Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video Wednesday blasting antisemitism on American college campuses, saying the atmosphere had become like Germany in the 1930s, and calling on leaders to do more to fight it.
Netanyahu was responding to a wave of radical anti-Israel and antisemitic protests at Columbia University and other college campuses. Columbia moved to “hybrid” online learning due to the threat to the security of Jewish students.
In a two-minute address in English, Netanyahu — who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the campuses engulfed by radical protests today — warned about the historic precedents for today’s protests.
“Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities,” Netanyahu said. “They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty. This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s.”
He called the responses of several university presidents “shameful,” adding that “more has to be done.”
He added that the protesters were not just calling for the death of Israel and the death of Jews, but for the death of America. He noted that antisemitism has often destroyed the societies that have allowed it to flourish.
Netanyahu added that the accusations made by protesters against Israel were “one big lie,” noting that this, too, was not new. “We’ve seen in history that antisemitic attacks were always preceded by vilification and slander — lies that were cast against the Jewish people that were unbelievable — yet people believe them.”
He said that all who wished to defend western civilization had to unite to stop antisemitism — on university campuses and around the world.
Funding for the protests is reportedly coming from a variety of radical sources — including, according to the UK Daily Mail, Democratic Party mega-donor George Soros. The Wall Street Journal also reported this week that the protests fit a strategy promoted by Hamas and other Iran-backed groups to undermine western support for Israeli security.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
