Israel/Hamas War Commentary: Intellectual and Moral Rot

By Rich Kozlovich 

Editor's Note: Here is the link to all I've published about this horror: My Israel/HAMAS War Series.  RK

I thought I'd seen it all but this is unfathomable to a sane mind.  The number of lunatics who've come out in support of the vile attack against these helpless people by Hamas is not only sickening, it's frightening.  Is stupid infectious?

Support for Hamas in U.S. underscores our moral decline - In May 2021, a man in Florida stuffed a baby wipe down the throat of a 2-month-old infant, killing her. In May 2023, the body of a 3-month-old infant was discovered in a bag just off a highway in New York, resulting in the arrest of two people who shook the baby to death for crying. In June 2023, a man in California physically abused a 5-week old infant, causing its death. Upon learning about each of these murders, any reasonable person should rightfully be horrified that the most vulnerable members of our society met such brutal endings, condemning the perpetrators and demanding justice be done. This is a line that every American should agree is never to be crossed. Sadly, in the wake of the brutal surprise invasion of Israel by Hamas, that is not the case.........

Apparently it is, right along with insanity.  This next section is disturbing, but fortunately, there's push back, as there are sane and courageous CEOs who are vowing not to hire these insane Israel-haters.  But there's the media, who right along with academia, suffer from a terminal case of stupidity and moral depravity deserving of unending contempt.  

The world has just witnessed the largest slaughter of Jewish people since the Holocaust. The videos are gut-wrenching. Stories make your stomach churn. Hundreds of innocent civilians are dead. Toddlers, teens, and grandparents have been taken hostage. Young women have suffered violence too terrible to speak. Families have been burned alive while hiding in their homes. Bodies have been mutilated as terrorists laugh and hand out candy in celebration of evil. Hamas’ terror attacks are heinous and deserve the condemnation of civilized people around the world.

Academia is a festering sore of leftist swill with fools contaminating the young and impressionable minds of the nation's youth, emptying the values they were taught as children, and filling their minds with nothing of value.  Academia leaves them with no solid moral foundation, as a result, the hate, greed, lust, envy, and violence being perpetrated by these young fools is nothing more than a reflection of the slightly older, and even dumber fools teaching them. 

These people in leadership roles in academia are so intellectually and morally befuddled their moral compass has no idea which way is North, and this piece by  Frederick M. Hess at the American Enterprise Institute, Hamas Brutality Illuminates College Officialdom’s Broken Moral Compass, demonstrates that clearly.  The fact so many remained silent for so long over the outrageous and vile behavior of their students was detestable.  But when they did speak out, but not too strongly, it was only because of public outrage.  That shows two things.  They lack of courage and they have no real sense of morality. 

They will bend to the strongest wind of the day.  They have no morality that allows them to row against the tide, or be rocks in the current.  They stand for nothing, and should be held in total and unmitigated contempt.  Academia, the corrupt media, the UN, and leftist misfits in general, in and out of government, all were despicable yesterday; they're despicable today; and they will be despicable in the future, because they share the same intellectual and moral rot that undermines courage in the face of adversity, and in the face of horror.  You had better hope that if disaster strikes you these vile and disgusting misfits aren't standing by your side as your only ally.  

Academia 

The Left Has Shown Its Moral Bankruptcy - Alan Joseph Bauer    Oct 21, 2023 - The response to the barbaric attack in Israel has exposed the liberal and intellectual left as being bereft of knowledge, insights, judgment, and compassion. The left has become a pathetic collection of ideological zealots.  Imagine the Olympics. One of the premiere events is the 4x100 meter relay race. The United States and Brazil are considered the favorites. The race starts and the two are ahead of the pack and are neck-and-neck until the anchor runner. The US runner puts on the afterburners and blows by his Brazilian counterpart and crosses the finish line in Olympic and world record time. The crowd goes wild until it is discovered that the US runner forgot the baton. Yeah, he crossed the finish line first, but with no baton in hand, he won nothing.

The example above would seem to apply to our modern liberal left which has great technical knowledge but no moral depth. All of our leaders are university-trained, without exception. Some have bachelor's degrees while others have advanced diplomas. Yet, they have shown themselves to be morally bereft of compassion and understanding of the severity of the events in southern Israel two weeks ago. Virtually every important institution is openly left-leaning in its actions and official statements. Universities, governments, Hollywood, sports, major businesses: all of them show their left-leaning bonafides via commercials, public comments, rallies, or through their products. 

 

Nobody forced Anheuser-Busch to put a “trans” person on a can of beer and nobody demanded that Harvard students come out en masse for Hamas. These are natural outcomes of their worldview, and their worldview has been shown to be bankrupt and corrupt to its core. These people are the final product produced by our modern educational system...............

Hayward: China Demands U.S. Colleges Be More Pro-Palestinian - John Hayward 17 Oct 2023 - China’s state-run Global Times on Monday took note of American universities supporting the terrorists of Hamas and insisted they should be even more supportive, which might be the most extravagant demand to come from the Chinese Communist Party since it drew a map that said the entire South China Sea, plus a good deal of India, belongs to Beijing.  The Global Times pushed Beijing’s phony moral equivalence line whereby the Chinese government pretends to be “neutral” and deplore all violence but actually supports the killers of Hamas and seeks to protect them from any Israeli military response..........

In The Terrorist Attack, The Jewish Future And The Jewish Past Come Together - By Sally Zelikovsky October 13, 2023- Let me tell you about the Jews of today. It’s taken thousands of years, but we are no longer a meek and timid people who will obediently board a train, be separated from our loved ones, and walk into a gas chamber believing we’ll have a nice shower after our arduous journey. It is precisely these tragic events in our collective Jewish past that inform the present and somehow will inform our future. The catastrophe that unfolded this past weekend in Israel was surreal for all decent humans with a pulse—excluding pro-Palestinian groups celebrating in Gaza, London, Sydney, and New York, as well as low-IQ individuals with undeserved diplomas and a platform for ignorance like Sonny Hostin of The View...........

College says praise of Hamas part of the 'free exchange of diverse ideas and perspectives' - By Eric Utter October 14, 2023 - Campus Reform recently reported that the Swarthmore chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) called the Hamas terrorists who butchered thousands of innocent Israelis (and others, including Americans) “martyrs” and affirmed the “right of Palestinian people to resist.” Which reportedly prompted Swarthmore College President Val Smith to issue a statement in which she called the students’ praise of Hamas terror actions examples of the “free exchange of diverse ideas and perspectives” that “we embrace” as a “liberal arts institution."..........If we’ve “progressed” so far that slaughtering innocent people is now simply considered to be illustrative of a different perspective, surely Swarthmore College and its SJP warmly welcomes conservatives and MAGA types to campus to share their diverse perspectives?  Right?

 

After Hamas attacks, Stanford lecturer allegedly herded Jewish pupils into a corner to teach them a lesson about oppression - October 13, 2023 By Olivia Murray -Leftism is a plague, and a resilient one at that—if the philosophy’s adherents were more capable of critical or independent thought, and less inflated with pseudo-superiority, such folly and ignorance would have died a long time ago.  Yesterday, an item at The Jewish Daily Forward reported that in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks this past weekend, a Stanford instructor teaching a “Civil, Liberal and Global Education” course had allegedly directed his Jewish and Israeli students to identify themselves; when they did, they were told to gather their belongings, and head to the corner of the classroom to receive a public shaming session, so they could learn a lesson about what it’s like to be on the receiving end of oppression.

Meet the Columbia University Students Supporting Hamas Terrorism - John Hasson  October 17, 2023 - On October 9th, a coalition of Columbia University student groups signed and published a statement blaming Israel and the U.S. for Hamas’ invasion and calling for “liberation.”  The coalition, “Palestine Solidarity Groups at Columbia,” began its statement by expressing sympathy for “the individuals and communities at Columbia University affected by the tragic losses experienced by both Palestinians and Israelis.” It quickly pivoted to a full-throated condemnation of Israel and defense of Palestinian aggression".   “We also affirm that there can be no future of safety and freedom for all Israelis and Palestinians without holding the Israeli occupation accountable for its actions and putting an end to the untenable status quo of Israel's apartheid and colonial system,” the statement read...............

Cornell U. Prof. Calls Hamas Terror Attack Against Israel ‘Exhilarating, Energizing’ -  Alana Mastrangelo 17 Oct 2023 - Cornell University professor Russell Rickford went on a pro-Hamas tirade on Sunday, calling the terror group’s recent attacks against Israel “energizing,” adding, “I was exhilarated!”“Hamas has shifted the balance of power. Hamas has punctured the illusion of invincibility. That’s what they’ve done!” professor Rickford proclaimed at a rally on Sunday. “You don’t have to be a Hamas supporter to recognize that! Hamas has changed the terms of debate!”....

Harvard, 2023’s Worst School for Free Speech, Claims Commitment to ‘Free Expression’ for Pro-Hamas Students - Alana Mastrangelo 14 Oct 2023 - Harvard University, which has been named 2023’s worst school for free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), is now, ironically, stressing its “commitment to free expression” in the wake of more than 30 of its student groups issuing a statement in which they blamed Israel for the Hamas terrorist attack that left more than 1,300 Israelis dead.........

Harvard, 2023’s Worst School for Free Speech, Claims Commitment to ‘Free Expression’ for Pro-Hamas Students - Alana Mastrangelo 14 Oct 2023 - Harvard University, which has been named 2023’s worst school for free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), is now, ironically, stressing its “commitment to free expression” in the wake of more than 30 of its student groups issuing a statement in which they blamed Israel for the Hamas terrorist attack that left more than 1,300 Israelis dead........

Anti-Israel, Pro-Hamas Views Are a Majority at Schools that End up Producing People Who Hold Power - Ian Hanchett 14 Oct 2023 - On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that anti-Israel and pro-Hamas sentiment is a majority view on elite campuses, which is a problem because those campuses “the mouth of the river from which most of this nonsense flows. And they’re very influential and those are the people who graduate and become the assholes in society.” Maher said that he’s not sure that the pro-Hamas faction on the left is that small anymore and has grown significantly. He added, “I don’t think it’s a minority on elite campuses, which [are] the mouth of the river from which most of this nonsense flows. And they’re very influential and those are the people who graduate and become the assholes in society.”................

Harvard Affiliates Gather at Hillel to Show Support and Grieve Amid Invasion of Israel -By Joyce E. Kim, Crimson Staff Writer October 8, 2023 -  "What kind of psycho sees families hunted down in their homes by men with machine guns and balaclavas, tortured, raped, executed, their bodies defiled, and says, ‘Hey, I identify with the depraved butchers, let’s go stage a protest for them'? Honestly, who are these ghouls?"............

Students who called for Jewish slaughter absolutely should pay the price -  October 16, 2023 By Andrea Widburg - A spirited debate broke out between Megyn Kelly and Vivek Ramaswamy and between Kelly and Candace Owens regarding what should happen to the college students who signed letters and took to the streets last week to say that Israelis deserved their rape, torture, murder, and kidnapping and that we should affirmatively support the sadists who target civilians. Kelly thinks that the people who made these statements should find that it affects their futures in seriously negative ways. I agree completely. Ramaswamy and Owens say that they should be cut some slack because all of us have dumb ideas. Both are wrong. However, Owens did make an important point that deserves to be recognized, which is why I’m writing here...............

Anti-Israel Protest at University of Washington: ‘One Solution, Intifada Revolution’ -  Paul Bois12 Oct 2023 - An anti-Israel protest erupted at the University of Washington on Thursday wherein students were seen waving Palestinian flags and chanting for an “intifada.” Video of the protest began circulating on social media showing students with Palestinian flags and chanting, “There is only one solution. Intifada Revolution.”..............

Swarthmore College Banned Fraternities, Won’t Ban Hamas-Supporting ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’ -  By Daniel Greenfield October 12, 2023 - Fraternities and sororities no, Hamas yes. There are people and organizations who can credibly take an absolutist position on free speech. Modern colleges where wearing a sombrero on Halloween or being a Republican is a hate crime are not among them. Any normal student who defended a racist group’s murder of minorities would be off campus in three seconds flat. A KKK chapter would never be allowed to exist on any college campus. And yet Students for Justice in Palestine and its chapters can openly support Hamas and the murder of Jews. And college administrators make excuses for them..............

 

Meet the Harvard Students Supporting Hamas’ Invasion of Israel - John Hasson October 10, 2023 - In the wake of Hamas’ brutal surprise attack against Israel, 34 Harvard student organizations recently signed a joint statement blaming Israel for the attack and expressing support for Palestine. “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” the letter read. “The apartheid regime is the only one to blame. Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years.” To date, the Hamas invasion has killed over 900 Israeli citizens, and at least 11 American citizens. Reports of Hamas raping Israeli women, and videos of militants holding Israeli children in cages, have flooded social media. In one violent spectacle, Hamas militants paraded the naked, dead body of a German woman through the streets of Gaza in the back of a vehicle.................

 

Hamas and Amoral Clarity By Victor Davis Hanson - One unexpected blowback from the medieval Hamas’s barbaric murdering of hundreds of Israeli civilians is the revelation of current global amorality. More than 20 Harvard university identity politics groups pledged their support to the Hamas murderers—to the utter silence for days of Harvard President Claudine Gay. Americans knew higher education practiced racist admission policies. It has long promoted racially segregated dorms and graduations. And de facto it has destroyed the First Amendment...............

 

The Campus Hate Groups that Support Hamas By Sara Dogan October 12, 2023 - A new report exposes their seething leftist hatred.  After Hamas terrorists butchered Israelis, raped and killed teenage girls at a musical festival, and caged children as hostages, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) called it a “historic win for the Palestinian resistance.” SJP, a campus hate group backed by Hamas’ Muslim Brotherhood parent organization, which has over 200 chapters in North America, declared that, Jewish “settlers are not civilians” and are fair game for the atrocities committed by Hamas against women and children. “This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation,” SJP National posted before urging its chapters to join in a National Day of Action..............

 

Universities: Maybe We Should Just Shut Up? October 17, 2023 by Steven Hayward - The moral nihilism and leftist willfulness of American higher education have finally been exposed by the harsh light of the Hamas barbarism, and for a change there are consequences. When a squishy, status-conscious centrist like Jon Huntsman tells the University of Pennsylvania that his “checkbook is closed” to further donations (Huntsman’s family has given tens of millions to Penn over the years) because Penn is “deeply adrift in ways that make it almost unrecognizable,” mired in “moral relativism” and a failed leadership that “fueled the university’s race to the bottom.” At Harvard, the Wexner Foundation has terminated its long-term relationship with the Kennedy School of Government:.............

 

Is This Why Some American Universities Aren't Cracking Down on Hamas Sympathizers? - 

Guy Benson  October 17, 2023 - I've been quite critical of my alma mater's response to Hamas' brutal murders of 1,300 Israelis on October 7. It began with days of silence, followed by a privately-relayed decision against making any institutional comment (reported publicly by me), followed by an incoherent and hypocritical public statement that there would be no institutional comment, followed by another public statement clarifying that the terrorists' butchery of Jews was, in fact, an affront to the university's values, after all.  A mess.  With pro-Hamas student groups in full throat, I've heard from disgusted pro-Israel students and alumni, including quite a few Jews who are deeply and especially disturbed. 

 

Students Are Not the Biggest Problem When It Comes to Speech By Samuel J. Abrams AEIdeas October 11, 2023 Open expression and the ability to question, debate, and disagree are at the heart of a genuine liberal learning experience. Sadly, many of our colleges and universities have moved away from being places that promote viewpoint diversity and disagreement and have become centers of ideological monoculture and communities of censorship and fear. While the student mobs that shout down speakers and threaten violence often make news, it is the college administrators and diversity, equity, and inclusion offices that hinder the classical liberal education experience. Their crusade is based on the notion that words and ideas can harm students, which is central to creating this culture of cancellation and silence.

SLC’s Disgraceful Silence  By Samuel J. Abrams Jewish Journal October 11, 2023 - The humanitarian crisis unfolding in Israel at the hands of Hamas has exposed just how deep and dangerous antisemitism is now on today’s college and university campuses. Let there be no misunderstanding; the unending statements about inclusivity and love on the part of diversity, equity, and inclusion offices are anything but genuine and actually welcoming. They are supportive only if one falls into line with their ideology and ideas and one such value is maintaining an antisemitic view of the world. 

Stealth Jihad in American Education - October 20, 2023 By Carole Hornsby Haynes - Since the terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas, college campus rallies in support of the barbaric act have erupted across the nation.  Although world focus is on Israel, this is only one part of the global plan of Islam. Islamic law -- Shari’ah -- requires Jihad to be waged as "warfare against non-Muslims” until all the world is under Islamic law.  Jihadist doctrine is advanced by both violent techniques and “civilization jihad,” a stealth subversive effort to destroy Western civilization from within a nation by its own hand.  The pattern of Islam is to use the courts, schools, art museums, and other major institutions including outreach to churches to infiltrate, gradually introduce Shari’ah, and then finally take over a nation.  American education is a prime target..........

1 in 10 College Students Support Hamas Atrocities - By Daniel Greenfield  October 20, 2023-  Only 50% of Democrats say they blame Hamas for the attack on Israel.   Some people are describing this poll as good news. It only seems that way because we’ve lowered the bar so drastically that anything short of a majority committing to bombing the Empire State Building seems good. It’s not good news..................

Ex-Obama NLRB Counsel, 80 Professors Sign Petition Saying Hamas Atrocities are a Legit “Military Operation” - By Daniel Greenfield • October 19, 2023 - The mask is coming off.   We bomb ISIS, yet we fund CUNY.  The City University of New York has been transformed from a public university that let poor kids get a good education and succeed. They boast about how many Nobel laureates they’ve produced, but those days are behind them. Instead, CUNY has become an antisemitic terrorist hellhole where over 80 faculty members are willing to sign on to a statement saying that the murder of elderly women and children, the rape of women and the kidnapping of children is a “military operation”........A military operation aimed at massacring and kidnapping civilians........

Hamas and Universities in Connecticut - Jay Bergman October 19, 2023 - Willful blindness to genocidal anti-Semitism.  

“O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

In this injunction in Article Seven of the Hamas Covenant, ratified in 1988, one finds the reason for the invasion of Israel that began on October 7.  Hamas does not merely seek the extermination of Jews.  That is why it exists.  That is why its fighters decapitate Israeli babies, rape Israeli women and burn them alive.  That is why they humiliate Israel children and grandmothers before killing them.  That is why they slaughter over two hundred Israeli teenagers gathered peacefully at a concert.  Everyone in Israel Hamas has murdered were murdered for one reason and one reason only – because they were Jews.  According to the same covenant, which reads like an addendum to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Jews are devoid of humanity, a demonic people responsible for everything Hamas objects to in human history, from the French Revolution to World War II...........

Harvard Students: Losing Job Opportunities Over Our Hamas Support Is the Actual 'Violence' Here Guy Benson   October 19, 2023-The bogus victimhood is bottomless.  Because grievance is the coin of their realm, and because many of them are incapable of arguing any other way, it should be unsurprising to see figures like Rashida Tlaib and various other Hamas apologists and anti-Semites claim that somehow they are the ones who've been wronged over the last two weeks. In a development that truly defies parody, Harvard students who signed an egregious, terrorism-justifying statement are now whining about the "bullying" they've experienced over the moral disgrace to which they signed their names.  They're even soliciting financial donations to (supposedly) finance mental health support in the face of this hardship.  The hardcore Left has labored for years to twist the meaning of the word 'violence' beyond all recognition, expanding it to entail virtually anything that they don't like, while exempting various manifestations of actual, physical violence that they happen to favor.  So comments like this are inevitable:........

 

Organizers of Pro-Palestinian ‘Insurrection’ at Capitol Have Pro-terror History - Nick Gilbertson and Joel B. Pollak -  The pro-Palestinian protesters who staged an “insurrection” on Wednesday by illegally occupying a Capitol office building were led, in part, by a group that calls itself “Jewish Voice for Peace” (JVP) but has a history of supporting Palestinian terrorists.  As Breitbart News reported:..........

 

Chaos in Berlin: 65 Police Officers Injured in Pro-Palestinian Riot - Kurt Zindulka 19 Oct 2023 - Chaos erupted in Berlin, leaving dozens of police officers injured, as pro-Palestinian protesters took to the streets of the German capital in defiance of the local ban on such demonstrations over concerns of antisemitism.  On Wednesday evening, protests were held throughout Germany following the explosion at a hospital in Gaza, which international media initially blamed on Israel without evidence. In the Berlin borough of Neukölln, hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists gathered despite the city’s ban on anti-Israel protests. The demonstration devolved into violence and rioting, with local police reporting that the demonstrators attacked officers with stones, bottles, and makeshift pyrotechnic missiles.......