At Portland State University, they treated the campus library like ISIS treated Palmyra, shattering glass windows, damaging furniture, and computers, destroying the fire extinguishers, and stealing rare books that were endowed to the university, in addition to spraying hateful graffiti calling for an intifada across the library.
About 300 students and community members were arrested at Columbia University and City College of New York, where the university is surveying damage from several buildings and grounds after demonstrators smashed glass doors, graffitied walls, and ransacked public property. At UCLA, the police broke up a violent plot to take over a campus building and disrupt mid-term exams. And the list just goes on regarding the violence that has taken place on American campuses in recent weeks by pro-BDS protesters.
And now, after the police have broken up many of the protests, at Princeton University and other campuses, the pro-divestment students are going on a hunger strike, angered at how campuses across America have invited in the police to deal with the violence caused by the protesters. I have a suggestion for the presidents of American universities. Why don’t they just arrest them, place these students in a mental institution and forcefully feed these demonstrators inside of that mental institution?
If the universities give into the pressure caused by these hunger strikes and the sensational headlines that they cause, all it will do is encourage a repeat of what happened at the library at Portland State University and other violent incidents that took place on campuses across America. Appeasing violence never works. To the contrary, it just whets their appetite to do more violent acts, which severely adversely affect the environment for all students studying at American universities.
However, if the university ignores them and lets them starve to death, it will be bad publicity for Harvard and all of the other American universities. Therefore, the universities should not sit back and let them starve themselves to death, nor should they give into their demands. Instead, the police should go to their encampment and give them the following option: Eat and go home, or be hospitalized in a mental institution for possessing suicidal intentions and causing harm to themselves and inciting other students to inflict self-harm. They should be given two hours to eat and go home. During these two hours, the families of the protesters should be brought in to try and dissuade the protesters from continuing their hunger strike.
In recent days, the hunger strike of Armenian leader Ruben Vardanyan ended because his family persuaded him not to give up his life over politics. “I am deeply concerned about the health and well-being of my father,” said David Vardanyan, one of Vardanyan’s sons, after his father lacked nourishment for several weeks. His concern about his father’s well-being in the end paid dividends for Azerbaijan, as he ended his hunger strike when he spoke to his wife on the phone.
This shows that bringing in families of the hunger strikers is instrumental in helping to end a hunger strike without giving in too much to the demands of the protesters. After all, all Azerbaijan did was permit him to speak to his family and to make some speeches from prison, and he ended his hunger strike without Azerbaijan giving him anything substantial in return. This shows how influential families can be in helping to end hunger strikes.
Anyone who does not comply after getting warned from the police and hearing pleas from their family should be arrested and brought to a mental hospital, where they will be forcefully fed with tubes. These students should not be released from the mental hospital until they commit to giving up their hunger strike, which should be treated as the same as having suicidal intentions. Until they agree, they should be forced into the same types of therapy given to people that wish to commit suicide and treated by the authorities as such.
The authorities can even drug them with psychiatric medication in the mental hospital, which will cause them to be more relaxed, less angry and less agitated, and thus when they do return, they will be less motivated to do something like having a hunger strike. The campus should treat these students as individuals who took a break from studies due to mental health issues, and get a record as such. After all, anyone who destroys a library and vandalizes a campus has significant mental health issues, which require psychiatric treatment for either malignant narcissist personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder or both. Anyone willing to die in order to protest for BDS also has significant psychological issues that should be addressed as well.
In this way, Princeton and all of the other universities can rid themselves of the students who are presently doing a hunger strike in favor of divesting from Israel, thus helping to restore peace and tranquility to campuses across America without adversely affecting the public image of the universities. After all, they would not be doing anything more than preventing mentally ill protesters from killing themselves over a worthless cause and stopping malignant narcissists from further disrupting campus life.
Allowing a hunger strike to continue will do nothing more than damage the public image of the universities. Indeed, every week that Vardanyan was on hunger strike was a public relations disaster for Azerbaijan. His son was interviewed by CNN, France 24 and a series of other major outlets, who all spoke ill of Azerbaijan defending itself against the financing of terrorism. A separatist terrorist allied with Putin under the influence of a hunger strike was transformed into a freedom fighter in the eyes of Western media outlets, and this was terrible for Azerbaijan, which prompted them to let his family convince him to stop the hunger strike, even though he was in solitary confinement.
Similarly, if these pro-divestment hunger strikers continue to wage their struggle at Harvard, the value of a Harvard degree will go on a slippery slope downhill. People will stop referring to Harvard as a top notch-institution but rather as a school that let its students starve to death over their refusal to give into the demands of their cause, or as a school who gave into antisemitic agitation and divesting from Israel, thus encouraging more violence on campus in the future. The only way to prevent this from spiraling in that direction is to invite their families into the picture to dissuade them from continuing their hunger strike and if that fails, to place these students immediately in a mental institution, where they will be forcefully fed. There is no other valid response to their hunger strike.
Rachel Avraham is the CEO of the Dona Gracia Center and the editor of the Economic Peace Center. She is the author of “Women and Jihad: Debating Palestinian Female Suicide Bombings in the American, Israeli and Arab Media.”
