Crashing Terrorism’s Cachet

This is an awful time to explore career options in terrorism—perhaps the worst ever. Its once dreamy cachet has cratered. Choose this treacherous path and you’ll find yourself very much on the move, forever looking over your shoulder. IDF soldiers here; ICE agents there. And there’s absolutely no opportunity for advancement.

Every time a new Hamas figurehead emerges from a tunnel, Israel assassinates him. And all those student leaders on college campuses who a year ago had earned the admiration of antisemites everywhere—openly expressing their allegiance to Islamist baby-butchers while themselves shrouded in keffiyeh masks—are now having their student visas stripped and green cards shredded.

University presidents who declared it to be open season on hounding Jews under the preposterous pretense of the First Amendment, have been fired or asked to resign. (Columbia has now terminated two presidents in the same year!)

To salvage its federal funding, Columbia acceded to the Trump administration’s demands that it ban keffiyeh masks, increase law enforcement to prohibit violent protests and protect Jewish students, and place its antisemitic Middle East, South Asian and African Studies departments in receivership. Astoundingly—even by the arrogant standards of the Ivy League—Columbia’s president hosted a call with faculty and reassured them that she wasn’t planning on honoring any of those commitments.

Bye, bye.

Columbia students and faculty remain unrepentant. Many were out chanting for the Iran-backed Houthis, who the United States is now, finally, bombarding for supporting Hamas and attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea. Outside the gates of Columbia, you’ll hear: “Yemen, Yemen make us proud, turn another ship around!”

The Title VI Damocles sword is finally crashing down on Columbia. Other schools are set to follow. The Civil Rights Act is clear: Jewish students who identify Israel as their place of national origin are protected from discrimination. Somehow these “elite” universities didn’t realize that calling for the destruction of Israel and the death of Jews is patently discriminatory. Creating such an atmosphere, and allowing institutional support for terror, places federal funding in jeopardy.

The Title VI Damocles sword is finally crashing down on Columbia. Other schools are set to follow. The Civil Rights Act is clear: Jewish students who identify Israel as their place of national origin are protected from discrimination.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that Jews can’t curb their insatiable capacity for diminished self-respect. Nearly 650 professors signed a letter that condemned the government’s decision to withhold $400 million from Columbia. A true act of self-esteem would demand that Columbia forfeit the additional $900 million in federal funds it is earmarked to receive.

Columbia, after all, is sitting on a $15 billion endowment. If it can’t resist hating Jews, then it can afford to do it on its own dime. Such is the price of becoming a cesspool of antisemitism.

Meanwhile, Islamists slumming as faculty who owe their appointments to successfully brainwashing students and spreading lies about Israel will now have to find more suitable establishments to ply their trades.

I hear ISIS is hiring.

Yale Law School terminated a “scholar” affiliated with a terrorist group sanctioned as a “sham charity.”

Two “professors” from Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies were instructed to pack up their Hamas propaganda and join up with some other Jew-hating caravan. It never occurred to anyone that a department ostensibly dedicated to understanding the Middle East might offer at least one pro-Zionist course—or at least have a kind word to say about Israel.

Harvard’s faculty charged that the university had ceded authority to “bullies and bad-faith actors committed to silencing speech with which they disagree.”

Seriously? The only actual bullies on campuses are those screaming into the faces of Jewish students to “Go Back to Poland!” At Harvard, pro-Hamas throngs jostled a Jewish student. The library during finals week was crowded with students holding banners attacking Israel. They were all given extra credit and will graduate magna.

The only “silenced” speech was that granting Israel the right to defend itself against medieval barbarians.

According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, more than 300 students have had their visas revoked on account of their Hamas leanings and campus-upheaval activities.

A Tufts graduate student was arrested and is being detained in the same facility where sits the former Columbia graduate student whose green card was rescinded. A Georgetown student is also facing deportation, alleged to have been “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.” His wife’s father, apparently, is an advisor to Hamas.

Naturally, Georgetown ignored the national security concerns at work here. They conjured the falsehood that these deportations were “depriving rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate.”

Since when did any of these pro-Hamas encampments invite anyone to a civilized “debate”?

Rubio summed up the issue perfectly. “We let them in our country to study. They didn’t say, ‘I want to go to university, and I want to vandalize your library, and I want to chase Jewish students down the street, and I want to wear a mask over my face like if it’s Halloween and terrorize people.’ We didn’t give them a visa to do any of that.”

The lowest point for terrorism arrived this week when, astoundingly, Gazans protested Hamas! Hundreds assembled in two cities to chant: “Hamas out! Hamas is terrorism!” and “We want to live freely.”

The lowest point for terrorism arrived this week when, astoundingly, Gazans protested Hamas! Hundreds assembled in two cities to chant: “Hamas out! Hamas is terrorism!” and “We want to live freely.”

All throughout the 18-month war, polling had Gazans solidly supporting Hamas and thrilled over what happened to Israel on October 7.

Some of that support has apparently eroded. I would not go so far as to suggest that Gazans have licked their addiction to terrorism and apocalyptic hatred of Jews. We may never see the day when Palestinians discover a more life-affirming hobby. But at least some have grown sick of Hamas.

Lastly, from the grotesque carnage of October 7 to the Magical World of Disney. A much anticipated remake of “Snow White” produced a different kind of bomb this week—empty theaters everywhere, the worst kind of fizzled fireworks in Hollywood.

In a bit of casting against type, Wonder Woman and former IDF combat instructor Gal Gadot plays the Evil Queen. But the real miscasting involved Snow White. There was controversy surrounding Rachel Zegler. Some purists believed the part should not have gone to a Latina.

They were right: she was miscast, but not because of her ethnicity. A 20-year-old antisemite is anathema to Snow White; Jew-hating is unbecoming of any sleeping beauty. In the aftermath of October 7, Zeger repeatedly posted, “always remember, free palestine [sic].”

The movie gods have been known to impose their own morality. When Zegler gazed into that Magic Mirror, she instantly discovered she wasn’t, in fact, the fairest of them all.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself,” and his forthcoming book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”