Going back decades, most colleges and universities demanded sympathy for "marginalized" minorities, for the rainbow flag-waving activists, and even for the long-gone Native American tribes that once roamed the grounds where the school buildings now sit.
“It’s amazing to watch," author and seminary provost Owen Strachan told the Washington Watch program. "Universities that are supposedly devoted to equity and inclusion instead feature all sorts of protests that have various voices calling for the elimination of the Jews."
Now fearing for their lives, Jewish students have turned inward for emotional support and safety. The students are bonding together in campus groups such as Chabad and Hillel, where attendance has surged since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in northern Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis.
Now six months after the attack, with the IDF fighting Hamas in Gaza, Jewish students have now watched fellow students turn on them personally. With student-led groups chanting in support of Hamas, George Washington University student Sabrina Soffer told The Times of Israel her Jewish friends were spat on. A fellow Jewish student was laughed by protesters after revealing an Israeli relative had been killed in the attacks.
Last November, Jewish students listed safety as a top priority in choosing a college, JewishInsider.com. reported.
One Israeli university is doing what it can. The Washington Examiner reported Friday that The Technion, Israel’s leading technological university, has released a statement offering spots to faculty, post-doctoral researchers, graduate students, undergrads and visiting research students who don’t feel safe at their current schools.
After watching these student protesters intimidate Jews on campus, Strachan says Christians need to make sure they’re standing with Israel.
“There’s going to be a little bit of theological difference among some camps," he said, "but Christians have a number of reasons to support Israel."
Four reasons to stand with Israel
Strachan, a provost at Grace Bible Theological Seminary, listed four reasons the Church should support Israel. The very first reason, he said, is that Jesus was Jewish.
“God chose to cause the Messiah to be born out of the fulfillment of a Jewish line. Jesus had fully Jewish skin and a Jewish body, and he lived in the Middle East. He lived in a humble town, and so we recognize our Savior and our Messiah and our King as a Jewish Messiah and Savior and King.
That matters to us greatly,” Strachan said.
Strachan, who is also with the Family Research Council, listed three more reasons:
*In the New Testament, Paul’s writings call for Christians to support Jews.
“Paul, in the book of Romans and Romans 9 through 11, has a good deal to say about his countrymen, ethnic Jews, and he does not indicate that God Has given up on the Jews," Strachan commented. "He indicates, in fact, that God still has salvific plans in store for the Jews. This is wonderful because he does indicate, of course, that many have turned their back on the Messiah, which is very sad. Yet we live in hope that God is going to fulfill those good saving promises of Romans 11 to his people.”
* Israel is a democracy.
“The United States needs democracies to flourish in the Middle East,” Strachan said.
* Israel plays an important role in God’s plan for the end times.
“We know that in terms of biblical eschatology that Israel plays a part," he said. "Christians have some different nuances of position on that effect but suffice it to say Christians will be very glad to stand with Jews.”
Class skippers vs. trained activists
While the protesting mobs are displaying hateful and dangerous views, Strachan said, some students are merely followers joining the crowd to skip classes. Others know what they are doing, he said, because they have been trained by their own professors to hit the streets as far-left activists.
“Harvard, Yale, Columbia and so on have turned to not actually training students to think with a core of knowledge but have trained students to be activists. This is the perfect playbook for wokeness," he said. "Wokeness desperately wants an activist generation that doesn’t really know what the activist thing is about but will show up on the lawn to tell conservatives, Christians and Jews how awful they are."
First Amendment rights and free speech should be protected on college campuses, Strachan said, but the same campus where you can be punished for misgendering someone is allowing praise for Hamas and the mass murder of "colonizing" Jews.
When there is support for Hamas, and support for its terrorism, Strachan said, you are not having a disagreement about beliefs.
"You're dealing with something beyond that,” he warned.
