Police keep watch at a protest of the war in Gaza at the University of Texas at Austin on April 24. Students walked out of class as protests continue to sweep college campuses around the country.
University of Texas police approach protesters to apprehend them during a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas at Austin on April 24.
Pro-Palestinian protesters are pushed to the edge of campus by Texas State Troopers on horses at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas. Student protests over the Israel-Hamas war have popped up on an increasing number of college campuses following last week's arrest of more than 100 demonstrators at Columbia University.
A state trooper yells for protesters to move back during a pro-Palestinian rally at the University of Texas at Austin on April.
Pro-Palestinian protesters are pushed to the edge of campus at the University of Texas at Austin.
University of Texas at Austin police officers arrest a man at a pro-Palestinian protest on campus on April 24.
State troopers near a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas at Austin.
A woman is detained at a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas at Austin on April 24.
Gov. Greg Abbott and University of Texas at Austin President Jay Hartzell have fallen into the Hamas terrorist organization’s trap by sending riot police to attack peaceful protestors.
The larger turnout for another protest the following day proves such tactics are futile, and relying on violence draws more people to sympathize with demonstrators. Any continued oppression of people’s civil rights will only feed greater indignation and fit perfectly into the terrorist's playbook.
To understand how U.S. and Israeli leaders and protesters defending Palestinian human rights are being manipulated, we need to understand the decades-old tactics of revolutionary terrorism and how Hamas wins in the long run by losing the short.
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Abbott, Hartzell and other liberty-loving people should know better by now.
When the U.S. Army sent me to Germany as an intelligence analyst in the 1980s, the Marxist terrorist organization Red Army Faction was assassinating and kidnapping people. We were trained in terrorist tactics and strategies. I interviewed many terrorists and revolutionaries during my 20 years with the Associated Press.
All revolutionary groups, regardless of politics or theology, share one goal: overthrowing the existing government. They are convinced their system is superior and ready to impose it by force.
Hamas emerged in 1987 from the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic political movement born in 1928 to impose theocratic rule across the Middle East. The Egyptian government first banned it in 1948, but its Pan-Islamism became mainstream after Israel’s victory against secular Arab governments in 1967’s Six-Day War.
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Revolutionary theory recognizes that groups need to win public support to seize power. One strategy is to employ shocking guerilla tactics to attack people and institutions associated with the government and provoke an overreaction.
The terrorists hope the government’s retaliation will be so repressive and violent it will offend the public’s sensibilities and convince more people to join the revolution. International groups employ terrorism to provoke overreactions from powerful nations and convince oppressed people that resistance is not futile.
As my old boss and Middle East expert, Dan Perry, recently explained in his newsletter, Hamas is a hybrid between the murderous ISIS movement and the Ku Klux Klan. The organization is committed to ethnically cleansing Jews from Israel.
Before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack killed more than 1,100 Israelis and injured 5,000, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right wing government had blocked peace talks and was actively undermining moderate Palestinian leaders.
Yahiya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, was counting on Netanyahu to break the deadlock by launching a massive counterattack following the massacre and sexual assault of Jews.
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The Netanyahu government’s response has been disastrous. Israeli Defense Forces have killed 34,000 people in Gaza and injured 77,000. The Army has destroyed or damaged 60% of Gazan homes, 80% of commercial buildings, 73% of schools and two-thirds of the hospitals serving 2 million Palestinians.
Netanyahu now promises to attack Rafah, a city on the border with Egypt where 1 million civilians are living in makeshift shelters. Another 1 million Palestinians are scattered across Gaza, struggling to find food, fuel or clean water.
Despite turning Gaza into a wasteland, Netanyahu has failed to achieve his goals of destroying Hamas or freeing the hostages. Hamas still functions, and the terrorist organization is more popular than ever among Palestinians as hatred toward Israel grows with every airstrike.
Sinwar has succeeded in radicalizing more Arabs and Westerners to his cause. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s scorched-earth policy has earned condemnations from human rights groups and governments around the world while making Israel’s traditional allies very uncomfortable.
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world, including Israelis, are protesting Netanyahu’s disproportionate retaliation for Oct. 7. Hundreds of people staged a peaceful protest on the UT campus last week, which, according to most witness accounts, did not include any antisemitic or pro-Hamas chants or speeches.
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Nevertheless, Abbott and Hartzell also overreacted, with witnesses condemning their heavy-handed tactics.
“I witnessed police run into a small peaceful crowd of students,” Jeremi Suri, a UT history professor who is Jewish, posted on LinkedIn. “The violence came from the police. Shameful. We have learned nothing from history.”
Experience shows that engaging demonstrators is more effective than attacking them, Suri explained. Measured responses always work better.
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that we must protect the “freedom for the thought that we hate” if we wish to enjoy freedom of speech ourselves. Abbott and Hartzell failed to protect the protesters’ rights last week and, in doing so, mocked the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of free speech.
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Hamas’ leaders couldn’t be happier.
Award-winning opinion writer Chris Tomlinson writes commentary about money, politics and life in Texas. Sign up for his “Tomlinson’s Take” newsletter at houstonhchronicle.com/tomlinsonnewsletter or expressnews.com/tomlinsonnewsletter.
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