As college seniors don their caps and gowns this weekend and proud parents converge on campuses, it may seem from headlines and TV live shots that all of America’s universities are out of control.
They’re not.
First, the ruckus is not everywhere. Second, the pro-Palestinian demonstrations will run down naturally after exams end, provided college administrators don’t continue to overreact.
Arrests and expulsions should be for those who incite violence, destroy property, block others’ access to classes or seize buildings — whether pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli.
It would be a worse world, after all, if college students and other young people weren’t always trying to save it. Their idealism is healthy, even if it is sometimes misplaced.
One thing the demonstrations have exposed is how little world history so many students seem to know. College deans, take note.
Meanwhile, calling in the police should be a last resort, not the first.
Missing from the clamor
To be sure, something is ominously missing from the campus clamor, which is one-sided and myopic on the Palestinian side.
Protesters seem concerned only with Israel’s tactics in Gaza, indifferent to the prolonged and intentional mayhem that Russia is perpetrating against Ukraine, where more than 9,000 innocent civilians have died and entire communities lie in ruins.
They also seem to ignore — and some — how savagely Hamas provoked Israel on Oct. 7. More than 1,100 people of all ages were killed in an orgy of rape and mayhem. Parents were slaughtered in front of their children.
Some 240 hostages were taken and as many as 130 still remain alive in Hamas’ underground dungeons. To act as if that hadn’t happened or, worse, to relish it, is obscene, antisemitic and destructive to the peace that the students claim to seek.
The campus protests seem to fault only Israel, not Hamas, even though Palestinian terrorism shares the blame with Benjamin Netanyahu’s intransigence for the diminishing prospects of a two-state solution.
What’s antisemitic, and what isn’t
Antisemitism is an ancient virus forever looking for an opportunity to erupt. It is evident when Jewish students are harassed and threatened even as they attempt to speak out for a multilateral cease-fire or a two-state solution.
But it is not inherently antisemitic to criticize how Israel is conducting the war — as we do — or to question whether partition of Palestine was wise, which we do not. That is history; Israel exists, and it is antisemitic to suggest that it should be exterminated “from the river to the sea.”
Words have consequences. Students must understand that.
It was certainly antisemitic when the Columbia University student who’s become infamous for saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live” spotted some Jewish students and commanded his followers to “push them out of the camp.” That was violence. If he hasn’t been expelled, he should be.
However, schools should regard people like him as the exception. They should suspend or arrest only those students who threaten others or block their access to campus facilities. They should stop flinching under pressure from Congress to fire faculty who say unpopular things.
Freedom of speech still demands freedom for the thought that we hate, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. cogently explained. Academic freedom necessarily means putting up with some nutty professors, provided they don’t take out their biases on their students. Both freedoms are in danger of becoming casualties of the war in Gaza.
Open to differing views
We listened to with Jewish students from Columbia, Michigan, UCLA and Tufts, sponsored by J Street, the American Jewish organization that advocates a two-state solution.
Among their messages: Students need to be exposed to clashing viewpoints — that’s essential to an education. There’s a difference, as one said, “between being unsafe and being uncomfortable.” Too much attention is being paid to the extremists, too little to Jewish and Muslim students who advocate for peace. Police raids inevitably make things worse. Yes, outside agitators have infiltrated the demonstrations.
Most importantly, the Jewish students noted that protestors have “no idea of what Zionism is” or the history of how Israel came to be.
Don’t ever forget 1968
Antisemitism festers on ignorance. If college students had a better understanding of why Israel came to be, they’d be less naïve about Hamas. If they had a better grasp of geopolitics, they’d be more aware of how and why Russia might use the internet to inflame the demonstrations.
History should also inform them what happens when America becomes disgusted with protesting students. In 1968, violent protests on campuses and at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago led to the election of Richard Nixon, a president who prolonged the war the students wanted to stop.
Fifty-six years later, students’ anger at a Democratic president despite his efforts to restrain Israel plays into the designs of Donald Trump, who happily 蜜兔直播s Islamophobia and catered to the Netanyahu regime when he last had the chance. Trump, too, would prolong the strife they want to stop.
Students should fear for what they claim to care about if they help elect him.
The 蜜兔直播 Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
