    I too wonder about all the matching tents. Who is funding this? I believe some group of outside agitators are hoping for a few dead protesting students for the sake of their cause. Shutting down campus for awhile may be the only option to take in these extreme cases. The pandemic gave us plenty of practice teaching on-line.

  16. I love & care for two old folks who watch a lot of MSNBC and are convinced that Israelis are deliberately bombing and killing innocent Palestinian civilians as part of a strategy to take over Gaza. Both will nod their heads when reminded about October 7th, and that this is a war, and that Hamas deliberately puts kids and women and old people in harm’s way, and that the IDF tries hard not to injure or kill those human shields. But I can’t get either of them to see that Israel is defending itself and must win this war. It’s weaponized empathy through propaganda, and it’s working.

    1. If Israel wanted to “genocide” Arabs, they’d start with the 2 million Arab-Israeli citizens who have all the same rights as Jews and enjoy a higher standard of living, medical care and opportunity than in any Arab country.

      And they could have firebombed Gaza (as the US did to German and Japan cities during WWII) until they surrendered. And the US never sent “humanitarian aid” to Germany or Japan while at war.

    2. There is a Jewish version of your old folks’ mythology, offered by an old person I know: the IDF is deliberately killing and bombing innocent civilians etc. etc. in order to keep Netanyahu in power. This line, of course, flies in the face of the war cabinet’s composition: besides Bibi, it is the career soldier Yoav Gallant, and Benny Gantz, Chairman of the National Unity(formerly Blue and White) Party, which opposes Netanyahu; plus observer Gadi Eizenkot, from Gantz’s party.

      1. A Jewish leftie acquaintance, whom I’ve alluded to here before, subscribes to “Not in our name” and loathes Prime Minister Netanyahu. (Fine. Lots do.) She says she believes that the trouble here is being fomented by far-right American* white supremacists like the Proud Boys and, in Canada, the Trucker Convoy nucleus, who have it in equally for the Jews and the Muslims. Netanyahu is useful for their short-term goals of killing Muslims in Gaza and ethnically cleansing them from Canada but when that job is done they’ll come for the Jews. She says it’s like 1938 but doesn’t see Islamism’s hand in it. (I should say that in the town where she lives, the Jewish congregation invited the local Muslims to worship in their synagogue when their mosque suffered a fire several years ago.)

        I wish I could say I was making this up. If anyone can triangulate it I’d be grateful. It makes me think I’m losing my mind….or she already has.
        ———————
        * The Canadian Left blames the United States for everything. That’s not aberrant in itself.

        1. This line always omits Islamism’s hand in these matters because, you see, that would be Islamophobic.
          [Noticing the plain language of Hamas and similar groups is dismissed as Trumpist or alt-Rightist.] However, for some Jewish adherents of the pop-Left, the October 7 pogrom has had the same jarring effect that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had on the pop-Left of an earlier time.

  17. Why this conflict, why now?

    One the day (October 7) of the Palestinian attacks on innocent Israeli citizens one of my students from Burma (Myanmar) missed class. He was too traumatized to attend lecture. His story is that of fleeing the military junta and making his way to the United States to restart his university education; starting completely over after nearly being finished with medical school.

    His parents and other family members were living in the refugee camp in northern Burma that was attacked resulting in numerous dead. He feared that they were amongst those murdered that day.

    Fast forward six months and almost no mention of the situation in Burma is made on college campuses across the nation yet protests in support of Palestine have turned violent.

    Does anyone have a good explanation why this conflict has become so central to so many students in the U.S.? I truly do not understand.

    1. The students don’t seem interested in any other conflict. Or much of anything else for that matter. Few of them can be directly impacted by the conflict so it’s all rather strange.

      1. One would expect that, if progressive American university students would find time for political activism, they would support Ukraine. The pro-Russian wing of GOP and the too-cautious administration managed to withhold help for half a year (with disastrous results) because the most active segment of the American society didn’t give a damn about Ukraine.
        Also, one would expect progressive students to identify with heroic young Iranian protestors rather than the theocratic regime of Iran.

    2. I don’t know, but think one important reason is that this conflict can be interpreted as fitting into the Colonialist White Oppressors vs Indigenous Brown Oppressed critical social justice framework they’ve been educated in. They also grew up on a steady diet of American Civil Rights heroes. Israel is popularly considered to be similar to the United States in education, values, and temperament — so here they have an opportunity to vicariously experience what it was like to be on the Right Side of History fighting against a deadly version of bigoted injustice.

  18. If Trump was still president and groups of far-right students and fundamentalist Christians were marching in the streets shouting these exact same things, we would see the media in lockstep condemning the situation. Instead we see the “mostly peaceful protests” reporting style from them, and downright support from MSNBC.
    In fact, the whole op seems to be similar to 2020 in many ways (claim of structural oppression of the victim(s), demonization of the oppressors, nationally organized events); we’ll see if it expands to more violence and looting without consequence. The difference seems to be that the current protesters aren’t capturing the support of people not on the far left, and aren’t able, as of yet, to shame people and corporations into supporting them.
    Biden knows that he can get away with not saying much as he’ll still get the left-center votes no matter what he does. He’ll probably mildly condemn the more violent stuff at some point to satisfy them, but not take any real action that would upset the far-left side.

  19. These latest developments are completely unsurprising. What did you expect from people that shouted “globalize the intifada” for six months straight starting before the cinders of October 7th had burned out? “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.”

    1. “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.”

      “There was one thing the experience had taught him. He said he’d learned that when millions of people, a whole political system, countless numbers of citizens who believed in God, said they were going to kill you — just listen to them.” (from I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes)

  20. Why are these far left groups, who are virulently atheist and anti-religion in so many other areas, aligned with a religion that seems to be more strongly against leftist values than any other large-scale religion? Islamic countries are horrible places for women’s / gay / trans rights, free speech, etc., yet these same students, who would label as harm a school system moving a book containing graphic descriptions of gay sex from an elementary school library to a middle school library, are marching alongside those who represent those Islamic countries. These same students would not associate with traditional Christians who hold much less repressive values; what is it about Islam, except for a basic hatred of Jews, that attracts them?

      1. Also, I think they are far less intelligent than they consider themselves, and are presumed to be.

    2. You are propagating Islamophobic tropes. Also, even if what you said were true, which we sincerely believe it’s not, the cause is very probably nefarious colonialist crusader influence. The Islamic world has been somewhat less successful than the West for a few hundred years, and people from those countries are minorities in the West and don’t look Northern European (the evil race), so they must be good and may not be criticized.

    3. It’s fun to join a cause and mildly misbehave when you’ve followed most of the rules your whole life. It’s fun to be part of a righteous cause supported by your peers. It’s fun to think of yourself as a warrior for justice. And it’s fun to poke your elders in the eye and get away with it. Fun coupled with righteousness, an irresistible cocktail for youngin’s.

      1. Unfortunately, in earlier instances, the causes supported by such righteous youngsters later became mainstream in at least one political party. These youngsters have been educated by a previous generation of righteous youngsters who now sit in positions of power, and they will themselves be part of the political and administrative and educational elite tomorrow, unless something drastic happens.

  21. The failure of Britain and the U.S. to supply electricity, food, and humanitarian aid to Germany and Japan during WWII is an offense for which the Anglosphere must forever hang its head. My own student protest group demands that the U.K. and U.S. governments offer a public apology for this offense, and set up Flagellants Offices (analogous to DEI) in society to supervise this and other acts of penitence. We will camp out on university lawns to dramatize this campaign (as soon as our order for matching sets of tents is filled).

    1. I want a tent too as I helped with bombing of “errant tribesmen” in 1967 in what is now Yemen. Sometimes known as The British Empire “Last imperial Battle or was it war, “ cannot remember. Now known as Houthis the errant tribesmen are still “errant”
      More dangerous now with modern weapons and the internet and social media.

      1. Your post, Robert, sent me down the rabbit hole of the ins and outs of Yemeni history and reminded me of the god awful mess of infighting that’s always existed in the Arab middle east. I’d forgotten just how bad it is. Man oh man. (I DID know you were joking about the tent)

    2. Joke aside, the moment they had conquered an area, the allies tried to help feed the civilian population, despite the Brits not having much for themselves. And the people who suffered most from the lack of food in Nazi Germany when it was in its death throes were of course the weakest and least privileged, among them the labor camp inmates (like my grandfather). Many deaths of the terminally malnourished that happened in the weeks immediately before and after liberation were probably the result of broken down supply lines that had withheld even the meager low quality rations the inmates had received earlier.

  22. Following along with all the protest and beyond over the months and perhaps years, I was struck just now how little of Islam is being espoused – or at least making it through to my mind. But there is ample antagonism against an opponent.

    This suggests strongly to me that absolutely none of the “pro-Palestine” etc. activists actually care or have any interest at all about Islam. This would have to mean they are simply being used and manipulated from behind the scenes.

  24. Not sure how accurate these articles are from the Jewish site Tablet, but their answer to who is funding these groups is the Rockefellers, Fords, and Buffets (through NGO’s) in the states along with foreign Muslim governments who fund foreign students.

    https://www.tabletmag.com/collections/wasp-funding-woke-antisemitism

    (Not sure if the foreign student funders are included in the links but easy to find on the main site)

  25. There is so much going on here it makes my head spin. Rich, privileged kids going to “elite” universities trying to prove they are not rich and privileged? That they are on the side of the “oppressed” and are not oppressors, defending Iran and Hamas despite the fact that most would be jailed or killed by those governments.
    Correct me if I am wrong, but these protests aren’t happening at many other universities, where students are trying to get through their organic chemistry or geophysics or calculus classes. University of Iowa? Colorado State? I just tossed those out, but there is a long list of universities and smaller colleges providing good education to most students.

    1. I hope that employers will get the memo and stop automatically putting graduates of “elite” (read: for rich privileged kids) universities before those of the other universities.

  26. Two or three years ago, I got my commenting account at a large German left liberal newspaper cancelled for writing that “from the river to the sea” had a lot of support, and probably majority support, among Palestinian immigrants to Germany. Apparently, I was inciting anti-refugee sentiment and propagating Islamophobic tropes.

Comments are closed.