PBS Sym­pa­thizes With Pro-Hamas Camp­ing Pro­test­ers at Colum­bia: ‘Free Speech’

PBS Sympathizes With Pro-Hamas Camping Protesters at Columbia: ‘Free Speech’

Tuesday’s edi­tion of the PBS New­sHour took a deep-dive look at the anti-Jew­ish, pro-Hamas pro­test­ers camped out at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, with some “pro­test­ers” spew­ing elim­i­na­tion­ist rhetoric at Israel and telling Jew­ish stu­dents to “go back to Poland.” One girl stood in front of a group of Jew­ish counter pro­test­ers hold­ing a sign that read “Al Qassam’s next tar­gets.” (Al Qas­sam is the mil­i­tary wing of Hamas.)Yet anchor Geoff Bennett’s intro was dis­con­cert­ing­ly mild, ignor­ing all the dis­gust­ing details of the pro-Hamas demon­stra­tors, while pre­dom­i­nant­ly por­tray­ing them as vic­tims of an over-aggres­sive col­lege admin­is­tra­tion. What­ev­er actu­al goals the protests may have (divest­ment by the uni­ver­si­ties from Israel com­pa­nies, per­haps) weren’t mentioned.Bennett put the gen­uine threat to Jew­ish stu­dents in pas­sive terms, not­ing “but some stu­dents, Jew­ish stu­dents, in par­tic­u­lar, as well as some alum­ni and fac­ul­ty, say there’s too m …