'We've been seeing this normalization [of Hamas terrorism] going on for many years on academic campuses' said Jeffrey Lax, a CUNY professor
Professor says Palestinian activism dead as we know it
City University of New York professor Jeffrey Lax says the anti-Semitism behind pro-Palestinian activism on campus was revealed after Hamas' atrocities in Southern Israel.
A Jewish professor says pro-Palestinian activists' sympathies with terrorism have been ongoing at American colleges generally – such as when students chant for violent uprisings — but were avoided by administrators with no interest in tackling the problem or who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
"They really have pulled back the veil on what this is all about," said Professor Jeffery Lax from City University of New York. Lax explained he believed terror sympathies on college campuses were a massive problem that has been festering for years, but it wasn't taken seriously until now.
Israel formally declared war on Hamas Sunday after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launched a pogrom-style terrorist campaign against Israeli civilians, killing children, burning people alive, raping women, parading dead bodies through the streets, mowing down families and kidnapping little kids.
At least 27 American citizens have been killed, an unknown number are in Hamas captivity and others remain unaccounted for. Between 100 and 150 children, women and men are believed to have been taken hostage by Hamas.
A salvo of rockets is fired by Palestinian terrorists from Gaza as an Israeli missile launched from the Iron Dome defense missile system attempts to intercept the rockets, fired from the Gaza Strip, over the city of Netivot in southern Israel on October 8, 2023. (MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)
Jewish students at American universities told Fox News Digital that they're "stunned" by pro-Hamas sentiment on their campus amid the terrorist group's war against Israel. Harvard student groups were criticized by the institution after students signed onto a statement blaming Israel as "entirely responsible for all unfolding violence."
Professor Lax said he was not taken by surprise by the response from some pro-Palestinian activists.
"We've been seeing this normalization [of Hamas terrorism] going on for many years on academic campuses. And we see what happens in academia a couple of years before society sees it, but eventually it gets to society," Lax said. "Now you're seeing the effort of their work for all these years trying to normalize terrorism."
"I think the phony narrative radical Palestinian groups put forward about policy [with Israel] being the issue [is] being exposed. I do think the world is seeing it. And we have to educate and make sure that that message gets really hammered into the conscious consciousness of people, because that's the only way that true change will happen on campuses and in the world," he added.
Lax believes that universities, generally, have not cracked down on the anti-Semitism issues because "the problem is that today the highest levels of the universities are systemically anti-Semitic."
HARVARD STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS CLAIM ISRAEL 'ENTIRELY RESPONSIBLE' FOR GAZA ATTACKS
On the left is a Hamas terrorist in Gaza City, on the right is a pro-Palestinian activist in New York City. (FOX News Digital | Getty)
"And not only will give weak statements, they actually will say things at times in support of these [pro-Palestinian] rallies. And these rallies are literally inciting not just violence, but the most horrific kinds of violence," Lax said.
Examples of terror sympathies include, according to Lax, when students chant "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" – considered to be a Hamas cry for genocide against Jews in Israel – and when they chant for an "intifada" – which refers to a terrorist campaign that claimed thousands of civilian lives in bombing attacks in the early 2000s in Israel.
Lax's institution, CUNY, has been criticized and threatened with defunding over what critics have said is inertia at tackling an anti-Semitism problem. Students for Justice in Palestine chapters have chanted for "intifada" on its campuses, in many cases causing Jewish students to feel unsafe.
LIVE UPDATES: ISRAEL AT WAR WITH HAMAS
Pro-Palestinian activist lauds Hamas for taking hostages, according to video footage from Brendan Gutenschwager. (Twitter/screenshot-Brendan Gutenschwager)
Most recently, CUNY Law's commencement speaker spoke out in defense of the "Palestinian political prisoners like HLF (the Holy Land Foundation) in U.S. prisons." HLF was a Texas-based charity shut down by the Department of Justice after it uncovered a $12-million dollar terror-financing scheme to Hamas, a designated terror group.
"I hate to use the words silver lining when we're seeing such atrocities being committed. But I do think there is one sliver of a silver lining here, and that is that I think we are witnessing before our eyes the death of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement."
BDS is a pro-Palestinian movement claiming that it supports social justice and peace in the Middle East. It calls for the West to bring economic warfare against Israel to pressure it into pro-Palestinian aims. However, critics say the movement is anti-Semitic with the sole aim of delegitimizing Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
Jeffrey Lax is a professor at City University of New York. (FOX News Digital )
"If you go on social media now, you're seeing BDS activists and people of their ilk defending the rapes of Israeli women, defending those women being dragged with blood streaming down their legs in the streets…, and babies being kidnaped and… beheaded. They're defending that," Lax said.
"And what they're saying [to Israel] is, ‘Well, you know, you have this coming,'" he added. "And so they're really drawing back the curtain on what their belief system is, because for all these years, they've been saying our only problem is with the government policy of Israel. We have no problem with Jews, we're not anti-Semites, we have no problem with the people of Israel."
Lax continued, "That's not what's happening today all across the world in rallies and on social media, you're seeing swastikas by BDS movement people, and you're seeing defense of the most horrific atrocities committed against Jewish people since the Holocaust. And that is really revealing because what they're really telling the world is we don't really have a problem with the government policy. We have a problem with Jews being around. We want Jews out."
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Hannah Grossman is a Reporter at Fox News Digital.
