MEF Chief Editor Jim Hanson spoke with Jesse Watters on FOX News as police prepared to move onto Columbia University in New York City to remove the anti-Israel mob there.
The segment was edited for length. The transcript below reflects the edited segment.
Jesse Watters (Host): Let’s now bring in former US army special forces Jim Hanson. Jim, the NYPD put out some images earlier in this afternoon at a press conference, showed what looked like antifa anarchists all black, diving through windows. And they said they’re known criminals throughout the department. What does that tell you?
Jim Hanson (Guest): This has had outside agitation all over it from the very start.
Jesse, we already know there is a ton of foreign funding behind this. There are groups coming in from all across the United States. The usual suspects are all in effect. And I think it’s time to get serious about this. A lot of the groups organizing this have chapters in multiple states and are doing this on multiple campuses.
That makes them open to a potential RICO prosecution, and I think it’s time for somebody to bring one. Well, we just heard that the massive civil rights violations already in play, just based off, you cannot religiously discriminate against people in this country or target people just based off of their ethnicity or their religious affiliation.
Jesse Watters (Host): That’s clearly already happened for about a week at the University of Columbia. And this is just months after the president of Columbia told Congress at a hearing under oath, that violates the harassment policy and they’d crack down immediately. But they didn’t crack down.
Jim Hanson (Guest): They had no intention of cracking down because they support these people because, as you pointed out, they’re being intimidated. Jewish and Israeli origin students are being intimidated and physically stopped, in some cases from public participation, even in places where they’ve paid tuition to be. That brings into play another law that might be applicable, the anti clan act, which prohibits doing exactly that. So I think it’s time for both the cops to get in and do the right thing and physically remove these agitators and these terrorist sympathizers, and then for the Justice Department of some good state to go ahead and bring the kind of charges that will stop this thing in the future.
Jesse Watters (Host): Well, that looks like it’s going to happen tonight because the University of Columbia just issued a shelter in place order for that whole wing of the campus.
That tells me the call has been made. They’re positioning NYPD forces to prevent outsiders from gaining access to the campus, and they’re just going to methodically go in, dismantle the tents, and then remove the people that have been occupying illegally this building. What kind of tactics would law enforcement use in a situation like this?
Jim Hanson (Guest): They have a ton of non violent ways to deal with protesters like this, and they’ll use all of them up until the protesters go ahead and push them over the line. But in the end, their job is to get them out of there.
And what’s likely to happen, unfortunately, is NYPD will be smeared for doing the right thing, doing what the taxpayers deserve and the regular, normal students at Columbia deserve. In the same way that these protesters have smeared Israel for a genocide that’s not happening in Gaza. It’s a horrible propaganda ploy and people need to see through it to what it is. It’s support for terrorism against our best democratic ally in the region, and I think the students there need to be held accountable along with the outside.
