Why Israel-linked billionaires silenced University Campus protests against Gaza War

America’s universities are on fire. A protest movement against the violence in Gaza and U.S. colleges’ complicity in them has swept the nation, with encampments on college campuses in 45 of America’s 50 states.

The crackdown has been swift; thousands of students have been arrested, charged, fined, lost their degrees, or even deported. Israel has long been a political third rail in America. The thousands of students being arrested are learning that in real-time.

Amid corporate media demanding a Kent State 2.0, riot police, armored vehicles and snipers have been deployed across the country to terrify those campaigning for justice into silence.

The movement began on April 17 at Columbia University, where a modest Gaza solidarity encampment was established.

Protestors hardly expected to be welcomed by university authorities but were shocked as university president Minouche Shafik immediately called in the NYPD – the first time the university had allowed police to suppress dissent on campus since the famous 1968 demonstrations against the Vietnam War.

Shafik’s decision was no doubt influenced by the enormous pressure put on her by the university’s top donors – many of whom have deep connections to the Israeli state and its military death squads.

Billionaire businessman and sports executive Robert Kraft, for example, publicly announced he was cutting the university off from his lavish funding over its failure to suppress the protests effectively enough.

I am deeply saddened at the virulent hate that continues to grow on campus and throughout our country, he said in a statement, claiming that Columbia was not protecting its Jewish students.

Kraft is one of Columbia’s most important donors, giving the institution millions of dollars, including $3 million to fund the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life.

He also has deep connections to Israel, having visited the country over 100 times, including to have private lunch with his friend and mass murderer, Zionist PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who said, Israel does not have a more loyal friend than Robert Kraft.

Netanyahu is correct. Kraft is one of the Israel lobby’s primary benefactors, donating millions to groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), The Israel Project and StandWithUs.

He pledged a gigantic $100 million to his own Foundation to Combat Antisemitism narrative – a group that presents critics of Israeli policy with the charge of anti-Jewish racism.

He has also funded a host of pro-Israel politicians in races against progressive, anti-war challengers. A recent MintPress News investigation took a closer look at how Kraft is a key actor in trying to launder Israel’s image in America.

Another billionaire benefactor pulling his Columbia funding is Leon Cooperman. The hedge fund manager suspended his donations in October, citing student support for Palestine.

These students are fucking crazy. They don’t understand what they’re doing or what they’re talking about, he fumed, adding that they also have to be controlled.

One person who does know what he is talking about on this issue is Columbia’s Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History, Joseph Massad. Yet Cooperman demanded Massad be fired after the academic took positions on Palestine he objected to.

Cooperman has enormous influence at Columbia precisely because he is one of its chief income sources. In 2012, for instance, he donated $25 million to support the construction of the university’s new Manhattanville campus.

A third billionaire backer using his financial clout to pressure Columbia is Soviet-born oligarch Len Blavatnik, who demanded that the university protestors be held to account.

Leaked messages reveal that for Blavatnik, this meant using the full weight of the law against protestors.

Blavatnik was a member of a secret WhatsApp group created in October 2023 that included many prominent Americans, former Israeli prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Benny Gantz, and Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog.

Its mission was, in its own words, to change the narrative in favor of Israel and help win the war for U.S. public opinion.

This included donating to pro-Israel political candidates and trying to pressure black celebrities such as Alicia Keys, Jay-Z and LeBron James to publicly condemn antisemitism – i.e., attempting to conflate the protestors with racists.

However, from Columbia, the protests quickly spread across America, including to many of the country’s most prestigious institutions, including Harvard.

Another billionaire apparently stunned and sickened by Harvard’s pro-Hamas positions is former Victoria’s Secret CEO Leslie Wexner.

Apart from Wexner’s exceptionally close and well-publicized connections to child sex traffickers and Israeli intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein, Wexner is a major donor to Israeli causes.

Nowhere, however, has the elite backlash to student protests been as bitter as at the University of Pennsylvania.

Leading the charge to suppress pro-Palestine sentiment on campus there has been Marc Rowan. The billionaire investor demanded that his side must exact a price on students who express solidarity with Palestine.

I would not hire you if you were anti-Black. I wouldn’t hire if you were anti-gay. I wouldn’t hire you if you were anti-anything (except for anti-Gaza). Why would I hire an anti-Semite, effectively conflating antisemitism with criticism of the Israeli government.

Rowan strongly opposed UPenn’s hosting of a Palestinian literature festival in 2023, demanding that college president Liz Magill and UPenn board chair Scott Bok be fired. After October 7, Rowan and his allies succeeded in forcing both from their jobs.

It could be argued that MIT could reasonably be accused of directly abetting a genocide in Gaza. However, MIT and other elite institutions are under enormous governmental pressure from the other side.

Its president, Sally Kornbluth, as well as Harvard president Claudine Gay and Pennsylvania’s Magill, were brought before Congress and grilled on their universities’ alleged support for Hamas and indifference to antisemitism.

The case made national news and focused waves of pressure on universities nationwide.

The USA, of course, has an extremely close relationship with Israel, using it as an outpost of its power in the Middle East.

Washington has vetoed successive bills at the United Nations that attempt to address the dire situation, including those calling for a ceasefire and full Palestinian statehood.

The U.S. supplies Tel Aviv with nearly $4 billion worth of military aid each year, and in April, Congress voted to send $17 billion of additional U.S. taxpayer money.

Critics have blasted the aid as pointless at best and supporting a genocide at worst. But President Biden maintains that every penny given to Israel is money well spent and has stated that if Israel did not exist, the United States would have to invent one.

Authorities, however, have been in little mood to negotiate, and images of black-clad riot police beating up and dragging away students and faculty members have gone viral across the globe.

This is all happening in a context where the government continues to pledge its full support to Israel and its war aims and has moved to crack down on anti-Israel speech, attempting to make it functionally illegal to openly oppose Israel’s expansionist policies.

Mint Press / ABC Flash Point News 2024.