Top Black author John McWhorter says progressives who try to justify Hamas’ massacre against Israel are ‘patronizing racists’ who are ‘condescending’ to Palestinians

New York Times columnist and Columbia University professor John McWhorter argued that protesters who support Hamas’ terrorism against Israel are exercising the “ultimate condescension” toward Palestinians.

In one piece for The free pressMcWhorter lays out the issue as he sees it, with the wave of support for Palestinian terrorism that has unfolded around the world in the days since Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,400 people.

He writes that in the United States, “leftists” suggest that the barbaric attack is “the understandable consequence of Jewish ‘colonization.’

“Such a perspective is a deep insult to Palestinian humanity,” he continued. “It implies that the Palestinians are so controlled by circumstances that they have no freedom of choice.”

“It implies that Palestinians cannot be expected to behave according to the same ethical standards as those who abstain from mass murder.”

New York Times columnist and Columbia professor John McWhorter wrote that for American leftists to applaud Hamas’ actions assumes that Palestinians are no better than terrorists.

Since the day after the attack in which Hamas operatives raped, beheaded and slaughtered innocent Israelis in the streets, large groups across the US have gathered in the streets to sing for the “freedom fighters” in Gaza.

Several chapters of Black Lives Matter in the US have publicly endorsed Palestinian resistance to the “settler-colonialist” state of Israel.

Some of them playfully used images of paragliders, such as those used by Hamas terrorists to descend on the Nova music festival in southern Israel, where dozens of Israelis were murdered.

Students on campuses across America — from the University of Washington to Georgetown and GW — have staged protests and put up flyers that read: “Glory to Our Martyrs.”

“The implication” of these demonstrations, McWhorter writes, “is that the act of mass and unexpected killing of thousands of civilians is ‘understandable’ if the perpetrators are Arabs.”

“There is a kind of patronizing racism in the idea that the slaughter of innocent people equates to a noble struggle for freedom, as if this is the only way to respond to oppression,” he continues.

McWhorter, who is black himself, goes on to argue that American leftists excused similar bad behavior — albeit on a much smaller scale — during the riots that broke out across the country following the killing of George Floyd.

“Some honestly argued that the looting and vandalism — mostly in neighborhoods where people of color live and own the businesses — was a constructive statement of protest,” said McWhorter, who identifies politically as an old-school liberal.

Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus celebrate on October 7, 2023, after terrorists from the Gaza Strip infiltrated Israel

A protest in Toronto, Canada took place in front of the US Consulate General. The group stood in solidarity with the Palestinians as the Israeli counterattack begins to move into high gear

In Illinois, a woman holds a sign that reads, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan often used to signify the destruction of the nation of Israel.

In New York City, a student holds a sign that reads, “Please keep the world clean,” referring to the extermination of Jews

Despite some specific calls for violence against Israel, and more broadly against the Jewish people, the linguistics professor writes that “few of those who glorify cruelty in theory would do so when confronted with its reality.”

“How many people who cheer on Hamas as noble freedom fighters can seriously imagine waving their fists as they watch the men on their way to murder Jewish teenagers at a music festival?”

“Decolonization,” he says, is a word used to “deflect attention from actions that are inexcusable in the mind of any right-thinking person.”

He concludes by writing that people and their actions are not black and white, but he is not sure that “those who encourage Hamas live in gray areas or see Palestinians as complex human beings.”

“The Hamas cheerleaders are essentially saying: Men have slaughtered legions of people in your name. Hooray for them and hurray for you!

“By classifying Palestinians as ‘brown’ people, apparently enlightened souls applaud this brutality of their representatives – but from a position of unintentional, but ugly condescension.”