OPINION:
Oct. 7 was the second holocaust for Jews. For America, it was the day the violence-loving left revealed itself as an intricate part of our country. Prosperous, well-connected leftists are willing to publicly condone and even celebrate the Hamas blitzkrieg in Israel, which included the beheading of Jewish babies and the rapes of Jewish women.
We found out that our nation’s colleges support radical Palestinian student chapters. And that college administrators are supportive or indifferent.
Off-campus, we have seen Black Lives Matter Chicago post on social media a glorification of Hamas assassins who rode parachute gliders into a joyous, peaceful music festival. These flyers murdered more than 200 Jews. You can fairly conclude the BLM chapter endorses the murder of Jews.
The X account @EndWokeness posted messages from Black Lives Matter Grassroots, a collection of local chapters. BLM Grassroots claimed that Blacks in America are “slaughtered with impunity,” just like Palestinians. BLM wants a “decolonized” Israel — a term Jews know means Israel’s destruction, which, by the way, is Hamas’ main objective.
BLM is not just a corporate-funding favorite. Democrats and the New York-Washington liberal media love it, too.
BLM has not repudiated pro-Hamas atrocity statements. The last press statement on its homepage is dated July of this year. BLM has advocated an end to capitalism and two-parent families. (It scrubbed the two-parent language off its website.) It still pushes the disastrous “woke” liberal policy of “defunding the police,” which has produced more crime and more hardship for Black Americans.
But who knew that our colleges harbored so much hatred of Jewish people and so much love of violence?
Washington University Jewish students were aghast at protesters and their national “glory to the murders” chant on campus. “They want us dead. How are you allowing this?” a student pleaded with a campus faculty member. She wept.
She wept because they now know America has fundamentally changed. We are on the wrong path. We should have noticed during the 2020 riots when some Democratic members of Congress, amid daily violence, called for more. The killings, arson, rampant theft and destruction were not intense enough. Few, if any, Washington Democrats condemned the violence. Some liberal news anchors encouraged it.
Now, a professor at Cornell University told a pro-Palestinian mob he was “exhilarated” when he heard the news Hamas had slaughtered Jews.
At the University of Washington at Seattle, pro-Hamas demonstrators held a rally. One confronted counterprotesters. “F—- Israel. … You guys are all f——— gay,” according to a video posted by Jason Rantz of KTTH Radio.
Harvard University led the pro-Hamas sympathizers. Harvard is hardly recognizable today as a place for learning. It is a $50 billion endowed bastion of GenZ orthodoxy, radical-left professors, anti-Americanism and “woke” ideology — an expensive brainwashing mecca.
Student groups at Harvard celebrated Hamas, whose dead-end governing of Gaza is guided by two principles: First, keep fellow Palestinians poor and hateful of Jews, and second, launch Iran-funded terror attacks on Israel to melodically eradicate it.
That’s it. That’s Hamas’ reason for being. It will deliberately kill its own people by launching rocket attacks from civilian buildings, knowing Israel will strike the sites. It’s called self-defense. Hamas then shows the gullible liberal press the photos.
“Hamas Harvard” student groups signed a statement posted on Instagram that blamed Israel for Hamas’ butchery.
All of this was too much for Harvard’s normally loyal liberal alumni.
Larry Summers, who served as Treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton and is a former Harvard University president, took to X.
“In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today,” Mr. Summers said. “The silence from Harvard’s leadership, so far, coupled with a vocal and widely reported student groups’ statement blaming Israel solely, has allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel.”
His target was Harvard President Claudine Gay. She issued a lukewarm statement that failed to criticize Hamas. After the backlash, she belatedly released a second statement, this one condemning Hamas.
Dan Diker is also a Harvard alumnus. He is not surprised at the Hamas fan club in the United States.
The New York-born Diker heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which researches and reports on violent Islam including Hamas’ growing influence among American students and professors.
“Hamas has been on campus for decades, and they’ve been given a free pass by university presidents, university faculty, university administration, and they’ve been given an endorsement by student groups across campuses, ” Mr. Diker told Mark Levin on Fox News’ “Life, Liberty & Levin.”
Hamas, Mr. Diker said, “has been receiving rhetorical, ideological and moral support from hundreds of campuses across the United States.”
The main umbrella group is Students for Justice in Palestine, with 300 chapters nationwide. Then there is the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, which has its own official university website. Mr. Diker said the committee is now “poisoning and frightening Harvard Jewish students.”
Harvard funds the Solidarity Committee, Mr. Diker said, adding that it “supports the genocidal Hamas which burns babies in their cribs.”
The day after Oct. 7, Hamas supporters quickly put together a “Global Day of Jihad,” such as the one in downtown Philadelphia. “I salute Hamas. A job well done. When I heard the news, I smiled,” one speaker said.
There were pro-Palestinian protesters in New York City who celebrated specific Hamas atrocities.
There is no need to search why the number of Americans who view patriotism as important to their lives has plunged over the decades, from 70% to 30% today, polling shows.
Just look at the state of American colleges and their teachers.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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