As one can imagine I am greatly disturbed by the statement put out by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Group concerning Hamas campaign of kidnapping, rape and murder in Israel against civilians - Jew and non-Jew alike. Their position is made utterly clear in their statement's first sentence:
We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all the unfolding violence.
In holding Israel solely responsible for Hamas' acts of evil, they approve Hamas's violent barbarity by absolving it of any acts of kidnapping, rape and murder committed in the past 72 hours while also absolving Hamas of any such future acts.
In holding Israel solely responsible for Hamas' acts of evil, they demonstrate they do not consider Jews to be worthy of human dignity and have no sympathy towards those who were killed just for being Jews or for those non-Jews visiting the Jewish state.
In holding Israel solely responsible for Hamas' acts of evil, they have the temerity to demand the Harvard community "to take action to stop the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians" at the very moment Hamas is doing everything it can to annihilate Jews in Israel.
Now whether this is representative of the majority of Harvard students, faculty and staff isn't exactly clear. But the fact the Harvard President Claudine Gay could not bring herself to condemn Hamas much less the acts of these student organizations only embolden their behavior.
I'm certainly not surprised Israel would be subject to such vitriol at Harvard given the Harvard Crimson's April 2022 editorial in support of the BDS Movement. The Crimson is now giving the signatories in the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Group anonymity "following concerns of threats and retaliation against individual students." Too bad they don't seem willing to afford the same consideration to Israeli Jews. With this in mind here are the student groups who signed this statement. If they don't like it, then they shouldn't have signed it in the first place:
African American Resistance Organization
Bengali Association of Students at Harvard College
Harvard Act on a Dream
Harvard Arab Medical and Dental Student Association
Harvard Chan Muslim Student Association
Harvard Chan Students for Health Equity and Justice in Palestine
Harvard College Pakistan Student Association
Harvard Divinity School Muslim Association
Harvard Middle Eastern and North African Law Student Association
Harvard Graduate School of Education Islamic Society
Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine
Harvard Islamic Society
Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine
Harvard Divinity School Students for Justice in Palestine
Harvard Jews for Liberation
Harvard Kennedy School Bangladesh Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Women's Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School Palestine Caucus
Harvard Muslim Law School Association
Harvard Pakistan Forum
Harvard Prison Divest Coalition
Harvard South Asian Law Students Association
Harvard South Asians for Forward-Thinking Advocacy and Research
Harvard TPS Coalition
Harvard Undergraduate Arab Women's Collective
Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo
Harvard Undergraduate Muslim Women's Medical Alliance
Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Students Association
Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee
Middle East and North African Graduate School of Design Student Society
Neighbor Program Cambridge
Sikhs and Companions of Harvard Undergraduates Society of Arab Students
I am listing these organizations names because I live about 15 minutes away from Harvard Yard. Members of these organizations might very well be my neighbors and people I see when I commute on the MBTA Red Line.
If these people are fine with Hamas slaughtering Israeli Jews, then it is not a stretch to think they would welcome the killing of American Jews up to and including Jews who live right here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is worth remembering the BDS affiliated Boston Mapping Project published the addresses of Jewish organizations and home addresses of individual Jews in the hope of disrupting and dismantling them.
Since I was a teenager, I have had a foreboding sense of doom that Jews would be sent back to concentration camps within my lifetime. While anti-Semitism has always been among us, given the reaction of a small segment of people in my community to the events of the past 72 hours, I have come to the conclusion that a critical mass of my fellow Americans would warmly approve of Hamas style killing of Jews in this country. Perhaps some of them would do the killing themselves.
This is not a comforting thought on which to try to sleep. Yet this is now the world to which I must awake.
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