DAVID MARCUS: Time to ban pro-Palestine (Hamas) groups on campus, just like KKK

Fox News

23-05-2025

College is a place where differing viewpoints and ideas should flourish and clash, but institutions have long had a responsibility to avoid formal recognition of hate groups such as the KKK or the Nazi Party. Today, in the wake of growing pro-Palestinian terror, groups supporting that terror should be added to this list.
In recent years, since the American campus protests in support of Hamas' terror attack on October 7, 2023, some colleges like Columbia University have canceled recognition of some pro-Palestine groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine, but it's not enough.
After 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez allegedly murdered Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky two Israeli Embassy staffers on Wednesday night in Washington he can be seen on video yelling, "free free Palestine" in exactly the 60s style, sing-song cadence that echoes across our campuses.
On those campuses we also hear a call to "globalize the intifada," precisely the call answered by Rodriguez. The intifada, after all, is an invitation to murder civilians in the name of Islam. Why would any American university allow itself to be associated with that?
These schools may argue that it is possible to be a pro-Palestinian group on campus without advocating for violence, that only fights for fairness, but that is not what "from the river to the sea means," it means the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews.
How much daylight is there between a movement that would presumably eradicate all Jews in the Levant in the name of Palestinian birthrights and one that would kill minorities in the name of racial purity?
The pro-Palestinian movement has many similarities to the banned KKK, both groups cast themselves as ethnic victims, both embrace terror tactics, both wear masks and symbols of violence from the white hood to the green Hamas headband, and obviously both hate Jews, but claim they only hate "what Jews have done," or something.
Neither group has any place on any college campus.
We don't need starry-eyed freshmen (mostly girls) walking into a college organization fair, seeing a Palestinian flag and keffiyeh and saying, "I want to help the oppressed people," with absolutely no context.
Speaking of that ubiquitous Palestinian flag, while it dates back to older pan Arab fights against the Ottoman Empire, in the 1960s it was adopted by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, a prototypical modern terrorist group.
In the 60 years since, this flag has always represented a leadership and government, if you can call it that, of the Palestinians who have been terrorists the entire time, every single person in charge.
The Palestinian flag was banned in Israel until 1993 when the Oslo Accords brought hope that peace could soon be found, but Palestinian leaders and their Iranian puppet masters have cruelly mocked that hope for decades.
How many more antisemitic assassinations in our nation must there be before we take this problem seriously, before we address the poison being fed to our college kids?
Colleges should support free speech, but if they can - and rightfully do - ban Nazi flags or the black flag of Isis, then why shouldn't the Palestinian flag also be banned?
We want to believe that there is some peace-loving pro-Palestinian movement out there that abhors terrorism and just wants a reasonable solution, but there isn't. They don't chant demanding Hamas release the hostages and accept a two-state solution, they chant for the destruction of Israel.
It is very similar to Black Lives Matter, a phrase which, on the one hand, seemed anodyne and obvious but which also represented hardcore Marxist ideology behind the placid mask of civil rights. And behind demands to protect Palestinian children is almost always the willingness to kill Jews.
For all the talk of the online manosphere radicalizing right-wing men, the flurry of political violence of late from the DC murders, to Trump assassination attempts, to arson at Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's mansion, have been coming from the far left.
A progressive ideology that apologizes for, and even embraces, violence has taken hold at our prestigious universities, and at its core, loudest of all, are the pro-Palestinian groups, often backed by foreign money.
How many more antisemitic assassinations in our nation must there be before we take this problem seriously, before we address the poison being fed to our college kids?
We no longer have to accept the twisted rules of wokeness and privilege, we no longer have to lie to ourselves and say that the Palestinian cause has been righteous just because they are supposedly the oppressed group.
The pro-Palestinian movement must be judged on its own actions, not on some sliding moral scale that takes into account skin color or privilege points. There must be a line drawn at terrorism.
It is not too late to save our county's colleges, and a great start would be to remove the cancer of anti-Israel, anti America, and pro-terror groups from every quad and library in the land.