COMMUNIQUE #9

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Don't stop now! America's got your back.

That's the message students and others protesting at Columbia University and other schools against Israel's mass-killing of Palestinians need to hear right now—now that politicians including the president of the United States unleashed criticism aimed at silencing them on Sunday. 

The student protests at Columbia gathered new force last week after their university's president, Nemat "Minouche" Shafik, a former international banker, sacrificed her students and academic freedom to Republicans during a bogus and partisan Congressional "hearing" into alleged anti-Semitism at Columbia.

It was "the most appalling and shamefully un-American political spectacle since the 1954 Army-McCarthy Hearings into alleged Communists and 'subversives,'" Communique No. 8 declared Thursday. 

The protest has spread to other American colleges, including  Yale, Brown, the New School, MIT, Boston University, Harvard University, Princeton, Northwestern University, Miami University in Ohio, Temple University and the University of North Carolina.

All these student protests share the same goal: to get their colleges to cut academic and financial ties to the state of Israel, which they accuse of committing genocide against the Palestinian people—a claim the International Court of Justice found plausible back in January.

Within hours of being betrayed by their president, students at Columbia reacted last Wednesday by seizing control of part of the storied-school's public square. 

Pres. Shafik responded like most tyrants do: she unleashed the police to arrest students on Thursday.

Even the NYPD's chief-of-patrol, John Chell, said it wasn't right.

The next day, Columbia's faculty declared open revolt against Pres. Shafik. 

She "capitulated" to "Congressional inquisitors" and promised to "end academic freedom at Columbia," their statement published on Friday said.

"We have lost confidence in our president and administration," the professors added. "We pledge to fight to regain our university."

Just as the professors and students in other colleges have joined the Columbia protesters, ordinary New Yorkers enraged at the Fascist attempt to silence legitimate—and constitutionally- protected—anti-Israeli dissent also rallied to the Palestinian cause over the weekend by filling the many public streets that surround and intersect Columbia's urban campus. 

One of these protesters, one, waving a Palestinian flag, harassed Jewish students leaving the campus on Saturday.

"Go back to Poland," he yelled, "Fuck Jews!" 

There's a real possibility this person was not a legitimate protester, but an Israeli operative spewing hate to tar the pro-Palestinian movement. It's a tactic governments and groups have used in the past. They're called "agitators."

As resistance to Israel's owning of American politicians and American foreign policy grows, so too does the possibility pro-Israeli operatives will infiltrate pro-Palestinian protests to do exactly what this one person did. Especially when they're wearing masks. Everyone, including politicians, must be alert to this possibility and scrutinize claims of anti-Semitism closely.

That said, The Free Lance, publisher of The Communique, condemns anti-Semitism. It's wrong to hold an entire group responsible for the crimes of individuals belonging to that group. Just as it's wrong to collectively punish by murder, expulsion and starvation all Palestinians for the actions of Hamas, it's wrong for Palestinians to hold all Jews accountable for Zionist crimes.

Its equally wrong for Israeli-controlled American government officials to seize on the actions of individual, anti-Israeli protesters to create propaganda painting all pro-Palestinian protesters as anti-Semitic. 

That didn't stop Pres. Joe "Genocide" Biden from briefly overcoming his increasing senility to call out what he alleged was an "alarming surge of Antisemitism–in our schools, communities, and online." While he didn't name Columbia, he called it "reprehensible and dangerous–and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country."

Other politicians, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, parroted the president's baseless claims.

Let's be clear: Israel has unleashed legitimate criticism on itself for its decades-long military occupation of Palestinian land and its mass-killing of Palestinians. The State of Israel, not protesters, has placed Jews in the cross-hairs of every zealot in the world—and in the cross-hairs of every Palestinian-American who has had family and friends killed or maimed by Israel's war machine in Gaza.

If Jews in America want peace, they need to join the protests and pressure the Israeli government to stop killing Palestinians, and stop occupying their lands.

No justice, no peace! is a familiar protest slogan for a reason.

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