False, And True: A Lot of Phonies Since Oct. 7, but Also Leaders

What began last Oct. 7 with the invasion of Israel by 6,000 Hamas gunmen bent on slaughtering Jews has reached the one-year mark, with Hezbollah, another heavily armed and genocidal enterprise, firing thousands of missiles at Israeli civilians. The left has largely whitewashed or defended Hamas' and Hezbollah's attempts at genocide while accusing their victims of committing one.

This much is clear: All too many, professing to be "progressives," have spent the past year preening for those who believe that the massacre of Israelis is fundamentally A-OK. Spineless or morally lost, they have turned whatever intellectual cartwheels are necessary, or have simply run for cover, rather than risk the wrath of the pro-Hamas crowd.

But there have also been heroes.

There's Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., Chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, whose fellow Republicans forced a dismal slew of feckless university presidents to explain why, when Jewish students were being bullied and harassed on campuses by actual genocide supporters, they sat with hands folded, or with their thumbs placed where thumbs decidedly don't belong.

There's Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., who have refused to be intimidated by enraged fellow Democrats and untethered stalkers, and who have fearlessly called Hamas and Hezbollah the murderers that they are.

In academia, the past year has seen the exposure of billions of dollars of influence-purchasing by unsavory Mideast actors pushing an anti-Israeli agenda, and a whole lot of moral rot. But there've been some courageous leaders. One is Ron Liebowitz, the suddenly outgoing president of Brandeis University. While the body parts of Israelis blown apart by Hamas were still being collected, Students for Justice in Palestine were organizing celebrations of the Oct. 7 massacre and exhorting Americans to commit violence against Jews. Universities across America gave the group the imprimatur of formal recognition while it egged on attacks against Jews and supporters of Israel.

A Ku Klux Klan support group would never be accorded the benefits of a university affiliation, and Liebowitz decided Brandeis wouldn't stay silent about SJP. So he banned it from campus. This naturally provoked howls of protest from those who would have approved the banning of, say, Students for the KKK. Last week, Brandeis' faculty, famously precious and performative, narrowly voted for a resolution expressing "no confidence" in Liebowitz -- who told them to stuff it and resigned. Brandeis' loss.

Apart from Israel's borders, where the country is surrounded by barbarians with massive weapons arsenals, Israel's most consequential battleground is easily the United States, where those who wish her dead and buried flood the public square with hogwash, hoping to dilute American support. A big part of the strategy is intimidating others, and it often works. And when some step forward to confront the intimidation, they are met with organized efforts -- you guessed it -- to intimidate them.

Recently, the chairwoman of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, Katherine Craven, permitted students and others to address the board at a public meeting on the subject of antisemitic bullying in Massachusetts schools. It's a pervasive problem, and it seemed a pretty obvious thing for the board to want to hear about.

Some folks who were unhappy that it was addressed complained to the Massachusetts attorney general that permitting the discussion violated the state's public meeting law. Admitting that there was no precedent for her ruling, the attorney general nevertheless issued a dubious opinion that the discussion of antisemitic bullying at the public meeting of the board overseeing elementary and secondary education violated state law. An eyebrow-raising ruling, it looked very much like a cave-in to political pressure from you-can-imagine-who. The chairwoman may be named Craven, but she is anything but, especially when it comes to hate in the schools. She's another hero.

The indulgence and, indeed, the defense of simple barbarism has been worse than eye-opening, especially on the part of some who think they're "progressive." But there have also been leaders. And that's a reason to be thankful.

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Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.