OFFICIAL SUNDAY OPEN THREAD

We Must Oppose Antisemitism At Home & Abroad

FILLER

n recent weeks, I have written here about the necessity of fully supporting Israel and deterring Iran.  To accomplish these objectives, we must recognize that Hamas is in full control of the Gaza Strip and will remain in control unless Hamas is destroyed.  The worst approach our leaders can take right now is to push for a ceasefire and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza before Israel has the chance to eliminate Hamas.  Instead, Hamas’ wicked, antisemitic designs must be opposed everywhere, including from the Oval Office to our college campuses.

Hamas is in full control of Gaza and has been since 2007, when it violently drove out the Palestinian Authority.  Since then, the “humanitarian” aid sent into Gaza has been used by Hamas not to benefit the civilians in Gaza, but to pursue the destruction of Israel.  As recently as 2014, one of Hamas’ main command centers sat beneath Al-Shifa Hospital, which Israel itself renovated and improved in the 1980s to help the residents of Gaza. Over the last decade, the European Union poured $100 million into a project building water pipelines in Gaza; evidence suggests Hamas dug these water pipes out of the ground and used them to build more rockets to fire into Israel.  From 2014-2020 alone, U.N. agencies sent nearly $4.5 billion worth of aid to Gaza; it has produced no tangible results, with roughly 80% of the population still mired in poverty. This is not Israel’s fault. It is the fault of Hamas, which takes the money and resources intended for civilians and uses it to attack Israel instead.

Yet the Biden Administration continues to operate as if it can separate the people of Gaza from the terrorist organization that rules over them.  Just last week, the Administration announced its plans to send more aid – over $100 million worth – into the Gaza Strip. This absurd act will only reward Hamas for its atrocities. The U.N. and EU haven’t learned their lessons, either: EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell has declared that delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza should be the West’s top priority.  He has called for an immediate ceasefire to accomplish it, and he was echoed by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.  We need to be clear: Hamas does not care about the Palestinian people. It is a proxy of the Iranian regime, wholly committed to wiping out Israel and establishing a radical Islamic state. Its goals are fundamentally evil, and every decent person should oppose them.

On college campuses across America, though, Hamas is being celebrated. At UC Berkeley, a pro-Palestinian student organization released a statement that read in part, “Glory to Palestine, glory to the resistance, and glory to our martyrs.” In Washington, D.C., a student group at Georgetown held vigils for the terrorists who died in the attacks.  Down the street at George Washington University, a student group projected the words “Glory to our martyrs” and “Divest from Zionist genocide now” on the walls of the school’s library. Thirty-one student groups at Harvard signed a letter blaming Israel for the attacks perpetrated by Hamas.  More examples abound. This is not some random minority of students, either: A recent poll shockingly revealed that nearly half of all college-age Americans actually support Hamas in the current conflict.

The sickening displays on our college campuses are, at their core, antisemitic.  When students chant Hamas’ rallying cry, “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” they are not just chanting a slogan – they are calling for the Jewish nation state to be wiped out. They are calling for the murder of the Jewish people on a level not seen since the Holocaust, which is the very reason Israel exists today.  And they are calling for a radical, terrorist regime to be in control of the Holy Land. It is the moral responsibility of every leader at these institutions to denounce these protests and condemn antisemitism on their campuses. The same responsibility applies to our leaders on a national level.

Unfortunately, faced with alarming protests in support of a murderous, antisemitic, and radical Islamic ideology, the Biden Administration has prevaricated. In his national address, President Biden spent as much time denouncing antisemitism as he did criticizing anti-Muslim bigotry, and he chose – unbelievably – to scold the American people over our nation’s anger following the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Each time the nation of Israel is attacked by terrorist thugs, the same predictable pattern repeats itself. After horrific attacks claim innocent Israeli lives, Israel’s justified response is routinely condemned by world leaders, progressives in the media and government, and protesters around the world. This condemnation is then followed by full-throated calls for a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds, sprinkled with thinly-veiled antisemitism that blames the Jewish victims for the attacks, rather than the terrorists who committed them. 

This time, the pattern must not repeat itself. The wicked, antisemitic violence we witnessed on October 7 was worse than anything the world has seen since the Holocaust; it is imperative that America and the world tell the truth about Hamas, not reward its acts of terror with “humanitarian” aid or permit its unchallenged celebration. If we do not do so, we risk allowing the conflict to deepen, heightening the risk that it will expand into a broader war throughout the region. This would be disastrous for the American people and for Israel.✪