Toward the End of History? Understanding University Unrest

Pro-Hamas protests on U.S. campuses are a small, albeit significant, element in a wider anti-Israel/antisemitic global campaign. The virulent and worldwide launch of an unparalleled explosion of outright, explicit antisemitism advocating the outright slaying of all Jews wherever they might be was clearly triggered by Hamas’ heinous slaughter of large numbers of innocent human beings just inside Israel on October 7^th. It is clear from the “in-your-face” disruptive tactics that there is no interest in “winning over” public opinion. Clear also is the intent to intimidate, to further cow not just the general population but also the authorities into

acceding to outrageous demands. The protests, now occurring widely outside the United States as well, are clearly different from earlier ones, if only in their antisemitic focus. What do they mean? What do they portend? What are their antecedents? The pages that follow will try to clarify their role and significance within the broader strategic picture.

The Wider Context

That massacre – replete with torture, kidnappings, rapes, and other unimaginable acts – was meticulously planned long before and was part of a much larger strategy by Hamas’ master sponsor, Iran. It is now clear that Iran was involved in the planning, funding, and even in the timing of the attack.

Tehran has for years been following what it calls a “Shiite strategy” for achieving dominance in an arc stretching from Lebanon in the west to Pakistan in the east. I heard this strategy openly discussed during my visit to Pakistan in December 2003. The idea, simply, was to use the Shiite minorities in the various Arab countries to foment unrest and create pressure on the targets, thereby creating unrest, chaos, or otherwise somehow achieving dominance through blackmail, building up internal oppositions supporting Iranian objectives, or weakening those regimes. The Iranians have been implementing that approach since then. The results are clearly visible in Lebanon (with Hezbollah as an arm of Iranian intelligence and the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps]), in Syria, in Iraq (where entire militias are Iranian proxies), and with the Houthis in Yemen.

University Protests: Laying the Foundations

We know that October 7^th was planned way in advance. We now are also finding out that the so-called university protests, far from being spontaneous manifestations, were also carefully organized and coordinated by professionals – whether communist, anarchist, or some other variety of revolutionary.[1]

What perhaps is not as well known is that the planning being discussed and brought out into the greater light of day is itself simply the outcome of a much more extensive preparation stemming from as far back as 70 years or more.

Leftist ideology has not invented anything new in its understanding of how society works. Such well-known strategists as the ancient Chinese thinker Sun Tzu (6^th century BC) or the 18^th century Prussian Carl Von Clausewitz had already developed a deep and lasting understanding of the political/psychological aspects of war. The Soviets – as well as other leftists – aware of their military inferiority, were conscious that winning ultimately did not require military victory. It could be attained by focusing on the enemy’s army, population, or government – singly or in any combination, depending on the enemy’s existing situation. In essence, it has meant weakening the opponent’s will to resist, destroying his morale, and convincing him that the enemy will persist for longer than the opponent can tolerate, that the stakes are not worth it, or that the population is being exploited by its government for various bad reasons.

In all of this, propaganda is critical. Standard techniques have been creating major divisions within the population, using domestic groups already sympathetic to the foreign government and focusing on segments of the population susceptible to the argument that they are being taken advantage of, etc.

In the Vietnam War, the perception that the U.S. lost the war is still very widespread. The reality is somewhat different. The U.S. was focusing on enemy “body counts” to report progress in the war. When the Communist North Vietnamese launched the famous Tet Offensive, which saw Viet Cong troops actually attacking within Saigon itself, the psychological impact was enormous. How could American claims about “progress” and “the light at the end of the tunnel” be true if Communist troops at this stage could penetrate even the South Vietnamese capital?

What people didn’t know, and at that point were no longer interested to know, was that the Vietnamese Communists, in launching that attack, had made a desperate gamble and had been bled white. They had been so seriously weakened that the United States was then in a position to move toward a military victory. But it was too late; the will to continue the fight had been broken, and Americans were no longer willing to continue a war they now saw as hopeless and not worth pursuing. Losing militarily but winning politically had worked.

The current disruptions in American universities, as already mentioned, are but the logical extension of a long evolving situation. Back in the late eighties, when I was exploring a return to academia after a stint at the Pentagon as the aide to the Assistant Secretary of Defense, I was repeatedly asked why I thought I could possibly obtain a position. Virtually all the universities, I was told, are in the hands of leftists. And indeed, they were, but there were still some which apparently were not. That fact that intellectuals were often on the Left and that they found in the academic world a congenial home was not a new phenomenon. That academia became virtually the exclusive preserve of the Left, with others not welcome, was a significant development that antedated the eighties.

What was happening in the academia was reflected in what was transpiring in the wider society. Marxist ideology, like its offspring socialism and communism, was thoroughly hostile to religion and its norms and actively opposed anything they saw as somehow linked to it or encouraging it. Anti-clerical political parties and groups, as they were known in Europe, were very active in opposing anything that smacked of religion and its norms. America’s enemies understood that in order to triumph, they would have to weaken the country from within, to demoralize its population – in short, to destroy the fundamental norms of society, many of which were based in religion.

There is no doubt that a number of factors contributed to the decline and, one could say, the near disappearance, nowadays, of the fundamental moral consensus that must exist in a democratic society for its proper functioning and for its legal system to be effective. One of these factors was the encouragement of “free love,” starting the 1960s. This was an early form of what later progressed to growing acceptance of same-gender relationships and, ultimately, marriage, as well as other forms of immorality 

The Present: Asymmetrical Psychological Warfare – the Way of the Weak

Not content with the erosion and even destruction of Western, or Judeo-Christian, values, these groups have launched in the past several years a frontal assault on another two major fronts. Often subsumed under the label of “woke,” this latest twist has involved an attack on the very symbols of national pride, of the connection of the nation with its past, with its traditions and continuity.

The destruction of statues, flags, and other historical/cultural symbols, initially limited to Confederate symbols, has been a big part of that. Soon enough, however, these spread even to such major figures as George Washington.

The second front of this more recent assault has been at least equally ominous: the assertive dictation of what people are allowed – or forbidden – to say. There are now what, without any stretch of the imagination, could be called “re-education” sessions, reminiscent of the worst of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, to which the various professions are being subjected. Medical doctors, for instance, have to sit through sessions in which they are told that if someone with a beard, dressed in a suit and tie, asks for directions to the restroom, they are forbidden to direct him to the men’s room but must ask what restroom he wishes to use. And an expectant mother must be referred to as a “pregnant person.” This control of speech, and in some ways of what one can think, is pervasive, and violations have consequences; people in various walks of life have been fired from their jobs. The situation has reached such a stage that people have become very careful about not deviating from this new “orthodoxy.” That is one of the ways through which the Left has, and is, moving to exclude those who don’t comply with their definition of right behavior. It is worth noting that even Stalin’s terrorist methods didn’t extend that far but were mostly limited to the political realm.

Even in elementary schools, children are taught – inappropriately and without regard to age – about anatomical matters, including advice on “gender identity,” without the knowledge or consent of their parents. This and other similar matters are by now becoming known and in some instances have produced some pushback.

However, the general lack of resistance to such acts on the part of authorities or the public testifies to the apparent ascendance of these leftist groups, who clearly think that they now are in the driver’s seat…and perhaps they are.

The Left’s stranglehold on universities, on the propagandization of the next generation, when combined with the destruction of national and cultural symbols, in effect erases the pride of belonging to a nation with a worthy heritage. It aims at creating a passive citizenry, largely unwilling to defend the nation because it no longer sees it as worth it. Perhaps it is not accidental that the word “treason” is no longer even mentioned, and appropriate corrective action is not taken. 

At work here, for a number of years already, are a substantial number of actors, some very minor, some quite powerful. Some have similar agendas, many have opposing, even strongly inimical, interests. All have one common objective: overcome the United States, the “Great Satan” as Iran has called it. A good analogy would be the various terrorist groups operating in the Bekaa Valley in the 1970s, when many groups, spanning the spectrum from extreme right to extreme left –  Fascists, Marxists, communists, anarchists, and Islamic fundamentalists – worked together. All had one common objective: to overcome the United States.

There were those who maintained that it was not possible for factions at times totally opposed to one another to cooperate. Yet they did. The common enemy then, as now, was the Great Satan. The idea was this: We work together now, and once the Great Satan is finished, we will wipe out the smaller fry. Some “experts” also asserted, some time back, when there were claims that Tehran was hosting Al Qaeda terrorists, that this was impossible given the very real enmity between Shiites and Sunnis. Yet the Iranians were, and are, working with Sunnis toward that common objective.

The Current Situation: How Did We Get Here?

The underlying objective of the so-called “protests” at the universities has been to strike a major additional blow in the ongoing campaign to delegitimize Israel’s very existence. Iran, Hamas, and other terrorist networks have been advertising that goal from every public forum with impunity for years. The purpose of delegitimization has been to turn Israel into a pariah, to portray the victim as a ruthless aggressor and international criminal entity. Since they know they cannot win militarily, they have focused on psychological warfare, aiming to create an international environment supportive of their demands, which in turn would paralyze Israel, or at the very least make it so difficult as to deny Israel victory.

Iran and Hamas planned from the start to maximize their own casualties, using the Gazan population as shields and locating their bases in and under hospitals, schools, mosques, and other civilian buildings and installations. They have purposefully manipulated the number and sorts of casualties, describing terrorists killed as civilians, etc. The idea was to translate the delegitimization into an operational reality and generate strong opposition to Israel by creating a “humanitarian crisis.”

They succeeded beyond hope. The one thing that supposedly matters on the world stage now is the supposed killing of “innocent civilians,” “massive casualties,” the destruction, the “disproportionate” use force, the “starving” and on and on. Note: These criteria apply only to Israel. In no other wars, including those of America, has there been much concern for the enemy’s population.

Hamas was playing into ready and willing American hands. As soon as the initial shock at the barbaric Hamas attack had worn off, the U.S. began to focus on obtaining a ceasefire. Although it was initially tied to the release of the hostages, it soon centered exclusively on asserting that Israel was not doing enough with humanitarian aid until that became the focus of attention. Not only was there no longer backing for destroying Hamas by eliminating it from the Rafah area of Gaza but Washington started issuing warnings that the U.S. was opposed to an attack on that sector.

As soon as Israel took initial steps to deal with Rafah, American warnings sharpened until, on May 8^th and 9^th, the U.S. government announced it was stopping the delivery of certain critical munitions and weapons systems because it was afraid they would be used in Rafah. Not content with that, President Biden on the 11^th, actually stopped the flow of ammunition and weapons in the middle of what is, for Israel, an existential defensive war. This halt in delivery is, in many ways, worse than not providing the weapons in the first place. The United States has now come full circle and has associated itself with the demands of Israel’s enemies. (Also, apparently, without the knowledge of the Israelis, the U.S. went directly to Hamas and changed the demand for the return of live hostages to that of deceased ones.)

The American position now dovetails with that of the campus “protesters.” Perhaps this should not be so surprising. Not unrelated is the fact that a “dark-money philanthropy empire tied to Obama would be bankrolling a protest movement designed to undercut American support for Israel’s war on Hamas.”[2]   

Obama, in his foreign policy, had “demonstrated a disturbing propensity to curry favor with our adversaries at the expense of our friends.”[3] Particularly illustrative was his highly critical attitude toward Israel compared with a surprisingly accommodating approach to Iran, despite their designating the U.S. “the Great Satan.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a joint press conference with the Egyptian leader, announced that Obama was demanding a complete stop to all settlement development in the West Bank – this while Obama was pursuing a nuclear agreement with Iran that was supposed to curtail its nuclear development in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, thereby releasing billions in frozen Iranian assets. In effect, the “deal” was being made with a radical Moslem regime, which daily proclaimed its enmity and acted on that enmity through a variety of subversive activities and active support of terrorism.

Obama also developed close relations with the Moslem Brotherhood. That interaction was so close that some of the Brotherhood’s members were actually in the administration or advising the government, including the White House.[4] The Moslem Brotherhood itself was close to Hamas and to other terrorist movements.

The Moslem Brotherhood connection was not the only link to Islamic fundamentalism, however. It turns out that “The Biden administration’s now-suspended Iran envoy, Robert Malley, helped to fund, support, and direct an Iranian intelligence operation designed to influence the United States and allied governments.”[5] The source for this extraordinary claim was a series of Iranian government emails, about which Wall Street Journal correspondent Jay Solomon reported on the website Semafor, and also detailed in Iran International, a London-based Iranian émigré opposition publication a week before the Tablet article. These emails “showed that Malley had helped to infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence named Ariane Tabatabai into some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government – first at the State Department and now the Pentagon, where she has been serving as chief of staff for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, Christopher Maier.”[6]

It is not surprising, in light of the above, that President Biden has continued that approach. In November 2023, in the middle of the Gaza war, the Administration announced a new “four-month waver,” enabling the release of billions of dollars to Iran blocked by U.S. sanctions.[7]

Most egregious, however, is undoubtedly the Administration’s “fly-swatting” response to the Iranian or Iranian-proxy aggression against the U.S. that has accompanied the Hamas attack. There were, in the weeks following, more than 170 attacks on U.S. military assets in Syria, Iraq, and Jordan. The Houthis, a Shiite Yemeni proxy, initiated a series of attacks in the Red Sea not only against any traffic supposedly to Israel but also against British and U.S. military vessels – significantly disrupting commercial traffic. The American response: shooting down incoming missiles and a few strikes on Houthi missile sites. The continued Iranian and/or Iranian-directed attacks are an eloquent commentary of their contempt for the U.S.

Conclusion

What is one to think, when the same U.S. government that, early in the war, proclaimed Israel’s right to defend itself and destroy Hamas now denies weapons and ammunition and threatens that, should Israel go into Rafah, it will not provide any offensive weapons? One doesn’t need to be an expert to recognize betrayal. What is one to think when this harsh attitude toward the victim is accompanied with a benevolent one toward the aggressor that in essence says, “Look we sympathize with you, but we do have to seem to be doing something” – and that something includes allowing American servicemen and women to become the targets of America’s enemies?

Could this be related to Obama’s Marxist antecedents, to his long-proclaimed belief that the U.S. has been an “imperial” power whose “arrogance” needs to be curbed? Could this policy be connected to Obama’s continued hold on large segments of the American Left that have assumed inordinate influence on society?

The systematic erasure of fundamental moral and social norms and the indoctrination of the young in schools and universities have produced an emptiness that has in turn facilitated all sorts of problems – from widespread use of drugs to rising crime and violence, abated by woke notions, such as contempt for law enforcement and demands for defunding the police. The October 7^th Hamas attack broke a psychological barrier by showing that the unthinkable was not so unthinkable but could be done with seeming impunity. It opened the floodgates to an explosion of rabid and violent antisemitism on a global scale.

And the Obama-Biden projection of American weakness worldwide, showing the empty worth of U.S. “ironclad commitments,” causes mounting worry among the many who, while often critical of the United States, value its protective presence. That American wavering has already significantly increased the likelihood of major war.

So, what can be done?

The answer lies at two different levels. One is the societal – domestic and international. The other is on a higher plane and concerns the One Who truly runs things, and what will ultimately happen as a result.

At the first level, a broader historical perspective might remind us that events frequently move in cyclical – often opposite – direction. We may now already be in a transitional phase between the apex of one and the early part of the next. There is some evidence of a nascent backlash against the excesses of the leftward push. What can be described as the arrogance of those who feel they are now in the driver’s seat may become part of their undoing. When students begin to see that there are meaningful negative consequences, things may go differently. And the Administration’s sudden and abhorrent betrayal of a key ally – especially in light of some earlier horrendous examples – might well be shown to have been a turning point.

It is, however, the second, higher plane level that is more central. And it is that aspect that is generally not mentioned in discussions of the geopolitical – that of the ultimate Divine control of the flow of events. From that perspective, we may well be approaching the true End of History.

As we read every year in the Haggadah, “In every generation they rise against us to destroy us, and the Holy One Blessed Be He saves us from their hands.” Jews have unfortunately experienced such tragedies not infrequently through our long history. Those who have sought our destruction have always failed. There isn’t a reason in the world to think this time will be different. One doesn’t have to believe to appreciate the accuracy of the conclusion. Anyone making decisions based on simple risk analysis should come to the same result. The track record speaks for itself.

Certain events in the ongoing war that should have captured the attention of people have passed unnoticed by most. How much damage, how many casualties, have been caused by the more than 15,000 missiles and rockets lobbed at Israel by Iranian proxies and, more recently, by some 350 drones, cruise missiles and rockets from Iran itself? Very few. Almost none! The best scientific estimates expected 90% protection. But those are often optimistic assessments. In the case of the historically largest salvo from the Iranians, the effectiveness was 99.9%. There have been hundreds if not thousands of other instances of such miraculous events. Why the ease to ignore? Why the reluctance to recognize what is clearly beyond the human dimension?

The difference this time may be that this latest attempt to destroy the Jews will be the last. The very global character of the attack and the astounding existence of instant communications  may also be the harbingers of the promised global resolution, of the foretold Messianic era, the true End of History as we know it.

May it come speedily in our time.