The anti-Israel and anti-Jewish scenes of the last week are reminders that the spirit of Adolph Hitler is far from dead.

The hateful pro-terrorist demonstrations at Harvard, Yale, other universities, and in New York City are reminders that the Nazis’ desire to exterminate the Jewish people was strongly echoed during World War II by many Arab leaders. 

The best example of Arab support for Hitler and the Nazis was Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini. He went to Berlin, made radio broadcasts favoring the Nazis and went to Bosnia to recruit Muslims to serve in the Waffen SS.

The commitment to eliminating all Jews and wiping out Israel is sustained by Hamas’s commitment outlined in its founding document. A major leader of Hamas announced, “not a single Jew will remain.”

The vicious, almost unimaginable attack of October 7 is a vivid warning of the depth of hatred which has been growing among Hamas and its supporters. They killed and beheaded babies when they attacked Israel. They raped women and then dragged their corpses through the street to be desecrated. In a real way, Hamas’s hatred of Jews matches the German SS.

The difference is: During World War II most civilized countries recognized the Nazis’ barbarism for the evil it was. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his nationwide radio address announcing the landing at Normandy said, “Almighty God, Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization.”

We are faced with the same struggle today. The forces of evil are now personified by the Hamas terrorists who slaughter the innocent, terrorize the weak, and humiliate the helpless.

Faced with the reality of Hamas’s clear commitment to unspeakable terror attacks, some Americans (and legal and illegal immigrants) have banded together to create a pro-terrorist movement of intimidation and violence.

Pro-Hamas rallies are inevitably anti-Israel rallies. 

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a rally speaker urged a group of school children to chant, “Glory to the murders.” There are roughly 5,000 Jewish students on campus.

At a Tallahassee rally, a man said “if Israel is erased and the crimes of Israel are erased, the people of the entire world will prosper.”

A chant virtually everywhere has been “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” This is remarkably parallel to the Nazi desire for a Judenfrei Europe. Hamas and the Nazis have a lot in common. They both stand for genocide, torture, terror, and death.

When 57 percent of American Jewish college students say they have witnessed or experienced antisemitic acts, something is terribly wrong. I had a conversation Sunday with a woman who was wearing the Star of David as a necklace. Someone spit at her. She is afraid she will be attacked if she openly displays her Jewish faith.

The universities and other institutions who piously declare their neutrality need to reread Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. They are saying they are neutral between barbarism and civilization. They are declaring neutrality between evil and decency. They are neutral between terrorists who behead babies and vulnerable children who need to be saved. It is despicable and cowardly.

Being for innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza is rational and righteous.

Being for Hamas should be comparable to being for the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazis. 

Pro-Hamas student groups should be defunded on every campus.

Pro-terrorist members of Congress should be defeated in the primaries (they are in heavily Democrat districts and can probably only be defeated in primaries).

The FBI should immediately be involved when Jews are targeted, such as the Israeli student who was attacked in front of the Columbia University main library. Antisemitism is a hate crime. It should be doggedly pursued just as other hate crimes are.

We learned in World War II and the Cold War that we must defend ourselves from enemies foreign and domestic.

We must insist on the defeat of Hamas and the isolation and repudiation of its supporters.

The spirit of antisemitism must be destroyed everywhere – in America and abroad.