Taking on Hamas, antisemitism, and campus hate - opinion

The surviving terrorist leadership that conspired to launch the October 7 murder, rape, and kidnapping of Jews in Israel has a new sworn enemy to consider: the next president of the United States. 

This autumn, Israeli intelligence discovered in the Gaza tunnels of Hamas a detailed plan that called for a far deadlier wave of terrorist assaults against Israel – potentially including a September 11-style attack on a Tel Aviv skyscraper. 

Captured documents also suggested the terror regime was looking to Iran for assistance in the shared mission of annihilating the Jewish state. Only now do we discover the Iranians had additional plans, such as the murder of Donald Trump.

Against this backdrop, Hamas and Hezbollah continue to find support, encouragement, and allies on the campuses of America’s colleges and universities.

Far from exercising free speech, pro-terror students have created an “open season” against Jewish students, including intimidation, harassment, and, in any number of instances, physical assault. 

This autumn, after multiple attacks against Jews, the University of Michigan’s President Santa Ono issued the following statement: 

“Last weekend, one of our students was attacked off campus simply for answering ‘yes’ in response to the question ‘Are you Jewish?’

We strongly condemn and denounce this act of violence and all antisemitic acts. Antisemitism is in direct conflict with the university’s deeply held values of safety, respect, and inclusion and has no place within our community.”

While Ono has played an active and effective role in confronting antisemitism, providing a leadership example that places the craven response at Harvard, Penn, and Columbia in context, words alone will not serve as a firewall against a rising tide of hatred directed against Jews on campuses across our nation. 

One report reveals that more than 60 colleges and universities are now under federal investigation for alleged hate crimes directed at Jews. 

How did our centers of higher learning become incubators for hate that targets Jews, and what are administrators and trustees going to do about it? Some have created an “office of religious and ethnic inclusion.” 

Again, their mission is laudable, but confronting deeply rooted and highly toxic antisemitism is not going to be disposed of in an academic year. University administrators need to look long and hard at their institution’s culture and recognize the malignancy that has been allowed to metastasize. It has the means to destroy their institutions. 

Students at Michigan were confronted with the remorseless face of Hamas when Mosab Hassan Yousef, a former member of Hamas who has repudiated its code of violence and his Islamic faith, spoke at Rackham Auditorium. His credentials? His father was a co-founder of Hamas. 

Yousef told students that Hamas simply “pose[s] as a national resistant [sic] movement with the intention to liberate what’s so-called Palestine.” He cautioned that it is, in fact, “a religious ideological movement waging a war – a holy war – against a race, against a nation.”

He chided those who support Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Middle East terrorist groups. 

“All the pro-Palestine groups… are giving, directly and indirectly, [their] support to a savage group that… committed genocide against entire communities. They wiped out everything in their way, killing children [and] women, raping, burning [and] systematically ethnically cleansing a race only because they are Jewish.”

The ADL also has insight into this crisis on our campuses.

They assert that racists have exploited a shared commitment to free speech, redrafting their lies as academic freedom. They have successfully poisoned an emerging generation into believing that Israel has no right to exist, the Holocaust is a fiction, and Jews are “Untermenschen,” or subhuman, the word used by the Nazis to destroy the humanity of their victims. 

What must now be considered by Michigan and other universities is implementing a policy where these institutions will dismiss teachers, tenured or not, who promote antisemitism, encourage hate speech, and seek to demonize Zionism. 

Further, they need to expel their student disciples who promote antisemitism and hate. 

In addition, the University of Michigan needs to increase security, launch additional investigations into hate crimes, and be more vigilant about who is on campus. 

Post October 7 protests revealed that any number of individuals from off-campus embedded themselves among the student population for the purpose of stoking hate. This much is clear. 

Jews have long recognized that the rest of the world may look on with sympathy, real or feigned, when they have been targeted – whether it was the czar’s Cossacks, Hitler’s SS, the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympians, or the October 7 massacre. 

The late prime minister Golda Meir once observed, “The world hates Jews that hit back. The world loves us only when we are to be pitied.” 

That era is over. American Jews will confront the bigot, challenge the antisemite, and respond to attacks on their community – whether it is on a campus or a street corner.

The Israelis now have documented evidence that the devastating October 7 Hamas attack was a dress rehearsal for a war Hamas envisioned would allow their terrorists, Hezbollah, and Iranian forces to host a victory parade in the ruins of Tel Aviv. 

And the world would have – once again – wrung their hands. Not this time. And never again. 

Against the conflict of the Middle East, the Jew-haters on America’s campuses are now on notice by Jews who know their history. We aren’t going to be your victims. Neither is the next President of the United States. 

The writer, a graduate of the University of Michigan, is a supporter of Facts on the Ground at the university (FOG at Michigan), a student group dedicated to “clearing the fog” of disinformation on campus related to the Israel-Palestine conflict and the 2023-present Israel-Hamas war through educational initiatives that foster diverse, productive, and fact-based dialogue.