[Baltimore Sun] Chris Roemer: When it comes to Jewish students, why is this hate tolerated? | COMMENTARY
Read Time:4 Minute, 31 Second
We really need to stop coddling the current crop of anti-Israel student activists.
These are dangerously ignorant adolescents who think they’re smarter than everyone else – more educated, more enlightened and morally superior — but it doesn’t take a brain surgeon or Mother Teresa to scream hate, shout insipid chants and feign outrage.
Any words of encouragement given to these children only serves to validate their mindless fury. They are enabled puppets who don’t command respect. They command contempt.
Far-left academia is responsible for the conditioned response we are seeing to Hamas’ bloodthirsty attack on Israel, and Israel’s reaction to that butchery.
Professors planted the seeds of hate and ignorance, apps like TicToc watered it and professional activists have now given the increase. Hate is in full bloom this spring at Columbia University.
Columbia professor, Joseph Massad, referred to the Oct. 7 Hamas’ raid as “awesome” and a “stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance.”
He went on to say, “the sight of the Palestinian resistance fighters storming Israeli checkpoints separating Gaza from Israel was astounding.”
I’m really happy Massad was so impressed, and I’m certain he didn’t impart any of his twisted ideas to his students.
Then there’s Columbia University’s Mohamed Abdou. According to the New York Post, Abdou was brought on as a visiting Columbia scholar for the spring 2024 semester and teaches a weekly class on “Decolonial-Queerness & Abolition.”
Columbia’s website describes Abdou as “a North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar of Indigenous, Black, critical race and Islamic studies, as well as gender, sexuality, abolition and decolonization.’”
It’s the “Muslim anarchist” part that caught my eye. That’s what we need on college campuses — anarchists.
Actually, that there are people like Abdou on Columbia’s campus explains quite a bit. The students causing all the trouble have a lot in common with the average anarchist.
Professors like Abdou whipped students into a frenzy, pointed them to the newly purchased tents outside and then stood back to admire all they had accomplished.
These students aren’t just spewing hate. They have demands, too.
I’d like to tell you what they can do with their demands.
How’s this for a demand? Either you take down the tents, end this nonsense right now and get back to class or you’re expelled. And we might even have you arrested to boot.
For me, the biggest question is, when it comes to Jewish students, why is this hate tolerated?
I mean, if African-American students were being subjected to this kind of harassment and hateful rhetoric, there is no doubt in my mind the federal government with all its bureaucratic firepower, would have been all over Columbia University before the sun set on the first day.
And rightly so, but for some reason there is an exponentially higher tolerance for aggressive, hateful behavior when it’s directed against Jewish students.
Why is that?
Where is President Joe Biden? Why hasn’t he used the enormous power of the Office of Civil Rights and Department of Education to stop the virulent antisemitism which has taken root on campuses throughout the country?
Where is the Department of Justice? Is it not watching what’s going on? Doesn’t it care?
All his life, Biden has tried to have everything both ways. He has no principles, so waffling between positions on every issue is easy for the president.
Most people’s consciences won’t allow them to easily abandon deeply held beliefs, but the president is not burdened by deeply held beliefs. He has only politically convenient beliefs.
Even Roman Catholic Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, recognizes Biden’s penchant for choosing convenience over principle.
Gregory said, “[Biden] picks and chooses dimensions of the faith to highlight while ignoring or even contradicting other parts.”
He went on to say, “There is a phrase that we have used in the past, a ‘cafeteria Catholic,’ [in which] you choose that which is attractive and dismiss that which is challenging.”
Unfortunately, the Israel-Hamas conflict is not going to be an issue that allows Biden to be so pliable.
In this case, there is a clear right and a clear wrong. We have an important ally in a part of the world that is forever in turmoil, an ally that has been attacked in an especially savage way, and struggles daily just to survive.
On the other side, there’s the Hamas terrorists whose butchery on Oct. 7 had a lot in common with your typical 10th century Viking raid. Hamas’ stated reason for existing is to “obliterate” the Jewish State.
Now we have American children, with a one-dimensional simplistic view of the world making demands of their school. Meet our demands, they say, or we’ll keep the campus in an uproar, continue to spew hateful rhetoric at Jewish students and chant support for the noble and virtuous Hamas terrorists.
Columbia’s administration is actually “negotiating” with these pinheads.
Biden needs to pick a side. Only, at this point, I’m not sure which side the president would choose.
In keeping with his only guiding principle, it will depend on where he thinks he can find the most votes.
Chris Roemer is a retired banker and educator who resides in Finksburg. He can be contacted at [email protected]
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0