Are any of your children attending Columbia University in New York? If so, you might want to alert them to this exciting new educational opportunity. The college is now apparently offering a new class covering the ongoing unrest in the Middle East. It's called Palestinian Resistance 101. The subtitle of the course is, "The Fight for Liberation." Students will hear from speakers representing Israeli-designated terror groups who will instruct them on how to celebrate the October 7 terror attacks and the strategic importance of hijacking airplanes. Your kids will be out there in the streets waving swastikas around in no time at all or your money back! (Free Beacon)
On Sunday, a group of keffiyeh-clad individuals huddled around a computer to discuss the "Palestinian resistance." Charlotte Kates, a member of the Israeli-designated terror group Samidoun, praised Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack for showing "the potential of a future for Palestine liberated from Zionism." Khaled Barakat, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine activist, lauded airplane hijackings as "one of the most important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in."
While those speakers and other attendees were explicit in their support for terrorism against Jews, the event did not take place in Gaza, Doha, or Tehran. It took place in New York City, where an anti-Semitic Columbia University student group—Columbia University Apartheid Divest—invited the speakers to deliver a lecture on "the fight for liberation," titled "Palestinian Resistance 101."
Where are all of these pro-Hamas activist groups coming from? And who came up with the name "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine?" It sounds like something out of a Monty Python movie. It might all be humorous were it not for the very serious nature of what's going on here. These groups are showing up on American college campuses and fanning the flames of the already unhinged pro-Hamas student groups.
Columbia University is technically listed as a "privately supported, nonsectarian, not-for-profit" institution. However, they still currently receive $1.2 billion in government grants and contracts annually. Why is any university receiving taxpayer funding of any sort when they are spreading this type of poison around in the national bloodstream? The maniacs involved in Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) are already causing enough damage. They don't need outside help of this sort.
To be clear, none of this is happening in a vacuum. Young people don't simply wake up one morning and decide to support terrorism. They are being indoctrinated, possibly at home but definitely in the schools. They have professors and advisers there steering them in this direction and those teachers and administrators only quiet down (temporarily) when their antics make national headlines and calls for their dismissal come up for discussion.
Speaking of SJP, they haven't slowed down with their hateful antics, even if they aren't generating as many headlines these days. They are still holding "die-ins" around the country and they just held another one at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this weekend. They plastered pictures of dead children on campus buildings while chanting about "honoring our martyrs." At other schools such as the University of Chicago, the question is finally being raised as to whether or not the school should continue to allow SJP to engage as a recognized student group. Their constantly disruptive behavior and violations of school policies are turning the campus into a toxic and sometimes dangerous battlefield. The fact that they continue to find faculty sponsorship is equally disturbing.
Now they are importing foreign "talent" to come in and egg the students on further. I remain in favor of free speech, but openly calling for violence and the destruction of property is not free speech. It's incitement. And a way should be found to put a stop to it.