Don't negotiate with terrorists! MAUREEN CALLAHAN demands: Defund the Ivy League NOW... before this vile campus infection of violent Islamism and anti-Semitism leads to Jewish bloodshed

Defund the Ivy League.

In a disgusting, shameful, cowardly appeasement of 'pro-Palestinian' students who are pledging fidelity to Hamas and bullying, threatening, and attacking Jews on campus, university presidents — led by Columbia's Minouche Shafik — are doing nothing.

On Sunday, the day before Passover began, Columbia Rabbi Elie Buechler warned Jewish students to stay home.

'The events of the last few days… have made it clear that Columbia University's Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students' safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy,' he wrote in a WhatsApp message.

'It is not our job as Jews to ensure our own safety on campus,' he continued. 'No one should have to endure this level of hatred, let alone at school.'

Columbia's president clearly begs to differ, issuing a morally reprehensible open letter on Monday that paid tribute to the 'many views across our diverse university'.

In a disgusting, shameful, cowardly appeasement of 'pro-Palestinian' students who are pledging fidelity to Hamas and bullying, threatening, and attacking Jews on campus, university presidents are doing nothing.

On Monday, Columbia's president (Minouche Shafik) issued a morally reprehensible open letter that paid tribute to the 'many views across our diverse university'.

In giving equal weight to antisemites and her own persecuted Jewish students and faculty — in refusing to corral, punish and expel these pro-Hamas hatemongers — Shafik sends one very clear message: She doesn't care about Jews on her campus.

She doesn't care that, as student David Jonah Lederer told CNN on Tuesday morning, he and his brother had been attacked by these 'pro-Palestinian' protesters, one throwing a rock at his brother's head, no security anywhere.

Shafik should be fired immediately. She should hang her head in shame.

Columbia has a $13.64 billion endowment and around 300 Jewish students. Shafik can clearly afford to provide one-on-one security for any Jewish student or faculty member who wants one.

Billionaire donors should follow alumni Robert Kraft's lead and divest from Columbia. Board members should resign en masse. Jewish students should withdraw and demand that their tuition be refunded in full. A class action lawsuit surely awaits.

Still standing are what CNN politely calls 'Gaza solidarity camps' on the Columbia quad, where students screaming for the elimination of Israel and the birth of another Holocaust are also, per a cheerful dispatch from New York Times, 'in a rather upbeat mood, noshing on donated pizza and snacks' — organic snacks at that.

Of course. One must not skimp on proper nutrition while persecuting Jews.

'An impromptu dance party had even broken out,' the Times reported.

How wonderful! Are these protestors also fully committing to the misogyny, rape, torture, and honor killings so central to Hamas?

There's nothing like seeing privileged students of the Ivy League, young women especially, wearing keffiyehs in solidarity with a terrorist group that would throw them and their most beloved gay, non-binary, trans, agnostic, atheist friends — anyone not identifying as a fundamentalist Muslim dedicated to the death of the West — off the roof of the nearest building.

Allying themselves with a terrorist group that kills women who have been raped for bringing 'dishonor' to their families. That sells off girls as young as 6 into marriage for $2,000. That tortures, rapes and murders women who do not cover their heads.

A group that embeds itself in schools and hospitals, and uses civilians as human shields.

Yet at Columbia, 'Trans People 4 Palestine' have joined the pro-Gaza encampment, as have 'Lesbians 4 Liberation'.

How about they spend their summer vacation with their pals in Hamas? Take a little trip, see what it's really like.

In giving equal weight to antisemites and her own persecuted Jewish students and faculty - in refusing to corral, punish and expel these pro-Hamas hatemongers - Shafik sends one very clear message: She doesn't care about Jews on her campus.

At best, the 'pro-Palestinian' protestors are useful idiots of Islamism — doubtless recruited through TikTok, which recently gave birth to the Gen Z 'awakening' that Osama bin Laden had some really good points.

One would think the presidents of top universities would be despondent and outraged — if not by violent antisemitism, then by such gross, jaw-dropping stupidity, by such a deficit of critical thinking among America's ostensible best and brightest.

Then again, Columbia countenanced over 100 of its professors signing an open letter of support for students who backed Hamas' 'military action' against Israel, arguing that they merely sought to 'recontextualize the events of October 7'.

The university also did nothing in February as fliers depicting Jews as skunks — echoing Nazi propaganda during World War II — went up all over campus.

'If any other group was depicted as animals,' assistant Columbia professor Shai Davidai wrote on X, 'the school would have already called the FBI to investigate.'

Davidai, who is Israeli-born and an outspoken pro-Israel voice on campus, said Monday that his Columbia ID had been deactivated — with university officials telling him that it was for his own safety. Meanwhile, the pro-Hamas protesters on campus had no problem gaining entry and expanding their tent city.

If this were any other marginalized group being targeted — black or gay people, trans, non-binary, differently-abled — such hatred and intimidation at America's top universities would have been snuffed out in its cradle.

Coordinated, systemic attacks on any other cohort would be the top story of outrage in every left-leaning outlet. Full-throated condemnations would be heard from such liberal icons as the Obamas and the Clintons.

Instead, we get crickets. Instead, we get wall-to-wall coverage of the Trump trial as the true threat to American democracy and freedom.

Here is a sampling of the cheers and chants at Columbia:

'We are all Hamas, pig!'

To Jewish students: 'Go back to Poland! Get the hell out of here!'

'[Hamas] make us proud. Take another soldier out. Burn Tel Aviv to the ground'.

And this, claimed by the left to have 'multiple interpretations' — but, as they well know, is nothing but a call for the elimination of Israel: 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!'

Imagine if students set up a white supremacist camp, donning white robes and hoods and yelling, 'We are all the KKK!' and telling black students to 'go back to Africa!'

It's impossible to imagine, because it would never be tolerated. Ever, ever, ever.

So far, John Fetterman is the only Democrat, in the House or the Senate, to demand that Shafik resign.

'These 'protests' are antisemitic, unconscionable and dangerous', Fetterman said.

How has this become an outlying position on the left?

The university also did nothing in February as fliers depicting Jews as skunks - echoing Nazi propaganda during World War II - went up all over campus.

To wit: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that bottom-feeding Democratic socialist from New York, praised these pro-Hamas protestors Monday.

'It is especially important that we remember the power of young people shaping this country today, of all days,' she said — again, on the first day of Passover — 'as we once again witness the leadership of those peaceful student-led protests on campuses like Columbia, Yale, Berkeley and many others.'

Tell that to the Columbia students who held Israeli flags while a protester – oh-so bravely masked, as most of them are – stood in front of them, holding a sign that read, '[Hamas'] Next Targets'.

This rabid, unchecked antisemitism has spread to at least 13 U.S. college campuses, including Yale, M.I.T. (whose Jewish president Sally Kornbluth remains standing, despite testifying before Congress last year that 'calls for the genocide of Jews' really depend on 'context'), Berkeley, Harvard, and NYU, where police arrested more than 150 protestors Monday night.

On Tuesday, Columbia announced that all classes would go remote for the remaining school year.

Have none of these university leaders learned that you don't negotiate with terrorists?

On this crisis, New York City's mayor Eric Adams is a lone voice of sanity and decency.

'I am horrified and disgusted with the antisemitism being spewed at and around the Columbia University campus,' he said in a statement. 'Supporting a terrorist organization that aims to kill Jews is sickening and despicable.'

New York has more Jews than any city outside of Israel. If such antisemitism is allowed — encouraged, really — to flourish here, America is in for a summer of hate.

It will be a replay of 2020's BLM mayhem, looting and rioting and violence in the name of social justice, cities on fire while a liberal media tells us all is well.

Campus protesters have already announced their next target: the Democratic National Convention.

Of course, this has come as a surprise to Camp Biden, an administration that, just three weeks after October 7, announced the 'first-ever National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia in the United States.'

To those who ask what the federal government can actually do right now — well, a lot. In 1957, amid segregationist protests, President Eisenhower sent the army to protect black female high school students in Arkansas.

In 1965, President Johnson federalized the Alabama National Guard to protect Civil Rights marchers led by Martin Luther King.

Yet Biden remains cowed by his own party, overtaken as it is by anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment. It should not be this hard for a sitting U.S. president to stand up for what is so clearly right, but Biden, in more ways than one, is feeble.

This rabid, unchecked antisemitism has spread to at least 13 U.S. college campuses, including Yale, M.I.T., Berkeley, Harvard, and NYU, where police arrested more than 150 protestors Monday night (pictured).

We are now witnessing the only rational outcome for the woke left, eaten by the monster its own orthodoxy has created. Generations of college students indoctrinated by 'right think' and political correctness, a kind of mono-intellectualism that considers morality relative, white people the devil, and America a scourge.

This is nothing short of a complete, system-wide failure of academia.

And make no mistake: The longer these universities tacitly endorse antisemitism, they are fomenting violence.

It's only a matter of time before something truly tragic and wholly preventable happens — riots, grave injuries, the death of Jews on American soil.

And the powers that be, Shafik among them, will have blood on their hands — if not their conscience.