From the River to the Sea

By Martin H. Levinson

There’s lots of anger being aimed at students protesting on behalf of Gazans who are suffering because Israel is trying to destroy Hamas—FYI the H is for humanitarian, the A for altruistic, the M for magnanimous, the S for self-sacrificing. While it’s true that the torment was caused by Hamas, which invaded Israel on October 7 and slaughtered, dismembered, raped, burned, and kidnapped more than 1200 Israelis (250 of whom were sent to Gaza to view a system of intricate, well-built tunnels financed by diverted Western aid), that’s not the major point. The fact is, Hamas had a reason for its attack, a rationale encapsulated in the expression “from the river to the sea.”—this locution has a nice ring to it and, even if those who are doing the ringing don’t know the names and locations of the bodies of water they are shouting about, it is well worth saying.

LGBTQ student protestors have exhibited a particular generosity in supporting Hamas, a group that has no problem killing, maiming, and torturing lesbians and gays. Women protestors are similarly munificent in backing a cohort composed of people who have zero compunction in performing honor killings. The commitment to Hamas by LGBTQ and female protestors has been kindly and benevolent, although admittedly puzzling to people with intact cerebrums who have trouble understanding why anyone would give succor to folks who want to murder them.

Some in the country are worried about the antisemitism, exemplified by Columbia student Khymani James saying, “Kill the Zionists,” and swastikas put on dorm room doors, being generated by the student protests. But their concerns are overblown. The members of Hamas are Semitic—a term that denotes people who speak Semitic languages, like Hebrew or Arabic. If anything, the protestors are philosemitic, their preference being dark-skinned Semites who speak Arabic.

There have been critics of the student protests who have mocked what they claim are entitled know-nothing protestors who couldn’t find Gaza on a map. They label the protestors as “useful idiots” who are making common cause with genocidal Islamists who want to see Israel wiped out. Well, boo to them. Useful idiots have had their place in history and calling people names is a microaggression that needs to be outed and punished in no uncertain terms . . . provided it doesn’t lead to an argument or make the other person defensive.

To those who say students have a right to protest but not to destroy property or prevent others from going about their business on college campuses the answer is this: destroying property is a way to guarantee a protest will get covered by the press and shown on TV, and nothing should be happening on college campuses until Israel agrees to the conditions specified in the Hamas charter, namely that Israel becomes extinct “from the river to the sea.”

Rather than finding fault with kids wearing masks and keffiyehs, living in tent encampments, and asking people for “humanitarian aid” in the form of bringing the youngsters food and water because they can’t take the time to stroll over to the school cafeteria to get it for themselves, we should praise the colleges they attend. These institutions of higher learning, in lieu of teaching critical thinking skills and promoting intellectual curiosity about what is happening in the world, have determined that it’s better to allow young people to float along on a sea of righteousness and good intentions, screaming all the way.

God bless the USA, where student protestors are free, to glorify Hamas atrocities, which they all seem to agree, were a just and righteous spree, from the river to the sea, the actuality, is throughout the land of milk and honey, no live Israelis.