Founded by Jewish students at Harvard in 2012, Open Hillel seeks to persuade campus Hillel houses and the organization that coordinates them to change their rules regarding Israel-related programming. These forbid cooperation with groups and speakers advocating actual boycott of the Jewish state or calling for its destruction, but allow events sponsored by left-wing groups like Breaking the Silence, which excoriates the IDF. Jared Samilow explains that Open Hillel is not the tolerant defender of free speech it claims to be:

Open Hillel troopers no doubt fancy themselves brave martyrs struggling to speak truth to power, but this is a comical inversion of reality—at least on a college campus. Unicorns aren’t as rare as pro-Israel humanities professors. Hardly a month passes by without some student government or faculty association condemning Israel.

And guess what? If upholding [Hillel’s] guidelines really does alienate some Jewish students, that’s unfortunately the cost of doing business. If you stand for a real and meaningful principle, then it’s inevitable that somebody will feel unrepresented. The only way to appease everyone is to stand for nothing. If there are Jews who cannot feel comfortable in Hillel unless they are granted a soapbox for their anti-Israel crusade, then that’s just a “loss” we’ll have to absorb.

Besides, we shouldn’t lose too much sleep over it. In perhaps the greatest irony, it turns out that the “open” in Open Hillel is about as accurate as the “democratic” in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Holly Bicerano, who served as a campus outreach coordinator for Open Hillel, recently wrote a blog post about why she quit, explaining that “many Open Hillel leaders have no problem with advocating exclusion and alienation within Open Hillel; . . . many [are also] intolerant of pro-Israel voices that they dislike.” The ringleaders behind Open Hillel aren’t perturbed by the concept of non-inclusiveness; they’re just miffed that they’re the ones being excluded, when they’d prefer to be the ones doing the excluding.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.