Hamas Comes to Campus

Shocking but not surprising. That’s our reaction to the report in the New York Post that the federales have uncovered a “direct link” between, on the one hand, a protester against Israel at Columbia University, and, on the other hand, Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades. The protester in question, Tarek Barzouk, has been charged with three hate crimes against Jews, though he was not a student at Columbia and the school has disavowed him.His prosecution, though, could be a turning point. The Department of Justice, the Post reports, is ready to argue that Mr. Barzouk was a “a member of a chat group that received regular updates” from the spokesman of the al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida. Mr. Bazrouk’s phone, according to prosecutors, was “littered with pro-Hamas and pro-Hizballah propaganda,” including images of the architect of October 7, Yahya Sinwar.How much of a role does Mr. Barzouk have to have played in order to be in serious trouble with the law? His case brings to mind, of all things, a legal precedent from 1807 — Ex Parte Bollman and Ex Parte Swartwout. The case was one of alleged treason on the part of two compatriots, Erick Bollman and Samuel Swartwout, of the rogue Founding Father, Aaron Burr. Chief Justice Marshall acquitted them.The chief justice reasoned that since war had not been declared, the accused could not be deemed treasonous. Yet, Marshall wrote, “if war be actually levied — that is if a body of men be actually assembled for the purpose of effecting by force a treasonable purpose — all those who perform any part, however minute or however remote from the scene of action, and who are actually leagued in the general conspiracy, are to be considered as traitors.”Meaning that once a state of war is discerned, all who aid in whatever form can be roped in as traitors. We are not suggesting that Mr. Bazrouk is a traitor. He doesn’t have to be, though, to be entangled in a way that could portend serious trouble. Hamas is still a terrorist group whose eradication is supported by Washington. Mr. Barzouk’s alleged crimes and associations underscore that the eruption of anti-Israel activity is far from collegiate silliness.All the more startling, then, to see two legal sages argue in a forthcoming article that claims of anti-Zionism are unlikely to succeed under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Benjamin Eidelson and Deborah Hellman reckon that “discrimination based on the cultural practices or viewpoints that may be associated” with a religion — “as Zionism might be associated with Jewishness — is ordinarily not cognizable as discrimination.”Never mind that even Harvard has accepted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which mandates that anti-Zionism can — of course — cross over into antisemitism. We would go even further, and assert that in the wake of “Free Palestine” being yelled over the bodies of Jews murdered at Washington and burned at Boulder, anti-Zionism is the most dangerous of antisemitisms.That brings us back to Mr. Barzouk. The United States attorney at New York, Jay Clayton, reckons that he “deliberately targeted and assaulted Jewish victims at protests relating to the Israel/Gaza war.” Add in Mr. Barzouk’s ties to Hamas and this begins to look less like a protest and more like a situation that can be prosecuted against all those who were, per Bollman, “actually leagued” in the conspiracy against Jews and the Jewish state.

Hamas Comes to Campus

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