Thank you from the bottom of my anxious, broken heart. This is, by far, the most honest assessment of the situation and response. In May of 2021, as the bombs were flying over the remains of my family in Israel, I tried to explain to my fellow American progressives that: with a fully integrated 20% Arab Israeli population and Arab members in seats of power and command; with half the Jews originating not from Europe but from countries in the Middle East (from which they were expelled, after millennia of dhimmitude and pogroms) - Israel was no apartheid state. Gaza and Judea and Samaria have their own governments. The walls went up when land for peace brought the Intifadas. That two state solutions had been repeatedly rejected. My friends would hear none of this. I was ideologically impure, a dreaded Zionist. I tried to explain that I’d heard all of this rhetoric before, as a child in Soviet Kiev, and what this vile propaganda cost my family. Apparatchik style, they repeated their slogans and tried to re-educate me. They were missionaries of a particular type of ideological capture and facts were no match for faith. I’m seeing it all again, but at a far more ugly, more vicious level. Crowds chant ‘gas the Jews’, while the Ivy League crowd explains that antiZionism isn’t antisemitism. Thank you for your courage and clarity.
I am no longer a progressive. No longer a democrat. I have my pious, well educated friends to thank for that. Oh, I also have new friends that don’t demand purity test, or fancy pronouns.
When Obama was first thrust upon the stage at the 2004 Democrat convention (and thrust upon the nation) he famously proclaimed, "I don't see two Americas, I see one America.", he forgot to speak the last part, "I will put an end to that." Lo and behold, his first term wasn't even over yet before he had indeed carved the nation into ideological and cultural halves, a division even worse now than a decade ago.
There is indeed no reaching the other side. Or, rather, the Upside Down.
Thank you! The air has more oxygen here, lol. Maybe your fiends will be hit where they can’t negotiate with pain, and they have their own rude awakenings. I love the saying ‘You can save either your face or your ass’
The problem here is that Hamas uses supposedly civilian buildings/installations (mosques, schools, hospitals etc) as fronts for their military activities. For example , they will put ammunition and weapons in mosques, use hospitals for command and control purposes, and place rocket launchers in civilian neighborhoods.
They hope that either the Israelis won’t attack for fear of civilian casualties, or that if they do attack it will result in tremendous civilian deaths. Either way the Israelis lose....
Mark you cannot excuse what has been going on is Gaza, or the West Bank. It has always been clear to me that Israel does not want a united Palestinian state, and Hamas, and it's behavior guarantees that. Netanyahu cultivates them, supports them, and people have written on this very issue. Gallant and his degrading attitude toward the people of Gaza, stating it's coming to them death to both the young and old, and defining them as animals, and talking genocide, not only in the attacks, but no food, no water. I felt no different about our many middle eastern wars, and I never supported any of them and people like Bush/Cheney, even Obama, Clinton, are people I loathe. It's a good thing that since I was a kid I kept the government separate from it's people. No one supports targeting a civilian population, not Israeli's, not Muslims. Read this article from the Times of Israel. https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
I don’t have time right now to give a lengthy answer to your comment, but I would like to point out that everyone in the west has been propping up Hamas, not just Bibi.
The US government (except under President Trump) has sent Hamas/the Palestinians millions and millions of dollars to try and buy them off.....
I’m quite sure that the EU has sent plenty of money too.
And so has Iran, but for a much darker purpose.
Hamas, and Iran, have been playing the West for suckers..... and have been for years. They take the money and then do what they wanted to do in the first place.
Hamas, while pretending to be open to peace, has committed the largest atrocity against innocent Jews since the Third Reich.
Are the Israelis (and the US) supposed to believe that Hamas will EVER negotiate in good faith?
This is a moving and heart-rending read. The mentality of 'Progressive' demonization of Israel is beyond contemptible.. It's not truly even primarily about a concern for the Palestinian people. The real driver is to signal that your narcissistic little (privileged) wonderful self is on the side of the 'oppressed'. To these people 'oppression' is a shallow abstraction that serves to inflate their personal vanity as one of the good guys. This poisonous vanity has been pouring out of Western academia for decades. I still remember the drug-addled anti-Zionist 'sit-in' at my UK university in 1972.
Thank you for your kindness. I appreciate it immensely. You are absolutely right - it is narcissism, it is shallow fashion, it is signaling to others of your ‘brand’. The Palestinian is just an object, just a vehicle for their self-view as the caring and good. In the end, what I was left with was their tactless, callous and brittle failure of empathy (despite all the posturing about compassion and nuance). The May 2021 Gazan attack revealed their true nature; I’m glad I saw their real faces. I am ashamed I considered them friends but I’m so grateful they are out of my life. They couldn’t abandon their self righteous, dogmatic vanity long enough to even acknowledge a friend’s suffering - there is a Russian saying, ‘don’t talk about rope in a hanged man’s house’.
We are all humans who should care about each other, no matter what!
I tend to be very logical and since I am going to be 71 tomorrow, I have been around long enough to know history and truth.
My Dad fought in WWII and we only found out recently, through a grandson's research, that my Dad helped free Flossenburg Prison Camp.
I can't even imagine what my Father saw as far as the inhumanities against the beautiful Jewish peoples, but it explains his attitude the rest of his life.
Please know that there are still SO many good people in this world.
Thank you, and blessed is the memory of your father. Your words so much to me, to us. Sometimes it’s hard to hear over the shouting, but I’m listening. Thank you.
I don't mean to get all Nietzschean here, or to be glib at all, but there are many different kinds of morality and as for Leftists they have always made it clear that they stand opposed to "bourgeois morality". (This was how the Bolsheviks excused all those human eggs they broke in attempting to make their utopian omelette.)
Left morality is always based on Who/Whom or more simply: Whatever aids the "Revolution" is moral, and whatever hinders it is immoral. And I realize this sounds a bit overheated but it seems clear and undeniable to me at this point: for the permanent Left revolution at this point in its history, anything that attacks and/or injures anything or anyone European is "moral" (that is, justified by historical oppression and the urgent need to fight it), and that very much includes Israel, which they consider an outpost of European colonialism. Leftists don't necessarily hate Jews, they hate Europeans (aka white people), European culture and history (America included) and consider any assault against these things, from massacres to ideological colonization, ipso facto "Moral".
As for the liberal class, they once again play the role of Useful Idiots, and they may have more faith in their sacred creed than even the most fundamentalist member of Hamas. In their fantasy universe anyone from anywhere can be turned into a cosmopolitan humanitarian who waves the Pride flag and loves Taylor Swift if only they get the proper reeducation and have all their wounds tended to by a healing circle of trauma-informed social workers. They simply have no capacity to recognize barbarism and no ability to oppose it.
Both groups are blinded and cossetted by their extreme privilege as being citizens of the richest safest most tolerant countries in history, and are like Richie Riches who hide behind their parents' bodyguards while asking the proles why we all can't just get along. They have no conception of the evils and brutality of life and history because they can't see past their own sanctimony.
"So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot." Orwell
There’s a paternalistic whiff of white savior-ism that keeps them in suicidal denial. Even being shown what the terrorists are, our Ivy League educated betters still stand on their own superior, evolved and oh-so-compassionate understanding.
White Saviorism is the sacred creed shared by both gentry liberals and their more radical children, it is the glue that holds our progressive oligarchy together, and another reason why they can't bring themselves to denounce these acts of barbarism: Thou Shalt Not speak ill of anyone or anything considered Oppressed is their first commandment.
just about all my friends are liberals of one stripe or another and even the smartest think that almost all opposition to their eternal Compassion Crusade is based in bigotry of some kind, and even if met with a cogent argument seek for the bigot beneath (bigotry is the new Satan, always lurking, always present, esp when you least expect it).
no one who imagines themselves on the Right Side of History™ hates themselves, quite the contrary, it's just that in their world (cities, academia, culture industries etc) all their opinions are proper thought and basic etiquette, while all opposing positions are suspicious, possibly blasphemous.
you are either a loyal member of the team or some type of angry benighted bigot: it's the only simple binary they acknowledge.
same boat. Its a pretty simple view. Their views align with the Perceived Wisdom and therefore cannot be questioned. Basically an argument from Authority. The reality is that most of the people I know who feel that way could not find Gaza on the map let alone tell you within a standard deviation of 10 years when Israel was founded and when the 6 day & Yom Kippur wars is irrelevant.
and they find me as a bit of an oddball because I know that stuff.
did anyone ever see the omelet? I just saw the broken eggs.
also - i disagree on one thing. They recognize barbarism. to them its the knuckle dragging/Minivan driving middle class that betrayed them by voting for Trump in 2016. Nothing is worse than those planet destroyers.
Do you leftist Jews now see how utterly foolish you are for supporting and putting faith in the Left? They hate you!! Never made sense to me that a Jew was liberal. Death wish perhaps?
Yes. It took a minute. I was an old school liberal. I was too busy working and building a family and a life to keep up with the ideology. Fortunately, my head popped out of my ass when I saw what was really behind the slogans.
The leftists who support the Muslims against Jews and Christians want to destroy both Judaism and Christianity and to replace the worship of God with the worship of government. The leftist support of Muslims is a means to that end. Christians and Jews worship the same God and are threatened by the same enemies.
I am against Israeli policy as it relates to the Palestinians, however I certainly do no not condone what Hamas did, and little has been said if anything about their actions and what they wrought on those they proclaim to support. I was no less critical of our many Middle Eastern wars, and many of our policies, but I do not hate my fellow Americans, or my country. Do I believe in a change of policy in the US, you bet, but what is wrong with that?
Much of the ignorance on the Left (and America in general) I believe derives from a complete and total lack of any of the history of the region. I'll bet if you asked ten people at random when Jews starting living in Israel, at least nine of them would give you some random date in the Twentieth Century. They don't know that early Zionist settlers purchased the land from Arabs, who over the centuries had allowed the once fertile land to become desert wasteland, and it was the Israelis who were responsible for restoring the land. Nothing was "stolen." Or that Israel established the one and only democracy the region has ever known. They don't know that Israel has been under near constant attack since statehood in 1948 from every one of their neighboring states and that the official position across the Arab world is that Israel has no right to exist in any configuration. Or how the various terror armies which have adopted the wholly contrived identity of "Palestinian" have committed to the murder of every Jew in Israel /by any means necessary/.
Only they know what they believe -- or have been brainwashed to believe by demented sociopaths who pass for college professors these days. And they expect us, the taxpayers, to pick up the tab for the procedure.
This title is perfect, because that’s exactly what this is- a moral test. So many have failed what should be an easy test for any civilized person.
Maya Angelou said “when people show you who they are, believe them”. The progressive left have been showing us who they are for years, but we still couldn’t believe the truth that was in front of our faces. They’ve been excusing if not outright condoning criminal and depraved behavior for a long time.
Now we know that there is no level of depravity that they cannot try to justify. There is no more denying who they are.
I consider myself as being on the left, but not the left of today which is extreme in my opinion. I think you have to realize there are many who define themselves as liberal, as I do, but don't adhere to the so called liberal policies pushed today.
Liberals have been responsible for the decline in our society certainly since at least the 60s. They are responsible for ruining the black family with their social programs as well as the “sexual revolution” which brought us porn at the touch of a button. Nothing collapses society quicker than loose morals. If I were you I’d never admit I was ever a liberal!
Well, let me put it this way, when you talk about liberals or conservatives they come in all shades of grey and some are solely black and white on issues, so put in the former group, where I can even be conservative on any number of issues.
It's really disheartening to see that it's not the murder or oppression many groups object to, it's only WHO is doing the murdering and oppressing. Politics and Ideology over Principles and Ethics.
There’s an old Russian story of the Scorpion & the Frog. The Scorpion asks the Frog to take the Scorpion on its back across the river so it won’t drown. The Frog protests, saying that the Scorpion will sting the Frog & both with die. The Scorpion assures the Frog this will not happen. So the Frog takes Scorpion on its back & starts to swim across the river. Halfway across the Scorpion stings & kills the Frog, then it drowns in the river.
The nature of evil is clear. There can be No 2 State Solution for Israel. They need to deal with the terrorists & then clear out the Palestinian area completely. Ship them all to Iran. Pease comes only when the scorpions no longer live under your armpit. However it happened, it did happen. Leaving a door unlocked is not an invitation to murder. Get them all gone.
You really think Iran would take in 5 million people, mostly Sunni Muslims whom they hate a little bit less than they hate the Jews? Aside from a forced deportation being a crime against humanity...
Since Iran is already shipping arms to the Palestinians, I’m reasonably certain the trade lines exist. This would a return in their trade. When you find a rattle snake inside your house & call the exterminator is forced deportation what you are thinking about? Or getting rid of something you know will kill you. Or you believe that what just happened was not a crime against humanity. Hamas has declared their intention to exterminate all the Jewish people in Israel. It’s past time to pretend they are deserving of international protection. A terrorist nation, which they provably are, does not deserve those protections.
Hamas is perpetrating crimes against humanity as collective punishment against the people in Israel. Do you think the correct response is collective punishment for all people in Gaza and the West Bank? Is it the crime you object to or the perpetrator?
What is your alternative? This massacre cannot be simply ignored. That will inevitably only encourage Hamas to build on their "success".
I object to a philosophy that calls for the killing of others as one of their fundamental beliefs. I don't care about the skin color or tribal affiliation of the person who condones such a philosophy.
Perhaps it's better to treat them (Hamas) as criminals instead of treating them as "enemy combatants" or soldiers and making martyrs left and right. They ought to be arrested and put on trial, or at least they should be put on trial before they are murdered. Most of the war on terror seems to me just stooping pretty close to their level and waging a campaign of mass murder and terror that has very little regard for civilian casualties (aka collateral damage).
I don't really have a good idea but maybe someone smarter should come up with an idea before retrying what has failed in the past. Perhaps a solution that doesn't also magically enrich a small group of people and send the stocks of defense contractors soaring.
I see a ton of apologists here. Brad, this is one time black and white thinking is the right thinking. What happens to these people when they are left to stew, after their losses? They stop believing kill all Jews? They are less angry at the White people? Hamas is to blame for civilian casualties because Hamas uses their own citizens as shields, builds their weaponry under hospitals and people's homes because they know the Western mind is fragile and we don't like to see all of the citizen casualties. At some point, their bluff must be called.
I definitely do not support what Hamas did and I have never been in support of our many 20th century wars, but what do you make of this statement by Netanyahu?
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told Likud Party legislators. Doing so would help prevent the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) from ruling Gaza and giving Palestinians a relatively moderate, unified voice at the negotiating table. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
I wanted to do some research before I answered. It looks like Hamas was voted as leader of Gaza in 2006. They did not want to be in a coalition with the West Bank. So, from what I can gather, there are 2 separate Palestinian groups here. My understanding is this would be like the Confederate states and the Northern States deciding to be broken into 2 regions. In talking about encouraging, say southern states to undo themselves because they support slavery, this is the way Netanyahu was speaking of Hamas controlled territories. Now, I am not an expert on the middle east. I know a little bit about a lot of things. So, this is just my reading of the text.
It is confusing. But it seems multiple entities are using the Palestinians as pawns in a larger game. I mean, why not have Hamas in both Gaza and West Bank? Surely simpler to administer.but no, Hezbollah and Hamas. I kept trying to separate Palestinians from the terrorist overlords. But then, there are these videos of 5 and 4year olds saying to run over or stab Jews is their biggest goal. It is no longer just terrorists and innocent Palestinian civilians. They have been co-opted fully. The Israelis are trying to split hairs in saving the civilians. Is that possible now?
This is what I think many are doing and we want to do this because we want to believe there is no way there aren't innocent people here. I have seen those videos, I know that the Palestinians under Hamas desire nothing more than to die for their cause. They don't want to strike a deal. The only deal they would agree to is for all Jews to be annihilated. There's no bargaining with these people, none of them. Those are just the facts. We won't change them. They will grow up with the same goals. Israel needs to do what must be done quickly and without hesitation so that there is less chance for greater build up. May God have mercy on all our souls and theirs, too.
I'm not sure I believe they didn't see it coming. Or, if they thought it was just a scare? I don't know those answers. I know only that they believe a martyrs death is preferable to allowing the nation of Israel to exist because they themselves said so.
I definitely take Hamas at their word when they say shit like that because it's entirely in keeping with their rotten character. What I have a hard time believing is that the IDF and Mossad can be so incompetent and competent at the same time.
Yes, Hamas is evil. Not only because they massacred Jews in Israel but also because they set into motion events that have resulted in great suffering and death among Palestinians. Hamas hurts people on both sides of the border, most of them as innocent as the readers of this blog.
I agree. i also believe they do this on purpose. Yes it is evil but it is also a strategy. (Accepting evil opens up strategic options.) So the question is why are they doing this?
sadly, it is my opinion that a few more days of bombing will bring back the "moral equivalence" arguments. My prediction is you will start to see a shift on the sunday talk shows (if you watch, I don't.) At that point Israel becomes a pariah, the Saudi deal is dead and Hamas remains the legitimate authority. Talk about breaking some eggs, but that is the omelet they are preparting. IMO.
There is no difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. None at all.
One can be on neither side preferring a two-state solution where both countries maintain their cultural sovereignty and live in peace. It is the murderous Islamic culture that is incompatible with that vision. Israel continue to inflame Arab and Persian insecurities and they respond to that feeling of being disrespected simply by Israel's success, as a call to murder Israeli Jews and wipe them off the map... the same resentment that drove Hitler and the Nazis. It is just antisemitism. The claim that opposition to Zionism and Judaism are somehow separate is the modern lie of the antisemite.
So Israel is left without options except two: to expect a walled-off peace that is backed by aggressive response for Islamic terrorist attacks or allow itself to be wiped out.
Thank you for this. When I try to discuss the situation and issues rationally, i inevitably run into people who seek to appear sophisticated by declaring a moral equivalency, or who skip the equivalency and go straight for "Blame the Jews." This conflict is not religious, it's about tyrants needing to distract their people from the tyrant's own oppression of the lower classers. Something strange happened about 1500-1600 when the most advanced civilization outside Mezoamerica, the Arab world, turned from love of learning toward denying lower-class Arabs literacy and teaching only rote memorization of Koranic verses. The fatalism of Arab Islam, represented by Insh'allah is mostly responsible for the success of Zionism. Jews arrived in what is now Israel and offered to buy land from local landowners, The landowners looked at barren ground and said "Insh'Allah" (if God so wills) the land will be fertile. It was not, and so it can only be that God willed the land to be infertile. They laughed at the Jews who paid good money for worthless land. The Jews were different. They agreed that if God so willed the land would be fertile, but added "and if I irrigate the land and weed the garden and use fertilizer then it will be fertile."
When the common folk looked at the miracle it was easier to believe what their rulers told them, that the land was always fertile and the Jews had stolen it from them than to believe they had been foolish. Thus was born the Arab-Israeli split.
I'm going to recast this post rather than take the time to locate references and risk falling asleep while I tried to type.
There is a "luxury beliefs" factor here. try and "de-colonize" them and see what happens. More to the point when Ackman and some other Wall street CEOs started saying they prefer not to hire people who felt this way, they scurried away like roaches when the light went on. "vive la resistance" until that means I cannot cash in my lottery ticket.
If the leftists want to decolonize something, start with Constantinople. It was the first Christian city in the world and was Christian for like a thousand years. Muslims conquered it by force, enslaved the people, and colonized it.
If the leftists oppose colonialism, why don't they demand that Constantinople (which the colonizers call "Istanbul") be freed from Muslim rule, and the Turkish colonizers killed?
I think all they really demand is that the colonizers feel sorry and apologize for their ancestors misdeeds. You sometimes see it before speeches or presentations "let's first acknowledge we're standing on land stolen from the XZY tribe" (I don't see them returning the land, feels more like a gratuitous victory lap). I also don't see the American lefties leaving the colonies for Europe or wherever their ancestors are from. And from our perspective here in Europe you're welcome to keep them.
Repeating a post - I believe they do this a strategic plan by Hamas. Yes it is evil but it is also a strategy. (Accepting evil opens up strategic options.) So the question is why are they doing this?
sadly, it is my opinion that a few more days of bombing will bring back the "moral equivalence" arguments. My prediction is you will start to see a shift on the sunday talk shows (if you watch, I don't.) At that point Israel becomes a pariah, the Saudi deal is dead and Hamas remains the legitimate authority. Talk about breaking some eggs, but that is the omelet they are preparing. IMO.
You are right and like Bari Weiss’ essay when these people tell you who they are, believe them. Anti-semitism has never gone away and more importantly if these people can so easily dehumanize one group of people, how easy would it be to dehumanize others?
Thank you from the bottom of my anxious, broken heart. This is, by far, the most honest assessment of the situation and response. In May of 2021, as the bombs were flying over the remains of my family in Israel, I tried to explain to my fellow American progressives that: with a fully integrated 20% Arab Israeli population and Arab members in seats of power and command; with half the Jews originating not from Europe but from countries in the Middle East (from which they were expelled, after millennia of dhimmitude and pogroms) - Israel was no apartheid state. Gaza and Judea and Samaria have their own governments. The walls went up when land for peace brought the Intifadas. That two state solutions had been repeatedly rejected. My friends would hear none of this. I was ideologically impure, a dreaded Zionist. I tried to explain that I’d heard all of this rhetoric before, as a child in Soviet Kiev, and what this vile propaganda cost my family. Apparatchik style, they repeated their slogans and tried to re-educate me. They were missionaries of a particular type of ideological capture and facts were no match for faith. I’m seeing it all again, but at a far more ugly, more vicious level. Crowds chant ‘gas the Jews’, while the Ivy League crowd explains that antiZionism isn’t antisemitism. Thank you for your courage and clarity.
I am no longer a progressive. No longer a democrat. I have my pious, well educated friends to thank for that. Oh, I also have new friends that don’t demand purity test, or fancy pronouns.
WELCOME!
I wish I could convince some of my "progressive" friends to wake up....but I've given up.
When Obama was first thrust upon the stage at the 2004 Democrat convention (and thrust upon the nation) he famously proclaimed, "I don't see two Americas, I see one America.", he forgot to speak the last part, "I will put an end to that." Lo and behold, his first term wasn't even over yet before he had indeed carved the nation into ideological and cultural halves, a division even worse now than a decade ago.
There is indeed no reaching the other side. Or, rather, the Upside Down.
Well said. Hard to disagree.
Obama single handedly set back race relations 70 years
Right. As if that wasn't bad enough?
I'm a liberal (not a progressive) and want the same thing. I haven't given up, but then I was always a slow learner.
I would consider myself a classic liberal libertarian.
I am so disappointed in classic liberals. I don't know if TDS infected their thought cages or if they never meant what they said.
I just don't understand how my friends who leaned the same way have drastically changed in the last 5-7 years.
It's bizarre
I believe TDS had an Impact. More so intellectual laziness.
Thank you! The air has more oxygen here, lol. Maybe your fiends will be hit where they can’t negotiate with pain, and they have their own rude awakenings. I love the saying ‘You can save either your face or your ass’
No one is justifying Hamas's action, but I think you have to wake up to this carnage. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-gaza-civilian-buildings-bombed
The problem here is that Hamas uses supposedly civilian buildings/installations (mosques, schools, hospitals etc) as fronts for their military activities. For example , they will put ammunition and weapons in mosques, use hospitals for command and control purposes, and place rocket launchers in civilian neighborhoods.
They hope that either the Israelis won’t attack for fear of civilian casualties, or that if they do attack it will result in tremendous civilian deaths. Either way the Israelis lose....
Mark you cannot excuse what has been going on is Gaza, or the West Bank. It has always been clear to me that Israel does not want a united Palestinian state, and Hamas, and it's behavior guarantees that. Netanyahu cultivates them, supports them, and people have written on this very issue. Gallant and his degrading attitude toward the people of Gaza, stating it's coming to them death to both the young and old, and defining them as animals, and talking genocide, not only in the attacks, but no food, no water. I felt no different about our many middle eastern wars, and I never supported any of them and people like Bush/Cheney, even Obama, Clinton, are people I loathe. It's a good thing that since I was a kid I kept the government separate from it's people. No one supports targeting a civilian population, not Israeli's, not Muslims. Read this article from the Times of Israel. https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
I don’t have time right now to give a lengthy answer to your comment, but I would like to point out that everyone in the west has been propping up Hamas, not just Bibi.
The US government (except under President Trump) has sent Hamas/the Palestinians millions and millions of dollars to try and buy them off.....
I’m quite sure that the EU has sent plenty of money too.
And so has Iran, but for a much darker purpose.
Hamas, and Iran, have been playing the West for suckers..... and have been for years. They take the money and then do what they wanted to do in the first place.
Hamas, while pretending to be open to peace, has committed the largest atrocity against innocent Jews since the Third Reich.
Are the Israelis (and the US) supposed to believe that Hamas will EVER negotiate in good faith?
Neither of those words mean the same today as they did thirty years ago. Hell, even ten years ago.
This is a moving and heart-rending read. The mentality of 'Progressive' demonization of Israel is beyond contemptible.. It's not truly even primarily about a concern for the Palestinian people. The real driver is to signal that your narcissistic little (privileged) wonderful self is on the side of the 'oppressed'. To these people 'oppression' is a shallow abstraction that serves to inflate their personal vanity as one of the good guys. This poisonous vanity has been pouring out of Western academia for decades. I still remember the drug-addled anti-Zionist 'sit-in' at my UK university in 1972.
Thank you for your kindness. I appreciate it immensely. You are absolutely right - it is narcissism, it is shallow fashion, it is signaling to others of your ‘brand’. The Palestinian is just an object, just a vehicle for their self-view as the caring and good. In the end, what I was left with was their tactless, callous and brittle failure of empathy (despite all the posturing about compassion and nuance). The May 2021 Gazan attack revealed their true nature; I’m glad I saw their real faces. I am ashamed I considered them friends but I’m so grateful they are out of my life. They couldn’t abandon their self righteous, dogmatic vanity long enough to even acknowledge a friend’s suffering - there is a Russian saying, ‘don’t talk about rope in a hanged man’s house’.
My heart is also broken.
I am not Jewish, but that should not matter.
We are all humans who should care about each other, no matter what!
I tend to be very logical and since I am going to be 71 tomorrow, I have been around long enough to know history and truth.
My Dad fought in WWII and we only found out recently, through a grandson's research, that my Dad helped free Flossenburg Prison Camp.
I can't even imagine what my Father saw as far as the inhumanities against the beautiful Jewish peoples, but it explains his attitude the rest of his life.
Please know that there are still SO many good people in this world.
Thank you, and blessed is the memory of your father. Your words so much to me, to us. Sometimes it’s hard to hear over the shouting, but I’m listening. Thank you.
I don't mean to get all Nietzschean here, or to be glib at all, but there are many different kinds of morality and as for Leftists they have always made it clear that they stand opposed to "bourgeois morality". (This was how the Bolsheviks excused all those human eggs they broke in attempting to make their utopian omelette.)
Left morality is always based on Who/Whom or more simply: Whatever aids the "Revolution" is moral, and whatever hinders it is immoral. And I realize this sounds a bit overheated but it seems clear and undeniable to me at this point: for the permanent Left revolution at this point in its history, anything that attacks and/or injures anything or anyone European is "moral" (that is, justified by historical oppression and the urgent need to fight it), and that very much includes Israel, which they consider an outpost of European colonialism. Leftists don't necessarily hate Jews, they hate Europeans (aka white people), European culture and history (America included) and consider any assault against these things, from massacres to ideological colonization, ipso facto "Moral".
As for the liberal class, they once again play the role of Useful Idiots, and they may have more faith in their sacred creed than even the most fundamentalist member of Hamas. In their fantasy universe anyone from anywhere can be turned into a cosmopolitan humanitarian who waves the Pride flag and loves Taylor Swift if only they get the proper reeducation and have all their wounds tended to by a healing circle of trauma-informed social workers. They simply have no capacity to recognize barbarism and no ability to oppose it.
Both groups are blinded and cossetted by their extreme privilege as being citizens of the richest safest most tolerant countries in history, and are like Richie Riches who hide behind their parents' bodyguards while asking the proles why we all can't just get along. They have no conception of the evils and brutality of life and history because they can't see past their own sanctimony.
"So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot." Orwell
There’s a paternalistic whiff of white savior-ism that keeps them in suicidal denial. Even being shown what the terrorists are, our Ivy League educated betters still stand on their own superior, evolved and oh-so-compassionate understanding.
White Saviorism is the sacred creed shared by both gentry liberals and their more radical children, it is the glue that holds our progressive oligarchy together, and another reason why they can't bring themselves to denounce these acts of barbarism: Thou Shalt Not speak ill of anyone or anything considered Oppressed is their first commandment.
My question is do they "hate" themselves as well as everything else you mention?
If so, they must have a galactic case of cognitive dissonance.
just about all my friends are liberals of one stripe or another and even the smartest think that almost all opposition to their eternal Compassion Crusade is based in bigotry of some kind, and even if met with a cogent argument seek for the bigot beneath (bigotry is the new Satan, always lurking, always present, esp when you least expect it).
no one who imagines themselves on the Right Side of History™ hates themselves, quite the contrary, it's just that in their world (cities, academia, culture industries etc) all their opinions are proper thought and basic etiquette, while all opposing positions are suspicious, possibly blasphemous.
you are either a loyal member of the team or some type of angry benighted bigot: it's the only simple binary they acknowledge.
Here's a better link:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1RGauE334xI#bottom-sheet
mmm looks delicious!
same boat. Its a pretty simple view. Their views align with the Perceived Wisdom and therefore cannot be questioned. Basically an argument from Authority. The reality is that most of the people I know who feel that way could not find Gaza on the map let alone tell you within a standard deviation of 10 years when Israel was founded and when the 6 day & Yom Kippur wars is irrelevant.
and they find me as a bit of an oddball because I know that stuff.
Hmmm. Lmao, you are hilarious. Makes sense though.
I guess it's just hard for "normal" peeps to understand.
I mean I would probably loathe myself if I were that self-righteous and had to walk that tedious tightrope every day.
This is what I want to say to my "progressive friends" sometimes:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/275927848732842?fs=e&s=9RfQYY&mibextid=gbviqC
Give them a few drinks and see what happens.
Some of the most racist and bigoted things that I’ve ever heard have come from drunk ‘liberals’.
And they will strenuously deny everything the next day....
"just about all my friends are liberals of one stripe or another"....mine too.
did anyone ever see the omelet? I just saw the broken eggs.
also - i disagree on one thing. They recognize barbarism. to them its the knuckle dragging/Minivan driving middle class that betrayed them by voting for Trump in 2016. Nothing is worse than those planet destroyers.
The omlette never manages to materialize, does it?
yeah ikinda stole that from Conquest
Very, very well stated.
Thank you.....
When is conservative media going to start calling these politicians Nazis? The Left is somehow able to completely ignore their own evil.
Many of them aren't ignoring it, they are participating in it.
Do you leftist Jews now see how utterly foolish you are for supporting and putting faith in the Left? They hate you!! Never made sense to me that a Jew was liberal. Death wish perhaps?
Yes. It took a minute. I was an old school liberal. I was too busy working and building a family and a life to keep up with the ideology. Fortunately, my head popped out of my ass when I saw what was really behind the slogans.
The leftists who support the Muslims against Jews and Christians want to destroy both Judaism and Christianity and to replace the worship of God with the worship of government. The leftist support of Muslims is a means to that end. Christians and Jews worship the same God and are threatened by the same enemies.
I am against Israeli policy as it relates to the Palestinians, however I certainly do no not condone what Hamas did, and little has been said if anything about their actions and what they wrought on those they proclaim to support. I was no less critical of our many Middle Eastern wars, and many of our policies, but I do not hate my fellow Americans, or my country. Do I believe in a change of policy in the US, you bet, but what is wrong with that?
Well written, Brad.
Much of the ignorance on the Left (and America in general) I believe derives from a complete and total lack of any of the history of the region. I'll bet if you asked ten people at random when Jews starting living in Israel, at least nine of them would give you some random date in the Twentieth Century. They don't know that early Zionist settlers purchased the land from Arabs, who over the centuries had allowed the once fertile land to become desert wasteland, and it was the Israelis who were responsible for restoring the land. Nothing was "stolen." Or that Israel established the one and only democracy the region has ever known. They don't know that Israel has been under near constant attack since statehood in 1948 from every one of their neighboring states and that the official position across the Arab world is that Israel has no right to exist in any configuration. Or how the various terror armies which have adopted the wholly contrived identity of "Palestinian" have committed to the murder of every Jew in Israel /by any means necessary/.
Only they know what they believe -- or have been brainwashed to believe by demented sociopaths who pass for college professors these days. And they expect us, the taxpayers, to pick up the tab for the procedure.
This title is perfect, because that’s exactly what this is- a moral test. So many have failed what should be an easy test for any civilized person.
Maya Angelou said “when people show you who they are, believe them”. The progressive left have been showing us who they are for years, but we still couldn’t believe the truth that was in front of our faces. They’ve been excusing if not outright condoning criminal and depraved behavior for a long time.
Now we know that there is no level of depravity that they cannot try to justify. There is no more denying who they are.
I consider myself as being on the left, but not the left of today which is extreme in my opinion. I think you have to realize there are many who define themselves as liberal, as I do, but don't adhere to the so called liberal policies pushed today.
Liberals have been responsible for the decline in our society certainly since at least the 60s. They are responsible for ruining the black family with their social programs as well as the “sexual revolution” which brought us porn at the touch of a button. Nothing collapses society quicker than loose morals. If I were you I’d never admit I was ever a liberal!
Well, let me put it this way, when you talk about liberals or conservatives they come in all shades of grey and some are solely black and white on issues, so put in the former group, where I can even be conservative on any number of issues.
It's really disheartening to see that it's not the murder or oppression many groups object to, it's only WHO is doing the murdering and oppressing. Politics and Ideology over Principles and Ethics.
Agreed.
Who/whom
There’s an old Russian story of the Scorpion & the Frog. The Scorpion asks the Frog to take the Scorpion on its back across the river so it won’t drown. The Frog protests, saying that the Scorpion will sting the Frog & both with die. The Scorpion assures the Frog this will not happen. So the Frog takes Scorpion on its back & starts to swim across the river. Halfway across the Scorpion stings & kills the Frog, then it drowns in the river.
The nature of evil is clear. There can be No 2 State Solution for Israel. They need to deal with the terrorists & then clear out the Palestinian area completely. Ship them all to Iran. Pease comes only when the scorpions no longer live under your armpit. However it happened, it did happen. Leaving a door unlocked is not an invitation to murder. Get them all gone.
You really think Iran would take in 5 million people, mostly Sunni Muslims whom they hate a little bit less than they hate the Jews? Aside from a forced deportation being a crime against humanity...
Since Iran is already shipping arms to the Palestinians, I’m reasonably certain the trade lines exist. This would a return in their trade. When you find a rattle snake inside your house & call the exterminator is forced deportation what you are thinking about? Or getting rid of something you know will kill you. Or you believe that what just happened was not a crime against humanity. Hamas has declared their intention to exterminate all the Jewish people in Israel. It’s past time to pretend they are deserving of international protection. A terrorist nation, which they provably are, does not deserve those protections.
Hamas is perpetrating crimes against humanity as collective punishment against the people in Israel. Do you think the correct response is collective punishment for all people in Gaza and the West Bank? Is it the crime you object to or the perpetrator?
What is your alternative? This massacre cannot be simply ignored. That will inevitably only encourage Hamas to build on their "success".
I object to a philosophy that calls for the killing of others as one of their fundamental beliefs. I don't care about the skin color or tribal affiliation of the person who condones such a philosophy.
Perhaps it's better to treat them (Hamas) as criminals instead of treating them as "enemy combatants" or soldiers and making martyrs left and right. They ought to be arrested and put on trial, or at least they should be put on trial before they are murdered. Most of the war on terror seems to me just stooping pretty close to their level and waging a campaign of mass murder and terror that has very little regard for civilian casualties (aka collateral damage).
I don't really have a good idea but maybe someone smarter should come up with an idea before retrying what has failed in the past. Perhaps a solution that doesn't also magically enrich a small group of people and send the stocks of defense contractors soaring.
I see a ton of apologists here. Brad, this is one time black and white thinking is the right thinking. What happens to these people when they are left to stew, after their losses? They stop believing kill all Jews? They are less angry at the White people? Hamas is to blame for civilian casualties because Hamas uses their own citizens as shields, builds their weaponry under hospitals and people's homes because they know the Western mind is fragile and we don't like to see all of the citizen casualties. At some point, their bluff must be called.
I definitely do not support what Hamas did and I have never been in support of our many 20th century wars, but what do you make of this statement by Netanyahu?
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told Likud Party legislators. Doing so would help prevent the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) from ruling Gaza and giving Palestinians a relatively moderate, unified voice at the negotiating table. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
I wanted to do some research before I answered. It looks like Hamas was voted as leader of Gaza in 2006. They did not want to be in a coalition with the West Bank. So, from what I can gather, there are 2 separate Palestinian groups here. My understanding is this would be like the Confederate states and the Northern States deciding to be broken into 2 regions. In talking about encouraging, say southern states to undo themselves because they support slavery, this is the way Netanyahu was speaking of Hamas controlled territories. Now, I am not an expert on the middle east. I know a little bit about a lot of things. So, this is just my reading of the text.
Thanks Brandy for your time. Too many things are too confusing on this whole issue, or the commentary made.
I agree. It's been such a shock to my system, I find myself lost and just reading and reading. I did not see this coming.
It is confusing. But it seems multiple entities are using the Palestinians as pawns in a larger game. I mean, why not have Hamas in both Gaza and West Bank? Surely simpler to administer.but no, Hezbollah and Hamas. I kept trying to separate Palestinians from the terrorist overlords. But then, there are these videos of 5 and 4year olds saying to run over or stab Jews is their biggest goal. It is no longer just terrorists and innocent Palestinian civilians. They have been co-opted fully. The Israelis are trying to split hairs in saving the civilians. Is that possible now?
This is what I think many are doing and we want to do this because we want to believe there is no way there aren't innocent people here. I have seen those videos, I know that the Palestinians under Hamas desire nothing more than to die for their cause. They don't want to strike a deal. The only deal they would agree to is for all Jews to be annihilated. There's no bargaining with these people, none of them. Those are just the facts. We won't change them. They will grow up with the same goals. Israel needs to do what must be done quickly and without hesitation so that there is less chance for greater build up. May God have mercy on all our souls and theirs, too.
Are we supposed to believe the same people who didn't see this attack coming know where the perpetrators are hiding?
I'm not sure I believe they didn't see it coming. Or, if they thought it was just a scare? I don't know those answers. I know only that they believe a martyrs death is preferable to allowing the nation of Israel to exist because they themselves said so.
I definitely take Hamas at their word when they say shit like that because it's entirely in keeping with their rotten character. What I have a hard time believing is that the IDF and Mossad can be so incompetent and competent at the same time.
Yes, Hamas is evil. Not only because they massacred Jews in Israel but also because they set into motion events that have resulted in great suffering and death among Palestinians. Hamas hurts people on both sides of the border, most of them as innocent as the readers of this blog.
I agree. i also believe they do this on purpose. Yes it is evil but it is also a strategy. (Accepting evil opens up strategic options.) So the question is why are they doing this?
sadly, it is my opinion that a few more days of bombing will bring back the "moral equivalence" arguments. My prediction is you will start to see a shift on the sunday talk shows (if you watch, I don't.) At that point Israel becomes a pariah, the Saudi deal is dead and Hamas remains the legitimate authority. Talk about breaking some eggs, but that is the omelet they are preparting. IMO.
There is no difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. None at all.
One can be on neither side preferring a two-state solution where both countries maintain their cultural sovereignty and live in peace. It is the murderous Islamic culture that is incompatible with that vision. Israel continue to inflame Arab and Persian insecurities and they respond to that feeling of being disrespected simply by Israel's success, as a call to murder Israeli Jews and wipe them off the map... the same resentment that drove Hitler and the Nazis. It is just antisemitism. The claim that opposition to Zionism and Judaism are somehow separate is the modern lie of the antisemite.
So Israel is left without options except two: to expect a walled-off peace that is backed by aggressive response for Islamic terrorist attacks or allow itself to be wiped out.
Thank you for this. When I try to discuss the situation and issues rationally, i inevitably run into people who seek to appear sophisticated by declaring a moral equivalency, or who skip the equivalency and go straight for "Blame the Jews." This conflict is not religious, it's about tyrants needing to distract their people from the tyrant's own oppression of the lower classers. Something strange happened about 1500-1600 when the most advanced civilization outside Mezoamerica, the Arab world, turned from love of learning toward denying lower-class Arabs literacy and teaching only rote memorization of Koranic verses. The fatalism of Arab Islam, represented by Insh'allah is mostly responsible for the success of Zionism. Jews arrived in what is now Israel and offered to buy land from local landowners, The landowners looked at barren ground and said "Insh'Allah" (if God so wills) the land will be fertile. It was not, and so it can only be that God willed the land to be infertile. They laughed at the Jews who paid good money for worthless land. The Jews were different. They agreed that if God so willed the land would be fertile, but added "and if I irrigate the land and weed the garden and use fertilizer then it will be fertile."
When the common folk looked at the miracle it was easier to believe what their rulers told them, that the land was always fertile and the Jews had stolen it from them than to believe they had been foolish. Thus was born the Arab-Israeli split.
I'm going to recast this post rather than take the time to locate references and risk falling asleep while I tried to type.
I love this so much. Thank you. Beautiful message.
There is a "luxury beliefs" factor here. try and "de-colonize" them and see what happens. More to the point when Ackman and some other Wall street CEOs started saying they prefer not to hire people who felt this way, they scurried away like roaches when the light went on. "vive la resistance" until that means I cannot cash in my lottery ticket.
Leftists and "muh decolonization".
If the leftists want to decolonize something, start with Constantinople. It was the first Christian city in the world and was Christian for like a thousand years. Muslims conquered it by force, enslaved the people, and colonized it.
If the leftists oppose colonialism, why don't they demand that Constantinople (which the colonizers call "Istanbul") be freed from Muslim rule, and the Turkish colonizers killed?
I think all they really demand is that the colonizers feel sorry and apologize for their ancestors misdeeds. You sometimes see it before speeches or presentations "let's first acknowledge we're standing on land stolen from the XZY tribe" (I don't see them returning the land, feels more like a gratuitous victory lap). I also don't see the American lefties leaving the colonies for Europe or wherever their ancestors are from. And from our perspective here in Europe you're welcome to keep them.
Repeating a post - I believe they do this a strategic plan by Hamas. Yes it is evil but it is also a strategy. (Accepting evil opens up strategic options.) So the question is why are they doing this?
sadly, it is my opinion that a few more days of bombing will bring back the "moral equivalence" arguments. My prediction is you will start to see a shift on the sunday talk shows (if you watch, I don't.) At that point Israel becomes a pariah, the Saudi deal is dead and Hamas remains the legitimate authority. Talk about breaking some eggs, but that is the omelet they are preparing. IMO.
Brad,
You are right and like Bari Weiss’ essay when these people tell you who they are, believe them. Anti-semitism has never gone away and more importantly if these people can so easily dehumanize one group of people, how easy would it be to dehumanize others?