Could campus protests against Israel turn violent?
There is good reason to believe that they could, and there are certainly people who want them to do so.
Consider how far those protests have already progressed beyond what would have been acceptable just two years ago. Throughout the last school year, open support for jihad terror groups steadily became mainstream on campus. Open expressions of support for Hamas and Hizballah, hardly ever heard in the Western world before Hamas’ massacre of 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, became all too common.
As leftist and Muslim students took to encampments to express their solidarity with those who were fighting Israel, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Common Sense) quipped indelibly that “it’s a great American value to protest, but I don’t believe living in a pup tent for Hamas is really helpful.” Others, even some who were more sympathetic to the protesters’ cause than Fetterman was, thought it was a pointless exercise as well, and wanted instead to turn up the heat on campus.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), reported in Sept. 2024 that “Al-Qaeda Central Command devoted a November 24 [2023] essay to chiding the protestors in the West, calling their efforts insufficient and stressing that ‘America needs a new civil war.’ In another major essay, on November 29, [2023,] it exhorted protestors to launch ‘civil disobedience’ campaigns around the world – which are, in effect, already underway – and to carry out attacks.”
Are such attacks in the offing? Police recently searched the home of two sisters, Noor and Jena Chanaa, who attend George Mason University and head up that university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The Washington Free Beacon reported Monday that the cops found firearms, “as well as scores of ammunition and foreign passports, all of which sat in plain view, according to court documents obtained by the Free Beacon and sources familiar with the investigation. They also found pro-terror materials, including Hamas and Hezbollah flags and signs that read ‘death to America’ and ‘death to Jews,’ according to court documents and sources familiar.”
The National Students for Justice in Palestine website states that it is “supporting over two hundred Palestine solidarity organizations across occupied Turtle Island, we aim to develop a student movement that is connected, disciplined, and equipped with the tools necessary achieve Palestinian liberation.” “Occupied Turtle Island” is what particularly fanatical leftists call North America; “Turtle Island” is a name for the continent taken from Native American folklore, and of course it is “occupied” today by the evil white oppressors who are, in SJP’s view, also responsible for the supposed occupation and oppression of Palestinian territory. As absurd as this locution is, in light of the fact that no one aside from woke millennial leftists, not even Native Americans themselves, refers to North America as “Turtle Island,” the National SJP website uses the term consistently and without irony. It invites visitors to the site to “learn more about recent victories in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses across Turtle Island, and beyond!”
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Did the Chanaa sisters want to aid in an act of violence on Turtle Island, or help equip someone else to do so? The Free Beacon notes that “a group of student radicals defaced George Mason’s student center in August, spray painting messages that warned of a ‘student intifada.’" The “intifadas” in Israel were violent Palestinian Arab uprisings in which numerous Israeli civilians were murdered. The Free Beacon adds: “In its coverage of the incident, the Washington Post wrote that ‘activists spray-painted words on Wilkins Plaza outside the university’s Johnson Center.’ Those activists caused thousands of dollars in damage, a felony in the state of Virginia, and police suspect the SJP leaders, sisters Jena and Noor Chanaa, led the group of vandals.”
The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was furious over the search, claiming that the sisters were only getting law enforcement attention because of their work on "anti-genocide events on campus." The Intercept went even into leftist paranoiac territory, claiming that the weapons that cops found in the Chanaas’ home were "antique firearms." They weren’t; they were quite modern.
Was there a plan for an armed “intifada” at George Mason University? Are other “intifadas” being planned at other American universities? Are there students among these thoroughly propagandized, miseducated and radicalized cadres who agree with al-Qaeda that it’s time for a new American civil war, and that they can help spark it? We shall see.
