The protests that we see unfolding on American college campuses are both understandable and worrying. It is understandable because there is nothing more natural than to see young people express their compassion and pain about the unfolding tragedy in Gaza—where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live without shelter or solace and thousands of Israeli families grieve and worry about their loved ones held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. In northern Israel, 60,000 people have fled in the face of rockets and shells launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon.
In principle, it is noble to demand justice and reject violence by exercising fundamental rights to demonstrate and freely speak out peacefully. And yet, the reality is more worrying. The rhetoric is not from the tradition of Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi, which mixed eloquence and urgency with pleas for justice and moderation—an approach meant to persuade onlookers to join their cause. Instead, campus demonstrators celebrate the atrocities of October 7, in which Hamas terrorists murdered, raped, or abducted over 1,100 Israelis just a few months ago. Their words call for the end of Israel, a democratic ally of the United States, or champion the cause of........