Pro-Hamas Protesters Push To "Burn Tel Aviv to the Ground"

Last weekend, pro-Hamas demonstrators outside Columbia University proudly announced their support of Hamas, yelling, “Al-Quassam you make us proud! Take another soldier out! We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground! Hamas we love you. We support your rockets too!” As a consequence, an Orthodox rabbi at Columbia/Barnard urged more than 290 Jewish students to go home until the campus unrest settled down.

The events of the last few days at Columbia University echo the empty words of Columbia University’s president, who testified before Congress last week asserting that she had not seen anti-Jewish protests on Columbia’s campus. At Yale University, a Jewish student journalist “reporting on an anti-Israeli protest at the Ivy League university Saturday night was stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag – with her assailant going unpunished.”

While the events at Yale and Columbia University and similar demonstrations accompanied by “Death to America” chants in Dearborn, Michigan, by pro-Hamas supporters do not mirror the tragic events of early September 1939 in Poland, which included Germans setting fire to some of the streets in the Jewish quarter and shooting Jews trying to escape from their burning homes, the level of vitriol and hatred toward Israel and the Jews is alarming.

Fuel for pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, and anti-American vitriol is provided by classifying Israelis, Jews, and American supporters of Israel as oppressors. First, as Arta Moeini observes: “In the modern era, when sovereignty and political legitimacy hinge on ‘identity,’ the who-ness of the ruled, rather than the specific qualities of the rulers, justifies power.”

In our current era, politics grounded in identity has established itself with stunning ferocity and power as ruling-class elites classify certain groups as victims. Victimology supplies political power. This quasi-Marxist move is grounded in a consequentialist view of truth that flees from the actual truth on the ground. Rather than rely on the actual facts, this perspective on truth depends on attaining a desired political result. Hence, pro-Hamas supporters blame Israel for Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2024, grounded in the notion that the Jews deserved their fate.

This approach illustrates Hannah Arendt’s extraordinary claim that democracies are always inclined to abandon their principles as they corrupt their ideals and values. This move substitutes an oppressor/victim paradigm for deeply shared constitutional beliefs and equal rights as opponents of Israel embrace the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.” In this view, victimization becomes a professional career as real or imagined suffering enables alleged victims to accuse and simultaneously demand political power, irrespective of the facts.

Framing Israel as an apartheid state, an enslaver, and a torturer enables our academic and political elites to justify efforts that amount to the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. At the same time, the smell of downed explosives from Iran’s recent drone and missile attack still fills Israel’s airspace. While the nation-state of Israel is not perfect, both history and United Nations Resolution 181 establish Israel’s right to exist just like its neighbors, such as Jordan and Egypt. We should remember that on November 29, 1947, a 2000-year-old dream became reality: A Jewish State was born anew in its ancient homeland. On that day, the U.N. General Assembly voted on Resolution 181, adopting a plan to partition the British Mandate into two states, one Jewish and one Arab.

Given this mandate and this history, two essential questions arise. First, does Israel have the right to defend itself against the unprovoked attacks launched by Hamas on October 7, 2023? Second, must Jewish students at Columbia and elsewhere prepare to flee their campuses like the Jews fled Poland decades ago? Now more than ever, most Americans must resist inflammatory chants by demonstrators yelling, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” Now more than ever, we must resist attempts to engage in the ethnic cleansing of American university campuses and the nation-state of Israel.