A Modest Proposal – Students for Palestine Edition
** This is the third in a recurring series, in which I offer some modest proposals – in the venerable tradition of Jonathan Swift – for American and international politics. **
For the past several weeks, pro-Palestine protests have been roiling American college campuses. These have been appearing on and off for the six-plus months of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, but they have reached an apex of annoyance since early April. Protests have hit institutes of higher education in nearly all states, from public universities like UT Austin and the University of Colorado at Boulder to elite private colleges like Princeton, NYU, and, most infamously, Columbia. These demonstrations blur the lines between students and outside agitators, as both sets cover their faces with keffiyehs, shout the same antisemitic slogans, and jointly engage in illegal acts.
The newest strategy for these petulant children involves creating pseudo-permanent encampments on university quads, taking them over with demands for a self-imposed Israeli defeat in Gaza and a full divestment of their specific colleges from Israel-related companies, among other more banal requests like making classes Pass/Fail for protesters. They’ve occupied university buildings – creatively renaming them, including as “Intifada Hall” – accosted Jewish students, invited famously antisemitic speakers like Linda Sarsour, and, I kid you not, praised totalitarian states like North Korea that have nothing whatsoever to do with the issue. All of this falls under the organized movement calling itself the Popular University for Gaza. These demonstrations have disrupted university life during finals season (really choice timing there, guys), but most professors seem perfectly fine with that. Some even have gone so far as to either allow these truant students to receive good grades simply for protesting or to participate in the protests themselves – including attacking cops and learning the hard way what that brings in response.
The encampments that have taken over large swathes of private property on university campuses are well-funded and organized by the pro-Palestine (read: anti-Israel) NGO-industrial complex, receiving donations from well-heeled progressive factions across the country. You didn’t think that all of these “spontaneous” encampments were filled by the exact same model of tent purely by coincidence, did you? As time has gone on, these viral protests have become increasingly belligerent, antisemitic, and violent. Pro-Israel counterprotesters have been assaulted, Jewish students have been told to stay home for their safety and join class remotely, and Israel-friendly professors have been barred from campus. Protest leaders have called for the death of “Zionists” (read: Jews), the flags of international terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah have been proudly flown, and Israelis have been told to “go back to Poland” to their “real homes.”
In response, university administrators have had their feet held to the fire by donors, alumni, and even Congress. Some legislators have proposed bills making particular antisemitic speech a target of investigation and potential suppression, while various state governments have brought in the National Guard to break up these illicit encampments. Colleges with some semblance of a spine have suspended or expelled protest leaders. But none of this solves the problem. In fact, such responses play right into the oppression narrative favored by the leftist student demonstrators and their Marxist professorial backers.
Instead, I present here a modest proposal that could end these ridiculous protests once and for all, while providing a better outlet for the veritable flood of NGO money that has allowed them to flourish. I call it Reverse Birthright.
If you have some familiarity with Israel or the Jewish community in the United States, you’ve likely heard of Birthright, which is a free 10-day tour of Israel given to diaspora Jews who wish to learn more about the nation, its history, and their common heritage. It has been incredibly successful in building cultural relationships spanning the globe and connecting Jews and Israelis across time and space. I propose we do the same with these students and professors, but with Gaza instead of Israel.
Each participant in these encampment protests – the Popular University for Gaza – will qualify for a free, one-way, permanent trip to the place they so strongly support: Gaza. There, they will be able to live out their Intifada dreams by serving the Gazan government, namely Hamas. They can deliver the massive stockpiles of humanitarian aid that Israel has allowed into Gaza, but that NGOs have failed to distribute. The need is immense, as these demonstrators constantly tell us, so who else would be better at alleviating this crisis than those who take every waking moment to scream about it? They will work to dig up Palestinian-created mass graves, parading the bodies of the deceased for the international press and blaming their deaths on Israeli war crimes. Another important activity for these newcomers will be to use their social media savvy to film hostage videos and boost their presence on TikTok, thus (checks notes) gaining a ceasefire. Their accommodations will have all the familiarity of home, as they’ll be living in the same tents that they are illicitly putting on university property today. What could be better than that?
They can create a real version of the Popular University for Gaza, replacing so many of the educational institutions (read: Hamas military depots) that have been destroyed in this war. They will be able to build their university with international aid dollars, the supplies being sent via the Biden administration’s Gaza pier, and repurposed concrete from destroyed Hamas tunnels. Of course, no Gazan university would be complete without rocket emplacements, underground prison cells for hostages, and a big ole UNRWA label slapped on the roof. The professors that have suborned these encampments won’t be left behind, however. They’ll be relieved of their jobs at the oppressive American fascist universities they so despise and will instead be given tenure-track positions at the Popular University campus. Naturally, they will all have to be card-carrying members of Hamas, but most already are, so that’s no real hurdle. At this new university, they can teach Queer Theory, Intersectional Feminism, Marxist Organizing, and Solidarity 101, while the local professors will provide instruction in Advanced Antisemitism, Holocaust Denial (taught by the visiting professor Mahmoud Abbas), Terror Tactics, and Bomb-Making. It really is a match made in heaven.
For fun, the Popular University for Gaza will field several recreational and intramural sports teams, including Quidditch[1], lacrosse, competitive arson, and grenade long-toss. Other university-sponsored activities will include paragliding lessons, keffiyeh-sewing, marksmanship, torture practice, and the ever-popular deceptive video editing. Pallywood needs a new generation of stars, and the students of the Popular University will provide. There will be a plethora of officially-sanctioned student clubs, which will inculcate key Gazan values and ideas into the student body. The Gazan Health Authority Math Club is probably the most highly-subscribed, as it requires very little math and rewards creativity in counting. Another trendy group that focuses on STEM learning – critical to career success in this day and age – is the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Rocketry Club. In its nightly sessions, students will learn how to improperly calculate launch trajectories, build rockets based on instructions written in Farsi, and even set off their own experiments! This also allows for a great tie-in with the aforementioned Math Club, where participants can work together to blame Israel for failed Gazan rockets and exaggerate casualty counts.
As part of this Reverse Birthright, all student loan debt for these demonstrators will be fully forgiven by the United States government. That is, in exchange for their passports and American citizenship. For these students, that should be an incredibly favorable trade. They already hate America and they constantly decry the oppressive loans that nobody forced them to take out. I call that a win-win. Free of the burdens of student loans and US citizenship, these men, women, and they/thems can finally flourish and build the Edenic utopia they envision. There may be some very minor problems reconciling their vision with that of Hamas, but I’m sure they’ll work it out. They are elite university students who did Model UN in high school, after all. If anyone can succeed at this diplomatic task, it’s them. As for the donors, what better way for George Soros, Reid Hoffman, the Pritzker family, and the rest of the progressive dark money blob (in the Pritzker case, literally) to spend their billions than on idealistic young people solving the true problems of humanity, like how to get those damned Jews out of the Middle East.
I look forward to seeing this amazing project come to fruition. I know that the students here on American campuses would just die for the opportunity to build a better tomorrow in Gaza. In fact, it’s my hope that Reverse Birthright will help them achieve that lofty goal. It’s the least I can do.
[1] Under a different name, of course, because of that dirty transphobe JK Rowling.