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Agitators on and off campuses across the country are subjecting Jewish students to assaults, intimidation, threats, and harassment during the latest wave of pro-Hamas disruptions. This round started at Columbia University where pro-Hamas agitators have seized space on the campus, which they designated a “liberated zone.” Their slogans and chants included “Long live Hamas!,” “We say justice, you say how. Burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” and “Hamas we love you. We support your rockets, too.”

Just outside Columbia University’s gates, this chilling threat was shouted for Jews to hear loud and clear: “Never forget the 7th of October. That will happen not 1 more time, not 5 more times, not 10, not 100, not 1,000, but 10,000 times! The 7th of October is going to be every day for you.”

Columbia is ground zero for the pro-Hamas hatefest against Jews, but it has spread like wildfire to other colleges and universities across the country.

Hamas has taken notice. “We in the Hamas movement believe that any popular movement demanding an end to the aggression and genocide against our people are useful and supportive activities for our cause,” Hamas spokesperson Bassam Naim told Newsweek. “They also refute the Zionist narrative. The importance of this increases if these activities involve young people and university students, given that this reflects the vision of future generations.”

Naim added that “The American administration’s attempts to suppress these activities will not change the reality of the situation, whether regarding the justice of the Palestinian cause or the brutality and racism of the Israeli occupation. We believe that suppressing these activities will increase the youth’s adherence to their position and reveal the falsity of American democracy.”

The agitators’ “activities” that Hamas is praising are not peaceful protests as the left-leaning media and anti-Semitic politicians would have us believe. The agitators are mimicking Hamas’s own genocidal ideology in a deliberate attempt to spread the terrorists’ propaganda and threaten Jews with violent rhetoric and physical intimidation. Jews have been assaulted on and off campus, including a student journalist at Yale University whom a pro-Hamas militant attacked by jabbing at her eye with a Palestinian flagpole. Assaults targeting Jews and police officers trying to restore law and order have also broken out elsewhere – for example, at New York University and the University of Southern California.

President Biden is worried that he is losing support among young voters sympathetic to the Palestinians’ cause that is vital to his reelection because of U.S. military support for Israel against the terrorists. So, he is trying to walk a fine line, talking out of both sides of his mouth.

When President Biden was asked for his reaction to the anti-Semitic turmoil embroiling the nation’s campuses, he gave a tepid answer. President Biden engaged in the same kind of moral equivalence that he attacked Donald Trump for, following the Charlottesville anti-Semitic demonstration during the Trump presidency. Biden chastised the former president for remarking back then that there were “some very fine people on both sides.”

Now it is President Biden who has had his own “Charlottesville” moment. “I condemn the antisemitic protests,” the president said. “That’s why I’ve set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” That is another way of saying “some very fine people on both sides.”

Any doubt that President Biden was expressing empathy with the militant activists on the side of the Palestinian cause is dispelled by what the president said after left-wing progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)  introduced him at an Earth Day event. During her introductory remarks, AOC veered off topic. “It is especially important that we remember the power of young people shaping the country today of all days, as we once again witness the leadership of those peaceful student-led protests on campuses like Columbia, Yale, Berkeley and many others,” the Democrat-Socialist member of the hate-Israel “Squad” declared.

President Biden could have used this opportunity as a teaching moment to state unequivocally that hateful pro-Hamas behavior on campuses that instills fear in Jewish students for their safety has no place at any college or university in America. But instead, the president praised AOC. “Representative Ocasio Cortez of New York, you know, I learned a long time ago, ‘Listen to that lady. Listen to that lady,’” he said.

The current pro-Hamas turmoil at Columbia University began on April 17^th, the same day as Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, was testifying before a congressional panel in Washington, D.C. that was examining anti-Semitism on the nation’s campuses. A coalition of student groups known as Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) organized this collective support of the terrorist organization responsible for the October 7^th genocidal massacres and abductions of civilians in Israel.

After ordering the agitators to remove the tents they had set up in the so-called “liberated zone” and to disperse, which they ignored, President Shafik asked the New York Police Department on April 18^th to intervene. In her letter to the NYPD, Columbia’s president told the police that the participants were “in violation of University rules and policies.” President Shafik said she had determined that their “encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University” and requested “NYPD’s help to remove these individuals.”

The police removed from the campus and arrested more than one hundred militants on suspicion of criminal trespass, many of whom were subsequently released from custody. Columbia University students, including from the affiliated Barnard College, who took part in the pro-Hamas campus disruptions were suspended.

AOC condemned Columbia’s decision to ask for police assistance. “Calling in police enforcement on nonviolent demonstrations of young students on campus is an escalatory, reckless, and dangerous act,” AOC posted on X. “It represents a heinous failure of leadership that puts people’s lives at risk. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”

AOC and her left-wing progressive cohorts should be condemned in the strongest possible terms for advocating that the anti-Semitic troublemakers should face no consequences for their outrageous behavior.

Unbowed, the pro-Hamas agitators camped out again on Columbia University’s lawn in large numbers, including some who had been previously arrested. Their numbers have grown during the last several days, including outsiders who managed to end run Columbia’s security. The militants have vowed to stay put until their demands are met. The principal demand is for the university to divest itself of any connection to companies or other institutions doing business with Israel. They are also insisting that there be no punitive consequences for their illegal occupation of university property.

Concerns for the safety of Jewish students on and around the campus have become serious enough for a Columbia University rabbi to advise these students to leave the campus altogether and go home.

The university itself has decided to conduct classes virtually rather than in-person. And instead of asking the NYPD once again to remove and arrest the trespassers, and immediately expelling permanently all repeat student offenders, Columbia’s administration has now been negotiating with the terrorist supporters. This disgraceful display of moral cowardice should result in Columbia’s President Minouche Shafik’s immediate resignation or removal. A strong leader should be selected to replace her who believes in traditional education, backed up by strong disciplinary measures against anyone who engages in harassment or physical intimidation and interferes with the university’s orderly operations.

House Speaker Mike Johnson visited Columbia University on April 24^th and called upon President Shafik to resign for not adequately protecting Jewish students. “I’m here to proclaim,” he said, “to all those who gnash their teeth and demand to wipe the State of Israel off the map and attack our innocent Jewish students this simple truth: Neither Israel, nor these Jewish students on this campus, will ever stand alone.”

Speaker Johnson showed backbone in staring down the pro-Hamas agitators who tried to drown him out. President Biden is too spineless to come to such a hostile venue and upbraid the agitators to their faces for their blatant anti-Semitism and support for a genocidal terrorist organization.

Far-left “Squad” member Ilhan Omar ( D-Minn.), accompanied by her daughter Isra Hirsi who had been previously arrested and suspended for her participation in the initial encampment at Columbia University, visited Columbia on April 25^th to cheer on the pro-Hamas agitators. Meanwhile, Omar lashed out at Speaker Johnson for his campus visit, claiming that the visit would “stir up really more anger and hate and endanger the lives of young people who are at the encampment at Columbia University.” Omar could not care less about the Jewish students whose lives are really in danger from the pro-Hamas militants she was honoring.

Supporters of the pro-Hamas agitators are trying to make this a First Amendment issue, claiming that Columbia University and other institutions of higher learning would violate the agitators’ right of free expression if disciplinary actions are taken against them. The Columbia campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors issued a statement criticizing the tough actions that President Shafik initially took against the agitators, which she has since backed away from. “We have lost confidence in our president and our administration, and we pledge to fight to reclaim our university,” the chapter’s statement declared.

Reclaim the university for what? More anti-Semitism and occupation of private university property to call for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel and the killing of Jews in line with Hamas’s mission of genocide?

While some faculty members have joined the pro-Hamas agitators, not all professors are left-wing lunatics who lack any moral compass. Take, for example, Vincent A. Blasi, a Columbia law professor, who is an expert in civil liberties issues. “You can debate who you ought to be sympathetic with,” he said, “but in my own mind, I am confident that the students have no First Amendment claim to stay in that space.”

Columbia University is a private institution, and its premises are private property. As such, First Amendment protections for free expression do not technically apply to disciplinary actions that Columbia takes to enforce its policies and rules regarding protest activity on its private property. But even assuming for the sake of argument that the First Amendment protections do apply, as is the case at public colleges and universities, the pro-Hamas agitators’ conduct has crossed over into unprotected territory. Setting up tents, disrupting normal day-to-day business, and harassing others are not protected free speech. Assaults and incitement of imminent violence against a targeted individual or group is not protected by the First Amendment.

A college or university, whether public or private, is entitled to reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of protests on its campus. Columbia, like other colleges and universities, has instituted such policies and rules. The agitators encamped on school grounds are violating these policies and rules by obstructing normal operations on campus and endangering the safety of Jews with their anti-Semitic rhetoric and behavior.

Instead of fulfilling their duty to protect the safety of all their students, too many colleges and universities are treating hate speech and harassment directed against Jews more leniently than hate speech and harassment directed against other minority groups. This discrimination against Jews violates their civil rights.

If it takes the police or the National Guard to restore law and order and it takes a cutoff of federal aid to colleges and universities to sanction their indulgence of anti-Semitism on their campuses, so be it.