A prominent member of our state Legislature sounds like the antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-American “squad” of far-left congressional members.

While we often hear blatantly antisemitic talk from Democratic U.S. Reps. Rashida Talib, Ilhan Omar and other acolytes of New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Colorado has state Rep. Iman Jodeh accusing Israel of committing “genocide.”

The first Palestinian-American and Muslim elected to state or federal office in Colorado, Jodeh defended the terrorists in an interview with Axios Denver. She declared the United States and President Joe Biden as complicit in the “massacre” of at least 10,000 in the Gaza Strip.

Whatever rationale she has for these accusations, we’d like to remind her, and any others with this bizarre view, that Hamas – the elected government of Gaza – last month waged unprovoked attacks on innocent men, women and children. Israel is exercising its right under international law to pursue the terrorists who are responsible.

Those who cannot cope with the gruesome truth, understandably, should read this no further. Hamas beheaded babies with knives. The terrorists brutally raped and gang raped women and girls and dragged them through the streets like trophies. They laughed and smirked while shooting children and babies sleeping in their beds.

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No territorial grievance could possibly justify these acts, but Hamas promises more of the same. These terrorists don’t care about their lives or those of the Palestinians they govern and use as human shields.

Unless one thinks it is OK to laugh and smirk while gratuitously killing innocents, there can be no civilized defense of Hamas. There is no moral equivalence between the Israeli Defense Force and these terrorists.

Jodeh is merely the latest to defend Hamas as if its actions were justified. Legions of faux intellectual America-loathing academics throughout Colorado and the United States sit in their ivory towers and tell students they are smart to oppose their country’s top Middle East ally and embrace barbarism.

Coloradans should always tolerate the free exchange of conflicting ideas, no matter how heinous and ignorant a message might be.

Hamas, of course, doesn’t believe in the free speech Americans and Israelis fight and die to preserve – the exact same free speech that allows tens of thousands of students, faculty and a handful of politicians to denounce the United States and elevate an enemy that openly pledges to kill all Christians and Jews.

Jodeh is right. We have another genocide. It’s the latest in a series of historical massacres of Jews – the most persecuted minority in human history.

Palestinians and Jews deserve to live in peace. World leaders long have worked toward a two-state solution that might achieve and sustain coexistence. Progress toward this vision has never been greater than in the days leading up to the gratuitous genocide of Jews by Hamas in October.

While we fight and die for free speech in the United States – and would do so for Jodeh – people with her view are not fit for public office in an enlightened state. They have no appropriate place in academies of higher education, polluting young minds with ignorance disguised as high-minded intellectualism.

Rational people don’t want deadly, unprovoked attacks on Jews, Palestinians or anyone else. They don’t want war. The day we will see world peace is the day the civilized world shows savages they get nothing for unprovoked attacks – nothing other than global opposition.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board