“Death to Israel!”

“Death to America!”

It sounds like something you’d hear chanted by hundreds of brainwashed young people in the streets of Tehran.

But as we saw this week, those are the chants of our own children on college campuses.

People can agree or disagree on what the Israeli military is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza to punish Hamas for its attack on Oct. 7, or what our State Department is doing wrong in the Middle East.

And am I seriously worried about Joe Biden’s weak, confused and destructive foreign policy in the Middle East — and everywhere else? Absolutely.

But what terrifies me the most — and saddens me the most — is that we are now seeing crowds of our young people calling for the death of America.

I am terrified of what’s going on in Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois.

Those Middle American places — what I’d be calling “Gaza West” if I were president — have become breeding grounds for what in my mind look like future homegrown terrorists.

We have generously allowed tens of thousands of people from the poorest and least free corners of the world to come to this country — and their children have grown up to hate America.

If you go to Gaza, it’s no surprise that you will find children being brought up by Hamas to hate Israel and America. It’s the political indoctrination kids also get in Iran and elsewhere in the Mideast.

But now here at home we are seeing that same hateful philosophy taught on our college campuses by professors who are brainwashing students to hate America while siding with terrorists who want to destroy Israel.

Is “Hate America First” widespread? No. Is it a mass movement like the Vietnam war protests? No.

Most American college kids are far more concerned about the records of their sports teams, midterms and the next beer fest than who’s dying in Israel, Gaza or anywhere else.

But teaching “Hatred of America 101” in Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois is like a cancer — and cancer spreads.

Last week at a council meeting in Bakersfield, Calif., we saw a woman arrested for threatening to murder 18 members of the city council if they didn’t pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. She’s now out on bail, of course.

How long will it be before some crazed American college kid wearing a bomb walks into a schoolhouse or church and blows himself up to protest our government’s support of Israel?

I don’t think it will be more than a year or two, if not sooner, that we will see a homegrown suicide bomber.

When I hear a bunch of American college kids and adults who should know better chanting “Death to America,” I take it personally.

What they’re really saying is, “Death to me and you.” I’m an American. You’re an American. We’re all Americans — or used to be.

Last week I went to see the disturbing new movie “Civil War,” which is set in the near future when the U.S. is controlled by a dystopian dictatorship and has been torn apart by the bloody Second American Civil War.

The movie really terrified me. I know it’s only Hollywood. And I’m still an optimist about the future of America and the good sense of its people.

But based on the anger and hate we’re seeing today, it’s not a stretch to think that while I watched the violence and hatred depicted in “Civil War” I was looking at a preview of what’s coming soon to America.

Copyright 2024 Michael Reagan