“The most ominously crucial question now hanging over this country’s future is: what will our universities teach at our expense and without our consent? What ideas will be propagated or excluded?” –Ayn Rand, 1972
American and Canadian Jewish students (and faculty) now must avoid wearing a kippa or any jewelry signifying their Jewish identity for fear of being physically and verbally assaulted in the halls of our universities. Muslim students, conversely, wear their keffiyeh proudly, without the slightest fear of similar assaults.
Even more shameful is the fact that within the “Free Palestine!” narrative passed around today as the front-running avant-garde intellectual currency can be detected the jihadist, anti-Jewish exterminationist ideology advocated by both Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and Khaled Mashaal of Hamas. Jewish Zionism is propagated as an evil; Islamic jihad, especially if committed in the cause of a future sovereign Palestinian state, is propagated as justified and a good. Hence one need not look too far to find explanations for why Jewish students are threatened on campus and their affinity to the State of Israel smirched, as though Jews—all Jews—are never victims but rather criminals being punished for their crimes and terrorism their just reward.
Omer Bartov, historian at Brown University in Rhode Island, has written, “If the attacks on the Twin Towers were founded on antisemitic motifs, one should say so. If a Malaysian prime minister expresses antisemitic opinions, one must not attempt to apologize for that which is inexcusable. If a self-proclaimed liberation organization demands the annihilation of the Jewish state, one must not pretend it is demanding anything else. Where clarity ends, complicity begins.”
I will say here that I believe the BDS movement is stimulated more by traditional Muslim antisemitism than inspired by genuine concern for the “liberation” of the Palestinian people. I believe also that those at the centre of the BDS movement desire more the “annihilation of the Jewish state” than the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.
Why do BDS protesters shamelessly fly the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, two terrorist entities whose primary goal is the annihilation of the State of Israel, if they’re truly concerned with the future of the Palestinian people? How can they expect those critical of their movement to believe they’re really concerned with the welfare of one people when the terrorist organizations they align themselves with demand the extermination of another?
Even Norman Finkelstein, one of Israel’s most hateful accusers, during a meeting of left-wing activists in New York in 2013 condemned the BDS movement, as revealed in an Anti-Defamation League report: “He challenged the latent hypocrisy within the anti-Israel movement (and his co-panelists), which constantly points to international law to justify its agenda while ignoring the fact that international law established Israel as a Jewish state.” He asked, “How does one propose to win support for the Palestinian cause based on international law, yet not support two states?”
A shocking fact of the day is that our Western universities seem to have become a place of concourse for Islamist-minded Muslims and their jihadist-centred political movements. Duncan Gardham of the UK’s Telegraph revealed back in 2011 that, “A number of terrorists have studied at British universities including members of the fertiliser bomb and trans-Atlantic airlines gangs as well as Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab, the Detroit underpants bomber, and Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, the Stockholm suicide bomber.”
An op-ed in the New York Times in 2005, only four years after 911, by Peter Bergen, author of Holy War Inc. and a fellow at the New America Foundation, disclosed that, “The 1993 World Trade Center attack involved 12 men, all of whom had a college education. The 9/11 pilots, as well as the secondary planners identified by the 9/11 commission, all attended Western universities…the lead 9/11 pilot, Mohamed Atta, had a degree from a German university…the operational planner of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, studied engineering in North Carolina…two-thirds of the 25 hijackers and planners involved in 9/11 had attended college.”
Of the three Canadian VIA Rail plotters, two of them attended university in Quebec; Ahmed Abassi at Laval University and Chiheb Esseghaier at Sherbrooke University. But one shouldn’t be surprised at this. After all, it’s a short walk from the antisemitic and wipe-Israel-off-the-map BDS movement to the al-Qaeda/ISIS/Boko Harem/Taliban terrorist trend.
I can accept the maxim that our universities are places of learning, where open discussion on a wide variety of subjects is permitted and condoned, even encouraged. I get that. What I do not accept is that certain Muslim immigrants, who hated our democratic system and way of life before leaving their country of origin, are allowed to vent their Jew-hatred and anti-Western (read: anti-social) venom upon arriving here, even while acquiring a reputable education under a roof that my dime and the dime of every taxpaying Canadian and American has paid for.
mortimer says
Some sort of pledge of good behavior must be required before allowing these students to enter. The anti-Semitism inherent in Islam is always simmering under the surface. Islam amounts to Archie Bunker speaking as Allah.
umbra says
Until a system is in place to weed out all terrorist, potential terrorists and terrorist sympathisers, it would better if none were allowed in. islam is the sort of disease that can turn fatal “without any warning” to both adherents and people around adherents.
Lia Wissing says
I first went to University many years ago. The rector of the university told us (the 1st-year students) that we were the privileged 5% of the population, but that our bursaries, loans & parents were not covering our tuition costs completely, so we were subsidised by the taxes of many people who would never have our opportunity. We were therefore to study hard & on completion of our degrees, start giving back service (apart from our career incomes) to whatever community we ended up in. Isn’t this good advice valid anymore?
Lioness says
Don’t be naive, Lia, those values are dead. Today’s students are leftist anarchists that want free education and free support from the state. At any rate, what they study – gender, social justice, feminism – will not get them a job in anything. “Giving back to the community”? They only understand “taking from the community”.
Kathy Brown, Esq. says
Forget a ‘pledge of good behavior’. What’s needed here are attorneys at law like myself, pro-bono, filing lawsuits v. the 1st Amendment violation these vile prohibitions, are.
‘Dress’ is part of Free Speech. Often schools forbid such to ‘avoid disruption on campus’. That’s known as ‘The Heckler’s Veto’, since it accords all the power to the violent, here, the muslims (of course).
I want to know which universities are doing this, whereupon I will immediately email them offering my services-free of charge-representing [if these are local places] the Jews told they may not wear yarmulkes, phylacteries, etc.
FYI: Anytime these things occur, the aggrieved students MUST file a complaint with the school. When-not if-that is dismissed, then they must notify organizations like the AFLC (they’ve represented Pam Geller many times with her bus ads, and won), Liberty Counsel, etc.
I understand that students fear having their grades suffer, retribution, etc. But if you don’t report a rape, it’s just a bad sc_ _w.
TheBuffster says
Kathy Brown, Esq. said: “‘Dress’ is part of Free Speech. Often schools forbid such to ‘avoid disruption on campus’. That’s known as ‘The Heckler’s Veto’, since it accords all the power to the violent, here, the muslims (of course).
“I want to know which universities are doing this, whereupon I will immediately email them offering my services-free of charge-representing [if these are local places] the Jews told they may not wear yarmulkes, phylacteries, etc.”
Yes, this is how these things should be handled.
Restricting the non-violent so as to appease the violent into being peaceful is to make violence a successful strategy. We need to use the law to reinforce rights and penalize rights violators.
If that makes some Muslims strike back with violence, they should then be taken down with violence.
mortimer says
Wearing Jewish apparel is problem? But not wearing the full Salafi uniform…veils…etc?
This is obviously unjust, an admission that the violent Muslims are violent and cannot be controlled by campus police!
Campus has become a no-go zone!
Charles Martel says
The Frankfurt school meets the Fitna school.
classicus says
QED! You’ve hammered that one.
Joginder Singh says
Howabout not letting muslims in these universities in the first place
pongidae rex says
What has happened is that the increasingly dogmatic and totalitarian ideology of ‘multiculturalism’ has been successfully hijacked by Islamists who are using their status as a ‘minority’ to leverage it to scapegoat Jews and ‘Islamophobes’ as morally flawed deviants. No mention, of course, of the ongoing outrages of the Islamic State. Similarly, Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Arab oil states have created strategically positioned university ‘endowments’ occupied by skilled propagandists masquerading as college professors who indoctrinate those who come to learn. Any with opposing views receive failing grades, moral reprimand, dimmed futures and wasted tuition dollars.
The brutal and inescapable fact seems to be that the ideology of multiculturalism is morphing into a dogmatic and totalitarian ideology that tolerates no dissent from its ‘morally superior’ perspective that equates Western civilization with violent, medieval ideologies. This is very very dangerous.
I do not know what the solution is. I just know that we have allowed skilled propagandists hostile to the West to take control of our most hallowed teaching institutions.
Darren says
The scary thing is this problem has been going on for so long, and they are so entrenched, I wonder if we have truly crossed the rubicon on this issue. The cancer has gotten so bad that it might be inoperable. Something stealth jihadists and liberals excel at is using the very system against itself. I’m not talking about the normal old school liberals who are actually liberal, and not totalitarian in nature, but the ones teaching at every university and school all across the country. Being Pro American and pro western civilization is the new Mccarthyism of our time. Ironically Macarthur had many valid points about communist infiltration.
Paul says
I don’t know why leftist, ‘progressive’, pro-‘Palestinian’ (pro-Hamas)
students attend university anyway. Surely, they already know
everything there is to know about the world, so how can you improve
on perfection? Places of education should just be left to ordinary mortals
who want to learn and see the enrichment and value of the free, unhindered
exchange of ideas and discourse. ‘Progressive’ students, like their Islamist
comrades, have to police the opinions of others, it’s their vocation in life.
TheBuffster says
Ain’t it the truth, Paul. Spot-on.
Paul says
In case you haven’t seen it before, Pat Condell did a good
video on this recently. He briefly touches on Israel :
Jay Boo says
Islamic funded Muslim student organizations should be banned from universities.
Darren says
Muslim student organizations are simply another form of stealth jihad.
The Muslim Students Association and the Jihad Network
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=30339
jay says
Maybe this trend will awaken the Jewish left out of it’s anti-American/Western politics finally and put them on the side that doesn’t want their utter destruction. If all of these powerful rich liberal Jews were on America and Israel’s side, can you imagine? We’d lick this entire problem in a few years flat.
Fritz Kohlhaas says
Expose the troublemakers, expel them, charge them, prosecute them and sent them to
prison! Publish their pictures! Bunch of low life scum!
Cookiebaker says
“I have a dream”, how about kippah day all males wear them on these bastions of “higher learning”.Perhaps such a similar story happened in Denmark during World War II?Maybe, women could wear blue and white?
The message these “students” need to promulgate is,you are next!
Solange says
i agree. I also feel that Jews should stop cowering in the corners when faced with discrimination. As far as physical attacks go, everyone should learn how to defend themselves. As for me, I’m going to go out and buy a bigger Jewish star.
Darren says
I don’t understand the attitude of leftist Jews. Leftist Jews support people who want to kill them, and hate both America, which saved many of their ancestors in WW2, and dislike Israel. They also largely support the Palestinians. All the Palestinians are, are simply a proxy force used by the Ummah to wage a war and weaken their mortal enemy the Jews. We need to simply called Fakeistinians displaced Jordanians, and they were displaced for a reason. These people aren’t poor persecuted individuals like the media portrays them as.
Black September, The PLO’s attempt to take over Jordan in 1970
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~samuel/september.html
Kathy Brown, Esq. says
Amen to that Solange! And I will be proud to walk by your side, letting everyone know what a valuable and precious thing is the Jewish community, all over the world.
Think about it! I’m a New Yorker originally. Thus I- and lots like me-consider ourselves ‘honorary Jews’ because, if you grew up in NYC, you learned lots of Yiddish (so expressive!), love Jewish food (bagel and lox is to die for), and from your earliest age heard ‘Jewish men make such good husbands’ and ‘the Jews become doctors, lawyers and get the best grades’.
So as we say back East: ‘What’s not to like?’
And chew on this. Over the centuries-until Israel was created-Jews were always the unwanted, the outsiders. They were the epitome of those ‘handed lemons’ by every society in which they lived. But they didn’t just ‘make lemonade’ with those lemons, No: They made super-duper, gourmet, out-of-this-world ‘champagne lemonade’…
Forbidden to own any property but intellectual property, their scholarship has enriched the world. Enjoined from ever defending themselves in any way, the Israeli military became-in the twinkling of an eye-a military second in skill only to our own. To this day the War Colleges state: ‘We can’t teach what Israel did militarily, because here we don’t explain miracles’.
The point is, there aren’t so many Jews worldwide. But there are lots of people like myself, who are so well aware of what a wonderful community this is! Combined, our numbers are impressive. I for one am speaking out on the side of this great community.