America's Talking - University Antisemitism Reaches Fever Pitch With Calls for Violence Against Jews

Starting point is 00:00:00 Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulip, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Thursday, April 25th. Pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protests are raging across the country, on college campuses, major highways, elsewhere, and that the level of vitrials spewed at these protests, some of them escalating to riots or near riots, it's surging.

Starting point is 00:00:28 joining me today to discuss these developments as Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, this past week, it feels like things have gotten a bit out of control. Bring us our listeners up to speed on what's going on around the country. Yeah, I mean, so we have seen at campuses around the country this Hamas Israel issue bubble up to the point of violence, to the point of arrests, to a level really reminiscent of the week of October 7th. but I would say even beyond that. Of course, October 7th is when Hamas, the terrorist group, carried out its deadly attack on Israel, killing over 1,000 Israelis, many of them civilians, and committing other, you know, unmentionable acts to those that were their victims that kicked off a really sustained bombing campaign from Israel

Starting point is 00:01:16 against Hamas and Gaza. There have been plenty of civilian casualties along with that that have brought a lot of scrutiny and criticism of Israel and its response. that is then escalated even more recent in recent weeks to Iran and Israel crossing new lines by exchanging fire with one another on their own territory. They've often operated against, through via proxy groups, but these were direct strikes on one another. That's a new kind of a red line they haven't crossed before. And, you know, I think that has helped push us to where we are today now, which is these protests have a few features, Dan, that in the minds of many cross the line.

Starting point is 00:01:55 One that's very distinct in my mind is really calls for violence against Israel and against Jewish people. Now, of course, there's many Jewish students on these campuses. And I've interviewed some of them. And I wrote a story using some of those interviews earlier this year talking about their experience, how they felt unsafe, how their, you know, their fellow classmates are channing death to their maybe their home country or the country that is of their ethnic origin. Right. And they filed the complaints for the Department of Education and it really has gone nowhere. there's been a lot of political implications of this where lawmakers are questioning whether these schools can get federal funding or that federal funding can't be yanked. But right now, many of these schools have descended into chaos, some have canceled classes. It seems no end in sight. There has been some violence, many arrests. Lawmakers are making threats.

Starting point is 00:02:44 But right now, Dan, it doesn't seem like a clear resolution either to this war with Israel and Hamas or to the chaos on college campuses. Casey, just reading from one of your stories this week, a Jewish Yale student reportedly stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag during a pro-Hamas protest on campus from a separate story. Columbia University, an Ivy League school in New York, went to full virtual learning for the rest of this semester because of the violence, the threats of violence by pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protesters on campus just here in Chicago, large. groups of anti-Israel pro-Homaz terrorists blocking access to O'Hare International Airport. Of course, we've seen that in Seattle and in Portland and across the country. Here's an example of the opposite of what's happened. Also, just yesterday in Texas at the University of Texas in Austin, protesters anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, protesters tried to do something similar as to what's been going on at

Starting point is 00:03:47 Columbia and Yale and others. Texas had a different response, though. They went in and busted up the protests, arrested at least, I think the last count I saw was at least 34 different people were arrested, got the protesters out, leading up to the protests. The students were encouraged to walk out of classes and, quote, reclaim our space as we demand divestment now, referring to the Palestinian boycott divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. They also said that in their protests, in the footsteps of our comrades at Columbia University, and other schools were referenced and countless others across the nation, we will be establishing the popular university for Gaza. Texas Governor Greg Gabbitt wasn't having anything of it,

Starting point is 00:04:32 sent the State Department of Public Safety forces in there, along with Austin Police and campus police, broke it up immediately. But you're not seeing that kind of reaction in many of these other college campuses. I guess the one thing that we could be thankful for is that spring semester is almost over on most of these campuses. I don't know that that's the big solution anyway, thoughts. Yeah, schools out for summer might save the day temporarily. But as you hinted at, many of these Ivy League and coastal schools and more liberal schools in particular,

Starting point is 00:05:05 it seems like Texas has sort of avoided this, but they've created a precedent of pretty strongly giving in to liberal groups and their demands. When we've seen conservative speakers kicked off campuses, we've seen, I mean, you know, some pretty strict speech code policies or efforts to regulate student speech around things like gender and sexuality. And so, I mean, it's no secret that these universities have become hyper-liberal. And they've really just created a precedent where they cave to student groups. And so now they're being put in a tough spot because they have a very liberal, I mean, I think you've seen the word comrades that tells you about their communist sympathies.

Starting point is 00:05:41 But these very liberal pro-Hamas groups, and yes, they are pro-Hamas, not just anti-Israel. they have to cave to them or kind of buck the precedent that they've already set. Now, they have many alumni and donors who are very upset about this. And just to make that point about being pro-Hamas, not just, these aren't just like sophisticated, you know, speeches being given on out in the public square about whether Israel is doing too much to hurt civilians. That's not what's happening. So here's some, here's some quotes from, you know, videos of the protest. We say justice, you say how. Burn Tel Aviv to the ground. Hamas, we love you. We support. We support. your rockets to, red, black, green, and white, we support Hamas's fight, and it is right to rebel,

Starting point is 00:06:22 let Hamas give them hell. So, you know, this is, it is explicitly pro-Hamas, and Hamas is a terrorist organization. That's not just rhetoric. I mean, the State Department calls them a terrorist organization. We're not just like throwing that word out there for effect. So I think that is part of what's pushed us into a new level. But I think our country, Dan, I mean, this, I don't want to go too big picture here, but I think the last, you know, five years, our country is really grappling with what is appropriate and when it comes to demonstrations, protests, riots, and it feels like a double standard to a lot of people. And we haven't resolved this issue because, you know, we had the BLM riots, which burned many cities, which were totally out of control, hurt a lot of people,

Starting point is 00:06:59 hurt their businesses. And pretty much nothing, very little was done about that. And then, you know, fast forward to January 6, which of course, there are a lot of people being prosecuted, I think, that maybe aren't as controversial. But there's a lot of people who have been prosecuted maybe for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, right? And then you come to things like this, these protests. People want to prosecute certain people for, say, to be illegal to use the wrong pronoun, but then you can call for death for Jews and it's not, you know, hate speech. So I think it's just like there's a cognitive dissonance. There's a disagreement about what does it look like to have the right to assembly in America right now? And we have not resolved that issue. And I'm not

Starting point is 00:07:38 sure how we're going to do it. And I can't dispute anything you just said there, Casey, unfortunately, something like this hate speech, just like everything else, is political in this country. It's red states handle it one way, as we just talk about in Texas. Blue states are handing another way. College campuses are obviously very progressive in most instances across the country. Hate speech should not be a political issue. This is something we should all reach some form of consensus on, but unfortunately, we haven't been able to do that. Casey, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this ongoing story and more at thecentersquare.com.

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America's Talking - University Antisemitism Reaches Fever Pitch With Calls for Violence Against Jews

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