Teaching and celebrating terrorism on campus – one professor’s view

by Matthew M. Hausman

Since Hamas’s bloody October 7th terror attack on Israeli civilians, American college campuses have erupted in demonstrations where students without any sense of decency or history chant antisemitic slogans that in past generations could have come from the mouths of Church Fathers, Crusaders, Cossacks, or Nazis. In a display of progressivism run amok, college students glorify Hamas and justify the murder of Jewish civilians, beheading of babies, and rape of women and girls as natural consequences of an “occupation” that exists only in their addled minds. 

Remember: Israel left Gaza in 2005.

And they have been brought to this moment by woke professors who teach antisemitic conspiracy theories as history and administrators who provide safe spaces for every real or imagined identity group but refuse to protect their Jewish students. Indeed, it is often considered a microaggression to assert one’s Jewishness or express support for Israel on campus.

Without embarrassment or shame, student demonstrators – many at Ivy League schools – are shown on social media chanting repugnant anti-Jewish slurs, while professors teach revisionist Palestinian Arab mythology and belittle Jewish students without fear of discipline. Such behavior is acceptable – even fashionable.

Some Democrats are now speaking out against the vitriol spewed by their progressive colleagues, though it took Hamas’s orgy of murder, rape, and torture to finally loosen their tongues. But given the antisemitism permeating their progressive constituencies, their denunciations are too little, too late. Where was their concern the last few years when Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and other members of the Democratic “Squad” were spouting anti-Israel or antisemitic rhetoric? Or during the 2020 presidential primary season, when most major candidates for the party’s nomination had anti-Israel progressives or BDS supporters on their campaign staffs?

Those who now claim to be moderate did nothing as leftist rancor dragged Israel’s approval rating among Democrats down to 38% according to a recent Gallup Poll. And contrary to their recent pleas for moderation, party leadership treated the Squad’s members like rock stars, despite the group’s penchant for derogatory comments regarding Jews and Israel. The question Democrats must ask themselves is why they tolerated antisemitism from party progressives for years without rebuke.

Politicians with reprehensible beliefs are frequently elected and sent to Washington with their biases fully formed. In contrast, students arriving at college are blank slates looking for mentors to guide their intellectual growth….

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