The Only Road to Peace for Israel and the Gaza Strip - "The root cause of the long and unending conflict between Israel and the Palestinians (if one leaves aside the ur-cause, namely the irrational, atavistic Jew-hatred that has infected the souls of uncounted millions over the centuries) is not the wobbly commitment to the peace process – it is the peace process itself. The “war never solves anything” clique are speaking plain nonsense. This is not opinion; history provides objective verification. While it is true that many wars result in stalemate, status quo ante bellum or partial victory by one side that leaves the underlying issues unresolved, history is replete with instances where disputes were settled, for better or worse, through armed conflict. The U.S. Revolutionary War and Civil War are two clear examples. The Second World War, however, provides the most recent and powerful attestation of the “war never solves anything” claim’s ultimate vacuity... What all-too many well-meaning people do not understand about the ongoing conflict between Israelis and those who govern the Palestinian Arabs is that – as with Nazi Germany – the main issue in dispute is irreconcilable and can never be resolved through negotiation. A good portion of Israelis have understood this for years, decades even, but have been forced to go along with the untenable narrative to appease the United Nations, Israel’s trading partners, the big European countries and Israel’s main sponsor and protector, the United States. In addition, Israel’s left – which dominates the bureaucracy, courts, academia, arts, entertainment, and the media – largely believes the narrative of appeasement. But even amidst Israel’s costly, decades-long efforts in that direction, world opinion – including in the U.S. – has been growing increasingly negative toward the Jewish state. And world opinion has always been vitally important to Israel... It is the greatest civilian death toll in Israel’s 75-year history and the largest mass-murder of Jews since the Holocaust. The appalling depravity and barbarity of the Hamas attackers is unfathomable on many levels, yet on another level was foreseeable and explicable. The uncontrolled rage against Jews is manifest in Hamas’s own Charter of 1988, a hate-filled screed wherein the group’s nature and founding goals are made plain: a fundamentalist Islamist movement dedicated not to negotiate a peace or merely achieve a state, but to destroy Israel as a Jewish state and replace it with a “Palestinian” state governed by Islamic law, after expelling Jews from their ancient homeland... To repeat: the goal of terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad (to name a few) is not Palestinian independence within acceptable borders, but the eradication of Israel as a Jewish state – followed by the pursuit of Jews wherever they might be found worldwide. Nothing that Israel or Jews can do would appease these impulses. The goal of Israel, by contrast, is to survive as a Jewish state. If the Arab world – Palestinians in particular – simply left Israel alone, there would be peace. There is no viable compromise between these two positions, no middle ground on which a durable peace can be built. Yet the international community continued to indulge the fantasy... It was not supposed to be this way. On September 13, 2005, Israel completed its eviction from the Gaza Strip of more than 9,000 Israeli citizens and ended its direct rule of the 365-square-kilometre, impoverished wedge bounded by Israel, the Mediterranean Sea and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, then home to about 1 million Palestinians. IDF soldiers forcibly removed the Jewish residents after 38 years of Israeli presence. As the Jerusalem Post memorialized 16 years later, “The disengagement plan was put forward by then prime minister Ariel Sharon to ‘lead to a better security, political, economic and demographic situation,’ according to the text of the plan. Sharon hoped that the plan would reduce friction with the growing Palestinian population in the Strip.”... In extending the olive branch of peace, Sharon hoped, better relations might evolve. There were immediate signs that it might all be in vain. Hundreds of the Jewish settlers’ state-of-the-art greenhouses, which had previously generated some $200 million per year in export earnings and were left behind intact, were promptly destroyed by rampaging Palestinians – who also defiled and destroyed the area’s synagogues. The next year, Hamas won an election over Fatah (the main faction in the Palestine Liberation Organization), then began murdering its defeated rivals, throwing dozens of Fatah officials (as well as homosexuals) off rooftops. Hamas has governed Gaza with an iron fist ever since, illustrating the cynical saying, “One man, one vote, one time.” Tweet Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza was followed by dozens of terror attacks and no fewer than five major confrontations with Hamas. Israel has spent nearly two decades building ever-more-elaborate and costly defensive systems... With each new Hamas attack, Israel refrained – largely in response to international pressure – from taking the necessary measures to destroy its enemy. Each time, the terrorist regime was left to rebuild its capacity to indulge its lust for Jewish blood... Hamas and Fatah have had multiple opportunities to achieve a peace that would include one or even two Palestinian states, international recognition, voluminous aid and the growing prosperity that would come from trading with a flourishing Israel that is only too eager for a normal life. They have spurned or sabotaged all such offers, most notably the Oslo Accords of 1993. Until and unless those who seek the elimination of Jews are themselves eliminated, the so-called “cycle of violence” will continue, with greater intensity and suffering for Israelis and innocent Palestinians, plus the potential to escalate into a wider regional conflict... much of the Israeli left has been behaving as if it wanted to tear down the precariously balanced country. The left’s overall aims have been twofold: to erase all signs of public religious Jewish behaviour and to preserve the ultra-liberal Supreme Court of Israel’s unusually extensive powers, particularly that of nullifying any piece of legislation its justices disapprove of... The Israeli judiciary’s power is unique in the Western world... The high court’s steady arrogation of power has enabled it to, for example, demand that a government spend more money on social welfare, cancel major contracts for natural gas, or order the prime minister to fire any minister who happens to be the subject of a criminal inquiry. Right-leaning politicians have routinely come under such investigations while their left-leaning opponents are curiously spared these ordeals."
Meme - "Born too early to see space battles
Born too late to see phalanx formations
Born just in time to see whatever this is *Hamas motorised paraglider*"
UPenn president launches action plan to fight ‘evil’ antisemitism after facing donor backlash - "Private-equity billionaire Marc Rowan has led a campaign calling for Magill to step down after barely a year on the job. Rowan, “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf, former US Ambassador Jon Huntsman, hedge fund billionaire Cliff Asness and other prominent alumni have halted their donations to UPenn. “The engagement of Jewish faculty, students, staff and alumni has been an important part of the success of Penn as a leading University,” Magill said. “To see their sense of belonging shaken by hurt and fear – that is intolerable to me. It is also galvanizing.” However, there are signs that Magill will continue to face pressure from donors. Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management leading the donor backlash, signaled he is not impressed by the new action plan. Rowan told CNN in a statement on Wednesday afternoon that protection from racism is “the bare minimum.” “Without both a change in the culture that allowed antisemitism to take root and addressing the plunge in Jewish matriculation, none of this matters,” Rowan said... It’s not clear that the new steps will be enough to halt the exodus of donors."
Terry Glavin: A dim hope amid the unfathomable horror of the Israel-Hamas war - "Hamas has now agreed to allow more than 500 foreign nationals and dual citizens to leave Gaza along with an unspecified number of the sick and injured by way of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. That’s some small bit of good news... just why “the conflict” was allowed to fester and metastasize is a story that’s not so straightforward. It involves the cruel obstinacy of Arab police states, the Iranian regime’s determination to wipe Israel from the map, a deep cynicism among right-wing Israeli politicians, and a Euro-American political culture that has failed to bring its immense resources to the cause of Israel-Palestinian peace. The most successful mobilizations in the Western world since the Oct. 7 pogrom have been grotesque celebrations of the massacres. The lumpen sloganeering at pro-Hamas rallies, the hounding of Jews in the streets and on campus and the ubiquitous high-society justifications of “decolonialism” by any barbarism necessary — none of this has anything to do with the security and well-being of the Palestinian people. But that’s the “pro-Palestinian” movement for you, and it has never been pro-Palestinian... the activism that calls itself anti-Zionist has been allowed to stand in the way and suck all the oxygen out of every room where a genuinely pro-Palestine and pro-peace movement could have flourished. In the liberal democracies, the pitiless glorification of the Palestinian “resistance” has required a smothering of any effective alternative movement that might have assisted Israelis and Palestinians in the work of building a sovereign and democratic Palestinian republic alongside Israel... In 2010, its “ Gaza flotilla ” stunt with the MV Mavi Marmara “humanitarian aid” hoax left nine so-called peace activists dead and provided no relief to the people of Gaza. Sponsored by the Foundation for Human Rights and Humanitarian Relief, the Free Gaza Movement was openly affiliated with Hamas and enjoyed a partnership with the suicide-bombing advocate Yusuf al-Qaradawi. In its “ Global March to Jerusalem ” of 2012, posh anti-Zionists from Vancouver to Istanbul joined hands with the Khomeinist regime in Tehran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. If there is one barely discernible glimmer of hope that might emerge from the catastrophe enveloping Gaza at the moment, it is not just that Hamas will be smashed and irreparably ruined. It is that those of us in the privileged “West” might have a good long look at what we have allowed to happen to ourselves, and that the so-called pro-Palestinian activists (not really pro-Palestinian at all) who have been showing up so prominently in the news pages will be at last quarantined, expelled and purged from every public institution, every private corporation, every university faculty and every trade union where they have been permitted to flourish. It’s a dim hope, but it’s all we’ve got to go on right now."
Why would Israel stop foreigners from leaving Gaza? Monsters!
Mike Fegelman: 'Globalize the intefadeh' campaign paved way for Dagestani Jew hunt - "In the days following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, in Sydney, Australia, a group of anti-Israel protesters chanted “gas the Jews” and “f–k the Jews” outside the Sydney Opera House, leaving little room for uncertainty about their meaning. In Milan, Italy, anti-Israel demonstrators shouted “open the borders to us, so we can kill the Zionists.” In Berlin, an anti-Israel demonstration featured harrowing scenes of protesters chanting “Death to the Jews! Death to Israel!” In Calgary, anti-Israel activists held signs calling for Jews to go to Auschwitz , an unmistakable call for Jews to be burned in ovens again. In Vancouver, anti-Israel activists lauded the “amazing, brilliant offensive” waged by Hamas on Oct. 7. In Winnipeg, police believe the recent shooting of a home in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood may have been a hate crime. In Kingston, Ont., police contend that a man intentionally drove his truck into a crosswalk, almost hitting participants of the city’s Jewish community rally, a hate-motivated crime. In rallies around the world, including Toronto, anti-Israel demonstrators openly displayed the emblem of Hamas, which is recognized as a terrorist organization by Canada, the United States, the European Union and elsewhere. In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, crowds in New York City gathered to celebrate the massacre, chanting “resistance is justified” and “globalize the intefadeh.”'
Opinion: There’s a smarter way to eliminate Hamas - "To defeat terrorist groups, it is crucial to engage in long campaigns of selective pressure, over years, not simply a month (or two, or three) of heavy ground operations, and to combine military operations with political solutions from early on. Indeed, the very effort to finish off the terrorists in just a month or two militarily with little idea of the political outcome — as Israel appears to be doing now — is what ends up producing more terrorists than it kills. The only way to create lasting damage to terrorists is to combine, typically in a long campaign of years, sustained selective attacks against identified terrorists with political operations that drive wedges between the terrorists and the local populations from which they come. Israel is drawing comparisons with the defeat of ISIS, but it is important to remember that Muslim ground forces made an enormous difference by applying military pressure against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, over years, in ways that did not galvanize the local population to replace them, by allowing the local populations to effectively govern the area cleansed of terrorists. The campaign that defeated ISIS joined military and political operations together practically from the beginning."
Xerxes on X - "“Hamas and Hezbollah are social movements that are progressive and are part of the Global Left." Some of the western left really wants to align themselves with the same terrorists who want to throw them off a roof when all is said and done."
Gad Saad on X - "Judith Butler is the perfect exemplar of a parasitized mind that has promulgated endless idea pathogens. She is anti-science, anti-reason, anti-logic. She is the poster child of academic rot. She has contributed nothing to knowledge."
Some liberals claim only "fringe random" members of the left are pro hamas. Even if we ignore Jeremy Corbyn, Judith Butler is a revered figure on the left
Richard Hanania on X - "Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky was caught on tape admitting that he illegally discriminates against whites in faculty hiring. Now, he says as a 70 year-old Jewish man, he's shocked at how anti-Semitic campus radicals are. Who would've thought that people at Berkeley would hate a group that is light skinned and economically successful? They were only supposed to hate the other whites! Nothing does more to increase anti-Semitism than people like this."
Kelden Formosa on X - "Dr. Knight - the woman celebrating massacres of Jews in this clip - is an American immigrant who received of tens of thousands of Canadian taxpayer dollars to fund her Ph.D. Her dissertation focused on internalizing decolonization, especially in urban contexts."
Thread by @EzraMoGee on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Starting a thread for my normal friends who don't experience my feed. You've been completely scammed about "open air prisons" + concentration camps See below for what life was like in Gaza, starting with a luxury car dealership that opened Aug 2023 in Gaza City (h/t @imshin)
Brunch on the Titanic Rooftop in Southern Gaza overlooking the ocean
The Blanco Beach private Beach Resort in Gaza
State of the Art Virtual Reality club for kids in Gaza City
Nu Level Rooftop Restaurant on a Saturday in 2023 in Gaza City
Al Qadi Sweets luxury candy store in Gaza City
Cedar restaurant in Gaza City 2023
Capital Mall Shopping Center in Gaza
Friends Club in Gaza, one of **multiple** equestrian academies on the strip.
White House Bridal Salon, opened in 2020:
Gazan family, out shopping at a Mall March 2023
Girls day out at a Gazan beachfront resort
Gaza's famous Az-Zawiyeh Market August 2022
The Asdaa City Water Park in southern Gaza
Every Thursday night, DJ parties at the C House Milano Beach Resort in Gaza
Tropical Restaurant in southern Gaza, circa June 2023
Supermarket in Central Gaza Strip June 2022
Taking a break, but could go on forever with more villas, private pools, beachfront resorts, even Gazan Youtubers doing restaurant reviews. Let's be clear: most Gazans live in poverty. But if this is Gaza with Hamas siphoning the vast majority of international "aid" to billionize its top leaders and invest billions into weapony, imagine what it **should** have looked like. Hoping this thread wakes up even 1 thinking person; then it will have been worth it."
Yair Rosenberg on X - "The antisemitic gaslight, in three steps:
"It’s not happening. You're paranoid."
"It's fringe, stop pretending it's significant."
"Well, what did you expect? I may not like it but it's understandable.""
This is really just usual liberal cope: "this is not happening, and it's good that it is"
The law of armed conflict - "'There has been a lot of talk about proportionality in the law on self-defence. I refer to the words that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, used a few days ago on the test of proportionality. It does not mean that the defensive force has to be equal to the force used in the armed attack. Proportionality means that you can use force that is proportionate to the defensive objective, which is to stop, to repel and to prevent further attacks. Israel has described its war aims as the destruction of Hamas’s capability. From a legal perspective, these war aims are consistent with proportionality in the law of self-defence, given what Hamas says and does and what Hamas has done and continues to do. Asking a state that is acting in self-defence to agree to a ceasefire before its lawful defensive objectives have been met is, in effect, asking that state to stop defending itself. For such calls to be reasonable and credible, they must be accompanied by a concrete proposal setting out how Israel’s legitimate defensive goals against Hamas will be met through other means. It is not an answer to say that Israel has to conclude a peace treaty, because Hamas is not interested in a peace treaty. Proportionality also applies in the law that governs the conduct of hostilities, not only in self-defence. The law of armed conflict requires that in every attack posing a risk to civilian life, that risk must not be excessive in relation to the military advantage that is anticipated. That rule does not mean, even when scrupulously observed, that civilians will not tragically lose their lives in an armed conflict. The law of armed conflict, at its best, can mitigate the horrors of war but it cannot eliminate them. The great challenge in this conflict is that Hamas is the kind of belligerent that cynically exploits these rules by putting civilians under its control at risk and even using them to seek immunity for its military operations, military equipment and military personnel. An analysis of the application of the rules on proportionality in targeting in this conflict must always begin with this fact... the Government have taken the view that Gaza remains under Israeli occupation, even though Israel pulled out in 2005. The traditional view until 2005 was that occupation required physical presence in the territory. That view is consistent with Article 42 of the Hague regulations of 1907, which states that a territory is occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the occupying power. Again, it is also the view taken by the UK manual of the law of armed conflict, which reflects the UK’s official legal position and states that occupation ceases as soon as the occupying power evacuates the area. The European Court of Human Rights, in its jurisprudence, has also adopted a similar approach to occupation. So I have always been rather baffled by the British Government’s position on this issue, which, as far as I know, has not changed. Yes, it is true that Israel has exercised significant control over the airspace and in the maritime areas, but even as a matter of plain geography it takes two—Israel and Egypt—to control the land access points to Gaza. More fundamentally, it is Hamas that has been responsible for the government and administration of Gaza. I appreciate that this is a legal matter on which the Minister may not want to respond immediately but it is an important one, because the legal fiction that Israel was still the occupying power under the laws of armed conflict has been relentlessly exploited by Hamas to blame Israel for everything, while using the effective control that it has over the territory, the people and the resources to wage war. On a final note, I would like to say something briefly on the way in which the war is being reported. When a serious allegation is made, particularly one that could constitute a war crime, the immediate response of the law-abiding belligerent will be to say, “We are investigating”. The non-law-abiding belligerent, by contrast, will forthwith blame the other side and even provide surprisingly precise casualty figures. The duty to investigate is one of the most important ones in armed conflict. What happened in the way in which the strike on the hospital was reported is that the side that professes no interest whatever in complying with the laws of armed conflict was rewarded with the headlines that it was seeking.'"
A new wave of antisemitism threatens to rock an already unstable world - "a Beverly Hills home of a Holocaust survivor was daubed with antisemitic graffiti reading “F— Jews.”... FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Tuesday that antisemitism is reaching “historic levels” in the US. “In fact, our statistics would indicate that for a group that represents only about 2.4% of the American public, they account for something like 60% of all religious-based hate crimes,” Wray said of the Jewish American community in a Senate hearing."
Claire Lehmann on X - "For the past decade I've been told that jokes, words, & scholarly debates need to be suppressed because they may cause 'harm' to vulnerable minorities. Yet when a global minority is butchered, tortured & maimed, those who suppress words shrug as if war crimes are no big deal. Student groups will demand professors be fired for stating that biological sex is binary, while they glorify the butchers who slaughtered a music festival."
This Is What ‘Decolonization’ Looks Like - "Najma Sharif, a writer for Soho House magazine and Teen Vogue, posted on X: “What did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers.” So far, Sharif’s post has been liked 100,000 times and reposted nearly 23,000 times—by, among others, The Washington Post’s global opinions editor, Karen Attiah... All this is a good reminder that when people say something, they often mean it, and we should believe them, or at least take them seriously. Fancy-sounding academic jargon is not a curious intellectual exercise. Words make worlds... “And as you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters,” a speaker at a Democratic Socialists of America rally in New York proclaimed to whoops and laughter. (DSA members include representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar.)... Columbia student groups called the attack on Israel “an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza, who tore through the wall that has been suffocating them.”... “Shabbat shalom and may every colonizer fall everywhere,” wrote Barnaby Raine, who received his PhD in history from Columbia and now teaches at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. The writer Mohammed El-Kurd, the Palestine correspondent for The Nation, stated: “What is happening in occupied Palestine is a response to weeks and months and years of daily military invasions into Palestinian towns, killings of Palestinians, and the very fact that millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are besieged under Israeli blockade.” Rania Khalek, a Lebanese American journalist, wrote: “Watching armed indigenous people take their land back from their colonizers is something else.” Self-styled “journalist” Mariam Barghouti said: “Gaza just broke out of prison.” Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis suggested “the path to ending the tragic loss of innocent lives—both Palestinian and Israeli—begins with one crucial first step: the end of the Israeli occupation and apartheid.” The New York Times decided this was the right moment to run a story headlined “Gaza Has Suffered Under 16-Year Blockade.” The Times was good enough to note that the blockade was made possible not only by Israel but by Egypt, but it failed to mention Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza in 2005; that Palestinians elected Hamas to rule them; that Israelis routinely give Gazans notice before attacking to minimize loss of civilian life; and that one reason (maybe the reason) so many Palestinian children have died during Israeli air strikes is Hamas uses them as human shields—the better to generate sympathetic news coverage. Then, of course, there were the moral relativists, those who provide a patina of legitimacy to the alleged freedom fighters... Meanwhile, the ersatz activists of Hollywood and Silicon Valley are eerily quiet. The people who turned the Ukrainian flag into their avatars, those who worry about misgendering and triggering and safe spaces, those who insist words are violence (those for whom violence is apparently not violence)—they’re busy ignoring all this. We should listen closely to these latter-day Bolsheviks and their many enablers. They are being honest. They are saying exactly what they believe and what they want to see happen. Which means the next time some academic or media personality on cable blithely informs us that Palestine must be liberated “from the river to the sea”—that means from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, i.e., the whole of the Jewish state—we should ask them whether they are okay with all the girls who will be raped, all the old people and toddlers who will be mowed down or strung up. We should ask if they believe that as a “settler-colonialist” entity, the United States awaits a similar fate. What would this death cult do if it could do anything? We have glimpsed that over the past 72 hours. We know what they are capable of, and we know that they have many defenders here at home. Those who imagine themselves fomenting the long-awaited revolution. Those who know that the beloved academic language of decolonization means nothing if you’re unwilling to see it enacted in flesh, and especially blood."
"when arabs say free palestine they don't mean have a Palestinian state that exists alongside israel. they mean a Palestinian state that replaces israel."
Western leftists have lost the plot - "It wasn’t just bloodthirst and occasional antisemitism that disgraced these DSA rallies, though. The advertisements for the rallies also made reference to “75 years of occupation”. Gaza and the West Bank were occupied in 1967, which was 56 years ago. 75 years ago was the creation of the State of Israel, meaning that these leftists are explicitly supporting Hamas’ goal of ethnic cleansing of Israel... the bloodthirst pouring out from leftists in the streets and on the internet suggests that there’s a deep sickness in the Western leftist movement... And especially galling is the fact that many of the same leftists now celebrating Hamas’ massacre as a righteous blow against occupation refuse to give similar support to Ukraine’s defense against Russian occupation. The DSA’s International Committee blames NATO for Russia’s invasion, and advocates a “peace” that would mean parts of Ukraine being permanently ruled by Russia... The communist project of the 20th century failed spectacularly, as did follow-up efforts like Hugo Chavez. Decolonization happened, and the European empires vanished. Democratic socialism succeeded in Europe, but that success — which was ultimately driven by reformist progressive types rather than by revolution — doesn’t seem to admit much room for improvement. Swedish workers are not going to start a revolution, because Swedish social democracy is pretty damn nice. This leaves Western leftists without much to fight for. Sure, some claim that African and Latin American countries are still “colonized” because they don’t get paid enough for their natural resource exports, but very few people actually believe that, and even fewer care enough to march in the street. Nor do most people think that climate change is going to force a dramatic reordering of society — we’re just going to build some solar panels and electric cars and stuff. Most actual imperialism in the world is now done by countries like China and Russia that are opposed to the West (and Western leftists only ever oppose the West). And despite continuous leftist shrieking that neoliberalism has left both the world and America impoverished, on some level everyone knows that global poverty has plunged and that most Americans are materially secure. The Palestinian cause was different"
IDF says Hamas still blocking residents from evacuating from north Gaza - "The military’s top spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, says the Hamas terror group is continuing to prevent Palestinians from evacuating southward from the northern part of the Gaza Strip, after the IDF warned it would soon heavily bomb the area."
Why would Israel do this?
Credulous people will lap up Palestinian deaths and pretend that it's proof that Israel are evil, of course
Hamas Official: We Have Been Planning Invasion For Two Years - ""The Israelis are known to love life. We, on the other hand, sacrifice ourselves. We consider our dead to be martyrs. The thing any Palestinian desires the most is to be martyred for the sake of Allah, defending his land."
Endless "resistance" is less puzzling when you realise it's a people who love death
The Hamas Attack Shows Why Liberals Should Break With the Left - "The first question to ask is whether this “progressive” window-dressing on an attack with clearly genocidal intentions is merely reflexive posturing—or whether it is the real meaning of leftist ideology. Consider Ryna Workman, the president of New York University’s Student Bar Association, who issued a statement condemning Israel’s “settler colonialism” but declared, “I will not condemn Palestinian resistance”—no matter what form it takes. Yet according to the New York Post, “Mx.” Workman “identifies as non-binary,” which I am sure would go over well with the Islamic fanatics of Hamas. This is an old absurdity, summed up by “queer” leftists wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the image of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara—who presided over the persecution of homosexuals as “sexual perverts.” It is this sort of absurdity that causes Levitz to blame the left’s callousness toward mass death on the fake “performance of radicalism.” But what if this is actually the substance of their radicalism? In grappling with this phenomenon, The Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira points to a related example: Ibram X. Kendi’s proposal for a federal “Department of Anti-racism,” staffed by unelected “experts” with veto power over all government actions down to the local level, along with the power to punish elected officials for speech they disapprove of. It’s a resurrection of the Leninist system of totalitarian rule by an elite ideological cadre. In elevating Kendi, and wasting millions of dollars on his academic ventures, liberals were ignoring the actual, totalitarian substance of his ideas. They need to ask whether they’ve done the same thing with the rest of the “intersectional” and “anti-colonial” left—because that is what the “anti-colonialists” are telling them... Now consider the reality of what these Western leftists are endorsing as “decolonization.” As I’ve pointed out before, the Hamas attack on Israel was not directed at any tactical or military aim. Its goal was the death of civilians. It was genocidal in its basic intent. But more than that: Hamas embraces death on principle... To paraphrase an observation from Maya Angelou: When people tell you who they are, believe them. Believe it when Hamas tells you it loves death—but also believe it when its supporters on the Western left endorse that agenda. But why do they endorse it?... What unites the far left and the far right is not merely a philosophy that dehumanizes the enemy, but one that dehumanizes the individual. That’s the hallmark of the reaction to this new war in Israel. Civilians die in every war, and even a legitimate war of self-defense cannot be run so cleanly as to spare all innocents. But what distinguishes the barbarity of Hamas, and of its leftist defenders, is the act of prioritizing and celebrating civilian deaths. This is an outlook that sees the individual life not as something to be preserved and defended, but as something to be sacrificed to a higher cause—and the greater the number of lives sacrificed, the more proof of your devotion to that cause."
