In the sludge of bad news comes a bit of light from a six-year-old at an NYU Commencement. I know, I get wrapped up in the negativity of our times and want to lash out in anger but the bravery of this little girl gives me hope.

Her name is Eden Rose Neiger and she was at Madison Square Garden to watch her mom, Devorah Neiger, walk the stage for commencement. In a sea of NYU purple robes and mortar boards and in front of a crowd of strangers, she stood up to the bullies.

Pro-Palestinian Hamas Groupies staged walkouts at the NYU ceremonies. Here they are chanting in unison, mindlessly, verbatim, at Yankee Stadium.

Amidst the chants of we will not stop, we will not rest” and “Over 40,000 dead, NYU, your hands are red”, Devorah Neiger, a Jewish woman, walked the stage with her family. Her six-year-old, Eden shut the haters down with a simple drawing of a heart in NYU purple.

The drones of Hamas minions were flabbergasted.

There was tension in the room – you didn’t know what was going to happen next. While some students disrupted the ceremony with symbols of hate, Eden drew a purple heart as a symbol of love.”-Father of Eden Neiger.

https://twitter.com/dynorobot3000/status/1791804232766832954?s=61&t=E_Ff35R0vn53rQQGZaL_WQ

Little six-year-old Eden Neiger held her heart up high and handed the heart to NYU law school Dean Troy McKenzie who actually pleaded with the pro-Palestinian protestors to get off the stage.

It did not happen at first. Tensions were strong at the JD ceremony and at Madison Square Garden. As the Neiger family was preparing to walk the stage with Devorah to celebrate her accomplishments, Devorah’s husband moved the children to the back of the room and away from the tension and the hateful chants. He encouraged them to draw.

You just have to sit there and take it – you don’t want to stoop to that level, even though every part of your body wants to stand up to them.”-Devorah Neiger

Little did she know what her daughter had planned.

All of a sudden, this little girl gets up on the stage with her mother holding a piece of paper with a big heart. It was very powerful to me – the innocence of a child is all you want in this world. It was beautiful – children don’t know about hatred. That picture is sort of the answer to all of this hate.”-NYU Commencement Attendee

Eden confided to her mom afterwards and said, “that was kind of brave of me”.

Still, there will be haters. Haters of six-year-olds who dared to have a different opinion. Individuals who will never understand the context of how some Jewish families came to live in New York City and what their ancestors have gone through before coming to America. Years back when I was in college, I had a friend whose name is Devorah. Her family, like many Jewish families who now reside in New York City, survived the atrocities of the Holocaust. We could not expect the clueless pro-Hamas robots to think about this for a hot second. This would actually cause them to stop and think about a frame of reference-something they are seemingly unable to do because they have been locked up in their protective, little bubbles of progressivism.

Israel is heartless

— Lana (@RashadLana18915) May 18, 2024

The truth is, this brave, young girl, who stood up in the throngs of mindless chanting, has more heart and bravery than these young adults walking (and simultaneously disrupting the NYU commencements combined. To get up on stage and not only offer an alternative expression of love, but also, defend her family takes chutzpah, whether she knew it at the time or not.

In fact, young Eden Neiger has more chutzpah than all of these mindless fools combined. They only think showing up in mobs and chanting is bravery. They have not been taught to think critically, only to recite the script. This young girl went off-script. Big time.

There is something to be said of her parents, too. Instead of sheltering their young children away from the tension and the hateful rhetoric, they encouraged a positive activity. Eden’s father, who was in the audience, did not pick their children up to take them home and hide them away from the discord. Nor did he retaliate back with hateful rhetoric. He simply took them elsewhere until it was time for them to walk the stage with their mom, to do something else. Kudos to great parenting. We need more of this. Perhaps then, we will see more Eden Neigers in the world and less scripted hate and division.

We can hope. God Bless the Neiger family.

Photo Credit: Jonathan71, CC BY-SA 2.5 , via Wikimedia Commons/Cropped

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