Hayward: China Demands U.S. Colleges Be More Pro-Palestinian

China’s state-run Global Times on Monday took note of American universities supporting the terrorists of Hamas and insisted they should be even more supportive, which might be the most extravagant demand to come from the Chinese Communist Party since it drew a map that said the entire South China Sea, plus a good deal of India, belongs to Beijing.

The Global Times pushed Beijing’s phony moral equivalence line whereby the Chinese government pretends to be “neutral” and deplore all violence but actually supports the killers of Hamas and seeks to protect them from any Israeli military response.

The regime in Beijing has not denounced the Hamas atrocity, or even used the name of the terrorist organization that rules the Palestinians, but eagerly pontificates against Israel’s responsive military action.

“Taking sides will not solve the puzzle. The top priority is to achieve a ceasefire, stop the conflict as soon as possible, abide by international humanitarian law, and fully guarantee the safety of civilians, before working toward a just and lasting settlement that shall respect the rights of both sides,” the Global Times huffed, in a piece that briefly mentioned the “Hamas attack” only to frown at the “intense backlash” against American university students and faculty who supported it.

The Chinese Communist newspaper frowned at a few prominent university donors and alumni speaking out against campus statements of support for Hamas, linking them to an alleged “concerning trend” where “expressing support for Israel is safe while being pro-Palestine has become a taboo.”

The communists were especially “concerned” about “billionaire hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman and several other business leaders” calling on Harvard to release the names of students who signed a letter “holding Israel responsible for the unfolding violence.”

“Showing sympathy to the Palestinian people or voicing that they have the right to resist can be labeled as supporting ‘terrorism’ and must face consequences. Take Ackman’s wording, he was basically saying – If you are anti-Israel, you can have freedom of speech, but at the cost of your future career on Wall Street,” the Global Times railed.

This is especially hilarious coming from the state-controlled media of a regime that routinely ruins the lives of dissidents for even minor speech crimes — a regime that banned images of Winnie-the-Pooh because people were posting them to insult pudgy dictator Xi Jinping.

Chinese subjects who say something the Communist Party’s mandarins dislike will be very lucky if the only thing they lose is a high-paying job in the financial markets. China makes billionaires disappear for arguing with Party dogma.

Leaving aside the low comedy of Chinese propagandists pretending to be champions of free speech, Ackman and his associates were perfectly within their rights to say they have no interest in hiring people who blame rape and murder victims for their own torment and death.

The despicable letter Ackman was responding to called on Harvard to “take action” against the “apartheid regime” of Israel and its “colonial retaliation” — and they wrote it while the blood of Hamas’ victims was still warm. 

Harvard’s administration has tripped over itself trying to gain distance from the horrific missive, and many of the signatories are claiming they had no idea what they were endorsing or had no control over groups that signed in their names. Ackman and his fellow CEOs probably will not be eager to hire law students who claim they signed papers endorsing rape, murder, kidnapping, and infanticide without reading them first.

The Global Times propagandists picked some very weird hills to die on when they mourned that American universities are no longer “bastions for freedom of speech, robust debate, and radical thinking.” It is hard to imagine them writing similar apologetics for a group of dissident Chinese students who wrote a letter supporting Uyghur nationalists who struck a blow against their oppressors in Beijing.

The Global Times hilariously concluded its screed by fretting that American universities are becoming “more and more conservative,” even though Harvard is not the only university where student groups wrote letters supporting the Hamas savages. 

And it is not just the students — this week, a Stanford University instructor was suspended for calling his Jewish students “colonizers” and forcing them to stand in a corner because, he said, “this is what Israel does to the Palestinians.” 

The Global Times nevertheless urged pro-Hamas forces to speak up more loudly and become more disruptive on campus.

“It seems future American elites are expected to be mere parrots who can mimic and puppets who can be manipulated. This could be a sign that highlights the dumbed-down state of American education and a precursor to the decline of the U.S.,” sneered the state newspaper of a regime that routinely threatens the families of students studying abroad if they dare to criticize the Chinese Communist Party.