I strongly disagree with most of the criticisms of Israel's conduct in the war against Hamas, but I can understand why people disagree with me too. 

Many people are reflexively anti-war in all circumstances; many believe that Israel hasn't been discriminating enough in its fighting; many don't think the US has any business getting involved, and many hate Bibi Netanyahu and believe that this is his war. All those photos of destruction in Gaza are, indeed, heart-rending. 

And almost all of them buy what the MSM has been selling them, and for the most part, the MSM is peddling Hamas propaganda. For God's sake, the media directly quotes Hamas' "Ministry of Health" as if they are an objective news source. If I believed all that propaganda and hadn't dug more deeply into the realities I might have a different opinion. 

I could go on, of course, about why I disagree with these people, but while their opinions matter, they aren't the people driving the debate in America or those who are in the streets. 

The people in the streets, taking over America's campuses and spreading antisemitic poison, are not opponents of the war; they have chosen a side: Hamas. They love the war; they just want Hamas to win it. 

Jonathan Chait, whom I am quoting approvingly for the second time in as many weeks (oh, how I hate that!), hit the nail on the head in his latest piece for New York Magazine. 

The reason anti-semitic incidents keep happening is the core ideology of the pro-Palestine movement, which embraces Hamas and rejects dialogue https://t.co/XlQQslYnGS

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) April 22, 2024

Chait is not anti-Palestinian by any means, but he looks at the pro-Hamas Left and calls them out for what they are: violent Jew-haters. He is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but not their advocates in America. 

The anti-Israel demonstrations around Columbia University turned threatening and antisemitic Saturday night, as they have repeatedly across the country. On social media, you can find footage of crowds taunting Jewish students to “Go back to Poland!” and chanting, “We don’t want no Zionists here!” There is a masked protester with a sign that reads “Al-Qasam’s Next Target” with an arrow pointing at Jewish counterprotesters nearby. Al-Qassam is the military wing of Hamas. A protester screamed at Jewish students, “The 7th of October is going to be every day for you!”

The protest groups and their supporters have attacked the Biden administration for denouncing these incidents and the media for reporting them. “We are frustrated by media distractions focusing on inflammatory individuals who do not represent us,” asserts the Columbia chapter for Students for Justice in Palestine.

The problem with what SJP claims is that it is false. SJP itself has called for a worldwide Intifada and applauded Hamas' attack on October 7th. They are putting a bit of distance between themselves and the violent mobs not because they disagree but because they are being harmed in the public eye. 

They are trying to have their cake and eat it too, and for the most part, the media is willing to cover for them, just as they did with Black Lives Matter. "Mostly peaceful" and all that. 

The main national umbrella group for campus pro-Palestinian protests is Students for Justice in Palestine. SJP takes a violent eliminationist stance toward Israel. In the wake of the October 7 terrorist attacks, it issued a celebratory statement instructing its affiliates that all Jewish Israelis are legitimate targets:

Liberation is not an abstract concept. It is not a moment circumscribed to a revolutionary past as it is often characterized. Rather, liberating colonized land is a real process that requires confrontation by any means necessary. In essence, decolonization is a call to action, a commitment to the restoration of Indigenous sovereignty. It calls upon us to engage in meaningful actions that go beyond symbolism and rhetoric. Resistance comes in all forms — armed struggle, general strikes, and popular demonstrations. All of it is legitimate, and all of it is necessary.

SJP likewise directed its members to join the struggle directly: “This is a moment of mobilization for all Palestinians. We must act as part of this movement. All of our efforts continue the work and resistance of Palestinians on the ground.”

As we heard many times since 10/7, this is what decolonization looks like. Rape, murder, hostage-taking. 10/7s forever, until the West is done, because for the Left the Jews are the symbolic leaders of the West. And this is what our academic elite teaches. 

A second group that has helped organize the demonstrations at Columbia is called Within Our Lifetime. Like SJP, WOL takes an uncompromising eliminationist stance toward Israel, even calling for “the abolition of zionism.” If you suspect it would be difficult to exterminate an idea peacefully, you are correct. WOL, like SJP, endorses all violent attacks on Israeli Jews: “We defend the right of Palestinians as colonized people to resist the zionist occupation by any means necessary.”

More pertinently, WOL “reject[s] all collaboration and dialogue with zionist organizations” as “normalization,” which is to say it believes people anywhere in the world who wish to see a Jewish state survive in any form should not be permitted to live normal lives. If there is a theoretical distinction between this doctrine and direct advocacy of systematic harassment of mainstream Jewish people and organizations, it is paper thin.

The Left is a revolutionary movement, and revolutionary movements are everywhere and always violent in intent and often violent in action. In a sane world the hammer and sickle would be as offensive as the swastika, because communism has killed even more people than the Nazis did. But communism is alive and well on America's campuses, where any Nazi would be pilloried and rightfully so. 

When I worked at the Minnesota legislature I was struck by the posters my Democrat colleagues in the staff had up; among the union posters were many that included raised fists and photos of Che Guevara, the mass murderer who is beloved by the Left. They idolize violent revolutionaries unironically, although most of them have joined the "long march through the institutions" instead of picking up arms. 

They love the ones who do, though. Bloodlust is their motivation. Not all, of course, but the ones who don't sit in desks next to those who do. 

Amid all the calls for a ceasefire too few have noticed that Hamas is the party that has consistently opposed one. Even Qatar, which is playing the intermediary between Israel and Hamas, is fed up with them. The Arab world spurns Palestinians because allying with them is exhausting and, they know, picking the wrong side. Allying with Israel--and many Arab countries have, informally--is the best path forward. Palestinians are in love with blood. 

As are the campus revolutionaries. 

Jewish students have been forced to endure an atmosphere of eliminationist rhetoric that is consistently unable to modulate or confine its Manichean demands. The pro-Palestinian groups have chosen to embrace violent fundamentalist death cults as their allies. They have chosen to spurn compromise and coexistence. The gaping void of a humane, universalist, liberal movement to advocate for the cause of Palestinian freedom is their failure, and its fruit is the rancid antisemitism that, despite their feeble denials, has sprung up everywhere since October 7.

Chait desperately wants a humane pro-Palestinian movement, but while there are indeed humane Palestinians out there, there is no Palestinian movement that is not steeped in hatred and blood. Peace between Israel and any large Palestinian group is impossible not because Israel wants to kill off the Palestinians but because the Palestinians want to kill off the Jews. 

They tell us that constantly. It is we who choose not to hear them and understand. 

Palestinians have been offered a state a number of times, and they don't want one. They want it all. They want Jews dead or enslaved. Hamas even had a plan to enslave the Jews after victory. 

"Educated Jews and experts in the areas of medicine, engineering, technology and civilian and military industry should be retained [in Palestine] for some time and should not be allowed to leave and take with them the knowledge and experience that they acquired while living in our land and enjoying its bounty, while we paid the price for all this in humiliation, poverty, sickness, deprivation, killing and arrests," the conference's concluding statement asserted.

When a Columbia student shouts "We are Hamas!" this is what they mean. When they chant they don't want a two-state solution, they mean that Israel will be destroyed. 

There is no "humane" pro-Palestinian group. Allying with the Palestinians is worse than a fool's errand; it is choosing evil. 

That doesn't mean that people who don't support Israel are necessarily antisemitic. There is plenty of room for disagreement about any war. It is no different than a person who believes simultaneously that Putin was wrong to invade Ukraine and that US should stop supporting the kleptocrats in that country. 

The world can be complicated. 

But the pro-Palestinian movement is not. It is all about bloodlust and hate.