Julio Rosas

Campus unrest is coming to a city near you

It is 10 p.m. at the University of Texas at Austin’s South Mall. The night is quiet, a stark contrast to just the day before when UT Austin became the latest battleground of the culture war on American college campuses. All over the country this spring, anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protesters set up squalid camps on well-manicured quads, blocking and storming buildings. Revolutionaries clad in Covid masks and the keffiyeh favored by terrorists the world over spent the semester hounding Jewish students in libraries, dorms and whatever other structures they could seize. They demanded that institutions cut ties with Israel, topped off with requiring criminal pardons and straight “A”s for themselves, lest their noble impulses hinder their career prospects.

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On the ground in Ashkelon

Southern Israel I woke up on Tuesday morning, October 10, having just got back from New York City covering a big pro-Palestine protest. War reporting has been something I’ve always wanted to do. I figured it might be hard to catch a flight to Israel with everything going on, but because of the large Jewish and Israeli population living around Miami, there was a direct El Al flight that evening to Tel Aviv for $800. It was the last direct flight out of Miami for a couple of days, so I thought, “If I am going to do this, today is the day.” I was planning on leaving my job at Townhall the following week to start my independent Substack, but told them I was departing that day to go cover the war in Israel. They wished me well and off I went.

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