The Cornell University’s Student Assembly recently voted, by 19 to 2, to condemn the university administration for permitting a former Member of Knesset to speak on campus.
Who do you suppose was the speaker to whom the students angrily objected? A representative of one of Israel’s right-of-center parties? Someone who supports building Jewish communiities in Judea and Samaria and making more concessions to the Palestinian Authority?
Hardly. The target of the Cornell students’ ire was none other than Tzipi Livni, former leader of the left-of-center opposition in the Knesset.
If ever there was an Israeli politician who you would expect American college students to embrace, it would be Livni.
She’s a fervent supporter of creating a Palestinian Arab state, and over the past decade has been one of the harshest critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Livni has said, “History won't forgive Netanyahu for the damage he is doing to Israel." She has accused Netanyahu of “humiliating the Palestinians." She has even gone so far as to claim that Netanyahu was bringing about “the demise of the Jewish state."
The Cornell students who denounced Livni pointed to the fact that she was Israel’s foreign minister during Operation Cast Lead, a military action against Hamas terrorists in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.
It’s worth recalling that the prime minister who ordered the beginning of Cast Lead was Ehud Olmert and the defense minister who implemented it was Ehud Barak-two more of Netanyahu’s most vehement critics on the left.
That fact is a reminder that there has always been a broad right-to-left consensus in Israel on the need to take action against the Hamas terrorists, even before October 7. Israelis may have their differences, but not when it comes to national self-defense and survival.
Media pundits and critics of Israel often claim that the college campus attacks on Israel are merely disagreements with the policies of Prime Minister Netanyahu, not opposition to Israel itself.
The Cornell students’ denunciation of Tzipi Livni, Netanyahu’s arch-critic, suggests otherwise.
Editor's note: Perhaps the human rights advocates to which the above commentary alludes should take a closer look at last week's events in the Palestinian Authority-governed areas, on which Dr. Medoff commented in the following Facebook post:
Four Palestinian Arab women in the town of Beit Awwa were killed by an Iranian missile on March 18.
Here’s what a news article in the New York Times reported: “Israelis often have access to fortified bomb shelters, either in their homes or in nearby public buildings. But Palestinians in the 'West Bank' have almost no recourse in the face of falling missiles, making them exceptionally vulnerable."
The Times forgot to mention that Beit Awwa has been governed by the Palestinian Authority (PA), not Israel, since 1995. So are the other towns in those territories where 96% of the Palestinian Arabs reside. Cornell University's well-educated students would never make the mistake made by the Times.
The PA has had more than thirty years during which it was the recipient of billions in foreign aid that could have been used to build bomb shelters in Beit Awwa and the other towns that it governs. Why hasn’t it built them?
During those thirty-plus years, the PA allocated a significant portion of its annual budget to paying salaries to imprisoned terrorist murderers and stipends to the families of dead terrorists. Those payments now amount to more than $300-million each year.
How much would it have cost the PA to build bomb shelters in Beit Awwa?
Dr. Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and the author of more than 20 books about Jewish history, Zionism, and the Holocaust. Follow him on Facebook to read his daily commentaries on the news.