Where Are the Progressive Politicians Standing Up to the Jew Hatred on Campus?
The “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, on April 25, 2024. Photo: Reuters Connect
The members of the progressive caucus in the US House of Representatives, known as “The Squad,” have recently coalesced around support for the “peaceful” antisemitic protests engulfing college campuses.
The Squad hears “ceasefire” when “Globalize the Intifada” and “From the River to the Sea” are chanted. They are pandering to the students who are currently calling for a Palestine “free” of Jews, and who believe their ideology that everything in the United States — and globally — is about race and an “oppressor vs. oppressed” ideology.
The litmus test for all progressive policies is that they must advance “racial justice and equity” (The House Progressive Promise). Members of the Squad justify their anti-Zionist position by falsely accusing Israel of being an “apartheid state.” This accusation is a lie, but it squares nicely with the objective of the progressive platform which is to advance their particular version of racial justice and equity — which means the demonization of whomever they deem to be “white” and “powerful.”
Members of the Squad believe that their commitment to “dismantle the systems of oppression and discrimination that allow racism to persist” obligates them to oppose Israel.
The following is a statement that Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) made on October 8, 2024, while Hamas sadists were still on a killing rampage in Israel and Hamas rockets were reigning down on Israeli towns:
The path to that future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance. The failure to recognize the violent reality of living under siege, occupation, and apartheid makes no one safer. No person, no child anywhere should have to suffer or live in fear of violence. We cannot ignore the humanity in each other. As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.
I believe professor and diversity advocate Mona Khoury-Kassabri, the Vice President for “Strategy and Inclusion” at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, may have a different viewpoint concerning Congresswoman Tlaib’s libelous accusation that Israel is an apartheid state, as would the Arab-Israeli doctors who are studying and practicing medicine in Israel, all Arab citizens who have equal rights and serve in the Knesset and Supreme Court, and many others.
Israel is not an apartheid state. For just the beginnings of proof, you can look here.
New York Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), probably the most well-known member of the Squad, hurried up to Columbia to give her support to the students of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment who demanded that Columbia University divest from all things Israel.
The following are the first two of five demands the Columbia University Apartheid Divest Organization made to the administration of Columbia (cuapartheiddivest):
- Divest all of Columbia’s finances, including the endowment, from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine. Ensure accountability by increasing transparency around financial investments.
- Sever academic ties with Israeli universities, including the Global Center in Tel Aviv, the Dual Degree Program with Tel Aviv University, and all study-abroad programs.
The protestors refuse to let anyone speak who disagrees with these views. In effect, they are demanding that their free speech rights are respected while calling on the silencing of Jewish and pro-Israeli voices.
The intent of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement is to de-legitimize Israeli scientists, artists, politicians, entrepreneurs, athletes, farmers, industrialists, doctors, and professors — irrespective of their politics or views — and to de-legitimize the State of Israel itself.
The logic of the BDS movement is that isolating and suffocating Israeli society will create immense pressure that forces Israel to retreat to the geography of the 1967 borders — and eventually collapse upon itself. Of course, an isolated and weakened Israel will be far less likely to make any concessions because it will be unable to take the risks associated with ceding more autonomy over more land and resources to the Palestinian people. The anti-Zionist policies voiced by the student protestors, and supported by the Squad, will lead to more death and destruction in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank — not less.
The demands of the protestors also don’t include one word about the Israeli and American hostages that Hamas is currently torturing, or the 1,200 people massacred intentionally on October 7. They are ignoring Hamas and Palestinian terrorism — which are the primary cause of the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza. Protestors marching for the “global intifada” have decided that the actions of Hamas on October 7 were a legitimate act of resistance.
If they’re serious about what they believe, any non-Jewish progressive politician besides Ritchie Torres (D-NY) should step up to the bullhorn and address the students who are in a rage about the death and destruction in Gaza, and explain how and why the commitment of Hamas to slaughter Jews from “the river to the sea” is absolutely evil and not progressive.
Charles A. Stone is a Professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY.
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