Words and labels matter, which is why I’m angered that America’s legacy media refers to Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Illan Omar as “progressives.” A progressive is open minded to new ideas and policies and wants to move America forward. Tlaib and Omar are dyed-in-the-wool Jew haters, both proud recipients of the “Antisemite of the Year” award from an organization whose focus is Jew hatred.
Tlaib, deemed the 2023 Jew hater of the year, even bested Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and stick figure Gigi Hadid, who has yet to disavow the vile homophobic and racist attacks of her father Mohamed Hadid on Congressman Ritchie Torres, whose support of Israel the elder Hadid said makes Torres “worse than the rats of New York sewage system.” Torres is an openly gay Black Hispanic.
Tlaib, who has a Palestinian flag outside her office, has refused to denounce protesters from or near her Dearborn district who recently chanted, “Death to America,” let alone condemn “Death to Israel” chants.
Jew hatred isn’t progressive. It dates back centuries and Tlaib and Omar can’t even come up with new and original tropes, instead relying on the golden oldies of the Jew haters that preceded them. Tlaib and Omar have been pushing Jew hating boundaries for years, cunningly feigning ignorance and innocence that they didn’t know their comments were hurtful when they realized they went too far.
I’m also tired of legacy media headlines referring to protesters who are a menace to the universities they attend as “anti-Israel”. The legacy media, which is rife with Jew haters fresh out of the colleges where the protests are taking place, know that labeling the protesters Jew haters would diminish their cause. Portraying the university protesters as crusaders for the victims of Gaza gives them a patina of morality, championing the cause of the downtrodden being oppressed by Israel’s “white colonialists.”
The photo below makes clear that protests at universities, particularly at Columbia, are very much driven by Jew hatred. Columbia Jewish students celebrating the Sabbath this weekend were harassed by protesters, supposedly including some naive or self-hating Jews, displaying a banner, “Shabbat Shalom From the Liberation Zone.” Shabbat Shalom means have a peaceful Sabbath, a religious day of rest observed by a limited number of Jews worldwide.
Outside of Jerusalem, the Sabbath isn’t religiously observed by most Israelis, but to the Columbia protesters Judaism and Israel are one and the same. Imagine the outrage if some students displayed a banner “Ramadan Kareem From the Family and Friends of Hamas’ Oct. 7 Victims” while Islamic students were observing Ramadan. Tlaib and Omar would be at the forefront of those shouting “Islamophobia!”
At this writing, the New York Post reported that Elie Buechler, a prominent rabbi at Columbia, issued an advisory that all Jewish students avoid classes at the university because of “extreme antisemitism.”
Watching videos of the Jew hating protests at Columbia, Yale, and other high-priced universities, I wondered how these students gained admission to supposedly elite schools that had the pick of the intelligence litter. The students have a vacuous Stepford Wives air about them, chanting rhymes, banging on drums, many dressed in keffiyehs. Cultural appropriation, once very much frowned upon, is now very much in vogue on college campuses.
The New York Post and New York Times in recent days provided insight about some of the Columbia protesters who were arrested, although as is typical of the Times’ institutional dishonesty regarding Israel and Jews, the publication provided a slanted and sanitized view. I did some research to provide a more complete and insightful perspective.
One of the arrested Columbia students was Jennifer Seward, daughter of William J. Seward, UPS Supply Chain Solutions President. The Post confirmed that young Jennifer was the teenage driver a Vermont publication reported got off with a $220 fine for her part in a double fatal car crash that killed an elderly couple. The Brattleboro Reformer reported that Jennifer, who was 17 at the time of the fatal accident she allegedly contributed to, provided at least three conflicting stories about her cell phone leading up to and after the crash, according to the Vermont State Police accident report.
The Brattleboro publication said that Jennifer’s mother paid the $220 fine. I wonder if young Jennifer made certain that her Palestinian loving protesters used UPS for the tents and other supplies they apparently secured on very short notice. It could make for a great slogan: “What Brown Can Do ‘From the River to the Sea.’”
Another arrested protestor was Avery Reed, a former summer intern for New York Attorney General Letitia James who also worked part-time on “gender equality” for the Biden-Harris Florida campaign in 2021. The Post reported that Avery is the former host of a Columbia Daily Spectator podcast, and in 2018 sat on a panel at Guild Hall in East Hampton alongside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Reed’s LinkedIn profile also says she attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she studied solo cello and toured England with the Young People’s Symphony Orchestra. I suspect that attendees at the Supernova open-air music festival in Israel on Oct. 7 would have appreciated Reed’s cello playing, but the Hamas degenerates that Reed implicitly supports murdered 364 of them and took another 40 as hostages.
Reed’s LinkedIn bio says she also attended Cornell, having taken undergraduate courses in international human rights for a year.
Another Columbia protester was Isabella Giusti, whose family the Post reported owns a $3 million, 3,000 square-foot home in Savannah, Georgia’s posh South Historic District, complete with five bedrooms and bathrooms. Giusti appears to have attended The Savannah Country Day School, where tuition ranges from $17,950 to $24,825.
Mia Roque, a sophomore political science student at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College, was also among the Columbia protestors. The Post reported that Roque belongs to the Columbia University College Democrats and recently attended a “lobbying trip” to Washington, DC. The Post said Roque’s LinkedIn profile, which I can’t find because it possibly was removed, said she will be working this summer as an intern for Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate and the first Senator to demand that Israel halt its activities in Gaza. The Post said a spokesperson claimed in an email that Durbin’s office had yet to sign any official offers for summer interns.
Me thinks Mia might need to find an alternative internship this summer.
The New York Times featured a Columbia protester named Marie Adele Grosso, who the publication said has “loved ones” in Gaza and that her grandmother texted her upon learning Grosso was arrested.
“She was proud of me,” Grosso told the Times.
Grosso hails from Lansing, MI, and I defy anyone to find a high school student with as many achievements Grosso claimed on her personal website when she was a senior. In addition to volunteering in political campaigns since 2016, Grosso loves languages and in high school was studying Arabic and French. No doubt the eyes of the Columbia admissions person who reviewed Grosso’s file lit up when they saw she was studying Arabic.
Of course, the New York Times in its coverage of arrested Columbia students managed to find a Jewish person who was part of the protest festivities. Iris Hsiang told the Times that it was Columbia — not her protesting peers — that had made her feel unsafe, insisting her only crime was “sitting and singing on the lawns.”
Hsiang, whose LinkedIn bio says she is studying climate science and human rights, said the commemoration of Passover, which begins Monday night and celebrates Jewish freedom from slavery in Egypt, weighed on her and why she joined the protesting encampment.
“Judaism means standing for the liberation of all people,” said Hsiang, who two months ago joined Emerge Young Leaders Cabinet that trains women to win elected positions. “And ‘never again’ means never again for anyone.”
Of course, not all the arrested Columbia protestors were rich white kids. One of them was Isra Hirsi, a Barnard junior and Ilan Omar’s daughter. I imagine that Columbia’s admission folks were orgasmic that Hirsi chose Barnard over other prestigious universities that no doubt would have welcomed her presence simply because of her mother.
Hirsi told the Times that while she had been “mentally preparing” for being arrested, she was “shocked” at what unfolded. Hirsi, 21, said her professors had been supportive, although she was unsure what the future held.
Hirsi need not worry about her future, nor must any of the other privileged Columbia white kids hoping to pursue careers in politics and human rights. If anything, a permanent suspension from Columbia would boost their job prospects, as the New York Times and other establishment publications, as well as the legions of Jew hating organizations, would hail them as martyrs.
If not, their parents no doubt know the right people to land them jobs that most U.S. kids can only dream about.
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