Column: A Time for Pushback: Anti-Israel Mob Is Losing Steam

’The best defense is a good offense, and I intend to start offending right now.’

— Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk

‘Judaism, yes, Zionism no! The state of Israel has got to go.’

— Pro-Arab chants outside Grand Central Station on Oct.11, from The New York Times

The withering pro-Palestinian brigade started offending long before it mounted a pathetic offense. Preceded by George Washington, actor William Shatner’s Capt. Kirk carried on the tradition of adopting the “good offense” strategy, but he had the resources to succeed. The core group of champions for Palestinians do not.

They are losing recruits and emboldening their victims and authorities to retaliate, and even a Philadelphia organizer and former allies admit that the movement is running out of steam. It is happening in Manhattan, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Miami and Rhode Island, and the stage is set for it to happen in Portland, Maine.

Jude Husein, 26, a Palestinian-American organizer, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that she fears people are more and more “copping out” of voicing opposition to the war because they are afraid of retaliation. Several students at Columbia and Barnard near Manhattan’s Upper West Side told a Times reporter that their desire to protest had diminished because of the movement’s tougher stances and threats from their schools of discipline for participating in protests.

The anti-Israel crowd in America has engaged in grubby tactics for more than two decades and usually got away with it, which I learned from personal experience. Others who follow Israeli issues apparently knew that this mob regularly distorts conditions in the Middle East, behaves crudely and even commits low-level crimes such as disrupting Israel ambassador Michael Oren’s speech in Orange County, Calif. Their numbers expanded as civilian deaths in Gaza grew into the thousands amid Israel’s response to Oct. 7. That day, Hamas and other terrorists invaded southern Israel, massacring 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping another 250.

The large number of Israel’s critics provided them with their strength, emboldening them to install illegal encampments last April on campuses from Columbia University in New York City to UCLA in Los Angeles. They persisted with blocking spots like the Brooklyn Bridge and an L.A. freeway. They appeared on television and made front page headlines every day for a few months. They overplayed their hand. They announced to the world that they are mad hoodlums.

They lost what they most needed: numbers. They attracted many supporters who claimed to be concerned about the deaths in Gaza. However, their helpers were getting into trouble with police and their schools, and likely recognized that the original demonstrators were not all they seemed.

So the mob conjured up a not so good offense which is bound to cost them more in credibility. As the Times mentioned last week, they are openly backing terrorists out to destroy Israel and revoking an apology for a member who declared that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” Neither our first president nor Captain Kirk would adopt that as a “good offense.”  

One of the most striking blows was delivered by Brown University’s board of governors last week when it refused to divest from companies who do business with Israel. A list of companies was proposed by students who shut down their encampments last spring in return for taking a vote on divestment, but there was no guarantee of the outcome.

The decision prompted approval from Rabbi Josh Bolton, executive director of Brown/RISD Hillel, who said, “After a year of insanity, antisemitic sloganeering, maligning of Jewish students, this is a day that we can be proud of our institutions.”

 The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the governing group, called the Brown Corporation, concurred with an internal committee that rejected divestment on Oct. 8 in an 8-2 vote, with one abstention. The board wrote in a statement, “The Corporation reaffirmed that Brown’s mission is to discover, communicate and preserve knowledge. It is not to adjudicate or resolve global conflicts.”

The Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island, joined other colleges in promising to hold divestment votes if protesters removed their encampments. Other colleges include Northwestern University and the University of Minnesota.

From the Delaware to the Monongahela, Pennsylvanians pushed back. Temple University in Philadelphia temporarily banned Students for Justice in Palestine from operating on campus following a protest that interrupted an on-campus career fair a few weeks ago, the Inquirer reported. Four SJP members, including a Temple student, were detained by police during the demonstration.

Without specifying that incident, a Temple spokesperson said in a statement that the interim suspension stems from “recent conduct,” and the group is barred from conducting on-campus activities that include “meetings, social and philanthropic events.”

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, speaking to a Jewish organization in Pittsburgh last Wednesday (Oct. 9), denounced

Rep. Summer Lee, a fellow Democrat, for a general statement she issued on Oct. 7 with other Pittsburgh officials memorializing all victims of the past year’s war, Jewish Insider reports. Jewish leaders complained that any statement issued on the anniversary should be limited to the Israeli victims.

While still endorsing Lee for re-election, Casey said, “All this transpired in a way that was both insensitive, it was inappropriate and it was just dead wrong. It was especially insensitive, inappropriate, because of when they issued the statement, and I categorically condemn that statement.”

Elsewhere: Manhattan, police are intensively investigating an attack against a Jewish man who was struck in the face when he unfurled an Israeli flag on Oct. 7 in front of at a dozen advocates for the Palestinians;  the University of Michigan, where student government rejected a pro-Arab proposal to block funding for student activities; media mogul Shari Redstone rebuked CBS News executives (part of Redstone’s Paramount empire) for pressuring a reporter who robustly challenged the views of an anti-Israel author; and students in southern Florida are seeking ways to stand up for Israel and openly voice their pride in Jewish traditions.

Many of these actions are far from perfect, but it is a great start. Of course, the anti-Israel mob is still active and will continue to be disruptive, if not dangerous. Yet it has weakened.

I am disappointed that there has been little pushback against Portland City Council, Maine, for its unanimous vote in early September to divest from Israel. However, two Portland-area Jews got in some shots against City Council in a Portland Press Herald article about the Oct. 7 anniversary.

“Portland has turned against us, (and) we’ve been here for generations,” said Jackie Soley of nearby Freeport.

Rabbi Levi Wilansky of Chabad of Maine added, “It was a stab in the chest.”

Will Jewish Portlanders ever stab back?