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The anonymous author of the following piece, an Israeli-American, asks, and answers, his own query: how did his former friend, a leftist and a pacifist, and now a university professor brainwashing his own students, end up as a supporter of Hamas and its murderers?
More on this malevolent metamorphosis can be found here: “Thoughts On A Socialist Murderer (Guest Post),” Elder of Ziyon, May 23, 2025:
The murderer of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky wrote a manifesto before setting out to commit a premeditated cold blooded dual murder. His manifesto sounded strangely familiar. I had heard an old friend of mine say similar things. My old friend is also a Socialist, and a Marxist, and a Harvard graduate, and is now a sitting professor. When we were friends in grade school, he was a peace activist who often quoted Martin Luther King. He strongly believed in non-violent protest. He opposed the Vietnam War. In fact, he opposed all wars. He believed that all conflicts could be solved through UN negotiations and peace treaties. He believed all crimes should be adjudicated in international courts, since he did not trust the US court system. He believed the US was corrupt, while the major Communist dictatorships were utopian. His parents had a poster of Che Guevarra, and a bust of Karl Marx prominently displayed in their home. He had a strange fascination with Carlos The Jackal. I knew there was something odd about his family and the belief system he had grown up with, but I did not place him within the same groups of radical lunatics portrayed in Hollywood movies. After all, he was a straight-A student, and he was very well read in literature, history, philosophy, and the sciences. He was a Renaissance man. He would read the entire Sunday edition of the New York Times every weekend. His teachers all loved him. He was admitted to Harvard on a scholarship, without the help of any family connections. He later became a university professor. I admired his accomplishments, and I thought he must be doing something right….
Circling back to Elias Rodrigues, I have to wonder if my friend would be capable of committing a similar crime. If he expressed support for Hamas in 2001, he is no different than the campus activists organizing the hundreds of marches and encampments supporting “the Gaza resistance” today. If a college professor has no morals, and makes political allegiance with barbarians, than the question is a valid one. My conclusion is that it is a moot point. Even if the professor wouldn’t actually pull the trigger, I have no doubt that these professors would do nothing to stop the actual “trigger man.” The guilt is shared by the entire ideology that justifies vigilante murder in the name of a deranged interpretation of social justice. I shudder to think how many seemingly normal people are walking around with this latent leftist brainwashing. It reminds me of The Manchurian Candidate. Is this life mimicking art, or was the story a guidebook for a long-term Soviet project?
His former friend has no interest in reading any of the books about Israel that were suggested he might read, or that were not just suggested, but given to him to read. He burned, without reading, the copy of The Case for Israelhe had been given. He’s one more example of a widespread phenomenon, observable especially among leftists, whenever the subject of Israel is raised. The refrain of these leftists is this: I know all that I need to know about Israel. My mind is made up; Israel is a colonial-settler ethnic-cleansing genocidal state, and please don’ try to confuse me with facts. Besides, all we know on earth, and all we need to know, is this: From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
Hope this little pussy freak gets his social justice, good and hard from Bubba, just before they drop those cyanide pellets in the gas chamber.
Some pacifist supports violent maniacs he needs to recheck his background
The violence you cite is not the same as a death sentence given legally as a social penalty of heinous acts such as murder.
It is iportant to remind all these violent activists that JESUS was JEWISH Perhaps that will help them realize that murdering Jews is not what they had been taught
Sorry but there’s no such thing as “a leftist pacifist”: the very expression is an oxymoron
More than they despise liberals, lefties hate other left wingers who have limits as to how far they will go to being paradise on earth. The vanguard of the revolution are those who shout loudest and call for the most extreme actions to destroy bourgeois society, which is to say the happy, productive, cohort they believe above all others must be immisirated, and made like themselves.