What could snatch news headlines from a massive 6.3 earthquake in western Afghanistan that ended the lives of 2,000 souls? The calamity of Hamas’s murderous attack on unsuspecting Israelis. On October 7, 2023, the Western world awakened to alarming reports of an orchestrated terrorist assault on Israel, the magnitude of which is reminiscent of the Nazi Kristallnacht 85 years ago.[1] Hamas terrorists savagely assaulted unsuspecting Israelis and guests.[2] They murdered around 1,200 individuals (including 25 Americans), wounded more than 3,000, and took 240 hostages—in many cases even live-recording their murderous terror. Since this surprise attack, most Westerners seem appalled at the overwhelming supportive(!) response Hamas has received from university students and their faculty.
1. Kristallnacht (translated literally as “Night of Crystal” but often referred to as “the Night of Broken Glass”) was a night of Nazi-sponsored vandalism and destruction of Jewish property on November 9–10, 1938 in German-controlled territories.
Anti-Semitic hatred has become commonplace, especially on university campuses throughout the West. But what motivates these Western pro-Hamas activists? Why have they decried Israel’s defensive response, condemned Israelis as colonizing oppressors of Palestinians, and demanded an Israeli ceasefire against Hamas? In the first portion of this two-part article, my objective is to document numerous instances of Americans—and especially college professors and students—supporting this terrorist group before I probe the reasons why.
2. Hamas is an acronym for HMS—Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement). Hamas distanced itself from the milder Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) “an umbrella organization for disparate Palestinian factions that ranged from Marxist to secular nationalists—by propagating resistance in the religious context of jihad, or a holy struggle and martyrdom. ‘Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes,’” [Doctrine of Hamas]. It is both descriptive and ironic that Hamas in Hebrew means “violence,” even though this association is likely unintentional.
Widespread Western Endorsement of Terrorist Hamas Against Israel
Pro-Hamas activists in the U.S. Congress—Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Ayanna Presley, D-Mass., Cori Bush, D-Mo., and Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y.—published press releases with personal statements in response to the early morning surprise attack by Hamas terrorists. Each one initially offered hollow moral-equivalency platitudes condemning the violence sustained by both Israelis and residents of Gaza before some of them went on to blame Israel for provoking Hamas’s “justified” attack.[3] Rep. Tlaib issued the vilest claims against Israel. While professing to be committed to “fight for a just future,” she faulted Israel as a nation where not “everyone can live in peace, without fear and with true freedom, equal rights, and human dignity.” She stated:
3. Bowman was the one exception who did not blame Israel for the Hamas terrorist attack.
The path to that future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance. The failure to recognize the violent reality of living under siege, occupation, and apartheid makes no one safer. No person, no child anywhere should have to suffer or live in fear of violence. We cannot ignore the humanity in each other. As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.
Since October 7, pro-Hamas protestors have aggressively opposed Israel and endorsed Hamas, frequently filling the streets of Western cities. Over a hundred thousand pro-Hamas marchers blocked the streets and Westminster Bridge of London. Over a hundred thousand. Massive crowds of pro-Hamas advocates filled the streets of Midtown Manhattan, and pro-Hamas demonstrators later occupied the Brooklyn Bridge. On November 11, 2023, thousands of like-minded activists marched in Paris, demanding a ceasefire by the Israelis. It was heartening to see a day later more than 100,000 march in Paris against anti-Semitism. Yet, activists who endorse Hamas against Israel continue to capture newsreels, perplex many in the media, and divide Democratic politicians.
University Social Justice Warriors Support Terrorists, Puzzling Many
How did the terrorists of Hamas acquire such widespread endorsement and support, especially from students and faculty at major Western universities? Perplexity has settled over many, especially media personnel. Five days after the Hamas surprise assault on Israelis, USA Today’s Ingrid Jacques expressed the bafflement that confounds many.
It’s hard to wrap your mind around: The social justice warriors on college campuses around America have come out in support of terrorists who last weekend raped and murdered and beheaded innocent people (including children, women and the elderly) in Israel.
These are the same students who need safe spaces from those who may talk about race or gender in a way they find offensive, or who will shout down and demand the cancellation of speakers with whom they disagree.
Yet, some of them seem perfectly OK with defending the atrocities committed when Hamas invaded Israel in a surprise attack in which the terrorists murdered at least 1,200 Israelis; 27 Americans also died and more than a dozen are missing.
It seems the higher ed bubble has decided it’s “woke” to support Hamas and to shun Israel, regardless of how horrific the situation.
And even though many of these students believe “words are violence,” they defend real violence.
Jacques observes that student organizations at numerous major American universities, including Columbia, Northwestern, and the University of Michigan Law School, joined those at Harvard by publishing similar statements that condemn Israel as being “entirely responsible” for Hamas’s attack. When President Claudine Gay tepidly condemned the pro-Palestinian phrase “from the river to the sea” as anti-Semitic, more than 100 Harvard University faculty members endorsed a letter disapproving of her actions.
Despite her initial stance, less than a month later, on December 5, Claudine Gay and Liz Magill, President of the University of Pennsylvania, testified before a Congressional hearing where they were pressed on whether students and faculty calling for the genocide of Jews violated their universities’ standards against hate speech. Both evaded the “yes” or “no” question. Within a few hours, Magill expressed regrets.[4] But her apology did not quell demands for her resignation, to which she surrendered. (A member of the “cancel culture” got canceled.) The following day, December 6, Gay posted no apology, but rather a self-acquittal thinly veiled as a rebuke of Republican New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, who gave many of the most pointed questions:
4. Magill acknowledged, “I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It’s evil—plain and simple.”
There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students. Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.
Ingrid Jacques points out the hypocrisy of most university presidents who hastily publish statements on notable news but remained strangely silent or equivocating concerning the mass murder of Jews. As notable counterpoints, she cites Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE): “If you find yourself . . . cheering the people who are raping, murdering, kidnapping . . . shouldn’t that be a point for reflection?” Then she points university students, faculty members, and administrators to the moral leadership of Ben Sasse, President of the University of Florida, who unequivocally denounced Hamas’s terrorism in his Letter to Gator Alums.[5]
5. Sasse wrote, “As for us, our educational mission here begins with the recognition and explicit acknowledgment of human dignity – the same human dignity that Hamas’ terrorists openly scorn. Every single human life matters. We are committed to that truth. We will tell that truth.”
In her October 12 column, Ingrid Jacques cites Zareena Grewal, Professor of American Studies, Ethnicity, Race, & Migration at Yale University, who supports Hamas’s terroristic attack on Israelis by stating, “Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard.” Though this statement was an early clue concerning the reason university students and their faculty stand in solidarity with Hamas terrorists against Israel, most journalists remain baffled by the hypocrisy.
Recently, Jacques argued that Harvard’s president “botched her testimony on antisemitism,” but that firing her, as called for by Rep. Stefanik, “might feel good – and may even be deserved – but it won’t solve the underlying shortfalls on campus.”[6] Jacques is correct, but she, Greg Lukianoff, and others remain somewhat shortsighted in their analysis by focusing on right of “free speech.”[7]
6. Shortly before the publication of this article, Claudine Gay resigned from her role as Harvard’s president after serving six months and two days but only after serial plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation was exposed. She accepted no accountability for minimizing antisemitism on campus, her flagrant plagiarism, or the damage she has done to Harvard’s reputation. Instead, though she refused to denounce real threats of genocide against Jews when questioned by Rep. Stefanik, Claudine Gay contrived slanderous and false accusations of racism against everyone who called for her resignation. She claimed it is “frightening to be subject to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.” See her resignation letter.
7. Jacques interviewed Greg Lukianoff, whom she identifies as a “Classic Liberal.” He contends, “There’s an argument that if (Gay had not been) given a chance and she (had been) required to step down, that could send a message to universities across the country that the problem is that they’re not policing protected speech enough,” Lukianoff told me. He continued, “Now of course, should they be policing unprotected speech like threats and intimidation? Of course they should. But if the message is sent that this actually means that these prestigious institutions lost their presidents because they hadn’t clamped down on speech enough, that would be indeed very bad.”
In “How Were the Universities Lost?” Victor Davis Hanson observes that prior to October 7, 2023, attentive Americans recognized that their higher education campuses were havens of left-wing intolerance hostile to academic merit and achievement.[8] Almost daily, some university professor or student group spews anti-Semitic animosity, threatening and even attacking Jewish students, or engaging in “mass demonstrations calling for the extinction of Israel.” He adds this significant historical reference: “But immediately after Oct. 7 — and even before the response of the Israel Defense Forces — the sheer student delight on news of the mass murdering of Israeli victims seemed akin more to 1930s Germany than contemporary America.” Though he does not develop this correlation, Hanson aptly explains the various factors and dynamics that have degraded America’s universities from academic institutions of higher learning to “incubators” of “primordial hatred,” nursing micro-grievances into full-fledged activist rage, including anti-Semitic rhetoric and violence.
Jewish Intellectuals & Jewish Voices for Peace Advocate for Hamas and Condemn Israel
On October 19, 2023, just three weeks after the surprise terrorist attack and the Israeli counter-response, forty-four Jewish writers, artists, and academics sent an “Open Letter to President Biden” insisting that he call for Israel to cease waging war against Hamas. They wrote:
We believe it is possible and in fact necessary to condemn Hamas’ actions and acknowledge the historical and ongoing oppression of the Palestinians. We believe it is possible and necessary to condemn Hamas’ attack and take a stand against the collective punishment of Gazans that is unfolding and accelerating as we write.
8. Also see Bari Weiss, “Campus Cowardice and Where the Buck Stops,” The Free Press (Oct. 12, 2023). She observes, “Contrast what colleges will tolerate with what they won’t. Microaggressions are met with moral condemnation. Meanwhile, campuses will tolerate—even glorify—the wanton murder of Jews—actual violence.”
While interviewed concerning the letter, Judith Butler explained that Israel’s response to Hamas is not justified because “the military powers are radically asymmetrical and this is not a conflict where both sides are at fault in some equal way.” She explained that people need to understand “the history of the violence that has been inflicted against Palestine including Gaza” by Israel.
A month later, on November 20, a group identified as “scholars of the Holocaust and antisemitism” published “An Open Letter on the Misuse of Holocaust Memory,” with this heading: “Appealing to the memory of the Holocaust obscures our understanding of the antisemitism Jews face today and dangerously misrepresents the causes of violence in Israel-Palestine.”[9] (Without question, not every public official’s response has been equally wise, for some have mistakenly imputed Hamas’s evil to Palestinian civilians.)[10]
9. The letter’s endorsers plainly signal their ideological stance: “Israeli leaders and others are using the Holocaust framing to portray Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza as a battle for civilization in the face of barbarism, thereby promoting racist narratives about Palestinians. This rhetoric encourages us to separate this current crisis from the context out of which it has arisen. Seventy-five years of displacement, fifty-six years of occupation, and sixteen years of the Gaza blockade have generated an ever-deteriorating spiral of violence that can only be arrested by a political solution. There is no military solution in Israel-Palestine, and deploying a Holocaust narrative in which an ‘evil’ must be vanquished by force will only perpetuate an oppressive state of affairs that has already lasted far too long.”
10. The Open Letter specifies examples of what they deem excessive. “Particular examples have ranged from Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan donning a yellow star featuring the words “Never Again” while addressing the UN General Assembly, to US President Joe Biden saying that Hamas had “engaged in barbarism that is as consequential as the Holocaust,” while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that “Hamas are the new Nazis.” US Representative Brian Mast, a Republican from Florida, speaking on the House floor, questioned the idea that there are “innocent Palestinian civilians,” claiming, “I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II.””
David Herman, answered this open letter with his “Academics and Israel: A New ‘Trahison des Cleres’?”. He uses the French phrase, meaning “the treason of the intellectuals.”[11] He calls out Omer Bartov, a leading spokesman for the Open Letter group, for his irresponsible bombast, claiming, that Israel “has managed to kill very large numbers of Palestinian civilians . . . perhaps in order to kill one or two [sic] military commanders of Hamas.” He continued, “If you drop a very large bomb on a school in which there are refugees, therefore you have information that there is one or two commanders and you choose an especially large bomb knowing there would be hundreds of civilians there, then you should consider that twice.” Herman queries,
Is this the language of a leading historian? We know that Hamas has used schools and hospitals to protect its terrorists and that as soon as the invasion of Gaza started, journalists and politicians warned that Israel would be faced with an agonising [sic] dilemma: How could they attack Hamas terrorists without endangering Palestinian civilians? . . . How can Bartov be so sure that Israelis have chosen “a very large bomb” to kill “hundreds of civilians” in order to kill “one or two commanders”? Why not just say they have often used bombs with many casualties?
What prompts Jews to defend anti-Semitic Hamas terrorists who engage in mass murder of Israelis because they are Jews? Succinctly stated, their Marxist ideology dominates their inverted view of and for the world masked with a pretense of caring for “universal human rights.”[12] Thus, they see Israelis as colonizers whose historic oppression of Palestinians provoked Hamas’s attack, itself worthy of condemnation, which nevertheless does not justify the war of “collective punishment” the Israelis now wage against Gaza residents. Given their identifying Israelis as the oppressors and the Palestinians as the oppressed, it is not difficult to discern what they mean by “collective punishment.”
11. Herman derives the French phrase from Julien Benda’s La Trahison des Clercs (1927) by way of Niall Ferguson’s “The Treason of the Intellectuals,” an article too full of provocative development to engage in this short essay. Watch for further engagement with Ferguson’s article in a forthcoming presentation: “Christian Theory: Everyone’s Oppressed,” (January 21, 6:00 PM) Christ Institute.
12. “Cutting off resources to more than 2 million people, demanding families flee their homes in the north, indiscriminately bombing a trapped population – these are war crimes and indefensible actions. And yet the United States government is offering ‘moral’ and material support for the dehumanization and murder of innocent Gazans. We write to publicly declare our opposition to what the Israeli government is doing with American assistance. We call on the US government to seek an immediate ceasefire and to use our resources towards providing aid ensuring the safe return of hostages and building a diplomatic path towards peace. (“Open Letter to President Biden: We Call for A Ceasefire Now”).
While they are eager to forcefully accuse Israel of “collectively punishing” Palestinians, these elite Jews whisper a passing indictment of Hamas’s anti-Semitic murderous attack against Israelis to provoke the latest Middle-East war. These Leftist Collectivists refuse to acknowledge that “collective punishment” perfectly describes Hamas’s war crimes, the execution of humans for being Jewish. This phrase does not accurately describe the measured and guided, albeit deadly, military strikes carried out by Israel. Nevertheless, despite Hamas’s well-funded and long-planned violations of internationally acknowledged “explicit regulations, of established customs, and of the clear dictates of humanity,” these intelligentsia Jews rush to loudly prosecute the Israel Defense Force for war crimes by echoing the United Nations’ claim that Israel is violating international law that condemns “collective punishment.”[13] “Collective punishment” may seem to be a new term to many, but the concept dates from 1919. Then, the “Commission on the Responsibility of the War [WWI], and on Their Punishments,” used the descriptive term, “collective penalties” among numerous detailed atrocities the Commission exposed as practiced by Germany and her allies throughout World War I.[14]
These accusations against Israel made by the United Nations and echoed by some elite Jews provide some clarity why Jewish Voices for Peace would hold a large “Jews Against Genocide” rally, taking over the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C. where they were joined by Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush. There, they called for an Israel Defense Force ceasefire while chanting “Not In Our Name” and the battle cry “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” objecting to U.S. aid for Israel.[15] At the “Not in Our Name” Jewish-Led Sit-in at NYC’s Grand Central Station, Indya Moore explains the protest. “I am protesting in solidarity with Jews, trans-people, queer people, black and brown victims of colonization, and Americans just like you and I stand against our tax dollars being used to decimate Palestinians, and we’re standing for peace, we’re standing for compassion, and we’re standing for self-determinating [sic] justice, and liberated Palestine.” On December 18, the New York City police prevented pro-Hamas protestors from accessing a building where a fundraiser on behalf of Israel’s military was being held. The police action stirred an impromptu chant: “The NYPD, KKK, and IDF they’re all the same.”
13. “UN Experts say Israel’s Strikes on Gaza Amount to ‘Collective Punishment.” “Rule 103: Collective Punishments.” Also, see “A Short History of the War Crime of Collective Punishment.”
14. Report Submitted to the Preliminary Conference of Versailles by the Commission on Responsibility of the Authors of the [First] War and on Enforcement of Penalties. Here is the pertinent passage in “CHAPTER II: VIOLATIONS OF THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF WAR”: “In spite of the explicit regulations, of established customs, and of the clear dictates of humanity, Germany and her allies have piled outrage upon outrage. Additions are daily and continually being made. . . . Murders and massacres, tortures, shields formed of living human beings, collective penalties, the arrest and execution of hostages, the requisitioning of services for military purposes, the arbitrary destruction of public and private property, the aerial bombardment of open towns without there being any regular siege, the destruction of merchant ships without previous visit and without any precautions for the safety of passengers and crew, the massacre of prisoners, attacks on hospital ships, the poisoning of springs and of wells, outrages and profanations without regard for religion or the honor of individuals, the issue of counterfeit money reported by the Polish Government, the methodical and deliberate destruction of industries with no other object than to promote German economic supremacy after the war, constitute the most striking list of crimes that has ever been drawn up to the eternal shame of those who committed them. The facts are established. They are numerous and so vouched for that they admit of no doubt and cry for justice.”
15. On disputes concerning the meaning of the phrase, see “‘From the river to the sea’: Why these 6 words spark fury and passion over the Israel-Hamas War.”
It is baffling—no, distressing—to see photographs and videos of throngs of people denouncing Israelis for defending themselves against the surprise terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7. Equally troubling are reactions by Western university students aided and abetted by their professors. They publish statements opposing Israel and favoring Hamas, mass together in the streets, disrupt the lives and movements of citizens, and hurl taunts and threats against fellow Jewish students in angry mobs.
Much more shocking is the large number of Jewish intellectuals who—swiftly following Hamas’s attack against fellow Jews in Israel—drafted, sent, and published open letters appealing for Israel to cease its measured and strategic military response to Hamas’s violent, malevolent, murderous rampage. Their open letters favor Hamas and Palestinians as the victimized oppressed under Israel’s oppressive colonizing knee.
Reasonable people are understandably puzzled and outraged by these widespread passionate endorsements of Hamas and condemnations of Israel. While it is heartening that there are many who denounce the antisemitism that has been on public display, it is also discouraging that many in the media, in politics, and in the general public remain silent, even dubious, concerning the reported and documented savagery Hamas terrorists perpetrated on and against Israeli citizens and their guests. Why this silence? What are we witnessing? What prompts not only students but also faculty members to rise up in opposition to a nation that has been violently attacked by terrorists? Why do Jewish intellectuals raise their voices also in opposition to fellow Jews who have suffered the largest single assault against Jewish people since the Nazi death camps? These are questions part two will seek to answer.
