Anarchist with acne

From the West Lawn on the Columbia University campus, the whining, pimply-faced radical “performed” his demands to the Administration. He wanted the audience to shun Israel and instead to support the terrorist organization Hamas along with their human-shield Palestinians. He was a well-trained “useful idiot” for Islam. The tantrum-throwing radical spokesman, worrying about a career-limiting police record, also petitioned for amnesty that would forgive arrests for trespassing and disorderly behavior.

The sea of keffiyeh-clad supporters, sort of, listened to his hyperbolic, change-the-world activist diatribe. Like his khaki-clad anti-Vietnam War protestors of a half a century past, the crowd shuffled around hoisting clever posters and chanting neat little rhymes. In the good old days, they burned draft cards and proclaimed, “Hell no, we won’t go.” At least, back in the 60’s, the protestors wisely suggested, “make love, not war.” No such wisdom was proffered from the temporary podium at Columbia University.

Today, the ill-informed agitators, lacking meaningful knowledge of the complex Middle East issues, referenced faraway rivers and seas. They drone on about genocides not appreciating Jewish history with the ovens. Their antisemitism and anti-Zionism come as part of the one-size-fits-all intersectional woke package of beliefs. Now, with virtue signaling and CRT/DEI supercharging the masses, kill the Zionist is the imagined reason to storm the castle with pitchforks raised.

The pressures of term papers and securing an impressive summer internship make the student body ready to blow off steam, and jump aboard a cause celebre offering  an air of importance for these future leaders. Once upon a time it was the imperative of saving whales, protecting women’s rights, BLM, pronouns, or the need to cool our oh-to-warm planet. Now, propagandized righteousness of a terrorist organization, fresh off a bloody pogrom, is cool. The Jews, all .4% of the world’s population, once again are blamed and assaulted.

Unfortunately, beyond collegiate strum and drang, there are more insidious forces at play.  The tens of billions of dollars invested by Muslim countries have warped erudite faculties to espouse anti-Israel and anti-America narratives. The woke, progressive pressure to shoehorn all conflicts into an oppressor-oppressed paradigm has relegated Israel and America into the former category. Intersectional alignments encourage disparate demographics to side with Israel’s enemies, to hate America and to question the value of the Western civilization. And let’s wonder how many of the milling mob weren’t even paying tuition. Congress needs to explore from under what well-funded rock these agitators emerge on balmy New York days.

These eruptions would seem like a “spring break” gone bad but the stakes are too high. It’s much more significant than a few arrests, cancelled graduations and the police overtime. With the election of 2024 just six months away, incumbent President Biden’s advisors must be watching his falling polling numbers and job approval metrics. His team is calculating the impact of the riots on younger voters and the Muslim population in swing states like Michigan and Nevada. Will he choose to do the right geopolitical things for America, or will he play for a second term? Within his own party, the Far-Left supports Hamas and even moderates like Senator Chuck Schumer wander away from the “Israel, we have your back” moral clarity. The Left is running out of lawfare traps to hobble President Trump and prevent him from conducting a full-throated campaign. Soon President Biden will have to duke it out on the issues and maybe, without a teleprompter talk to a reporter. Or heaven forbid, he might debate President Trump.

Most media outlets, reporting in lockstep with the Democrats, support the narrative that mighty Israel, despite encircled by Iranian proxies, is the bad guy. News articles and editorials impugning Israel’s army and prime minister, and second guess of the Gaza War tactics and the rescue of the hostages, are tinged with opprobrium and bias. With preconceived dogma and wanting to flip the narrative about genocide and brutality, both the media and the speaker fast-forwarded past the October 7^th atrocities. Even Sheryl Sandberg’s chilling new documentary “Screams Before Silence,” that captures Hamas’s sexual depravity, has not received the attention it deserves. The “facts” about the Israel-Palestinian conflict are too much for the sound bite crowd and contradicts the wounded “feeling” of the tented “Zionist Free Zone” residents.

The media, like vultures, circled around the Columbia campus and homed in on this unsure rebel rouser. They were looking for the juiciest bits of drama to report. The speaker, tightly clutching his microphone and trying to be important, avoided words like hostage, rape, decapitation, babies, burnings, and torture. It was too much for the little guy.