Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

The great universities are now paying the price for allowing woke professors to indoctrinate their students with idealogical and political dogma instead of offering them a critical thinking and intellectually honest education.

The result is a vulnerable and naive student body on many of America’s prestigious colleges and universities, egged on by radical outsiders supported by questionably legal funding sources, violently protesting the war against the Arabs in Gaza, and endorsing the delegitimization of the Jewish State.

The attempted takeover of university property, and the unleashing of hate speech, threats and intimidation against Jewish students who support the State of Israel, is part of a national surge in antisemitism that has not been seen in America since the days of Nazi infiltration and propaganda of the 1930s.

All this is occurring under the banner of freedom of speech, conveniently forgetting the words of the First Amendment to “peacefully assemble.”

The Hamas butchering of Israeli babies and children, the rape, torture and murder of Israeli and dual-national men and women, the taking of hostages in an invasion by as many as 4000 armed terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent mistreatment, rape and murder of many of them (if not all of them) while in captivity was met with outrage and mourning by most citizens around the globe.

That was not the case with the Arab residents of Gaza, Judea and Samaria who celebrated the wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians of Israel by dancing in the streets and distributing candy to their children. Unfortunately, the vast majority of American Muslims and Muslims around the world also embraced the Hamas attack and massacre.

Israel’s response to this attack, as would be the exact same response of every sovereign nation including the U.S, was to initiate a defensive war to neutralize and destroy a persistent terrorist enemy.

For years Hamas and its innocent citizens have been raining down thousands of rockets on Israel, flying kites over the border to burn Israeli agricultural fields, advocating the elimination of the Jewish State, teaching their children to hate and kill Jews and most recently, holding some of the hostages.

The Arabs in Gaza are not innocent civilians. They are collaborators with Hamas. In 2007 they voluntarily elected Hamas to govern them after Israel unilaterally removed defensive Jewish settlements in Gaza and totally withdrew all its military forces, leaving the local population to self-govern.

Instead of establishing a government to peacefully engage with Israel and to live and thrive alongside Israel, they embraced the Hamas leadership and its Charter that calls for the destruction of the Jewish State and the annihilation of all its Jewish citizens.

During the preceding years, and despite the aggression from Gaza, the citizens of that territory have been the recipients of more foreign aid per capita than any other population on Earth, including averaging 200 truckloads of food, medical supplies and building materials entering Gaza daily from Israel. In addition, Israel opened its border with Gaza for thousands of Arabs to work in Southern Israel in the Israeli towns and kibbutzim bordering Gaza.

These were the very towns and kibbutzim which Hamas attacked and destroyed. It turns out many of these workers ended up supplying Hamas with details and intelligence that aided in the massacre of their benevolent employers and their families.

Much of the aid entering Gaza, was used to build the extensive tunnel network that surpassed the New York City subway system in size and made the IDF’s task of combatting the terrorists much more dangerous.

Adding to the complexity of the military operations was the fact that almost every home and civilian building including hospitals were either command posts, weapon storage facilities, rocket launch sites or hidden entry to the tunnel complex.

The tunnel complex could not have been built without the complete cooperation of the civilian population, including the collaboration of medical personnel in the hospitals and the UN personnel whose own facilities in Gaza were sites for Hamas’ military purposes.

To our American college students protesting and disrupting in support of the innocent civilians of Gaza: Given the facts that the innocent civilians of Gaza have assisted Hamas in seeking the annihilation of the Jews and the disappearance of the State of Israel, have danced in the streets celebrating the killing of Jewish babies and the raping of Jewish women, and have willingly built the infrastructure to rain rockets on Israeli civilians; have you considered the possibility that you are ignoring American values and just might be supporting the wrong side in this war?

If you wish to comment or respond you can reach me at melpearlman322@gmail.com. Please do so in a rational, thoughtful, respectful and civil manner.