Where the student intifada goes very wrong

“We are Hamas!”

You hear it on campuses and elsewhere, but mostly on campus, and it is 2024’s version of “Defund the police!” That backfired on the protesters and their movement .

Badly. 

Let’s be clear: Americans have a right to protest anything.

Peacefully.

Former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, acting all macho and putting on his Che beret in support of George Floyd protests that had turned violent, trying to justify the violence, said, “show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful.”

That wasn’t much of a challenge. Here is the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which I have helpfully highlighted: 

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

So that’s assembly. It’s lawful if peaceful, unlawful if it is not. Intifada is not. And Hamas is the worst of the worst.

Now, let’s turn to free speech.

It is free. It is not absolute.

You’ve probably heard you are not free to shout “fire!” In a crowded theater if there is no fire. You are not permitted to willfully slander, libel or defame others. You are not free to incite violence. This can lead to close calls.

Does some of the students’ speech incite violence?

When they chant “Death to Israel,” do they mean death to the 2 million Arab Israelis? Of course not. They mean death to the 7 million Jewish Israelis. And that would be genocide because the definition of genocide includes actions to wipe out an entire class of people — perhaps an ethnicity, such as when the Hutu majority tried to eliminate the Tutsi minority in Rwanda in 1994. That was genocide.

Eliminating a religious group is genocide. Hamas does that, Israel does not.

“Death to America!” is something we should not tolerate.

When the pro-Hamas supporters chant,  “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” do they know what it means?

Since Israel is located between the river (the Jordan), and the sea (the Mediterranean, the chant calls for the elimination of the Jewish state. 

And that is genocide.

When they say, “We are Hamas,” they are announcing solidarity with an organization the second paragraph of whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel. Hamas has been condemned as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government since Oct. 8, 1997.

Its purpose is not to “free Gaza,” since Gaza has been free since Israel walked out of the seaside sliver and allowed Gaza to run itself. The first thing it did in 2006 was to elect Hamas to run Gaza, and Hamas quickly destroyed the competing Fatah party. There has not been an election since that time in Gaza. Hamas has never denounced violence and attacked Israel with rockets and missiles regularly since 2006.

No thinking person should remain passive when confronting this evil. 

Various truces and ceasefires between Israel and Hamas were signed, included the one broken by the horrific butchery of men, women, children, and even babies on Oct. 7 that resulted in what Hamas wanted — an overpowering assault to bring the murderers to justice. Hamas knew the massacre would lead to massive civilian casualties.

It wanted the casualties to give Israel a publicity black eye, and it has succeeded.

Is Hamas popular with Gazans and Palestinians on the West Bank, the proper name of which is Judea and Samaria, its Biblical names, used by the U.N.?

The answer is yes.

And  yes.

But also no.

Because of all the deaths, American support for Israel has dropped. 

When it started, most Americans believed Israel had cause to go to war, but once the bodies began piling up, Americans turned their faces away. 

A week later, a majority of Americans were against the war.

And then came the campus protests, focusing on Hamas’s lies about genocide and European colonial occupation — standard Marxist clap trap — with the hostages all but completely forgotten, along with what lit the fuse to start the war — the Oct. 7 massacre.

Many protesters cross the line from condemning actions of the Israeli government, which millions of Israelis oppose, to wider attacks on Zionism, and Israeli and American citizens. They become Palestinazis.

Zionism is the term that means the Jewish people — like almost every other group — is entitled to a national homeland, and in the place where it was first founded, almost 3,000 years ago. Jews have had an unbroken presence there from before the birth of Jesus until now. Zionism means a Jewish homeland, nothing more. (A Jewish homeland that welcomes Christian and Muslim citizens.)

American Jews are being threatened, as if they can control the actions of Israel. Many protesters cross the line between criticizing Israeli policy to attacking Jews, whether in Israel or America.

At that point the attacks turn into the anti-Semitism of threatening American Jews, who have nothing to do with Israeli political policy.

Nor do Jewish-owned businesses in the States, yet boycotts were called in Philadelphia here and here. Pure anti-Semitism.

How would you feel about attacking Iranian Americans because Iran is an enemy?

Would you be comfortable shouting “Death to Muslims”?

I doubt it. 

If the campus mobs were targeting gays, or Blacks, I can’t imagine college administrations negotiating with them. Can you? 

Jews seem to be the one minority that is treated like a majority, although on a map with Arab countries, Israel can barely be seen. Mideast Arabs outnumber Jews by 456 million to 7 million; 22 states to 1 state, yet Israel is imagined as the Goliath.

In fact, Israel’s military is the strongest in the region. It has to be, to counter the threats from its neighbors it has lived under for the  75 years it has been independent. Israel’s military prevents another Holocaust.

These are the facts most student protesters don’t know, because they have been seduced to attack a fellow liberal democracy by the deaths and destruction that made Hamas’ death wish come true.

When words turn into threats, and threats turn into violence, there is no choice but for us to turn to the police.