Palesinian supporters gather for a protest at Columbia University, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023, in New York. The New York Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against Columbia University for suspending two student groups that had protested Israel's actions in the Gaza war. The lawsuit announced Tuesday, March 12, 2024 accuses Columbia of violating its own rules by suspending the two groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)

Two things can be true at the same time. But one cannot be a helpless victim and a powerful destroyer of others at the same time.

Crying powerlessness while exerting great power is a favorite tactic of the Zionist lobby, Israel and evil ones who call themselves Jews but are not due to their wickedness.

Their target this time? A Muslim American student at the University of Southern California demanding justice for Palestine. This Class of 2024 valedictorian has been banned from speaking at her graduation.

The university says it deprived Asna Tabassum of her rights in order to protect students and those coming to the commencement.

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An on campus group, “Trojans For Israel,” squawked that her selection turned “an inclusive and meaningful milestone into an unwelcoming and intolerant environment for Jewish graduates and their families.”

What about Ms. Tabassum, her family, Muslim graduates, and those who oppose Israel’s blatant genocide against Palestinians?

“Although this should have been a time of celebration for my family, friends, professors, and classmates, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices have subjected me to a campaign of racist hatred because of my uncompromising belief in human rights for all,” she said.

“USC administrators informed me that the university will no longer allow me to speak at commencement due to supposed security concerns.

I am both shocked by this decision and profoundly disappointed that the University is succumbing to a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice,” she added in a statement issued through the Council on American Islamic Affairs.

She says in an April 14 meeting with school officials, she asked about “alleged safety concerns” and was told USC had the wherewithal to increase safety for her speech but wouldn’t because the university didn’t like the optics it could produce.

“Because I am not aware of any specific threats against me or the university, because my request for the details underlying the university’s threat assessment has been denied, and because I am not being provided any increased safety to be able to speak at commencement, there remain serious doubts about whether USC’s decision to revoke my invitation to speak is made solely on the basis of safety,” she said.

Jewish torpedoing of Ms. Tabassum’s rights is part of a deliberate strike against the rights of all Americans. Conspiracy theory? Not at all.

“As worldwide protest escalates over Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, academic freedom and free speech are under all-out attack on university campuses in the United States, not just from university administrations and pro-Israeli groups, but now directly from the highest levels of the Israeli state.

In a story that has been largely ignored in the Western press, the Israeli news website Ynetnews, one of the largest media outlets in the country, reported that the Israeli government has launched what appears to be a wide-ranging covert campaign to harass and intimidate students, faculty, and administrators into silence,” wrote William I. Robinson in a TruthOut.org report published online March 23.

“The task force, chaired by Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and led by senior government officials, drew up a multifaceted ‘action plan,’ according to Ynetnews, involving political and psychological operations against its critics. … The plan specifies that actions taken ‘should not have the signature of the State of Israel on it.’ ”

Other elements of this anti-democratic scheme include “the Foreign Ministry and [Israeli] representatives in the U.S. (contacting) professional unions to recruit them to act against antisemitism and exert pressure on university heads, pressuring employers to blacklist pro-Palestinian students (which) ‘has already happened in major law firms in the U.S.,’ and ‘if a university knows that the chances of its students finding employment have decreased, the university administration will act against those antisemitic students to avoid harming the university’s ranking.”

The presidents of “Harvard University (Claudine Gay) and the University of Pennsylvania (Elizabeth Magill) were both forced to resign in early 2024 and late 2023, respectively—not because they opposed the Israeli-perpetrated genocide or came out in support of Palestinian lives but because, in defense of free speech, they did not crack down hard enough on Palestine solidarity actions on their campuses.

Such censorship has swept university campuses across the U.S. and some professors have even lost their jobs.”

Off campus corporations repress employees who post opposition to Israeli genocide on social media, artists have had exhibitions canceled, and authors have had appearances suspended for “signing petitions against the genocide.”

Especially troubling are Israeli discussions with the Justice Dept. to “map out legal tools that can be used” as part of this assault. Mr. Robinson notes suspension at “Columbia University of the campus chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine was the most well-publicized case, but such crackdowns on pro-Palestinian student activism have taken place at many universities.” Jewish Voice for Peace has also exposed bullying and targeting of groups within the Jewish community.

“Israel will identify leading donors within the Jewish and Israeli communities and enlist them in the struggle to serve as a lever of pressure on university heads to act against antisemitism,” the Israeli plan stresses.

Harvard lost “hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to the university’s endowment to pressure the administration to crack down on pro-Palestinian solidarity,” Mr. Robinson observed.

The plan’s “explanatory axis” involves “creating a toolbox available to pro-Israeli professors and students, assisting them in addressing claims against the pro-Israel side physically and especially on social networks.” Israel’s Foreign Ministry is looking at a campaign on social networks focused on campuses, Mr. Robinson wrote.

There are a “number of groups specifically set up to operate on U.S. university campuses—among them The David Project, AMCHA Initiative, Canary Mission, the Israel on Campus Coalition, and Students Supporting Israel. These organizations have systematically targeted for persecution scholars, academics, and students who speak out on and off campuses against Israeli policies and for Palestinian rights.”

“The playbook of tactics employed by the Israel lobby include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods and a complete disregard for the truth, gaslighting, blacklisting targeted individuals, political and economic blackmail, and even threats of violence.”

The effort “gained traction as a result of the support it has received from the U.S. Departments of State and Justice,” he points out. “The State Department revised its definition of antisemitism in the early 2000s to include ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g.,

by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor,’ ‘drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,’ and ‘blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tension.’ ”

“In turn, Zionist activists and lobby organizations draw on the State Department’s ‘new definition’ to silence those who criticize Israeli state practices and come out in support of Palestinian freedom by labeling them ipso facto ‘antisemitic.’ ” 

“Now is the time for social justice activists to step up their resistance. The Israeli government would not have bothered to develop its action plan were the mass movement not having a mounting impact on the U.S. and the world stage in turning the political tide against the genocidists,” Mr. Robinson argued.

He is right. Zionist Jews don’t want truth or dialogue; they want the destruction of truth and the existence of the state of Israel at all costs—including the destruction of rights supposedly enshrined in the Constitution.

But since we are living in the day when the lie and liar must be exposed, their words and deeds that violate the law of Moses bear witness against themselves. Truth will ultimately fully overcome all falsehoods and evil. That’s why we must continue to tell the truth and defend truth tellers.

—Naba’a Muhammad, editor, The Final Call