Tony Badran
Tablet, Jan. 30, 2024
“American universities have made either an exceedingly clever or else exceedingly reprehensible bargain: quota-filling at a profit.”
Five weeks after Rutgers University suspended the New Brunswick campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) on Dec. 11 for violating several university policies, the school reversed its decision and reinstated the pro-Hamas group. In celebration, SJP members filmed a video in the classic Palestinian terrorist style: faces covered in kaffiyehs, reading a communique which, following a diatribe against the Zionists, made a list of demands that the school must meet if it wished to wipe the stain of its complicity in genocide.
Since October, American cities and college campuses have been transformed into stages for this kind of Middle Eastern performance theater in support of Hamas and its murder, torture, and rape of Jews. Performances have ranged from vicarious partaking in the Oct. 7 pogrom, like the tearing down of posters of kidnapped Israelis, to calls for “globalizing” Palestinian terrorism “from New York to Gaza,” to outright expressions of support for Hamas and the extermination of Jews “from the river to the sea”—“by any means necessary,” lest there be any confusion. “There is nothing, nothing more honorable than dying for a noble cause, for justice,” a high-profile organizer of a rally at Columbia shouted into a bullhorn in a thick Arabic accent.
There’s also no confusion about the fact that these rallies feature Arab and Muslim students who eagerly support terrorism—often by denying that Hamas or its actions of Oct. 7 constitute “terrorism” at all. Equally evident is that many of the students leading, organizing, and participating in these protests and expressions of antisemitism and support for Hamas on college campuses are not Americans—meaning that they are not American citizens or even green card holders. Rather, they are foreign passport holders, including from Arab and Muslim countries, who have decided to avail themselves of U.S. educational infrastructure while importing the passions and prejudices of their home countries to American campuses.
American universities have made either an exceedingly clever or else exceedingly reprehensible bargain: quota-filling at a profit. … [To read the full article, click here.]