Ivo Welch: updated 2025
How can the otherwise presumably smart people in the progressive momenent be so mind-bogglingly stupid? Just step back and ask yourself (as also Thomas Friedman often asks): "What would your worst enemy want you to do?" The Ku Klux Klan (and Donald Trump) could not possibly have thought of a more effective false-flag operation than what progressives are performing for the public every day now without prompting (though with surreptitious fanning from foreign actors).
Racial and gender diversity, equity, and justice are perfectly justified. Let's say that it goes even further and anti-racism, affirmative action, and other progressive causes are also justified. Alas, when progressives imagine that their vocal priggish demands only promote their stated objectives, they seem to forget that Whites (especially in rural areas far beyond their few select progressive city echo chambers) are also listening to their rhetoric. And not only do they vote, but they are also still in the majority. What good can possibly come from emphasizing tribal differences? One shouldn't pick a fight with a knife if the other party still has a gun.
Instead, all of us should emphasize commonalities — such as the fact that poor people of all colors and backgrounds can be disadvantaged; and, further, that we are all in the same boat competing with other countries for our economic survival, and with anti-democratic anti-liberal countries for our political survival.
Unfortunately, our progresssive and populist stupidities have set back many a good cause by decades, and this also has dire consequences for universities and enlightened democracies more broadly.
I wrote the above before Trump's reelection of Nov 9, 2025. It couldn't have been more prescient. We need to stop rampant DEI, racialization, and genderization. We need to make sure that when there is a racist or misogynistic incident, we appropriately clamp down on it. Diversity is great --- and I mean in all respects, not just the one in the liberal monoculture that is tolerating no dissent, and not even centrist views. Institutional DEI has been all too often the opposite of what it often has claimed to be.
What good can a sit-in on a campus do? Divestments of university endowments could not possibly make any difference.
Why don't we instead try to organize humanitarian help for the poor Palestinian civilians suffering in Gaza1? And if not our own money, we could even ask endowments to channel the thus-foregone returns directly to the population? (What did donors want?) And why don't we also help the millions more poor civilians in Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Myanmar, Venezuela, and North Korea, while we are at it, too. They also deserve our attention, they also very much need help, and humanitarian aid could also save their lives. The situations of innocent civilians caught in conflicts is heart-breaking.
Hamas is a murderous medieval Islamic terror organization: anti-modern, anti-feminist, anti-LBTQ, anti-diverse, Sharia-based, anti-secular, anti-Christian/Jewish/Bhuddist/Hindu. They don't even hide it. Read their charter. Ask what they do in practice to theists, and critics. Their leader, Yahya Sinwar, is reported to have personally killed not only suspected collaborators but also apostates. Ask them what they aspire to. Salman Rushdie considers them to be like the Taliban. The G'd of Hamas is definitely neither progressive nor tolerant of progressives.
I hope the university protesters' goal is not to extend Hamas' rule from the river to the sea — although such an outcome would practically ensure that the Jews would suffer the same fate as the Yazidis did under the equivalent ISIS. The Christians might merely suffer the same fate as other Christians in the Middle East — being driven out. And the Palestinians, whom Hamas does not represent, would end up like Afghanis and Iranians: happy under the freedoms granted by Mullahs.
The situation in Gaza is terrible. It is unjust to the civilian victims. It is murderous. Israel needs to do more for the civilian population. Food and medicines for innocent civiliarns should be a top priority. Israel has allowed too many civilian casualties when bombing terrorists --- though, of course, this is exactly what the terrorists want and part of why they embed themselves among civilians.
I also don't understand why we cannot have a camp where we evacuate women, children, and vetted men to, leaving Hamas to be eradicated in its tunnels. A camp isn't great, of course --- but it would be better than living in the desolate landscape of Gaza with fear of further strikes. It's where I would want to be if I were a Gaza resident.
We need better alternatives than what we have. The Westbank is indeed defacto an Apartheid state. There is a good reason for this: the alternative are daily suicide bombings, the kinds of which we had during the Intifadahs before Israel built the wall. Nevertheless, this state of affairs is despicable all around, most of all for the Palestinians. It goes against everything secular humanism stands for.
We need better alternatives than what we have. I hate Israel's government and its settlers. Vote Netanyahu out of office ASAP and evict the settlers from the Westbank! And prosecute them if they terrorize the Palestinians, just as we would prosecute Palestinians if they terrorized Jews.
We need better alternatives than what we have. Abba Eban famously quipped: The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. After a bit of reflection, it should become clear to everyone that better alternatives is only one possible way forward. The Palestinians --- perhaps the Israeli Palestinians that can vote in Knesset elections --- need to offer the Jewish population a better and more righteous peaceful alternative. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas are not modern secular liberal non-corrupt better alternatives. Palestinians need a Palestinian Nelson Mandela that gives the other side hope for a peaceful better alternative.
Of course, Israeli settlers, right wingers, and Natanyahu would hate and never accept this, but there are still large swathes of secular Israelis (perhaps only for a few more decades) that would love to see and vote for a better alternative. Over the decades, a separate state could even morph into a European Union type entity, in which neither Jews nor Palestinians would fear each other, they could buy land whereever they wished, and they could move at their own discretion to whereever they want to be. And hopefully the result will be one in which both groups will mix for a more lively and richer culture.
Does Hamas have the right to do what it did on Oct 7 and repeat it, as they stated they would? Does Israel have a right to prevent "righteous" repeats? I would say that Israel even has a duty to prevent this.
Are we willing to win a war against evil? Does the inevitable killing of innocent bystanders — which Hamas seeks out — mean we have no choice but to give in?
What better choices do Israelis have now? 60% of Israel's population descended from Jews expelled from their Arab country homelands, and another 20% are Muslim Arabs. (Western Jews are a minority.) Should they live under a Syrian-, Afghan-, Iranian-, Sudanese-, Egyptian- or Lebanese-inspired system?
I sometimes wonder who the protesters consider to be the lesser evil: Hamas or Israel?
I strongly dislike the current Israeli government --- always have. But now its war conduct seems atrocious from my vantage point, too.
I support calls for an independent investigation into Israel's targeting, especially but not only with respect to the ambulance convoy. Israel has every right in my mind to go after legitimate targets (and it will kill innocents at times, too). However, Israel has no right to avoid accountability and war crime prosecutions for those who commit them. It is no excuse if Hamas commits war crimes, either. Israel is not Hamas and must never stoop to that low a level.
My heart goes out to the poor people of Gaza. They don't deserve what's happening.
1: The 1/3 civilian casualty rate is lower than it has been in other recent wars. This is cold comfort to the innocent victims.