3 May—Has it struck anyone that the revolting college students who have shown how immature, impressionable, inflexible, and irresponsible they are in the past few weeks didn’t do a damn thing when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel last October? Were there demonstrations—let alone violent protests, occupations, and riots—critical of Hamas’s enabling Arab states or even of Hamas itself? Did any of the collegiate snots voice support of Israel?

An editorial in the 30 April Republican-American put it brilliantly: “Accusing Hamas of war crimes and atrocities is like accusing the U.S. Postal Service of delivering mail—terror is what Hamas does for a living. Taking hostages, such as the more than 100 Hamas has held since Oct. 7, is a war crime. So is hiding arsenals and command centers at hospitals. Hamas couldn’t care less.”

Were there demands in October that universities divest themselves of investments in the colluding countries? Okay, Iran is out. But nothing in U.S. law precludes American investment in Arab states. Hamas-enabler Iraq has the world’s fifth-largest crude oil reserve, for instance, from which an average of over 300,000 barrels are exported to the U.S. every day; university endowments must derive some income from that oil. Lebanon exports jewelry, fertilizer, and condiments to the U.S.; universities must derive some benefit from those products, too.

Even President Joe Biden, at the risk of alienating Jew-hating so-called progressives, asserted that while “dissent is essential for democracy, “order must prevail” and “dissent must never lead to disorder.”

“There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos,” Biden said yesterday. “People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across campus safely without fear of being attacked.”

Right on, Joe!

But then there’s El Liberalissimo’s response to 1 May’s Students forget their place:

“As surely as we depend on the earth circling the sun, we depend on young people to take the risks we avoid and to disrupt us old farts enjoying the comfortable life. That’s true for those on both sides of this dispute. As of this moment it is not clear how peaceful demonstrations turned into an assault by police while negotiations were ongoing. However, from where I sit it seems like there was no urgent rush to end the demonstrations and occupation.”

Certainly it’s possible the demonstrations started out peacefully before they became disorderly and violent, likely through the influence of motivated (professional?) agitators. But to accuse the police of fomenting the chaos and violence by assaulting demonstrators is—without supporting evidence, at any rate—nothing but a libel; from all reports, the police were merely doing their duty.

And “while negotiations were going on”? Sorry, El, but negotiations should not have been going on; negotiations were not in order. The students and other demonstrators and occupiers, having purposefully trod well beyond campus regulations and superseding laws, were in no position at all to demand negotiations or anything else. And that’s all there is to it.

Pusillanimous campus authorities who have allowed themselves to be goaded into negotiating with undisciplined, unqualified, unreasonable mobs of students have nothing to be proud of. Dialogue schmialogue.

No two ways about it: if it’s “my way or the highway” for the recalcitrant students, they should be sent home on the highway . . .