Protesters, free speech, campuses, and Canaan

Canaan, we are told, was created as the center of this planet – something fairly clear when looking at a globe and the Old World (Eastern Hemisphere). But the conflicts which have been raging for at least 4,000 years create hatred and even horror even on the other side of the planet.

On Tuesday (30 April 2024), news reports are that Pro-Palestinian Protesters broke into and occupied an academic building at Columbia University in New York City. Columbia is a “private school” (ignore all those FedGov subsidy checks deposited daily) and so their buildings and the grounds (but probably not the streets) are private land.

The protests in favor of “Palestine” and “Palestinian people” and against Israeli “genocide” and occupation have been national news. The university began suspending students who refused to voluntarily end their encampment by a 1400 hour, Monday deadline. The protesters have been camped out, trespassing on private land, for nearly two weeks as part of nationwide protests on college campuses. Despite the protests, Columbia has refused to call on the NYPD for help.

This is clearly a change from peaceful protest to acts of violence, matching and expanding on the verbal threats and verbal attacks on Jews, including many of their own classmates. Is this an aberration or more?

Asd lovers of liberty, we applaud the university for not getting the cops involved. At the same time, is there no action that the University can take to prevent the disruption of its services and damage and destruction of its property? Is there no non-governmental way of dealing with both the disruption and damage? Prevention and mitigation? Columbia’s administration seems to be at least trying, with threats of suspending or expelling students involved: denying them degrees. And both the protests and the university seem to have taken other actions, like shutting down cafeterias.

That, keeping in mind the history of protest movements, might be a measure with mixed results. After all, hunger strikes have a long tradition. And starvation is a very slow tool. Perhaps they should consider shutting off drinking fountains and deactivating soda vending machines: thirst is a quicker-acting measure. (Shutting down the toilets might also be worth exploring, except in San Francisco, where the protesters can join a lot of other people using the sidewalks.)

But the university is being condemned from all sides for its actions and its inactions. Congress, in its usual idiotic rhetoric, is demanding that free speech be curtailed and the police called in to bust heads. (At least the right-wing types are.) Indeed, many protesters have been arrested for trespassing and attacking (physically, we understand) their opponents and the objects of their vicious threats.

At the same time, we have the likes of Dennis Kucinich attacking the schools and society in general for stealing away these protester’s right to free speech. Dennis obviously hopes (and perhaps expects) that the protests are the beginnng of overthrowing American society and government. Given Dennis’ past and credentials, we suspect that lovers of liberty would have little truck with what would replace that overthrown society. Nevertheless, we applaud Dennis’ concern for freedom of expression and his condemnation of Congress and others who want to punish speech.

(We learned about Dennis’ article “American Spring?” from Ron Paul’s Institute, which republished it. According to some sources, Dr. Paul has long called for the destruction of the State of Israel and giving all its land to Arabs, so this may not be a surprise. Is that true? We’ve never read anything by Dr. Paul on the subject, and suspect it might be incorrect: he is presently a Baptist after rejecting Episcopalianism and Lutheranism for those denomination’s support of abortion, and most Baptists seem to be strong supporters of Israel in the 21st Century.)

But we also note that just as too many regressives applauded the Black Lives Matter and Occupy movements as being “peaceful protests” and freedom of speech, they ignored the widespread aggressive violence against other people, and the property of other people. Is this the beginning of such a thing in 2024 with dozens of campuses – including those of private institutions – disrupted and vandalized? Will the sporadic attack on some Hebrew students (and those who support them) turn into something much worse? An American version of Kristallnacht?

This division of opinions and demands for action is common in the States these days: it seems the only things we can agree on is what to disagree on.

Even when there is clearly significant mental dissonance on the part of the protesters and their supporters. Two examples:

It was reported that the building attacked and occupied by the Pro-Palestinian “occupiers” was renamed from Hamilton Hall to Hind’s Hall, to memorialize a six-year-old Arab Muslim girl in Gaza killed by the IDF. These are often the same people who are promoting abortion and apparently supporting the “right” of the Palestinians to use six-year-old or slightly older children as suicide bombers and stone-throwers at Israelis. And the right of Hamas to butcher even younger Israeli and foreign children.

Oddly enough, the LGBTQX community in many of these colleges is very strongly in support of the Gaza rulers, Hamas, although Hamas is infamous for its tyranny, abuse, and condemnation of homosexuality.

Indeed, homosexuality in the Palestinian territories (especially the Gaza Strip) is considered a taboo subject; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people experience persecution and violence. Indeed, at least one Hamas leader has been executed by Hamas for engaging in homosexual actions.

Editor’s note: Though it may indicate a bias, we try to refer to the land now occupied by the (secular) State of Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and partially still ruled by Hamas (the Gaza Strip or Gaza) as being what the ancients called a part of Canaan, named after its first known inhabitants. NOT the antiquated League of Nations and United Kingdom name of Palestine – a name briefly given the area by Romans (Imperal Romans, at that) seeking to suppress the memories of the ancient homeland of the Israelites and their remnant, the Judeans (Yehuda) which were called (in English translations of Greek and Latin texts) Jews.

To us here at TPOL, to use the name Palestine, especially in an anachronistic way referring to the area at anytime between about AD 70 and AD 600, or between AD 1915 and AD 1948, is biased in favor of those Arab people who now claim to be “Palestinians” who have an “ancient homeland” called “Palestine.”

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