They Were Assaulted
on Campus for Being Jews At Yale, Sahar Tartak was stabbed in the eye. At
Columbia, Jonathan Lederer’s Israeli flag was burned and he was hit in the
face.
For a second, imagine that black students at Columbia were taunted: Go back to Africa. Or imagine that a gay student was surrounded by homophobic protesters and hit with a stick at Yale University. 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. There would be
relentless fury from our media and condemnation from our politicians. 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.” This weekend at
Columbia and Yale, student demonstrators did all of the above—only it was
directed at Jews. They told Columbia students to “go back to Poland.” A
Jewish woman at Yale was assaulted with a Palestinian flag. And an Orthodox
rabbi at Columbia told students to go home for their safety. Demonstrators on these
campuses shouted more chic versions of “Jews will not replace us.” At
Columbia they screamed: “Say it loud and say it clear, we don’t want no
Zionists here.” At Yale they blasted bad rap with the following lyrics: Fuck Israel, Israel a
bitch / Bitch we out here mobbin’ on some Palestine
shit / Free Palestine bitch, Israel gon’ die
bitch / Nigga it’s they land why you out here tryna rob
it / Bullshit prophets, y’all just want the profit These campus activists
are not simply “pro-Palestine” protesters. They are people who are openly
celebrating Hamas and physically intimidating identifiably Jewish students
who came near. We are publishing the accounts of two of those students—Sahar
Tartak and Jonathan Lederer—today. Students—all of us—have a right to protest. We have a right to protest for dumb causes and horrible causes. At The Free Press, we will always defend that right. (See here and here, for example.) It is not, however, a
First Amendment right to physically attack another person. It is not a First
Amendment right to detain another person as part of your protest. And while
Americans are constitutionally protected when they say vile things, like
wishing upon Jews a thousand October 7s, we are certainly free to criticize
them and to condemn institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth who stand
by and do nothing meaningful to stop it. The students who
support terror have given in to madness. Refusing to condemn them is madness. There are courageous
students who see that madness clearly. Please read these essays by Jonathan
Lederer and Sahar Tartak.
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