‘Antisemitism is a symptom of a much deeper crisis’: Journalist Bari Weiss excoriates anti-Israel sentiment in the aftermath of October 7 terror attacks by Hamas and says anti-Jewish feeling is a ‘sign that society itself is breaking down’

Anti-Semitism is “a sign that society itself is collapsing,” journalist Bari Weiss warned, as she denounced the “hip, young people with pronouns in their bios” who cheered when Hamas killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7.

Weiss, who founded an online news site The free presssaid she was stunned by the rush to justify the terrorist attack, and shocked by the contrast in response to 9/11.

Weiss spoke at The Federalist Society’s annual conference in Washington DC and delivered the Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture on Friday evening – given in honor of an influential lawyer and free speech advocate who died aboard the plane that crashed into the Pentagon crashed. .

Weiss said it was clear to her that her speech should be about “the civilization war we are in.” The war that took the lives of Barbara Olson and 3,000 other innocent Americans.”

She continued: ‘I want to talk about the stakes of that war. About how we must go about it – fearlessly and ruthlessly – if we want to build a world fit for our children, and if we want to save America itself.”

Weiss, who is Jewish, said she was devastated to see people “filling the streets of our capitals to celebrate the carnage.”

Pro-Palestinian activists around the world called for an end to Israel, saying Israel had only itself to blame for the October 7 attack.

Weiss said the anti-Semitism unleashed was terrifying — noting that The Free Press offices in New York City were vandalized with “F*** the Jews” and “F*** Israel.”

“The social justice crowd – the crowd that tried to convince us that words are violence – insisted that actual violence was actually a necessity. That the rape was resistance. That it was liberating,” she said.

“University presidents – who moved to issue morally clear condemnations of the murder of George Floyd or Putin’s war on Ukraine – offered silence or corny talk about how the situation is tragic and ‘complex’ and how we can ‘both sides’ if there is any form of equality between innocent civilians and jihadists.

“But most alarming of all were the young people who threw their support not behind the innocent victims of Hamas terrorism, but behind Hamas.”

Weiss condemned the academics and students who justified the terrorist attacks, saying she was deeply disturbed by their defense of Hamas’s actions. She also condemned university presidents who did not speak out.

She told the delighted crowd of her sadness at seeing the kidnapping posters being torn down, struggling to understand how anyone could do such a thing.

“The easy answer is that the people who were slaughtered on October 7 were Jews,” she said.

‘And that anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred in the world.

‘But that’s not the whole answer. Because the spread of anti-Semitism is, as always, a symptom.”

She said the rise in anti-Semitism – the Anti Defamation League said on October 27 that reported incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault had increased by 388 percent compared to the same period last year – was part of the broader trend.

“It replaces the basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad),” she said.

‘It has replaced a lot of things. Color blindness with racing obsession. Ideas with identity. Debate with indictment. Conviction with public shame. The rule of law with the anger of the mob.

“People were to be given authority in this new order, not in recognition of their gifts, hard work, achievements, or contributions to society, but in inverse proportion to the disadvantages their group had suffered, as defined by radical ideologues.”

Weiss noted that Jewish people make up two percent of the American population, but that their success, under the new ideology, “does not indicate talent or hard work, but unearned privilege.”

She added: “This conspiratorial conclusion is not so far removed from the hateful portrait of a small group of Jews dividing the ill-gotten loot of an exploited world.”

Weiss said, “Their moral analysis is as crude as you can imagine: they see Israelis and Jews as powerful and successful and as ‘settlers,’ so they are bad; Hamas is weak and coded as people of color, so they are good. No, it doesn’t matter that most Israelis are “people of color.”

‘That baby? He is a colonizer first and a baby second. Raped that woman to death? Too bad it had to come to this, but she is a white oppressor.”

Weiss urged the audience to open their eyes and realize that you don’t need context to know that killing civilians in their beds was wrong.

She said it was fundamental that laws were enforced regarding the ban on full face masks at protests in some states, and said it was time to end the “double standards” on freedom of expression, especially on campuses.

“The universities are playing favorites based on the speech they prefer, and the racial group hierarchies they have established,” she said.

‘It’s a dirty game and they should be held accountable for it.’

And finally, she urged her audience to fight and defend what they believed.

“Time to defend our values ​​– the values ​​that have made this country the freest, most tolerant society in the history of the world – without hesitation or apology,” she said.

‘We have let far too much go unchallenged. Too many lies have been spread due to inaction due to fear or politeness.”