Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
On Oct. 30, a long list of faculty at Columbia University and Barnard College attached their names to an open letter which argued that the murders, rapes, and kidnappings committed by Hamas against Israelis and foreign nationals in Israel—mostly civilians—were a “military response by a people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years.”
The open letter is just the latest episode in a broader convulsion of cruel stupidity on the Western left since the atrocities of Oct. 7.
Protesters celebrated the massacre of young concert attendees in New York. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) declared the slaughter of civilians was a “direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime” and “not unprovoked.” An open letter from a “coalition of Palestine solidarity groups” at Harvard University announced that Israel is “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” and stated that the “apartheid regime is the only one to blame.”