University Donors Pull Funds Over Anti-Israel Protests. Where Was The Outrage Over BLM?
Major university donors closed their pocketbooks this month after pro-Palestine activists who stood in solidarity with Hamas exposed the far-left radicalism that has taken over higher education. While the donors are now wielding their financial influence against antisemitism in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, they didn’t have any qualms about pro-Palestine allies of Black Lives Matter terrorizing cities across the country three years ago. In fact, in many cases, they funded or otherwise supported it.
Former Utah Gov. and U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman, whose family has donated tens of millions of dollars to the University of Pennsylvania over the years, was among the first to send a letter to the school’s president over its response to the Hamas attack. He announced the Huntsman Foundation will “close its checkbook” thanks to UPenn’s immediate silence in the wake of Palestinian militants killing a reported 1,400 Jews or more in a surprise attack.
“Moral relativism has fueled the university’s race to the bottom and sadly now has reached a point where remaining impartial is no longer an option,” Huntsman wrote. “The University’s silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel (when the only response should be outright condemnation) is a new low.”
Hedge fund billionaire Cliff Asness and venture capitalist David Magerman also followed suit, ending donations to the university that Huntsman called “almost unrecognizable.”
“I am deeply ashamed of my association with the University of Pennsylvania. I refuse to donate another dollar to Penn,” Magerman wrote to the university president, citing its “fierce[] support” for antisemitic views.
Harvard University also faced donor backlash after more than 30 student groups signed a statement blaming Israel for the attack.
“The apartheid regime is the only one to blame,” the letter read. “The coming days will require a firm stand against colonial retaliation. We call on the Harvard community to take action to stop the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians.”
[READ: ‘Elite’ College Students Blame Israel For Hamas Terror Attack]
The university’s response, or lack of it, drew criticism from prominent alumni such as Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and former GOP Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. Last week, the Wexner Foundation, chaired by Leslie and Abigail Wexner, pulled financial support from the school. On Monday, Hogan announced he will pull out of two fellowship programs in which he had planned to participate.
“I cannot condone the dangerous anti-Semitism that has taken root on your campus,” Hogan said. “This horrific terrorist attack was the greatest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust and it should be universally condemned as exactly what it is: Pure evil.”
But where were these billionaires and politicians when Black Lives Matter activists burned down American communities? Mitt Romney, at least, was marching with them.
Black Lives Matter Is America’s Hamas
The 2020 summer of rage left behind an estimated $2 billion worth of damage. And while the grifters at the Lincoln Project have absurdly labeled the right the “American Taliban,” describing Black Lives Matter as the American Hamas is closer to the target.
In 2015, The Washington Post documented the “growing solidarity between #BlackLivesMatter and Palestinian activists.”
“Activists on either side of the world began connecting. As the Ferguson protests intensified, Palestinians reached out to those on the streets of the troubled St. Louis suburb. Some even offered advice over how to deal with tear gas,” the Post reported. “In April, Ethiopian Israelis protested police brutality in Jerusalem by reportedly chanting ‘Baltimore is here!’”
That same year, BLM activists even went on a “mission to the Palestinian territories and emerged more convinced of the shared challenges of their struggles.”
It should be no surprise then, eight years later, that the BLM chapter in Chicago published a post on social media celebrating the Hamas massacre with an image of a paratrooper, captioned “I stand with Palestine.” During their Oct. 7 surprise attack, Hamas paratroopers dropped into Israel and killed about 260 people at an outdoor music festival.
The Chicago Black Lives Matter group later apologized and removed the post, but it was no isolated incident.
In 2021, BLM activists similarly protested on behalf of Palestine when fighting broke out between Hamas and Israel. Black Lives Matter activists were also in Israel for pro-Palestine riots in 2016. The group’s ideological alliance with Palestinian revolutionaries became the subject of profile features in Politico and National Public Radio (NPR).
“In the 1950s, Malcolm X was among the first Black activists to speak out for the ‘Arab cause’ in the Arab-Israeli conflict, beginning during his time with the Nation of Islam when he sometimes talked up antisemitic conspiracy theories,” NPR reported. The activism of the mid-20th century icon would go on to inspire future generations of black activists who similarly peddle antisemitic tropes.
Federalist Senior Contributor Benjamin Weingarten wrote about BLM’s commitment to the destruction of Israel in 2016 for Conservative Review, four years before BLM riots erupted nationwide.
“The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has found the real enemy, and it is the Jews,” he wrote, with a link to the organization’s platform, which states:
The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people. The US requires Israel to use 75 percent of all the military aid it receives to buy US-made arms. Consequently, every year billions of dollars are funneled from US taxpayers to hundreds of arms corporations, who then wage lobbying campaigns pushing for even more foreign military aid. The results of this policy are twofold: it not only diverts much needed funding from domestic education and social programs, but it makes US citizens complicit in the abuses committed by the Israeli government. Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people.
It was clear in 2020 and it’s clear today that a top priority of Black Lives Matter is solidarity with Palestine, which, of course, is run by Hamas. In fact, Palestinian Arabs overwhelmingly support the terror group’s genocide against Jews. Some of the same elites taking a stand against antisemitism in the aftermath of the latest attacks, however, have championed BLM along with the rest of corporate America. For example, while Leslie Wexler was still on the board of Victoria’s Secret’s parent company, L Brands, the lingerie retailer and L Brands Foundation celebrated the BLM movement with “$1 million to fund the fight against racism and inequality.”
Huntsman’s last gubernatorial campaign also participated in a protest with Black Lives Matter in June 2020.
The same universities now vilified for Hamas sympathies have also been staunch defenders of the BLM movement, with statements of commitment to BLM across the school websites.
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