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Shai Davidai, a Jewish Israeli professor at Columbia University in New York City, was unexpectedly barred from campus yesterday (Monday) after he tried to lead a pro-Jewish rally at the Ivy League college.
An outspoken supporter of Israel, Davidai was told that his campus ID card had been “deactivated” — even as a massive pro-Hamas tent city sprang up on the campus with some 200 protesters, all of whom would have had to use their Columbia IDs to get in.
“The problem isn’t Columbia. It isn’t school administration,” wrote Abe Greenwald, the Executive Editor of Commentary Magazine. “It’s the Left-academic superstructure in all it’s manifestations, from texts to teachers to foreign donors and beyond. It’s massive and diffuse. But it’s the single biggest mistake the Left has ever made. Average Americans aren’t going to tolerate the rich-kid jihad for a second.”1
The “foreign donors” that Greenwald mentioned include the jihadist Qatari government, which is the top foreign donor to U.S. universities, “gifting” nearly $4 billion since 2001 — much of which was illegally undisclosed.
And yet, Greenwald was too narrow-minded in my estimation. Academia does not live in a silo. There is a much greater ecosystem here that includes the media, politics, and society as a whole.
For instance, imagine that Black students at Columbia were taunted with chants of “Go back to Africa,” just as Jewish students have been told: “Go back to Poland.” Or imagine that a gay student was surrounded by homophobic protesters and hit in the eye with a flagpole, which is what happened to a Jewish student at Yale University this past weekend.
Or imagine if a campus imam told Muslim students that they ought to head home for Ramadan because campus public safety could not guarantee their security. (That was the explicit message from Columbia’s campus rabbi to Jewish students on Sunday.)
“There would be relentless fury from the media and condemnation from politicians,” wrote journalist Bari Weiss. “Just remember the righteous — and rightful — outrage over the white supremacist ‘Unite the Right’ march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, where neo-Nazis chanted ‘The Jews will not replace us.’”
Instead, the media response has been mild to say the least, and some politicians are saying all the right things but are doing little in action. Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish politician in America, has not made a single comment about the profusely antisemitic weekend at Columbia. His last tweet, while Jewish students feel incredibly unsafe at a university in his jurisdiction, says: “As Passover begins tonight, Chag Pesach Sameach to everyone celebrating in New York and around the world!”
As one social media user commented on this tweet, “With a Jew like you, us in Israel need to trust only ourselves.”
Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden had another “both sides” moment on Monday, condemning “antisemitic” campus protests across the U.S. after several days of mayhem at Columbia University — before swiftly moving to defense of the Palestinian cause.
“I condemn the antisemitic protests, that’s why I’ve set up a program to deal with that,” Biden told reporters yesterday, without specifying what program he was referring. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
To be sure, the question from the reporter that preceded this response was about antisemitism on U.S. college campuses and made no mention of the Palestinians.
Still, the 81-year-old Biden’s remarks were a mirror image of then-President Donald Trump’s assessment of deadly unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia following a white supremacist rally in August 2017.
“You look at both sides. I think there is blame on both sides. I have no doubt about it,” said Trump at the time. “You also had some very fine people on both sides.”
It might appear absurd that the most prestigious universities in the world have been infected so rapidly with antisemitism. Yet precisely the same thing has happened before, according to historian Niall Ferguson.
Countless German academics acted as Adolf Hitler’s “think tank,” much like many of today’s Western universities are a laboratory for “progressive” experiments that are pushing Jews and Israelis away from their institutions.2 Already in 2019, journalist Liel Liebowitz (who was schooled at Columbia University) wrote a piece which argued that colleges were beyond redemption and that Jews should not apply anymore.
“Sadly, it aged very well,” he added yesterday.3
Indeed, a critical factor in the decline and fall of the German universities was that so many senior academics were Jews. For some, Hitler’s antisemitism was therefore — not unlike “woke” and “progressive” intersectionality in our own time — a career opportunity. And the atmosphere at German universities grew steadily more toxic even for the most assimilated of Jews.
“The Nazis’ antisemitism led, of course, to one of the greatest brain drains in history. Over 200 of the country’s 800 Jewish professors departed, of whom 20 were Nobel laureates,” wrote Niall Ferguson. “Albert Einstein had already left in 1933 in disgust at Nazi attacks on his ‘Jewish physics.’”
“Non-Jewish German academia did not just follow Hitler down the path to hell,” added Ferguson. “It led the way.”
“The lesson of German history for American academia should by now be clear,” according to Ferguson. “The ‘final solution of the Jewish question’ began as speech — to be precise, it began as lectures and monographs and scholarly articles. It began in the songs of student fraternities. With extraordinary speed after 1933, however, it crossed into conduct: first, systematic pseudo-legal discrimination and ultimately, a program of technocratic genocide.”
To be sure, today’s “progressives” are not quintessential Nazis. As George Mason University professor David Bernstein pointed out, “the vast majority of antisemitism historically was not eliminationist Nazi antisemitism, where the antisemites would murder you solely for your Jewish ancestry, regardless of anything else.”
In the Soviet Union, you could generally get by with Jewish origins if you renounced Judaism, Zionism, et cetera — and took the party line. In Spain, the Inquisition only applied to Jews who practiced Judaism in secret. If you became a sincere Catholic, you were more or less left alone.
“In other words, if you adopted the ideology the Jew-haters wanted you to adopt, they gave you a pass,” wrote Bernstein. “In some cases, it was even an advantage, e.g. the Church or State might put you in charge of persecuting other Jews.”
“You don’t have to be a Nazi to be antisemitic,” he added.
Emmy Award-winning TV presenter Rachel Maddow, who is pretty darn Left-leaning, had this to say:
“When people are telling you something about a minority group, that they’re not just bad, but they’re evil, that they are secretly powerful, that they’re the reason things are bad, that toxic conspiracy theory about a minority group has a purpose: It is always to make us think that we shouldn’t be in a democracy.”
“A democracy is that we all decide things together. You have to put a seed in people’s mind that there are some people among us who aren’t just bad; they’re dangerous, and they’re out to get us, and we need to be protected from them. And therefore we can’t have a democracy, because we can’t have those people voting too. And we need a government that’s going to protect us from those people.”
“And that form of antisemitism is part of fascism, it’s part of authoritarianism, it’s part of trying to make us give up our democracy. It’s evil, it’s malicious, it keeps repeating itself, and it ought to be a big red flag for all of us.”4
The images coming out of Columbia University during the past few days are not surprising, but that does not make them any less disturbing.
In one story, Jewish students came to the campus and “didn’t say a word,” according to one of them. “My friend had a Jewish star necklace. All of the sudden we’re surrounded, they’ve been circling us, threatening us.”
In another story, 20 Jewish students stood on the sundial in the middle of Columbia’s campus with Israeli and American flags and sang peaceful songs. Even as they sang lyrics such as “We don’t want to fight no more, there will be no more war,” they were met with hostility. Masked keffiyeh-wearers came to them face-to-face, trying to intimidate them. They chanted, “F*ck Israel, Israel’s a b*tch!”5
They were also told, “You guys are all inbred.” They threw water in the peaceful protestors’ faces. These groups are not fairly described as “pro-Palestine.” They are active supporters of Hamas and they say so explicitly: “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” one group chanted. “Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets, too.”
One keffiyeh-masked protester came up to a group of Jews and held up a sign with an arrow pointing toward them that read: “Al-Qassam’s Next Targets.” Al-Qassam is the military wing of Hamas.
Another Jewish student said that she was called a “Kike, a nazi, and a dumb white b*tch all in one breath,” adding that it is “illogical for me to be all three, but that’s beside the point.”6
For several days now, protesters have been camped out on Columbia’s South Lawn demanding financial divestment from Israel, an academic boycott of Israel, a call for ceasefire, and an end to Columbia’s real estate purchases. Their newest demand is to defund Columbia’s public safety, the only people on campus supposedly tasked with keeping students safe.
“While U.S. citizens are being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” said Shai Davidai, “you have students at Columbia University and faculty at Columbia University who are cheering on Hamas! And Columbia University’s administration not only won’t do anything about it, they are refusing to let the New York Police Department in. They are letting the terrorists in and keeping the NYPD out.”
As Liel Leibovitz wrote, “You know things are bad when Colombia is safer than Columbia.”
One social media user added, “I’m on my way to Israel where my two sons will be safer and feel more welcomed than they would be today on the Upper West Side.”7
Another wrote, “Hamas leaders are no longer welcome in Qatar. There’s always adjunct teaching positions available for them at Columbia University.”8
Yet another was more somber, writing: “I have seen a lot that has moved me at these protests. A student removing his kippah today before exiting the subway station at Columbia University has left a mark I am struggling to put into words.”9
Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, gave us this reminder: “Every Passover, the Haggadah reminds us: ‘In every generation, they rise up to destroy us.’ You thought it was a history lesson. It’s a warning.”10
Another social media user candidly wrote:
“It almost doesn’t matter what’s going on or being said and done by the crazed mob at Columbia, and it almost doesn’t matter what is being said and done at Harvard or Yale or any other institution in the United States. The reality is not just that it’s happening, but that it’s being allowed to happen and continue to happen. For all the millions of Americans who say they’re against it, it is still happening and being allowed to happen nonetheless.”
“Allowing it to happen is complicity in what is happening. The fact that no police, no senator, no congressman, no member of the administration, and not even the President of the United States has stepped in to stop what the entire world sees happening, shows that this is what America represents right now.”
“It doesn’t matter what may happen in November. It doesn’t matter if Trump wins or Biden wins or anyone wins for that matter. We are a little more than six months away from the elections, and six months is an age away. This sheer unprecedented insanity began six months ago, and look at just how horrific it is six months later.”
“President Biden, nobody cares anymore about your stupid policies and grandstanding, and pretending that you’re in control. And it’s not just you. It’s every damned politician and law enforcement official in the entire United States. You all talk, a lot. But you are all in charge of what was once the greatest nation in the world. Look at what you have all allowed to become of the United States of America.”
“You have no authority, not one of you, to pass judgement on any nation in the world while you so pathetically and willingly sit idly by while your country falls apart in front of your eyes and yet not one of you does anything about it.”
“You’re not even a Chamberlain. You’re even more pathetic. I never in a million years would have thought I’d live to see America collapse so timidly. You are all in violation of your sworn duties. The world is burning because you’re all so damned weak and gutless.”
“October 7th didn’t just bring out the true face of Islamism and extremism. It brought out the true face of your unconscionable and pitiful pusillanimity. The world needs true leadership now more than ever before. But right now, it has none. You’re simply not cut out for the task at hand. God help us all.”11
Abe Greenwald on X
“Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals.” The Free Press.
liel leibovitz on X
“Late Night with Seth Meyers.” NBC.
“At Columbia I Am Told: ‘Go Back to Poland’.” The Free Press.
Angela Van Der Pluym on X
Campbell Brown on X
Aviva Klompas on X
AJ Edelman, OLY, MBA on X
Eylon Levy on X
Cheryl E on X
The mainstream Jewish community was dead wrong when it disavowed Meir Kahane's Jewish Defense League because it used all means, including violence when necessary, to protect Jews. If the JDL had been allowed to flourish intelligently, Columbia University's Islamo/Leftist orcs would not be getting away with all this and neither would any Western city that allows rampant anti-Semitism. I believed this back in the 1970s and I'm even more convinced of it now. Further, if Kahane's policies had been implemented in Israel, we would not be going to the US on bended knee for help. In fact we probably wouldn't need it, since we would have gotten whatever we needed from other countries wanting to hook up with a "winner" and developed/manufactured the rest ourselves. Between a policy like that and the mighty Mossad (who even the Mullahs are afraid of) Israel would have become the true Promised Land for Jews.
This is profoundly disturbing.