In 2006, Judith Butler, the prominent anti-Israel "gender studies" professor, made one of her most infamous statements. During a teach-in at UC Berkeley she said, “Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important."

In 2006, Judith Butler, the anti-Israel gender studies icon, made one of her most infamous statement at UC Berkeley: “Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important.” She was widely ridiculed for framing terrorist groups as "progressive" and over the years she tried to thread the needle between being against terrorist violence but describing October 7 as "armed resistance."

"Columbia University Apartheid Divest," the umbrella group behind all the anti-Israel actions at Columbia, goes beyond Butler.

In their Substack last August, CUAD wrote, "As the leading force of the anti-imperialist struggle backed by the Palestinian people, Hamas is assessed as principally a progressive force."

They use the same logic to declare that the Houthis are also a "progressive force."

They pretend that Islamist bigotry is a problem for them and then they dismiss it: "Assessing Hamas and Ansarallah as principally progressive forces in an anti-imperialist struggle does not mean that one has to agree with every aspect of the nature of these forces, or that they have always been or always will be principally progressive. These other aspects are secondary to the issue at hand, which is their role in carrying out a national liberation war against their oppressors."

This all puts a lie to the idea that "progressives" are progressive. They mask their antisemitism and anti-Western bile  in the rhetoric of human rights and progressivism. They consider groups who insist that women and non-Muslims are second class citizens and who literally execute gays to be on their side. Their supposed "progressive" viewpoints are, according to them, "secondary" to their "anti-imperialist" nature. 

The Islamists strive to build a single Islamic 'ummah that would be, by definition, imperialist - the major world power where only Muslim men would have full rights.  There is very little ideological daylight between the Islamists and the white supremacists. The 'ummah under Dar al-Islam is their nation—a supremacist, imperialist project demanding loyalty, not unlike neo-Nazi fantasies of a white ethnostate.

Most of the anti-Israel students in Columbia would not be very happy living under Islamic rule of their Hamas and Houthi "comrades," no matter how much they call them "progressive."

The Columbia students who are threatened with deportation are being framed by much of the media as being merely "pro-Palestinian." CUAD represents all of them, and CUAD's article shows that the group is, above all, anti-American. The State Department has every right to deport non-citizens who cheer attacking, kidnapping and murdering Americans.  

Calling them a national security risk isn't an exaggeration - their beliefs are spelled out in black and white. 

PHOTO: Use according to Section 27 A