“Divestment is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself…to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”
Those statements comprised the beginning and the end of an entry placed on the social media platform Telegram. The authors were the National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Before the group deleted the message, The Jerusalem Post preserved a “screenshot” of the complete message, which it published in September 2024.
Presumably, SJP intended the language for its supporters. Regardless, it is provocative. The phrase “eradicate America” can only mean one thing. Given the campus agitation last spring, ignoring the threat would be reckless.
Of course, it is one thing to make a threat and another to carry out. The first only involves the ability to speak; the second requires power. Assessing the threat, therefore, requires taking a long look at the SJP.
Self-Definition
What does the SJP say about itself? Their website’s “About” page clearly states its attitudes, goals and strategies.
“Building on the legacy and impact of previous student movements on occupied Turtle Island (so-called US and Canada), National Students for Justice in Palestine (National SJP) seeks to empower, unify, and support the Student Movement for Palestinian liberation. We promote an agenda grounded in freedom, solidarity, equality, safety, and historical justice, and we seek to elevate the student movement to a higher level of political engagement. We aim to develop a connected, disciplined movement equipped with the tools necessary to contribute to the fight for Palestinian liberation.”
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The language in that rather wordy paragraph is significant. It requires “unpacking.”
Perhaps the first item of contention is the most complex-“the legacy and impact of previous student movements.” SJP casts its gaze back to an era before its members’ births: the student protests of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The scope of that violence is worth remembering.
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Historian, journalist and podcaster Eli Lake recalled that time in a recent podcast titled “When Students Become Terrorists.” First, he tied those sixty-year-old events to the modern movement. Mr. Lake then played the recorded voice of Bernadine Dohrn, a leader of the radical “Weathermen” organization, active between 1969 and 1974. “We are not just attacking targets. We are bringing a pitiful, helpless giant to its knees.”
Such language evoked, according to Mr. Lake, “America’s worst nightmare.” Then, he points out another striking parallel with modern radicals. “The Weathermen’s leaders did not rise from poverty or want. Most came from good families and attended the best schools…. They were celebrity student leaders in the 1960s, disgusted with the Vietnam War…. In their eyes, this great crime made America irredeemable…. America needed a second revolution, by any means necessary.”
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From Jail to Academia
Some of the radicals of that generation did jail time but were released when the storm appeared to have subsided. Then, they took shelter in America’s universities. Bernadine Dohrn became a law professor at Northwestern. Her lover, Bill Ayres, taught at the education school at the University of Chicago. The government jailed Angela Davis for over a year, but that didn’t prevent an appointment as a “distinguished professor” at the University of California, Santa Cruz. After serving twenty-three years in prison, Kathy Boudin became an adjunct professor at Columbia. These “professors” and their admiring leftist colleagues link the radicals of the “Vietnam Era” and those now protesting about Palestine.
The curious reference to “Turtle Island” is worthy of brief mention. According to leftist lore, it was an Indian reference to the North American Continent. Radicals use the term because it allows them to assert their sympathy with “aboriginals,” “First Nations” or “Native Americans”-whatever the term of the day is.
The following sentence voices the SJP’s desire to “empower, unify, and support the Student Movement for Palestinian liberation.” At first blush, that sentence sounds strident. On examination, it becomes absurd. An Internet search for “Student Movement for Palestine Liberation” revealed that the first entry was “National Students for Justice in Palestine.” All the sentence says is that they support themselves.
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Then the SJP hangs out their leftist laundry list-“freedom, solidarity, equality, safety, and historical justice.” Presumably, they are showing solidarity with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. The Koran-inspired “sharia law” hardly promises freedom, equality or safety to its unfortunate adherents.
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The SJP’s statement also describes itself as “a connected, disciplined movement.” To whom are they connected, other than to other radicals? Where is the discipline required to make ideas into a set of achievements? Last spring’s display at Columbia attracted attention because the news media wanted something to discuss. The “students” pitched their identical tents, lit candles, chanted for the cameras, and played with spray paint. Their only real achievement was to turn Columbia’s greenspace into a garbage-strewn landscape.
The final phrase in that paragraph contains two words that-like many of the other phrases in SJP’s self-justification-everybody throws around, but no one stops to define “Palestinian liberation.”
Creating a New Nationality
What is a Palestinian? Any quest to find a definitive answer is doomed to frustration. Most of the available definitions boil down to the simple idea that a Palestinian is someone from Palestine. Another question immediately arises: what is Palestine? Until the early twentieth century, the term was primarily historical, loosely describing a section of the Ottoman Empire. It was a loose geographic area without definite borders, much like “the Riviera,” “the Great Plains” or “the steppes.” Indeed, there was never a nation called Palestine or a people referred to as Palestinians.
The first modern use of the word Palestine appears to stem from the fall of the Ottomans at the end of World War I (1918). At that point, control of the area passed to the British under the title “British Mandate of Palestine.”
According to figures compiled on a Google Books “Ngram,” the word “Palestinians” was rarely used prior to 1920 and didn’t enter popular usage until the latter half of the sixties. So, while there certainly were people dwelling in the area throughout history, any reference to “Palestinians” living there for thousands of years is a mode
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Rescuing the Language-And the Culture
To some, such a discussion over the definition of a single word and when it came into use may appear tedious and uninteresting. Such assumptions would be mistaken. Language is a tool that the radicals know how to use. Often, conservatives unthinkingly acknowledge the revolutionary usages as genuine. Tying the leftists down on the rhetoric they throw about is crucial.
The Palestinian movement is a modern political creation. Treating it as something that has deep historical significance gives the radicals power that they do not deserve. Experience shows they are willing to use that power whenever it suits their purposes.
When those purposes include a desire “to undermine and eradicate America as we know it,” they must be stopped.
Photo Credit: © Erman Gunes- stock.adobe.com