Their targets: Jews and anyone who stands with them. Because, evidently, murders, beheadings, rapes, and the literal roasting of infants represent reasonable responses to leaving Gazans pretty much to their own devices these past 18 years.  

Or so say SJP adherents. Here’s a summation saluting the “historic and unprecedented” incursion/barbarity by “Palestinian resistance groups” from the University of Chicago’s SJP chapter.

No people deserves to be driven from their lands, militarily occupied, and confined to ghettos and concentration camps. History will honor the Palestinians for striving decade after decade, against all odds, to finally break free from theirs. And it will look back with shame and bewilderment at those who refused to support them. SJP UChicago stands in full solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation and unequivocal opposition to Israel’s escalating war of erasure, ethnic cleansing, and extermination.

Hoo, boy.

The entirely sensible response by a trio of Northeastern universities — Brandeis, George Washington, Columbia — has been to shut down, at least temporarily, SJP operations on their campuses.

In this, the three are belatedly following the bold lead set forth by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (yes, the Republican presidential candidate), who, through state university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues, sought the deactivation of SJP chapters at the flagship University of Florida and the University of South Florida in Tampa back on Oct. 25.

“Our campuses have avoided the violence and anti-Semitism that is occurring on campuses all across this nation,” … Rodrigues said … at a Board of Governors meeting. “In Florida, we will not tolerate violent activity, anti-Semitic activity or a failure to observe the law.”

The universities did not complete the severing, in part because of in-house legal opinions that the action would expose university officials to civil liability. This hesitancy did not stop lawyers for SJP at UF and the ACLU from, Thursday, filing to prevent the state from carrying out its plan altogether.

(Frankly, just now, UF has more to worry about with a road trip to ninth-ranked Missouri and a visit from likely playoff-bound Florida State standing between the football team and bowl eligibility. Stipulated: As a Gator alumnus, my priorities may be skewed.)

The suit claims the proposed shutdown already “stifles UF SJP’s pro-Palestinian advocacy on campus at a time when the Palestine–Israel conflict is a matter of vital public discourse and concern.” The state, say the lawyers, is violating the group’s First Amendment freedoms of speech and association.

Here’s what the group is really worried about: Getting the boot from campus would sever SJP’s access to resources and funding. Ah. Your tax dollars at work.

Florida officials aren’t so sure, notes Politico.

Florida is targeting the groups over a “toolkit” published by the national organization that faced scrutiny in Florida and other states for labeling the attack, now known as “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” as “the resistance” while claiming that “Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.”

By linking this document to SJP branches in Florida, the state contends that the student groups are violating a state law that makes it felony to “knowingly provide material support … to a designated foreign terrorist organization.”

While Rodrigues notes that taking such a position would violate state law (signed by DeSantis in Jerusalem in April), UF SJP denies direct association with, or financial support from, the national organization. Which you can believe if you want to.

We have before us a fascinating legal argument, one that claims a constitutional guarantee must be backed by government resources. Is the ACLU willing to battle in court for student activity fees going to the UF KKK?

There is precedent, right there at my alma mater. I’m old enough to remember when the University of Florida cut off funding for the student newspaper over the administration’s demand for prepublication review of articles. When both sides refused to blink, a new newspaper — the Independent Florida Alligator — was born.

That was 50 years ago, and the student-driven paper publishes to this very day, free from the encumbrances of faculty and administration oversight. Were the Alligator’s First Amendment rights violated? Or, to practice that right inhibited, did the newspaper simply have to become more resourceful?

The latter question answers itself.

How much like the breakaway Alligator’s editors are Students for Justice in Palestine? They demand to have their say and associate with whom they please. This is precisely as James Madison envisioned it. Bravo.

However, dependence on support for exercising that right necessarily clamps shackles on its practice. That’s true whether the funds come from private sources or state accounts.

Thus is much revealed by the additional pushback from UF SJP to Florida officials proposing the group pledge to “reject violence,” “reject they are part of the Hamas movement” and agree to “follow the law.”

Untenable! say lawyers for the students: “Even if UF SJP were to comply with these demands, that would only open the door to further ultimatums constraining its constitutionally protected expression and association.”

Fine. UF SJP (and USF SJP, for that matter) also have a constitutionally protected right to seek funds outside official channels to pursue their passions. Maybe even link up, in fact, and in broad daylight, with the national SJP. Open a storefront. Gainesville is bound to have some leasable space in a strip mall. Compete in the arena of opinions and ideas, without the shackles of a government stipend.

Because, at least in Florida, it’s only going to get worse for supporters of Hamas barbarism. Thursday, the Republican-dominated state Legislature proposed stripping scholarships, grants, and other benefits from any student who “promotes” Hamas and/or other designated terrorist organizations.

Sounds about right.