After another week of frenzied Jew-hatred on our nation’s college campuses, the question should not be what to do about the people who hate Jews but what the reaction should be from people who don’t.
This week, a pro-Palestinian protest at Cooper Union, a college in New York, made its way inside the school buildings.
Jewish students were barricaded in the library for their own protection and reportedly offered the opportunity to hide in an attic.
The symbolism was clearly lost on the CU administration, which sent out a milquetoast statement after, noting: “There is no place at Cooper for hateful and violent language or actions.”
But there is a place for it.
We watched it on video as the Jewish kids listened to the chants and the banging on the doors and windows and had to be evacuated.
“There is no place…” is a line you can use before such a thing happens, not after.
The words to use after have to be words of remorse, admitting that you, as an institution, were unable to shield your Jewish students from this kind of terror — followed by a sincere apology that and for letting goons threaten them in your name.
After the words come repercussions.
Who were the students doing the threatening? How will they be held accountable?
Don’t tell us Cooper Union has no place for what we saw happen — show us.
Also this week, students at George Washington University projected slogans — like “Glory to our martyrs,” in celebration of the terrorists who slaughtered 1,400 people in the south of Israel on Oct. 7 and kidnapped 300 more — on a school building.
The response by the administration there?
A similarly half-asleep statement: “We recognize the distress, hurt, and pain this has caused for many members of our community. The University will continue to communicate with all members of its community about support resources available during this difficult time.”
If the bureaucrats in charge truly recognized the distress and pain felt by Jewish students as their classmates celebrated the massacre of Jews in Israel, they’d take steps to ensure those involved in the pro-mass-murder light show are penalized.
So far they have not.
Meanwhile, students at Brown University marched and chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which, for those unclear, is a call to dismantle Israel.
The chant is widely understood to be a call for genocide or ethnic cleansing, since it isn’t just about changing the name of the country but ridding the area of Jews entirely.
How does it feel to be a Jewish student at Brown today?
Oddly, the discussion now is moving to whether the people who are making Jews fear for their safety should face repercussions.
Should future employers know that you called for the extinction of Jews or threatened Jewish kids in the school library?
Suddenly the biggest promoters of cancel culture are very worried about “free speech.”
Universities have spent years talking about “harmful language,” “microaggressions” and “safe spaces” — and punishing students for all kinds of speech.
Kids were kicked out of school or had their acceptances rescinded for words they used before they ever got to college.
Social-media posts that embarrass the school have been used as grounds for expulsion.
Yet somehow these places of festering censorship have now fallen silent about explicit threats to Jewish students, citing their concern for protecting free-speech rights.
Spare us the excuses. We see what’s happening here.
Now that the harmful language consists of chants calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jews and the microaggressions are pretty macro, schools can’t just hide behind the First Amendment or weak slogans about what does or does not have a home on campus.
Antisemitism didn’t rise with the slaughter in southern Israel; it was exposed by it.
Sadly, the world’s oldest hatred has always existed and will.
There simply will always be people who hate Jews.
Ye the question has never been whether the hatred exists but how normal people will react to it, especially when they see it up close.
Crazed college students taught delusions about Israel being “occupied land” or an “apartheid” state will also always exist.
Again, the issue is less the brainwashed students than administrations that have perpetually given a pass to language that distorts the truth and threatens Jewish students.
These kids have been beaten up — both rhetorically and physically.
They’ve had the slaughter of other Jews celebrated in their faces.
You don’t have to be an antisemite to be complicit. You just have to be very quiet.
Twitter: @Karol
This story originally appeared on NYPost
