McConnell to Corporate Media, Academia: No Time For False Moral Equivalence

Press Release

"The barbaric terrorist attacks of October 7th have elicited two distinct sorts of reactions in the West.

Most reasonable people have responded to the slaughter of innocent Israelis with utter horror, fervent prayer, and strong support for Israel's right to defend itself.

The overwhelming majority of Americans think the United States should publicly support our closest ally in the Middle East. They recognize this moment as a time for choosing, and they see the choice between a democracy's right to self-defense and a terrorist group's obsession with destroying it as an easy choice.

The United States must have Israel's back as it roots out the terrorists who threaten it. For as long as it takes. I'm proud to stand with this overwhelming majority.

But alas, in recent days, we've also seen just how the default position in some highly influential corners of our society -- from national newsrooms to elite college campuses -- how quickly they've been to blindly amplify terrorists' version of events.

This was especially true of the reporting of a deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital yesterday. Hamas immediately blamed Israel for the blast, and major news organizations took their word for it, running headlines about an "Israeli strike'.

In the hours since this tragedy, credible evidence has emerged suggesting that the same terrorists who use innocent civilians as human shields were themselves responsible.

Well, the media can revise its headlines. But the shameful, anti-Semitic fringe of our society has already heard what it wants to hear.

Unsurprisingly, the woke incubators of the Ivy League have been at the epicenter of this anti-Israel outbreak. One coalition of 30 student groups at Harvard declared that they, "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible' for Hamas' terrorism.

Now, student radicals taking extremist stands is par for the course. The more important question was how university administrators -- the supposed grown-ups on campus -- would respond.

And the answer, Mr. President, is not good.

As former Harvard President Larry Summers rightly noted, his institution's initial silence ceded the field to campus extremists in defining Harvard's response.

And when Harvard's leaders did respond, they failed the most basic test -- distinguishing the victim from the aggressor.

The university's response professed heartbreak at "the war in Israel and Gaza now under way,' as if there were even a shred of moral equivalence between terrorism and self-defense.

The presidents of Columbia and Dartmouth expressed regret at, "the ensuing violence,' and, "the escalating violence,' respectively.

Not to be outdone, Notre Dame didn't even assign perfunctory blame to the terrorists.

Instead, they bemoaned, "the outbreak of war in the Holy Land' and calling "for an end to the cycle of violence.'

I'm reminded of a retort the late, great Bill Buckley deployed in a debate when his opponent tried to have "both-sides' of the Cold War.

He said, "that is like saying that the man who pushes a little old lady into the path of a bus is morally equivalent to the man who pushes her out of its path, because they both push little old ladies around.'

If you want to know where this leads, take the American Bar Association, the organization that accredits our nation's law schools. At first, the ABA's president called "on both sides to show restraint' and urged Israel and Hamas to, "settle their disputes in a peaceful and legal fashion.'

But yesterday, the ABA denounced Israel's self-defense efforts as, "collective punishment, forced displacement, [and] ethnic cleansing.'

Mr. President, terrorism and self-defense are not morally equivalent. And you'd think the leaders of America's higher education would understand it.

Some leaders in higher education have argued in recent days that schools should not wade into political disputes.

Stanford's President said doing so means picking winners and losers on campus. And Northwestern's president observed of his students and faculty that, "for me to speak for them displaces their own freedom to speak.'

This may actually be a wise policy. But it's certainly not one elite academia has been known to practice.

It doesn't take long to find the impassioned stances universities took following the murder of George Floyd or the ending of DACA. So why the new policy?

Let's be clear -- some university leaders have displayed admirable conviction. Our former colleague, Ben Sasse, at the University of Florida described support for the terrorists who murdered Israeli children as "sickening' and "dehumanizing.'

Emory's President said the attacks "must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.' Princeton's President called it "among the most atrocious of terrorist acts' and, importantly, placed the blame for the coming war entirely where it belonged, on Hamas's shoulders.

So Mr. President, I request unanimous consent to submit all of these statements -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- for the Record.

And I can only hope that the leaders of America's universities recognize what time it is in America. This is a time for moral clarity, not a time for anti-Semitic hate dressed in faculty-lounge jargon.

Leaders cannot afford to be silent. Terrorism is evil. Anti-Semitism is despicable. And Israel has a right to exist.

It shouldn't take a PhD to understand that, but it also shouldn't be so hard for a PhD to acknowledge it."

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