“A Cornell University professor was caught on camera telling students Hamas’ terror attack on Israel — which has left more than 1,400 dead — was ‘exhilarating’ and ‘energizing,'” reports the New York Post:
The remarks were made at a pro-Palestine protest by Russell Rickford, an associate professor of history…The professor said the coordinated Oct. 7 attack, in which militants broke through concrete walls and paraglided into Israel to indiscriminately murder civilians “shifted the balance of politics and punctured the illusion of invincibility” of Israel, which has imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip since terrorist group Hamas seized power there in 2007.
“That’s what they’ve done. You don’t have to be a Hamas supporter to recognize it,” he said…“It was exhilarating. It was exhilarating, it was energizing. And if they weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, the shifting of the violence of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated,” Russell said to a smattering of approval from students, the video showed.
The crowd then chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a common rallying call for pro-Palestinian advocates to eradicate Israel and establish their own state. The phrase is deemed antisemeitc by the American Jewish Committee.
A diversity and inclusion director at Cornell University supported the Hamas terror attack, writing that Hamas was “fighting for life, dignity, and freedom…against settler colonization, imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, which the United States is the model.”
At Stanford, an instructor told Jewish students to stand in a corner and lectured them that “Israel is a colonizer” after the Hamas terror attacks.
A Jewish student was “beaten with a stick outside the Columbia library after he confronted a woman tearing down posters of kidnapped Israelis.” He suffered a broken finger.
Universities that routinely speak out against microaggressions, Supreme Court decisions, Republican legislation, and things like students wearing sombreros to Halloween parties could not bring themselves to condemn either the Hamas terror attacks that killed at least 1400 people, or campus protests that explicitly praised the terror attacks. One university claimed it must remain neutral about “geopolitical issues and news events.” Such universities have often taken sides on political issues, such as climate change policy, and spoken out about news events, such as the death of George Floyd.
Northwestern University, which publicly criticized the Supreme Court for ruling against race-based college admissions, refused to “make an institutional statement” about the terror attacks by Hamas that killed relatives of some of its students and staff.
Hamas seized many civilians, including small children, as hostages. The seizure of these hostages came after the Biden administration agreed to pay a $6 billion ransom to Iran in exchange for the release of five American hostages. Hamas admits Iran gave it weapons it used in its attack on Israel. The Biden administration released millions of dollars to the Hamas-controlled government of the Gaza strip.
