The British-Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin made it his life’s work to understand and write about the European critics of the 18th-century Enlightenment—not because he, too, opposed the Enlightenment, but because he thought Western civilization would benefit from recognizing its own faults and limitations. Yoram Hazony argues that the substance of this critique of Enlightenment ideas has roots in Jewish thought going back to the Hebrew Bible. (Video, about 50 minutes.)

Commenting on the wave of anti-Hamas demonstrations in the Gaza Strip, Seth Mandel writes:

Gazans have not have been fully honest in public. There’s a reason for that. To take just one example, Amin Abed was nearly beaten to death with hammers for criticizing Hamas. Abed was saved by bystanders, so presumably the intention was to finish him off. During the cease-fire, Hamas members bragged about executing “collaborators” and filmed themselves shooting civilians.

Which is what makes yesterday’s protests all the more significant. To protest Hamas in public is to take one’s life in one’s hands. That is especially true because the protests were bound to be filmed, in order to get the message out to the world. The reason the world needs to hear that message is that Westerners have been Hamas’s willing propaganda tools. The protests on campus are not “pro-Palestinian,” they are pro-Hamas—and the people of Gaza are Hamas’s victims.