Western Civilization is imploding.
The lifeblood of the victims had not yet cooled. Civilized people of conscience were still reeling from shock at the savage slaughter of babies, beheading, burning people alive, kidnapping, torture, and rape gleefully perpetrated by Hamas. In that very moment the moral turpitude which is destroying Western Civilization was on full display. Various groups, notable amongst them student groups, issued vile, Faustian statements exonerating Hamas for its savagery and brazenly blaming its victim, Israel, for the carnage. Some university presidents immediately responded; reprehensibly, they generically condemned violence, careful not to single out or even reference Hamas. Others, after an initial sickening silence, prevaricated. Upon days of public pressure and contemplation, they decided that, in fact, they were opposed to beheading babies but hastened to "balance" their tepid remarks by expressing profound concern for the suffering of the innocent Palestinians in Gaza, thereby implicitly or explicitly condemning Israel's humanitarian, self-defense response to subhuman, belligerent savagery.
Notably, these "humanitarians" do not comment on the fate of Arab populations outside of Israel as they languish under brutal, dictatorial regimes. Tellingly, these academic "moralists" have been silent throughout the years as Hamas has integrated its terror network into the civilian infrastructure, inter alia, shielding themselves in, behind and beneath hospitals, schools, and residential complexes. When other countries have exercised their inalienable right to self-defense (think of any just, modern war) we have not heard a chorus of voices expressing concern for civilian casualties and invoking the laws of war. And rightly so. Should Hitler or Osama bin Laden or Isis be given carte blanche because of the grim, gruesome, tragic reality that even defensive wars inevitably involve civilian casualties? Should terrorists remain forever free to continue massacring innocents because they cruelly and cynically imbed themselves amongst the civilian population? Civilization cannot and would not survive such a hypocritical policy of "restraint".
Every person of conscience intuits that outright support for Hamas or camouflaged support in the form of moral equivocation are odious. Nonetheless, it is vital that we translate our pre-cognitive intuition into cognitive categories as that will reveal the existential threat which Hamas' apologists pose to civilization.
"The species of man is unique, there is no other species that resembles him in this respect, that he, of his own accord through his own understanding and contemplation, can discern good and evil and act as he wishes", writes Maimonides, the great medieval jurist and philosopher (Code of Jewish Law, Laws of Repentance, ch.5) Humanity is divinely endowed with a capacity for moral clarity. And, in turn, that moral clarity forms the basis for moral action. The civilized world can only combat forces of evil such as Nazism, Isis, Al Qaeda, and Hamas with such moral clarity. Moral clarity marshals the necessary resolve to exercise military might and vanquish evil. Without moral clarity and resolve, military firepower will never be directed to vanquish evil. The evil of explicit "moral" support for Hamas, or support camouflaged in equivocation and equivalences, is that it destroys moral clarity. Clearly, this form of evil is not academic; it reeks blood. By destroying moral clarity, it erodes moral resolve and dissipates opposition to evil. It perniciously acts as evil's fifth column. Evil's fifth column - the students, professors, administrators, and their co-conspiratorial ilk beyond academic circles - has and continues to provide moral cover for the atrocities of Hamas, empowering them to continue their savagery and barbarism.
Undoubtedly, rabid antisemitism animates the fifth column. In antisemitic quarters, Jewish blood is of no value and Jewish self-defense is a war crime. Nonetheless, the fifth column poses a universal threat. This is so morally because the beheading of babies, the fiery immolation of entire families, torture, and rape etc. constitute crimes against humanity. And this is so pragmatically because the Hamas beast, if allowed to torture and devour the Jews, will then turn its sadistic, predatory, murderous attention to all Westerners and "infidels".
Hamas, along with all other "pure, unadulterated evil" terrorist organizations, needs to be militarily destroyed. But that can only happen if the hypocrisy and evil of its fifth column is peacefully exposed and defeated. Every Jew and all other people of conscience must participate in this noble, non-violent effort to restore moral clarity. Educators, philanthropists, university board members, college bound students and their parents, heads of corporations, essayists, political pundits and activists, et al., and voters on both sides of the political aisle - each acting within their respective domains with moral clarity - must join forces. (Fortunately, some individuals and corporations have already taken initial steps in that direction.) The future of the Jewish people demands that effort. And the future of civilization depends upon it.