George Orwell famously observed that “there are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.” The reaction in some academic quarters to the barbarisms inflicted on civilians in Israel by Hamas murderers illustrates the obverse: There are some facts so obvious that only an intellectual could fail to believe them.
Here are some of those obvious facts. On October 7, members of Hamas penetrated the border with Israel and proceeded to conduct a murderous rampage on unarmed civilians. They raped women, shot the elderly, and burned infants. They seized about 150 traumatized civilians — again, many of them women, children, and the elderly — and carried them off to Gaza, where brutalized women were spat upon by the cheering, jeering local populace.
We know these are facts, and not mere rumors or allegations, because the perpetrators themselves filmed these actions and proudly posted them on social media.
(And by the way, could we please stop referring to the perpetrators as “militants” or “fighters”? Armed men who butcher women, babies, and the elderly do not fit the definitions of those terms. We do not say that “German militants” killed millions of Jews in concentration camps. We do not say that “Hutu fighters” killed 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda.)
Sensible people, regardless of their views on the geopolitics of the Middle East, can readily understand that these heinous facts must be condemned. But — referring back to the obverse of Orwell’s observation — there are some facts so obvious that only an intellectual could fail to believe them.
Unfortunately, Harvard is an incubator of such intellectuals.
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