Victor Davis Hanson: Hamas is a Complete Death Cult—Why Are Campuses Not Condemning Them?

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.

Jack Fowler: Well, Victor, let’s go to some campuses—two campuses. I’ll throw both stories out there and your take on them. They both have to do with antisemitism, and one is at Columbia, which has always been a hotbed since Oct. 7 for antisemitism.  

And the headline here is, from Fox News: “Columbia University Says Oct. 7 Dining Menu Listing Was a Mistake.” And part of what it said here on the menu at the school was Oct. 7 blush sauce, which is like—what the f–? This is, this is… “Oh, that was a printing typo.” How the hell does that get to be a printing typo? Anyway, that was one thing.  

The other thing that’s antisemitic and really troubling has to do with this professor at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. Professor Guangtian Ha he’s been arrested and charged with cyberstalking a Jewish colleague. He was posing as a MAGA anonymous person on X.   

Let me just read this. It says, “In addition to posting vile antisemitic messages, he allegedly posted his colleague’s home address, infant child’s name, a photograph of the family’s mailbox, countless antisemitic slurs and threats, and reference of real-time observation of their home,” etc. And he was a wackadoo, I think, if you look at the courses he was teaching. But someone with that mentality could be hired at a prestigious college, maybe it shouldn’t be surprising, Victor.  

Victor Davis Hanson: He’s DEI. He’s DEI. Remember what DEI is. DEI is just as if you and I go into an insurance company and say, “We’re gonna go take a trip, and we wanna get insurance. We’re gonna fly, and wanna get airline insurance.” And so we’re indemnified. I have a small little 40 acres, and I have a renter now, and I get insurance that says if anyone who wants to sue me, I have X amount.  

Basically, in California, it’s happened five times. If you’re drunk, and you’re driving at a high speed, and you go aerial, and you go into an orchard or vineyard and you destroy $30,000 or $40,000 worth of damage, you get nothing, and the person leaves the scene of the accident. And if you try to take the car, of course you’ll be arrested as a deposit.  

But they can… We’ve had cases where they sue people if they hit a pipe or something or, “Well, that pipeline shouldn’t be there.” So you get these expensive policies.  

Well, that’s what DEI is. It’s basically saying, “I got a DEI policy, and that means that if I want to make up a false identity and attack this person, I’m not a part of the oppressor class. I’m the oppressed class, so I get an exemption. If I wanna walk out of this store and shoplift, I get an exemption if it’s under $950, maybe even above.”  

And that’s the very worst thing about DEI. And that’s all these things have something in common. If you are a victim and you say, “The Jews did this,” or “The Jews did that,” then you’re going to be protected. 

I think the Jewish community, I think, knows that. I mean, there are right-wing antisemites. I think you can make the argument that Tucker [Carlson] detests Israel and is an antisemite, given the things he said. And I say that because I remember I had no evidence of that, but I remember when he, in his early career, he was a critic of Pat Buchanan, remember? And he said that Buchanan was really sending coded antisemitic themes. Tucker said that. So I think he’s gone from that to something completely opposite. 

But what I’m getting at is if it’s [Nick] Fuentes or Candace [Owens] or Tucker, that’s an isolated group. What we’re talking about is the whole left-wing party now is antisemitic. 

Basically, the mixture of socialism and the whole Islamism, you get the people in the United States who are always accusing the Jews of running cabals, and you get the people from the Middle East who say Israel is the source of all of our self-inflicted problems, and they combine, and they’re powerful, and people are not speaking out against it.  

But it’s from the Left, and that professor will be found out to be on the Left. That’s why he disguised himself as a MAGA person. But I think it’s accelerating so fast, Jack, I don’t think they’re ashamed of it. I think they’re happy about it. You know, you can see that with [Zohran] Mamdani. They’re talking now about firing Police Commissioner [Jessica] Tisch in New York. You know, the only Jewish member of his… I mean, mainstream Jewish. You know, she’s done a wonderful job.  

And Hasan Piker, whom they all invite to be seen with, he said that Orthodox Jews are inbred, and he said you will not see a Jew nominated ever again as a Democratic candidate for president.  

So they’re open about it, and it’s gonna keep going.  

Jack Fowler: By the way, we should just, since you stumbled into—you didn’t stumble into this, you brought us into this. About Mamdani, he did on Oct. 7 paid lip service to what happened three years ago. But then, of course, he also added all those other things. It was some event— But now he’s being attacked by — could you be further left than Mamdani? By those who say that his participation at an event that recognized the murders on Oct. 7 was inexcusable…  

Victor Davis Hanson: Well, people who have been flying—at some of these demonstrations, not all, but some, they fly Hezbollah flags. They’re happy. They believe in terrorism. [Abdul] El-Sayed said, “Hurt people hurt people,” i.e. translated, people that are hurt by Jews then hurt Jews. What do you expect? Right.  

The funny thing is, you take away Oct. 7 right now, and there would be no problem in Gaza. We would still go back to square one. The Gaza wall would be pathetic. It’s nothing compared to pictures of the Gaza Egyptian wall. In other words, the Egyptians were firmer that they didn’t want Gazans going into fellow Muslim Arab Egypt than the Jews were into Jewish Israel.  

There would be 18,000 work permits, with people still going in making $11 to $13 an hour in Israel working side by side. All the buildings would be there, da, da, da. All they had to do was not go in under the guise of being workers and conduct intelligence operations, find out where the kibbutzes are, plan the whole thing.  

Iran was the brain and the bank of the whole thing. Hezbollah was supposed to join in. The Houthis were supposed to join in. And they really did believe they would get further than 17 miles. They thought they were gonna go 50, 60, 80 miles because they thought that 150,000 rockets from Hezbollah would come in, Houthis would come in. They did fire right after—People forget this. They fired about 4,000 rockets after, Oct. 7 into civilian centers, before Oct. 20 when the Israelis went in. And then they ended up firing almost 14,000 in total. But they really did, and Iran really did believe that it could have deniability of culpability, and everything that we’re looking at now wouldn’t have happened. I mean, we might have — 

Jack Fowler: But on that point, on that point, Victor, it’s still hard to grasp that on Oct. 8 what happened and that it wasn’t latent. It was there. It wasn’t created on Oct. 8.  

Victor Davis Hanson: Absolutely.  

Jack Fowler: It was sitting there waiting to be unleashed.  

Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah. That’s what I pointed out.  

They were trying to hide it. And everybody thought people on both sides of good intelligence and a good heart said, “This was a horrible atrocity. We have to look at this.” Never in their right mind did they think that people would come out and cheer and think, oh my gosh, we killed 1,200 and we got to rape them and mutilate them and dismember them and torture them and take hostages. This is so wonderful. Now we’re going to celebrate. This is so…  

And then they really did go to the next leap, And the Israelis are losing. We’ve got inside Israel with only 6,000 people, and now they’re surrounded, and the Hezbollah is gonna wipe them out with the Houthis, and everything’s gonna get better, and Hamas has got 50,000, and Hezbollah’s got 100,000, and the Houthis got 20,000 rockets and drones, and Iran’s got all … It’s gonna be wonderful. Let’s celebrate. That was the whole climate.  

And the only reason Gaza is in rubble today, the Israelis said we want all of them back. We want all the people who did this. Send them back here. We want to try them. And by the way, give up the 251 hostages. That’s all we’re asking. And they said no. Why did they say no? Because we’re winning. We’re winning. We got people in the United States that are cheering on campuses. We got all of Europe is on our side. We’ve got 250,000 rockets, missiles, and drones in our ring of fire in Iran. We’re gonna win. And then Israel went in. And, when they went in, they were attacked.  

Probably 40,000 missiles and rockets have been shot at Israeli civilians from Lebanon, from Hamas, from Yemen, from Iran. And they lost. They lost badly. And that was all they had to …  

And if they didn’t wanna give them up, and they didn’t wanna give the hostages up, all they had to do was do this. They had to say, “You know what? The Israelis are gonna blitz us. We’ve got over 300 miles of tunnels. They have food. They have water. They’re safe from bombing. We want all you Gazan people who live anywhere near us, who might be in danger, get in those tunnels, because we’re gonna go out and fight these Jews. We’re gonna go out and fight the Israeli, the IDF. We’re gonna fight house to house. But we don’t want you hurt.”  

They did just the opposite. They put the entries and exits under hospitals, private homes, mosques, and schools, and they kept the civilians out. And they used it because they really did believe the Israelis would be more reluctant to inflict damage or death on their own Gazan brotherhood than they were in exposing them to that.  

So basically, Hamas made the calculation. You know, it’s easy. Anybody who knows any logic, A plus B equals C, will see that they said, “You know what? Those awful Jews in Israel, in their naivete, care more about human life than we do. And no, even worse for them, they care more about the Gazans than we do. So if we put our people out there to be killed, a lot of them are gonna get killed, but they’re not going to hit our entries and exits in the hospitals, the mosques, and the schools because they’re gonna pull back from those places. So we’re gonna sit here safe, and the Gazans will get killed, and that’ll be good for propaganda.”  

What they didn’t count on was the Israelis went down and got them and pulled them out and fought. But that would have all been avoided. And we’re not even getting into not one Jewish person was in Gaza for 18 years—since 2005. Or we’re not getting out, they had an election. All they had to do was say, “We’re gonna have an election. Let’s not kill Palestinian Authority rivals. They’re a different party, but please, Hamas people, don’t throw them off houses anymore. Please, that’s all we’re asking. Don’t kill 150 of our own people and throw them off. And don’t go to people’s houses and threaten them to vote for us. And then, once we elect Hamas, let’s have a free press, habeas corpus, a constitution, and let’s every four years hold regular elections.”  

They couldn’t even do that. And then if they couldn’t even do that, they could say, “Well, we’re gonna be an autocracy like, oh, the UAE or Saudi Arabia, but we’re gonna show the Jews in Israel that we’re smarter and better, so we’re gonna build a Kuwait City or a Dubai right here on 24 miles of priceless Mediterranean beaches, and we’re gonna make this. We’re gonna put the Israelis to shame. We’re gonna have more money, nicer places, tourists.”  

They couldn’t even do that. They were a complete death cult.  

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

More from this network:
Domains for Sale · GOTPeople.org · TheDSAPlatform · The Truth About Socialism

Donate to GOTPeople.org