Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Wednesday that protests at US universities against Israel's war in Gaza are “terrible” and need to stop, using public comments his first statement on the subject to chastise the student protesters and portray them as protesters.
Netanyahu's comments could increase divisions in the protests. They could also provide ammunition to Republican leaders, who have criticized protesters and accused university administrators and Democrats of failing to protect Jewish students from being attacked.
“What is happening in American universities is terrible,” Netanyahu said. “Anti-Semitic mobs have taken over top universities. They call for Israel's destruction. They attacked Jewish students. They attacked Jewish lecturers.”
It was not possible to solicit immediate feedback from students, who were not organized into a single group.
A relatively small number of students have been staging protests for months at universities in different parts of the country to protest Israel's war on Gaza, which began after Hamas took the lead. an attack on Israel on October 7 left about 1,200 people dead and a further 200 more held hostage. Since then, authorities in Gaza say more than 34,000 people have died in Israeli airstrikes and fighting, the majority of them women and children.
The protesters' main policy demand is for the US government to stop sending military aid to Israel. Some students have also called out universities stop investing into arms manufacturers and sell, or divest, holdings in funds and businesses that they say profited from Israel's invasion of Gaza and occupation of Palestinian lands .
Organizers of many of the campus protest groups leading demonstrations across the country have said they denounce violence and anti-Semitism. But some protesters used anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slurs as well as other threatening language, and some Jewish students said they felt unsafe. Some protesters also expressed sympathy for Hamas, which controlled Gaza before the war and vowed to destroy Israel.
Protests have erupted in recent days at some of the most prominent academic institutions in the country, including Columbia, Yale, Cornell and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Police have responded, in some cases by making hundreds of arrests.
One impact has been to force university leaders to grapple with how much to permit protests, which are widely protected as free speech, as some protesters have used anti-Semitic language. Some students and Jewish leaders also said they considered the protests anti-Semitic or promoting anti-Semitism.
In portraying anti-war protesters as dissidents, Netanyahu is siding with some Republican leaders who have harshly criticized university leaders and the Biden administration for doing so. too little to suppress the protests.
Last month, Netanyahu spoke to Senate Republicans via video link during a closed-door lunch meeting and criticized the Democratic majority leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York. York. Mr. Schumer, a Jew, said in a speech in the Senate that Mr. Netanyahu was an obstacle to peace in the Middle East and called for a new election to replace him.
On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a conservative Republican, Visit Columbia University in New York, where one of the most prominent student protests took place. Mr. Johnson said President Biden should take action, including possibly sending in the National Guard, to quell protests in Columbia, which he claimed had become violent and anti-Semitic.
The protests are becoming a political headache for President Biden, because the student protesters, and other left-wing Democrats sympathetic to them, are important constituencies in his hopes. his re-election hopes in November.
By portraying the protests in such clear moral terms, the Israeli leader could strengthen Biden's political bond.
Netanyahu appeared to equate protests against his government's prosecution of the war in Gaza with hatred of Jews. He said protests at American universities were “reminiscent of what happened at German universities in the 1930s,” an apparent reference to pro-Nazi student groups over ideological side, according to him. Encyclopedia of genocideworked with the security forces to carry out Hitler's agenda.
“It's unconscionable,” he said. “It must be stopped.”
Soon after coming to power in 1933, the Nazis passed a law that led to the dismissal of many Jewish university teachers and encouraged student groups to boldly deploy the army. violence and threats against Jewish faculty and students.
