While representatives of the terrorist group Hamas are in Cairo negotiating a possible ceasefire in the Gaza Strip with Israel, hundreds of students at elite American universities, and also in other countries such as Canada, Mexico, France and the United Kingdom, are mobilizing, allegedly in favor of the Palestinian cause. But, instead of calls for peace, what we have seen is the resurgence of violence and anti-Semitism, with songs that explicitly call for the end of Israel and its people, while at the same time praising the members of Hamas, the same who murdered 1,200 Israeli civilians in cold blood in October last year, in addition to kidnapping another 250, of which 130 are still imprisoned in Gaza.
At Columbia University, in New York, one of the main centers of protest, it was common to hear phrases like “Raze Tel Aviv to the ground!”; “al-Qassam, you make us proud! Hit another soldier!”; “Hamas, we love you. We also support your rockets!”; “Red, black, green and white, we support Hamas’ fight!” and “It’s right to rebel, al-Qassam, give them hell!” The al-Qassam brigades are the armed wing of Hamas that entered Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, massacring everyone they came across.
The cruelty demonstrated by Hamas during the October 7 attacks alone should be enough to prevent anyone from showing support for the terrorist group.
Students not only express their support for Hamas, but also demand that universities end academic partnerships with Israeli institutions, condemn Israel’s actions in the war, and reject donations from Israeli companies and citizens. Violence also occurs in the direct persecution of Jewish university students and employees. Many are afraid to walk around campuses alone. At Yale University, located in Connecticut, also the scene of pro-Palestinian protests, students participating in the protests blocked the path of a Jewish student who was trying to enter the university campus. There are records of attacks, insults and spitting against Jewish students. On Wednesday (1st), Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, compared the protests against the country at Columbia University with the Night of Broken Glass, a series of attacks against the Jewish population coordinated by Nazi Germany in 1938. – and which was considered the milestone for the escalation of Nazi violence against the Jews.
It is important to emphasize that the peaceful demonstration of a position contrary to Israel’s military action in Gaza or the defense of the two-state solution, for example, is not reprehensible. Although Israel’s reaction against Hamas is legitimate, an action of defense in the face of an act of immeasurable barbarity, any excesses against the Palestinian population or violations of international codes can and should be criticized. But this is not what has been seen in universities. What there is, for the most part, is unrestricted and shameless support for Hamas, a terrorist group whose raison d’être is the annihilation of Israel and the Jews.
The cruelty demonstrated by Hamas during the October 7 attacks alone should be enough to prevent anyone from showing support for the terrorist group. The images that spread around the world, of dismembered bodies, babies’ throats and entire families slaughtered, have no justification; they are acts of such brutality that they should inspire a deep aversion to Hamas and its brutal methods. Hamas has never been a group of Palestinian freedom heroes; On the contrary, it is a group that has no qualms about using the Palestinians themselves as human shields or stealing humanitarian aid shipments entering Gaza. Yet American students, thousands of miles away from Gaza, choose to explicitly support these terrorists and, like them, preach the end of Israel.
The resurgence of anti-Semitism within American universities is a reflection, as we mentioned in this same space, of the moral deformation that affects the university environment. In December last year, when the presidents of three of the main North American universities – Sally Kornbluth, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Liz Magill, from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn); and Claudine Gay, from Harvard University – appeared before the House of Representatives of the US Congress for a hearing on anti-Semitic demonstrations in university environments, it was possible to better understand how morally distorted the university environment has become.
Asked whether advocating the genocide of Jews would constitute harassment or bullying according to the regulations of their respective universities, the deans digressed; the deputies continued to press until the deans said that the answer would depend “on the context”, as if there could be some context in which it would be acceptable to defend the genocide of the Jews – or any group –, as well as justify the act of barbarity committed by Hamas in Israel. The same tolerance demonstrated by the deans does not happen with those who end up questioning the canons of identitarianism or the so-called progressivism that prevails in university environments. And it is within this progressivism and identitarianism that aberrations arise, such as the idea that it is fair and defensible to preach the end of Israel and commit acts of violence against Jews, as long as it is in defense of Palestine and Hamas.
Unfortunately, this is not a phenomenon restricted to American universities. All over the world, environments that should be free places for debate and exposure of ideas have become spaces of intolerance and persecution, including in Brazil. In October last year, for example, a PUC-RJ student ended up silenced when she tried to participate in a debate about Hamas and Israel, where the terrorist attack was treated as a “response to Israel”.
Ending camps or punishing students with suspensions or expulsions, or even imprisonment, as has been done in the USA, although these are specific measures necessary to prevent an even greater escalation of anti-Semitic acts within the university environment, will not solve the problem once and for all. . As long as universities continue to be bubbles isolated from reality, where the discourse of progressivism prevails, with no space for contradiction and true debate, there is a risk that episodes of anti-Semitism will become increasingly common.
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