Blaming Israel for Hamas Attacks Sparks Backlash Across U.S., Exposing Deep Rifts As debates span colleges, politics and workplaces, critics of the nation dodge reputational and professional damage
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/israel-hamas-attack-us-backlash-ff5f25e8
Across U.S. universities, workplaces and halls of power, a swift backlash is meeting those who denounce Israel in the wake of Hamas’s deadly attack on Saturday.
On social media and beyond, some groups and individuals sympathetic to the Palestinian cause effectively placed blame for the attack on Israel, alleging that the nation’s policies have left Palestinians little choice but to lash out with violence. Some of that commentary came over the weekend, as reports of atrocities committed by Hamas were beginning to emerge.
Many of those statements have since been met with fierce resistance from a variety of voices, including Jewish groups and university heads. Some corporate leaders have also entered the fray, with some threatening not to hire students who blamed Israel for the attack.
That pushback has prompted some progressive politicians and left-leaning student organizations to walk back statements blaming the Jewish state for the violence that began over the weekend or remove their names from petitions condemning Israel.
The tension has ensnared the likes of Harvard President Claudine Gay, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and college students who faulted Israel for creating the conditions that they said led to the attacks.
On Tuesday, the law firm Winston & Strawn rescinded a job offer to a summer associate studying at the New York University School of Law after the student wrote in a newsletter that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.”
“These comments profoundly conflict with Winston & Strawn’s values as a firm,” the company wrote in a statement. “Accordingly, the Firm has rescinded the law student’s offer of employment.”
On Saturday morning, as the details of the attack were only starting to emerge, campus groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine said Israel was to blame because its policies in Gaza were too restrictive.
The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and more than 30 other student groups signed a statement last weekend saying that Israel’s “apartheid regime is the only one to blame” for the violence.
Around the same time, Harvard President Gay issued a memo saying she was “heartbroken by the death and destruction” caused by the surprise Hamas attack on Saturday and Israel’s retaliation against Gaza.
Shortly thereafter, former Harvard President Larry Summers criticized Gay for failing to condemn Hamas.
On Tuesday, at least 17 Harvard student organizations, including Harvard Hillel, 500 faculty and staff members and more than 3,000 alumni and students signed a statement calling the Palestine Solidarity Committee statement “completely wrong and deeply offensive.”
Gay on Tuesday amended her statements about the attacks amid growing pressure.
“As the events of recent days continue to reverberate, let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas,” Gay wrote. “Such inhumanity is abhorrent, whatever one’s individual views of the origins of long standing conflicts in the region.”
Several groups withdrew their support for the letter this week, including the school’s Islamic Society and Nepali Student Association. By Wednesday, all of the signatories of the letter were removed and a note attached at the bottom of the letter said they had been “concealed” for student safety.
Alex Morey, director of campus rights advocacy at Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said universities stepped up their commentary on political issues during the pandemic and following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The engagement shifted expectations, said Morey, and has left schools “trapped…in a cycle of having to weigh in on everything and if they don’t, that failure to say something is saying something.”
Meanwhile, companies, which have a long history of scouring job candidates’ online personas for racist and other red-flag comments, have in recent days shown an unwillingness to put up with sentiment casting blame toward Israel.
Bill Ackman, a prominent hedge-fund manager, said Tuesday on social-media platform X that CEOs have been asking for the names of students involved with the organizations who signed the letter that circulated around Harvard to ensure “that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members.” Other CEOs, including Jonathan Neman of
, said online that he also wanted to know, so that he wouldn’t hire them.
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