Many of us have been watching the images of the protests on the Columbia, Yale, and NYU campuses and listening to the alarming stories of Jewish students being harassed or confined to their dorm rooms for safety. The images could be of mass protests in Gaza if the crawler didn’t identify it as Harvard.
It is unnerving to think that our country has sunk to such a low level that antisemitism is spreading faster than COVID. But we were given words of hope and encouragement yesterday as Congresswoman Cortez (D-NY) praised the “peaceful” protests and the brave students exercising their right to gather and protest. Cortez is a buffoon, and the fact that President Biden commended her for her words of clarity is an example that Joe Biden cannot be of sound mind.
The protests against Israel and for Palestinians and Hamas are far from peaceful, and for anyone to say so is a fool. Police are being taunted. Jewish students are harassed, threatened, and told to go home. Illegal encampments have been set up on university real estate, and classes are disrupted, with Jewish students having to attend class via live stream. The irony is when one Jewish student was walking by the demonstration area, they were threatened with inciting violence. That is like saying the person with the black eye is guilty of being in the path of a punch. We have lost our collective minds.
Twenty-two of the top fifty universities in the country have active protests on their campuses. Some administrators have asked police to come onto the campus property to restore peace. Student protestors have been arrested, and non-student agitators are found mingling with the students and trespassing onto school property to join and bolster the pro-Palestinian actions. Some graduations have been canceled because the campuses are not safe. Some members of Congress are calling for presidents of the institutions with protests to resign if they are unable to bring order to their communities and assure safety for the Jewish students. President Biden has yet to make an official statement on the protests. He has given flip answers to media members yelling questions at him but no specific comments during his public appearances. It appears that Biden is hoping to lay low and hope this situation will burn out before he must address it.
Our President’s silence is as complicit to the anti-Israel sentiment as TikTok, `which is calling for violence if changes are not seen in America’s stance on Israel and Palestine.
These protests go well beyond free speech. When students and activists are threatening the safety and well-being of others and screaming, “We are Hamas,” they have lost their rights and should be arrested. Over 200 individuals were taken into custody at Columbia. None of them were booked, photographed, or fingerprinted. They were treated as if their parking meter had expired. We have lost control, and the inmates are running the asylum.
This article came together very quickly. Sadly, I wrote it with frustration and anger at the lack of leadership in our country and the absence of common sense. It is obvious this is a concerted effort across the country to promote hate and antisemitism towards Jewish people. Biden said on Monday that there are good people on both sides of this complex issue. That is exactly the comment that Donald Trump made about Charlottesville that Biden condemned Trump for. What short memory does our President have, or does he not have one at all? We now condemn him for his lack of fortitude to shut these protests down, call them out as hate crimes, and restore peace to these campuses and safety to all students. Maybe he can funnel some of the effort into locking up the January 6 protestors and direct them to find who is responsible for these insurrections.
