On Oct. 8, 2023, the day after the villainous attack in the south of Israel, the demonstrations started. Hamas’ bestial attack, guided by anticipatory actions (e.g., identifying “soft” spots, training, ensuring maximum media exposure), morphed into a variety of forms of protest, predominantly on the campuses of America’s elite universities. According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “Individuals who previously worked for Hamas charities are now a driving force behind the large pro-Hamas demonstrations taking place in major cities across America.”
Society, already under the spell of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion that promotes a false sense of “fairness,” was not prepared for this wave. Therefore, taken by surprise, it merely reacted. As always, reaction is by many orders of magnitude less effective than prevention. As a result of the media-distorted presentation, the demonstrations eventually became a call to “Kill the hostages” and to bring intifada to America.
The world is still witnessing the unfolding of the broadest attempt to legitimize the extermination of the Jews. The Hamas charter, i.e., the Covenant of 1988, adopted a Hadith as the formulation of its goal: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’” (Article 7)
The various groups involved in the post-Oct. 7 demonstrations were involved in coordinated actions meant to harass, intimidate, and terrorize Jews. Practical manuals of urban insurgency that were uncovered contain detailed instructions: specific tools for breaking into buildings, what kind of tents should be bought and where, how highways should be blocked for maximum mainstream media coverage, how campuses could be shut down, etc. Organizations such as the People’s Action Coalition, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, Within Our Lifetime, IfNotNow (a Jewish initiative to “end U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid system”), Bend the Arc, and others, lavishly funded by notorious Jew-haters (including Jews), got involved. The call for erasing Israel from the map – the now famous “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – echoed loudly what Hamas pursues.
The script informing their actions is based on various preceding examples of psychological warfare. They were inspired by the Soviet investment in ideological subversion – not coincidentally based on Goebbels’s attempt to gain legitimacy for the Nazi regime: blackmail those not aligned with the goals pursued on Oct. 7. The application for the arrest warrants of the Israeli Prime Minister submitted by Karim Khan, the ICC prosecutor, is one example. After meeting victims of the Oct. 7 massacre, Khan described “extermination, murder, rape, hostage-taking, acts of torture, cruel treatment of hostages.” He denounced “calculated cruelty” and declared: “We can’t live in a world where executions, burnings, rapes and killings are normalized and even celebrated.” Blackmail ensued. One title: “Can Karim Khan and the ICC survive the West’s double standards?” The attacks against him, even doubting his Muslim identity in the Arab media, were as ferocious as the language used by the mercenaries of hatred on college campuses.
Blackmail does not excuse the fact that Karim Khan gave in. Actions of all kinds were conceived in advance in order to force him to make his application “politically correct.” The application leaves out Ismail Haniyeh, widely considered Hamas’ overall leader, as well as those who financed the Oct. 7 massacre. A world free of Jews – the “Judenfrei” ideal of the Nazis – is their credo and they will not spare money and political pressure in order to achieve it. “Each man must choose between joining our side or the other side” is Lenin’s formulation taken over by the Sinwars of Hamas as they asked their mercenaries to eliminate anyone not aligned with their murderous agenda.
What happened to Karim Khan and what happened at the ICJ – who ordered Israel to stop the attacks in Gaza while rockets from Gaza were reaching Tel Aviv – is not different from what caused some universities or even governments (Ireland, Spain, Norway) to cave in. In negotiations with the mob, i.e. under the pressure of a small group of insurgents, some conceded: We will boycott Israel. We will divest. We will sanction. Exactly what the BDS initiative became after many attempts at boycotting Israel. BDS was tolerated as an expression of free speech by universities courting activists while compromising on education standards. Those not aligned with the demagoguery were often “canceled.” Education driven by ideology unavoidably degenerates into morally void activism.
There is an almost ironic twist to all these well-choreographed scenarios. For those involved in the carnage who managed to run away unscathed, Hamas prepared (again: anticipation at work) the tunnels to hide in. Hospitals, schools, refugee camps, UNRWA facilities, innocent people (often children) were used as protective shields.
The demonstrations, still running on what is left of the fuel of discontent, were supposed to lend legitimacy to Hamas and to continue the war by means of blackmail and indoctrination. They were requesting a “ceasefire” on behalf of those fanatics in Gaza who they represented and who would not take one when offered. From the adulation of rape and torture as a form of heroic resistance, supposed to reach the tragic – we are willing to sacrifice our lives – they turned into the farcical: You did not feed us from Panera; in demonstrating against you, we were forced to compromise on the hygiene of tampons; why didn’t you provide the comfort you’d conditioned us to believe that it is the new normal? These arguments lead to their conclusion: We are entitled to be pardoned. The same formulations all over, as their puppet masters dictated them, recited from the screens of their cell phones.
The university, as an embodiment of the Middle Ages within which it emerged, failed again. It manipulated itself into a condition of hostage to the mob it courted, and on behalf of which it sacrificed academic integrity for political correctness. Should the university offer the blank pardon requested by the mob?
Let the authorities investigate the extent to which foreign influence – in the form of funding and training – can be established. Who were the instigators from outside the university is probably as important as finding out what kind of money exchanged hands and what for. At some colleges, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) pays up to $7,800 to community-based fellows and between $2,880 and $3,660 for campus-based “fellows” who start protests on campus. Fellows are expected to spend eight hours per week organizing “campaigns led by Palestinian organizations” and are trained to “rise up, to revolution.”
For those faculty members and students who prove to be mercenaries of hate, there should be no pardon. Tolerance based on self-delusion will only lead to more of the same. The call to “guillotine” George Washington University President Ellen Granberg is not an expression of freedom of speech. It aligns with actions against students and faculty members, of service personnel. The library of Portland State University, the City College of New York, and the University of California Oakland suffered. Hundreds of millions of dollars in damage was accrued by those blocking bridges, harbors, public places. Spray-painting swastikas and slogans, defacing someone’s property, and disturbing academic activity qualify as vandalism. Why should the taxpayer pay for this damage? It is time to connect donations – subsidized by the public – to organizations behind the damaging actions: the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the NoVo Foundation, the Tides Foundations, Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation, Inc. (AJP), and quite a number of others, some registered in the U.S., others abroad. If they fund destructive activities, they better be prepared to pay for what it would take to fix what was destroyed.
