With at least 30 dead last night in terrorist attacks on Israelis spending their holiday on vacation in Egypt, it seems hard to deny that Israel is facing the same war against terrorism that America is. Yet such denial seems, sadly, on the rise in elite circles in America, which seem more comfortable siding with the terrorist attackers than with the Israelis.

Last night, a leading Catholic university in America, Notre Dame, was set to host “a commemorative symposium honoring” Edward Said, who was famously photographed in Lebanon throwing a rock at an Israeli position. “Said was consistently critical of Israel for its policies regarding the Palestinians,” a Notre Dame news release noted with apparent approval.

At Duke University, the fourth National Student Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement is scheduled to be held between October 15 and October 17. The Anti-Defamation League reports that the anti-Israel student activists “have refused to sign a statement condemning Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians” and that at past conferences “several speakers have openly called for the destruction of the state of Israel.”

The Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, is sounding the alarm about the Duke event. “It pains us when anti-Israel student activism moves beyond legitimate criticism of Israel into hateful attacks against Jews and the Jewish state,” Mr. Foxman, said. “Given the troubled recent history of pro-Palestinian activism on campus, we are greatly concerned that any legitimate discussion or criticism that might take place as a result of this conference will be overshadowed by bigoted rhetoric or even acts of intimidation or harassment against Jewish or pro-Israel students or faculty.”

At the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where the board includes such establishment figures as a member of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Jamie Gorelick, and the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb, a staff member, Anatol Lieven, has just issued a book asserting that “The aggrieved and embattled sentiments of Israel have spread back to the United States and strengthened already existing tendencies to paranoia, resentment and chauvinism … As a result of this and the Israel lobby’s iron grip on the US Congress, American support for Israel, including support for the occupation of the Palestinian territories, has continued unchanged – with all that this means for the image of the United States in the Muslim world and for US chances of success in the struggle against Islamist terrorism.”

Mr. Lieven’s book – published by yet another elite, highbrow institution, Oxford University Press – claims, “Israel has become instead a very serious strategic liability to the United States and its allies in their effort to fight Islamist and Arab nationalist terrorism…The terms of the US-Israeli alliance are not a case of the tail wagging the dog; they represent the tail whirling the unfortunate dog around the room and banging its head against the ceiling.” He recommends “serious American pressure on Israel, including the threat of a severe reduction of US economic, diplomatic and military support.”

One of the encouraging things about the presidential campaign has been the generally pro-Israel line struck by both major-party candidates. But given the attitudes toward Israel spreading through elite circles in America, it would be a mistake for Jerusalem’s supporters in America to grow complacent. The elite in America are often out of touch with the sensible view when it comes to the war on terrorism. Within the Democratic Party, there is a growing presence of the policy makers who feel that the burden of peace making lies with Israel. One wonders how many more Arab terrorist attacks on Israeli vacationers it will take to shake the elites to their senses.