Former President Barack Obama has been considerably silent about anti-Israel radicals ‘ takeover of American university campuses for a person who has never been nervous about sharing his condescending ideas.
On Monday, Columbia University — Obama’s old school — announced it will not host its college- large commencement ceremony for this year’s graduating class. That appears to be a reaction to the weeks-long pro-Hamas presentations that have taken place at the university. The university made the announcement days after law enforcement had ( finally ) authorized the arrest of students who had occupied a school building without permission.
Any previous leader would likely be outraged by the installation of unlawful encampments and the abuse of Jewish learners at Columbia and another American universities. Donald Trump, for example, has consistently condemned these protesters and their extra- Jewish views. But for Obama, the process is apparently very difficult.
Obama has issued a number of posts on X since the Columbia encampments ‘ launch last month, none of which address leftists ‘ control of university campuses. The former president was n’t stop expressing his dislike for the racist behavior on show at his alma mater or any of America’s post-secondary organizations, despite wishing Jews a joyful Easter on April 22.
Obama’s Checkered Past
Legacy advertising” editors” would continue to spamming the phone lines and letters of every GOP official in the country asking for criticism if the above protesters were “MAGA Republicans” protesting an Islamist nation and harassing Muslim pupils. They will not uphold the same standard for Democrats, and their repeated criticism of Obama for ignoring the left’s monopoly on universities is evidence of this.
While the media’s inaction is n’t surprising, neither is Obama’s silence. Obama’s insistence on the matter speaks to both his actions and the people who have shaped his entire life.
Before Obama became president, there were rumors that he had engaged in racism. Next year, for instance, Tablet Magazine’s David Samuels published a , long expose , based on a question- and- answer interview with David Garrow, a longstanding legal rights historian who authored a biography on Obama in 2017 titled , Rising Star.
In his book, Garrow documented an argument between Obama and his longtime Chicago girlfriend, Sheila Miyoshi Jager. It allegedly started because the future president  , refused , to condemn antisemitism and black nationalism.
The two allegedly met during a visit to” an exhibit at Chicago’s Spertus Institute about the 1961 trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi who played a significant role in organizing the Holocaust.” After Steve Cokely, a black mayoral aide, “accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting Black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans,” Samuels claims that Chicago politics was engulfed in controversy at this time.
” In Jager’s recollection, what set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple’s relationship was Obama’s stubborn refusal, after seeing the exhibit, and in the swirl of this Cokely affair, to condemn Black racism”, Samuels wrote. She insisted that what upset her that day was Obama’s inability to denounce Cokely’s comments, despite acknowledging that Obama’s embrace of a Black identity had caused some distance between the couple.
” It was not Obama’s Blackness that bothered her, but that he would not condemn antisemitism”, Samuels added.
Even if one were to reject Jager’s allegations and accept Obama’s version of the argument, it still does n’t explain the prominent antisemitic figures the Illinois Democrat surrounded himself with before becoming president.
In 2018, a photo surfaced , showing , Obama and well- known antisemite Louis Farrakhan smiling together during a 2005 Congressional Black Caucus meeting. Farrakhan— who heads Nation of Islam, a black supremacist group — has  , claimed , that Judaism is a “gutter religion”, whites are a “race of devils”, and Adolf Hitler “was a very great man”.
Farrakhan claimed he met with Obama before launching his campaign, and that he endorsed him during the 2008 Democrat presidential primary, according to National Review. Conveniently, the picture was suppressed until after Obama’s two terms.
Obama’s associations with antisemites goes back further, to his days as a community organizer in Chicago. The former president was close to Jeremiah Wright, a “reverend” of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, who frequently made racist and vile remarks. Wright is also Obama’s former pastor. Wright gave their children the names Obama and married them.
Less than a week after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, one of Wright’s most outrageous statements was made. The “pastor” claimed that America’s foreign policy led to these atrocities.
” We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye”, Wright said. We have backed state terrorism against Palestinians and black South Africans, and we are now angry because the things we’ve done abroad are now being returned to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost”.
Obama brushed aside his affiliation with Wright during his 2008 campaign, saying,” I do n’t think my church is actually particularly controversial”. He also dismissed Wright’s unhinged remarks, saying Wright is” an old uncle who says things I do n’t always agree with”. Wright , claimed ,” them Jews” were keeping him from seeing Obama during his time as president.
His history with Farrakhan and Wright does n’t even include Obama’s rabid anti- Israel foreign policy as president or more recent indulgence , of “both sides- ism” regarding Hamas ‘ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Obama’s Legacy Comes to Fruition
Contrast Obama’s pro-Hamas anarchy with the modern Democrat Party’s response to the antisemitism that permeates America’s campuses with antisemites like Wright and Farrakhan.
While some Democrats have condemned the antisemitism spewed by these demonstrators, others, such as Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, have gone to great lengths to defend the encampments and coddle their participants. Omar has repeatedly accused Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and made numerous antisemitic statements, whose daughter was fired by Columbia for her involvement in the anti-Israel demonstrations on campus.
Many of these left-wing colleges have put up kid gloves on these protesters and waited weeks before allowing law enforcement to seize control of the illegal encampments. Some professors at the University of North Carolina are so committed to the left that they wo n’t give grades to students until the university reinstates [students ] who have been suspended for pro-Palestine demonstrations on campus, according to a report from The Federalist’s Tristan Justice.
What media “analysts” will never acknowledge, however, is that unhinged anti- Israel and antisemitic figures like these were mainstreamed in the Democrat Party by Obama.
The anti-Israel radicalism that permeates the modern left is due to Obama’s embrace and tolerance of antisemites and the media’s refusal to hold him accountable for it. Democrats viewed it as acceptable for anti-American radicals who harbor the worst feelings about Jews to join the party’s ranks by approving Obama’s controversial behavior and previous associations with people like Wright and Farrakhan, whether willingly or not.
Coupled with Obama’s pro- Iran foreign policy, this also altered Democrats ‘ views on Israel. The Democrat Party is now opposed to Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas and Iranian-backed attackers in an effort to appease their antisemitic wing, despite previously believing that American support for Israel was positive.
Whether he believes it or not, Obama’s silence on the pro- Hamas movement infecting America’s campuses speaks volumes.
The Federalist staff writer Shawn Fleetwood graduated from the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClear Health, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
