The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: DEI Enthusiasts Allowed the Free Palestine Movement to Get This Far

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Last week’s killings of two Israeli embassy employees in the name of “Free Palestine” is just another sad example of how the Left has lowered the bar for the justification of political violence.    Endemic antisemitism continues to spread on college campus across America because the people responsible, DEI proponents and recipients, feel that they are untouchable, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words:”   “So, that is one thing that's happening. And that makes violence more permissible. The other is this endemic antisemitism. Let's be honest. It's not some cowboy in Wyoming in 1950 that doesn't like Jews. We're talking about two nexuses that come together and promulgate antisemitism. The one is wealthy people in the universities—many of them DEI, but not all—who feel that it's either en vogue or, as DEI people, they cannot be criticized as victims for victimizing others, meaning foreign students from the Middle East. And in that cauldron, it becomes permissible to say, “Globalize the intifada,” “River to the sea,” the eliminationist rhetoric about Israel, storm a library, chase Jews into a library, damage the president's office, rough up a Jewish kid on campus. It was all acceptable. There were no consequences. That's why those three college presidents either were fired or had to resign.”  👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: https://youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1…     👉If you can’t get enough of Victor Davis Hanson from The Daily Signal, subscribe to his official YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/victordavishanson7273…     👉He’s also the host of “The Victor Davis Hanson Show,” available wherever you prefer to watch or listen. Links to the show and exclusive content are available on his website: https://victorhanson.com  The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: https://secured.dailysignal.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us. And contact Desjardin today.

We'd love to talk. Business. Recently, two Israeli diplomatic employees in Washington were shot. Apparently, the killer emptied his handgun and fired off 21 rounds, killed them almost instantly, and then ran into the museum where they were working, and started to act as if he was a victim until he shouted out free Palestine. What we're seeing throughout the United States right now is a lowering of the bar of what's acceptable in terms of violence. How can we get in there to justify this in some ways or contextualize it? So what we're seeing is two nexus that come together and promulgate anti-Semitism.

The unhinged come out of the woodwork because the general climate rewards that type of behavior. And what are we to make of this? Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hansson for the Daily Signal. Recently, two Israeli diplomatic employees in Washington, Yarron Lyshinsky and Sarah Milgram were shot. Apparently, the killer, Elias Rodriguez, emptied his handgun and fired off 21 rounds, killed them almost instantly,

and then ran into the museum where they were working, and started to act as if he was a victim until he shouted out free Palestine. And what are we to make of this? I think what we're seeing throughout the United States right now is a lowering of the bar of what's acceptable in terms of violence. We saw that Luigi Mangione became a cult hero to the left because he in a premeditated fashion killed a. United Health Company Corporation Executive, shot him down in cold blood on the specious excuse

that they were overcharging people. But he became a hero. And we saw that Abrago Garcia, who beat his spouse, threatened to kill her apparently. She thought he was going to kill her and was an illegal alien and had at one time deportation orders and was a member pretty clearly of an M-13 gang. was engaged in human trafficking and was deported, became a cult hero to the left. And we had an incident in Texas where a young teenager stabbed another one, and then he became a victim. No need to go into the details. We had the two assassination attempts, and I think if you collated the social

media content of those two killers, it was pretty much to the left, kind of reminiscent of the shooter of Congressman Steve Scalia and the wounding of others who was at Bernie Sanders. What am I getting at? There has been a general lowering of the bar, as I said, of what's acceptable violence. And we saw that with a Tesla excuses and contextualization when somebody ran somebody off the road or destroyed a charging station or firebombed a station. Even the media reports of the tragic deaths, I was reading today an NPR account. And after about six paragraphs, they get uneasy describing the murder.

And they just have to. They just have to put something in. And they do. And they say, and this wasn't during a period of tensions because of the people getting killed in Gaza. In other words, just a little bit, how can we get in there to justify this in some ways or contextualize it? So that is one thing that's happening. And that makes violence more permissible. The other is this endemic anti-Semitism.

Let's be honest. It's not some cowboy in Wyoming in 1950 that doesn't like Jews. We're talking about two nexus that come together and promulgate anti-Semitism. The one is wealthy people in the universities, many of them DEI, but not all, who feel that it's either in vogue or as DEI people, they cannot be criticized as victims for victimizing others, meeting for fervizing others, meeting for. foreign students from the Middle East. And in that cauldron, it becomes permissible to say, globalize the Intifada, river to the sea, the eliminationist rhetoric about Israel, storm a library, chase Jews are into a library, damage the president's office, rough up a Jewish kid on campus. It was all acceptable. There were no consequences. That's why those three college presidents

either were fired or had to resign. So what we're seeing is that the unhinged come out of the woodwork because the general climate rewards that type of behavior. So Mr. Rodriguez thought, A, if I use violence, in this case, bring a gun into Washington, D.C. from my home in Chicago, and I have good, firm, left-wing credentials. His father was asked to be a guest at the Trump speaker by a left-wing congressman Garcia from Illinois. So he comes in and he knows that if he shoots and murders someone, there's going to be a lot of people who will praise him or at least excuse what he did,

number one. And number two, he's killing Jews. So he knows on campus that one of the Harvard Review people roughed up a Jew and was given $65,000 honorarium scholarship from Harvard's, one of the groups that sponsors Harvard Law School. Bottom line, this is going to continue until somebody says we're not going to put up with it anymore. You're not going to be a foreign student and come over the United States on a student visa and spout hateful rhetoric and torment Jews and make it uncomfortable.

And you're not going to be one of these elite students who crashes into the president's office at Stanford or crashes into a building at Columbia and thinks there's no consequences. And that's why Donald Trump is trying to shock treatment to the universities to say, you don't know what you're doing. You're a global embarrassment that you permitted and you have fueled anti-Semitism. And the left atmosphere anyway is to condone violence when it's used for revolutionary purposes, add it all up, and we get two wonderful people murdered in D.C. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis Hansen for The Daily Signal.

Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.