Israel at War - Campus Protests in Iowa
By Justine Hemmestad
While protests and counter protests over the war in Gaza have been taking place on college campuses across the country, they have also been occurring on Iowa’s college campuses.
On Wednesday, May 1, more than 100 Iowa State University students joined local community members at the Parks Library on campus to call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.
(What students don’t understand, my friend Major Itamar Ben David tells me, is that “cease fire” for Israel really means the complete crushing/annihilation of Israel.)
Governor Reynolds chimes in by promising that she will not permit the unlawfulness that has happened in other parts of the country to happen in Iowa. “As long as they abide by the laws and do it peacefully, then great,” Reynolds said. “But if it crosses that line, we will be ready.”
Reynolds says that Columbia University allowed “things to go way too far.” She believes those students should not be allowed to participate in graduation as a result.
“They’re putting students at risk,” she says.
The risk exists in more ways than one, Ben David tells me, for the violence seeded within the rhetoric itself will reverberate for generations to come.
Reynolds continues to say, “In Iowa, if you break the law or violate university policy, you should be expelled, banned, and/or prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Rep. Carter Nordman, R-Panora, said in a facebook post. “These unlawful pro-Hamas acts occurring around the country are unacceptable and should be met with immediate consequences.”
University of Iowa Campus Safety Chief of Staff and Public Information Officer Hayley Bruce said in an email that Campus Safety, “has protocols in place,” but would not share details of procedures for safety reasons.
“The primary goal of law enforcement during demonstrations is to protect free speech while ensuring the safety of both demonstrators and the community,” Bruce said.
In response to the protest in Ames, Iowa State issued the following statement: "Iowa State University supports the First Amendment rights of students to peacefully protest on campus. The university’s demonstration safety team serves as a resource for students and members of the ISU community to plan a safe event."
Free speech is a cornerstone of America - we wouldn’t have a country without it, and Americans love the ability to protest…starting with dumping all the tea into Boston Harbor.
The point must be made, however, that the founding fathers fully understood what they were protesting about. They lived through British oppression. Martin Luther King Jr. knew what he was protesting about in the 1950s and 60s; he knew the future good that would come of his peaceful protest.
President Biden even says that the campus protesters are, “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians,” and he calls them “anti-semetic.”
Though these protests are “directed to Jews and Zionism,” without consideration for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, Ben David says, those for whom the protesters are protesting will not stop with Jews (and the terrorists will use relief/charity money for Gaza in order to carry out their attacks).
Even if the protests are peaceful, the rhetoric is covertly genocidal and anti-Western. Therefore, he says, the rhetoric is even more harmful than the actual violence.
Gad Saad, a professor at Cornell University whose English podcast has over 300,000 subscribers and whose soft Lebanese dialect of Arabic is music to Ben David’s ears (Ben David speaks Arabic, as well), is stunningly accurate when he says that first jihadists start with the Saturday people (Jews), then they’ll move on to the Sunday people (Westerners, regardless of baptism or belief in Christianity).
The concept is called “Fath Al-Rum,” or conquest of Rome, meaning conquest of the Christian areas (aka the West).
Saad, also an author of numerous books, says the protesters on college campuses, as compared to the true protesters of freedom, “are performative.” Their message lacks the depth of true freedom fighters, Saad says, and he speaks of “costly signaling theory,” in regard to the stance they take. The protests, he says, are “non-productive agitation.”
The bottom line, and the most terrifying thing about the protests, is the deception perpetrated by Hamas in order to garner sympathy, like a serial killer who waits on the side of the road, portraying himself as someone in need of help, coaxing his next victim to come near. This isn’t understood.
“Those who are apathetic,” Ben David assures, “will be targeted next.”
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