by Robert Spencer
Yet it’s Jewish students who are being attacked.
[Order a copy of Robert Spencer’s forthcoming book, Muhammad: A Critical Biography, by clicking here.]
At Columbia University on Tuesday, pro-Hamas thugs assaulted a Jewish student. This took place as pro-Hamas protestors, many from outside the university, shattered the glass of the university’s main building and occupied it. All that happened months after Columbia administrators met with a student and heard him speak openly about murdering Jews.
Not only did they opt not to expel him and allowed him to remain on campus, but they watched as he became the leader of the encampment protests. Amid all this, it’s not surprising that the Biden regime’s Department of Education would be opening a civil rights investigation into Columbia’s mistreatment of students. There’s just one catch: the DoE isn’t investigating Columbia’s allowance of open and menacing Jew-hatred. The Biden wonks are examining Columbia’s alleged mistreatment of “Palestinian” students.
Yes, we have really descended to this level of absurdity. USA Today reported Friday that “the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on Thursday opened an investigation into Columbia University for how it’s treated Palestinian students and allies, lawyers said.” The Biden apparatchiks have filed a complaint that “alleges unequal treatment by Columbia administrators, including President Minouche Shafik.” Yes, this is the same Minouche Shafik about whom the Washington Post reported Friday that “several Republican lawmakers have accused her of not taking rapid action against protesters and not doing enough to make Jewish students feel safe on campus.”
In the bizarro world of Palestinian Arab victimhood, however, it isn’t the Jewish students who feel unsafe. The USA Today report continues: “Four students and the student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, told federal officials they experienced harassment, death threats and doxing on campus since the start of the war, according to the complaint filed by Palestine Legal, a legal aid organization.”
In a fine froth of indignation, Radhika Sainath of Palestine Legal complained: “For months, Columbia has not only failed to take action to protect Palestinian students and their allies speaking out for Palestinian freedom from racist harassment and discrimination, but actively engaged in differential treatment. This investigation could not have come at a better time, as we just saw Columbia escalate its crackdown against Palestinian students and their allies by bringing in the NYPD to brutally arrest student protesters for the second time in less than two weeks.”
This civil rights complaint couldn’t possibly be more absurd, and in pursuing it, the Biden regime once again demonstrates its true colors and deep hatred of Israel. Are Jewish students breaking into and trashing university buildings? Are Jewish students assaulting Palestinian Arab students? There is abundant justification for a civil rights investigation of how Jewish students are being treated at Columbia, but the Students for Justice in Palestine and Palestine Legal know how to play the game: they know that victimhood is a coveted status in our sick society, and that consequently, being the first or loudest to claim that status is a quick pathway to preferential treatment and even pecuniary reward.
The Biden regime is acting on behalf of an extremely unsavory organization. Students for Justice in Palestine has no national leadership apparatus, but it does have a national website enunciating its motives and goals. The National Students for Justice in Palestine site states that it is “supporting over two hundred Palestine solidarity organizations across occupied Turtle Island, we aim to develop a student movement that is connected, disciplined, and equipped with the tools necessary achieve Palestinian liberation.”
“Occupied Turtle Island” refers to North America. Turtle Island is a name for the continent taken from Native American folklore, and of course it is “occupied” today by the evil white oppressors who are, in SJP’s view, also responsible for the supposed occupation and oppression of Palestinian territory. As absurd as this locution is, in light of the fact that no one aside from woke millennial Leftists, not even Native Americans themselves, refers to North America as “Turtle Island,” the National SJP website uses the term consistently and without irony. It invites visitors to the site to “learn more about recent victories in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses across Turtle Island, and beyond!”
The site speaks more frequently and thoroughly about another land that exists only in fantasy and propaganda, although in this case that propaganda has been far more successful and is much more pervasive today: occupied Palestine. Despite the fact that no independent state of Palestine ever existed in history, and that the Palestinian nationality is an invention dating from the 1960s, the National SJP website maintains the fiction that it represents an endeavor to liberate an oppressed people.
SJP was founded at the University of California Berkeley in October 2000. It is the brainchild of a professor of “Islamophobia” named Hatem Bazian, who has engaged in thuggery himself. He has openly called for an intifada, a violent uprising, not in Israel only, but in the United States as well. And regarding supporters of Israel, he has declared: “We need to harass them.”
In a sane society, Hatem Bazian would [be] under investigation himself. Instead, he is a respected professor at a prestigious university. He is a prime example of how our academic institutions have lost their way, deserve no public funding, and are in radical need of reform. What has happened of late at Columbia illustrates that anew. But also in radical need of reform is the Washington bureaucracy, which, instead of acting against the pro-Hamas thuggery at Columbia and other campuses, is aiding and abetting it.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 28 books, including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad, The History of Jihad, and The Critical Qur’an. His latest book is Muhammad: A Critical Biography. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-regime-investigates-columbias-treatment-of-palestinian-students/
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