Hate in America: Our universities have been incubators for years

Where did the hate come from?

From the angry mob on the streets of New York over the weekend rang chants of “Kill the Jews.”

Thousands chanted “Death to Israel ” earlier this month outside the White House while attempting to bust down the fence.

“Glory to the martyrs” was projected on the side of buildings at George Washington University. The martyrs, of course, are the Hamas killers, whose goal, as stated explicitly in their charter, is a religious obligation to kill every Jew.

Most Americans like me are in shock. American Jews are in fear for their lives, like the students at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York who had to barricade themselves in a building with an angry pro-Hamas mob pounding on the door, chanting for their death.

How did we not see the hate that is now worldwide but especially prevalent on U.S. college campuses?

Aren’t college students supposed to be for human rights, minority rights and tolerance?

Not for the Jews. Antisemitic incidents are up 400% since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Many of these are on college campuses.

After watching dozens of movies and reading books about World War II, the Holocaust, and Hitler’s despicable attempt to exterminate the Jews, killing more than 6 million of them and 4 million other “undesirables,” it has become fashionable to advocate his position and pick up where he left off.

Many have wondered how something like the methodical killing of an entire race of people could have happened. How could people at that time look the other way while Jews were slaughtered?

Now we know.

We have allowed the hate that drove the massacre of millions to infiltrate our universities and our streets. Young people have been indoctrinated with lies about the Jewish people, the Palestinian territory, and the right of Israel to exist.

This horrific hate we are witnessing in the streets has seeped in through academia while we looked the other way; young people led by pro-Palestinian professors, terrorist sympathizers, and Holocaust deniers on the internet have come to believe that Jews are to be despised and destroyed.

Remember, Hitler blamed Jews for everything — for capitalism, which he despised, and he claimed that communism was a Jewish conspiracy. Despite that contradiction, he spread the notion that Jews were looking for world domination, were manipulating markets, and were controlling the media.

And he targeted the universities first to spread these lies. In 1933, the new Nazi regime swept into German universities and manipulated the system to further their ideals, those of hating the Jews and cleansing the race.

Hitler’s chief propagandist for these lies was Joseph Goebbels, the minister of public enlightenment and propaganda.

The Nazis also exploited Arab hostility toward the British and French imperial forces and widely disseminated propaganda in order to stir up radical Muslim attitudes toward the Allies. In the lead-up to World War II, Hitler met with the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin Al-Husseini, whose hatred of Jews was well known. The Nazi propaganda machine fused traditional Islamic anti-Jewish beliefs with conspiratorial imagery of “world Jewry” and a claim that the Jews were waging a war against Islam.

After the war, Nazism was not criticized in the Muslim world as it was in Europe and the U.S. Prominent Nazis continued their propaganda activities in Arab countries, and the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948 brought anger and angst to the region.

This antisemitic mindset apparently never left the halls of academia. In the U.S. today, racists are now running the universities, implementing diversity, equity and inclusion programs that have reinforced hate not based on inclusion but on anti-colonialism. These DEI officers blame Whites for colonizing the Americas, and they blame Israel for claiming the tiny territory that is now Israel in the Middle East.

A Heritage Foundation study of DEI officers published in 2021 found that 96% of them posted negative messages about Israel on social media, most frequently referencing “apartheid.” A tweet by a Multicultural Student Center staff person declared, “Condemn the Apartheid State of Israel for their Human Rights Violations against the Palestinian peoples.” Other frequently used words are “colonial,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.”

Does that sound like diversity and inclusion?

Another DEI officer stated: “Every Israeli bomb and bullet used against Palestinians and paid for by USA dollars has been consummated by the blood and soil of American Indians. From the river to the sea and from sea to shining sea, we shall be free.”

Young people are being trained to hate America and hate Israel for things that happened centuries ago.

I have no doubt these same pro-Hamas sympathizers would have praised al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. They would have blamed the U.S. for the violence inflicted on America just as they blame Israel for the Oct. 7 massacre.

It makes a mother’s heart sick. But where are the parents? How did we raise a generation of haters?

Students for Justice in Palestine foments this hatred on college campuses and rallies ignorant people who likely don’t even know what “apartheid” and “genocide” mean. The DEI officers are the new Joseph Goebbels, leading the propaganda.

Certainly, young people have not been properly educated in history or religion. They don’t know the struggle between Arabs and Jews has been going on for millenniums, and they certainly have no respect for life.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” means the total annihilation of Israel and its inhabitants. It’s a racist jihad chant. “Death to Israel , death to America” means they are coming for us next.

There are 55 Muslim- or Arab-controlled countries, and only one Jewish state. Where is the equity?

We didn’t see it coming, but we should have. Universities have been indoctrination centers for years.

It’s time for parents to think long and hard before sending their children off to these incubators of hate. It’s time for parents to tell their children the truth and not buy into hate.

• Penny Nance is CEO and president of Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization.