Ellie Cahannam is a former Deputy Special Envoy to combat
anti-Semitism under President Trump senior Fellow at the independent Woman's
Forum.
Ellie, always good to see you.
This is still continuing and spreading.
Do you expect it to stop at any time?
Eric, it's always great to be with you.
Seven months into this pro Hamas movement,
we've seen excellent reporting coming out of Fox News,
tablet Magazine, Wall Street Journal,
and they've exposed the dark money that is funding and
organizing this movement.
It is again heavily funded,
heavily organized, and last night we saw President Trump call
on Joe Biden and the DNC to return the money
that they're getting the the the Biden administration and the
Biden campaign apparently is getting funding from these same dark
money sources.
So you have people like the Rockefeller fund,
George Soros, Pierre Omidyar of eBay,
these same folks, the Pritzker family from Chicago are funding
this anti American pro jihadi,
anti-Semitic movement and these same folks are funding the Biden
campaign.
So it's time for the Biden campaign to indeed return
this money,
as President Trump called for it last night.
But they should also be condemning.
They should be calling for an end to this movement.
And and you know what,
Eric? I have to point out the timing.
It is reminding many of us of the BLM movement
prior to the 2020 presidential elections.
It feels very reminiscent. And and we do have to
ask ourselves if this is not another attempt to cause
chaos in the United States prior to a
presidential election. Yeah, the the folks that you just mentioned,
for example, David Rockefeller, Junior and Soros.
There are those who say there's no evidence of any
connection,
but they give, they, they donate to groups that then
maybe support the 'cause,
that they may be part of the protesters.
I mean, the Open Society
Soros Fund says that they fund a broad spectrum of
US groups that have advocated for the rights of Palestinians
and Israelis for a peaceful
resolution. So they it's not connected completely to the protesters,
but do you take issue with that and in terms
of some of the other groups,
in terms of where they're getting their money from,
I do take issue with it,
Eric, because a lot of this money is funded to
places like the Tides Foundation,
which is directly linked to these,
to these protesters. And again,
there's been incredible reporting coming out of the Wall Street
Journal,
Fox News tablet. I recommend everyone to go read those
articles and see the linkages.
The other person that has been exposed to be in
the center of this web,
Hatim Bazayan, a Palestinian academic who was linked to organizations
that U.S.
Treasury shut them down because they turned out to be
front groups for Hamas.
He was raising money for Hamas.
So this is again a very a big web of
dark money,
and it behooves the FBI and our authorities to be
investigating further.
We're seeing a lot of violence come out of this.
We're seeing police attacked. We're seeing the facilities worker at
Columbia University held hostage,
Jewish students physically assaulted and attacked.
So it really behooves the FBI to understand this as
a domestic terror threat to be investigating and to be
exposing and I really hope to be making arrests again.
We cannot have chaos in our country and the lead
up to elections.
This is a true threat to democracy and it's the
domestic terrorism that we should be focusing on.
Do we know who like for example,
people paid for the tents and and pays for that
stuff that we saw that the protesters had?
I mean this stuff just doesn't pop up someones arranging
it and someones planning all this exactly right.
Eric and the Wall Street Journal
had an expose showing that the students were were being
organized for months and months prior to to the campus
explosions
that that began after April 15th.
They had been planning these protests for months and and
learning lessons from from from paid organizers.
So again, this is not some sort of a grassroots
campaign. This is a well funded,
well organized campaign meant to create chaos in our country
starting on the college campuses.
But we can expect that when summer starts,
they're going to take over our streets and it behooves
authorities to get ahead of this right now.
We should be able to have a stable elections in
this country.
We should be able to have presidential elections without expecting
our cities to burn and without expecting chaos across the
country.
Hot tie bias on who you mentioned is not here
to defend himself.
But in terms of, you know,
this continuing, what do you expect?
And after graduation, we're getting into the summer,
you know, where did these protesters go?
Well, Eric, you know, look in red states at the
University of Texas in Austin,
in Florida, we saw under red governors in red states
that you can shut this down immediately within two hours.
Even at UCLA when they sent in the police and
gave him the mandate to arrest,
they were able to clear clear out within hours.
So again it is within within the power of authorities
to take actions which can shut down this pro Hamas
movement,
what President Trump called a pro jihadi anti American anti-Semitic
movement and rightfully so.
So when the authorities want to shut it down they
can shut it down within hours.
It's all a matter of political will.
And again, I have to call upon authorities in blue
states,
governors in blue states, to do the right thing.
We should be able to have presidential elections in this
country that
that does not involve chaos,
doesn't involve burning down our cities.
It doesn't include threats to Americans,
to Jewish Americans. We need to have law and order
put back in this country so that we can have
a functioning democracy.
At Berkeley, Bazion was one of two professors signed this
statement saying we decry any calls for violence,
any form or support for terrorism and we continue to
mourn the loss of innocent life.
With they say with that in mind that they want
to share these unlike threats and their harassment that they
say they're receiving.
How does the both sides quell any violence?
How do both sides come to,
you know, can they both come to a
intellectual, reasoned conversation as opposed to the disruptions that we're
seeing?
Absolutely. Free speech is is one of our
greatest freedoms in this country.
And and you know, making statements as Hatim Batayan,
he may have done in the past,
statements are wonderful, but what we need to see is
action.
And so again, when the United States Treasury has shut
down organizations that he's been tied to in the past
because they have turned out to be front groups for
foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas,
we're beyond statements at that point.
There's a track record to look at.
And and again, it it behooves the FBI and other
law enforcement to be investigating where this money's coming from,
where where these organizations are linked to and tied to,
and if there's illegal activity,
make arrests, shut them down.
You know, we have a legal system.
We need to see enforcement of existing United States laws,
and it's certainly not stopping and likely will continue.
Ellie Cohenem. Ellie, good to see you.
Thank you.