Townhall Review | Commentaries

The explosion of anti-Semitic violence and rhetoric that we are witnessing in the United States—the United States!—should alert everyone that the ideology of the new left has embraced “history’s oldest hatred.”

In Congress, we have a group of Congresspeople peddling old, anti-Semitic tropes, repeating lies and engaging in the worst sort of “yeh, but” moral equivalence. 

We’re also seeing mass protests with vile antisemitism on campuses of the most prestigious universities in the nation. Faculty members, indeed, have cheered the barbarism. 

         Clip: It was exhilarating. It was exhilarating and energizing!

The campus culture that permits this and the K-12 education systems that did not prevent this ancient evil from taking deep root have got to be changed, immediately—by donors and then by state and federal law. 

The Dept of Education has an Office of Civil Rights. Where’s the announcement of an investigation of universities standing by as their Jewish students are assaulted and threatened—and some actually battered?

This is not a time to be silent.

It is not a time to be invisible.

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Horrified Americans have watched antisemitism erupt on elite college campuses. At Harvard, more than 30 student groups blamed Israel for the Hamas attacks. Penn will host an internationally condemned antisemite during the high holy days.  Course material at Princeton promotes blood libels against Jews. Cornell students were advised to avoid a Jewish center after threatening messages were posted online.

It’s been an open secret that China has funded Confucius Institutes at our universities. Less known is that Arab sources gave American universities some $4.3 billion dollars between 1986 and 2021. That can buy a lot of influence.

Cornell, Harvard and NYU are among the biggest recipients of Arab funding, with Cornell having taken the most — a whopping $1.5 billion dollars.

Our universities have been targets of foreign funded influence campaigns. 

It’s time to stop their toxic gravy train.

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World leaders, including Joe Biden, urge Israel to pause its war operations for ‘humanitarian’ negotiations with Hamas. However, these terrorists made clear their overall goal. Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad told Lebanon TV that they will repeat the October 7 massacre as often as needed to ‘remove’ Israel from the region—and to annihilate all Israelis.

How did American media outlets cover this? With the exception of a single mention by NBC News, they ignored Hamad’s declaration entirely. Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post made a single mention of it. The same is true of CNN, ABC and CBS.

The history of cease fires between Hamas and Israel demonstrates that the terrorists use them to load up for their next attack operation, and Hamad’s declaration shows their purpose. Our outlets have hundreds of stories between them highlighting calls for cease fire, and not a single report on why it would be futile.

Elite media in America have chosen a side. They have sided with the monsters of October 7.

I’m Ed Morrissey.

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There is a growing need to highlight some points of clarity related to the October 7 massacre in Israel.

The animating hatred of Hamas’s terrorist attack in Israel was specific—this was a pogrom against Jews.

For Islamist fanatics such as these, though, a more basic motivation is this: They want Jews dead. 

As Israel fights to defend their nation, it also needs to be pointed out that this is not the “clash of civilizations” that Samuel P. Huntington predicted in the 1990s. It is a clash between the civilized—the West—and the barbaric.

Unless we first recognize the barbarity, the depth of the depravity coursing through Hamas—which is really just an arm of Iran—we cannot possibly defeat it. 

The question on many people’s mind is whether—or not—a post-Christian West can even rally to its own defense? 

The U.S.—and the West—has received an urgent wake up call.

We need to heed it.

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The United States of America now has a Speaker of the House of Representatives.  

That’s good news—and knowing who he is, is even better news.

Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana—now Speaker Johnson—was first elected to the House in 2016. He was the fourth to be nominated by Republicans since the toppling of the former Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California on October 3rd. 

Remember this, the House can’t function without a speaker. Legislation can’t advance without a speaker. 

Looking forward, since we have a speaker, there’s reason to be encouraged: Mike Johnson is a solidly conservative Republican legislator. He’s pro-life. He’s pro-family. He’s been associated with the Southern Baptist Convention. He’s also been an attorney and spokesman for Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the most important organizations defending religious liberty in the United States. 

Now, we all know this: The challenges facing the country and the Republican caucus in the House are great. The conservative cause needs leadership. 

Congratulations, Speaker Johnson.

We wish you well.

We need you to succeed.

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The House of Representatives has a new Speaker—Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

Now: It’s time for the people’s House to get on with the people’s business. There’s a lot to do.

The arc of history is bending as I speak to you. The question is whether it bends in the direction of freedom and rule of law and human dignity—or in the direction of authoritarianism, barbarism and vile anti-Semitism.

Speaker Johnson gets it. His first order of business: “The first bill that I’m going to bring to this floor, in just a little while, will be in support of our dear friend, Israel and we’re overdue in getting that done. We are going to show not only Israel but the entire world that the barbarism of Hamas that we have all seen play out on our television screens is wretched and wrong, and we are going to stand for the good in that conflict.”

It was a very impressive first speech.

Speaker Johnson: Congratulations!

Godspeed.

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There are very few “silver linings” coming out of the Hamas atrocities. But there’s one: It’s been a clarifying moment for Americans.

Plenty of people—busy with families, jobs and lives—didn’t fully realize the complete disaster of our immigration system, our universities and some of our churches. It’s suddenly become clear that far too many of those who have come to our country really don’t love it.

It’s time to start insisting on assimilation again.

People have seen universities have too often become a waste of time and money, toxic to their child’s worldview … not a ticket to the middle and a healthy future.

People have even seen some churches—like the Episcopal Church—have condemned the Israeli response without even condemning Hamas. 

That’s not religion. That’s mushy Marxism masquerading as morality.

They say the first step is realizing you have a problem. Maybe can start to fix what we realize is broken.

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Even after six days, the New York Times refused to admit that they promoted terrorist propaganda as ‘news.’  You’ll remember: They reported—based on Hamas claims—that Israel destroyed the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza and killed 500 people. They didn’t even wait for sunrise to check those claims before running Hamas’ story.

Video and audio evidence supplied by the IDF added to the obvious conclusion in the first sunrise: an errant missile fired from Gaza landed on the hospital grounds. The Times, however, still won’t report that. Instead, they wrote nearly a week later that Hamas had failed to “make its case,” when in fact they never offered any evidence at all for those claims.

The only correction added to their original report notes only that “the hospital itself was not ruined.” An editor’s note issued a week later – but not included in either article—admitted to relying “too heavily” on claims by Hamas, without apology or corrective action.

The damage has been done.

The paper should change its motto for full accuracy: All the Terrorist Propaganda Fit to Print.

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Israel is about to respond to a ground, sea, and air war targeting the terror group Hamas.  This would not take place had Hamas not barbarically attacked innocent civilians by the hundreds, in actions thought indescribable since Caligula. And it would not have to happen if Hamas would surrender both its perpetrators and the hostages it took. But Hamas remains dedicated to Israel’s destruction.

The war will be awful; non-combatants will die. Civilian institutions like will be hit.  This will not be Israel’s fault, though—by any read of just war theory, fault lies squarely on Hamas for deliberately using civilians as shields to play off Israel’s morality and the world’s sympathy; and for propaganda.

This is how Hamas fights. 

And there is recent satellite evidence of Hamas already placing weapons and missile sites in, under, and next to civilian structures like schools, medical centers, and UN buildings.  These are the real war crimes—and Hamas is committing them. 

We must steel ourselves, so it never happens again.

Hamas must be destroyed.

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This is Carol Platt Liebau for Townhall.com.

In recent years, almost all American universities have shut down right-leaning speakers and cancelled unpopular speech. The justification was that words somehow constituted violence and speech was making college community members feel unsafe.

Please.

In a dark bit of irony, many of those who claimed that discussion of conservative ideas made them feel unsafe are celebrating the massacre of Jews. On campuses like Harvard, masked pro-Hamas protesters have literally intimidated and harassed Jewish students.

Now that’s behavior that could legitimately make someone feel unsafe. Yet Harvard’s leadership does nothing.

They lied when they claimed that conservative speech was banned for “safety” reasons. The left banned speech in our universities because they have a totalitarian impulse and want to shut down the marketplace of ideas.

“Safety” was an excuse. It was all about gaining, holding — and now abusing — power.

I'm Carol Platt Liebau.

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