The true origins of anti-Semitic hatred on university campuses
Pro-Hamas protests erupting on campuses across the country have shocked and dismayed Americans. These protests are bone-headed and wrong for many reasons, but suffice to say it’s a monstrous failure in moral judgment to draw equivalence between deliberately targeting innocents for slaughter and the inevitable, often forewarned collateral killing of innocents, especially when they’ve been planted as human shields for terrorist installations in schools, mosques and hospitals. And the rationalization that Israel should be wiped off the map because it is an apartheid state founded on settler colonialism — that’s as fabricated a race hoax as the 1619 Project. Many Americans, having magnanimously acceded to the diversity-equity-inclusion narrative for “oppressed minorities,” feel betrayed. How can kids who linked arms with their Jewish comrades Oct. 6 to demand every “inclusive” accommodation for every last LGBTQIA+ person so <chosen pronoun> would “feel safe” leave their Jewish friends cowering in fear Oct. 8 while they, flaunting paraglider posters, lustily celebrate terrorists who slaughtered kids and shout “Kill all Jews”? For this betrayal, many Americans blame college administrators. Indeed, college administrations can’t disown the students they enrolled after bragging that their “holistic admissions” evaluates not just scholastic promise — that would “not be inclusive” — but the “whole student,” for which they summoned the dark art of “personal scoring” to predict “integrity” and “courage.” Right. Nor are administrators credible when they suddenly proclaim newfound love for “academic freedom” to coddle pro-Hamas campus militancy when their campuses are effectively no-free-speech-zones. First prize for academic-freedom hypocrisy goes to Harvard President Claudine Gay, who notoriously led the witch-hunt against heterodox Professor Roland Fryer, though University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill doesn’t lag far with her ongoing persecution of heterodox Professor Amy Wax. Yet blaming college administrators is fighting shadows of the real culprit because kids didn’t lose their brains and morality when they stepped on campus. That happened in K-12. Indoctrinate kids in K-12 that America is irredeemably odious because it is an apartheid state founded on settler colonialism, and kids are primed to rally that Israel must be wiped off the map because it, too, is an apartheid state founded on settler colonialism. This fabrication, straight from the oppressor-oppressed revolutionary ideology of critical-race theory, is equally weaponizable against any meritocratically earned success story: America, Israel, Jews, Asians. Keep up with today’s most important news Stay up on the very latest with Evening Update. But blaming the K-12 educracy is still fighting shadows — who made K-12 toxic? While education schools come to mind, the 800-pound gorilla of CRT is the teachers unions. But that’s still fighting shadows. The teachers unions owe their outsized power to their heady marriage with the Democratic Party: The unions deliver manpower, donations and future Democratic activists while Democrats reciprocate with friendly legislation, policies and taxpayer dollars. The Democratic Party is the ultimate purveyor of CRT; it is its core ideology, with teachers unions playing eager partners. Whenever Democrats spout all-too-familiar racial dog-whistles like “underrepresented,” “marginalized,” “inequity,” “privilege,” “systemic” and the latest, a real juggernaut, “reparations,” we recognize the toxic marks of CRT. And in CRT’s racial cauldron, Jews and Israel stand unequivocally in the wrong; the battle-cry “From Ferguson to Jerusalem” is no accident. Some “progressives,” pointing to President Biden’s support for Israel and Rep. Ritchie Torres’ denunciation of Hamas, say antisemitism occupies only the extreme-left Democratic Socialist of America fringe, not mainstream, of the Democratic Party. But that’s delusory, because with CRT as a core ideology, Democratic support for a pro-West, entrepreneurial, successful Israel that unapologetically rejects the oppressor-oppressed binary is necessarily conflicted. It’s no accident Jimmy Carter already in 2006 called Israel an apartheid state, Obama sent billions to Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s paymaster Iran, Biden would have sent $6 billion to Iran but for Republican outcry, Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s first reaction to Hamas’ attack was to call for cease-fire, mainstream Democrats Dick Durbin and Chris Murphy call Israel’s campaign “unacceptable” and Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris noisily announced an “anti-Islamophobia” initiative last week. As if further confirmation is needed, Gallup polling shows that Democratic sympathy for Israel, perennially weaker than Republican, finally swung deeply negative this year. Mainstream Democrats’ support for Israel lives on borrowed time. It is the DSA that enjoys coherence between core ideology and Jew-hatred; it has the upperhand and is surely gaining. To our Jewish Democratic-voting friends: Are you ready for this future Democratic Party? Wai Wah Chin is the founding president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York.
