By Bruce S. Ticker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
“At no time were they yelling that they wanted to kill people,” says Carlos Nieves, an assistant commissioner in the NYPD in October 2023.
From Australian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah: “Armed struggle is a moral and legal right of the colonized and the brutalized.”
So goes the unchecked influence of distorted language that routinely accompanies anti-Israel protests.
At the Cooper Union college in New York City, pro-Arab demonstrators may have said nothing about killing people, but who would put it past them after they banged on the door of a library where Jewish students studied and screamed “Free Palestine!”?
The statement from Abdel-Fattah, who was disinvited from the Adelaide Writers’ Week, is difficult to translate. It could be that she was bolstering Israel’s response in Gaza after Arab terrorists invaded southern Israel, which qualifies as colonizing, and brutalizing Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. They murdered 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 250 others.
Nieves’ bluster that nobody yelled “they wanted to kill people” was highlighted when Cooper Union settled a lawsuit brought by Jewish students. They were trapped inside a college library in October 2023. The students’ lawyers announced the settlement on Jan. 8 of this year.
Cooper Union, a prominent art, architecture and engineering school in Manhattan, is formally known as the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.
The New York Times reports on a videotape depicting demonstrators banging on the closed door of the library, chanting “Free Palestine” while Jewish students inside watched nervously. The demonstration, which appears to be more like a riot, prompted repeated calls to the police.
The Times article then states, “It turned out that the police had been monitoring the protest the whole time and later said that there had been no cause to intervene. No one was assaulted or injured in the protest.” That prompted Nieves to declare, “At no time were they yelling out that they wanted to kill people.”
That is the standard for breaking up a group of thugs terrorizing students striving to do their classwork? At the very least, they disrupted students engaged in their studies. Police should have broken it up immediately.
Were police afraid? They remind me of the police officer in Texas who was prosecuted for refusing to rush into a school to stop a gunman. Except the Texas officer could have been killed. It is doubtful that the New York police would have run that risk. The demonstrators, though they were morons, were probably not dumb enough to take on the police for long. Maybe they would have engaged just long enough to accuse the cops of police brutality. For some unexplained reason, the police refused to do their jobs. Someone must have ordered them to stand down while the Jewish students were being threatened with harm.
That reflects a pattern whenever these Israel-bashing goons start trouble. Police have not acted quickly enough, and they have not prosecuted to the max, if at all. Forceful enforcement of the law is the only way to deter these lawbreakers.
Down Under, the board sponsoring the Adelaide Writers’ Week canceled the appearance of Randa Abdel-Fattah, a lawyer, academic and writer who leaves behind a trail of accusations distorting Israeli actions.
The Times reports that the board was influenced by the massacre of 15 people at the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration as the board stated it would “not be culturally sensitive” to have her speak “so soon.” This decision triggered a boycott of 180 of the 240 writers scheduled to appear on grounds that it set a perilous precedent of curtailing free speech and freedom of expression.
The boycott was followed by a shakeup of the board and then cancellation of the writers’ week itself. On Thursday, executive director Julian Hobba announced that the organization has apologized to Abdel-Fattah and invited her to Writers’ Week 2027, according to a J-Wire article.
Judging by Abdel-Fattah’s past comments, she never should have been invited in the first place. By all means, the Arab perspective should be presented so long as it is factual and intended to improve conditions. On the day after the Oct. 7 massacre, she posted an image on Facebook depicting a paraglider silhouetted against a Palestinian flag, signifying the paragliders that Hamas employed during the attack.
She dubbed the image as a symbol of Palestinian resistance. She overtly supported war crimes.
So, what does that say about her aforementioned comment? “Armed struggle is a moral and legal right of the colonized and the brutalized.” How could Hamas’ murders on Oct. 7 be anything but brutal? What could their mass attack on southern Israel be if not colonialization? Who would have the right to armed struggle if not Israel?
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Bruce S. Ticker is a Philadelphia-based columnist