Trump to Campus Jews: "I'm from the gub'mint, here to protect you"

The natives are rightly suspicious.

 NYT coverage:

Yousef Munayyer, the executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights and a Palestinian citizen of Israel: “Israeli apartheid is a very hard product to sell in America, especially in progressive spaces, and realizing this, many Israeli apartheid apologists, Trump included, are looking to silence a debate they know they can’t win.”

“Would threaten freedom of expression on campus”

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an organization that advocates free speech on campus:

While the order is couched in language intended to paper over the readily evident threat to expressive rights, its ambiguous directive and fundamental reliance on the IHRA definition and its examples will cause institutions to investigate and censor protected speech on their campuses. Having spent 20 years defending speakers from across the political spectrum, FIRE knows all too well that colleges and universities will rush to punish student and faculty speakers in an attempt to avoid federal investigation and enforcement.

Marjorie N. Feld, professor of history at Babson College:

As a professor of U.S. history and a scholar of American Jewish life, I have traced the history of attempts to silence debate over Israel/Palestine, and it is clear that this EO will not fight the growth of anti-Semitism or make Jewish students safer on campus. Instead, it will prevent essential collaborations and will, without question, have a chilling effect on our freedom of speech.

Part of a campaign “to silence Palestinian rights activism”

Peter Beinart, a writer and professor at the City University of New York: “So according to Trump, ‘denying the Jewish people self-determination’ is now bigotry, which loses a college government funds. Denying Palestinians the right to self-determination, by contrast, is US + Israeli policy.”

Mark Joseph Stern in Slate:

It’s unclear whether Wednesday’s order will have any impact, given that it mostly just reaffirms the current law. … It raises the faint possibility that, in some case down the road, a student’s sharp criticism of Israel may be used as evidence of anti-Semitic intent after he has been accused of targeting Jews because of their perceived race or nationality. Is this order red meat for Republicans who believe colleges are increasingly hostile to Jews? Probably. Will it quash the pro-Palestine movement on campuses or impose an unwanted classification on American Jews? Absolutely not.

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Best thing America could do for Israel today is to cut off US taxpayer aid for a year. Let the Israel state try standing on its own feet, without American protections or financial support.  I suspect internally a lot of decisions will be made differently about political policy and leadership if America, the Big Brother Perpetual Protector,  no longer extends military or financial aid to the prosperous country in the troubled region.  It's a tough neighborhood, but it's not ours.*  It's up to Israelis to determine if they can independently keep their democracy intact, with the accompanying ethnic discrimination internally amongst its own citizens, without the United States taxpayers, and military, effectively propping it up and supporting the apartheid.

*  We've got border issues and neighborhood troubles of our own, economic distress creeping northward threatening the future of American social programs. Some of us are concerned about Americans security here at home in the near future when the funds run dry. OK Boomers? (who have never had to think past tomorrow...)