https://melaniephillips.substack.com/
The shocking scenes on campus over the past few days are far more significant than mere student demonstrations getting out of hand.
With “Gaza solidarity encampments” having sprung up on more than 100 US campuses (and with British campuses now following suit) Islamists and the hard left have turned western universities into a theatre of war against Israel, the Jewish people and America.
At UCLA, a Jewish girl was knocked unconscious by the mob. On the Berkeley campus, the founder of Students Supporting Israel was repeatedly punched in the head, with one thug shouting “Go back to Europe, coloniser.”
At the Columbia University encampment, the mob called for “10,000 October 7ths” and screamed “Go back to Poland” and “Burn Tel Aviv to the ground”. One student who said “Zionists don’t deserve to live” was barred from campus but subsequently spotted in the mob that broke into and barricaded the university’s Hamilton Hall.
Just as on October 7 Hamas stormtroopers burst through the defences of an Israel that was looking the other way, so their supporters have burst through inadequate western defences to turn the Palestinian cause into a beachhead in their war to bring down a west that refuses to acknowledge the threat it faces.
Apart from a few examples, such as when the New York police tore down a Palestinian flag to restore the Stars and Stripes above City College and disbanded an encampment at Fordham University, with the LA police belatedly doing the same at UCLA, America has been signalling surrender to the mob.
The police should have been called in immediately to evict these unlawful encampments. Students perpetrating intimidation, incitement or violence should have been immediately expelled.
Instead, both Brown and Northwestern universities sought to appease the mobs by agreeing to consider their demands for divestment from Israel.