Campus “Pro-Palestinians” Don’t Care if Palestinians Are Tortured

How long will the moral rot be tolerated?

Lawmakers urge Biden admin to take action against pro-Hamas demonstrations spreading across college campuses. (Fox News)

This week the Washington Post reported on an uptick in endorsement of anti-Israeli terror, particularly Hamas terror, on US campuses. While “last year, signs and chants demanded ‘Divest!’ and ‘Cease-fire now!,’” this fall “pro-Palestinian” students are “celebrating the Oct. 7, 2023, attack echoing language used by Hamas and declaring, ‘Glory to the resistance!’”

A professor at Columbia University who runs a nonprofit providing security to Jews in the New York City area says the “protest” rhetoric is now “[b]latantly pro-Hamas, blatantly pro-Hezbollah, blatantly pro-Houthis.”

A year ago, at the University of California at Berkeley,

students hung a long banner from Sather Tower, an iconic 307-foot bell tower on campus. It read: “Cease fire now. Free Gaza,” with an image of the Palestinian flag. This fall, that banner was gone and a new one was hung in its place, reading: “Glory to the Resistance,” with an inverted red triangle, a symbol Hamas has used to identify military targets. . . .

On Instagram, the Swarthmore College Students for Justice in Palestine chapter called Oct. 7 a “glorious day” and declared: “Happy October 7th everyone!”

“The shift,” the Post reports, “is perhaps most apparent at Columbia . . . the epicenter of last year’s protests”:

For weeks, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, one of the pro-Palestinian groups on campus, has taken a harder tone across its communication channels. On Substack, the group has praised the leadership of Hamas, Hezbollah and Ansarallah (more commonly known as the Houthis), all Iranian-backed groups designated by the United States as terrorist organizations.

On a Telegram channel with more than 7,700 subscribers, CUAD has praised and posted quotes and photos from Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks who was killed by Israeli forces last month.

When Sinwar was killed, it was time for eulogies:

Students for Justice in Palestine at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona is one of many chapters that posted positive messages about [him]. On Instagram, the group posted his photo with the words: “The face of the resistance. Martyred while fighting for our liberation. Rest in power,” followed by a heart emoji.

The universities, for their part, “have repeatedly said they do not condone violence but they have also said they respect students’ right to free speech.” Another way of saying this: “We’re not in favor of murder, but today you’re free to advocate it.”

Also this week, the Israel Defense Forces posted a 46-minute video showing Palestinians being tortured by Hamas—that is, by Palestinians—at a Hamas base in the Gaza town of Jabaliya, some of them having the soles of their feet whipped while in contorted positions.

Seemingly, “pro-Palestinians” would be concerned about this, but don’t bet on it.

Israel’s Ynet, in a report—derived from a Daily Mail report—that includes a link to the video as well as horrific photos, says the footage was

found on computers seized during an Israeli raid in March, [and] reportedly includes thousands of hours of interrogation sessions.

The footage, dated from 2018 to 2020, depicts detainees in distressing conditions, including being chained to floors and ceilings with bags over their heads. In one video, a man is shown crying out in pain. Another segment . . . shows a Hamas operative leisurely reclining in a chair with his hands behind his head as a prisoner is seen handcuffed and hanging from the ceiling beside him. A third clip shows a man brutally tied up with a red sack over his head. One of the guards is later seen strangling the man.

. . . Human rights groups have previously highlighted instances of Palestinian citizens—allegedly including political dissidents, LGBTQ individuals, suspected adulterers and those accused of collaborating with Israel—who were reportedly detained and subjected to abuse by Hamas.

A Hamas torture victim named Hamza Howidy

told the Daily Mail how he was detained for protesting against the regime in Gaza. “They would torture you until you broke and say whatever it is they wanted,” he said. “I could hear my fellow protesters scream in the next room.”

. . . He said that one of the men had been detained for three years and tortured three times a week. “He had objects inserted into him,” Howidy added. “One man was given electric shocks for two years before his innocence was eventually discovered. The first thing he did was shoot dead the Hamas officer who reported him—his uncle.”

A “former Israeli intelligence officer” said that Sinwar, for his part—hero of the abovementioned “campus protest”—was

“obsessed with finding collaborators and held thousands against their will.”

“Some are electrocuted on electricity pylons or dragged on a chain from a vehicle until they die,” he said. “Even worse, they won’t allow the families a proper burial, and the bodies have a sign on saying they were collaborating.”

The Wall Street Journal, in a stinging editorial on the Hamas torture video, notes:

You won’t see any street protests over it. No encampments on campus. Video evidence of the torture of Palestinians in Gaza elicits little reaction in the West—perhaps because the torture was carried out by Hamas.

. . . Hamas’s brutality has never seemed to trouble the conscience of the student or activist left in the West. . . . No one gets worked up when Israel can’t be blamed.

Hamas, which continues to hold Israelis and others in suffocating dungeons, is at the lowest possible level of moral depravity. Students who openly celebrate its acts are on the same moral level, and their indifference to its horrific abuses against Palestinians—the group they claim to champion, and to which not a few of them belong—shows a cynicism and hypocrisy that is perhaps beyond words.

When open advocacy for Hamas and other terror groups is justified as “free speech” granted by “higher-learning institutions,” something has gone profoundly wrong. Hopefully the administration soon to be sworn in will do something about it.