You can see the outraged dignity on their faces. Of course I oppose the slaughter of babies, they snap, implicitly demanding: What do you think I am, a monster? Insulted and aggrieved, convinced they’ve been tarred with a vicious slander, they retreat to their “pro-Palestinian” campus groups and social media feeds and glorious fall Saturday demonstrations, where all good people understand the righteousness of their cause.

Having once been such a “pro-Palestinian” activist myself, I’m sure that, in most cases, the sincerity is genuine. They do think the beheading of babies is wrong. They can examine their consciences and confidently say they oppose the atrocities Hamas committed on October 7.

And yet they don’t. Say it. The failure to condemn Hamas stretches from universities and unions to the United Nations, which has denounced Israel many times since October 7 but the Palestinian terrorist group, zero. The luminaries behind these organizations want us to know they oppose the massacre of Israeli civilians; and because they are human beings not monsters, they undoubtedly do. It just doesn’t seem to inspire any kind of passion.

My interest here is the mental sleight of hand that enables decent, avowedly progressive and other people to disregard the screaming signs that antisemitism is on the rampage. I’m not going to address the growing number who don’t present as “good people”: the mob in Sydney chanting, “Gas the Jews!”, the guy displaying a swastika at a demonstration in Times Square the day after the pogrom, the woman at a London train station screaming, “Kill all the Jews!” These people are, thankfully perhaps, beyond my understanding. I also have a hard time understanding the mindset of someone who takes down posters of Hamas hostages; I can’t see this as anything but evil. But I do have a bead on how people — I’ll even call them good-hearted people — can see the above things happening and still think the righteous place to be is on the side of Hamas.