Mike Johnson at Columbia: A New Hero Emerges

“In every generation there are those who rise to annihilate us”: This is one passage in the Haggadah that Jews have been reading this week as they celebrate Passover. If they live near New York’s Columbia University, or any similar campus, all they need as proof is the hum from outside. Pro-Hamas fans of Hezbollah and Osama bin Laden, and other haters, blame Jews, or in this case the Jewish state, for every ill under the sun. In one heroic moment, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, did go to Columbia this afternoon. Facing a crowd that included some who booed and chanted pro-Hamas slogans, the speaker expressed solidarity with the Jewish students. He called on the university’s president, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, to resign and denounced attacks on Jewish students. “That is not who we are in this country,” he declared.Mr. Johnson quoted Churchill as saying: “It is manifestly right that Jews should have a national home where they may be reunited.” Said the speaker of the United States House: “We believe in that principle, and today I am here to proclaim to all those who gnash their teeth and demand to wipe the state of Israel off the map and attack our innocent Jewish students, this simple truth: Neither Israel nor these Jewish students on this campus will ever stand alone.” “What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said today, denouncing “antisemitic mobs” taking over campuses and attacking Jewish students and faculties. “This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s,” he said. “It’s unconscionable. It has to be stopped. It has to be condemned and condemned unequivocally. But that’s not what happened.”Asked to denounce antisemitism at Columbia, President Biden hedged. “I condemn the antisemitic protests,” he said Monday. “That’s why I’ve set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” This is the same man who all but blamed President Trump for an antisemitic rally at Charlottesville, because he said “there are good people on both sides.” Is Mr. Biden’s both-side-ism any different?Other than that throwaway line, Mr. Biden studiously avoided talking about the growing movement that is now spreading to the entire country. He has yet to confront the left-wing Democrats the way, say, candidate Bill Clinton did in the now famous “Sister Souljah moment,” when he denounced a supporter, a rap artist who seemed to advocate “killing white people.” Mr. Biden, in contrast, courts the leftist mob. Noticing that many tents on the Columbia campus are similar in color and shape, the New York Police Department is launching an investigation into who is behind these mobs. That strikes us as a shrewd move. Foreign terrorist-loving players, from Qatar to the Islamic Republic of Iran, certainly look like prime suspects. And the pervasive diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology is creating fertile ground for such ugliness as we are seeing.It has been breathtaking to watch Columbia’s collapse in the latest events and the speed with which protests are spreading to other campuses. This fight has been going on, after all, for years. We have thought throughout it of the letter the Zionist prophet Vladimir Jabotinsky wrote to the South African student who, in 1918, had said that, in the face of antisemitism, he was considering suicide.Jabotinsky wrote back to encourage the young man to hang in. That was the letter in which he told the young man that his generation was destined to see miracles, for events were converging on the creation of a Jewish state. He foresaw that eventually Israel would stand between the Jews and doom. Which is why these protesters are so eager for Hamas to defeat Israel. And why so many will appreciate a leader like Speaker Johnson for his words today.________Correction: 1918 was the date of Jabotinsky’s letter to the despairing youth. The date was given incorrectly in the bulldog.

Mike Johnson at Columbia: A New Hero Emerges

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