Netanyahu savages ‘antisemitic’ US unis
TEL AVIV: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Wednesday that protests at US universities against Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip were “horrific” and should be stopped, using his first public comments on the subject to castigate the student demonstrators and portray them as antisemitic.
Mr Netanyahu’s comments could harden division over the demonstrations. They could also give ammunition to Republican leaders who have criticised the protesters and accused university administrators and Democrats of failing to protect Jewish students from attack.
“What’s happening i n America’s college campuses is horrific,” Mr Netanyahu said. “Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty.”
It was not immediately possible to solicit a response from the students, who are not organised into a single group.
In portraying the anti-war protesters as antisemites, Mr Netanyahu is aligning himself with some Republican leaders, who have sharply criticised university leaders and the Biden administration for doing too little to crack down on the protests.
Last month, Mr Netanyahu spoke to Senate Republicans via a video link during a closed lunch meeting and criticised the Democratic majority leader, Sen Chuck Schumer of New York. Sen Schumer, who is a Jew, had said in a speech on the Senate floor that Mr Netanyahu was an impediment to peace in the Middle East and called for a new election to replace him.
The demonstrations are becoming a political headache for Mr Biden because the student protesters and other left-leaning Democrats who sympathise with them are important constituencies in his hopes for reelection in November.
By portraying the protests in such stark moral terms, the Israeli leader could reinforce Mr Biden’s political bind.
Mr Netanyahu appeared to equate protests against his government’s prosecution of the war in Gaza with hatred of Jews. He said the protests on American campuses were “reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s”, an apparent reference to ideologically militant pro-Nazi student groups that, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, worked with the security forces to carry through Adolf Hitler’s agenda.
“It’s unconscionable,” he said. “It has to 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 emboldened student groups to deploy violence and intimidation against Jewish faculty members and students.