This past week, however, Pittsburgh became the site not of strength and unity, but of hatred and division. A group of over 300 far-left activists established a Gaza solidarity encampment on the private property of the University of Pittsburgh, and the community has not been the same since.
The activists, some involved in local Democratic politics and a few actual University of Pittsburgh students, erected a barricade and set up a fence around an encampment filled with small and large tents. The encampment has also included defacing the Cathedral of Learning, blocking the entrances, and defacing the Frick Fine Arts Building with antisemitic graffiti. ...
The protesters said they were reclaiming the campus “in the name of Palestine from the river to the sea” and listed a series of demands that included the university disclosing all of their investments and the immediate termination of Pitt’s Hillel chapter.
Pennsylvania state Rep. Dan Frankel, a Democrat, said in response to all of it, notably the “river to the sea” reference and the termination of Hillel, that what they were proposing was both chilling and dangerous.
“This is not a close call. It is antisemitism and it is dangerous,” Frankel said.
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