American colleges have a long history and tradition that is supposed to encourage debate, freedom of expression, development of political and social ideas and vehicles, such as protests, to express those ideas in a “democratic” society. That right is being crushed before our eyes.
Jewish groups and individuals have strong-armed university officials into abusing students peacefully protesting genocide in Gaza and demanding that their schools cut ties with and end investments in Israel.
Now students engaged in civil disobedience are jumped, tased, beaten, arrested and endured rubber bullets from law enforcement deployed on campus at Emory University as cops crushed protests.
While students are victims of violence the pro-Israel and media narratives say the protests are unsafe and violent—the University of Southern California has canceled its graduation in the name of safety. But where are the credible threats? There are none.
Heavily armed police have invaded campuses, destroying tent cities and student-organized gathering places. The young people oppose the slaughter of 34,000 Gazans and over one million Palestinians starving or facing starvation because of human rights violations perpetrated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warmongering.
Instead of treating students as dissenting U.S. citizens, they are criminalized.
In Texas, state troopers were called out and some Republicans called for deploying National Guardsmen on campus.
“The activist group Emerson Students for Justice in Palestine accused police of ‘slamming’ protesters to the ground, and it called on Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to do more to protect ‘her constituents of color,’ ” the Washington Post reported April 25.
Mainstream media is ablaze with breathless reports of growing on-campus protests against Gaza genocide. Such framing of the news is part of a strategy by Jewish groups and Zionists to pull attention away from the slaughter of Palestinians, including discovery of a mass grave in southern Gaza, and positioning Jewish people and students as victims.
You are hearing about “unsafe” feelings among Jewish students but not about actual attacks or arrests—except arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters. And the Jewish “students” you are hearing from are not necessarily folks randomly chosen for interviews. Many are “voices” put forward by pro-Israel groups, organizations and activists.
You are not hearing the voices of the anti-genocide demonstrators, who have positions, concerns and actions they are appealing to their respective schools to take. Their voices have been long stunted, silenced and shunned.
Why are you seeing such police aggression when school will end in weeks?
These are the largest anti-Israel public protests in American history and opinion polls show support for Israel among young people in single digits. That sentiment and the images of youth calling for justice for Palestinians are reasons for the vicious Jewish assault. They plan to crush any opposing view. No dissent, no Israel criticism allowed.
Confrontations at the urging of university officials, pressure and threats from influential Zionists, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, the governor of Texas, and others have grown.
But from Emerson University in Boston to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, demonstrations were not stopping.
Protests were taking place at Columbia, New York University, the California State Polytechnic at Humboldt, Northwestern University, the University of Texas at Austin, Princeton University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, Yale,
The New School, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Michigan, the University of Minnesota, the University of New Mexico and other places.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student groups—including Jewish Voice for Peace—organized school encampments and calls for divestment of “all of Columbia’s finances, including the endowment, from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine.”
The group also wants “accountability by increasing transparency around financial investments.” Their demands, similar to those of other young people, are not extreme nor unreasonable.
None of those things matter to Zionists like Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots.
Fed up with anti-Israel protests at Columbia University, the powerful Jewish businessman said he would not financially support his alma mater. He called for professors to be essentially fired for criticism of Israel and genocide in Gaza. Jewish students are feeling unwelcome and that must not be tolerated, he declared April 22.
In reality, he wants to protect the state of Israel, kill any criticism of Israel and punish those who challenge evil perpetrated by Israel.
While Mr. Kraft and his ilk complain of danger, protestors have been evicted and arrested. Even Jewish students have joined these protests and found themselves targeted by rabid defenders of the illegal state of Israel.
In a live report, CNN noted there were more New York City police officers on hand than protestors April 22, so where was the danger?
Passions are high and outrage is growing as America and the world watch the murder of Palestinians, mainly women and children, by Israel.
In the United States, the voices of those who object to taxpayer funding of the genocide are growing and growing louder. Moral outrage and righteous anger are driving on-campus demonstrations in ways Israel and her co-conspirators have never seen.
Zionists malign protestors and anyone who would dare say using famine, massive bombs and drones to kill unarmed civilians is wrong.
“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,” observed William I.
Robinson in a TruthOut.org report published online March 23. “Such censorship has swept university campuses across the U.S. and some professors have even lost their jobs.”
Mr. Robinson noted 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.”
The Israeli strategy also calls for using deep pocketed Jewish donors to pressure universities by threatening to withhold their money—just as Mr. Kraft and others are doing.
Groups like the David Project, AMCHA Initiative, Canary Mission, the Israel on Campus Coalition, and Students Supporting Israel have been set up. “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,” explained Mr. Robinson.
“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.” (We referred to this nefarious plan in an editorial in Vol. 43, No. 30.)
Mr. Kraft told CNN that the Jews are the first targets and then Blacks and other groups are targeted. I beg your pardon. Black students have been and remain the leading targets of hate crimes at colleges and universities.
“Since 2015, college campuses saw a 25 percent increase in the number of reported hate crimes,” said researchers Dominique J. Baker of the University of Delaware and Tolani Britton of the University of California. Their paper, “Hate Crimes and Black College Student Enrollment,” was published last year. The researchers noted, “Black individuals are the most frequent target of reported racial hate crimes.”
Educational institutions and the media have made definitive statements about their determination to protect Jewish students, not tolerate “anti-semitism,” and punish any offenders. Black students engaged in Black Lives Matter protests a few years ago heard no such declarations nor promises those who threatened or assaulted them would be dealt with.
Americans fighting for their rights in their own country? Clearly, the Zionists believe U.S. citizens have no rights they are bound to respect. Their rights are the only rights that matter. They will do anything, anything to assert their agenda. It doesn’t matter that their hands are bloody and their heinous cause is wrong.
—Naba’a Muhammad, editor, The Final Call
