You may have noticed that many professors in Canada and the US openly defend Hamas. Many go so far as to even support this religiously fundamentalist and truly genocidal organization.
Perhaps worse than their support of an organization that sows chaos and misery in Israel and the Palestinian territories, academics act as though they are being moral, just, and honourable in their support for barbarism and depravity.
“By any means necessary,” you may have heard them say.
I noticed this post over the weekend, where a State University of New York professor calls for a ceasefire and reminds his followers that “history did not start on October 7th.”
He urges us to “actually study the past” – as if that’s the guide to siding with the Palestinian leadership class.
Well, I too have “actually studied the past” and my conclusions couldn’t be further than his.
In fact, I once naively believed in a two-state solution where Israel made more land concessions, loosened security restrictions and allowed free travel and resettlement for Arab Palestinians. The more I began to read and understand the region (including visiting and interviewing people on both sides), however, the more clear it became that:
1) Jews have an historic claim to the land, at least 1,500 years before Muslims. Jews are the traditional landowners, so to speak. While they’ve been conquered and displaced by a dozen different empires over the past 2,500 years, when the Ottoman Empire fell after WWI and the Brits and French began carving out new countries, one was promised to the Jews living in the region. (Arab Muslims were given control in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and eventually took over Lebanon).
2) Israel clearly wants peace and has made concessions, given away land, and agreed to peace deals half a dozen times, each time flat-out rejected by the Arabs.
3) Yes, ethnic cleansing took place: when about one million Jews were forced out of every Muslim country in the Middle East over the past 100 years, nearly all of whom were resettled in Israel. Wealthy Arab states do not accept or resettle Arab Palestinian refugees. Why is that? Why don’t they receive international pressure to do so?
4) Yes, there is apartheid: Jews cannot safely enter neighbouring Arab countries, including and especially the Palestinian territories. There are zero Jews living in Gaza. Arab Israelis, by contrast, make up 20% of the population of Israel and seem well-integrated, successful and happy. Arab Palestinians were given visas and work permits to enter Israel, a program that was sadly manipulated by Hamas and used to help plan the October 7th massacre.
5) The fundamental problems in Gaza clearly stem from lack of responsible governance: namely, no rule of law, no accountability, no economic foundations, and a leadership class that prioritizes terrorism over basic infrastructure and steals from its people so much that the leaders of Hamas are literal billionaires while most Palestinians don’t have access to clean water.
Knowing and understanding all of this after “actually studying the past” helps us draw the following conclusions about this conflict:
1) October 7th happened DURING A CEASEFIRE. So why on earth would Israel agree to going back to another one? Calling for another ceasefire is de facto siding with Hamas in saying that they can exist and go on just as they did before October 7th.
Israel can never and should never agree to that.
2) Calling for a ceasefire is not calling for peace, because there can never be peace with Hamas in charge (just ask Hamas, who reminds us daily that they will never accept a Jewish state and will never stop waging war against Jews).
If you want peace, call for Hamas to unconditionally surrender, return all hostages and turn over its leaders to be tried for war crimes.
It’s easier to blame the Jews for all the misery in Gaza, but a sober analysis shows that Palestinian leadership has utterly failed its people, that Islamist antisemitism — not land disputes — is the driving geopolitical force behind this conflict, that Israel must defend itself, and that woke academics are seriously radical and should not be in charge of shaping the minds of the next generation.
