By Milli Sands | American Thinker
It’s not just Columbia University that’s in the news. Yale has also made headlines because it, too, has had hundreds of students marching around supporting Hamas:
Hundreds of Yale students have been protesting on campus in recent days, calling on the university to divest from companies that produce military weapons they say play a role in the Israel-Hamas war. It’s one of various pro-Palestinian protests happening on college campuses across the country.
Back in 2023, Yale made the news in an even uglier way when its student newspaper refused to acknowledge the October 7 massacre:
Yale’s campus newspaper is being criticized for censoring a pro-Israel columnist by removing what it called “unsubstantiated claims that Hamas raped women and beheaded men.”
The Yale Daily News last week cut out the reference from an Oct. 12 column by sophomore Sahar Tartak titled “Is Yalies4Palestine a hate group?”
The Yale Daily News (“YDN”) maintained this position despite all the video, testimonial, and eyewitness evidence of Hamas’ savagery, much of which Hamas terrorists proudly filmed and published. (See here, here, here, here, here, and here for just some examples.)
This is the Yale coat of arms:
Meanwhile, YDN strongly supports the concept of “Palestinians” and the existence of a “Palestinian State.” It does so even though neither exists nor has ever existed. The irony is that, notwithstanding the YDN’s articles and editorials, Yale itself stands firmly in the Israel-is-for-the-Jews column, whether the college and the students realize it.
The Hebrew script in the open book is pronounced in English as “Urim ve’Thummim.” Urim ve’Thummim (Hebrew: אוּרִים וְתֻמִּים) is a Hebrew phrase that means “lights and perfections.” The Torah uses the term to describe a device that the high priest of Israel used to seek guidance from God on a variety of matters, including military campaigns, legal disputes, and religious rituals. It is mentioned in the Torah on several occasions, e.g., Exodus 28:30, Numbers 27:21, and Deuteronomy 33:8. The Urim ve’Thummim’s significance is emphasized in various historical accounts and religious texts from ancient Israelite tradition.
The Urim ve’Thummim comprised two objects that were kept in the breastplate of the High Priest of the ancient Israelites. The breastplate was also inlaid with 12 precious stones, each of which was engraved with the name of one of the 12 tribes of Israel.
According to historical and biblical accounts, the Urim ve’Thummim were primarily used during the period of ancient Israelite history, specifically during the time of the Tabernacle and, later, the First Temple in Jerusalem. This period is generally believed to have spanned from approximately the 14th century BCE to the 6th century BCE (references for the above appear at the end of this essay).
As the Urim ve’Thummim were used by the Israelite (that is, Jewish),, high priest from the 14th to the 6th centuries BCE, they are a testament to the fact that Jews have had a presence in the land dating back at least 35 centuries.
Further, this time period includes the United Kingdom of Israel under King David and his son, King Solomon. The United Kingdom of Israel comprised the lands of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea, which separated into independent entities following King Solomon’s reign.
The State of Israel is situated within the boundaries of the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Thus, through its coat of arms, Yale places the Jewish people in the land of Israel, at a minimum, 3,500 years ago.
And what about the so-called “Palestinians” (“SCPs”), whose claim to the land the YDN touts? They are a construct of the 1960s:
Historically, the Palestinian “desire for statehood” and “need for liberation” was invented in large part by the Soviet Union. It is no coincidence that the blueprint for the PLO Charter was drafted in Moscow in 1964 and was approved by 422 Palestinian representative hand selected by the KGB…
To understand the PLO’s conception of a Palestinian state, it is instructive to examine Article 24 of the original PLO Charter. It reads: “this Organization [the PLO] does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in the Gaza Strip or the Himmah area.” If not the West Bank and Gaza, then what exactly what did, the PLO claim? The Palestine that the PLO wanted was in fact the State of Israel…
The fact is that after the War of 1967, Israel inherited Arab refugees living in the West Bank and Gaza that were forced to live there in the period of Egyptian and Jordanian control from 1948 to 1967. Israel immediately offered to return the lands it won in 1967 (West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights) in return for a peace treaty. This offer was rejected by the Arab countries in the Khartoum Conference (Aug. 29- Sep. 1, 1967). In Arafat’s authorized biography, Arafat: Terrorist or Peace Maker, Arafat claims this moment as one of his greatest diplomatic victories…
Palestinian nationalism is therefore a historical fabrication born out of a communist thirst for expansion and an Arab resentment of the existence of Israel. The “need” and “desire” for Palestinian is a veiled expression of the “need” and “desire” to end Israel’s existence.
Zuheir Mohsen, leader of the Palestinian terror group As Saiqa, concurs. In a 1970 interview with James Dorsey for the Dutch newspaper Trouw, he explained why the “Palestinian people” had been invented:
The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.
Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
So, let’s do the math.
Yale institutionally acknowledges the Jewish presence in Israel for at least 3,500 years.
A leader of the SCPs admits that the people he represents had a politically useful identity created from whole cloth about 60 years ago.
3,500 years of inhabitance by the Jews vs 60 years, by the SCPs.
The colonizers of Mandatory Palestine are the Muslims and SCPs. The indigenous people are the Jews.
This raises a very simple question for YDN: “How are you claiming that the demands of the SCPs are substantiated?”
The same question can be asked of the entire anti-Israel/antisemitic world.
References
1. “The Oxford Companion to the Bible” edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan
2. “The Bible Unearthed” by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman
3. “Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings: A Translation with Commentary” by Robert Alter
4. “A History of Ancient Israel and Judah” by J. Maxwell Miller and John H. Hayes
5. “The Land of Israel in Bible, History, and Theology” by Shimon Bakon
