May 14, 2024
The anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests on college and university campuses continue, complete with law-breaking and violence. The protesters attempt to defend their illegal and violent behavior by claiming their actions are protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
But like so much else that these confused young people believe, while the First Amendment protects free speech, free speech does not include vandalism, trespassing, violence, and illegal harassment of individuals and groups. Actions such as blocking people from entering campus buildings, or taking control of school facilities, or interfering with school activities are not speech.
They are crimes. And those crimes turn what could and should have been peaceful protests into riots.
Such activities are what finally moved the administrations of some institutions to say, “enough is enough,” and bring in police to break up the protests, and even to arrest some of the protesters. Whether those charged with improper behavior will actually suffer the consequences of their behavior remains to be seen.
Once the authorities became involved, moving people out of the encampments and arresting them, what so often was suspected was proven to be true: many of the protesters/rioters are not students or in any way connected with the school where they gathered.
They quite frequently were members of activist groups that sponsored the encampments, and even in some cases were being paid to condemn Israel.
While they may have earned monetary fines, suspension or expulsion from school, notations in their school records, or even jail time, with the soft-on -crime attitude of so many incompetent prosecutors, they may only get a slap on the wrist.
Much of the emotion behind this criminal behavior results from ignorance and misinformation about Israel’s history and the action it took following the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas that took some 1,200 innocent lives.
An authoritative look into this situation by Victor Davis Hanson, who is an historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and was published by The Daily Signal, focuses on “10 Most Common Pro-Hamas Lies About Israel.”
One lie is the claim by the protesters that Israelis are “settlers” and “colonists.” Jewish students are even sometimes told to “go back to Poland.”
But it is no secret to anyone wanting to know the truth that the general region that is now the state of Israel has been occupied by the Jewish people for more than 3,000 years.
Of the charge that the Gaza Strip was occupied by Israel, Hanson wrote, “The Gaza Strip, adjacent Israel, was autonomous. The Israeli border is closed, but so is the Egyptian border. There have not been any Jews in Gaza for nearly two decades.
“So on Oct. 7, Gaza was not occupied by Israel. It was under the control of Hamas, designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.
“After being elected to power in 2006, Hamas canceled all subsequent elections and ruled as a dictatorship. Gaza forbids Jews from entering Gaza and has driven out most Christians.”
Israel is also accused of targeting civilians. But Hanson points out that after the October 7 attack the Hamas terrorists ran back to Gaza and “hid in tunnels and bases beneath hospitals, schools, and mosques,” using Palestinians as screens against Israel’s counter-attacks, insuring that some of them would be killed.
“Outside assessors have concluded that Israel has not inadvertently killed a greater ratio of civilians to terrorists compared to most other urban fighting conflicts elsewhere,” Hanson wrote, “and perhaps even fewer than American engagements in Mosul and Fallujah.”
On the charge that Israel produced a response that was “disproportionate” to the Hamas slaughter, Hanson provides some numbers.
“Iran tried to send 320 missiles and rockets into Israel. Israel replied with three. Hamas launched 7,000 rockets into Israel and slaughtered 1,200 Israelis before the Israel Defense Forces responded in Gaza, often dropping leaflets and sending texts to forewarn [Palestinian] citizens.”
The only disproportionate aspect of this is the much higher effectiveness of Israel’s response to the Hamas terrorism.
The clearly incorrect suggestion that Israel is attempting genocide, to wipe out the Palestinian people, like the other lies Hanson lists, falls with a loud thump when faced with reality and the history of the Jewish people with Palestinians.
Hanson: “Before Oct. 7, some 20,000 Gazans a day requested to work in Israel — on the correct expectation of much higher wages and humane treatment.
“If Hamas had come out of its tunnels, separated from its impressed civilian shields, released its surviving Israeli hostages, and either openly fought the Israel Defense Forces or surrendered the organizers of the Oct. 7 massacre, no Gaza civilians would have died.
“According to Hamas’ questionable ‘genocide’ figures, roughly 4 percent of the Gazan population died during the Israeli military response to Oct. 7. At least a third to almost half of those deaths, according to various international observers, were Hamas terrorists.”
If the lies and distortions of Israel’s obligatory response to Hamas’ terrorism isn’t bad enough, President Joe Biden gross failure to fully support Israel in its time of need is unforgiveable. This decision is one more item added to Biden’s long list of sometimes deadly catastrophes and failures of leadership.
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