Hundreds of pro-Hamas college demonstrators are about to learn a valuable life lesson: Sometimes there are consequences for your actions.
A number and faculty members, upset that hundreds of college activists have been arrested and suspended, are demanding amnesty for students and colleagues.
They’re concerned that suspensions and legal charges might hinder the futures of students by following them into adulthood.
We can only hope!
If you want to harass Jewish students, violate campus rules, ignore warnings, break the law, vandalize public property, deny other students the right to learn and act like a bunch of idiots, welcome to the repercussions.
Maryam Alwan, a “comparative literature and society major” at Barnard who was arrested at a protest, suspended, kicked out of classes and banned from dining halls, says it all “feels very dystopian.”
Now, granted, I’m not sure what they teach in “society” classes, but it is unsurprising that so many of self-absorbed ignoramuses who wear keffiyehs, fly Hezbollah flags and prattle on about imaginary “genocides” struggle to comprehend the basics of a civil society.
Dystopia is a place where people intimidate peaceful neighbors, ignore the rights of others and dispense with decency in the name of ideology.
Dystopia is a Hamas-run Gaza.
Here, you don’t get a pass for being passionate about the newest memetic socialist cause.
Then again, most of these students probably need remedial civics classes. They seem to be under the impression that free speech means schools have a responsibility to host them and help disseminate anti-American messages.
And, though the media has done it’s best to whitewash the ugliness of the protests, most of these demonstrations feature objectively antisemitic messages. Encampments are meant to intimidate fellow students and the administration.
Most of them are also closed off to pro-Israel counter-protesters. “Pro-Palestine” marches are as pro “free speech” as they are anti war. Which is to say, not at all.
They want free speech only for themselves, and ceasefires only for Jews. Hamas is welcome to any brutality it likes.
If you still want to participate in these vile demonstrations, take responsibility for your actions.
Many notable Americans have engaged in civil disobedience in the past — the Founding Fathers and Martin Luther King Jr. among them.
Every one of them accepted that there could be serious consequences. That’s what made their sacrifices matter.
Today’s demonstrators act like spoiled children who can’t even deal with the mildest blowback.
Of course, the other difference between those heroes and Hamas cosplayers at the “Gaza Solidarity Encampments” is that the former were on the side of freedom and dignity, while the latter are apologists for terror organizations that sexually torture, murders, and kidnaps innocent people.
Indeed, it’s not just the lawbreaking that’s the problem. It’s the message.
Everyone, even privileged students who support terrorist revolutionaries, have a right to peacefully protest in the United States.
And Jewish Americans – all decent Americans, actually – should remember the chants of “river to the sea” and exercise their own right to free association by shunning these Jew-haters in public and professional life.
Because, if anything, colleges and cops have been far too lenient with students who have ignored warnings to disperse and made it impossible for universities to function.
Without consequences, these radicals and their fellow travelers will return with a renewed vengeance.