As the war in Gaza carries on, student protests in support of Gaza and Hamas continue to be a staple of U.S. collegiate life. In the past three weeks, there have been protests on over 100 campuses, which have resulted in more than 2,000 arrests (see another list with news articles here). Of, course, the pro-Palestine side wants to make it as if this were simply "[mostly] peaceful protests." If they were simply peaceful demonstrations, I would support the exercise of their First Amendment rights, regardless of how reprehensible and vile I find their anti-Semitic speech.
Forget that private universities are technically not subject to the First Amendment. As the libertarian Cato Institute point out in its legal analysis on the campus unrest, "Restrictions on the time, place, and manner of speech are allowed as long as the restrictions don't relate to the content of the speech and leave ample alternative channels of communication." These protests cross the line from protected speech to unprotected conduct, particularly the campus encampments.
Freedom to protest does not give you a carte blanche to violate other laws. These protestors have set up tents where they are not permitted, they have intimidated students, impeded others from free access to education on campus, and have even broken into campus buildings while barricading themselves in said buildings. Between the trespassing, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest, I only wish that this abuse of the First Amendment was quashed earlier.
This is more than a legalistic argument about freedom of speech that go beyond the ignorance, misunderstanding, and abuse of such words as occupier, colonizer, and apartheid state. The doublespeak and hate from these protestors is nothing short of astounding.
These protestors are decrying ethnic cleansing. When the pro-Palestine protestors chant "From the river to the sea," what do you think is going on? It is bad enough that only 47 percent of protestors can tell you which river and which sea (Wall Street Journal poll). For those who know what is going on, they want everything in between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which includes Israel. At the minimum, these protestors are hypocritically calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jews, if not the downright destruction of the Jews currently living in Israel.
What about screaming "Globalize the intifada"; is that a peaceful chant? No. They cheer on violence against Jews worldwide. The protestors want to stop alleged Israeli genocide. Not only do they ignore what genocide actually is or not understand that Israel is not committing genocide, but also that Hamas has wanted to commit genocide against the Jewish people since its founding in 1988.
And calling for a ceasefire? The protestors see to not understand that Hamas has used past ceasefires to rearm and regroup, thereby perpetuating the fighting in the region. They also forget why there is a war in the first place. On October 7, 2023, Hamas broke the previous ceasefire by crossing into Israel to rape, kidnap, torture, murder, and decapitate Israeli civilians. If the Palestinians wanted to keep its ceasefire, it would not have fired the first shot and provoke Israel with such a blatant human rights violation.
Also, if you care about Palestinians, don't cheer for the government that oppresses its own citizens. And certainly don't cheer for the terrorist organization that uses its own civilians as human shields or hides military assets under civilian infrastructure to maximize casualties.
Not only does Hamas not care about its own civilians, but the majority of Gazan citizens harbor hatred towards Jews. This is a society that educates its children to hate Jews. Looking at Palestinian polling data, most Palestinians do not have an issue with violence against Jews. As a matter of fact, the Palestinians (or in pre-1967, the other Arab nations) have rejected every peace offer, including the UN Partition Plan of 1947 when the Arabs were de facto given a Palestinian state.
It would be nice to have a region where everyone gets along. After all, Israel has a multi-cultural, multi-racial society with Jews, Muslims (over 1.7 million), Christians, and Druze. If you look throughout the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict, the only peace and the only number of acceptable Jews is zero, or in order words, a Judenrein Middle East. For all the protestors' clamoring about peace, their vision of peace in the Middle East is neither a peaceful nor a tolerant one.
Imagine how different that region would be if the Palestinian government worked on building peaceful relations with Israel and providing basic services to its citizenry instead of investing in military capabilities with the sole purpose of wiping out Jews. If these people were legitimately concerned about "Muslim lives matter," they would call for an end of Hamas. If they were so concerned, where were they when Bashar al-Assad killed over 600,000 Arab Muslims in Syria? Or the 150,000 Muslims killed in the War in Yemen? What about the oppression of the Uyghur Muslims in China? This does not even get into mass death or oppression against non-Muslims. I guess human rights violations only matter for this crowd when the perceived bad guy is Jewish.
It is the same sort of ignorance and hatred that fuels these people to hold candlelight vigils for Hamas terrorists, put up photos of terrorists on campus to memorialize them, tell Jews to "go back to Poland," saying that "Zionists don't deserve to live," scream "Al-Qassam (Hamas), make us proud; Kill another soldier now;" or project anti-Semitic slogans onto campus buildings. What is even more messed up is that the protesting against Israel did not begin when the Israeli Defense Forces began their offensive in Gaza. They began earlier, shortly after October 7, 2023, merely hours after the Jewish people endured the worst pogrom since the Holocaust.
Anti-Semitism was already bad before October 7. As a report released yesterday from the Anti-Defamation League shows, anti-Semitism has spiked yet again. College students, not to mention K-12 students, in the United States have been indoctrinated in erroneously believing the world is as simple as "oppressor versus oppressed" or that Jews are so privileged that they should be labeled as "white." As I explained last year, it should not be the least bit surprising to see that this latest surge in anti-Semitism is coming from the Far Left (see here, here, and here).
It is not difficult to see how these college protests, along with the other pro-Palestine protests, stoke age-old anti-Semitic tropes. Regardless of whether the protestors are blissfully ignorant or downright anti-Semitic, I can safely say that these protestors are not freedom fighters. If they possessed situational or historical awareness, they would realize they are actually rooting for ethnic cleansing, genocide, and destruction of a historically oppressed people. These protestors are not fighting for the freedom of "the little guy," but rather cheerleading corrupt, homophobic, anti-Semitic, genocidal terrorists.
I expect to see more college protests, more arrests on college campuses, and graduations that are either cancelled or disrupted in light of these demonstrations. Aside from crackdowns on the disruptive conduct that is not protected by the First Amendment, I hope that there are counterprotests to peacefully demonstrate against the clear support for violence and hatred that emanates from the pro-Palestine side. The disruptive actions from the pro-Palestine side that go beyond freedom of speech and freedom of protest have no place in civil society.
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