Their True Colors

The Palestinian flag symbolizes anti-Americanism as well as antisemitism

UNC-Chapel Hill: They tore down Old Glory to hoist this symbol of fascism

---

During their “occupation” of the campus of Columbia University, “anti-Zionists” demonstrators expressed their solidarity with the Palestinian cause by tearing down the flag that flew over a memorial to those Columbia graduates who gave their lives in service to country during World War II. Much the same thing happened at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where protesters tore down the American flag flying over the quad, replacing it with the Palestinian flag while chanting “From the River to the Sea” and “Free Palestine.”

At Columbia, administrators stood by and did nothing while the American flag was desecrated. But at UNC, Interim Chancellor Lee Roberts took immediate action. With an escort of campus police officers, he rushed to the quad, struck the Palestinian rag and rehoisted the Stars & Stripes. Thereupon, the pro-Palestinian mob attacked the cops, who had to use pepper spray to disperse them.

The ugly incidents are a reminder that “anti-Zionism” is anti-American as well as antisemitic.

Just as the Iranian ayatollahs fulminate over the Great Satan (America) and the Little Satan (Israel), the American Left associates America with the oppression, war crimes and genocide alleged to be perpetrated by Israel. The Jewish state’s guilt is America’s guilt. Thus “Death to America” complements “Death to Israel” in the catalog of anti-Zionist chants.

There’s nothing new here. Back in the Sixties the New Left reviled “fascist Amerikka” and fantasized about a revolution that would destroy our constitutional democracy, replacing it with some kind of people’s republic. The sins embodied in American history—slavery, racism, genocide, imperialism—were held to be unique historical crimes, hard-wired into the country’s political, social and economic systems. And this grand vision of American evil blinded people on the Left to the realities of history—which is, in Gibbon’s lapidary summation, “little more than the register of the sins, follies and misfortunes of mankind.”

These notions gradually infected the Democratic Party, which more and more embraced such propositions as America’s primary responsibility for the Cold War. After Vietnam, the Cold War liberal Democratic hawk became an endangered species, eventually to fade out. During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the general consensus of the Democratic Party was that he, not the leadership of the USSR, represented the primary danger to world peace.

But it’s among the groves of academe that anti-Americanism has put down the deepest roots. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that hatred of America (and of the West generally) is the foundation stone of postmodern discourse. A profound ignorance of history and a ludicrous romanticization of non-Western cultures combine to fashion an alternate reality of binaries: black and white, light and dark, good and evil. In this world next door to reality, Donald Trump and his supporters are fascists, but pro-Palestinian protesters screaming for the destruction of Israel are peace activists.

It might be argued that the anti-Zionist campus insurrectionists are unrepresentative of the broad Left. That won’t do, however. The broad Left, including the Democratic Party, manifestly tolerates its extremists. The Democratic Party itself includes people like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib who openly espouse anti-American and antisemitic narratives. The President of the United States can scarcely move his mouth to criticize what’s happening on campuses across the country.

Representative Omar’s antisemitism has tended to obscure her equally egregious anti-Americanism—for instance, equating the United States (and Israel) with Hamas and the Taliban. And when called out over remarks like this, she whines and cries that her critics are racists. Her various denunciations of American evil are so numerous that one is left to wonder why—but we know why she won’t go back to her native country, Somalia. It’s because there she’d be a nobody, an unperson, mere chattel. Only here in America, the country that gave her refuge and opportunity, is she a whole person.

But instead of expressing gratitude towards her adopted country, Omar repays America with insults and contempt. And let us not forget that she’s a founding member of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Squad, a cabal of congressional progressives who fully share Omar’s dislike of America.

Of course, just as there was an element of fantasy in the ideology of the New Left, the anti-Zionism/anti-Americanism of the postmodern Left is based largely on magical thinking. The outcome of its jihad against the two countries won’t be a radiant future free of settler-colonialism in Palestine or the end global American “hegemony.” On the contrary, there’s likely to be a sharp turn to the right in both countries now that the Palestinians and their Western supporters have unfurled their true colors.

That, no doubt, goes some distance to explain why Donald Trump, with all his baggage, remains competitive in this year’s presidential election. I’m no expert on Israeli politics, but I do know that decent people in America don’t like seeing a symbol of fascism like the Palestinian flag being hoisted over a memorial honoring men who gave their lives to eradicate the scourge of fascism.