Gone Dark: When It Comes to Iran's Massacres, Israel's Haters Couldn't Care Less

Jeff Robbins
Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:56:23 -0800
Opinion

On Oct. 7, 2023, when Israelis were trying to locate the mutilated bodies of their countrymen slaughtered in their homes or at a music festival by thousands of Hamas gunmen, 34 Harvard student groups publicly blamed the massacre not on Hamas but on Israel. In the days that followed, while Israeli forensic experts sought to identify body fragments, many on the Left joined in the eye-popping blame heaped on Israel for the deaths of Israelis, affirmatively celebrating the killings, or defending them, or asserting that the cold-blooded, meticulously planned slaughter should be "contextualized."

And in the weeks following that, when Israel was grappling with how to dismantle a killing machine purposefully embedded in underground tunnels, in hospitals and in residential neighborhoods, waves of self-styled progressives competed for who could most loudly pronounce Israel guilty of genocide in its response to a massacre explicitly grounded in calls for the genocide of Jews. As for what, precisely, Israel was supposed to do about Hamas' invasion, they had no answer, and felt no obligation to supply one. Over the last 27 months, the little fact that had Hamas not chosen to carry out a genocidal massacre on Oct. 7, none of the suffering in Gaza would have occurred hasn't merely been obscured. It's been buried.

Which left some wondering: Were the professions of concern about human rights by those who ritualistically excoriate Israel for striking at Hamas in Gaza actually driven by concern for human rights, or was it something else?
Updated: Tue Jan 20, 2026

On Oct. 7, 2023, when Israelis were trying to locate the mutilated bodies of their countrymen slaughtered in their homes or at a music festival by thousands of Hamas gunmen, 34 Harvard student groups publicly blamed the massacre not on Hamas but on Israel. In the days that followed, while Israeli forensic experts sought to identify body fragments, many on the Left joined in the eye-popping blame heaped on Israel for the deaths of Israelis, affirmatively celebrating the killings, or defending them, or asserting that the cold-blooded, meticulously planned slaughter should be "contextualized."

And in the weeks following that, when Israel was grappling with how to dismantle a killing machine purposefully embedded in underground tunnels, in hospitals and in residential neighborhoods, waves of self-styled progressives competed for who could most loudly pronounce Israel guilty of genocide in its response to a massacre explicitly grounded in calls for the genocide of Jews. As for what, precisely, Israel was supposed to do about Hamas' invasion, they had no answer, and felt no obligation to supply one. Over the last 27 months, the little fact that had Hamas not chosen to carry out a genocidal massacre on Oct. 7, none of the suffering in Gaza would have occurred hasn't merely been obscured. It's been buried.

Which left some wondering: Were the professions of concern about human rights by those who ritualistically excoriate Israel for striking at Hamas in Gaza actually driven by concern for human rights, or was it something else?

In truth, there was never much need to wonder, but the silence of obsessive Israel haters about the Iranian government's mass slaughter of protesters whose "crime" is demonstrating against Iran's regime has put an end to the wondering.

As of last weekend, a network of Iranian doctors estimated that some 18,500 protesters had been executed by Iranian security forces, and perhaps more. Over 300,000 have reportedly been injured. The number of those pulled out of their homes or off the streets and thrown in cells is unknowable. Iran's government has shut down the Internet, shutting off the evidence of its atrocities to the rest of the world. Most of those murdered or injured are believed to be under 30, which one might be forgiven for thinking would help galvanize protests against Iran on college campuses and among those who use the phrase "Gaza genocide" as frequently as they use prepositions.

One might be forgiven for thinking this, but one would be wrong. At Harvard, at Columbia and at campuses all across America where purportedly progressive faculty and students have vied oh-so-performatively to condemn Israel, there has been ... nothing. Democratic Socialist types, Left-leaning unions, special interest activists and self-proclaimed human rights advocates who call for arrest warrants for Israeli leaders and the isolation of Israel are nowhere to be found, victims of an epic case of The Cat Has Their Tongue. Hollywood types who rush to get their names on highly publicized petitions indicting Israel for hitting Hamas without minimal knowledge of why it is that Israel does so or the complexities of doing so, are AWOL, working on their tans.

Commentators whose practical responsibility for doing anything extends all the way to clicking Zoom links for media hits have nothing to say about the bloody murder being wreaked by Iran's government. Ben Rhodes, who passed his time as an advisor for former President Barack Obama, telling us that concerns about Iran were ridiculous, Tehran-whisperer Trita Parsi, whose profession has seemed to be selling the Mullahs' talking points and Peter Beinart, the Iraq War advocate whose current gig is appearing everywhere as The Jew Who Thinks Israel Should Disappear, have all gone as dark as the Internet in Iran.

This should surprise no one. These folks' concern about human rights never included the human rights of the Israelis murdered on Oct. 7, or those of the Gazans ripped off and brutalized by Hamas for the last twenty years. It doesn't include those of the Iranians suffering under a murderous regime. If anyone expects remorse or even reflection from them, don't bother.

It's not happening.