While the letter signed by dozens of Harvard University student groups blaming Israel for Hamas’ terrorism has received national attention, a letter signed by groups and individuals affiliated with the University of California system has received scant attention.

The letter, which was circulating on social media within days of Hamas’ terrorist assault on Israeli civilians, holds Israel, not Hamas, responsible. “To blame anyone other than the Zionist Israeli government and its settlers mischaracterizes this struggle and fuels the ongoing violence,” the letter declares. “Although international law states that Palestians’ (sic) have the right to defend themselves in their ancestral homelands, it is evident these rights only apply to some.”

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The letter goes on to engage in direct apologia for Hamas’ butchery, arguing, “To police Palestinian means of resistance and demand that they be perfect victims and resistant subjects is part of the genocidal campaign against Palestinians.”

The radical screed then goes on to link the situation in Gaza to the University of California: “As it attempts to reckon with its legacy as a land-grab institution, the University of California must also reckon with its complicity in ongoing settler-colonial projects in the United States and abroad. Land acknowledgements are not enough if they are empty signifiers.”

Among the signers of the letter include pro-Palestinian student groups, like Students for Justice in Palestine UCSB and  Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, as well as hundreds of faculty, alumni and students.

“This statement is nothing less than a call for Palestinian liberation,” they write. “We remember and become accomplices to liberation. At this time, we refuse any calls for ‘peace’ which are just calls for the quiet submission of Palestinians to an early grave.”

These extremists are what pass, apparently, for the “educated” among us. It’s a disgrace.