Of course, it’s not just governments that risk falling into moral confusion, and it’s not just large international organizations with outsized budgets that propagate it. At Harvard, a group of over 30 student organizations quickly responded to Saturday’s atrocities with a statement that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Similar declarations emerged from other top-tier colleges, like the 50 student groups at University of California, Berkeley who joined together to express “unwavering support for the resistance in Gaza.”

J.J. Kimche, a doctoral student at Harvard whose explorations of Jewish thought may be familiar to readers of this newsletter, takes the statements of his schoolmates seriously:

Not only have our fellow students failed to condemn this proto-genocide; they have justified and celebrated it. The authors and signatories of this statement, men and women with whom we share dormitories and libraries, have exposed themselves as worse than common anti-Semites. They are enthusiastic proponents of our slaughter, a vanguard of apologists for those who seek the extermination of the Jewish people.

This realization has grave consequences not only for Jewish life on campus but for the university’s existence as a community. How can we share dormitories, classrooms, and ideas with students who would makes excuses or even celebrate if we and our families were hacked to death by a Hamas terrorist tomorrow?

Harvard’s top administrators made no effort to assuage such fears. . . . Only on Tuesday did President Claudine Gay “condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.” She didn’t condemn the statement excusing Hamas, but merely distanced herself from it: “No student group—not even 30 student groups—speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.”

One might defend Gay’s pusillanimity with the argument that issuing statements about current events, no matter how horrific, is well outside the remit of university presidents. But nowadays Harvard presidents feel obliged to issue declarations about the war in Ukraine, the murder of George Floyd by a police officer, and much else. Why do they find it so hard to spare a few words to condemn the slaughter of Jews?

Concluded in 1979, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty ended nearly 30 years of intermittent warfare, and proved one of the most enduring and beneficial products of Middle East diplomacy. But Egypt may not have been upholding its end of the bargain, write Jonathan Schanzer and Mariam Wahba:

Article III, subsection two of the peace agreement’s preamble explicitly requires both parties “to ensure that that acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, or violence do not originate from and are not committed from within its territory.” This clause also mandates both parties to hold accountable any perpetrators of such acts.

Recent Israeli operations along the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow strip of land bordering Egypt and Gaza, have uncovered multiple tunnels and access points used by Hamas—some in plain sight of Egyptian guard towers. While it could be argued that Egypt has lacked the capacity to tackle this problem, it is equally plausible that it lacks the will. Either way, it’s a serious problem.

Was Egypt motivated by money, amidst a steep and protracted economic decline in recent years? Did Cairo get paid off by Hamas, or its wealthy patron, Qatar? Did the Iranians play a role? Was Egypt threatened with violence and unrest by the Sinai’s Bedouin Union of Tribes, who are the primary profiteers of smuggling, if it did not allow the tunnels to operate? Or did the Sisi regime take part in this operation because of an ideological hatred of Israel?