Do not compromise with pro-Hamas students. suspend or expel | Jonathan S. Tobin

Negotiating with mobs is always a stupid task. That’s what Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, learned in recent days as she tried to talk her way out of an impasse with pro-Hamas students who set up camp on the school’s South Lawn and then occupied a building to To use force The government called, among other things, to divest from any investments related to Israel. In the end, talks with the demonstrators failed, the situation escalated and the police had to be called to restore order, but at the price of closing the campus and making normal university operations impossible.

At colleges across the country, administrators are facing similar decisions as hordes of students advocating the destruction of Israel and terrorism against Jews cross the line from legal protests to illegal acts of intimidation and violence to get their way. But as much as universities are tempted to compromise with the protesters, this is a mistake. This is true not only because appeasing tyrants – and that is what the organizers of these protests are doing as they seek to silence dissenters against their viewpoints and shield themselves from accountability and press coverage – always escalates demands and further concessions.

The real danger of giving in to the protests goes deeper than undermining the rule of law or making it more difficult to administer universities. Any concession to activists who demand a “free Palestine” “from the river to the sea” or celebrate the “globalization of the Intifada” is a gesture that legitimizes Hamas’s genocidal cause to destroy the Jewish state and slaughter its people .

Protesters rationalize, excuse, or even describe the unspeakable atrocities of October 7, 2023 as justified “resistance.” These are not reasonable opinions that deserve respect and understanding. This normalizes what should be considered an outrageous expression of hate. It is equally unacceptable to negotiate whether Israel should be boycotted or not. It means accepting the abhorrent idea that anti-Semitism is a legitimate form of discourse.

Yet that is exactly what those who defend the students are doing. It is true that many observers attribute the outbreak of chaos on campus to students showing compassion for the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip, which is embroiled in a war started by Hamas on October 7. But anyone who listens to their rhetoric knows that these are not anti-war protests. In fact, they are pro-war demonstrations in that they are not really concerned with stopping the fighting, but rather with keeping Hamas in its place, essentially declaring the victory of terrorism and ensuring that it continues to exist. This is the same Hamas that wants to continue its plans to destroy Israel, which it falsely describes as a settler/colonial oppressor rather than the only democracy in the Middle East and the only Jewish state on the planet.

Apologists for the student mobs describe their actions – like the Black Lives Matter riots in the summer of 2020 – as “mostly peaceful.” They excuse the use of face masks that hide their identities, much like the violent racists of the Ku Klux Klan wore white hoods. And they minimize intimidation of Jewish students. In this way, those who tolerate or negotiate with these thugs impersonating Palestinian terrorists with keffiyehs say that being a fan of Hamas and supporting an anti-Semitic ideology is acceptable or even praiseworthy behavior. This is something that no fair-minded or decent person should advocate.

And when one of the pro-Hamas student cheerleaders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., divides Jewish students into two groups — “pro-genocide” and “anti-genocide” — that is nothing short of incitement to violence, even if it is a disingenuous condemnation of anti-Semitism.

After the students were evicted from their tents, only to see them return the next day, Shafik still tried to appease a group whose rhetoric and actions created an atmosphere of hatred toward Israel and Jews. Sensing their weakness, these students, supported by outside agitators, occupied Hamilton Hall, one of the main buildings on campus. Then, in a parody of the demands of Hamas terrorists in Gaza, they insisted that “humanitarian aid” should be allowed to those who had violently seized the site and taken, albeit briefly, some staff hostage.

Shafik had been excoriated by the left-wing press, including the New York Times, for her first call to the police because student supporters compared her to the generations protesting the Vietnam War or South African apartheid. But as the situation on campus deteriorated into violence and chaos, school administrators gave her permission to ask the New York Police Department to resolve the standoff. They did so with professionalism, evicting the residents of both the building and the tent city with minimal effort and without the violence that ended a similar confrontation in 1968.

In defending the police action, New York Mayor Eric Adams rightly described the protests as deeply un-American. Incidents on college campuses in which US flags were torn down and replaced with Palestinian flags are a symbol of the disregard that the agenda of left-wing ideologues is not limited to their support for the destruction of Israel. Their contempt for America and its democratic values ​​is part of a mindset born of indoctrination in the woke myths of critical race theory and intersectionality. And they are insensitive to the pride that most Americans feel in the cases in which police or students defended the Stars and Stripes or returned it to its proper place.

Shafik and her board deserve little credit for their decision to act. She had endured an unbearable situation on the Manhattan campus for weeks. During this time, Jews on campus faced an unprecedented atmosphere of intimidation and threats from students, faculty and others who spread lies that Israel had committed a Palestinian “genocide” and who made no secret of their alliance with Hamas -Identified terrorists responsible for the largest mass massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Rhetoric about not tolerating the existence of “Zionists” had become the norm, as had advocacy for anti-Semitic boycott, divestment and sanctions resolutions aimed at discriminating against Israelis and Jews.

But as appalling as Shafik’s performance was, it was far better than what happened at Northwestern University and Brown University. In both cases, the schools gave in to students’ demands and gave them a say in whether those institutions would implement withdrawal measures from Israel in return for quiet on campus.

It seems like a good deal for these administrators; They probably thought they were buying peace rather cheaply. Ultimately, staging boycotts on these schools will be a lengthy affair and may not ultimately lead to the discriminatory agenda that pro-Hamas students seek. Among other complications, the state laws of Illinois and Rhode Island rightly deem BDS a form of illegal discrimination.

Israel opponents, however, have reason to celebrate both the school leadership’s weakness and the mafia leaders’ willingness to accept “yes” for an answer. Many of the protesters, outside agitators and their backers believe that the ongoing spectacle of campus closures and crowds at major institutions cheering on terrorists helps their cause. Some may even believe that the results of police action ending the protests will also make them martyrs or help make them appear sympathetic to liberals who view Vietnam-era student demonstrations with nostalgia.

But the goal of all post-Oct. The goal of the #7 protests is to bring the demonization of Israel and Zionism into the mainstream, essentially banishing and silencing Jewish students who refuse to bow to fashionable opinion on campus and join the mob . Schools that make such concessions only make this problem worse.

The authorities are not wrong in viewing the anti-Israel demonstrations as a challenge to the normal functioning of universities and to public order. For example, Colombia’s very liberal regulations allow all types of protests, but require, among other things, that demonstrations be conducted in a manner that does not interfere with the rights of other students. Such rules cannot be flouted with impunity if the university is not governed by the whims of radical mobs that have gathered for some reason.

Nor should any university allow libraries to be confiscated by protesters, as happened at Portland State University in Oregon. Or in the case of the University of California, Los Angeles, its sprawling anti-Israel camps made it difficult or impossible for students to enter classes or parts of the school grounds.

At its core, this nationwide fight is not just about maintaining law and order on college campuses. It is about a sinister movement whose goal is to exploit Israel and Zionism – the national liberation movement of the Jewish people – for shame, isolation and destruction. This is nothing less than a 21st century variety of anti-Semitism that is rooted in a woke ideology and gives license to hatred of Jews. If another minority group – African Americans, Hispanics, Asians – were treated the way Jews are now being persecuted on campus, there would be no debate about the need for a zero-tolerance policy for such behavior. Those who have violated school rules or gone so far as to use violence to further their hateful cause should be suspended and expelled, not coddled as misunderstood idealists. Universities that tolerate this behavior and allow radicals to create an anti-Semitic environment on campus should be barred from federal funding for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Statements by President Joe Biden that create false moral equivalencies to media coverage that legitimizes the protests, or concessions from universities to the anti-Israel protesters, must all be seen as part of the same moral failure of much of our political and educational institutions. Tolerating anti-Semitic mobs will only lead to more anti-Semitism.

Jonathan S. Tobin is Editor-in-Chief of JNS – Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jonathans_tobin.