Picture this: After white supremacists killed 3,000 Americans 20 years ago, people united in patriotic displays of flags to commemorate those lives. And then a white supremacist went about removing or vandalizing those flags and displays. Heck, imagine that happening to a Black Lives Matter mural. Do you think that would be a story on the evening news?

It was, of course, radical Islamist jihadis who murdered 2,977 innocents on September 11, 2001. And it was, of course, a Muslim student who set about removing an American flag display. The media? Crickets.

“Members of Young America’s Foundation at Washington University in St. Louis placed 2,977 American flags on campus to honor the lives lost in the terrorist attacks,” reports Campus Reform. “However, Fadel Alkilani, who serves as a student senator at the university, was caught later collecting the flags in garbage bags.”

Note that this wasn’t just any student — he’s a student senator. Asked about what would in many other circumstances be considered a hate crime, Alkilani spewed anti-American venom. “A memorial which uses US flags is especially insidious, as it does not recognize those who have fallen, but uses a symbol that was on the shoulders of those who are responsible for the deaths of 900,000 people,” he said, apparently referring to those killed in the War on Terror. Such a memorial, he insisted, “uses the innocent lives lost during 9/11 as a political prop upholding American hegemony.”

Alkilani also responded with victimitis: “Muslims such as I have faced fear, harassment, and Islamophobia from those who unjustly use the victims of 9/11 as a political cudgel. Those who died during 9/11 deserve better than to be used as a political tool by those who seek to excuse American imperialism and Islamophobia.”

They most certainly deserve better than to be used by Alkilani to rattle off such noxious tripe about how horrible America is and what a victim he’s been, despite not even being born yet on 9/11.

This wasn’t the only university display to be vandalized, either. “At Michigan State University,” Campus Reform adds, “YAF students’ flag display and 9/11 memorial were vandalized. Originally, the display said ‘Never Forget.’ The vandals, however, crossed out the word ‘Never’ and spray painted the word ‘Israel.’” Other colleges and universities had similar trouble.

Is this a real hate crime? Not by the Left’s classic definition, because the perpetrator is in a protected class. But it sure was hateful by Alkilani’s own admission. And it’s also a pattern on American college campuses. “Never forget?” It seems too many have done just that.