Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) officially pressured Joe Biden to send the National Guard to protect Jewish students on campuses. The Republican spoke in the Senate and reinforced the idea with a letter sent directly to the president, in which he recalled Dwight Eisenhower in 1957 when the then-president did the same to preserve the safety of African-American students who attended Central High in Arkansas.
The senator referred to the latest events at Columbia University, where authorities confirmed more than one hundred arrests in an antisemitic march, in which even the daughter of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was involved.
With this in mind, Hawley personally wrote to the president asking him to send the National Guard to ensure the safety of Jewish students, who he felt were "at risk."
Last October, the Senate passed Senator Hawley's resolution condemning antisemitic student groups.
The resolution passed only after Democrats initially blocked it.
Now Senator Hawley is calling on Biden to send in the National Guard to protect Jewish students on campuses. pic.twitter.com/vSApcHse5Q
— Senator Hawley Press Office (@SenHawleyPress) April 22, 2024
"In your statement on Passover, you stated that ‘in recent days, we’ve seen harassment and calls for violence against Jews. This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous – and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country,'" he wrote.
"Now, you must take action to match those words. In 1957, pursuant to Executive Order 10730, President Dwight Eisenhower deployed the National Guard and 101st Airborne Division to ensure the safety of black students attending Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas. I urge you to similarly mobilize the National Guard and other necessary authorities to protect Jewish American students on Columbia University’s campus, and any other campus where Jewish students are at risk. ‘Never again’ means never again,” Hawley concluded.
The antisemitic protest in Columbia
On the morning of Wednesday, April 17, dozens of anti-Israel activists protested on the university campus, creating a camp on the main lawn to demonstrate against the war between Israel and Hamas. The event continued late into the night, with calls for an intifada and even the death of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
New York Police officers finally arrested some protesters on Thursday morning, which led to a statement from the university to clarify the situation of its students, among whom was Omar's daughter.
"This morning, April 18, we began placing identified Barnard students remaining at camp on interim suspension, and we will continue to do so. Before noon on April 17, Columbia made multiple requests for students participating in the unauthorized camp to leave the lawn. Several members of Barnard's senior staff also went to the lawn to ask Barnard students participating in the camp to leave and to warn Barnard students that they would be subject to sanctions at Barnard if they did not leave the camp," they said in the statement.
