Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) spoke at the University of Florida (UF) on Wednesday, making it clear that his administration will not tolerate unruly pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protesters calling the shots on campuses, briefly mocking those who continue in their endeavors to disrupt.
DeSantis went directly to the campus, where some students continued to protest, as chants could be heard in the background. However, that did not stop DeSantis, who continued in his remarks despite the distant chants.
“You know, I wasn’t here after October 7 on the campus; I’m sure the protestors were all very upset at the fact that Hamas went into Israeli communities and baked babies in ovens, raped women, [and] assassinated elderly people in very brutal ways,” DeSantis said during the press conference as chants could be heard in the background.
“I’m sure they were very upset about that — oh no, they weren’t. That’s right, they didn’t care about that. They were completely fine with those massacres happening, and they had no concern about that,” he noted, making it clear that the attempts to “squat at the University of Florida” were shut down immediately.
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“There was an attempt to set up an encampment last week. And I know that we’ve seen this throughout the rest of the country where this has kind of become a common occurrence,” he said. “Well, we don’t do that here in the state of Florida, and so, they did have an encampment, and it lasted about a few minutes.”
Indeed, the university released a statement following the arrest of some pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protesters, making it clear that the campus is not a “daycare.”
“This is not complicated: The University of Florida is not a daycare, and we do not treat protesters like children — they knew the rules, they broke the rules, and they’ll face the consequences,” UF President Ben Sasse said in a statement.
DeSantis continued, emphasizing that the state universities in Florida are ensuring that order is maintained, unlike other parts of the country where protesters are ruling the campuses.
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“You do not have a right to commandeer property. You don’t have a right to go take over parts of the university. You don’t have a right to go after other students based on their ethnicity, and we’re going to ensure that that’s upheld in the state of Florida,” he said, highlighting the contrast between the way Florida universities are handling the agitators and other areas, such as Columbia University in New York.
If you look around the country, you have a lot of elite colleges and universities that have allowed themselves to become overrun with encampments, graffiti, as well as a lot of really nasty antisemitism. At Columbia, pro-Hamas activists stormed buildings, took cleaning staff hostage, and destroyed iconic academic halls. At UCLA, Jewish students were barred from entering buildings on campus by pro-Hamas activists. At Portland State, the library was taken over and subsequently trashed by vagrants who weren’t even students of the university to begin with. And we see some of the chants that are done at these universities, such as “from the river to the sea.” Some are saying, “We don’t want no two-state; we take it all.” And, you know, part of it is, you know, people can kind of say what they want, but when you’re talking about “from the river to the sea,” you’re essentially saying you want a second holocaust, that you want to wipe Israel off the map, and that’s what Hamas stands for.
“That’s why Hamas perpetrated the October 7 attack. So, when you see that, that is not what we want to be producing in terms of leaders around this country,” DeSantis said, questioning how many of these protesters have actually studied the history of the conflict.
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DeSantis said:
The reality is, if you actually study the history of this, you would be able to see there’s never been a Palestinian state. That was [the] Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years, then the British Mandate, then the UN Partition Plan, and, basically, Israel accepted that, and the Arabs rejected it, and they went to war, and they lost. So we can talk about that.
“But I think a lot of these people that are just spouting nonsense, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” the governor added.
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