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USA Today: Israel-Hamas war stirs free speech battles at college campuses across US

  |   By Polling+ Staff

No kidding.

USA Today headlines: https://www.aol.com/israel-hamas-war-stirs-free-092334248.html

Israel-Hamas war stirs free speech battles at college campuses across US

The story reports this:

“WASHINGTON – Aaron McIntyre skipped his math and environmental sciences classes Wednesday to join fellow students at the heart of Howard University’s campus. He held tight to a white bullhorn, glanced at his cell phone and urged students not to ignore events happening across the globe.

‘If we stand up for Palestine,’ the freshman from Chicago told a cheering crowd. ‘We stand up for oppressed people everywhere!’

McIntyre was one of hundreds of students at Howard, a historically Black college and university, who showed up for the afternoon “walkout” billed as a rally to stand in solidarity with Palestinians. The Howard protest took place the same day students at Columbia University in New York staged a pro-Israel rally, calling for an end to hatred toward the Jewish community. 

The 20-day-old Israel-Hamas War has generated a new level of activism on college campuses over the Israel-Palestinian conflict, according to experts. Instead of uniting for a cause – ending apartheid, objecting to the Vietnam War or advocating for civil rights – students are shouting down their classmates and holding dueling protests. The tumult has been fueled by an increasingly bitter social media landscape, along with dynamics that experts say are more nuanced than other controversies that have divided college campuses in the past.

The surge in campus activism has left some students and their parents scared and triggered unyielding criticism and condemnation of how university leaders are handling the behavior. Some pro-Palestinian activists said they have been harassed and had their personal information published online. Many Jewish students, meanwhile, also said they feel intimidated by a proliferation of antisemitic social media posts andprotests.”

“The surge in campus activism” reported here is nothing more than straight up anti-Semitism. For many Americans this is catching them off guard.

It shouldn’t.

The hard fact of the matter is that anti-Semitism has all too frequently lurked just below the surface in America, and sometimes reared its decidedly ugly self. In the 1930’s, America was at peace as Adolph Hitler’s Nazis rose to power and preeminence in Germany. And lo and behold the Nazis began to gather strength…in America. One Fritz Kuhn, a German-American, was the head of what was known as the “German-American Bund”. The Bund went about setting up training camps around the country, not to mention holding rallies.

So in fact, America has had to deal with the viciousness of anti-Semitism before.

And here we are again.