Jerusalem’s deputy mayor visited the Big Apple this week, where she had a stern message for American colleges and their “so-called liberal justice warriors” rallying in support of Hamas: Quit the gaslighting and start thinking critically.
“Parents are paying big money for their kids to be indoctrinated and taught the opposite of critical thinking, which is what university is supposed to be about. This isn’t critical thinking. It’s brainwashing,” Fleur Hassan-Nahoum told The Post Wednesday.
Heated anti-Israel protests have erupted across college campuses in the US after Hamas terrorists slaughtered 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, in a monstrous sneak attack on Oct. 7 — forcing the Jewish state to retaliate and protect itself.
The rallies have seen sickening messages beamed on campus buildings and antisemitic chants, including, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
“What we are seeing on college campuses is the result of decades of indoctrination. You can be a social justice warrior for any minority on earth except Jews and Israel because somehow it isn’t racism when you are punching up instead of down,” she said.
“There is a cognitive dissonance,” she added. “Israelis can’t be human, can’t be victims, so if you brutally attack and murder them, the attacks are justified.”
Hassan-Nahoum, who is visiting New York City to learn about how the city rallied together following the 9/11 terror attack, said the demonstrations “are gaslighting Jews.”
“They are trying to whitewash a call for genocide. I learned a new term — gaslighting. That’s what this is. Projecting what you are doing onto the innocent victim. They are gaslighting Jews to make us believe this is our fault,” she said.
“We don’t have apartheid, they do. There isn’t one Jew in Gaza. We left in 2005. They could have built Dubai. They ended up building Beirut,” she continued.
“The real racism is the racism of low expectations. When you turn them into victims who can’t control their own fate, that’s real racism. They were offered a state four times. We left in 2005. They built a terror base instead of a beautiful country. That’s what they have to decide. Do they really want their state or do they want to destroy our state?”
Ironically, she added, there have been no pro-Palestinian marches in Arab countries making peace with Israel.
“I have a lot of Arab friends who came out in the first couple of days and said, ‘not in my name,’” Hassan-Nahoum said.
“There hasn’t been one march in any of the modern Arab countries that have made peace with Israel. Ironically it’s the Western world and their so-called liberal values of the young people that are out on the street… It is ironic that I am getting phone calls of support from my Emirati, Moroccan and Bahrainian friends — and not the so-called liberal justice warriors in the West.”
Hassan-Nahoum also had this to say to students supporting Hamas, a terror group that systemically deprives women and the LGBTQIA community of their rights: “In this very non-binary world that we live in, they should step out of their binary notions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Nearly as many US college students support Hamas as they do Israel amid the raging Middle East war, according to a troubling recent poll.
The online poll of 609 college students by Intelligent.com found that 22% of respondents sympathize with Hamas while 26% side with the Israeli government.
That means about 1 in 5 of college students back a militia group officially designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
“This just shows how stupid people have become,” Hassan-Nahoum said.
After spending Tuesday in Washington, DC with 300,000 peaceful pro-Israel protestors, the Israeli pol traveled to the Big Apple — where she stopped by Caffe Aronne on the Upper East Side.
The Jewish-owned eatery has become a gathering place for Jewish New Yorkers and Israelis who need support and a community.
Hassan-Nahoum wanted to visit New York City to learn how it healed after the devastating 9/11 terror attacks.
“We can learn from the rehabilitation of the city, from the way that you memorialized it so well and the way that when you needed to attack and destroy the monster that did this to your city, everybody else supported you and we appreciate American support for us eliminating our own monsters,” she said.