What Does Congressional Action Against “Antisemitism,” Pro-Palestinian Campus Protest Funding by “Outside Agitators,” and the Halting of Aid to Israel Mean for Free Speech and Assembly?
The United States’ intervention in the Israel-Palestine conflict is having more and more domestic implications, and with pro-Palestinian protests erupting across college campuses and Israel’s campaign into Rafah, Gaza Strip (on the Egyptian border), what will this mean for free speech and assembly and continued American support to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu? Is the federal government cracking down on the ability of students and other pro-Palestinian voices to be able to speak their minds in what is supposed to be a free country? Will President Joe Biden cave to some of the demands of the protesters and cut off weapons to Israel to gain political points with his progressive base ahead of the presidential election, or will he capitulate to the military-industrial complex and the corporate interests that profit from the blood that Israel spills in Gaza? Of course, it is unacceptable for any protester to vandalize property, wrestle with police, or harass Jewish students, but where the police responses on these campuses are leading is a place that we do not want to go.
Last week, I discussed how law enforcement was being dispatched to college campuses across the country to break up protests, arrest students, and prevent the free expression of ideas. In that article, I mentioned how things started to get out of control only when colleges began to suspend students and the police arrived (similarly to how the police provoked pro-Trump supporters during the January 6th protests), but since then, students at Columbia University broke into and captured Hamilton Hall, prompting police in full riot gear to respond. The agents of the New York Police Department (NYPD) cleared out the building by trapping students and threatening them with batons and an armored vehicle, and the force sent an army to patrol and barricade the streets just outside of the college. After this militarized response, police “dismantled” the encampment that had been set up to temporarily house the protesters, effectively ending the protests, and similarly, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), outside protesters broke through a police barricade to join forces with the students who had set up a tent village (the situation was deescalated quickly, as police largely withdrew from the encampment and made no new arrests). Police are beginning to demolish the tent villages and terminate the student protests in quite an un-American fashion, and Columbia University made the decision to cancel normal commencement ceremonies and replace them with smaller ones off campus.
In the 1980s, similar protests at Columbia University against South Africa’s apartheid system were resolved with negotiations, and not militarized police, after students blockaded a building for three weeks. The heavy-handed response to the pro-Palestinian protests is similar to those against the anti-war demonstrations in the 1960s and 1970s (during the Vietnam War).
Even so, this time around, there were some colleges that did not call the police, and schools like Evergreen State College and Brown University met some of the demands of the students, and within no time, the encampments were voluntarily taken down and the protesters left the area. The president of Michigan State University talked with protesters and allowed them to continue demonstrating with a permit, and without a police response, the protests remained peaceful. Columbia’s decision (by President Nemat Shafik) to call the police (and have at least 282 people arrested) came at the urging of Congress to “quash” the free speech of those who chanted anti-Israel rhetoric (misinterpreted as antisemitism). Although private colleges have the right to set protest policies on their campuses (public colleges largely do not), asking the police to suppress protesters’ expression caused more problems than if the students were just allowed to remain in place.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams wanted to prevent the anti-Israel protests from growing further out of control by having a severe response, and he alluded to “outside agitators” and “external actors” that were pouring into the campus to cause violence and threaten public safety. Instead of allowing for free speech to continue and just arresting those “agitators,” you might as well just tear down the entire protest as a precaution, right?
So, who are these evil forces conspiring to cause a disruption to Adams’ “peaceful” city? Some of the protesters arrested in New York City were not students of Columbia University or the City College of New York (up to 29% at Columbia and 60% at City College), and some of them had criminal records or histories of agitating protests elsewhere. However, the most interesting outside forces seem to stem from typical culprits such as George (and his son Alexander) Soros, the Rockefeller Brothers Funds (specifically David Rockefeller, Jr.), and Nick and Susan Pritzker (large sponsors of President Biden and the Democratic Party); and the Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, which helped to back protests across college campuses, are supported by the Tides Foundation, which was formerly reinforced by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is currently funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation (this information is right out in the open on Politico and other mainstream sources, and this is not from some conspiracy theory blog somewhere).
It is ironic that the corporate media calls those who speak out against what George Soros is doing to fund certain agendas as antisemitic because he is Jewish, but when Soros funds so-called “antisemitic” protests on college campuses, there is silence (he is not considered antisemitic for funding protests that are dubbed as “antisemitic,” and interestingly, Soros escaped persecution during the Holocaust by securing fake identity papers and accompanying his “godfather” to a mansion of a Jewish aristocrat with a mission to have the property seized by the Nazi regime). Soros is also tied to the Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), which has received $7,800 per community-based fellow and $2,800 to $3,660 per campus-based fellow (Snopes will point out, of course, that these fellows were not receiving money, that we know of, in 2024, but it fails to consider that the money being funneled in the past could be an indication of what is still happening). These fellows then go on to organize community protests, and some of them have been linked to the most recent pro-Palestinian protests (Craig Birckhead-Morton was arrested at Yale after leading efforts there, for example). Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which is also funded by Soros, helped to inspire the “copycat” tent cities that arose throughout college campuses. In what seems like a coordinated effort by these powerful actors to cause chaos and division ahead of the 2024 presidential election (much like the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests did in 2020), we should understand that many of the student protesters probably do not actually know what they are objecting to and were perhaps paid to be there. However, Congress is taking advantage of these planned and organized protests to bring about bipartisan legislation to further degrade the First Amendment.
The House of Representatives easily passed the 2023 Antisemitism Awareness Act (H.R. 6090), which clarified and defined what antisemitism means and how it should be applied in public policy. In addition to what would be obvious antisemitic ideas being categorized as unacceptable speech in the United States, it takes on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “working” definition of antisemitism and targets ideas expressing frustration with Israel’s handling of war (anti-government), in opposition to the right of the nation of Israel to exist (anti-Zionism), of Holocaust-denial, and that Jesus was killed by the Jewish establishment as written in the Bible (anti-religion). Although calling for attacks against Jewish people is disgusting, it is protected speech under the Constitution, and if you could now face consequences for criticizing what the Netanyahu regime is doing to the Palestinians, we have truly lost what it means to be a free country. You may disagree with what the student protesters are doing and hate what they are saying, but if you only protect speech that you like, you are not really an advocate of the First Amendment. Free speech means that all speech is protected, whether it is anti-Israel, pro-Israel, antisemitic, or pro-semitic. You cannot cherry-pick what speech is acceptable.
The bipartisan bill adds the new definition of antisemitism into the Department of Education’s antidiscrimination laws (the same Department of Education and antidiscrimination laws that Republicans supposedly oppose) and pressures college administrations to crack down on free expression, under the threat of losing federal assistance. Congress is attempting to make criticism of the Israeli government (not just Jewish people) illegal, and this unconstitutional measure, if passed in the Senate, would be just another tool in the playbook to centralize power in the United States and erode the rights to free speech and assembly. It would not just stop at college campuses, as the definition of antisemitism would spread to other institutions and aspects of our lives (New York is already codifying hate speech laws to be updated with new definitions of antisemitism and authoritarian tools to combat it), thus making certain speech essentially illegal in the United States (Republicans are supposed to be in favor of free speech and against public policies pertaining to discrimination, but when it comes to Israel, they violate their stated principles).
Even though Hamas agreed to an Egyptian- and Qatari-brokered ceasefire deal for Gaza, the Israeli government refused the compromise and still began bombing the southernmost city of Rafah, defying what even the Biden administration could tolerate. The ceasefire would have worked out negotiations for prisoner swaps, halted Israel’s military operations in Gaza forty-two days after the initial implementation, and reconstructed the strip forty-two days after that. As a result of Israel’s declination, President Biden decided to halt congressionally-approved weapons transfers to Israel (ammunition and thousands of precision weapons), of which Republican Representative from Upstate New York Elise Stefanik argued that the president was “not complying” with Congress by withholding aid. Was that not what President Donald Trump was impeached for: quid pro quo demands? Trump supposedly withheld funds from Ukraine unless the government investigated Biden for corruption, and now, Biden is doing the same with Israel to demand that it terminate operations in Rafah. This quid pro quo will help, in theory, his chances (in the election) with his progressive base that has distanced itself from the administration’s support of genocide committed by the Netanyahu regime.
As Israel continues its shelling of Rafah (after Israel told people to vacate to the south during the initial campaign and then relocate back toward the north now that the south is being bombarded), we must consider that American aid to Israel is inhumane, as going on 35,000 Palestinians have been killed since October, and Gaza is nothing more than a large concentration camp where the people are subject to relocation based on Israel’s bombing whims. The beacon of democracy and free speech in the Middle East (Israel) has just banned Al Jazeera and free press within its borders for “national security” reasons, and Mitt Romney admitted, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, that the reason for potentially prohibiting TikTok in the United States is because there is too much pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli content on the platform (it has nothing to do with China, and these politicians of both parties want to give President Biden and his successors the power to ban future institutions). We are entering some very bad times for free speech, and unless we stand up and fight against this centralization of power, we will be doomed to face the same fate as other authoritarian countries.
Thank you for reading, and please check out my book, The Global Bully, and website.