Campus climate for Jewish American students about to get worse
As one who has followed the Israel-Palestinian conflict as it is played out on American college campuses for ten years, I have have noted with alarm a report that the forces of BDS are teaming up with the forces of Antifa on campus.
For those Americans who were not familiar with Antifa, they became familiar last week when this Marxist and anarchistic outfit showed up in Charlottesville, Virginia to do battle with their mirror image, the KKK and neo-Nazis. It was Hitler vs. Stalin all over again played out on the streets of an otherwise quiet Virginia university town.
Antifa openly uses violent means to get their positions across. They can take any far-left cause and turn it violent just by getting their troops out on the streets. Europeans are already familiar with Antifa since they have been doing battle on that continent against those opposed to any further Islamic immigration and the continuing Islamization of Europe.
For Jewish students in the US, already under threat from the pro-Palestinian and BDS bullies, this latest development dramatically increases the chances of getting beaten up if they show any support for Israel.
This should also serve as a warning to university administrators that it is time to stiffen up their spines. Local communities are only now belatedly waking up to the outrages being perpetrated on campus-including those by brown shirt organizations like UC Berkeley professor Hatem Bazian’s Students for Justice in Palestine. Once the public is treated to the sight of Jewish students getting beaten up by black-clad, masked Antifa thugs, the public demand to take strong action will increase. Antifa doesn’t stop at shouting down speakers they don’t agree with. They attack them.
This is the last thing our already beleaguered universities need.