On Israel

The November 14 March for Israel reportedly drew more than 290,000 participants, Jews and Christians alike, and over 250,000 people online. Photo by March for Israel/https://www.marchforisrael.org

Note to readers: Some descriptions in this story are graphic. Please use caution when clicking on links, particularly those within sensitive paragraphs. Though the images are soul-searing, they breed understanding and empathy.

Within the span of about eight hours on October 7, 3,000 Hamas terrorists tortured, raped, and slaughtered more than 1,400 innocents in Israel. Another 3,500 people were injured. In the hours and days immediately following, many called it Israel’s 9/11. Others, like Victor Davis Hanson, said it was more severe.

As with America’s worst terrorist attack, words aren’t powerful enough to describe what happened in Israel. First-person accounts are hard to read. Images of the depravity are unbearable.

Megyn Kelly aptly said on her October 20 show, “There’s a heaviness to my heart these days that I didn’t have two weeks ago. The daily conversations about the deeply disturbing atrocities that Hamas committed is a lot. … It’s like a plague,” she said. “It doesn’t seem like something you should be able to function in the face of.”

Yet, to the degree that we’re able, Americans must read and look to understand the gravity of what’s happened to one of our closest allies. It’s vital that we seek the truth and bear witness to it, because no one—especially the mainstream press—will do it for us. The Fourth Estate thinly veils its antisemitic bent, often siding with Hamas to distort the truth. The plague of antisemitism hasn’t been contained to the press; it stretches into the academy and the U.S. government.

America’s Failed Corporate Press

Since the attacks in Israel, a variety of mainstream media outlets have showcased both their biases and their incompetence.

A Washington Post story captioned a picture of an Israeli mother whose children were kidnapped and held hostage this way: “Hadas Kalderon, a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz, in an apartment in Tel Aviv on Thursday. Two of her children have been detained by Hamas.” Author Bethany Mandel called out the caption on X: “Interesting choice of words from Washington Post. ‘detained.’” The paper soon changed the caption to reflect that the children had been “taken hostage.” Note: A correction wasn’t issued to highlight the change, according to BizPacReview.

The New York Times failed in its coverage of an October 17 blast at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. The paper ran with unverified claims from Hamas officials who said Israel was responsible for killing hundreds in the hospital. All three points were wrong. To boot, they ran a picture of a different location, not the hospital. The Megyn Kelly Show pointed out that though the NYT changed the headline several times, they didn’t issue a correction apologizing for the error—standard practice in journalism.

An October 18 article in The Wall Street Journal said Israel, the U.S., and independent security experts agreed that initial evidence suggested the rocket that caused the explosion belonged to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It wasn’t the result of an Israeli airstrike. According to the story, “‘We have none of the indicators of an airstrike—none,’ said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an expert on military and security issues.” Israel also intercepted a call between Hamas operatives where they discuss shrapnel found in the attack, describing it as local, and unlike Israeli shrapnel.

The Medialine published an interview with Brig. Gen. (ret.) Amir Avivi, who said, “There is only one truth, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad admitted shooting the hospital. They didn’t really hit the hospital. They hit the parking lot. I don’t know how many died, but it’s maybe a dozen, maybe more, but not 500 and not Israel [who was responsible]. So, basically, it’s one big lie.”

U.S. intelligence officials briefed reporters October 23, according to The Daily Wire, and said they had “high confidence that Israel was not responsible” for the explosion in the hospital parking lot. It “caused ‘no observable damage to the main hospital building,’ the report said, which is consistent with the type of smaller rocket that Palestinian terrorists typically fire vs. an aerial bomb or artillery shell fired by the Israelis.”

In an October 23 attempt to save face, the NYT explained that “the early versions of the coverage—and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels—relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified. The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was.”

Some said the late apology was insufficient. Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review, said on the Megyn Kelly Show that the Times at least admitted to trusting the Hamas terrorists. “How damning is that? They rape women and behead children, and then you’re going to believe what they say about a highly sensitive [story] like this that they can use for propaganda purposes.” Lowry said it’s inexplicable, unless you trace it back to the anti-Israel reflex many journalists exhibit—something they share with deep-state officials.

The Times wasn’t alone in its errant handling of the story. Other outlets, such as Reuters, the Associated Press, MSNBC, CNN, and NBC, offered similarly unreliable coverage.

No wonder four in ten Americans have zero confidence in mass media. Journalists are derelict in their most important duties—maintaining accuracy, striving for fair, balanced reporting, and owning up to their mistakes.

A well-known adage among the press—reportedly originating with Chicago’s City News Bureau—is, “If your mother says she loves you, check on it.” No matter how credible a source, a good journalist knows to double- and triple-check what they say. That’s true for any story. In wartime coverage, story stakes escalate. Our mainstream press needs to drop its antisemitic, woke bigotry—that is, if it cares about saving innocent lives.

Los Angeles Times reporter Adam Elmahrek challenged stories about Israeli babies slaughtered by Hamas. He said on October 10 that “The only source for ‘Hamas beheaded babies’ appears to be the Israeli military, which is widely known to spread lies and disinformation.” As time progressed, Elmahrek appeared to dispute how the children died.

Yet The Jerusalem Post, author and commentator Ben Shapiro, French journalist Margot Haddad, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Megyn Kelly Show, among others, saw and/or shared images of babies riddled with bullets, bloodied, and burned.

A French-to-English translation of Haddad’s testament about the children on X says, “That’s it, the information is out. It’s so macabre that no one wanted to give it until they had 100 percent confirmation. Infants and children under the age of 2 were beheaded by Hamas in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. It’s a horror, a massacre. For those who ask for the source. There are many of them: the Israeli army, the domestic intelligence service and the atrocious images that I was able to cross-check. But the best source remains this one: courageous journalists from the foreign press who were able to see/agree to see with their own eyes the bodies in Kfar Aza.”

Telling the Truth

As of this writing, more than 1,400 people have perished at the hands of Hamas. Women, children, and families were targeted, tortured, and murdered—some found naked with their hands tied behind their backs. News reports indicated that babies and young children were killed in their cribs, some burned or beheaded.

The reports were based on interviews with the Israel Defense Forces and a group tasked with retrieving the dead. One first responder discovered the body of a pregnant woman: her baby had been severed from her womb, and both were executed.

Others were kidnapped. According to the Times of Israel, Hamas is holding at least two hundred and forty people hostage in Gaza. They are women, children, and the elderly who hail from twenty-nine nations, including Israel. Nine of them are Americans, and one is a U.S. permanent resident. More than twenty hostages are younger than eighteen, according to the Israeli military. About a hundred Israelis are still missing. Authorities have yet to determine whether they’re dead, or alive and held by Hamas.

At the Supernova music festival near the Gaza border, at least two hundred and sixty people were massacred. Women were brutally raped next to the corpses of their slain friends. Shani Louk, a German-Israeli woman kidnapped from the festival along with her boyfriend, was “paraded semi-naked on a pickup truck.” At first, Louk was believed to have survived, but her death was confirmed later, amid reports that she was beheaded.

Reporting from Israel, CNN’s Anderson Cooper released a video with graphic images of the festival during and after the terrorist attacks. A Times of Israel story features first-hand accounts from survivors. The Free Press published immediate coverage of the attacks, including an article by a twenty-year-old festival survivor, and one by a rabbi in Jerusalem whose son was called to military duty.

On October 23, Israeli officials shared revolting videos and pictures with reporters that showed “Hamas gunning down, torturing and decapitating civilians,” according to the New York Post.

Trey Yingst, a foreign correspondent for Fox News, obtained and partially described an Israeli interrogation video of a Hamas terrorist who took part in the October 7 invasion. Though Islam directs followers not to harm women, children, or the elderly, Hamas commanders ordered the terrorists to ignore that, and “step on the heads of civilians, to behead them and do whatever they felt like.”

When the interrogator mentioned parallels between ISIS and Hamas, the terrorist agreed: “We burned, we slaughtered and beheaded people. … We became animals, things that humans do not do.” He offered more details too horrific for Yingst to report on television.

In another case, the Israeli military released a recording of a Hamas terrorist calling his parents after murdering Israelis in a kibbutz along the Gaza border. In a macabre, chaotic swell of emotion, he boasts about talking to them on the phone of Jewish woman he slaughtered, about murdering ten Jews “with my own hands.” “Mom, your son is a hero. Kill, kill, kill! … I am the first (to enter) under the protection and help of Allah,” the terrorist shouts later, based on the English translation.

Moral Rot in Higher Ed

The same moral rot plaguing the American press has permeated higher education. That’s been true for some time. If it was in black-and-white before 10/7, it’s now playing out in technicolor.

Whether it’s pro-Hamas student groups and faculty, death threats to Jewish students, or university leadership refusing to take a clear stance on the spread of antisemitism, some universities and colleges exhibiting disturbing responses are: Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford.

At Columbia, a nineteen-year-old from Brooklyn reportedly struck an Israeli student with a stick and is facing hate-crime charges, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The incident occurred after the student placed posters around campus showing Israelis killed and taken hostage by Hamas.

Jewish students at Columbia spoke out about that attack, as well as online death threats and hate graffiti. They expressed their dismay at the university’s lack of leadership and ability to respond effectively to the rampant antisemitism.

Meanwhile, more than one hundred Columbia faculty signed an open letter referring to Hamas brutality as a “military response” to “crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years.” The letter defended a student statement that made the case for Israel as an oppressor to Palestinians and likened it to an apartheid government.

Another group at Columbia, comprised of more than four hundred and fifty faculty and staff, responded to the pro-Hamas letter with one of their own. They denounced the brutality and called on the university to respond with clear condemnation: “We are horrified that anyone would celebrate these monstrous attacks or, as some members of the Columbia faculty have done in a recent letter, try to ‘recontextualize’ them as a ‘salvo,’ as the ‘exercise of a right to resist’ occupation, or as ‘military action.’ We are astonished that anyone at Columbia would try to legitimize an organization that shares none of the University’s core values of democracy, human rights, or the rule of law.”

After mounting pressure, the university announced a new task force to examine ways to fight antisemitism. Other universities have launched similar efforts.

Ryna Workman, president of NYU Law School’s Student Bar Association, blamed Israel for 10/7. Soon afterward, the law firm of Winston & Strawn withdrew a job it had offered her. Workman appeared on ABC News to defend her pro-Hamas position. Later, she was recorded with a companion concealing posters of Israeli hostages. They covered the hostage posters with their own signs for a national student walkout demanding a free Palestine, according to the New York Post.

Northwestern University’s* president issued several weak, wobbly responses to the attacks. Personally, President Michael Schill said that he was “deeply repulsed, sickened and disappointed” by Hamas’s brutality. But he wouldn’t make that a university-wide declaration: “The University does not speak for our faculty, students and staff on these matters—they have their own voices, and I would venture to say, there are no doubt differences among our students and faculty on what Hamas did and how Israel is responding. For me to speak for them displaces their own freedom to speak.”

Meanwhile, vandals hijacked the college’s newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, and spread phony copies around campus filled with anti-Israel messages. An October 26 Daily story about the vandalism referred to the blast at Al-Ahli Hospital (see “America’s Failed Corporate Press,” above) without clarifying that Israel wasn’t responsible. A little digging would’ve revealed that by October 23, U.S. intelligence reported that Israel wasn’t responsible for the attack.

At a rally sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine, attendees hurled hateful speech toward Jewish students, calling for them to “go back to Europe.” They also chanted about wiping Israel off the map.

The university’s lack of moral grounding and support for Israel prompted a group of parents, alumni, donors, and students to sign and submit a letter to the president and board of trustees.

Meanwhile, Northwestern is one of six U.S. universities that Qatar has paid to open campuses there, offering degrees to Qatari students and study-abroad experiences for American students. Dubbed NU-Q, students pursue bachelor’s degrees in journalism and communication with a variety of minors. The campus also offers an executive education program. Since 2007, Qatar has paid Northwestern $647 million.

The Daily Wire pointed out that “Qatar overtly tried to use the financial relationship to essentially turn American students into unregistered foreign lobbyists. On Instagram ‘faculty and Staff members at NU-Q published a statement condemning the war crimes and genocide committed against Gaza.’”

(*Full disclosure: Northwestern is my alma mater. My bachelor’s degree is from the School of Speech, and my master’s degree is from the Medill School of Journalism.)

U.S. Politicians Refuse to Condemn Hamas

Some American lawmakers have refused to condemn Hamas. They’re calling instead for a ceasefire—essentially telling Israel it shouldn’t defend itself.

Shortly after the 10/7 attacks, sixteen members of the U.S. House of Representatives declined to back a resolution to support Israel “as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists.” Most were far-left lawmakers; just one was a Republican. Ten voted “no,” while six voted “present.” The symbolic measure garnered otherwise overwhelming support: according to GovTrack, it was the “second-most cosponsored legislation” ever.

Soon after it passed, House opponents introduced their own measure, “calling for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine.” GovTrack points out that “while a ceasefire could save lives in the short-term, there’s no reason to think that if the Israeli government stood down, that Hamas would too—and the resolution does not address that longer-term problem.” The bill fails to designate responsibility, “as though people just suddenly started dying for no reason. Without indicating who did what, it could very easily lead to a false presumption that only Israel is at fault.”

Meanwhile, twenty-three members of the House voted no to a resolution that condemns higher-education support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations, “which may lead to the creation of a hostile environment for Jewish students, faculty, and staff.” According to Politico, the no votes were mostly from progressive Democrats; Newsweek reported the full list of holdouts. Among the more recognizable names are Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

The House censured Tlaib on November 7 for her antisemitic rhetoric. Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., introduced a resolution to censure her for “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel and dangerously promoting false narratives regarding a brutal, large-scale terrorist attack against civilian targets.” Within a day of the October 7 attacks, the measure noted, Tlaib “defended the brutal rapes, murders, beheadings, and kidnapping—including of Americans—by Hamas as justified ‘resistance’ to the ‘apartheid state.’”

Tlaib’s narratives are indeed false, as The Epoch Times reported: “Israel is not an apartheid state as all of its citizens have equal rights. Palestinians outside of Gaza are under the Palestinian Authority, whose human rights record has come under fire, while Palestinians in Gaza are under Hamas.”

Tlaib, a cosponsor of the ceasefire resolution, has yet to publicly condemn Hamas’s heinous crimes in Israel. When a Fox Business reporter asked her about their brutality against children, she had nothing to say. Well after American and Israeli intelligence reported that Palestinian terrorists were the most likely culprits behind the Al-Ahli Hospital bombing, Tlaib continued to spread the lie that blamed Israel.

How Do You Explain Evil—and Those Who Support It?

As news of the atrocities continues to surface, the amount and depth of evil seems endless. It’s difficult to grasp the depravity. Even for those of us who lived through 9/11, the 10/7 attacks are more severe; more personal.

Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said on the Megyn Kelly Show that as of October 30, “we have between one hundred and two hundred bodies [in Israel] that we can’t identify. Do you know how rare that is—you can’t identify a body? You can’t get DNA out of them? That’s how thoroughly they were incinerated and mutilated,” he said. “We’ve compared the Hamas to animals. I think it’s an insult to the animal kingdom. Animals would never do this to another living creature—never.”

Other analogies have likened Hamas to the Nazis. But British author and journalist Douglas Murray said the comparison is inadequate. Though Hamas and the Nazis share antisemitic, genocidal goals, the Nazis aimed to conceal their crimes, while Hamas celebrates theirs. Nazi SS battalions who murdered Jews by day, he said, “had to get very, very drunk in the evening to forget what they had done.” (SS is the acronym for the German word, “Schutzstaffel,” which translates as “protective echelon.”)

Reporting from the Israel-Gaza border, Murray spoke of viewing the unedited video footage of October 7 and how it revealed terrorists “deeply proud” of their barbarism. As an example, he pointed to the terrorist who called his parents to brag about killing ten Jewish people (see “Telling the Truth,” above).

Oren and Murray are right. We call Hamas’s disgusting crimes “unspeakable” because they defy logic. Looking at just one of the images or videos from 10/7 startles most into acknowledging that what they’ve seen can’t be framed with words. Hamas has crossed into the realm of pure evil.

Pro-Hamas rallies and protesters are confounding—especially those in America—who slam Israel as an oppressive state. Do they realize they, like Tlaib, are promoting evil? No. They believe they’re promoting what’s right and just.

A video by the Campaign Against Antisemitism underscores that. CAA interviewed anti-Israel protesters who referred to Hamas as “freedom fighters” and “absolutely not” terrorists, and October 7 as “resistance against occupation” and “a beacon of hope.” “The continued existence of Israel is a war crime,” one woman said. According to another, the real terrorists are America and Israel. Some said they hadn’t seen or didn’t know of evidence that Hamas attacked Israel.

The upside-down nature of their views is partly explained by a lack of education. Schools do a poor job of providing reliable, in-depth history lessons. Logic courses are difficult to find at American public schools. Many journalists, as indicated above, can’t be trusted for accurate reads on current events. Though information is more accessible than ever, it takes work to find the truth.

But with a little digging, it’s still within reach. For instance, a few searches reveal background on the Hamas charter and analyses of the terrorist group. A WSJ op-ed by Ed Husain, a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, explains the origins of Hamas and how they hijacked Islam’s sacred text, the Quran, and turned it into “a political manifesto.”

According to Husain, “Hamas isn’t only a terrorist group, and it isn’t a Palestinian nationalist movement. It is a religious organization, incubated by the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, founded in 1928, departed from Islamic tradition and created Islamism, a totalitarian ideology to resist the pluralist West.

“Its worldview, as French political scientist Gilles Kepel has documented, arose in the same intellectual firmament as German Nazism and Italian fascism. The Brotherhood developed a new declaration of faith for its members: ‘God is our objective. The Prophet is our political leader. The Quran is our constitution. Jihad is our method. Martyrdom is our aspiration.’”

Rational people agree that the Nazis were evil. Why isn’t there more of a consensus on Hamas? The Hamas terrorists are “known as criminals and murderers only to the sane and sensible. To Hamas and its flock, the terrorists are known as martyrs and believed to live in heaven,” Husain wrote. Hamas has developed quite a flock, deceiving many into believing their cause is right and just. They’re skilled at propaganda and at selling it to Western media, who push it for them.

A New Yorker article says Hamas is winning the propaganda war—particularly among Palestinians and other Arabs—by using videos that often seem contrived in the west. “However unpersuasive or ham-fisted such propaganda might seem in the West, Ghaith al-Omari—a former adviser to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority and a longtime opponent of Hamas—told us that such videos had convinced many Arabs that the group’s fighters, unlike isis, ‘are humane and respect Islamic laws of war.’ He added, ‘It has resonated throughout the Arab world. This is now the line you see not only in Hamas media but in most Arab media, in Jordan, Egypt, and North Africa. The dominant narrative has become the narrative of Hamas.’”

That dominant narrative has taken root among many in America, as well, from those protesting on college campuses and rioting in cities, to U.S. lawmakers and those tearing down pictures of Israeli hostages.

Israel, You Are Not Alone

 Israel is America’s closest ally—if not in the entire world, certainly in the Middle East. We share the same values. Some of us share the same faith. Jewish-Americans are uniquely tethered to Israel. For those of us who follow Jesus Christ—who was Jewish—Israel is his sacred home, a land filled with the history of our faith that we find nowhere else.

After September 11, Israel supported the United States. Then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared September 12 a national day of mourning and exhorted the entire world to fight terrorism. In 2009, Israel finished its 9/11 Living Memorial twenty miles outside Jerusalem’s city-center.

A bronze American flag stands thirty feet and forms a flame, remembering the horrific fires at the Twin Towers. The base is melted steel taken from the ruins of Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. Plaques bearing the names of the 9/11 victims encircle the memorial. It’s the only memorial outside of the United States that holds the names of everyone who died.

Israel and America are uniquely linked, and not just in the modern era. In his book, The Magna Carta of Humanity, author and cultural observer Os Guinness examines the “faith-led revolution of ancient Israel,” and argues that the Bible’s Book of Exodus is the “highest, richest, and deepest vision for freedom in human history.” Exodus is, in fact, humanity’s Magna Carta: “with a constructive vision of a morally responsible society of independent, free people who are covenanted to each other and to justice, peace, stability, and the common good of the community. This is the model from the past that charts our path to the future.”

America, with its unparalleled liberty and freedom, wouldn’t be possible without Israel—without its rich history of faith and its brilliant blueprint for humanity. As an American, I believe it’s our job to stand with Israel and Jewish people everywhere. Israel must rout Hamas to protect its people from another barbaric invasion. Just as America wouldn’t have listened to anyone who insisted on a ceasefire after 9/11, neither should Israel heed such reckless calls now.

Our unwavering message to Israel, in word and deed, should be the one repeated at the invigorating March for Israel in Washington on November 14: Israel, you are not alone.