A solution? Limit issuing of student visas – or stop altogetherChad Groening (AFN) While Israel faces the prospect of a two-front war against Islamic terrorists, college campuses across the U.S. have become hot beds for pro-terrorist protests. Perhaps the most blatant example was at Harvard University, where on Saturday more than 1,000 demonstrators gathered to support Hamas one week after the terrorist group murdered 1,300 innocent Israelis and took 150 hostage. Brigitte Gabriel, chair of ACT for America, is a terrorism expert and national security analyst. The native of Lebanon says the U.S. has imported many students from the Middle East. 
"You have Palestinian students, Jordanian students, Egyptian students, Yemeni students, Saudi students – all these people with great sympathy to the Palestinian cause," she tells AFN. "They came to the United States, they organized on college campuses [where] they get involved and join the Muslim Students Association, which has over 200 chapters on American college campuses – and they begin the indoctrination of other American college kids who do not know any better, who do not know anything about the Middle East." Gabriel is calling on Congress to take action. "I think we are now at the point where America is ready to accept legislation that will stop, or put a cap on, the number of visas we extent to foreign nationals," she states. "Because under the Obama administration and now under the Biden administration, they are just handing out these visas. President Trump tried to limit this, but of course the Left resisted it." |
The national leadership of Students for Justice in Palestine in particular has come under scrutiny for its public statements and encouragement of violence. SJP praised the attacks, calling them a "historic win for Palestinian resistance" and has called for "armed confrontation with the oppressors."
The group on Thursday observed what it called a "National Day of Resistance" with campuses throughout the U.S. taking part. Arizona State, the University of Arizona, Bulter University, the University of Louisville, Michigan State University and the University of Virginia announced events for the day, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
"It's been going on for a long time. I remember as a college student there used to be protests for whole series of serious human rights causes around the world," Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values said on Washington Watch Thursday. "For the last 15 years, as the state of civilian human rights has declined and the state of religious freedom around the world has declined, everything on campus has been Palestine, Palestine and Palestine."
Menken told show host Tony Perkins that SJP students "have taken their masks off." What the organization is presenting is not an alternative political viewpoint but unbridled hate, according to Menken.
"Now it's out in the open. There's no pretense about this, no political dispute, no oppression, no occupation that makes a person go out and rape a woman. There's no political position that makes him parade the body of a dead woman through the streets. There's certainly nothing political about carving off the head of a baby – and yet Hamas did all of those things," Menken described. "This wasn't a war; this was a massacre – and you have groups like Students for Justice for Palestine calling it a victory."
Sometimes free speech has consequences
Some potential employers have taken notice of reaction on college campuses. Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman has pushed for companies to refuse job opportunities for Harvard students who signed a letter blaming Israel for the Hamas attack, the New York Post reported.
Ackman, the founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, was challenged by a Harvard law student on X, formerly Twitter, who accused him of "harassment," but Ackman held his ground.
"Would you hire someone who was a member of a school club who issued a statement blaming lynchings by the KKK on their victims?" he wrote. "I don't think so."
Menken says the students are "victims of indoctrination," not unlike young Palestinian children who are taught hate for Jews in their classrooms. This type of education shows itself with the attacks of last weekend, he said.
For that reason, Israel has no choice but to destroy Hamas, Menken said. In an op-ed for The Federalist, he wrote that calls for restraint are depraved and offensive. Such calls have come from the U.N. Secretary General, Egypt, Russia, China, Australia and South Africa among other nations.
"These calls are not merely inappropriate and one-sided but genuinely evil," Menken stated.
Many Israelis have compared the Hamas attacks to the Holocaust. He's reluctant to go down that path because the name "Hitler" has become overused to the point that it's lost impact in the conversation, he said.
Similarities and differences with Nazi Germany
Still, Menken sees both similarities and differences with Nazi Germany. "The Nazis tried to hide what they were doing. They saw eliminating the Jews as something distasteful but something they had to do. Hamas sees this as their religious ideology," he said.
He warns, "What starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews. Look at the places where the Christians are receiving the worst persecution around the world, and you find a country that already has no Jews, often because they've already been ethnically cleansed out … like Iraq."
Menken called on American college graduates to know if their alumni dues are being used to support Students for Justice in Palestine, which has groups on over 100 campuses.
Israel has no choice but to finish the job, Menken said.
"There can be no ceasefire. There can be no backing down. There can be no restraint. That is evil. That is backing down," he argued. "It's a recipe for more civilians to die. Hamas must be eliminated to the point that the white flag is flying from the rubble of what remains of their office."
Sidebar added after story was originally posted.
