If we needed proof that you could be a student at Harvard and still be a dope, now we have the latest piece of evidence. After Jews were slaughtered in Israel, massacred in their homes, mowed down at a music festival in the desert, after babies were murdered and hostages young and old were dragged to Gaza, a group of more than 30 campus groups at Harvard issued a joint statement holding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”
George Orwell was right when he said that “some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”
When news first broke of the massacre in Israel, the world of free countries, the world of western democracies, the world of sane people were united behind Israel. How could they not be, when so many innocent Israelis had been murdered? How could any decent person not condemn what happened when Israel suffered its worst loss of life in its 75-year history?
But that unity, that sympathy for Israelis, won’t last long. Very soon, the so-called mainstream left will revert to its version of high-mindedness — and Israel will be its target.
And it won’t only be anti-Israel and anti-Jewish college students who see Palestinians as the victims of Israeli oppression. It won’t only be pro-Palestinian demonstrators who took to the streets a few days ago here in America and in London and in Sydney, Australia, where chants of “Free Palestine” morphed into ‘F**k the Jews.” And at a rally in Manhattan, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote about what he witnessed in person:
“Would there be even perfunctory condemnation of Hamas’s methods? A brief nod of sympathy to Israel’s anguish? Some banal nod to the cause of peace and nonviolence? Not that I heard. What I saw was giddiness and gloating, as if someone’s team had won the World Cup. Hamas had perpetrated the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and the crowd was euphoric.”
Watch what happens in the coming days as Israel continues to target Hamas terrorists in Gaza. Watch what happens when Palestinian civilians are killed, not because Israel targeted them, but because Hamas terrorists used them as human shields, knowing that when a child is killed and the body paraded through the streets of Gaza it will shatter the once near-universal support the world had for Israel.
Terrorists understand the power of images. They understand that dead civilians have public relations value. Dead children understandably will generate sympathy from everyone who thinks Israel is reacting “disproportionately.”
But, as Gerry Baker asks in the Wall Street Journal, “Pray tell, what is a ‘proportionate’ response to an enemy that indiscriminately mows down young partygoers at a concert, drags off terrified grandmothers to an unknown fate in some Gazan hellscape, and spits on the half-naked body of an innocent young woman they have just murdered?”
After progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) issued the mandatory condemnation of the Hamas massacre, she called for “an immediate cease-fire and de-escalation.” Does she not understand that a cease-fire at this point would help the terrorists? Does she not understand that a cease-fire would shield Hamas from the consequences of its actions? Or maybe she understands very well.
We should expect more calls for de-escalation, for even-handedness, in the coming days. It will come not just from campus radicals but from liberals who inhabit the faculty lounges of elite universities, from the left side of the aisle in Congress, from liberals in Europe — and from liberals in the media.
If history is a guide, the storyline will very soon become one about Israel as a powerful force violating international law, even behaving like the terrorists they condemn.
Right now, the sound we hear is from bombs going off in the war against Hamas terrorists. I hope I’m wrong, but I think we’ll soon be hearing another sound — the sound of once near universal support for Israel shattering.
Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him @BernardGoldberg.