The Left, Hamas and Anti-Semitism
– By Howard Sierer –
On October 7th, Hamas burst into Israel, slaughtering over 1,400 people and taking over 200 hostages. Grandmothers were killed, women raped, and babies decapitated or shot in front of their parents. How did many leftist thought leaders react? Unreserved praise for Hamas.
The progressive left sees all the world as composed of victims and victimizers, in this case, seeing Palestinians as victims of Israeli colonialism and oppression. In the progressive mind, victims are allowed and even encouraged to turn the tables to retaliate in kind. Example: progressives excused rioting and looting following the 2020 murder of George Floyd in police custody, calling for defunding the police.
The kneejerk reactions to Hamas by the progressive left brings to mind Warren Buffett’s famous adage: “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” The stark realities of slaughter exposed the glaring inconsistencies and moral bankruptcy of progressive thought.
The usual progressive suspects were led by universities, of course, where radical leftist dogma and indoctrination is passed off as education. At Harvard – whose free speech ranking is dead last among 248 colleges – 30 student organizations signed a letter that said, “the Israeli regime is entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Fifteen student groups at Columbia’s law school blamed Israel for the atrocities and asserted it had no right to defend itself. Swarthmore’s Students for Justice in Palestine called the Hamas terrorists “martyrs” and affirmed the “right of Palestinian people to resist.”
Where do college students get these ideas? In their classrooms, naturally. Harvard’s “Global Rebellion: Race, Solidarity, and Decolonization” course discusses how “to rebel against global white supremacy.” Similar courses are offered at Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Duke, and other top schools. Occupation, resistance, and decolonization are common progressive talking points. Ivy League “decolonization” professors called the slaughter a “stunning victory” and said “Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle.”
I’ve opposed the creation of college Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion departments. Cornell’s DEI department demonstrates why calls for equity and inclusion are facades for racism and bigotry: its director glorified terrorism and “the resistance being launched by Palestinians.” A Cornell student was arrested for threatening to kill Jewish students, and all classes were canceled for a day. So much for equity and inclusion.
Left-wing intellectuals tout a social theory called “intersectionality” that urges all people suffering any form of oppression to join together to overthrow their common oppressor. Black Lives Matter Chicago tweeted a picture of a paraglider with a Palestinian flag and a caption, “I stand with Palestine.” The Democratic Socialists of America said the attack was a “direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime.”
Contrast the wholesale slaughter of over 1,400 people with the reaction of the progressive left to the 2020 murder of George Floyd in police custody. Harvard’s president called that a moment of national “moral reckoning” but said nothing at first about the Hamas attack. Ditto for other university leaders, silent, that is, until their major donors promised to cut off future donations. Money over moral consistency for too many of today’s university leaders.
Imagine for a moment if right-leaning student associations at Harvard and elsewhere had held rallies in 2020 in support of the police and pointed out that George Floyd’s criminal record and actions had led to his death. Those students would have been expelled and their words called hate crimes.
University leaders made belated and feeble attempts to backtrack. Swarthmore College’s President Val Smith wrote, “Hateful rhetoric and calls for violence have no place at Swarthmore.” But why didn’t Swarthmore students’ endorsement of Hamas’ butchery count as hateful rhetoric and a call for violence? What will be the consequences, if any, for the offending students? Likely nothing at all.
Time and again in recent decades, law school administrators and professors around the country encouraged or silently acquiesced to their students’ actions, canceling speakers who might present views that differed from progressive orthodoxy and ostracizing those in their midst who deviated from left-wing narratives. Today, those same law school deans are calling for respect, civility, and generosity for those with differing views. Where were they then?
The lack of moral perspective in many of today’s universities and in their graduates who now populate the progressive media is shocking but not surprising. It’s taken October’s Hamas attack to bring into focus how our colleges and universities have been indoctrinating their students with hate and intolerance for anyone whose views lie outside the narrow confines of progressive dogma.
When the Hamas attack sent the tide out, progressives’ distorted immorality and hypocrisy was exposed for all to see.
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Howard, it must give you great comfort to blame everything on the Progressive Left. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t wash. Neither does it make sense to equate anti semitism with liberal thinking. The majority of American Jews consider themselves to be left of center. What we perhaps can agree on is that there are some radical crazies on the far left. What we should also agree on is that there are far more of those crazies on the far right – you know, the Q-Anon lunatics and conspiracists who are now partially in charge of the Republican Party. But considering the Hamas – Israeli war, it should certainly be laid at the feet of Hamas. It is a terrorist organization. It wants to see Israel destroyed. Part of that can be blamed on anti semitism, but most is caused by their hatred of those who took their land from them and have essentially segregated the society there ever since. But even that would not justify the massacre of Oct. 7th. It was unforgivable and repulsive. But, Israel has done little to win world opinion over to its side by returning the barbarism in kind. Though often justified, retribution rarely succeeds. It just furthers the separation. We should all hope for an early settlement and an end to all the killing. The leaders of Hamas’s heads should roll, but not the Gazans who are now suffering horribly for the acts of a gang of terrorists. It’s got to end. No one can win. Twice there has been Israeli – Palestinian peace negotiated and twice it’s been scuttled. Perhaps if we all pledge to undertake acceptance and try to understand each other and stop pointing fingers every time a crisis arrises, peace could perhaps prevail. It starts here. In each of us.
JC Smith, thank you for your reasonable thoughts on this!
Like my colleague, Ms. Rutherford, I find your denunciation of Hamas right on point. But I must take exception to your examples of “crazies.” I know almost nothing about Q-Anon but I infer it is the right’s equivalent of Antifa’s leftist thugs. My examples of progressives focused on the leadership of Harvard, Swarthmore and others of their peers along with their students and their alumni who populate the progressive intelligentsia and media. While I’m sure that these folks don’t speak for all progressives, they’re the ones who were quoted in the leftist media. I can assure you that they have far more influence on the Democratic Party than does Q-Anon on the Republican party.
Q-Anon certainly is not the equivalent of Antifa’s leftist thugs. Q-Anon fantasizes itself to be intellectuals “in the know” about what is really going on politically in this country. Its communications are in code & only those with superior puzzle solving capabilities can decipher the meaning and, therefore, also know what is really going on. Q-Anon is not the source of conspiracy theories. Q-Anon IS a conspiracy theory. It has nothing to do with the few voices who are willing to swim upstream and try to tell us what our current, lawless government has become. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party which has morphed into a disgusting, compromised, unrecognizable blob of uni-party career politicians who do not speak for, nor do they represent, true Conservatives. The majority of Republicans now in office exist solely to preserve their own interests at the expense of the citizens of this country, and at the expense of the Constitution. As long as we refuse to see our government for what we have allowed it to become; as long as we continue to point fingers & place blame; as long as we allow this uni-party to distract us, divide us, and separate us from the Law Of The Land while it continues to operate in its own interest; we will continue to be the third world country we have become. It’s heartbreaking. Hamas & Israel are the new shiny object, having overtaken Ukraine in uni-party popularity. You and I and Lisa and JC will go where we are being led & squabble & distract ourselves with that unholy mess in Israel for a bit. Then something else will come along that has nothing to do with taking care of America and Americans. In the meantime . . . the uni-party thrives & those who try to help shake us awake are labeled as radical Q-Anon conspiracy theorist crazies because pointing fingers, placing blame, & labeling will always distract us from questioning; which, heaven forbid, might lead to critical thought; which, heaven forbid, will actually lead to awakening. All that to say, we ought to be looking at America and what our uni-party government is doing to destroy this homeland we all love, because destroying it (and us) they are.