Karen already provided some of the details about the sickening pro-Hamas protest over the weekend at Yale where a female, Hasidic Jewish student who was reporting on the event for the campus newspaper was stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag and taken to the hospital. Unfortunately, there is even more to the story and none of it is good. First of all, as the Free Beacon reported in a deeper dive into the story, the location of the protest wasn’t just any random spot on Yale’s campus. They were on the site of a World War II memorial honoring Yale students who fought and died in the war. The protesters apparently don’t grasp the irony of calling for the destruction of Israel and attacking a Jewish student on a site dedicated to those who fought to defeat the Nazis. Also, the “demands” of the rioters were rather ridiculous. They are calling on Yale to stop funding Israel, but only a tiny fraction of the school’s massive endowment goes to military contractors who are only tangentially involved in Israeli military activity.
Pro-Palestinian protesters at Yale University this weekend occupied a World War II memorial, tore down an American flag that flew there, and sent a Jewish student to the hospital as administrators stood by and refused to break up the protest, which violated several university rules.
The protest on Beinecke Plaza—a quad in the center of campus dedicated to Yale students who fought in WWII—focused on the university’s investments in military contractors and included graduate students participating in a “hunger strike,” now in its second week.
The investments comprise a tiny share of Yale’s $40.7 billion endowment: The school holds just $21,000 worth of stock in military contractors.
The protesters tore down and burned an American flag at the memorial. None of this had been authorized and the group could have been immediately ejected from the quad, but school administrators stood by and did nothing. When a Jewish student asked campus police officers why they weren’t intervening, they were told that the police were “waiting for the administration [to give] them the green light to disperse the protest.” Assuming the officer was giving an honest response – and there is little reason to suspect that he wasn’t – then it was the Yale administrators who allowed all of this to happen. When campus officials were asked about it by reporters, they declined to say whether or not that had given authorization for the protest to be dispersed.
There was a least some relief on the way, though it was too late for the Jewish student who was injured. The New York Post is reporting that police in riot gear stormed the site of the protest this morning and began arresting people.
Police clad in riot gear swarmed Yale University’s Connecticut campus early Monday and started arresting students who had been staging an anti-Israel protest encampment there for several days.
Footage posted online showed cops arriving at the Ivy League school and blocking off entrances to a plaza at the New Haven campus, where roughly 200 protesters had been gathered.
Cops started warning protesters they risked being arrested if they didn’t clear out, the Yale Daily News reported.
It’s being reported that “scores” of people were handcuffed and arrested, but an exact figure wasn’t immediately provided. There were still hundreds of them there this morning, however. One of the pro-Hamas rioters took to Twitter to complain about the treatment they were receiving. Here’s some video from the encounter.
BREAKING: Police have flooded the encampment and given the warning, banging tents as they entered.
Students have locked arms around the flagpole, signaling their willingness to be arrested.
The crowd, several of whom are in tears, have begun singing “We shall not be moved.” pic.twitter.com/gyHXCXnbDZ
— Thomas Birmingham (@thomasbirm) April 22, 2024
It’s good to see some action being taken at long last, but this assault is now entering its fourth day. There are clearly some non-students mixed in with the protesters, but a lot of these young people are Yale students. Shouldn’t they all have classes to go to? Are their parents aware that these are the types of activities that their tuition money is going toward?
These are no longer just “protests.” First Amendment rights to free speech only go so far, as the Supreme Court has long acknowledged. When Jewish people are being stabbed and American flags are being torn down and destroyed, you’re talking about a riot. As long as the school’s administration is going to timidly stand by while hiring professors and administrators who preach antisemitism and the annihilation of Israel, this is going to continue. And it’s not just the students who are to blame.