The brutal success of the Hamas terror attack and the failure of Israeli intelligence rank as the biggest shocks of a horrifying week.
But not far behind are the open and chilling expressions of antisemitism in the United States and around the world.
Hordes of ignorant Americans, most of them college students who couldn’t find the Mideast on a map, played the role of Hamas stooges by skipping school and denouncing Israel.
Whether they know it not, their chanting of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a call for the elimination of Israel.
That puts them in sync with the charter of Hamas and makes them supporters of terrorism.
When did it become socially and morally acceptable to defend the slaughter of Jewish civilians, including children?
Is this what colleges are teaching?
Yet if they are appalled by their students, most administrators are doing a good job of concealing it.
Their reputations for spinelessness are confirmed given their sanitized expressions of sympathy for everyone “impacted.”
The leader of the pack is Harvard’s new president, who churned out three statements of pure mush that managed to please no one.
The blowback from donors and potential future employers was a wake-up call from the real world.
It turns out that pushing for a second Holocaust and defending rape and torture aren’t good career moves even if you have an Ivy League degree.
Youthful ignorance is certainly no defense at the United Nations, which always treats the only Jewish state as a pariah.
It stayed true to form, warning frantically about the danger to civilians in Gaza, but made nary a peep about dead civilians in Israel.
After all, they’re just Jews.
Fortunately, amid the distressing din and signs the whole world has gone mad, some people managed to see through the fog of war to separate good from evil.
Here are three reassuring examples of wisdom in a time of turmoil.
My favorite phrase cuts like a knife and comes from Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres.
He represents parts of The Bronx, but last week, Torres, a longtime supporter of Israel, became a voice of sanity when many in his party had their heads screwed on backward or played Chicken Little.
“There are those who are skeptical about words like ‘moral clarity’ and ‘evil,’ ” Torres wrote on X.
“But there’s a danger of becoming so skeptical that one loses moral common sense.”
‘Hamas is evil’
“Hamas is evil,” he added.
“Its cold-blooded murder of Israeli civilians and children is evil. Both the actor and the act must be condemned with nothing less than moral clarity.”
Earlier, Torres also blasted the Democratic Socialists of America, part of the Dems’ far-left flank, which held a pro-Palestinian rally that drew open antisemites.
It later apologized, but Torres wasn’t having it.
The apology, he wrote, was so weak it couldn’t “even be bothered to mention, much less condemn, Hamas and its mass murder of Jews.”
He called the DSA “despicable, detestable, disgraceful, and disgraced.”
Now that’s moral clarity!
Mayor Adams also cut through the BS with an inspired speech at a “New York Stands with Israel” rally.
He began by saying that when an aide, presumably Jewish, said that “we are not all right,” it hit him in “my soul.”
“We are not all right when Hamas believes that they are fighting on behalf of something and their destructive, despicable action they carried out,” the mayor said.
“We are not all right when we still have hostages who have not come home to their family. We are not all right, and we’re not going to say we have a stiff upper lip and act like everything is fine.”
“Everything is not fine. Israel has a right to defend itself.”
His passion rising, Adams, speaking without notes, went on:
“Your fight is our fight. And right here in New York we have the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. This is the place that our voices must raise and cascade throughout the entire country. We will not be all right until every person responsible for this act is held accountable.”
‘You marched with us’
The speech lasted just four minutes, but managed to cover every base, including the historic alliance between blacks and Jews.
“Your fight is my fight,” the mayor said.
“That swastika not only displays the pain of antisemitism, it displays the pain of racism among African Americans.”
“You marched with us with Dr. King. You stood with us with all the fights we have. And I’m saying we’re going to stand with you and stand united together.”
“And we don’t have to be all right. We should be angry at what we saw.”
Bravo! It was Adams at his best, and there’s a must-see video online.
The third public person who got it right is Ben Sasse, a former Republican senator from Nebraska and now the president of the University of Florida.
In the same spirit as Torres and Adams, his letter to alumni is a model of moral clarity that shames his cowardly colleagues.
He begins: “I will not tiptoe around this simple fact: What Hamas did is evil and there is no defense for terrorism. This shouldn’t be hard.”
“Sadly, too many people in elite academia have been so weakened by their moral confusion that, when they see videos of raped women, hear of a beheaded baby, or learn of a grandmother murdered in her home, the first reaction of some is to ‘provide context’ and try to blame the raped women, beheaded baby, or the murdered grandmother.”
‘Sickening’ thinking
“This thinking isn’t just wrong, it’s sickening. It’s dehumanizing. It is beneath people called to educate our next generation of Americans.”
“In the coming days, it is possible that anti-Israel protests will come to UF’s campus. I have told our police chief and administration that this university always has two foundational commitments: We will protect our students and we will protect speech.”
“This is always true: Our Constitution protects the rights of people to make abject idiots of themselves. . . . When evil raises its head, as it has in recent days, it is up to men and women of conscience and courage to draw strength from truth and commit ourselves to the work of building something better — to the work of pursuing justice and pursuing peace. That is what we aim to do through education, compassion, and truth here at the University of Florida.”
Given the horrors of the last week, optimism is in short supply in the civilized world.
With Russia’s continuing war in Ukraine and now with Iran pulling the terror strings, Israel and the West are entering into an extremely dangerous period.
All the more reason, then, to treasure these three examples of courage and moral clarity.
We will all need lots of both in coming days.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
