In an effort to exploit the recent deaths of two African-American men at the hands of police officers, the New York University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has issued a statement that “many U.S. police departments train with [the] Israel Defense Forces” and that the “same forces behind the genocide of black people in America are behind the genocide of Palestinians.” Alan Dershowitz comments:

By implicating Israel in these killings, SJP is engaging in the old trope of blaming Jews for systemic and far-reaching societal problems. This practice was anti-Semitic when some Christian communities used it to blame Jews for plagues, poisonings, and murders; it was anti-Semitic when the Nazis used it to blame Jews for the failing German economy; and it is still anti-Semitic today. . . . The essence of anti-Semitism is the bigoted claim that if there is a problem, then Jews—and now Zionists—must be its cause. . . .

[Furthermore], the reaction by SJP is reflective of a broader trend in hard-left politics. Increasingly, groups such as Black Lives Matter, MoveOn, Code Pink, and Occupy Wall Street have embraced “intersectionality”—a radical academic theory which holds that all forms of social oppression are inexorably linked. This radical concept has led to the linking of disparate left-wing causes, no matter how tenuous their connections. . . .

Moreover, the conflation of police actions in American cities with Israeli military actions in Gaza raises a disturbing question: if the so-called oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and the oppression of blacks in the United States are two sides of the same coin, . . . are the violent tactics employed by Hamas, and perversely supported by many on the hard left, an appropriate model to emulate in the United States?

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.