The Moral Depravity of the Pro-Hamas Left

Spare me the whataboutism

Cal State Long Beach students hold a campus rally in support of Hamas (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

On Tuesday, Israelis began the grim business of removing the bodies of 40 babies who had been beheaded by Hamas terrorists. “It’s hard to even explain exactly just the mass casualties that happened right here,” i24 News correspondent Nicole Zedek said during a broadcast from Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

“Babies with their heads cut off, that’s what [the soldiers] said. Gunned down. Families gunned down, completely gunned down in their beds,” Zedek said of the “sheer horror.”

CNN’s Nic Robertson reported from the scene: “Men, women, children, hands bound, shot, executed, heads cut.”

“My stomach is churning at the images coming from Kibbutz Kfar Az,” wrote the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt. “40 Babies slaughtered and beheaded. The people who committed these massacres are evil. There is no moral universe in which such savagery can be justified. My heart is broken. Just broken.”

It was just one scene. From one town. The horror continues to unfold: Hundreds of young people slaughtered at a music concert; families massacred in their homes; women raped, murdered, their bodies posted on social media sites.

This was, or ought to have been, a moment of shocking, stunning moral clarity. It was, as President Biden said forcefully Tuesday, “an act of sheer evil.”

But the pro-Hamas left reacted very differently.

Nota bene: what follows is not an indictment of “all leftists,” or of those who sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians. It is, instead, a description of the moral depravity of those who actually celebrated, downplayed, rationalized, or ignored the atrocities in front of them.

And a reminder: We never promised you a safe space.

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Noah Smith’s post “Western leftists have lost the plot,” included this image from a rally by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in support of the Palestinian cause.

[Many] of the American leftists holding pro-Palestinian rallies gleefully celebrated the targeting of civilians as an act of liberation, even joking about the murders. For example, you can watch a video where one of the speakers at the NYC rally says:

And as you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters.

The audience cheers his description of the atrocities, whooping with delight. Meanwhile, posters for other rallies were decorated with heroic images of the paragliders that the Hamas attackers used to attack the festival. Some chapters explicitly praised the attacks.

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Via the Free Press:

Young girls in hijabs waved Palestinian flags in the street. Men in ski masks hung from scaffolding chanting, “Israel, go to hell.” And pamphlets rained from the sky, lauding the recent violence by Hamas as “heroic.” 

This wasn’t the Middle East. This was Midtown Manhattan, home to the second-largest Jewish population in the world after Israel, just days after Israel was ambushed by Hamas in the deadliest terrorist attack in the country’s history. More than 900 Israelis are now dead, more than 2,000 wounded, and an estimated 100 held hostage….

They chanted for the end of Zionism—or as they put it, “decolonization.”

It is right to rebel! Israel, go to hell!

5-6-7-8, Palestine is ours to take!

Resistance is justified when people are oppressed!

One sign stretching across an entire street dared: “By any means necessary.”

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At a pro-Hamas rally in Australia, protestors chanted “gas the Jews,” and “f*ck the Jews”.

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And then there were the universities.

At Harvard, a coalition of student groups declared that it held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

At UVA, students called the horrific events of this weekend "an unprecedented feat for the 21st century" and "a step towards a free Palestine." The president of the NYU Law School Bar Association put out a statement insisting that “Israel bears full responsibility” for the slaughter of Jews. “I will not condemn Palestinian resistance….”

Other student groups called for an “Anti-Israel ‘Day of Resistance’ Praising Hamas Attacks.”

In a post on Instagram, the pro-Palestine organization said the Hamas attack on Israel caught "the enemy completely by surprise."

"This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors," the post read. "As the Palestinian student movement, we have a responsibility to join the call for mass mobilization."

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It actually gets worse.

Pro-Hamas protesters in California “intentionally added the paraglider that Hamas used to arrive at the Nova festival to rape and slaughter young girls.”

Imagine being a Jewish student on campus these days.

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Another BLM statement declared solidarity with the Hamas attack and called for a similar “decolonizing” of the United States.

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The celebration of the Hamas atrocities was not confined to street protests. Via the Free Press:

On Saturday, as the raping and murdering and kidnapping were happening in Israel, Najma Sharif, a writer for Soho House magazine and Teen Vogue, posted on X: “What did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers.” 

So far, Sharif’s post has been liked 100,000 times and reposted nearly 23,000 times—by, among others, The Washington Post’s global opinions editor, Karen Attiah. 

The point was: Don’t be squeamish. Never mind the Jewish girl being pulled by her hair with blood streaming between her legs. Never mind the women being raped beside the corpses of their friends at a music festival. Never mind the children and babies snatched from their parents.

If you can’t handle it, if you condemn it without a preamble or equivocation, you’re an apologist for the Zionist colonizers. 

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And, yes, this is Fox News, but the questions weren’t hard. A simple: “Of course, I condemn that…” would have been welcome. Instead, we got this viral video.

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Spare me the whataboutism, the lectures about historical grievances, and the tortured, intellectualized rationalizations for evil. Because what we witnessed was evil. Objective evil.

All monsters have stories. They’ve suffered indignities, injustices. There are “root causes” for their rage; they can always try to cast their enormities as acts of justice. But sometimes evil is just evil.

The Germans after WWI were treated unfairly; the Treaty of Versailles was unjust and punitive. None of that remotely justified the Holocaust or is even relevant to the outpouring of evil that followed. The Russians can describe their grievances against Ukraine; but none of that provides a justification for the invasion — for Bucha, Mariupol, or the ongoing rape, slaughter, and torture of civilians.

Evil is just evil, even when dressed up in the rhetoric of liberation.

The good news

Joe Biden delivered a "crystal clear" condemnation of Hamas. Via Axios:

Biden's address — carried live by all major news networks —was perhaps the most powerful statement of support for Israel by a sitting U.S. president since Harry Truman recognized the Jewish state in 1948.

• "In this moment, we must be crystal clear. ... The United States has Israel's back. We will make sure the Jewish and democratic state of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow — as we always have," Biden said.

• "President Biden's speech was the most passionately pro-Israel in history," tweeted former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren. "Our people will always remember and cherish this speech and the man who delivered it."

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WH spox Karine Jean-Pierre also powerfully condemned “Repugnant Disgraceful Statements From Squad.”

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: So, look, I’ve seen some of those statements this weekend. And we’re going to continue to be very clear: We believe they are wrong, we believe they’re repugnant, and we believe they’re disgraceful.

Our — our condemnation belongs squarely with terrorists who have brutally murdered, raped, kidnapped hundreds — hundreds of Israelis. There can be no equivocation about that. There are not two sides here. There are not two sides.

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AOC breaks with 'Squad' to slam antisemitism at NYC rally.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) broke with her often-aligned group of hard-line progressive representatives Monday, denouncing "hatred and antisemitism" on display at a Sunday New York City rally that celebrated the recent terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas.

“It should not be hard to shut down hatred and antisemitism where we see it," she told Politico. "That is a core tenet of solidarity."

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Via Dave Weigel: Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres (D), Israel supporter/DSA critic, called this "the beginning of the end for the DSA as a political force."

"Its antisemitism and extremism have become too glaring to ignore. And its institutional influence will recede into the fringe."

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3. Israel, Ukraine, and the Need for American Leadership

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4. Speaker Race Is a Slow Crawl

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Mr. Santos’s alleged misdeeds, in contrast, have more in common with those of a run-of-the-mill grifter.

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