At Columbia University, the appalling abuses against Jews and impositions upon thousands of innocent students have been ongoing for seven full months, worse than the public understands, while the school’s administration obstinately refused to deter the aggressors.
The protesters are either pawns of or part of a well-oiled national movement that is Maoist in orientation and fully supportive of the attacks, rapes, baby-baking, torture, and murders committed by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Those are my takeaways from a May 2 interview with Ran Kivetz, a 24-year veteran at Columbia as a professor of behavioral economics and marketing, along with copious supporting documents and videos he provided. The evidence shows the “protesters” as either ignorant or malevolent or both, with the malevolence sometimes bleeding straight into evil. The administration, especially university president Minouche Shafik, looks both weak and morally benighted, unable to distinguish right from wrong and too willing to give verbal succor to the latter.
Again, those are my judgments, not Kivetz’ specific words. Then again, his specific words are rather strong — and, from the evidence presented, quite justified.
“A small coup of professors, tenured and untenured, and radicalized students, radicalized by these professors and outside groups, have engaged in verbal, violent, discriminatory, harassing conduct and even physical violence,” Kivetz said. “In support of terrorism. Undermining the United States with Marxist messages, with Marxist propaganda. They have used Israel and antisemitism as the beachhead, as the excuse. This has been since Oct. 12 — not just last week or in the last month, not even since after Israel entered Gaza, but since Oct. 12 … Calling on the Houthis to shoot American servicewomen and mean worldwide, calling for the death and the destruction and the burning of Tel Aviv.”
And, again he stressed, “We’re talking about Oct. 12, way before Israel entered Gaza. On Oct. 12, Israel was still searching and collecting and trying to identify body parts. Heads and heart and livers that Hamas had taken out.”
This is important. The encampments in the past two weeks are not a response to anything new Israel has done, but a culmination of a long-planned, consistently executed strategy to push for Israel’s annihilation and to undermine the Western world.
Hamas attacked Israel and butchered 1,200 people last Oct. 7. Within just days, radicals were calling for a “national day of resistance on college campuses across occupied Turtle Island” on Oct. 12. Turtle Island is what these crazies call the entirety of the United States and Canada, combined. In an official “Toolkit” for the day of resistance, the National Students for Justice in Palestine celebrated the Oct. 7 massacre as a “historic win for the Palestinian resistance: across land, air, and sea.” They called for the total annihilation of the state of Israel — no “peaceful coexistence” or “two state solution” here — “from the river to the sea” while “actualizing revolution.” Every single Israeli citizen is characterized as a “settler,” and the toolkit says they “are not ‘civilians’ in the sense of international law, because they are military assets used to ensure continued control over stolen Palestinian land.”
Therefore, every Israeli is a just target for slaughter: “All of it is legitimate, and all of it is necessary.”
And so hatefully on. And this was not in April; this was seven full months ago.
At Columbia and many other campuses, the demonstrators for a full school year have carried that message. Their signs don’t just complain about Israel’s incursions into Gaza. Instead, they bear pictures celebrating the hang gliders who led the Oct. 7 butchery; they spew the vilest invective at any Jewish student or staff member who walks past (as if a Jew at Columbia is, or all Jews collectively are, responsible for the policies of the state of Israel 5,600 miles away). They don’t advocate for peaceful Palestinians; as multiple videos show, they wave the flag of terrorist Hamas. And they are violent.
Just look at the evidence in these links. And listen to these “campers” repeating in unison, like mindless automatons, directions to “form a human chain” to keep “Zionists” out.
Since October, students and faculty have been asking Columbia’s president, Shafik, to intervene, with a particularly strong plea in December and another, here, in March, with numerous examples of how threatening the atmosphere is on campus. And, too, of how this isn’t just about Israel, but about hostility to the entire Western world of democracy and ordered liberty Indeed, protest leaders literally have put forth one of history’s greatest murderers, the Chinese leader responsible for well over 40 million deaths, as an icon, with these words: “As Mao says, dare to struggle, dare to win.”
Shafik, of course, refused to do anything until the situation got out of hand. Even now, in a May 1 statement, Shafik doesn’t merely hedge bets, but subtly implies solidarity with the goals, if not the means, of the thugs and occupiers. Noting that school “negotiators” had even considered shutting down a joint academic program in Tel Aviv, Shafik actually praised Columbia’s “long and proud tradition of protest and activism on many important issues such as the Vietnam War, civil rights, and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.” In that very context, in the next sentence, Shafik essentially equated the moral worth of today’s occupiers with those others, writing that “Today’s protesters are also fighting for an important cause, for the rights of Palestinians and against the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza.”
Of course, there can be no “dialogue,” no “discussion,” much less any “negotiation” with any of these demonstrators, anywhere in the country. They don’t want discussion; they want to stifle discussion and they wish ill on the entire West and especially the United States. They deface statues of George Washington and Ben Franklin, try to destroy the American flag, and, again, call all of North America an illegal settlement.
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At Columbia, “It’s not just Jews who are intimidated, harassed and bullied, but also Gentile Americans who disagree with the protesters, who want to engage in discussion and dialogue and talking about facts” said Professor Kivetz. “They are not allowed to speak.”
This cannot continue. Not at Columbia, not anywhere. Crush the rebellions, and when arrests are made, that shouldn’t be the end of it. Don’t arrest and release. Instead, arrest, prosecute, and imprison. Now.