AMAC Exclusive – By Andrew Shirley
In the wake of the barbaric terror attacks on Israel, many on the left seem more outraged about the supposedly “hateful” rhetoric being directed at Hamas and its sympathizers than the unspeakable acts of terror perpetrated on innocent civilians. The problem has become so bad that even some in the mainstream media are taking note.
Following the terror attacks earlier this month that saw Hamas fighters rape, torture, and murder men, women, and children, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was at war with “human animals.” Many other Western leaders and commentators have expressed similar outrage at the sheer brutality and savagery of Hamas’s attacks.
But for the left, the real outrage was the harsh language used to describe the terrorists indiscriminately killing civilians, rather than the killings themselves.
Liberation, a prominent socialist newspaper, accused Israeli officials of using “dehumanizing language” that is “openly genocidal,” yet declined to mention Hamas’s attempted genocide. The Huffington Post decried Gallant for calling for “further oppression of all people in Gaza.” MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones worried about “dangerous rhetoric around Israel-Hamas war,” urging those taking a hardline stance toward Hamas to “try being tactful instead.” (It’s worth noting that Jones did not mention whether or not he believes mass slaughter is “tactful.”)
In another opinion piece for Foreign Policy, Yousef Munayyer of the Arab Center in Washington, D.C., similarly chastised Gallant for using “dehumanizing” language. “Laying siege to Gaza is no solution,” he declared, urging Israeli leaders to stand down and allow Hamas to escape retaliation.
Even once the full extent of Hamas’s cruelty became clear, the prevailing sentiment on the left oscillated between outright and open support for Hamas (demonstrated by multiple pro-Hamas protests in major Western cities) and concern that leaders in Israel and other Western countries were being too mean toward the terrorists seeking to commit genocide on the Jewish people.
The grotesque defense of Hamas was even too much for CNN anchor Jake Tapper, who said on the network last week, “These last few days have been a real eye-opening period for a lot of people — a lot of Democrats, a lot of progressives — in terms of antisemitism on the left.”
“A lot of people who seem more shocked about the dehumanizing language used by world leaders to describe Hamas than what Hamas actually perpetrated on Saturday,” Tapper continued. The New York Times also ran an opinion piece entitled “The anti-Israel left needs to take a hard look at itself.”
These past few weeks have made abundantly clear that the anti-Israel left has found a comfortable home on college campuses – particularly the elite Ivy League institutions that pride themselves on being “welcoming” and “inclusive.”
By one account, “dozens” of university chapters of a group called “Students for Justice in Palestine” applauded Hamas for their efforts at “decolonization” and “resistance.” Many staged rallies in support of Hamas while they were still actively murdering Israeli civilians.
Most notably, more than 30 Harvard student organizations signed a joint statement in which they make no mention of any Israeli victim or acknowledge in any way that violence against Jewish people occurred. Instead, they focused squarely on demanding the world stand against “colonial retaliation” – i.e., eliminating the terrorists who killed innocent civilians.
The Harvard students state that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” blaming the murdered Israelis for their own deaths.
That America’s universities have become a cradle of Jewish hate is particularly ironic given that many of these same campuses birthed terms like “microaggressions,” “safe spaces,” and “trigger warnings,” while telling their students that words can be “literal violence.”
So how is it that those so emotionally attuned to imperceptible and subconscious slights are wholly ambivalent to the worst act of mass slaughter against the Jewish people since the holocaust? Even critics of Israel have set aside their personal feelings and acknowledged these acts of horror for what they are. Yet those Harvard organizations could not even affirm that anything wrong or unjust had occurred.
Whatever it is, the left’s willful ignorance and justification for clear atrocities has shattered any illusion that the “woke” warriors are fighting for a safer world. In fact, some seem perfectly comfortable with violence and hate, just as long as you don’t “trigger” anyone while you murder them.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
