A New Reckoning Is Long Overdue for American Universities Over the Antisemitism With Which Their Campuses Are Riddled

Why are Harvard, Yale, and other top universities remaining silent as the oldest hatred is voiced on their campuses?

Student groups at Harvard, Yale, City University of New York, and other major institutions of learning have issued statements in support of the Hamas murderers and rapists. Hundreds of students at Harvard issued the following statement:

“We the undersigned student organizations hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence… the apartheid regime is the only one to blame.” Similar statements were issued by student groups around the country. Many faculty members and administrators support — indeed encourage — such bigotry.

This should not be surprising in light of the propaganda demonizing Israel that has flooded university campuses for decades. Speakers such as Norman Finkelstein have become among the most popular supporters of Hamas’ genocidal goals.

While Israeli babies, women, and elderly civilians were being butchered, this despicable bigot and Holocaust minimizer published the following: “If we honor the Jews who revolted in the Warsaw Ghetto — then moral consistency commands that we honor the heroic resistance in Gaza.

“I, for one, will never begrudge — on the contrary, it warms every fiber of my soul — the scenes of Gaza’s smiling children as their arrogant Jewish supremacist oppressors have finally been humbled.”

The comparison is obscene. In the Warsaw uprising, brave civilians arose against well-armed Nazi soldiers who were trying to kill them. The only murders and rapes were by the Stormtroopers. In Israel, the murderers and rapists were the Hamas butchers whom Mr. Finkelstein supports.

Despite, perhaps because of, these outrageous, immoral, and historically inaccurate defamations, Mr. Finkelstein will continue to be invited to speak to large audiences at our major universities, while pro-Israel speakers — even those like me who support a two-state peaceful solution — will continue to be banned.

It is outrageous that hard-left woke progressives who claim to support women’s rights are in the forefront of defending rapists who parade their bleeding victims. Many of the Israelis who were murdered at the peace concert and at nearby kibbutzim supported a two-state solution and the rights of innocent Palestinians.

This doesn’t matter to the genocidal Hamas murderers. All that matters is that the victims were Jews — Israeli Jews, American Jews, British Jews. The goal of these murderers is not a two-state solution or a peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflict.

No, it is the murder of Israel’s population and of Jews around the world who support the only nation-state of the Jewish people. It is bigotry pure and simple, and anyone who supports the Jewish state  deserves the most extreme condemnation in the court of public opinion.

The most troubling aspect of these university statements in support of rapists and murderers is that many who signed them will be our future leaders. The universities that admitted and teach them have historically turned out future members of Congress, presidents, economic leaders, journalists, and others who will determine the fate of our children and grandchildren. These universities have failed our future.

Much of the blame lies with the faculty and administration of elite universities, which have taken strong views against racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry, while remaining silent about the oldest prejudice, antisemitism, which today disguises itself as anti-Zionism. Jews and Zionists are not included among minorities who deserve protection.

Among the Harvard groups most prominently blaming Israel for these rapes and murders is “Amnesty International at Harvard.” That group is the Harvard affiliate of the Nobel Prize-winning international organization that claims to be in favor of peace and non-violence.

I don’t know whether the Harvard affiliate represents the views of its parent organization, but Amnesty International has failed, at least so far, to disassociate itself from these abhorrent anti-peace and pro-violence views. Nor has Harvard University, with which these groups boast an association, disassociated itself from them.

None of these major universities would allow a Ku Klux Klan or other anti-black, anti-gay, anti-woman organization to be associated with the university. Whatever these universities would do with regard to such other bigoted groups, they must do with regard to these bigoted groups.

This is not about politics. This is about supporting murderers and rapists of Jews. These bigots must not be allowed to hide behind political claims. When a single African-American named George Floyd was brutally and unjustifiably murdered by police, this caused a major “reckoning” at American universities and other institutions.

Billions of dollars and other resources were redirected at remedying anti-black bigotry. The time has come for a new reckoning — a reckoning by American universities with their own tolerance and even encouragement of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.