António Guterres is missing a good opportunity to keep quiet. He wrote a letter to the UN Security Council President, distributed to all of the Security Council members, a letter that is not really responsible behavior.

The worst part of his letter is his demand for a ceasefire at all cost. He knows full will the meaning of that phrase in the present context—all cost includes the destruction of Israel as a polity, as a society, as a people. Guterres doesn’t care.

Underneath that, he bleats about “reportedly” 15,000 Gazans have been killed in this war, and adds his “reportedly” claim of 40% of those 15,000 being children. Undoubtedly, several thousand Gazans, including children, have been killed. But he chooses not to cite credible sources for those figures, he ignores who has the responsibility for those deaths, and he ignores the inalienable right of the Israelis to defend themselves, to defend their very existence.

Guterres also bleated about hospitals become battle zones and the decreasing supplies of hospital and Gazan necessities.

Guterres has chosen to ignore where the responsibility for this disaster lies. Hamas has repeatedly stated that its goal is the extermination of Israel, and at least one of its leaders has promised repeated October 7s until the goal is achieved—no matter how many Gazans die in the effort.

Guterres has chosen to ignore the basic fact that the vast majority of Gazan casualties—of whatever number—are the direct result of Hamas’ use of Gazans as human shields and Hamas’ use of Gazan residential apartment buildings, schools, those hospitals about which Guterres pretends to worry as rocket launch sites, weapons and ammunition storage sites, and command centers.

Guterres has chosen to ignore that it was Hamas that chose to ignite this war, and that it is Hamas that is creating the humanitarian disaster about which he pretends to care so much with its refusal to let Gazans evacuate combat zones—zones which the Israeli government and the IDF are constantly at pains to announce before hand, at great risk to their own soldiers and at great risk of letting terrorists leave the combat zone along with Gazans.

Guterres’ performance is not well brought-up behavior.

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R, NY) asked a question of three university presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard, Elizabeth Magill of Penn, and Sally Kornbluth of MIT, a simple, straightforward question at last week’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing regarding campus antisemitism:

Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct, yes or no?

Magill’s answer, smirk on her face:

It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.

Gay repeated the claim:

It can be, depending on the context.

Kornbluth tried to dodge the question altogether:

I have not heard calling for the genocide of Jews on our campus.

Stefanik called her on that…misinformation:

But you’ve heard chants for intifada.

Kornbluth’s response:

I’ve heard chants which can be antisemitic depending on the context when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people.

Wednesday after the hearing, Magill attempted to clarify:

In that moment, I was focused on our university’s longstanding policies aligned with the US Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable. I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It’s evil—plain and simple.

A couple of things about that. At the hearing, Magill spoke from what was in her heart. Further, as a talented academic and a university president, words are her stock in trade. She knew exactly what she was saying, she knew exactly what she was focused on in real time—and she focused and said those words deliberately and consciously. This statement, coming as it does later, after the outpouring of opprobrium, can hardly be taken as sincere. All Magill is doing now is covering her academic and political behind.

The other thing is that, in that statement’s second half (not quoted above, but it’s a two-minute video) Magill made the sotto voce admission that calls for Jewish genocide are not against Penn’s current rules. With that tacit admission, she “promised” to work with the Provost to adjust Penn’s rules. Sometime. She was careful to not offer a timeline for this effort, not even a general one, nor did she commit to what those “adjustments” would look like.

One more thing about Stefanik’s question and those presidents’ answers. An obvious follow-up question is “In what context would such calls for the genocide of Jews be acceptable in any legal way?”

Stefanik did put that question to Gay:

What’s the context?

Gay’s answer:

Targeted at an individual[.]

Stefanik followed up on that “individual” evasion, and Gay then refused to answer beyond repeating her claim if targeting an individual. Apparently, at Harvard, calling for the destruction of groups of Jews is acceptable.  One or two at a time, maybe not.

These are three school presidents who need to be fired for cause—not passively allowed to resign—and these are three schools that need to have all Federal funds headed their way canceled until those schools show, over a suitable number years, that they have corrected their behavior.