Breaking the promises that Americans once honored
By Larry Kobrovsky
We are currently witnessing the sad reality of our once most prestigious universities have turning into hotbeds of Jew-hatred and anti-Americanism filled with violent, aggressive thugs shouting, “Death to America,” “Death to Israel,” “Zionists Must Die” as well as spitting at and attacking Jewish students. Anyone identifiably Jewish is surrounded, stalked and threatened with violence.
When violent protesters threatened and bullied black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas and the local authorities sympathized with those protesters, but President Eisenhower called in the National Guard to ensure the safety of the black students.
We now find ourselves at a similar moment in time: states with Republican governors have cleared out the hatemongers in Georgia and Texas. States where the authorities sympathize with the protestors, like in New York, (Columbia and NYU), Massachusetts (Harvard) and Connecticut (Yale) do nothing.
How did we ever get here? From our very origins as a country, America has been a safe haven for the Jewish people like none other in the history of the Jewish diaspora. George Washington set the standard and tone for this — in his 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation of New Port, Rhode Island President Washington wrote the following stirring words which I have memorized and often took solace in:
“For happily the government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance . . . May the children of the stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other inhabitants — while everyone should sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there should be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths.”
For the first time in American history, those of the stock of Abraham — including me — are seeing that promise in jeopardy and at risk. For the students at these universities, it is akin to what Jewish students encountered when the Nazis came to power in Germany and thugs in brown shirts enjoyed similar immunity from sympathizers in positions of authority. Today’s Nazi-like sympathizers are the professors and administrators where these protests are now taking place.
The rot that is our higher education system has been exposed. What were once esteemed institutions of higher learning and sources of pride are now places where our children are taught to hate America. If the local authorities cannot or will not do what is necessary to provide order and safety, President Biden needs to send in the National Guard.
We should take seriously those who shout things like “Death to America” and pledge support to Hamas. Take them at their word and treat them like domestic terrorists. The Biden administration has had no trouble or hesitancy labeling parents who showed up at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists,” yet has been silent on the actual terrorists who call for America’s downfall and pledge their support to Hamas, a death cult whose charter calls for the death of Jews everywhere and the destruction of America. I hope that saner minds will prevail and I pray that this outbreak of antisemitism and hatred of America is an aberration and not the new norm.
Larry Kobrovsky is a member of Charleston County Council; he and his wife live in Mt. Pleasant.
