UNC frat brothers who defended US flag speak out: 'Deeply important to us'
Two fraternity brothers from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's chapter of Pi Kappa Phi spoke to Fox News after footage of them defending the American flag from anti-Israel protesters who had already taken it down once went viral.
Brendan Rosenblum told "Jesse Watters Primetime" on Thursday that campus police along with Interim Chancellor Lee Roberts hoisted an American flag that had been taken down and replaced with a Palestinian banner. Eventually, Roberts and the campus police had to leave the quad, and when they did, Rosenblum and his fellow fraternity members stepped in and held up the American flag as protesters chanted, threw projectiles and flipped the bird at them. A GoFundMe was set up in the fraternity's honor and had by Thursday evening amassed close to $500,000.
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Rosenblum said he and a friend named Trevor held the Israeli flag as the demonstrators menaced them, while other fraternity brothers held up the recently re-posted American flag as they were pelted with water bottles and accused of being White supremacists.
"I was told to kill myself about 50 times, called a White supremacist — a fascist. It was a really troubling scene, but we stood there strong, representing what we believe in," Rosenblum told Watters, who referred to the UNC chaos and the nationwide demonstrations collectively as "Arab Spring Break."
On "The Ingraham Angle," another frat brother, Isaac Maleh, said he is an Orthodox Jew and that he was originally on the quad near the protesters because he is Jewish. However, he said, it soon became duly important for his fraternity to also defend the United States from the pro-Palestinian unrest that devolved into anti-Americanism.
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"So we were there first and foremost for our country of Israel. When this becomes an American issue, that hits kind of double-hard, and that really hits us both in our religious country and our home, one that we really feel is deeply important to us," Maleh said.
"I've seen a lot about us being heroes or unbelievable people. It's none of that. We see a country that we love, and we believe in, and we stand for its values, being desecrated, and we didn't want to sit by and just let it happen."
Maleh added that the importance of the American flag remaining at full mast amid the protests is exacerbated by the murder of four law enforcement officers who had been trying to arrest Terry Clark Hughes Jr. in Charlotte. Hughes was wanted out of Lincoln County on firearms and eluding charges.
"That's the flag you're going to rip down? Absolutely not. Not on that day," Maleh said. "And so I'm honestly very proud of our [school] administration because they shut it down immediately, and I'm very thankful for that."
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Maleh also expressed incredulity at some of the taunts and epithets the protesters were lobbing at him and his brothers. The student told Ingraham he had recently been called a Nazi, despite being Jewish.
"I don't really understand how that makes any sense, to be completely honest," he said. "None of this makes sense to me."
"Regardless of your political affiliation, regardless of whether or not you believe what I believe. That's not what matters, and yet when we do that and when we try to protect the flag we love, my friend stands next to me, has a water bottle hit him in his face [and] still has a black eye and he's bleeding. I really don't get it."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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