Columbia U. Profs Sign Letter Calling Hamas Attack a ‘Military Action,’ Defending Students Who Supported it
“if every political avenue available to Palestinians is blocked, we should not be surprised when resistance and violence break out”
The response to the Hamas terror attacks on Israel at Columbia University has been so awful that a professor has spoken out and a billionaire donor is pulling his support.
Now, to make matters worse, some professors have signed a letter calling the attacks a ‘military action’ and defending the students who have shown support for Hamas.
The Algemeiner reports:
Columbia University Professors Claim Hamas Massacre Can Be Seen as ‘Military Action’
A letter signed by over 75 professors at Columbia University in New York City defended the claim that the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 can be viewed as a “military action” that must be put “within the larger context of the occupation of Palestine by Israel.”
The new letter, titled “Grave Concerns About the Well-Being of Our Students,” sought to defend an earlier statement from students that said “if every political avenue available to Palestinians is blocked, we should not be surprised when resistance and violence break out.”
The letter expressed concern that pro-Palestinian students at Columbia have been “viciously targeted with doxing, public shaming, surveillance by members of our community, including other students, and reprisals from employers.”
“In our view, the student statement aims to recontextualize the events of Oct. 7, 2023, pointing out that military operations and state violence did not begin that day, but rather it represented a military response by a people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years,” the professors’ statement continued. “One could regard the events of Oct. 7 as just one salvo in an ongoing war between an occupying state and the people it occupies, or as an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation.”
The statement also appeared to defend the students’ calls for Columbia to cancel all academic partnerships with Israeli institutions and the false description of Israel as an “apartheid state.”
Just stunning.
Being an intellectual is no guarantee for being smart or moral. German universities between 1933 and 1945 were full of Nazi professors. @Columbia doesn’t seem to be particularly different…. https://t.co/VDyBcGWXgM
— Emmanuel Nahshon (@EmmanuelNahshon) October 30, 2023
For the 9,000,003rd time https://t.co/36TJS0RaFQ pic.twitter.com/C4Irnq4b8D
— William A. Jacobson (@wajacobson) October 29, 2023
At the same time, Jewish students at the school are speaking out.
ABC 7 in New York reports:
Jewish students say Columbia isn’t doing enough to keep them safe amid Israel-Hamas war
Local and national leaders are stepping up efforts to address reports of antisemitic incidents on college campuses in the wake of the war overseas between Israel and Hamas.
That includes an incident at Cornell University where police are investigating a series of threats posted online over the weekend…
Meanwhile, at Columbia University, Jewish students and advocates are condemning what they call a failure by the university to support students facing antisemitism.
Jewish and Israeli students expressed the fear and antisemitism they’re feeling on campus and they say the Columbia administration has emboldened hate by not condemning Hamas for the terrorist attack of Israeli civilians on October 7.
“We got to this point because the Columbia administration, by their inaction, has enabled antisemitic rhetoric to spread and fester on the Columbia campus and throughout the university,” said Columbia law student Eli Shmidman.
The situation at some of our top schools seems to be getting worse.
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Comments
If that’s a military action, then it’s a war crime. They slaughtered civilians, among other atrocities!
Quite correct. I am all for going down the road these midwits want to travel. If Hamas is the duly elected government of Gaza and they attacked a sovereign nation like Israel then its an act of war which gives Israel the right to not only defend itself but fight them to the end or surrender. Pretty clear cut to me. Oh, and all of Gaza’s terrorist fighters that participated in the slaughter during the attack committed war crimes and should be brought before The Hague. Lastly, they were the designated army of Gaza as we are told endlessly by the left. If that is so, they attacked out of uniform disguised as civilians and committed war crimes. This means they can be shot on sight and I hope they are.
Bingo.
I’d say they didn’t think this through.
The Hague??
For what? The Hague is nothing.
We do not suffer under any sort of “global government” – thank G-d – and no one should ever wish such a thing on us.
There is no such thing as a war crime. When someone commits an act like this against you you retaliate – in-kind and worse – so that everyone thinks twice about trying something like that against you in the future. There is no global law or global police force or court. There is only reaction and deterrence.
The only thing I would support bringing to The Hague would be a MOAB. And it would make a nice set if it included one for Brussels and one for the UN and one for Davos, all at the same time.
If that was a military action would it also be a military action if Columbia professors are attacked and burned alive in their apartments?
When all avenues are blocked this “action” can be expected?? Maybe we on the right should keep that in mind for later. These profs are some filthy people.
All avenues aren’t blocked. The Muslims could execute the Hamas butchers, accept Israel and work on improving the lives of their citizens. The problem is that Islam demands that Muslims rule over Jews.
The only good news is that we now have a list of 75 Hamas sympathisers who, under effective administration, maybe shown the door out of Columbia and out of country if appropriate.
All should be unemployable, who wants this kind of filth in their workplace?
Even worse is them being around your youth.
Does the Columbia U. hiring committee require that faculty applicants have a swastika tattoo as a condition of employment, or is it just informally recommended?
“For the nine millionth time, academia is completely broken, it has been taken over by radicals more extreme than you can imagine, it cannot be reformed internally.”
Yes, and this is the case not only with college campuses, but is the direction our nation as a whole is headed.
Is a new Joseph McCarthy on the horizon? We sure as hell need one, maybe more than one.
Hamas terrorists attacked with the express target being civilians. But if, as leftists insist, this was a “military action,” then the leftist filth should stop wailing about Gaza civilians, because Israel’s express target is Hamas murderers and rapists (any civilian deaths being collateral damage caused by Hamas using them as human shields).
Hmmm, I think me and my money (tuition) would be gone. Well, at least we now know who stands where and people can rethink this whole Ivy League thing.
Ivy League degrees are devaluing faster than the dollar.
At the risk of being repetitive, read Niall Ferguson’s commentary at “The Daily Mail.”
It was referenced at “Quick Takes,” but deserves more attention.
As to professors, they are sure dumber than in days past, on many levels, including knowing what is right and wrong.
As a rule, these are mediocre people with mediocre minds
They have no business in academia , let alone “elite” academia.
They know it, too. Just like you and I knew it when we found ourselves in a course over our heads.
But they cannot acknowledge this reality.
And so they come up with these ludicrous ideas.
Face it: If they were sitting at the end of the bar at the corner neighborhood hangout … no one would pay any attention to them.
—- —- —-
It’s no different than playground pickup basketball. It’s not that the black kids don’t want to play with the white kids because the white kids are white. it’s that the black kids know that the white kids are generally not as athletic and thus the white kids cannot usually keep up with the black kids unless they grab or trip or hip-check ……. and the black kids don’t want to get injured.
It’s exactly the same in todays academia, and everyone knows it.
They won’t say it
But everyone knows it
Affirmative rot in the system went beyond black. There are a lot of completely useless departments and majors, they have pushed up the cost of lower ed. beyond reason.
Terror attacks are tactics of war. No doubt about that. They call for reprisals in kind – and worse – to add in the punishment necessary to deter future such attacks.
War is not a moral event. There is no such thing as a “war crime”. War is war. Israel would be justified – and absolutely correct and right – to simply lay waste to Gaza. That’s how we fought WWII when we realized the viciousness and aggressiveness and violence and depravity of our enemies. Savages need to be put down until they unconditionally surrender (and are then reorganized to civilization) or are done away with.
I really hate these silly moral arguments about Hamas and the gaza palestinians. IT is not a moral issue, it’s an issue of survival. This is war. Israel is justified to do what is necessary to insure its survival and its future, and that involves defending itself the same way America defended ourself and our interests in WWII.
As to the dirtbag Columbisa professors – they are just looking to justify Hamas attacking Israel. They are trying to take advantage of the silly moral argument to back hamas but all they are really about is rooting for hamas to destroy Israel, no matter what tactics are used. And if hamas can’t accomplish that they are pretty sure that Iran will be able to once it gets its nuke. I think we all know that Iran will be quick to destroy Israel once it has the ability, which is why Iran will need to have control of the oil and gas fields taken from it, eventually. That will be the only way to stop Iran from throwing the whole world into a fatal cataclysm. Iran must be defanged – not sanctioned, not shunned … but actually defanged and neutered.
That’s not entirely true about war crimes and war in general. There are rules to war as laid out by the Geneva convention. They aren’t always followed but punishment can and should follow suit.
Hamas is guilty of many war crimes if they want to call this a war (see diver’s post above). If they want to call it what it is (terrorism), then they have even less protections. Either way, they are guilty.
This is how you beat them at their own game. You point out that THEIR definition paints Hamas as just as guilty.
The Geneva Conventions (especially the 4th) are a complete joke. THey are not law. They are nothing. They are public retardation. Right after the most successful war ever fought in human history, with the most beneficial outcome possible, the 4th Geneva Conventions claimed that pretty much every successful tactic of that war would be “illegal” in the future. It was like a college kid who gets dead drunk and has the worst hangover the next morning declaring that he’ll never drink again. It was not serious … and no one of any substance takes any of the geneva conventions idiocy seriously.
War is, by definition, the abrogation of all “law”. In war, the winners are all heroes and the losers are all “criminals”. But it is only the winning and losing that determines that, not any laughable claims about there being “laws of war”. The winner gets to decide what to do with the losers, at their whim, and they don’t need to justify their actions to anyone but themselves.
There is no such thing as “international law” and that is good because there should not be any such thing as a global government (which would have to exist to formulate and enforce “international law”.
You are a dolt
Beheading babies isn’t a war crime? Raping a women, dragging her naked thru the street and torturing isn’t a war crime? I guess the Nazis didn’t commit war crimes whe they tried to exterminate the Jews.
Wars are fought on multiple fronts. On the PR and public opinion front, the words “war crime”, “Geneva convention”, and “international law” do matter.
The world has a civilized and uncivilized side and you don’t abandon one front just so you can pretend that your worldview is absolute. That’s a good way to win battles and lose wars.
The most important rule of war is to win. We have all seen Muslim brutality, that is what they understand and what they have coming. Time to bring back Napalm. They burned babies, children and adults alive after rape and torture.
Tell that to all the people who’ve been hanged for them over the past 150 years or so.
How many of the victors of these wars were hanged for these “war crimes”? Probably damn few to none.
Otto Skorzeny was let off the hook by the testimony of a British soldier who, like Skorzeny, operated behind enemy lines in an enemy uniform. The allies would have been happy to hang Skorzeny, but for the other man’s testimony, demonstrating that if the act was a “war crime,” the allies were guilty of the same “crimes.” (Skorzeny was probably lucky that back then people were still ashamed to be accused of hypocrisy.)
Lesson to be learned: If you want to avoid being charged with war crimes, win.
How many victors have hanged their own men for war crimes? It’s happened. The only instances that come to my mind right now are from the Boer War, but I’m sure it’s happened since too. Of course nowadays they don’t hang anyone for anything any more, because it’s racist or something.
Brilliant, Milhouse …. as usual.
What is this government body that legislates war crimes? Who enforces these alleged laws – found in some international book of war crimes, I guess …? What is the judiciary that adjudicates these fanciful “international war crimes”? The international criminal court? Are you advocating for global government? You are … but are you aware that you are?
There are no “Laws of War”. You’d have to be a moron to believe something so stupid. The winners do whatever they want to the losers. Is that too difficult of a concept for you to understand?
BTW, since you are so enthralled with the idea of war crimes, tell me what your opinion is of the tactics that America and the allies used in WWII? Are you one of the retards who likes to claim that nuking Japan was a war crime? Or maybe that we firebombed 60+ wooden cities of Japan?? Do you think that American generals and the President and the Congress should have all been handed over to some asinine international UN kangaroo court for having won WWII?? LOL. You probably do think so.
Sometimes you are just too stupid for words. People like you make the world dangerous for civilization.
War crimes are defined by international treaties, such as the Geneva Conventions, or by a country’s domestic laws. They’re enforced by any court that can, including military tribunals, either of the criminal’s own army or those of the army that has captured him.
LOL.
So, you’re saying that they’re just made-up figments of the imaginations of holier-than-thou virtue signalers. Yeah … that’s about right. The winner is allowed to carry out any punishment against the loser he wants. The loser is, by definition, a “criminal”, since he tried to kill the winner.
I notice how you studiously ignored my direct question to you about American tactics in WWII. Even Gen. Curtis Lemay said that he and the staff would be considered war criminals if the US lost the war. So, do you think that America committed war crimes in our successful prosecution of WWII? Or do you think that incinerating whole cities is a perfectly fine and just act of war?
This is not a tough question. Not for anyone with any sense and perspective, that is. Not for anyone who actually understands what war is. Hint: War is not a game between armies.
The one war crime I know the US did was handing Russian POWs liberated from the Germans back to the USSR.
Incinerating cities can be a war crime, but not necessarily. It depends on what the goal is, and how important it is. Doing it just because, out of revenge for what the enemy did, is a war crime. But arguments that that’s what Dresden was about are just that: arguments. The allies insisted at the time and still say that it was a legitimate raid on a military target that was important enough to justify the collateral damage
Milhouse has made the correct observation about prosecuting war crimes. Presumably the Geneva Conventions were defined by agreement when calmer heads prevail in time of relative peace, looking back at war experiences. There is also a presumption that in wars, if one side is out of line and committing war crimes in a gross manner, other “civilized” countries will be offended enough that they will ally against the “criminal” country. Thus the unstated assumption that the victors will be the civilized ones. This has worked out pretty well in the last few hundred years.
You are a dolt. But I think someone said that already.
These so called professors are engaged in rationalizing a pogrom
Further, Israel needs to take land from Gaza at the end of this war and annex it and never let it even enter any negotiations to be given back to anyone. Israel’s major mistake in the past was ever giving the arabs backj any land won in war. The arabs have no respect for anyone who gives back hard-won land – especially in wars that they started. Israel should have kept all land won and should have ejected the arabs to go live in the arab lands of the countries that helped back their fight and the wars.
In the end of this, Israel needs to take, at the very, very least, four or five miles into gaza and annex it to Israel. This is the only thing the arabs understand and worry about. When they start a war, arabs must lose land and never get it back. Ever. And every time that they fire any rockets out of gaza after that Israel takes more land pushing them into Egypt.
The silliness that people are espousing about not being able to take land in war is one of the most ridiculous and insane ideas any human has ever proposed. When someone starts a war they have placed all land under their control in jeopardy and should lose it. That is the risk they take by starting a war. Everyone with an IQ over 75 understands this very basic idea of natural fairness.
I think a DMZ is in order with Israel enforcing action against violators.
Attacks must result in land under control lost. Not temporarily … but gone.
Beyond the land that Israel must take and annex, all of gaza that is left has to be a DMZ. The palis cannot be allowed to have any weapons. They also cannot have airports or control of the borders or anything of the sort. They are mortal threats. They worked very, very hard to make sure that Israel can understand that they are mortal threats to Israel and they have to be treated as they are.
.Gaza should be populated with Jews who need to escape Europe and other countries.
I think the Gazans need to be removed from contact with Israel. I don’t know where they’d go, nobody in the Arab world wants them. But if they are removed, Israel should make a point of leaving Gaza utterly empty of people, to make the point that removing the Gazans was not about seizing land, but about removing a threat.
I thought Gaza had full autonomy – i.e. not occupied…
It did, that was a mistake
Whether it’s military or terrorist in nature it 100% deserves a forceful response from Israel. No other country would tolerate such barbarian acts committed on its citizens by a hostile foreign entity and neither should Israel.
This letter, and those who signed it, are providing ‘aid and comfort’ to a known terrorist organization that is an enemy of our nation, That is *TREASON* which means that everyone of them should be subject to arrest and incarceration or deportation. This is NOT a 1st Amendment issue – this is *TREASON*.
Wrong.
First of all, Hamas is not an enemy of the USA.
Second, even expressing support for an actual enemy in war time is fully protected by the first amendment, and is not treason. It can’t be treason, and the constitution says so. “Aid and comfort” in the treason clause means the same thing as “material support” in the law on Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations; expressions of support, which are protected speech, cannot constitute “aid and comfort”. That’s why Copperheads couldn’t be arrested during the Civil War, and why people who expressed support for Germany during WW2, or for the USSR during the Cold War, couldn’t be arrested either.
(WW1 was different, because Wilson ignored the constitution and a confused supreme court went along with him; hence the infamous “falsely crying fire in a theater” decision, which the court has since completely repudiated.)
Third, even were they to commit actual treason, most if not all of them are US citizens, and that can’t be revoked, so they couldn’t be deported.
So, Columbia is full of professors that are confirmed non-readers. This is no surprise. They are also grossly ignorant of what the people they support say and do.
This is the HAMAS Covenant of 1988. It’s gross, it’s nasty, it’s a pledge to engage in genocide, and this is the expurgated translation.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
And here is a compendium of translations of the sewage coming out of the mouths of the Islamists. They are still Hell-bent on genocide. Nothing has changed. They don’t want land, or peace. They want to murder everybody.
https://www.memri.org
This time around, the apologists for terrorists claimed that factual descriptions of the desecrations by HAMAS were lies, and so the Israeli government eventually released some of the raw information about the war crimes by HAMAS. Some of those stories can be found here.
It’s clear from the debriefings that the young men who committed these crimes know that they have disobeyed the Koran.
“This time around, the apologists for terrorists claimed that factual descriptions of the desecrations by HAMAS were lies…”
Initially, Hamas and its supporters around the world reveled in their deeds, with their videos and social media posts, showing quite graphically what they had done. But they appear to have seriously miscalculated the backlash from the greater portion of the world, to the point where their leaders won’t discuss what Hamas’ fighters did, and their supporters are now calling what were initially universally accepted as true accounts of Hamas’ actions “Israeli lies.” The shine on a beheaded baby wears off quickly.
If it was a military action (of a kind not allowed by the Quaran) then I assume a military counterattack by Israel is perfectly fine.
It seems like a military action to me, and also a war crime, bringing that state into disrepute and open for sanctions not to mention retaliation.
Terrorism is solo blowing up busses and weddings.
IEDs aren’t terrorism? Guerilla insurgents aren’t terrorists?
That’s a pretty narrow (and inaccurate, if meant to be exclusive) definition of terrorism you have there.
Actual violence (not fake prog violence like words) committed for political ends not officially sponsored/sanctioned by a recognized nation and/or part of a war campaign by one of these nations could be designated as terrorism.
The U.S. could see it as justification to declare war on Iran since they are sponsoring it, but Biden won’t do that.
Palestine is not now nor ever was a state. I would be tempted to argue that acts of war by Hamas and other Palestinians are therefore not military actions but acts of terrorism no matter the scale. No different than when Boko Haram commits atrocities against Nigerian citizens. What I am not certain of is whether a consensus could be reached that this means Hamas as placed themselves outside of the protection of treaties on military conduct.
75 professors?!?!
Columbia has become brainwash indoctrination..
All donors should stop giving.
Palestinians should welcome the IDF with open arms. The IDF is liberating them from Hamas just like Allied Forces liberated France on D-Day.
Precisely. If it’s in fact true — as dotard and crime boss, Biden, has stated — that the Hamas terrorist-thugs allegedly don’t represent the average Arab Muslim “Palestinian” on the streets, then, these residents of Gaza should welcome the ouster/destruction of Hamas.
Rape pillage and murder isn’t a military action
The Muslim supremacists/terrorists and their non-Muslim, useful idiot dhimmi and Dhimmi-crat enablers, appeasers and cheerleaders love to peddle the noxious and evil propaganda line, ” ‘Resistance’ isn’t terrorism.”
Jewish professors should walk out, Jewish students sue and demand a refund on their tuition. Any allies of Jews should do likewise, and donors should pull funds. Enough is enough. Time for America to stand up to these radicals. Republicans do that, time for mainstream liberals to abandon them as well, or else go down in history as complicit in this despicable hatred of Jews and Israel. No matter that some of the signers are Jews or even Israelis–every culture has its mentally ill self-haters.
I don’t know if this is even possible but maybe Jewish researchers associated with Columbia should sue to claim ownership of their intellectual property. I am certain Columbia gets the lion’s share if not all the benefits arising from this property. I honestly do not have any idea if there are any legal precedents. But am sure Columbia gets $$$$$ from such property.
Dhimmi-crats and dhimmi useful idiots, appeasers and enablers of Muslim supremacists, terrorists and Islamofascists believe that Muslims should never be held accountable for their ideological loyalties, political choices and behavior — their belligerent behavior, violence and sadism in service of the ideology of “Submission” can always be laid at the Jews’, Christians’ or Hindus’ feet. It’s always the victims’ fault, due to their alleged and contrived transgressions committed against the perennially innocent and well-meaning Muslims.
This propaganda fairy tale is as manifestly stupid as it is evil. It serves to rationalize, whitewash and excuse Islamofascism.
Thank God none of my professors from Columbia are on this list.
Seems like Columbia needs to sack a whole lot of professors for supporting terrorism, war crimes, and perhaps terrorism.
“if every political avenue available to Palestinians (wiping Israel off the map) is blocked, we should not be surprised when resistance and violence break out”
Because this is the only context in which any of these professors would support students who had signed a manifesto glorifying murder of innocents, this is going to be Exhibit A in an action against Columbia under title 6 for damages for intentional discrimination.
Being a professor or having a PhD does not mean you have any common sense. In fact, most professors are narrowly focused on one small area of their education and many have a life that is very sheltered. Like the morons in Hollywood, no one cares what they think. The old saying, “It’s one thing to be thought a fool, quite another to open your mouth and prove it”, fits these professors.