Curse, terrify, threaten, and beat up a visibly Jewish male or female student and then call it “free speech”? Is that what the Constitution protects? Op-ed.
The elite “woke” faculty and administration at Columbia and, for that matter, at all the Ivy-League universities in America, are insisting that violence, harassment, bullying, blocking access to traffic, to classrooms, and buildings, as well as destroying property, are protected by civil, free speech, and academic freedom rights.
They are dead wrong, but it’s almost impossible to reason with cult members. Is the increasing violence that characterizes “peaceful” protests funded by secular left-wing and religious Islamist money? And is such violence considered permissible because it is seen as righteously revolutionary? How much are our campus encampments influenced by Jihadi spectaculars in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa?
I began writing about this back in 2004, and over the years, a myriad of other universities, human rights organizations, and major media outlets have followed the Ivy League and Democratic Party’s yellow brick road.
Torch a city–but if you do it in the name of Black Lives Matter–and to “protest” alleged police violence–it is considered a “peaceful protest.”
Curse, terrify, threaten, and beat up a visibly Jewish male or female student and that, too, is “free speech” expressing itself peacefully.
Are the anti-Zionist/pro-Palestine free-speechers totally unaware that their demonstrations in America are fueling Hamas’s, Hezbollah’s, Qatar’s, and Iran’s prolonged, multi-pronged, and deadly assaults on Israel? Is this exactly what they’re after as they play-act being the most virtuous of victims?
Have those leftisst Israelis who have been hotly protesting Netanyahu’s war-time rule ever considered raging against and actually blocking Hamas and Iran rather than trying to bring down a democratically elected government with which they happen to disagree? (They lost the elections. They refuse to accept it. If they can’t win–they’d rather have the entire government fail and Hamas remain in charge of Gaza.)
Ahem. Who does this resemble?
I am totally in favor of cleaning out the Augean Stables that American universities have become–an almost impossible task–but I appreciate the concerns of those who fear the consequences of a chain-saw approach. I understand the fears about deportation without due process, evidence, a trial, and a decision–but do we really want pro-Hamas Jihadists on our campuses, violent criminals on our streets? For how long are we willing to fund their lawyers, trials, and appeals, and pay for their food and housing?
A liberal American judge told me that this is precisely why America is exceptional; this is why we are levels above most of the world. But do we want illegal child rapists, pimps, human traffickers, drug lords, and Jihadists living among us? Don’t we already have enough of their home-grown counterparts?
A leftist Israeli protestor said that they will not descend to the level of barbarians, that in their view, it is quintessentially “Jewish” to stand for peace and for a two-state solution, even if both are very dangerous illusions in the Middle East. Are these Israelis willing to commit suicide for the sake of their ethical principles rather than fight back to survive the genocidal war being waged against them?
Please allow me to recommend two very enlightening articles: First, Gadi Taub’s current piece up at Tablet, “Netanyahu Takes on Israel’s Deep State,” and Irina Velitskaya’s article in Commentary titled “The Coalition for the Sentimental and the Homicidal. There’s a word for it in Russian: poshlost.”
Finally, last night I again chanced upon the film Operation Finale, directed by Chris Weitz and starringBen Kingsley, Oscar Issac, Lior Raz, and others. The film portrays how the Shin Bet captured Adolph Eichmann, who was leading a safe and quiet life in Argentina, and brought him back to stand trial in Jerusalem. It was a daring exploit, perhaps a bit on the shady side, but when faced with monsters, it is a better choice than what? Just shooting him down dead in South America, versus using him, but in a fair trial, to show the world what the Nazis had done? I did not mind, not one bit, that the judges sentenced him to hang.
Did you? Thus, parenthetically, how long does Israel have to pay to feed, shelter, educate, and provide medical services to Jihadists with blood on their hands?
Prof. Phyllis Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and the author of 20 books, including “The New Anti-Semitism” (2003, 2014). She conducted and published four studies about honor killing. Her latest books are “An American Bride in Kabul, which won a National Jewish Book Award and is now in Arabic;“A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing,” “A Politically Incorrect Feminist.” She is a founding member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME).
