Two pieces on the sickeningly pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic protests roiling college campuses. (The link to each full piece is embedded in each headline.)
These people are criminals, so arrest and imprison them (Official Washington Examiner editorial, April 24): When campus protesters turned threatening and violent in 1970, Ronald Reagan, who was then governor of California, called them “cowardly little fascist bands who are trying to prove that our system cannot work.” Reagan’s response was to use police to restore order. He was right.
College administrators and municipal and state officials should have the same answer today when confronted by Jew-baiting protests at Yale, Columbia, and other universities. The right to protest does not create a right to trespass, deliberately intimidate, threaten, block physical access, or commit violence.
At Columbia, where Jewish students were physically assaulted, school President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik originally had about 100 protesters arrested for criminal trespass, but her follow-up has been culpably weak. She let protesters defeat her by ordering that classes be held online instead of in person and asking nonresident students to stay away. Professor Shai Davidai, who is a supporter of Israel, has been temporarily banned from campus because the feckless administration says it cannot ensure his safety.
If campus life has been disrupted to the point that it ceases to include life on campus, if the university cannot guarantee the safety of its professors, protesters must be neutralized by force…..
Speaker Johnson takes good stand against hateful protesters (April 25):
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) gave new evidence yesterday of having “found his voice” in defense of Western values against the threats from both international and domestic bullies and mobs.
Johnson spoke at Columbia University, which has cowered and covered itself with shame by going to a “hybrid,” mostly online, model of classes rather than crack down on threatening antisemitic mobs….
Johnson went to the lion’s den to denounce Columbia’s pusillanimity.
“Today I’m here to proclaim to all those who gnash their teeth and demand to wipe the state of Israel off the map and attack our innocent Jewish students, this simple truth,” Johnson said: “Neither Israel, nor these Jewish students on this campus, will ever stand alone.”….