Hate Speech? Or Legitimate Call for Resistance? 

SH sent me this article from The New York Times about Khymani James, a student at Columbia who was barred from the school’s campus after comments he made on social media went viral.

SH included this video of parts of James’ social media post.

“In my humble opinion,” SH said, “this is where social media has, again, a huge problem in allowing a totally misguided schmuck like this to post real ‘Hate’ online!”

I see it differently.

Because this jackass had his comments captured by social media, someone like SH can see them and be outraged, and then forward them to someone like me, who can then forward them to his friends or even publish them in his blog in a context that perhaps will wake up those people that still believe the pro-Palestinian movement is a socially conscious, liberal-minded cause.

What is going on right now on campuses all over the world is becoming, frighteningly and increasingly, a movement that has to remind us of the history of antisemitism in Germany and much of the rest of Europe prior to the Holocaust.

By now, we all understand what the pro-Palestinian chant – “From the river [Jordan] to the sea [Mediterranean], Palestine will be free” – means. It means: “Get rid of Israel.”

In recent months, these protests have become larger and more aggressive, with more specific antisemitic language, physical confrontations, and arrests.

What has also proliferated, according to Jarrett Stepman, a reporter for The Daily Signal, is the slogans themselves. The scariest one (for me): “There is only one solution: Intifada revolution!”

Click here to read Stepman’s account of an April 23 protest (participated in by NYU students and faculty) in New York’s Washington Square.