As exam period gets underway at Yale University, students are praying they can study in peace. Seniors are wondering if they will graduate without disruption. Partygoers are hoping that final celebrations do not get hijacked. Parents are spending a fortune in hopes of providing their children with an education and prestigious degree. Instead, they are subsidizing a camp — of hatred for America and Jews.
Last weekend, protesters occupied a central plaza on campus with tents and mass gatherings. The arrests of more than 40 students on April 23 did little to deter them. For the rest of the day, they blocked a main intersection in New Haven on the other side of the plaza. They proceeded to take over the campus quad and settled in for the whole week with sleeping bags, Palestinian flags, and fake “bombs” made of cardboard. After multiple warnings from the Yale administration and police, the encampment was cleared out Tuesday morning by the police and facility workers, yet no students were arrested. The protesters stole a line from Arnold Schwarzenegger as they announced, “We will be back.” Deterrence fails when consequences do not follow disobeyed orders.
When protesters sing “We Shall Not Be Moved” (a variation of “I Shall Not Be Moved”) the tone becomes somber. The students link arms and jump up and down as they chant, “Get up, get down, we’re anti-war in this town.” They have brought in student dance groups and singers to perform. When neither singing nor dancing, they ravage the mountain of snacks and beverages nearby.
It looks like a summer camp, at least when protesters are not cornering visibly Jewish students or hitting them in the eye, as they did last weekend. The sounds of the protests, furthermore, are not nearly as pleasant for the ear.
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“We don’t want no Zionists here,” the protesters said. When the vast majority of Jews are Zionists, it is clear who protesters do not want around. They chant, “When people are occupied, resistance is justified.” The same logic is used by jihadists who purport to fight for “freedom.” Protesters blared rap music with the words “F— Israel, Israel a b—.”
The protesters have compared the Yale police to the KKK and called senior administrators and trustees “terrorists.” They have torn down an American flag and attempted to burn it, according to several students I spoke with.
The Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale and Yale Friends of Israel cohosted a Yom HaZikaron (Israel’s Day of Remembrance) ceremony on April 25 that they had planned weeks in advance. OccupyYale, one of the main organizing groups of the protests, decided last minute to host a “Vigil for Gaza” at the same time and just yards away. Israeli lives seem to matter very little to the disrupters, if at all.
On Friday, the protesters hosted Linda Sarsour to speak on the campus quad. Sarsour has allegedly been connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. Sarsour’s platform “Women’s Strike” openly embraced Rasmea Odeh as one of its leaders. Odeh served time in prison for a terrorist attack in a Jerusalem supermarket and was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a US-designated terrorist organization.
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Students want to go to classes and libraries without having to walk through crowds of their peers who align themselves with terror. They want to sit on the grass during the few warm days of a New Haven school year. Alas, they cannot because the inmates are running the asylum.
The campus protesters are propagandizing with the phrase “books, not bombs.” They should take their own advice. Stop waging war on campus and let the students who care to learn get back to the books.
In Gaza, young Palestinians gather every summer at “camp” to learn from Hamas terrorists how to handle and use weapons and wage armed struggle against Israel. Children are handed guns and chant violent slogans in unison.
The campus protests at Yale look like summer camp, but their words suggest they want to wage war on America and Israel. Universities have a responsibility to educate their students and have an even greater responsibility to ensure that students who express vitriolic language or behavior do not graduate to inherit the reins of power.
Gabriel Diamond is a senior at Yale University and a research assistant at the Yorktown Institute.
An earlier version of this column mischaracterized the injury a Yale student received. It has been updated.
