Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.) told National Review in an interview Thursday that the failure of Democratic lawmakers to emphatically and unequivocally denounce celebrations of Hamas on college campuses in the wake of its brutal attack on Israel stems from an inherent weakness within the party.
“They seem to reflexively take the position of appeasement, whether it’s to nations or to their supporters, and both lead us in the wrong direction,” Scott said. “I can’t think of a worse sign to send to the nation and, frankly, to our Jewish brothers and sisters: that they stand in isolation.”
Student groups at universities across the country have issued statements in support of Hamas terrorism against Israeli civilians, like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Swarthmore College, which said it “honors the martyrs,” and SJP at the University of Virginia, which expressed its members feel “hopeful for the future of Palestine” after seeing the atrocities.
The sentiment is not limited to the campus; activist organization Black Lives Matter’s chapters have expressed “solidarity” with the terrorists and claimed to identify with the Hamas cause. The Democratic Socialists of America held a pro-Palestinian rally in New York City at which attendees laughed at jokes made at the expense of Israeli civilians killed at a music festival and at least one demonstrator displayed a swastika.
Few progressive elected officials have condemned these acts. In fact, not one House Democrat signed onto a letter sent to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona urging him to ensure universities protect Jewish students and fulfill their obligations to provide educational environments free from discrimination. The letter, organized by Representative Tim Walberg (R., Mich.), was distributed to the entire House and signed by 44 House Republicans. There are limited exceptions within the party: Representatives Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.) and Ritchie Torres (D., N.Y.) attacked members of the “Squad” for their calls for the U.S. to withdraw support from Israel.
Rather than condone such displays, the 2024 presidential hopeful said, progressive Democrats should look to his Antisemitism Awareness Act, which Scott reintroduced in 2019 after initially bringing the bill to the floor in 2016 and 2018. Had the bill become law, the U.S. would have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism. In December 2019, though, former president Donald Trump instituted it in the form of an executive order, which President Joe Biden has not rescinded, as Scott reminded NR.
“I wish they would use that definition of antisemitism to stop this hatred on college campuses that I believe could easily lead to a spillover into violence,” he said.
In fact, it has. On Wednesday evening, a 19-year-old female suspect allegedly assaulted a 24-year-old Israeli student on Columbia University’s campus after tearing down posters bearing the photographs and names of civilians held hostage in Gaza, which the victim had affixed to the walls of a university lecture hall. At Drexel university, a Jewish student’s door was set on fire, according to a letter the university president sent to the campus community condemning antisemitism in the wake of the Hamas attack.
Scott views the attack as a logical next step to the antisemitism and support for terror prevalent in American institutions of higher education.
“Their philosophy and their dictate is not only to eliminate, as you probably know, Israel from the map,” the South Carolina senator said of Hamas. “They want to eliminate all Jews from Earth.”
Given the severity of the issue, Scott told NR, he thinks executives like Bill Ackman who have pledged not to hire members of the student organizations issuing statements promoting Hamas terrorism have made “the right decision.”
Shunning the students — whom he specified do have the right to express such beliefs — amounts to “eliminating the possibility of hiring people that seem to be divisive and polarizing and, frankly, perhaps filled with hate,” Scott said. “That can absolutely destroy your culture as a corporation or as a community.