The vile, evil reaction on college campuses and beyond to the Hamas massacres and the ensuing war have been widely reported. Students, professors, university presidents have joined in a cabal of hypocrisy and evil. And they continue to spew sophistry, falsehood, and evil. It's important to underscore that this isn't true of all campuses. It is, however, true of many many campuses. The evil and hypocrisy are self-evident, but it's still very important to define the evil. The Gemara in Sanhedrin presents a din that ein to'anin le-meisis. Unlike other defendants where if beis din sees a tzad zechus that the person himself doesn't put forward, so beis din is to'an, you're not to'an to a meisis. A meisis is someone who incites. In the Torah's example, it's avoda zara, but Rav Moshe Feinstein actually writes based on this Gemara that it's to any averah, it's not limited to avoda zara. Ein to'anin le-meisis. המסית חבר לעבודת כוכבים אין טוענין בית דין בשבילו טענת זכות אלא אם כן טוען הוא.
Says the Gemara: אמר רבי שמואל בר נחמני אמר רבי יונתן מנין שאין טוענין למסית מנחש הקדמוני דאמר רבי שמלאי הרבה טענות היה לו לנחש לטעון ולא טען ומפני מה לא טען לו הקדוש ברוך הוא לפי שלא טען הוא.
It's interesting to see in the peshuto shel mikra. What does the nachash say? What does the nachash say? It's just peshuto shel mikra. What does the nachash say to the Chava? So he begins by אף כי אמר אלהים לא תאכלו מכל עץ הגן. Is it the case that Hakadosh Baruch Hu made all the trees off-limits? After the isha responds, so the nachash says to her לא מות תמותון כי יודע אלהים כי ביום אכלכם ממנו ונפקחו עיניכם והייתם כאלהים יודעי טוב ורע
end quote. That's the extent of what the Torah records from what the nachash said. The nachash never explicitly tells Chava to eat. He makes it enticing. He makes it appealing. Thereby encouraging her, but he never directly tells her 'you know, you should eat this'. And he's successful in his depiction: ותרא האשה כי טוב העץ למאכל וכו. But he isn't explicit. He makes the evil of violating devar Hashem, he makes it appealing. He makes it enticing. And that has a din meisis, because of its anticipated potential effect and influence. When people, as has happened and continues to happen on many, not all, campuses, when they exonerate and justify Hamas's atrocities, so they provide them with a moral cover which enables and empowers them to commit rachmana litzlan further atrocities. They generate support for Hamas Yimach Shmam and on the other hand pressure on Medinat Yisrael not to respond as forcefully as it should which endangers the lives of Chayalei Tzahal. The evil on these campuses and beyond, it's not limited to these campuses, is the extreme evil of Hasasa. It's the meisis and thereby they're complicit, complicit in the evil of Hamas. Even if it were the case that there's nothing we could do to peacefully respond to this evil, it's important to recognize evil for what it is, to know it for what it is, even if it were true that there was nothing that we could peacefully do to respond. What not to do? What not to do is to counter-demonstrate. That's counterproductive and potentially dangerous. What not to do? Engage in direct exchange or debate even if virtual and not in the form of counter-protests. Debating evil gives it extra attention and it puts it on equal footing with good as two sides of a debate. What to do? So obviously the type of evil that we're speaking of now can and should only be countered by peaceful means, no other means, only peaceful means. We can Be'ezrat Hashem peacefully after first ensuring that we're very well informed be active in the marketplace of ideas. Turning to whatever media we're comfortable with we should dispel lies and distortions about Israel and expose the monstrous evil which is Hamas. We should provide moral clarity. Everyone needs to judge for himself what his kochos and skill set allow him to contribute. Who's our audience? Sadly the vicious anti-Semites, and they're not only anti-Semites, they're anti-civilization, they're anti-humanity, campus cabals are not interested in the truth. But within society there are people of conscience who are open to truth. They're our audience. We should provide them with truth. We should eloquently and compellingly provide them with moral clarity and in so doing Be'ezrat Hashem we do what we can to counter the evil of the Hasasa.