The anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protestors are getting paid to protest.

Not all of them. But enough of them – enough to raise concerns about the “reality” of what we are seeing on our TV and computer screens, says the evidence and experts.

This newspaper first revealed in January that Israel-hating protesters were getting paid to show up. We detailed how a group called the Plenty Collective in Victoria, B.C. was paying out $20,000 a month to people to attend carefully stage-managed anti-Israel protests in and around that city. The “protesters” were actors, in effect, and were being given food, drink and professionally-produced signs and banners.

We also reported that it was happening in bigger cities like Montreal, as well. There, the city has been divided up into precincts by paid organizers, each acting as a “captain” responsible for quickly putting together protests in select neighborhoods. Sources there told us protestors were getting $150 per event.

Then, in the past week, other media published similar reports. The New York Post revealed that anti-Israel “fellows” at three U.S. colleges were getting paid via the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights – in some cases getting as much as $5,000 (Can.) a week in exchange for just eight hours of agitating.

That revelation was followed by the Daily Mail detailing a report authored by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). That report showed that the main group behind the occupation of Columbia University and other campuses had received more than $3 million (U.S.) a year from charities linked to Hamas.

In the 73-page report, ISGAP revealed that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) – with chapters in Canada and the United States – had been funnelled millions via myriad non-profits like the Westchester People’s Action Coalition (WESPAC), Tides, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), its parent organization Americans for Justice in Palestine (AJP), and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

In their report, ISGAP said: “It is clear that individuals who previously worked for Hamas-linked charities are now a driving force behind [campus protests]. The Department of Education (DoE) should carry out an immediate investigation into which universities are funding and/or supporting SJP activities and instruct those universities to cease such funding and/or support…ISGAP calls for SJP (and its affiliated organizations) to be banned and for Jewish students to be protected.”

As this newspaper reported in January, groups like B.C.’s Plenty Collective were using their non-profit status to financially assist other anti-Israel “partners” in that province. After this newspaper published our report, the Plenty Collective hurriedly returned thousands to one of its largest donors.

And, now, an expert who runs a Beverly Hills firm that openly acknowledges it pays for protests, called Crowds on Demand, says he has no doubt that the practice of paying people to show up at protests is much more widespread than anyone knows.

Adam Swart, who operates his firm in Canada as well as the U.S., has been providing paid-for crowds for everything from red carpet events to audiences at speeches since 2012. And, in an interview with the Toronto Sun, Swart said “extremely lucrative offers” have been made to Crowds on Demand to provide bodies. So far, he’s declined, he says, but he generally defends the practice.

Swart says there is no doubt the anti-Israel side has lots of money, too. Says he: “There’s obviously money in these protests. In my business, I know that some of the professional banners that these people have – those are $200 and $300, and the signs can be up to 100 bucks. Someone’s paying for that, here in the United States. So, you have essentially an unlimited amount of money coming in to potentially violent organizations that are tax exempt nonprofits here, and are social advocacy groups in Canada.”

The Canada Revenue Agency, which oversees such groups, was asked by the Toronto Sun whether they have any active investigations into funded protests in Canada.

At press time, they had not replied.

Comments (1)

Who benefits from these metastasizing campus encampments? Who loses?

The losers are easy to spot. They’re the families who scrimped and saved and borrowed to send junior to an Ivy League school – only to learn that he/she/they have adopted Yasir Arafat’s fashion stylings, and are sleeping through final exams in a tent beside a guy who now calls himself “ISIS Bro.”

The losers also include the university presidents, who fret about “free speech” while losing  scads of support from alumni, public opinion, GOP congressmen, new students and assorted millionaires/billionaires with big social media followings.

And the losers also include (sadly, unfairly) Joe Biden, who is in danger of being defeated by the same addled crew who tipped the scales against Hillary Clinton in the electoral college in 2016 – clueless, gormless Bernie Sanders-loving Gen Z crypto-fascists who blame Jews (here) for the decisions of an Israeli government (way over there).

The winners are equally easy to spot.

As “encampments” spread at American and Canadian post-secondary institutions – and we use quotation marks around “encampments,” here, because they’re actually illegal occupations which claim to oppose illegal occupations – one group, in particular, is deliriously happy about the Infant-fada.  And that’s Iran’s H Team: Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and haters.  They’re overjoyed.

Just read up on what they’ve been saying.  Steven Stalinsky did.  He’s the executive director at the Middle East Media Research Institute in the U.S., and he published an important Wall Street Journal piece last week, titled “Who’s Behind the Anti-Israel Protests.”

It makes for fascinating reading.  A sampling of what the H Team are saying:

• Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said “we should salute…the many people demonstrating in America” because they “apply pressure on their governments.”
• Hamas’ leader abroad, Khaled Mashal, urged Jew-hating supporters to protest “in cities everywhere.”  Hamas’ friends were “the global Left,” he said, and noted that they’d shifted public opinion against Israel.
• Another Hamas leader, and former Palestine Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called the protestors “resistance abroad…strategic allies” in creating a global caliphate and “this great victory.”
• And, not be outdone, Iran’s Supreme leader and the erstwhile boss of Team H, Ali Khamenei, went to the trouble of posting in English on X alongside videos of Western student protestors: “See what is happening in the world. In Western countries, in England and France, and in states across the US itself, people are coming out in huge numbers to chant slogans against Israel and America. US & Israel’s reputation has been ruined. They truly have no solution.”

Khamenei has a “solution,” of course.  It’s the same one Adolf Hitler had.

Reached in Washington, D.C., Steve Stalinsky is clearly concerned.  What the protesters are demanding goes far beyond a ceasefire, he says.  It’s about delegitimizing and destabilizing Israel and her Western allies.

Says Stalinsky: “The rhetorical support that Hamas and Hezbollah are receiving from these protests, whether it’s a Columbia or a McGill or any university on the continent at the present time? [Iran, Hamas et al.] are surprised how successful it is. It’s not totally spontaneous, either. Some elements are, but there’s also a lot of activity that has been going on online. And there’s been years of preparation in going after this younger generation.”

The younger generations – Gen Z and Millennials – were particularly susceptible to Internet manipulation by Iran and its proxies, he says.  The pandemic pushed them online, where their favoured research methodologies became watching TikTok videos manufactured in boiler rooms in Tehran.

Western governments have been “a huge failure” in fighting the online manipulations of the forces of Jew hatred, Stalinsky says. “Hamas, Hezbollah have indicated that these protests and rallies – the histrionics coming from these students – has been very influential. And it’s mind-boggling to me.”

He continues: “There’s been failure in governments and academia. But there’s been a total failure in the media, too – because they’re not reporting how terrorist groups are openly supporting the campus protests.  And the media are not reporting what’s going on on the ground, either, about how students are expressing support for Hamas and other jihadi groups, right out in the open.”

“It’s hate speech.  And it’s being ignored by the adults.”

Time to wake up, adults.  Because you’re losing the fight, too.

 

Comments (3)

Comments (3)

What is Columbia University?

It’s a university in New York City, of course. It’s also a place that we’ve been hearing a lot about in recent days. It’s symbol of sorts, now.

It’s also 36 square acres of hate.

Listen to Khymani James, one of the leaders of the group that has effectively seized control of Columbia University’s campus, in a video he filmed and promoted: “Zionists don’t deserve to live comfortably, let alone Zionists don’t deserve to live. The same way we are very comfortable accepting Nazis don’t deserve to live, fascists don’t deserve to live, racists don’t deserve to live, Zionists, they shouldn’t live in this world.”

He went on: “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

Over at New York University, a short taxi ride away, some students were interviewed saying they “really don’t know” why they are protesting. (Give NYU students points for honesty, if not actual education.)

Since April 17, Khymani James and hundreds of others – some students, some not – occupied the lawn in front of Butler Library, in the middle of Columbia U. They’ve set up identical tents tents – same size, shape, color, and who bought them for a bunch of typically-penniless undergrads, no one knows – and they are living there. They’ve got up Palestinian flags and banners saying COLUMBIA FUNDS GENOCIDE.

What Columbia’s Israel-haters are doing has spread to other universities in the U.S.: Emerson College, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, New York University, Ohio State, Yale, Princeton, Emory, and many more. Similar things have happened at Canadian universities, like McGill, York, McMaster, Western, Concordia, U of T and more.

The occupation at Columbia has attracted the most attention, however, because it’s spurred arrests and violence and confrontations – one Jewish professor, Shai David, has actually been denied access to campus because he’s a Jew – and, probably, because it’s close to many major American news organizations. It’s been ugly.

That ugliness has been made worse by outsiders. The New York Post reported Friday that hard-Left interests – such as the George Soros-funded Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Campaign for Palestinian Rights – have funded student “protestors” with significant amounts, much of it run through non-profits.

The Post reported that a campus-based “fellow” can receive up to $5,000 (Cdn.) a week for devoting eight hours to “organizing campaigns led by Palestinian organizations.” (The funding is not just happening in the U.S., either: as this reporter revealed in January, a B.C. organization called the Plenty Collective disbursed as much as $20,000 a month to those who came to anti-Israel protests in the Victoria area.)

So, that’s what the students are doing at places like Columbia, and how many of them are getting paid to protest. But what is the objective? What do they want?

A document provided to this writer provides some answers. Previously unseen in Canada, the document has been published by a shadowy group that refers to itself as “Ill Will.” The manual, written by “Anonymous,” is titled “First We Take Columbia.” (Which they have.)

Key excerpts from the manual, which they have also made available in French, Spanish, Turkish, Japanese and Chinese:

• “Occupations are effective because they are disruptive.”
• “An occupation needs to spread in order to survive. New buildings need to be taken on campus, throughout the city, and across the country. Take the enemy by surprise.”
• “Every occupation is a commune. By shutting down the normal flows of capitalist society, they open up space for something new to emerge.”
• “Occupations draw strength from the spectre of a riot.”
• “Students from other campuses, residents of the surrounding neighborhood, and outside agitators need to be welcomed in…The NYPD stood down [in the past] out of fear that violence might otherwise erupt. Similar tactics might be necessary today.”
• “This is only the beginning. A number of revolutionary organizations emerged from the 1968 occupations movement. Pushing the university struggle to its limit might contribute in a similar way to producing a constellation of revolutionary forces in the city today.”

“All power to the communes,” the manual concludes, which seemingly takes inspiration from the April 1968 occupations at Columbia, when students and others seized five campus buildings and took the dean hostage, resulting in 700 arrests.

Hopefully the current anti-Israel occupations won’t go that far. But one thing is clear about the Columbia students and others, and their opposition to the “illegal occupation” of Gaza.

Their occupations? They’re illegal, too.

Comments (7)

There’s a scene in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies that applies, and doesn’t, to the madness that now grips the civilized world.

In Golding’s famous book, a plane full of boys crashes on a deserted island during a nuclear war. The pilot dies; the boys survive. The boys soon realize that they need to fend for themselves – no one has come for them.

One of the boys addresses the others. Says he: “This is our island. It’s a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us, we’ll have fun.”

“We’ll have fun.” Therein lies the contradiction. The boys want adults to rescue them. But they also don’t. So they start to form their own society, one that is replete with extreme violence and factionalism.

It’s just a book, yes, one that Golding later said readers can take from it what they will. But, observing the epidemic of anti-Semitism and anger that is now seemingly everywhere, things look quite a bit like Golding’s book. That is, young people are off on an island on their own, these days, and they are descending rapidly into violence and hatred.

But here’s the key difference: they don’t want to be rescued.

The statistics – in Canada, the United States and Europe – all show the same depressing thing: vast swaths of younger generations hate the Jewish state, and they increasingly hate anyone who does not feel as they do. Poll after poll show the same thing: shockingly-large segments of Generation Z (from 18 to 24) and Millennials (from 25 to late 30s or so) have moved to their own island, one where Jew hatred and hatred of the trappings of modern society are the rule.

Some of the polling, from across the West:

• A Harvard poll, conducted right after the carnage of Oct. 7, found that more than half of American Gen Z support Hamas. That Hamas was “justified.” A fifth of them regard the Holocaust as “a myth.”
• A March Leger poll found that 22 per cent of Canadian Gen Z have “a positive view of Hamas,” and they are eight times more likely to doubt or deny the Holocaust than older Canadians.
• A Fall Ekos poll found that half of Gen Z regard Israel as an apartheid state. Angus Reid found that three times as many young women in Canada side with the Palestinian/Hamas side over Israel’s.
• A December Harvard/Harris poll found that more than half of American Gen Z say “Israel should be ended and given to Hamas.”

That is not all. Other polling, unpublished to date, shows nearly 40 per cent of Canadian Gen Z “support the destruction of Israel.” More than 40 per cent of them say the “extreme violence” of Hamas on October 7 was “justified.”

You don’t need to be a pollster to know these things. Turn on on your TV, or glance at your computer screen, and you will see it: the protests and rallies – some violent, many anti-Semitic – are filled with young people. White young people, mostly.

But why?

All of us were as young once. When you are young, it is normal to be oppositional – to oppose your parents, your teachers, your governments. Opposing war is something every generation does – from Vietnam onwards. And, now, it’s the Israel-Hamas war – but with a difference.

RMG Research in the U.S. has attempted to answer the “why” question. Young people, the pollster found, regard Israelis and Jews as wealthy and powerful, and that is why their war on Hamas is unjust – they are the oppressors, the powerful, wreaking vengeance on the weak. Their hatred for Israel and Jews dovetails with the hatred we now see them expressing about Western society, says on of the poll’s sponsors: “Gen Z is so embarrassed about being American that a large swath of them have become terrorist sympathizers.”

It is not an exaggeration.

The anti-Semitic trope that Jews are wealthy and all-powerful is part of it. But so too is the racial dimension. Even though more than 60 per cent of Israel’s population are non-white, many North American and European Gen Z and Millennials falsely depict it as a racist state (in fact, Israeli Apartheid Week got its start on Canadian campuses). So, a recent investigation by PBS saw youthful anti-Israel protestors repeatedly citing race as a motivator, too. Previously, they participated in Black Lives Matter and Native American protests. Now they are protesting for Gaza and against the Jewish state: it’s all connected, to them.

Can it all be fixed? Can we get back the Gen Z and Millennials who seem to be drifting away into hate?

Perhaps. Maybe. But, for now, they are on their own little island, “having fun.”

Comments (11)