The weeks of unrest at Columbia University ended abruptly early Wednesday after administrators changed their approach and arrested hundreds of anti-Israel agitators on the campus. Those agitators took over an academic building, discarded the U.S. flag there and raised the Palestinian flag in its place, among other demonstrations.
Gary Bauer has served on the board of Christians United for Israel. He says the Columbia University president finally did what she had to do. "She announced that the police are coming in. They're going to remove the students," he points out.
Now, he says, further steps must be taken for those who were arrested who are not U.S. citizens. "If you're there on a student visa from some other country, you are going to be expelled from the university – and the federal government ought to expel the student back to the country they came from," Bauer argues.
And as for negotiating with the Hamas-supporting rioters?
"There's no negotiating with Hamas itself, which is what we keep telling Israel to do: make concessions to Hamas," says Bauer. "And every university should understand there's no negotiating with Hamas youth, which is what essentially these students are on these campuses. Either knowingly or stupidly, they're siding with a terrorist group that sent its fighters into Israel to kill 1,500 Israeli civilians. So, no – there isn't any negotiation."
Outsiders' radical influence
The anti-Israel protests haven't been limited to Columbia. On the other side of the country, riot police in Los Angeles were called to UCLA's campus after clashes between protesters and counter-demonstrators escalated.
Jan Markell is founder and director of Olive Tree Ministries and host of the weekly radio program "Understanding the Times." The messianic Jewish leader is shocked that so many college students across the U.S. are supporting the cause of barbarians.
"This is 'Israel Derangement Syndrome' – and some of these people are hired," she tells AFN. "This isn't necessarily springing up from within the college, though certainly some are. I think it's going nowhere good [and] I think it's going to continue to spread. This is going to be an open invitation for all of these crazies to accelerate and spread to every known campus that they possibly can."
The ministry leader argues the agitators are cheering for "barbarian Hamas" who "burn people alive and put babies in ovens."
"That is who these college age kids are cheering for," says Markell, "and that is a very sick society when you've got people cheering for this kind of barbarian mentality that has no pity or mercy on anybody. They just want to bury Israel."
Regarding Markell's remarks, state and local leaders say the students who are protesting are not alone. Fox released a new report looking at NYPD video from Columbia it says shows a woman identified as Lisa Fithian, who is a professional "protest consultant." She's been arrested more than eighty times.
In addition, New York City Mayor Eric Adams says this unrest isn't all the students' doing, and that outsiders within the groups are egging them on.
"There is a movement to radicalize young people, and I'm not going to wait until it's done and all of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it," said the mayor. "This is a global problem that young people are being influenced by those who are professionals at radicalizing our children."
Adams went on to say New York police are processing campus arrests "to distinguish between those who are actual students and those who are not supposed to be on the grounds." Approximately 300 people were arrested at Columbia and City College.
