October 13, 2023

Hamas Rally at the University of Washington

Yesterday, a pro-Hamas rally took place on Red Square at the University of Washington, with the sounds spreading across a large area of the UW.   It reverberated in my office.

Speakers at this gathering supported the violent actions of Hamas and called for the destruction of the State of Israel.  Their advertisement for the rally celebrates a death-dealing Hamas paraglider:

As many of you know, I am a great supporter of freedom of speech, an essential part of American democracy.  But that does not include calling for violence and the deaths of others; thus, what happened at the UW was well across the line and totally wrong.

A young Jewish student was in tears as she asked a UW administrator to stop the Hamas rally.  Her statement was heart-rending:  "they want to kill ME."   And she was right.

There is a lot of talk about safe spaces on university campuses.  For Jewish students, there was no safe space on the UW campus yesterday.  Many were afraid.  Sitting in my office hearing the proceeding I was highly disturbed.

Let us be clear, the actions of Hamas were barbaric and immoral. 

 There is no excuse for their actions.  None. 

Over a thousand people were slaughtered.  Babies had their heads cut off.  Families were torched.  Pregnant women were cut open.  Celebrants at a music festival were cut down.  Thousands of rockets were sent across Israel to maim and kill.  Hundreds of Israelis were taken as hostages and will probably be killed. Nearly two dozen American visitors were slaughtered.

It is the same kind of barbarism done by the Nazis during the second world war.  Like the pogroms of Russia in which Jewish families were slaughtered indiscriminately.

No nation in the world would tolerate such an attack on its people and Israel needs to strong backing of the American people to stand up against such barbarism.

21 comments:

  1. We live a life here in the USA, pretty insulated from the more harsh political environments that exist in many other countries...Naivete rules, particularly among younger folks.

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  2. The lie about babies with heads cut off has been retracted. Ask yourself how many other lies you have swallowed without a second thought.

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    1. You are so very wrong. It has been confirmed: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-767951 Absolute savagery. You need to evaluate your sources of information.

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    2. Also I think how babies were killed is beside the point. The point is babies and children should not be slaughtered and pregnant women should not have their stomachs cut open. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12623843/Israel-releases-images-babies-murdered-burned-Hamas-verified-photos-beheaded-terrorists-confirmed-local-media-IDF-drops-Gaza-leaflets-telling-citizens-flee.html

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  3. It truly does boggle the mind and truly is disheartening that this is going on. I won't go into the all the hypocrisy of certain speech is violence and violent speech, but it has to be said that the ones that say certain speech is violence use a lot of violent speech. Sad.

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  4. Thank you, sir. This is much appreciated and I agree completely.

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  5. Cliff, I agree with the need to support Israel. The U.S. has of course supported Israel since 1948. No nation has received as much Aid from the U.S. as Israel. I also agree that Hamas' heinous acts merit universal condemnation. Even those attempting to help Palestinians either have to publicly acknowledge that Hamas acts are detestable and condemnable or they shouldn't be arguing that more benign Israeli acts are condemnable. There can't be a double standard. Last, I have failed in all of my attempts to verify some of the extreme acts of depravity by Hamas, that is, decapitating babies, 40 dead babies, cutting babies out of the wombs. As of me typing this there are no reliable sources confirming those reports and there are reliable sources who question them. As much as one can be applauded for supporting Israel in its self defense I suggest that there is sufficient documented brutality to act against and we should wait before accepting reports of exceptionally inhuman, unbelievable brutality.

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    1. There is clear verification of these atrocities. There are many pictures of lines of dead bodies....how can you deny this?

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  6. Thanks Cliff, my sentiments exactly.

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  7. I wish I could tell every citizen or visitor of Jewish descent: we stand with you, against these murderers.

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  8. Always remember the double standard that's been at work in this country for years at this point - our speech is violence, where their violence is speech.

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  9. Supporting Hamas, especially in the context of what it just did, is EXTREMELY irrational. Greta Thornberg's apocalyptic variety of climate "science" is similarly irrational. I suspect that about 100)% of those in the UW pro-Hamas protest believe that Greta, not Cliff, is right about climate change. It would be interesting to somehow survey them about what they believe about climate change, and their level of "activism" in promoting the apocalyptic view of climate change.

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  10. The death toll is now over 1300 equivalent to 42,000 Americans. The outpouring of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas sentiment is a predictable outcome after decades of indoctrination of students in cultural Marxism which divides the whole world into victims and victimizers and says there must be decolonization so people of color can be free. BTW, BLM doubled down on blaming Israel for the attack. How many of our institutions felt virtuous in donating millions to this corrupt organization? I know Boeing did.

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    1. ...equivalent to 42,000 Americans?

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    2. As a percentage of their population vs. US population. It's called math, look into it.

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    3. Yes, thanks for the snarky reply. My response wasnt an ignorance of math, but incredulity that anyone would dare frame loss of life this way.

      Would you object if I said that Israel has killed the equivalent of 1,500,000 Chinese people in Palestine over the past week? Or if said that 9/11 wasn't that big of a deal, since really only the equivalent of 1 or 2 Finns were killed? And really who cares about the gulags, since it's not the equivalent of even a single Harlem globe trotter.

      I am broadly on Israel's side against Hamas, along with every reasonable person, but one Israeli death isn't equivalent to forty American deaths.

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  11. Thank you, Cliff for your brave and principled stand. The Holocaust began in the Universities, where Jewish Professors and students were first castigated and later tossed out.

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  12. The number of people who think that these atrocities are lies is heartbreaking.
    In the last week I have seen images I never would have thought were even possible:
    - The blood soaked sheets of a babie's playpen
    - The burned remains of a baby
    - The burned remains of children handcuffed and burned alive
    - The burned remains of people recoiling while still in their car
    - Eyewitness stories of barbaric atrocities so horrible I will not repeat them

    Thank you Cliff for speaking up. I am so very sorry that we even have to speak of this on a weather blog. As a UW grad myself I am ashamed that the school would allow this.

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  13. Some of my friends have tried to organize peaceful protests over unaffordable housing/our failing healthcare system and they have gotten shut down. The message the government seems to be sending is we can't protest things like unaffordable housing but genocidal/torture ralleys are okay? Wow our government is way more messed up than I thought it was. How come when I disagree with the CDC over COVID and back my argument with links to science papers my posts still get censored but the government won't stop a garbage protest like this? If the government won't censor properly they shouldn't censor at all.

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  14. The problem is that Humans are hot-headed and when threatened, we react emotionally rather than logically.

    If the Palestinians and Israelis would get together and agree on "hard" national boundaries, and honor them, then peace will have a good chance. Until that happens, this will continue.

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Please make sure your comments are civil. Name calling and personal attacks are not appropriate.