Victor Davis Hanson: The Selective Outrage and Hypocrisy of Antisemitism

Added: 2026-05-29

[00:00:10]Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. A lot of people who oppose Israel resent people who suggest they might be anti-Semitic. That's a legitimate criticism. They're not necessarily synonymous. But there but when people start talking about Jewish people in a certain fashion, a conspiratorial fashion that for example uh a small country of 10 million can influence 340 million in America and tell Donald Trump what to do or that a small cabal of Jews run a particular industry or they have cons then you start to get worrisome. But one of the best indicators of anti-semitism is selectivity, selective outrage. What do I mean by that? Well, we talked about uh Israel after October 7th. Remember that 1,200 Israelis were butchered, raped, mutilated in medieval fashion. Israel did not go into Gaza on the ground right away for 3 weeks, not until October 27th that it entered Gaza. And what did what was it supposed to do? Go to the UN, ask China and Russia on the security council. China has a million people of wagers in camps. Russia is waging a genocidal war in Ukraine and ask them to be fair. Go to the NATO or EU and ask the Spanish premier, Mr. Sanchez, to negotiate with Hamas. What were they supposed to do? Are they supposed to how they what were they supposed to reply to when Hamas would not give up the perpetrators would not give up the 251 hostages descended into a labyrinth of tunnels and the entries and exits were beneath churches, mosque and schools?

[00:01:54]What were they to do? What would anybody do? What would the United States do? The United States is 34 times larger uh than Israel is.

[00:02:05]34 times larger. So what would we do?

[00:02:10]Well, if 6,000 Hamas people went into Israel, what would happen if I don't know 200,000 people uh came into the United States across the border, let's say from Sola, the cartels, and instead of they butchered 1,200, but let's say in American terms, 34 times larger, they butchered 40,000 Americans.

[00:02:36]That would be a fair comparison. And then they took back 8,000 not 251 but 34 times given our larger size back to Mexico. What would we do? What would we do? Would we say would you please can we negot negotiate with El Chapo and the cartel people in Geneva? Can we ask our friends in the UN to criticize them? Or would we hear almost immediately um that we had it coming because of the Mexican war or Yankee go home? We probably hear that. And don't think that that is an exaggeration.

[00:03:14]In 1917, Ponchovilla crossed the border, went into Colombia, New Mexico, and took over the town and killed 17 Americans.

[00:03:23]What did the United States do? We put 100,000 people on the border. and left-wing President Wilson sent John Persing into Mexico to find him feudal.

[00:03:34]And do you think that people were outraged that Ponchovilla did that? No.

[00:03:40]Um, President Obador, the former president of Mexico just two years ago said that he thought it was a wonderful thing what Poncho Poncho Villa did by invading the United States and killing Americans. He said it was a blow to you imperialism. It's like you can imagine what we would do. We would bomb and we would tell people in Sola, please separate yourself from the cartel members. Please uh get out of the hospitals and the schools and the churches where their entry or exits are beneath them. And you can imagine the outrage. Uh are we worried about illegal occupations? I don't think so.

[00:04:16]Worldwide, Turkey is still occupying via the Turkish population Cyprus, northern Cyprus. Are we worried about ethnic cleansing? Turkey in 1917 to 1921 ethnically cleansed 1.2 million Armenians. We've given Turkey an aggregate of about $500 million in direct aid and military sales.

[00:04:40]Are we worried that they threaten to go into Cyprus? They threaten Athens all the time. They threaten Israel. Why do we stay allies with them? Recently, Abber Bjan, a Turkspeaking people in the country of Al Azerban went into into the Nagorno car uh corridor and they just e they ethnically cleansed 120,000 Armenians. Some of it been had been there since medieval times. What was weird about it was it almost to the day was simultaneously to October 7. Did Mahmud Khalil and the Colombian protesters say, "We want a moment of silence because our Turkish Muslim friends have gone into another country and ethnically cleansed 120,000 people."

[00:05:28]No, we didn't hear a word. If you want a more direct comparison, after the 67 war and the wars that followed, the Arab nations ethnically cleansed 900,000 Jews from Egypt, from the Gulf States, from Jordan, from Syria, from Iraq.

[00:05:48]There's almost no there's a few, maybe 20,000 in other Muslim countries, but there's almost none in the Arab world today. They were all ethnically cleansed. Did Israel do that? Well, when Israel was formed in 1948, there was about 800,000 Arabs that fled. 150,000 stayed in Israel.

[00:06:09]Stayed in Israel. Today, that population is increased 14 times greater. There are 2.1 million Arab citizens of Israel. And yet Israel is called an ethnic cleanser and a police state when the Arab world surrounding an ethnically cleansed almost a million Jews.

[00:06:32]Sometimes the Europeans are very angry.

[00:06:35]The French have been very vocal. Do we remember what uh France did in Chad for almost 50 years currently? The people of Chad are rediscovering their national identity and they're very anti-French.

[00:06:48]We helped the French. We gave them logistical support, reconnaissance, etc. logistics to go in and stop Islamicist in Chad. But uh when they were at the early part of the 20th century around 1917, they massacred 400 uh Islamic scholars. They call it the cuckoo massacre. That's for blowblow or cut cut.

[00:07:13]And they didn't just massacre them. The French beheaded 400 400 Islamic scholars. Does anybody talk about that today? No. Almost none. Nobody talks about it. So, what I'm getting at is selectivity. Now, Miss Ilan Omar, our representative, has been very critical.

[00:07:31]She's called Israel an illegitimate entity. She has a map where it doesn't even appear in her office. She said it's the Benjamin's baby about Netanyahu and his supposed moneyed interest that influenced the United States.

[00:07:45]her family. Her father was a colonel in Sead Berry's dict Marxist dictatorship in Somalia. He waged a genocidal campaign against an entire tribe of Somali. He may have killed 150 to 200,000 people, ethnically cleansed them. And most of the Somali who fled fled as supporters of Barry's uh Marxist dictatorship and who had an alliance with the United States. So they fled to the west. So we don't know the exact numbers, but there's a sizable percentage of the Somali community in the United States that were elites, as was Ilan Omar's family and directly involved with that illegitimate dictatorial Marxist government that waged ethnic cleansing.

[00:08:34]Let people who were without sin throw them first stone.

[00:08:39]Zoran Mandami is very critical of Israel. can't seem to have an appointee that doesn't have an anti-semitic past.

[00:08:46]He talks about uh interlopers and his supporters say that Israel is a settler colonial power.

[00:08:55]There's a 3,500year continuum of Jews in the Holy Land of Israel.

[00:09:02]It's not true of Indians in Uganda.

[00:09:04]Mandami's family came as I guess he would use the term settler colonialist into Uganda. They make up 1% 1% of the Ugandan population. That would be I guess he would call that the 1enters or the wealthy foreigners. 1% of Uganda's present population and they control or they're responsible for about 65% of their wealth. The wealthiest person in Uganda is a billionaire who of Indian descent. That's and I guess Mr. uh Mandami or his father and mother didn't want to stay there anymore. They came to America and they're very critical of Israel as somehow illegitimate in the Middle East. It has a lot more historical claim to Israel than Indian immigrants do to basically running the economic structure of Uganda, which I there's no criticism of that. But my point is the hypocrisy is shocking. So when you want to know what an anti-semite is, it's an anti-semite is someone who fixate on Israel when there's an whole continuum, a whole spectrum of ethnic cleansing, massacring, killing, and I'll leave you with this final example.

[00:10:15]why our campuses erupted erupted over uh the Israeli incursion into Gaza and no one said to the Israelis uh we have a better plan for you to get back the hostages and punish the Hamas people.

[00:10:32]Nobody gave them what were they supposed to do? Go and say to the Hamas people, would you please come and give yourself up and we won't go into Gaza? No. The people in Gaza cheered them on even though there was a labyrinth of tunnels underneath their schools, mosque, and hospitals. So, it was inevitable that civilians by intent were going to die.

[00:10:49]And a Hamas person admitted that, one of their leaders.

[00:10:52]But while this was all going on in our campus, our professors, our Middle Eastern studies programs were very, very angry. There were 40,000 Muslim, mostly Muslim, Iranians, that were butchered by the current Iranian government. We weren't in there at all.

[00:11:09]We hadn't gone in there. We hadn't start bombing. Last summer was ancient history. We just hit a nuclear facility.

[00:11:15]But these people were butchered by their own country. And guess what? There was not a peep, not a word, not anything from the American left is so critical of Israel. Not a word. And finally, it wasn't just that there wasn't a word about U. Israel. Uh, excuse me. I'm just going to cut that. Finally, it wasn't that there wasn't just a word of outrage about the 40,000 uh Iranians that were slaughtered. There was criticism of the United States for trying to hurt, disarm, isolate, bankrupt the government that killed the 40,000.

[00:11:52]But no, not a word from our American left. All they had contempt for was one tiny country of 10 12 million. So if you want to know what an anti-semonite it is, it's select se selective outrage and hypocrisy. Thank you very much, Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal.

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