{"id":16922,"date":"2024-05-31T12:45:48","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T09:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/?p=16922"},"modified":"2024-05-31T12:45:48","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T09:45:48","slug":"campus-protests-must-be-branded-academic-intifada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/campus-protests-must-be-branded-academic-intifada\/","title":{"rendered":"Campus protests must be branded ‘Academic Intifada’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Worldwide, small cells of well-organized, well-funded haters demean academia, reducing a complex conflict to hate-filled slogans.<\/h3>\n

When I lived in Cambridge, Harvard\u2019s Commencement Day was magical. Scholars streamed toward Harvard Yard. Freshly minted PhDs and their teachers wore magnificent pinkish robes, evoking the original, now-faded, crimson gown.<\/p>\n

This pink, smarty-pants sea, punctuated by three black velvet stripes on each arm \u2013 for their bachelor\u2019s, master\u2019s and doctoral degrees \u2013 was rousing. It symbolized our collective commitment to scholarly excellence, open-mindedness, critical thought, rigor, liberal ideals, harmonizing with America\u2019s meritocratic commitment to equality and success.<\/p>\n

Harvardians respected the 1892 Class Day Committee rule barring \u201cribbons, badges or medals of any description on the gown.\u201d Yet, last week, many students defiled those robes, wrapping themselves in keffiyehs representing terrorism and totalitarianism, anti-intellectualism and anti-Americanism.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s appalling how hostile many elite universities are to Jews \u2013 unless they\u2019re un-Jewish, Israel-bashing turncoats.<\/p>\n

Clearly, most American students don\u2019t hate Jews or think much about Gaza. But October 7 unleashed thousands of rampaging snowflakes hooked on Jew-hatred, spurred by propagandizing professors and sniveling administrators, amid the silence of tenured lambs and student ostriches, with their heads buried in beer mugs.<\/p>\n

Label this mania \u201cthe Academic Intifada.\u201d Worldwide, small cells of well-organized, well-funded haters crying \u201cGlobalize the intifada\u201d demean academia, reducing a complex conflict to hate-filled slogans.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t defeat a phantom \u2013 which is why we must name and shame the enemy.<\/p>\n

For years, our enemies proved elusive. When we called anti-Zionists \u201cantisemitic,\u201d they insisted: \u201cWe don\u2019t hate Jews, we only hate Israel.\u201d This sidestep had Jews wringing their hands \u2013 \u201chow can we prove that anti-Zionism is truly antisemitism?\u201d<\/p>\n

Never forget. The burden of proof is on the haters, not the hated. Since October, anyone deluded before sees how Zionophobia feeds Judaeophobia in an ever-escalating bile spiral. Today, those who \u201conly\u201d hate Israel or Zionism bark at Jews \u201cwe know where you live\u201d \u2013 as anti-Jewish violence spikes.<\/p>\n

Others still claim, \u201cWe\u2019re not anti-Jewish, we\u2019re \u2018anti-war\u2019 and \u2018pro-human rights.\u2019\u201d But even if you refrain from robotically intoning \u201cHamas, we love you; we support your rockets, too,\u201d crying \u201cWe are Hamas\u201d and \u201cLong Live Hamas\u201d is not peaceful. Nor is championing \u201cintifada,\u201d a word popularized in the early 2000s when Palestinian terrorists slaughtered over 1,000 innocents.<\/p>\n

Similarly, delegitimizing Israel as a \u201csettler colonial state\u201d and an \u201capartheid regime\u201d crossbreeds historical ignorance with callous insensitivity to Jews\u2019 human rights. Jews, too, have rights. We can define our identity on our terms as synthesizing religion and nationhood, renew our indigenous roots in our homeland, and establish a state there. Affirming Palestinian rights by negating Jewish rights makes the conflict zero-sum and insoluble, unless you support Hamas\u2019s \u201cfinal solution\u201d \u2013 killing nine million Israelis, \u201cfrom the river to the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of these pugnacious peaceniks snarl at Jews: \u201cGo Back to Poland\u201d and \u201cGo Back to Germany.\u201d These slogans require more historical deciphering than \u201cBurn, burn Tel Aviv.\u201d They essentially mean, go back to Auschwitz, or let Hitler\u2019s successors finish the job.<\/p>\n

Most slippery has been the intellectual gaslighting whenever experts analyzed this heavy-handed hatefest\u2019s underlying academic lies. As academics worshiped Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and other bards of deconstruction, they called themselves \u201cpostmodernists.\u201d When some of us objected to postmodernism\u2019s assault on liberalism, linear narratives, objective truth, and other Enlightenment pearls, these intellectual hacks called us \u201canti-intellectuals.\u201d Nonacademics simply said \u201chuh?\u201d shrugging their shoulders at this nerd-clash.<\/p>\n

Then, especially after the \u201c1619 Project\u201d distorted American history by rejecting the soaring inspiration of 1776, some of us criticized \u201cwoke academics.\u201d But when Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis declared \u201cwar on woke,\u201d liberals who had critiqued this movement went mute. After all, in today\u2019s polarized partisan political environment, anything Trump dislikes must be defended.<\/p>\n

Similarly, anyone who questioned anything about \u201ccritical race theory\u201d or any part of \u201canti-racism\u2019s\u201d blinding orthodoxy was demonized. We who warned that extreme racialists, imposing DEI quotas \u2013 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion \u2013 hijacked the civil rights movement, repudiating Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s patriotic, colorblind teachings, were called \u201cracists.\u201d This small, elite group of black radicals claimed that disagreeing at all betrayed the entire civil rights movement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>
A pro-Hamas protest encampment on the campus of Columbia University in New York City, April 22, 2024. Credit: Lev Radin\/Shutterstock<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Talk about appropriation!<\/p>\n

And when Black Lives Matter activists let no one say \u201cAll Lives Matter\u201d or \u201cJewish Lives Matter,\u201d but bellowed \u201cPalestinian Lives Matter,\u201d few dared call out their hypocrisy or the absurdity of linking George Floyd\u2019s unfortunate death with Gaza or IDF anti-terrorism training.<\/p>\n

As the enemy kept dodging yet entrenching, while outshouted Zionist voices kept scrambling, supposedly responsible leaders fell asleep at the wheel. The intellectual rot just penetrated deeper and deeper.<\/p>\n

At least we now have clarity. In the nation\u2019s capital, pro-Palestinian hoodlums projected onto one George Washington University building images of an American flag burning and slogans such as \u201cLong Live the Student Intifada.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just a student intifada. Fomented by some professors, all too tolerated by others, it sits on a putrid foundation of these flawed doctrines. Their fanaticism proves that the worst ideas come from taking good insights too far, going all accelerator, no brakes.<\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s call out the Academic Intifada. Run advertising campaigns showing them burning American flags, bullying Jews, sullying America\u2019s intellectual sanctums, among other assaults on American icons and values. Then ask, \u201cIs this what you want our universities to look like? Is that what you want America to look like?\u201d<\/p>\n

Once again, our enemies prove: Jew-hatred is the sickness of the Jew-hater, not the Jew. We\u2019re not just fighting for Israel\u2019s existence, Zionism\u2019s legitimacy, and Jewish safety. We\u2019re fighting for America \u2013 and to save Western democracy from pro-Palestinian bullies, bigots, and despots.<\/p>\n

Published by Jerusalem Post<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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