WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

 So who is behind the kill-the-Jews campus protests that, as Steve noted earlier today, have panicked Congressional Democrats who fear a political debacle as in 1968? Consistent with the retro nature of the protests, the organizers appear to be largely left-wing retreads, with a financial assist, it is reported, from one or more Soros entities.

Take, for example, Charlotte Kates. Kates has been prominent in the Columbia protests:

Radical anti-Israel activists told Columbia students, “There is nothing wrong with being a fighter in Hamas” — weeks before the campus exploded in pro-Palestinian protests.

In a two-hour tirade to the hardest core of anti-Israeli activists at Columbia and its sister college, Barnard, Charlotte Kates, international coordinator of Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, said, “These [Hamas] are the people who are on the front lines defending Palestine and fighting for its liberation.”

Kates gets around. Most recently she was in Vancouver, where she praised Gaza’s October 7 massacres:

Charlotte Kates, the international coordinator for the allegedly Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-affiliated (PFLP) Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, led demonstrators in a chant proclaiming “Long live October 7.”

“We stand with the Palestinian resistance and their heroic brave action on October 7,” Kates said in her speech on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

A normal person will wonder, how can any human being be so awful? The answer: Kates is a long-time Communist:

Charlotte Kates:

* Communist
* Organizer for New Jersey Solidarity and Al-Awda
* Co-chair of National Lawyers Guild’s Middle East Subcommittee

The National Lawyers Guild is a Communist front organization that dates at least to the 1950s. Scott has had a run-in or two with them.

* Former leader of Rutgers University’s Palestine Solidarity Movement
* Believes that Israel has no right to exist
* Says that Israeli children are “legitimate” targets for Palestinian suicide bombers
* Considers the U.S. to be a racist, imperialistic nation

Which is the real point, of course. Those who profess hatred for Israel usually are using Israel as a proxy for their hatred of the United States. There is much more at the link, but I will highlight a couple of items in Kates’s resume:

She depicts the U.S. as an oppressor nation with an insatiable lust for world dominance. In one fiery speech, she condemned Israel and the United States jointly:

Our troops are Hezbollah. Our troops are the Palestinian resistance. And we do support our troops and we will struggle and we will build our resistance here until all of Palestine is free, until not one more cent of our money goes to fund genocide, until not one more U.S. bomber or U.S. soldier stands in Iraqi streets and stands in Afghan streets.

Calling the Guantanamo Bay detention center “a prison camp for the international political prisoners of the U.S.,” Kates asserts that “political imprisonment is nothing new here [in America]. There are many political prisoners, from Mumia Abu-Jamal and other veterans of the Black Liberation Movement to the Puerto Rican Liberation Movement and other struggles for social justice.”

On domestic policy, Kates wrote in 2007:

Millions of people in the United States have no health care, and costs of education have been skyrocketing increasingly out of reach for many. Youth of color in U.S. cities are put on a fast track to criminalization, targeted by often-brutal police and introduced at a young age to the world’s largest prison system. Women’s rights are increasingly under attack, while … immigrants … have been targeted for severe repression…. [T]he right to dissent is under attack, as the [Bush] administration seeks ever-increasing authority to spy on citizens … [and] attempts to sell its bankrupt policies to the people of the United States through scare tactics, racist manipulation, and repression.

This is depressingly familiar, because we have been hearing Communist drivel for a long time. The point is that the people behind the current kill-the-Jews rallies are old-timers. Charlotte Kates is just one instance, but there are many more. The current war with Israel, started by Gaza, is just one in a long series of opportunities to undermine American freedom and security, in the interest of Communism–or, if you doubt that they seriously think that a Communist takeover of the U.S. is a realistic possibility, out of sheer malice.

Saul Alinsky said it best: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/04/who-are-these-people.php