On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas murdered, beheaded, raped and massacred 1,200 people while attempting to do the same to the 7 million Jews living in Israel. Astonishingly, support for the terror organization’s attack and its ultimate goal to destroy the only Jewish state has become a legitimate viewpoint that is defended by university administrators and a majority of the Democratic Party, even if they personally disagree with it.
Attempts to disguise the legitimization of supporting Hamas with a free-speech argument are absurd. These so-called advocates would never defend demonstrations by white supremacists on college campuses or oppose the deportation of neo-Nazi supporters holding green cards.
College administrators and Democratic members of Congress would also likely oppose campus demonstrations by and support the expulsion of students who refuse to call transgender students by their preferred pronouns. They would view this conduct as harassment, yet calling for the massacre of 7 million Jews does not raise the same level of concern.
It is well-documented that anti-Zionist students not only oppose Israel but are also antisemitic, as can be seen from the massive harassment and discrimination against Jewish students on campus, as well as non-Jewish pro-Israel students, all of which violate codes of conduct on American college campuses. Yet harassing people because of their pro-Israel views is somehow considered legitimate, whereas the harassment of transgender students is not. Somehow, college administrators cannot enforce the view that no students should be harassed.
The Democratic Party has also intellectually defended the call for the destruction of Israel as a legitimate viewpoint during the Biden administration, as their “National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism” failed to include the word Zionism or the full wording of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The IHRA working definition of antisemitism has been adopted by more than 40 countries and the U.S. State Department.
It is also noteworthy that the Biden administration revoked visitor visas to some right-wing Israelis, like Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Tzfat Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, and sanctioned others for being “extremist.” Not giving visas to right-wing Israelis is acceptable to members of the Democratic Party, but doing the same to those who support the mass murder of Jews is beyond the pale to many of these same Democrats. They also support restricting green cards to those who served in the Israel Defense Forces, yet are rallying against the arrest of green-card holder and Hamas supporter Mahmoud Khalil.
The Trump administration’s withholding of federal funds to universities is a chance for change—to protect Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus—and yet, where is Democratic support for these measures? Do they prefer to maintain the failed Biden-era policies that allowed antisemitism to rage out of control?
Support for Israel and the fight against antisemitism should be bipartisan, and it is for Democrats like Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman and Rep. Richie Torres of New York, and much of the Republican Party. However, the failure of a majority of Democrats in the House and Senate to support the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism and their vocal backing of virulent antisemite Khalil to be able to stay in America and continue his harassment of pro-Israel students at Columbia University has made it clear that fighting antisemitism is no longer a consensus bipartisan issue.