Why can’t the president unequivocally condemn campus Brownshirts?
“I condemn the antisemitic protests …” Joe Biden told reporters after days of anti-Jewish demonstrations at Columbia University and other Ivy League schools. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians…”
Any morally clearheaded American already has a very good idea of what’s going on. Biden is both-siding the actions of Kafiya-wearing terror cheerleaders on Columbia’s Gaza Quad — who target American Jews who have absolutely no bearing on Israel’s actions — with those who refuse to accept the blood libel of “genocide” in Gaza. It is the kind of odious moral relativism one expects to hear from a “squad” member or clout-chasing far-right “influencer,” not the president.
Hamas, the governing authority in an autonomous Gaza — still supported widely by the Palestinian people — flooded over the border on Oct. 7, 2023, raping, murdering, and kidnapping more than a thousand men, women and children in Israel, including American citizens. Afterward, Hamas retreated and hid among civilians to generate as many Palestinian martyrs as possible. The Israelis retaliated against this nihilistic death cult, keeping the civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio lower than perhaps any other instance of modern urban warfare.
That’s what’s going on. But because a not-insignificant contingent on the contemporary left is now both antisemitic and anti-“colonialist,” the president demanded Israel stop before the job was done. And he is willing to sell out a longtime ally and forsake the lives of American hostages to try to entice the votes in Jew-hating enclaves like Dearborn, Yale, and The Washington Post newsroom.
A number of people have pointed out the similarities between Biden’s condemnations and Donald Trump’s post-Charlottesville march “very fine people” comment. It’s a good gotcha. After all, Biden has risibly claimed that Trump’s comments impelled him to run for president (for the third time.)