The Hard-Left and Israel

Hours after Hamas’ bloody and brutal attacks on Israeli civilians, after they killed young children and took hostages, only hours after the largest mass killing of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust, almost three dozen hard-left campus groups at Harvard issued a joint statement holding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” A statement from Yalies4Palestine insisted that “Breaking out of a prison requires force, not desperate appeals to the colonizer.”

The administrations of Harvard and Yale responded without responding. They condemned the violence in a vague way that seemed to suggest that both sides were wrong. They did not address their own student organizations’ pro-terrorism statements at all. It was more or less equivalent to Donald Trump’s statement after the hard-right violence in Charlottesville that there were “some fine people on both sides.” A former Harvard president said that he was never more embarrassed to be associated with the school.

Hard-left members of Congress were more skillful. They condemned Hamas’ attacks but quickly pivoted to demanding an immediate ceasefire. In other words, the Israelis should just take it without a response in kind. I’m sorry to say that my own hard-left Congressman Mark Pocan has been a leader in criticizing Israel. A couple of years ago Pocan even organized an hour-long Israel bashing session on the floor of the House.

What is it with the hard-left and Israel? When I was mayor, an alder introduced a resolution that would have established a sister city relationship with Rafah, a city in the Gaza Strip that was famous for being a node for delivering armaments to Hamas to be used in attacks on Israel. It was clearly an attempt by hard-left members of the Madison City Council to make a pro-Palestinian statement. I threatened to veto the resolution if it passed, which in the end it did not. But it failed only after hours and hours of raw, impassioned testimony on the matter at a public hearing. How anyone could have supported this transparent attempt to use our Sister City program to make an outrageous political statement was just beyond me.

To this day, I can’t say I fully understand the passion on the hard-left in their support for Palestinian terrorists. My only theory is this. In hard-left culture there is no status higher than that of victim. While one might think that Israelis and Jews might have cornered the market on victimhood over the centuries, the hard-left seems to have concluded that, for some unfathomable reason, the Palestinians are even greater victims. And, my gosh, if you’re more victimized than the Jews that makes you the greatest victims of all time. Hence the passion.

Here at center-left (some days center-right) YSDA we regularly criticize the hard-right and the hard-left alike, but we usually feel that there’s more to worry about from the right. Donald Trump is a much bigger threat to democracy than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But the crisis in the Middle East exposes the most awful part of the hard-left.

Americans already view the Democrats as being, overall, more extreme than Republicans by a margin of nine points. Crazy statements from leftist student groups, muted responses from liberal college administrators and ridiculous calls for cease-fires from Democratic congressional representatives will only widen that gap.

Look, nothing in the Middle East is simple. But Hamas’ brutality is so clear that it demands condemnation in the clearest, strongest terms. Those who hedge on their condemnation, much less actually find those attacks justified, are just wrong.