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The billionaire businessman had previously announced that he was stopping his donations to Columbia.
By Batya Jerenberg
Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism will air an ad Tuesday during the NBA playoffs telling anti-Israel protestors that exhibiting Jew hatred at their pro-Hamas demonstrations is unacceptable.
While scenes play of the virulent protests that have filled college campuses around America for the last few weeks, millions around the world who watch the premier basketball league’s games will hear a calm woman’s voice tell them to “Bring your passion, your tenacity, bring your anger – but don’t bring hate to the protests.”
Signs that have been held equating Jews with Nazis and calling for their death are flashed, as are pictures of despairing young people representing those students who have found it impossible to walk on campus without being violently assaulted verbally, and sometimes even physically.
“Scream until you’re red in the face. But don’t scream at the Jewish kid walking to class,” the 30-second ad says. “Threaten to change history, but don’t threaten your Jewish neighbor. Draw a line in the sand, but don’t draw a swastika. Because bringing more hate to anyone brings more hate to everyone.”
Kraft, the Jewish owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots who is a firm supporter of Israel and a Columbia University alumnus, wrote a scathing op-ed in the New York Post two weeks ago slamming his alma mater for becoming a “breeding ground for hate and polarization.”
Kraft blamed the radicalization of the student body on a faculty that has “poisoned young minds.”
Too many professors, he wrote, “use the classroom and the campus as a bully pulpit to promote their personal political viewpoints as opposed to fostering critical thinking — they preach eliminationist rhetoric championed by unchecked and dangerous activist groups.”
He demanded that the administration fire such teachers, enforce its own Code of Conduct so that students learn that there is accountability for their actions, and return to being the school he once knew that “encouraged students to cultivate independent thought and the ability to engage critically with diverse viewpoints.”
Robert Kraft has been on a mission to address rampant antisemitism on college campuses across the United States. We're taking this initiative to the next level by premiering a new ad focused around this issue. Keep an eye out later today for more. #StandUpToJewishHate #🟦 pic.twitter.com/0mCYG8DCH3
— Stand Up to Jewish Hate #🟦 (@StandUp2JewHate) May 7, 2024
The billionaire businessman had previously announced that he was stopping his donations to Columbia because “I am no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff,” and he was “not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken.”
He would continue to support the Hillel Center for Jewish Life that is named for him, saying he hoped it would “serve as a source of security and safety for all Jewish students and faculty…who want to gather peacefully to practice their religion, to be together and to be welcomed.”
Columbia students took the lead last month in setting up a pro-Palestinian encampment that was then copied in dozens of other colleges.
Repeating Hamas propaganda about the IDF committing “genocide” in Gaza, they called for divesting from the Jewish state, but descended from there into calls for Israel’s destruction and overt threats against their fellow Jewish students.
The administration pleaded and negotiated with the demonstrators for weeks, finally calling in the police to dismantle the illegal gathering only after protestors broke into a building, trashed it and replaced the American flag hanging outside with a Palestinian one and a sign calling for an intifada.
Over a hundred people were arrested, and the police found that almost half of them were “outside agitators” who were paid to come stir up trouble. The same was found on other campuses where police ended similar protests, and the source of their funding has been revealed as pro-terrorist groups and extreme leftist organizations.
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