For years, Republicans have claimed that theirs is the party of free speech. They have correctly amplified instances of the intolerant left cracking down on conservative speech, particularly on campuses, often under the bogus guise of combating “hate speech,” racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and other scourges they grossly exaggerate. Many of us on the right have mocked safe-space-craving Gen Z and millennial students and their expansive needs to feel “safe” by insulating them from speech that hurts their feelings. But now Republicans are conflating legitimate criticisms of Israel with antisemitism and essentially embracing the left’s victim culture in calling for safe spaces — if not by name — for pro-Israel Jews on college campuses.
Protests have unfolded on dozens, perhaps hundreds of college campuses — and many thousands of people are involved in them. Republicans are making grossly hyperbolic comparisons to 1930s Germany and have portrayed the protesters as antisemites, amplifying video clips featuring the most extreme elements in crowds. Of course, some of the protesters are likely sociopaths, but just as not all the J6 protesters were the violent insurrectionists the left told us they were, not all of the pro-Palestinian protesters are the same.
Are antisemites involved in the protests? As Sarah Palin used to say, “you betcha.” But I don’t buy the notion that many or most of the protesters are Jew-hating antisemites. In fact, there are Jewish groups involved in the protests and Jewish students have been suspended and arrested for their actions. Perhaps the most famous person arrested in the protests so far, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, is Jewish. But Republicans would like us to believe that there’s a sudden explosion of antisemitism on college campuses.
This supposed explosion of antisemitism coincides with Israel’s deadly counteroffensive in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children; 196 aid workers have also been killed in the conflict, according to the US-funded Aid Worker Security Database, along with at least ninety-seven journalists, ninety-two of them Palestinian, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Most of the population has been rendered homeless — and the UN says some 577,000 Gazans face imminent famine, largely because the Israeli government hasn’t allowed enough aid in, as documented by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and many others.
Republicans aren’t outraged by any of this; in fact, they’ve voted to send even more aid to Israel despite the carnage. But the students are outraged, and they don’t want their tuition dollars going to Israel, even indirectly. CNN published a poll this week indicating that 81 percent of Americans under thirty-five disapprove of Biden’s handling of the conflict in Gaza. And Gallup published a poll a month ago indicating that only 36 percent of Americans approve of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, while 55 percent disapprove. So the students aren’t the only ones concerned about Israel’s war and our support for it.
If you have Gen Z children, you know that calling someone in this generation a racist is about the worst thing you can accuse them of. Say what you will about this cohort — but they are the least racist generation in American history. Yet we’re supposed to believe that they’re more prejudiced against Jews than older Americans? The evidence that antisemitism is exploding on college campuses is mostly anecdotal — look at this sign here, or that chant over there. The left has built a similar case that there’s an epidemic of racism and police brutality, nearly all of it based on anecdotes and social media clips featuring inflammatory incidents. In some cases, they’ve embraced outright hoaxes. Now the right is doing the same to silence or intimidate critics of Israel.
Take, for example, perhaps the most gruesome reported incident of the protests so far, where a Jewish student, Sahar Tartak, was allegedly “stabbed in the eye” with a Palestinian flag at a protest on the campus of Yale University. In denouncing what he claims is a “virus of antisemitism” that is “spreading across college campuses,” this was the key example House Speaker Mike Johnson gave to prove his point in a recent speech. The day after the incident , the Free Press published a piece by Ms. Tartak claiming she was stabbed in the eye “because (she) is a Jew.” She conducted many interviews but didn’t publish her own footage of the incident, though several popular YouTube channels did, including The Jimmy Dore Show, The Majority Report and Breaking Points.
The clip shows a man walking by her waving a small flag on a wooden stick. He may have bumped into her but it’s clear that if the man’s flag contacted her eye, it was clearly accidental, as the man was just walking by her and wasn’t even looking in her direction. So she wasn’t “stabbed because she’s a Jew” any more than Jussie Smollett was beaten up by MAGA bros in Chicago.
It wasn’t the first time Ms. Tartak claimed she was a victim of antisemitism on campus. In December, she made headlines with a claim that the word “Israeli” was removed from a salad in the Yale dining hall. But the Jerusalem Post and other outlets pointed out that the incident had nothing to do with anti-Israel sentiment and the word “Israeli” was quickly restored to the menu. In January of this year she got more media attention with claims that a pro-Israel column she wrote was “censored” (read: edited) by the campus newspaper at Yale.
The Daily Beast reports that a pro-Israel student at Northeastern University tried unsuccessfully to goad the crowd into chanting, “Kill the Jews.” He was booed but ended up getting about 100 other protesters arrested in the process. In another bogus incident, a woman lampooned on social media as a “Karen” walked into a protest encampment at Northwestern University with her dog and called 911, claiming that she was “a Jewish American who needed help” and was being surrounded by protesters, even though video shows she was in no danger whatsoever.
The point of bringing up these incidents is that Republicans purport to oppose victim culture but are happy to promote the claims of dubious “victims” when it suits their needs. Meanwhile, if you listen to what Republicans are saying and how they’re voting on this issue, they don’t sound like a party committed to free speech, or one opposed to cancel and victim culture.
This week, Trump “truth”-ed, “STOP THE PROTESTS NOW!!!” There were no caveats: just shut it all down and to hell with the First Amendment. If only Trump had been so emphatic when J6 protesters were breaching the Capitol.
I believe in the rule of law and there’s no question that some of the protests have gotten out of hand. The First Amendment guarantees their right to protest, but it doesn’t give them the right to take over campuses and prevent other students from attending classes. And some Jewish students have been threatened or harassed — and that’s unacceptable. But again, there’s a difference between ensuring the physical safety of students and creating safe spaces where students don’t have to hear things that upset them. And it’s worth noting that in some protests, like the one at UCLA this week, pro-Israel counter-protesters have also engaged in violent acts. The Jewish Federation of Los Angeles acknowledged this in a statement condemning the violence perpetrated by what they probably correctly call “the abhorrent actions of a few counter protesters.”
Trump’s rhetoric has been matched by others on the right. Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee claimed on X that college protesters were “Hamas sympathizers” who are “promoting terrorism right here in the US.” She said they should be “treated like the terrorists they are supporting.” And in another tweet, threatened to put students on the terrorism watch list and the TSA no-fly list if they “promoted terrorism or engaged in terrorists acts on behalf of Hamas.” What constitutes “promoting terrorism” and which students does she think belong on the lists? She didn’t say.
In the current Republican context, Blackburn is quite mainstream considering what other Republicans have said about Palestinians and their supporters in recent months. Representative Max Miller, a Republican from Ohio, said of Palestinians: “They’re not a state, they’re a territory that’s about to be eviscerated and go away here shortly as we’re going to turn that into a parking lot.” Republican representative Brian Mast of Florida has said that terrorism is “absolutely supported by the Palestinian people from elementary school all the way up into the elderly,” argued that humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians “should be slowed down,” and compared ordinary Palestinian civilians to Nazi collaborators during the Holocaust.
With that level of animosity toward Palestinians, it shouldn’t be surprising that Republicans want a harsh crackdown on the protests. The House passed a resolution to brand the slogan “From the River to the Sea” antisemitic. Perhaps it is, but Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party has a very similar slogan in its party platform — and in any case, Congress has no business policing speech. There’s also currently a bipartisan bill to install antisemitism monitors on college campuses. Imagine if the left wanted to install transphobia monitors or racism monitors at campuses. I bet not a single Republican would agree to it.
The House also just passed a bipartisan “Antisemitism Awareness Act,” that will mandate that when the Department of Education enforces federal anti-discrimination laws it uses a definition of antisemitism endorsed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. It passed 320-91, with all but twenty-one Republicans voting for it. Representative Jerry Nadler, a Jew, voted against it, arguing that it could have a chilling effect on speech, particularly criticism of Israel. Echoing the ACLU’s concerns, he says that if the bill becomes law, colleges may err on the side of caution in suppressing pro-Palestinian speech to avoid Title VI investigations that could result in the potential loss of federal funding.
I hardly ever agree with Representative Nadler — and politically, I have little in common with the college protesters. But I also don’t believe in simply aligning with the a designated “side” and supporting that side as though it was a sports team regardless of the facts. According to the Gallup poll, 30 percent of Republicans don’t approve of Israel’s war in Gaza, but you’d never know if the way Republicans are acting.
As a conservative, I’m concerned that when it comes to Israel, the GOP tosses aside all of its supposed bedrock principles — fiscal conservatism, commitment to free speech, opposition to cancel culture, victim culture and intellectual safe spaces — in order to shield Israel from (often) legitimate criticism. American taxpayers have funded Israel to the tune of $300 billion since its founding. Legitimate antisemitism must always be condemned, but Americans must always retain the right to protest what their tax dollars are being spent on overseas.
