Why the Epidemic of the Violent, Crybaby Protestors?
After seven months of nonstop pro-Hamas protests on campuses and in our big cities, a certain predictable and monotonous pattern has emerged.
The placards calling for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel (“From the River to the Sea”) are now amplified with ever more venomous rhetoric and performance-art demonstrations—from “Death to Israel! Death to America!” shouts (vintage 1979-80 Tehran) to flag burning to chasing and assaulting Jewish students, to defacing iconic monuments (including veterans’ cemeteries), storming classrooms, and to interrupting congressional life on the Hill.
Yet when a college president or government official on rare occasion calls the police and a few arrests or even suspensions follow, the fiery protestors melt.
We were led to believe by their hateful sloganeering and disrespect for the law that they were the descendants of the do-or-die 1917 Bolsheviks, or the thuggish 1930s Mussolini black-shirted toughs. But on the slightest pushback by authorities, they metamorphosize into hot-house plants that whimper in “I can’t believe this is happening to me” undergraduate style.
Last fall, we first saw glimpses of the fragility of the hate-Israel crowd at Harvard, where outrage followed when the names of violent protestors were spread among potential employers.