By Peter Traenkner
I have read Ms. Nini Cabaero’s column, “Meaning of the encampments,” and am stunned by the lack in depth of this complex subject.
I’d like to refer to an interview with the highly esteemed historian Niall Ferguson.
“For weeks there have been violent riots at American universities. Over the past decade, universities have come under the dominance of a coalition of so called ‘woke’-administrators, professors and students. With each passing year, this coalition has become more aggressive. It started with non-invitations of speakers they didn’t like, then came the ‘cancelling’ of professors or campaigns to fire them.
“Radical left-wing and Islamist groups give strategic tactical advice. The Oct. 7th Hamas terrorist attack acted as a catalyst. But you have to understand that this has been building up for 10 years. It took Oct. 7th for alumni of these universities to realize that their beloved alma mater had long since been derailed. The administration is almost always made up of leftist who see their role as empowering and organizing minority students to push through the DEI (diversity- equity-inclusion) strategy. But it means the opposite of what it promises: it means one-size-fit-all thinking, the absence of due process and exclusion of all dissidence, especially classical liberal or conservative thinkers.
“Now protests are part of the arsenal of a powerful coalition that controls what can be said on campus. And this control now enables explicit ‘Anti-Semitism,’ when Jewish students are attacked, sometimes verbally and sometimes physically.
“Israel’s founding was an act of decolonization against British rule in Palestine, and the Jewish relationship with the country goes back centuries, but the way universities have thought history has radicalized over the last decade.
“The Holocaust is hardly taught anymore. For me (Ferguson) there is no different between these professors and professors who were openly Nazis in Germany in the 1930s. There is no difference. They abuse their position as educators to pursue demagogic Anti-Semitism politics. This is despicable.
“Israel is the only democratic country in Middle East. That means it is absolutely possible to criticize B. Netanyahu. Israelis do this all the time. That’s just how democracy works. But it is impossible for Palestinians to criticize Hamas in Gaza. That’s the big difference. In my view, they are the ones who have plunged the Palestinians into misery, the terrorist-leaders of Hamas.
And after Oct. 7th, it still amazes me how quickly the lefties switched from victims of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to the victims of the Israelis armed forces.
“There is a big difference between victims and attackers. And the attacker were the Hamas terrorists, which killed Israelis, even babies and children, and took them hostage. One cannot imagine an Israeli government that would have left the Hamas terrorists in power. Even if they hold new elections a new Prime Minister would want to destroy the Hamas terrorists, because Hamas does not want peace or a two state solution. Hamas and their mastermind in Iran have only one goal: the total extinction of Israel.
“The Palestinians had their chance. And they wasted it. They were offered a viable Palestinian state in the Oslo negotiations.
“And they rejected that and handed power to Hamas.”