What remained of the bodies of 32-year-old Shiri Bibas, her 4-year-old son Ariel and her 9-month-old baby boy Kfir were returned to Israel last week. Autopsies showed that they had been brutally murdered by Hamas and Islamic Jihad after they were kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023, and dragged, terrified, into Gaza. Hamas, which held the two Bibas boys for a few weeks before murdering them, “did not shoot the two young boys,” reported an Israel Defense Forces spokesman grimly, “they killed them with their bare hands. Afterward, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities.”

Posters of the Bibas family and of some 250 others taken hostage on Oct. 7, over and above the 1,200 Israelis slaughtered that day, were spat on and ripped down in communities across America by self-professed “progressives.” It’s been observed that posters seeking information about lost dogs are respected; posters of kidnapped Israeli hostages chained, caged and starved in Gazan tunnels by killers pledging the annihilation of Israelis were desecrated.

The Oct. 7 massacre and its aftermath have exposed two disturbing elephants in the room. One is the inarguable genocidal bent of significant segments of Gaza’s population, fostered by decades of jihadist indoctrination and the glorification of killing Jews. The terrible takeaway of too many sadistic celebrations of the murder of Israelis is that there’s a grave problem in Gaza. And it is one that won’t be cured by yet again pouring dollars into the Strip that will be deployed yet again for murder.

The other elephant is this: the American left’s whitewashing — and defense — of the slaughter of Jews on Oct. 7 evidences a depravity that won’t be forgotten and a moral stain unlikely to fade.

While fragments of pulverized Israelis, the ashes of innocents burned alive and the bodies of raped and mutilated festival-goers were still being identified, those who’d spent a lifetime blaming Israelis just for existing were exulting in the massacre — and blaming Israel for it. On Oct. 8, 2023, Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad publicly praised the previous day’s slaughter, calling it “astounding,” “awesome” and “incredible.” He’s been supported by hordes of Columbia faculty and students. After Massad was cleared by the university to teach a course on Zionism, one adjunct professor there resigned, noting that having Massad teach a course on Jews’ longing for refuge in their historic homeland was “akin to having a white nationalist teach about the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and the struggle for Black equality, having a climate denier teach about the impact of global warming or a misogynist teach about feminism.”

But Massad is no outlier, and neither is Columbia. They are emblematic of the embrace of the massacre of Israelis fashionable throughout American academia. At Cornell, Associate Professor Russell Rickford cheered the slaughter. “For the first time in years! It was exhilarating!” he told a rally, adding that it was “energizing.” Before night fell on Oct. 7, 34 Harvard student organizations served notice that they were down with the day’s mass killings, proclaiming that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

A progressive nonprofit, the Center for Constitutional Rights, praised Hamas as “Palestinian resistance fighters,” who “lawfully carr(ied) out attacks on military targets,” blaming Israel for the bloodbath that day. Democratic Socialists of America: the same. The message at dozens of rallies across the United States: ditto. A speaker told a Washington, D.C. rally, “Make no mistake, we are in celebration.” At a Philadelphia rally it was, “What happened was freedom fighters fighting for freedom.”

While Hamas held 250 souls hostage, its enablers have spent the last 16 months engaged in some hostage-taking of their own. Some Democratic politicians, petrified of being stalked, heckled and primaried by the “We are Hamas!” crowd, have invariably found ways of blaming Israel for the Gaza war rather than laying the blame where even a kindergartner knew it belonged. It is one of the reasons why so many Democrats have grown disgusted by their own party.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad and their legions of members and supporters in Gaza have hands soaked in blood. That’s for sure. But there are plenty here in America who coddled them, “contextualized” them and found ways to blame their victims. Theirs will forever be a legacy of shame.