According to a new Harvard/Harris poll, only the police and military are more respected than Israel. It’s heartening that Americans overwhelmingly support civilization over the Islamofascists of Gaza and Iran.
Then again, “Palestinian Authority” gets 17% support, and Hamas has a 14% positive rating — which is to say 14% of your neighbors have taken the side of a medieval religious cult that’s vicious enough to cut Jewish babies out of mothers before beheading them. If 14% of Americans supported ISIS or al Qaeda or the Nazi Party, we would probably be concerned.
Anyway, those numbers seem far too small to me. I think there’s a good reason why. For one thing, many of those who claim to be “supporters” of the Jewish state are not. The Barack Obama types, who do the perfunctory throat-clearing about Israel’s right to exist before going into the usual reasons it should not. This faction — let’s be generous and call them “both-siders” — is a growing concern in the Democratic Party and on the fringes of the Right.
According to the Harvard poll crosstabs, 36% of “liberals” of all ages agreed that the Hamas attack on civilians was justified, and 15% of “conservatives.” While antisemitism isn’t the exclusive domain of left or right, full-blown Hamas apologists are now deeply embedded in left-wing institutions such as universities, major newspapers, cable news, progressive politics, think tanks and the State Department. They have the kind of disproportionate reach and institutional respect that cosplaying Nazis standing in front of Disney can only dream about.
Also according to the Harvard poll, a majority of 18- to 24-year-olds believe the killing of more than 1,200 Israeli and American civilians was justified. Nearly half of those 25 to 35 believe it was justified. That percentage might be a bit lower than what you find in The New York Times newsroom; nevertheless, it is only going to get worse.
How many young people working as engineers or carpenters or starting a new business or at home tending to a new family support Hamas? Very few, one imagines. What about the literature majors or those pursuing international relations degrees or Ph.D.s in one of the social pseudosciences? There is little hope for those who attend hermetically sealed ideological laboratories of higher “learning,” where identitarianism, intersectionality and other iterations of Marxism — most contingent on some form of antisemitism — are taught.
These institutions are run by cowardly administrators who only stand up for free speech when defending terror apologists. They will continue to create credentialed moral nitwits. These are not often places for young people to learn critical thinking skills. But they are places that produce ideologues who’ll be getting those editorial jobs and professorships and teachers union presidencies and law clerkships and security clearance jobs at the Pentagon.
Who else makes up this minority? We’re not supposed to talk about it, but it’s clear. According to a Cygnal poll (the outfit gets an “A” rating from FiveThirtyEight), a majority of American Muslims agree that Hamas was “justified” in its attack on Israel as well.
Though it is indisputable that antisemitism is deeply ingrained in certain Muslim communities, to say so will likely get you smeared as “Islamophobic” — always a big topic of conversation in Washington when Jews are being murdered.
But look to Europe, where crimes against Jews have skyrocketed in places with high levels of immigration from the Middle East, to understand the potential problem. When Pew polled the Muslim world, it found nearly universal antipathy toward Jews. Not only in places like Jordan and Egypt, where governments have spent decades ginning up Jew-hatred to distract from their own failing, but also in Muslim-majority nations like Indonesia, where there are around 20 Jews and the Israeli border sits thousands of miles away. Antisemites like Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib did not appear from the ether. They represent communities in Michigan and Minnesota.
There were dozens of Charlottesville-type marches in the United States last week, with chants of genocide ringing in the air. They were attended largely by Muslim protesters, along with the hard Left (including a number of self-hating Jews.) Though Jews are by far the most targeted religious minority in the United States, we have yet to have a big national conversation about the problem. No one in major media dares even bring it up.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books — the most recent, “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.” His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter @davidharsanyi.
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I understand that the koran contains explicit commands to kill jews. For hundreds of years jews were unarmed and defenseless. No more. They will keep their home or die trying. There’s something extra horrible about dying like a rabbit, which is what our communists hope for us after we’re disarmed in the wake of some ginned up crisis.
Hamas is pure evil, period.
You cannot coexist with evil.
you cannot reason or negotiate with evil.
You cannot compromise with evil.
Evil must be destroyed.
The savage vicious attack October 7th would make Josef Mengele blush and yet all across our college campuses, there are rallies supporting Hamas.
The most despicable member of Congress, Rashida Tlaib, supports Hamas and has Palestinian and Hamas flags in her office. I got news for you Rashida, you only have room in your office for one flag and it had better be the Stars and Stripes.
This “woman” screams like a banshee on our People’s House floor and spews her venom and no one has the stones to censure her.
(She should be thrown out of Congress as well as her pathetic disgusting “squad”)
Every goofball leftist college student should be made to view the body cam footage first hand of the atrocities of what the IDF found.
How in the heII did we get here?
This article is commendable Mr.Harsanyl, a report on the situation concerning the detachment some people have for human dignity — it is good to know about. Those of us who believe in the idea of human dignity , and respect for life, respect for freedom, we can truly feel a bit better with information on what the evil enemy elements are up to. Responsibility comes to mind in connection with defending all that is good and honorable , and you have made a profound contribution to that endeavor David . Identifying the supporters of evil groups such as Hamas, everywhere ,but especially here in the United States of America is vital. It is time to be at the ready, to do what is honorable , to think in terms of courage to defend what is right, The war crimes committed by Hamas in Israel earlier this month will need to be dealt with accordingly. Thinking in the spirit of We Did It Before and We Can do it Again ( title of a 1941 song ) may God bless America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Let Liberty be the watchword.
Of course our college students would support the beheading of babies by Hamas. After all we live in a country that beheads and chops up babies everyday and pays someone to get rich doing it. And our President will have you jailed in America if you are an 84 year old woman who goes to an abortion site and protests all the chopped up American babies whose bodies are thrown into a garbage heap or burned. Then in America our President also thinks you are on the side of terrorists if you protest the mutilation of our young girls and boys who have been indoctrinated into the LGBT… immoral culture. In America you can be fired from your job for hate crimes if you just use the “wrong” pronoun, which goes against what civilization has been taught since the beginning of the human race. Are we a lot different from Hamas? We need to protest the evils in our own country. Will the liberals win the next election? Probably- by abusing freedom of speech, only allowing their propaganda like they did before the last election; by allowing the millions of illegals to vote; by promoting the giant lie that requiring IDs to vote disenfranchises people; and because the Republicans are too divided. I am glad that I know my eternal future is with my God because we live in a deeply troubled world.
I support the Nation of Israel and all the families , as there being attacked by pure evil Hamas and other terrorist organizations and Nations.
Madrassa no matter where situated is teaching it’s students to recite the ideology without the need to read or write Any illiterate can be indoctrinated We see it all around us No intelligent independent thought is expected or required. Impossible to try to reason with someone schooled in that
Historically, this is what is happening: amazon.com/Red-Fog-Over-America/dp/1893157288
Written around the year of 1958. This is a rep reprint.
Jackass Joe Biden and his predecessor Barack “Muslim” Obama both HATE AMERICA by NOT SUPPORTING ISRAEL and proved it with their Phony Words that were NEVER BACKED UP BY THEIR ACTIONS! But obviously it’s FOOLING much of the Democratic Party but NOT CONSERVATIVES!
Sowing your seed with a bulldozer can cause this.