Though the stories emerging from Israel since early Saturday morning regarding the brutal attack launched by Hamas have been horrific, one bright spot has been the response of some prominent voices on the left speaking up and voicing their condemnation of the barbarity and their unwavering support for the people of Israel. We've witnessed several examples of prominent leaders and spokespeople – even some celebrities — who normally hew to far-left narratives nevertheless breaking ranks with those on the far left who contend that the actions of Hamas are justified in some fashion. 

Among those is Anti-Defamation League Director Jonathan Greenblatt, who blasted MSNBC on Monday, as detailed by Bob Hoge. 

Anti-Defamation League director Jonathan Greenblatt got right to the point on Monday when he was live on air with Jonathan Lemire on the show "Morning Joe":

While I am sad and trying to cope, I’ll be honest: I am angry. I am angry with the world that allowed the dehumanization of Israelis and sanitized the terrorism of Hamas. I must say I love this show, and I love this network, but I’ve got to ask, who’s writing the scripts?

Greenblatt was back on MSNBC Tuesday morning, this time joining "Morning Joe" to further discuss the attack, characterizing what happened Saturday as "a massacre, a slaughter." 

Joining him was founder of The Free Press, Bari Weiss, who powerfully and unflinchingly detailed some of the atrocities visited upon the Israeli people by Hamas, while hosts Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and their panel sat in stunned silence. 

Our founder, @bariweiss, on @morning_joe sets the record straight on the Israel massacre. “The Nazis tried to hide their war crimes. Hamas is livestreaming theirs.” pic.twitter.com/7iDFVz4Vr5

— The Free Press (@TheFP) October 10, 2023

Here is what Weiss shared, though I recommend watching the video as well. The reverence displayed by Scarborough, Brzezinski, and the other panelists, along with the emotional reaction of Greenblatt as Weiss spelled out the realities, speaks volumes. 

This is the biggest massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. But unlike the Holocaust, in which the Germans tried to hide their war crimes — it took the Allies, remember, years to uncover all that the Nazis did — here, we have people streaming it, on real-time, on TikTok, on live stream, and on Instagram. A message just went out to parents all over the State of Israel begging them to delete the apps from their children's phones because Hamas has warned that it is going to livestream the execution of hostages, and they don't want their children seeing it. 

I want to tell you just a few stories of some of the people that I've been speaking to in Israel — people who are desperate for their family members to come home. I spoke yesterday morning to Shaked Haran. Shaked is a young mother of two; she's eight months pregnant with her third child. On Saturday morning, she got a WhatsApp message from her father...on Kibbutz Be'eri. They said that they were in trouble, and they said that they loved her. This woman has 10 members of her family currently missing: her father, her mother, her sister, her brother-in-law, three children — three children under the age of 10 are missing. The reason they know that they have not been killed is a friend of the father's kept calling his phone, hundreds and hundreds of times. At some point, a voice picks up, in Arabic, and shouts: "Hostage! Hostage! Gaza — Gilad Shalit!" And people will remember that Gilad Shalit is the Israeli prisoner — the soldier that was held for more than four or five years, and released in exchange for a thousand prisoners, which gives you a sense of how Israel thinks of the importance of a single life. 

Another mother I spoke to — she asked that she remain anonymous because she is so scared that if her name is in public, it will make the lives of her children, who are held hostage, even worse. She was on the phone with her boys, age 12 and 16, as they hid in a safe room on another kibbutz at the south — a few kilometers from Gaza — and she heard her youngest child, 12 years old, begging not to be taken, because he said that he is too young. And she wants the world to know that this is not about an occupation — Israel does not occupy Gaza. It has not occupied Gaza since it pulled out almost a decade ago — ruled by Hamas. She said, "These are just teenagers, like anyone's teenagers. I am just a mother, like any mother who's watching this." 

I want to tell you about another person: Hersh Goldberg Polin. He sent a text message to his parents at 8:00 a.m., on Saturday morning, that said: "I love you, and I'm sorry." And they haven't heard from him since. They brought a toothbrush and his hair and his pillow to the police station in the hopes that they might find him. He was at the music festival like so many others — like Amit Tal. 

Someone on my team spoke to Amit Tal yesterday. He hid in a grapefruit grove for hours from the terrorists, and he dug a hole to shove his feet into the earth because he was scared that they would see his bright shoes. He describes what he saw as a slaughterhouse — that him and his friends were like sheep to be slaughtered. 

We now know that more than 250 bodies have been recovered from that music festival. The terrorists, who filmed themselves, came on paragliders with automatic rifles to slaughter and maim and mutilate as many people as possible. Women were raped at that music festival next to the dead bodies of their friends. 

The woman whose story I began with, Shaked Haran, 10 percent of that kibbutz where her family members were taken from — 10 percent, it is the literal meaning of the word "decimated" — were slaughtered. More than 100 bodies have been recovered from that kibbutz. 

I want to emphasize what Jonathan was saying before: This is not a situation with two sides, with militants versus an army. This — the two sides in what just happened over the past 72 hours — is the side of rapist, barbaric people, who we are now learning beheaded babies — beheaded babies  — versus innocent people. That is what is going on here. And anyone who is found cheering, celebrating in the streets of London or Paris or Berlin or New York or Sydney, where they are screaming: "Gas the Jews!" They are not cheering for the liberation of the Palestinian people in Gaza, who languish under the jackboot of Hamas. They are cheering for barbarism and bloodshed. And we should be absolutely clear about what is going on here. 

She's right: We should be absolutely clear about what is going on here. And if hearing the stories of those who've suffered from this attack — who are still suffering from it — doesn't bring absolute clarity, then likely nothing will.