“Intifada, intifada! Long live the intifada,” was the cry that rang out over a megaphone as crowds of students — some wearing keffiyehs to cover their faces — marched through the University of Michigan campus in protest at a visit by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Others were heard chanting the well-known clarion call for Israel’s destruction and replacement with a Palestinian state emptied of Jews: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
One protester at the front of the demonstration held aloft a sign that read: “There is only one solution!” The phrasing — an obvious reference to the Nazi plan for the extermination of Europe’s Jews known as the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’ — was clearly designed as a warning to Jewish students.
Yet, this was how the University of Michigan’s student newspaper, the Michigan Daily, summarized the chilling scenes on the college’s Ann Arbor grounds in a piece entitled, ‘Fifty Palestinian flags rose upon Kamala Harris’s arrival‘:
"University of Michigan students, led by a Students Allied for Freedom and Equality initiative, gathered in protest of Vice President Kamala Harris’s arrival at the University on Thursday. Protestors assembled in front of Hill Auditorium and marched towards Rackham Auditorium — the site of Harris’s speech — waving Palestinian flags and voicing chants that challenged the Biden-Harris administration’s unwavering support for the state of Israel.
‘Not another nickel! Not another dime!
‘No more money for Israel’s crimes!'”
Either the article’s author Maryam Shafie-Khorassani did not attend the demonstration, or she has chosen to sanitize the violent calls that characterized it. Either way, it is an alarming example of poor journalism from a student publication that prides itself on its commitment to “impartiality, fairness and the complete truth.”
Unfortunately, this is not even the worst aspect of the piece.
The article proceeds to suggest Israel is somehow guilty of environmental warfare by rooting up “native, time-honored Palestinian olive trees” to make space for “exported pine trees, Israeli settlements and the infamous Apartheid wall,” all of which Shafie-Khorassani claims is “threatening biodiversity and fragmenting ecosystems.”
Aside from the demonstrably false apartheid libel, which, frankly, has no place in what is ostensibly a news report rather than an opinion piece, the claim that Israel is committing ecological crimes is absurd.
Photo: United for Israel