For over a year, elites who govern the City and State of New York normalized terrorism in defiance of local, state, and federal law. They did so by enabling, platforming, and even coming to the aid of a group of individuals—some American, but many foreign—to do what they told everyone they would do: import the intifada from Israel to all parts of the West.
Even as these individuals extolled Hamas and celebrated the massacres at Nova and the southern kibbutzim as “Sinwar’s crowning achievement,” we were told by the bulk of U.S. media that the student-led shut-downs of Columbia, Harvard, UCLA, et al. could be ended only by reaching a ceasefire deal, as this was the primary goal of the “protest movement” that then held so many campuses hostage. A certain New York-based media outlet even reported that Netanyahu added demands to the deal that were meant to spoil it. That lie, coupled with the lie that protesters-cum-rioters only wanted the war in Gaza to end, served a singular purpose: to vindicate the opinion that any pressure placed on Israel to suspend the war would be justified in light of Israel’s “hawkishness.” The suggestion was also that Hamas cared more for the people it kidnapped on October 7 than did Israel.
Some of us are just now waking up to the lie that the occupation of Columbia by CUAD (“Columbia University Apartheid Divest”) was sparked by humanitarian concern for Gazans who are forced to act as human shields each time Hamas launches a war against “the Jews.” No: what drove students like Mahmoud Khalil was not a desire to preserve human life and pursue justice in its true sense, but by, in the words of CUAD, a desire to continue terrorizing the students and staff of Columbia “until Zionism ends”—which is to say until the Jewish people have once again been driven from their ancestral homeland. This, given the demographics and politics of the region, would see the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea become yet another Islamic polity, which may or may not grant the slimmest of rights to non-Muslims. Some of us are also wrestling with the reality that these “demonstrations” were never peaceful in practice or intention, as—all evidence of their anti-Jewish and anti-American violence aside—how could the goal of decimating if not annihilating a national group whose ties to the land pre-date the Arab conquest of the Levant and Islam itself be compatible with anything peaceful?
But, all wars, whether actual or propaganda-based, are fought on more than one front or by pivoting from one modality to the next. Just as Israel will never fall as a direct result of Hamas terrorism, the U.S. will not be brought down by persons sabotaging the work of universities in order to promote the agendas of Hamas, the PFLP, Hezbollah, et al. Still, America continues to fall in and out of an awareness of the existential threat posed by a political cult enjoined to the cause of foreign enemies who would weaponize democracy against itself in order to achieve anti-Western goals. With Trump in the White House, elites are suddenly less able to abandon our universities to political violence, and cities and states that would not before allow police to quell riots and banish pro-terror encampments will see federal law enforcement agencies, ICE included, enter the fray.
what drove students like Mahmoud Khalil was not a desire to preserve human life and pursue justice in its true sense, but by, in the words of CUAD, a desire to continue terrorizing the students and staff of Columbia “until Zionism ends,” which is to say until the Jewish people have once again been driven from their ancestral homeland.
In response, individuals and groups who were issued burn notices by those who once stood between them and the consequences of their actions have been forced to alter their language and approach. For now, the lexicon of the revolutionary socialist has been exchanged for that of the pseudo-lawful “progressivist.” Persons speaking that language in defense of pro-terrorist “demonstrations” on U.S. soil are now invoking the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of expression and peaceable assembly. Where the former spoke of “bringing the war home” and “the total eradication of Western civilization,” the latter is now saying that any attempt to deny them their First Amendment rights should be taken as evidence of the “fascism” of those who oppose them in their pursuit of “justice for the Palestinian people.” And, according to these champions of free speech, the greatest indicator of American fascism is the arrest and planned deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a former leader of the notoriously pro-Hamas Students for Justice in Palestine and a current leader of CUAD, the organization that did the most to turn Columbia into what felt to many like Kabul in the wake of the previous administration’s surrender to the Taliban.
The same corporate media that downplayed the anti-Semitic violence of CUAD—violence that prompted the director of Orthodox Union-Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus at Columbia-Barnard to state that the safety of Jewish students could no longer be guaranteed on campus—is now framing Khalil’s case as a free speech issue without giving any attention to the mountain of evidence that he has a long history of cheering for terrorists and celebrating their savagery in violation of the terms of his status as a lawful resident of the U.S., which does not grant every right of citizenship.
According to these apologists, chief among them Khalil’s lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, Khalil was “identified, targeted and detained” due to his outspokenness for Palestinian rights and his protected speech. It might interest the reader that Kassem served as Senior Policy Advisor for Immigration to the Biden Administration and is infamous for arguing that the U.S. brought 9/11 on itself by (read between the lines) being an ally of the Jewish state. Kassem and those like him would have us ignore the fact that Khalil co-organized a pro-terror event that featured Khaled Barakat, a senior member of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that took part in the October 7 terrorist attacks—attacks that saw 14 children under 10 years of age and 25 persons over 80 murdered and sometimes horribly mutilated. This is not mere guilt by association, as CUAD itself issued a letter to clarify its position on a public statement made by one of its leaders—i.e. “Zionists don’t deserve to live”—in which it said, “In the face of violence from the oppressor… where you’ve exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, violence is the only path forward.”
It should go without saying that the First Amendment does not grant a right to engage in acts of violence, incite others to violence, and to pal around with the representative of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. It would seem that the left is, in its entirety, unaware of the fact that Khalil, as a green card holder, promised to do none of these things lest he be deported. Leftists seem equally unaware of the fact that the Secretary of State possesses the constitutional power to deport visa and green card holders for acts related to terrorism, expressions of support for terrorist acts, and terrorist organizations, even if such persons have not been charged with a crime.
This alternation between the modality of “by any means necessary” and the modality of the principled freedom fighter is taken directly from the Palestinian terrorist playbook. Yasser Arafat remains its most important contributor and his approach to terrorist politics was defined by his ability to present one face to the Arab world and another to the West. For that reason, he has been described as the “Janus” of Islamist and Arab nationalist terrorism. In his own words, he “came bearing an olive branch in one hand and a gun in the other.” And, after years of portraying himself to the Arab world as being uniquely positioned to “eliminate the State of Israel and establish a Palestinian state,” Arafat gained the trust of Western elites who either believed his claim that he only wanted freedom for his people and was amenable to a two-state settlement to the conflict, or had convinced themselves that he could be bought. Israel was then made to step into the trap that was the Oslo Peace Accords, the spring plate for which was the Western guarantee that Arafat would negotiate in good faith and follow through on his commitments.
But, when, as a sign of good faith, Israel withdrew from territory that she captured defensively during the Six-Day War, Arafat endorsed years of international terrorism—from Sabena Flight 571 to the Munich Olympics to the Entebbe hostage standoff. In 1987, he launched the First Intifada and greenlit some of the worst atrocities of that more than five-year-long barrage of suicide attacks, bombings, mass shootings, and stabbings, the targets of which were civilians of every age and walk of life. Seven years after the Oslo Accords palliated that drawn-out massacre, Arafat struck again in 2000, killing even more innocents. One would think that strategies that are as hyper-Machiavellian as Arafat’s and those belonging to the average “pro-Palestinian activist” would cease to bear fruit in a world flattened by globalism and the Information Age, but it is instead true that the West is as vulnerable to ideological tricksters now as it was when the world was riven by the rise of Marxist superpowers and their exportation of collectivist and totalitarian ideologies.
It was Freud who said that the average person does not want freedom—intellectual, political, or otherwise—because most of us are frightened of the responsibilities that come with being free. As much as I want to argue with Freud, the segment of Gen Z from which this “protest movement” emerged does indeed suffer from an allergy to personal responsibility. Hence their politico-cultural infantilism and rejection of nuance and complexity, combined with their illiberal need to frame every problem in terms of its power dynamics. To add insult to injury, such persons will assign all virtue to the underdog without giving any consideration to the long-term fluidity and potential multi-dimensionality of said dynamics. It’s been said before that such thinking could have been used to whitewash Nazi Germany as the Reich was at a gross disadvantage following the liberation of France and experienced far more civilian casualties than either Britain or France. And if bombing a civilian population center that contains strategic targets is truly the worst war crime imaginable, then the Allied bombing of Dresden, done in the face of the Nazi refusal to end the war diplomatically but without a promise of amnesty, would make the Allies an assemblage of rogue states.
the First Amendment does not grant a right to engage in acts of violence, incite others to violence and to pal around with the representative of a US-designated terrorist organization.
If Western civilization is to retake the public square, it must stop flogging itself per the requirements of critical theory and re-embrace the concept of Judeo-Christian exceptionalism, which, unlike its alternative, does not pretend to bestow perfection upon the individual and collective, but instead offers both the opportunity to improve themselves while “maintaining property in their own personhood.”
American society can begin to do so by standing on American laws, principles, and values that were not in question 20 years ago. That would mean deporting any non-citizen who makes no bones about their support for terrorism and desire to replace what remains of Western civilization with the politics and culture of places like the Gaza Strip, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Qatar, and Iran. But, again, all of that would be a first step only.
Americans cannot long tolerate a party that welcomes those who would use terrorism or an organized campaign of violence to further its agenda while stymying the party that holds the baton of law and order. Once a party has done so, it has demonstrated its true attitude toward democracy, which works only when all actors are committed to fair and transparent elections and achieving whatever it is they want to achieve by purely political and electoral means.
In a truly democratic country, violence is never to be treated as an alternative to democracy, but as the thing to which one resorts when confronted with democracy’s absence.
