Winter for Jews and Israel!
Madison’s Democratic Socialists, the party of Comrade John Nichols and his idol, Bernie Sanders, today announced their policy on the Middle East: they’re siding with Hamas against Israel.
According to Madison WI’s so-called Democratic Socialists, Israel is guilty of genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, Islamophobia, oppression, occupation, and colonization. So is the United States of America guilty. In its 350 words, the DSA communiqué devotes not a syllable of condemnation directed at Hamas, not a whisper of the murders of 1,400 innocents, zip on the impoverishment and imprisonment of their fellow Palestinians.
“We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine, indigenous and colonized people everywhere, and all those here in Madison and around the world who are struggling for their liberation.”
Of radical Islam’s attacks on 9/11? America is again guilty.
“We remember the devastating results of Islamophobia and dehumanization in the wake of the attacks on September 11th, and are distraught by the militaristic and genocidal rhetoric that we are seeing yet again from our country’s political leaders and in the news media. Social media is awash with this as well, as false claims spread even more quickly and easily.”
“False claims”? Like the Hamas claim that Israel bombed that Gaza hospital. (One way you know it was Hamas and not Israel is that the missile hit a hospital. Hamas war rooms are located IN hospitals!)
To cleanse the palate, the Werkes prescribes a little Simon Sebag Montefiore. Read his entire piece, if you can, in The Atlantic magazine.
‘If this is not a hate crime, what is?‘
I always wondered about the leftist intellectuals who supported Stalin, and those aristocratic sympathizers and peace activists who excused Hitler. Today’s Hamas apologists and atrocity-deniers, with their robotic denunciations of “settler-colonialism,” belong to the same tradition but worse: They have abundant evidence of the slaughter of old people, teenagers, and children, but unlike those fools of the 1930s, who slowly came around to the truth, they have not changed their views an iota.
The lack of decency and respect for human life is astonishing: Almost instantly after the Hamas attack, a legion of people emerged who downplayed the slaughter, or denied actual atrocities had even happened, as if Hamas had just carried out a traditional military operation against soldiers.
October 7 deniers, like Holocaust deniers, exist in an especially dark place.
This ideology, powerful in the academy but long overdue for serious challenge, is a toxic, historically nonsensical mix of Marxist theory, Soviet propaganda, and traditional anti-Semitism from the Middle Ages and the 19th century. But its current engine is the new identity analysis, which sees history through a concept of race that derives from the American experience. The argument is that it is almost impossible for the “oppressed” to be themselves racist, just as it is impossible for an “oppressor” to be the subject of racism.
Jews therefore cannot suffer racism, because they are regarded as “white” and “privileged”;
In 2007, Hamas seized power, killing its Fatah rivals in a short civil war. Hamas set up a one-party state that crushes Palestinian opposition within its territory, bans same-sex relationships, represses women, and openly espouses the killing of all Jews.
— Simon Sebag Montefiore, ‘Dangerous and False“
‘The use of human shields is immoral’
→ Bibi Netanyahu: “Hamas murdered children in front of their parents, murdered parents in front of their children, burned people alive, raped women, beheaded men, tortured Holocaust survivors … Victory over these enemies begins with moral clarity … It means making the moral distinction between the deliberate murder of the innocents and the unintentional casualties that accompany every legitimate war, even the most just war. … Hamas continues to use the basements of hospital as their command posts … mosques as fortified weapons depots.”
Blaska’s Bottom Line goes to Mr. Montefiore: “Very strange company for leftists.”
Who in Madison WI is “struggling for their liberation”?
(According to DSA, it’s the coffee pourers at Starbucks! Starbucks Workers United plans a labor strike on Red Cup Day, November 16. Democrat Socialists of America announced they stand with them in Solidarity! Along with Hamas, of course.)
48 responses to “Socialist springtime for Hamas”
[…] This post originally appeared at https://davidblaska.com/2023/10/30/socialist-springtime-for-hamas/ […]
“‘The use of human shields is immoral’”
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The Gotch
We can add another nickname for Progressives: Holocaust Deniers. These are the same people who claim climate urgency, equity and inclusion, reparations, white supremacy and on and on. Never have a group of idiots taken themselves off the board so thoroughly. It will be (sadly) amusing to see how they respond to this blog
“It will be (sadly) amusing to see how they respond to this blog”
No sadly, here.
Funniest thing, none of the usual suspects answered the bell on this.
The Gotch
I’m disappointed, but not surprised, that a reasonable outlook on this terrible situation isn’t often found. More than one thing can be true at once, and criticism of a government is not criticism of a people. We can critique the French government without being labeled anti-French, after all.
If Kooter was looking for me here I am. I’m not particularly interested in commenting much on this topic because it has so much history that it’s not very productive to have internet conversations on. Terrible choices made on all sides over decades and decades. If 2 wrongs don’t make a right, hundreds of wrongs certainly don’t. It’s simple minded to “blame” any single event, decision, or group of people.
But I’ll give you this opinion, since clearly you’re searching for a debate partner: I wish that the supporters of the establishment of Israel way-back-when would have given their own land for the project. I’m sure all the current supporters would be happy to donate their homes and land.
Debate what exactly? Once again your circumstantial reasoning leads nowhere. What is your point exactly other than to demonstrate you have no moral compass. We’ve already established you’re racist. What next, reparations? You are the poster child for the progressive movement.
Someone who argued that people of color are inherently flawed is saying I’m a racist.
Then saying I have no moral compass, but without any reasoning.
Lamenting that contrasting viewpoints are missing, then act like you’re not looking for a debate.
Debate what, you say? Exactly.
Violence is wrong. The Israeli government and Hamas have inflicted a lot of violence.
“Check out the history of the CIA. Is it really that easy to see who’s evil? Because our media sure does act selective when framing it, heavily dependent on the race of the victims.”
Good idea. The next time we are discussing the CIA and whether they are good or evil, we’ll delve into that. Today the issue is Hamas, and it’s really not that complicated.
Who oppresses more Palestinians than Hamas?
Who oppresses more French than the French government? Who oppresses more Russians than the Russian government. Who oppresses more Americans than the US government?
Touché
Dumbass equivalence. You’ve just equated paying taxes to starvation, human shield hostage taking and murder. Did democrats or republicans murder their predecessors like Hamas did to Fatah?
You really think the extent of US oppression is limited to paying taxes? You are as dim as they come. True Republican: only taxes are wrong.
“Who oppresses more Americans than the US government?”
You mean it’s NOT White Supremacy and RAYcism most foul…
The Gotch
Cosseted Madison leftists need to be “liberated” from their own asininity. Given the nightmare of the Israeli/Hamas war, how dare they claim to be “struggling”? Poor, put upon Starbucks baristas. In my youth I poured quite a few cups of coffee and made lots of malts working at Rennebohm’s lunch counters. I seem to have survived without trauma.
You know how you can tell someone is writing a screed these days? They leap to use a word that attempts to shut down any opposing viewpoint. What’s the word?
Denier
Stating again – what Hamas did was an abomination. Hamas’s usage of its own people during wartime? Ditto.
Israel, specifically Netanyahu and the Likud Party, directly nurtured and supported Hamas as a bulwark against the Fatah party. As such, they bear responsibility for the deaths of their own people, and Palestinians.
How was it possible for 1,000 Hamas soldiers to mass up on a border installation that could detect a mouse?
Taking one side or the other on this one is simplistic at best.
Knee-jerk reactions only feed the Beast.
How many have to die before the Beast is satiated?
It’s deniers and apologists all the way down.
Sure sounds like you are blaming Israel, Michael.
“…Netanyahu and the Likud Party, directly nurtured and supported Hamas as a bulwark against the Fatah party. As such, they bear responsibility for the deaths of their own people, and Palestinians.
How was it possible for 1,000 Hamas soldiers to mass up on a border installation that could detect a mouse?
Taking one side or the other on this one is simplistic at best.
Knee-jerk reactions only feed the Beast.
How many have to die before the Beast is satiated?”
You sir, are in need of professional help.
Do you care to provide substantive criticism of my points? Ad hominems are really boring.
Okay, I’ll play Captain Obvious to your ludicrous suggestion that Likud started this and your moral equivalence of Hamas and Israel.
Perhaps you missed that Hamas didn’t “mass 1,000 soldiers” on a border. They invaded from land sea and air in a coordinated, well-planned massacre with a side order of hostage taking. Your response? It was Likud’s fault, and maybe they allowed it to happen.
“Taking one side or the other is simplistic at best.”
Why? Because it’s too complicated to make a moral judgement based on the facts? It IS simple, just not simplistic. You don’t pick the side of evil, and it’s plain to see who the evil parties are. They are the ones who murder, torture and rape, then run and hide behind their wives and children, forbidding them to seek safety from an attack that they have been warned about. Unlike Hamas, Israel warns about attacks to prevent civilian casualties. Hamas gathers their civilians so they can increase casualties of women and children. Then they lie about it, inflating the numbers to gain sympathy from useful idiots. Which side to pick? Easy.
A knee jerk reaction is reflexive. You can’t really help yourself from doing it. That is NOT what is happening here. The invasion of Gaza is a rational decision made about a group who is intractable in their belief that Israel must be annihilated. It’s not a matter of how many have to die, it’s a matter of WHO has to die, and that who is every single member of Hamas.
Thank you Patrick, no we have something substantive to discuss. I’ll start by providing references that I had provided a couple of blog posts ago:
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he [Netanhayu]. told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
“You know Hamas, if you look at the history, you’ll find out that Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat… (Rep. Ron Paul, 2011)
Interested in learning more? Here’s a link to a Jan 24,2009 WSJ article (paywalled), How Israel helped spawn Hamas:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847
Netanyahu is unambiguous in his support of Hamas. There are other references if you need them.
The Iron Dome is said to be able to detect the movement of a mouse. It is reasonable to ask why the Hamas buildup went undetected.
Netanyahu is extremely unpopular with a large segment of the Israeli people, particularly with his attempted soft coup of the judiciary. Wag the Dog is a well-established political technique. The question needs to be asked.
Quoting again from my previous post on what the hard right thinks of the Palestinians:
here’s a quote from a Netanyahu aligned former Minister of Defense:
“Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there. They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists,”
Describing the children and mothers of your enemies as snakes that deserve to die and have their houses demolished is inhumane, by definition.
Please re-read what I wrote. I didn’t say Likud started it. Likud, quoting Netanyahu, fostered and supported Hamas as a bulwark against the Fatah party.
I utterly disagree that you, or anyone else, know who has to die. That you feel you, and others here and elsewhere, know who does is deeply troubling. I say this because your commentary, and most everyone else here, is completely one-sided. Israel has treated the Palestinians like snakes for 70 years. When you treat human beings like they aren’t, what would you suggest is an appropriate response?
I do not in any way support what Hamas has done. I do believe, like JFK, that we need to understand who we are facing and why they are acting the way they are and then work towards a constructive solution. Even if it were possible, annihilation of Hamas is not a solution. Attempting to do so will ignite a conflagration that could consume the world. Take a look at this video:
https://youtu.be/Do0svkNWif0
just watch the first minute or so. Turkey’s armed forces are far bigger and better equipped than Israel’s. Ditto Egypt and Iran. Are you willing to bet they will sit on the sidelines and watch?
Is moral equivalence the new buzz phrase? It’s getting repeated an awful lot.
The reason “moral equivalence” is being repeated “an awful lot” is because of people like you, Leger. Israel pulled out of Gaza 18 years ago, to the detriment of Jew and Muslim alike.
The Allies in WW2 considered the Japanese and German people responsible for the war. They did not call for a cease fire after Pearl Harbor. They bombed Tokyo and Berlin as the Axis had bombed London. The Union held the South responsible for the insurrection and destroyed its productive capacity in Atlanta, Richmond and on Sherman’s march to the sea.
“The sad fact is that Hamas, or at least its policy toward Jews, is quite popular. Recent polling performed in July 2023 by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy reveals that “57% of Gazans express at least a somewhat positive opinion of Hamas—along with similar percentages of Palestinians in the West Bank (52%) and East Jerusalem (64%).”
“Polling from March 2023 reveals that if elections were held in Gaza between Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority and leader of Fatah, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas head would win 61 percent of the vote to Abbas’s 35 percent.
“A country that commits barbaric acts cannot merely pin such acts, as post–World War II Germans had hoped to do, on a small clique.”
https://www.city-journal.org/article/not-just-hamas
Moral equivalence is being used a lot, not because it is a buzzword, but because it is being practiced by a lot by useful idiots who rationalize the barbarism that is Hamas. Funny that you are befuddled when trying to figure out who are the bad guys.
You can’t separate yourself from Hamas’ atrocities while claiming they have a case to be made. Saying “I don’t support what they did,” doesn’t absolve you from taking their side. as GWB said, “You’re either with us or you’re against us.”
You find it “deeply troubling” that I claim to know who should die? Good, be deeply troubled. Maybe it will cause you to look past your rock-solid conviction that Hamas should be rewarded instead of punished for their crimes. That’s what it was, a crime that intentionally targeted innocents.
You think we should be concerned about Egypt and Turkey? Because they have far larger and better equipped military that Israel? Now, that is willful ignorance at best, and wishful thinking at worst. I wouldn’t make the bet that Isael will destroy Hamas completely, but I’d sure as hell bet they won’t be better off when this is over.
Erdogan is a blowhard by the way. All that bluster if for a domestic audience. He wouldn’t dare attack Israel.
Thank you gentlemen. We obviously see things differently. I have nothing more to offer.
Tru dat
patrickmoloughlin
“it’s plain to see who the evil parties are. They are the ones who murder, torture and rape”
Check out the history of the CIA. Is it really that easy to see who’s evil? Because our media sure does act selective when framing it, heavily dependent on the race of the victims.
“Moral equivalency… I’m not sure that these words mean the same thing to all of us. All I hear is gobble-gook about it.”
Allow me to shed some light on that “gobble-gook.”
Moral equivalence is when one equates things as just another action that produces the same result, without consideration of the context and intent of the two alternatives. it’s like equating the allied bombing of German arm factories to the V2 buzzbombs that Hitler rained down on London for the purpose of killing civilians. Or like equating the 9/11 murders with the bombing of Tora Bora. Or equating the deliberate murder of children by Hamas, to Israel giving warnings to evacuate before they bomb. By the way, when Hamas tells their people to stay instead of leaving, what is that about if not about higher casualties of their own people? It’s like the Highlights puzzles, “Which of these two things are different?”
Oh, great, so now we’re on to “intent”. “Mother of dead baby, it’s not so bad. You see, we didn’t intend to kill your baby”. You should work for the CIA.
Funny how the people with more power are always acting with honor and the people with less power are always acting like savages.
Yeah, you’re probably right Rollie, there is absolutely no difference between beheading a baby and killing a baby by accident. Kind of strange to hear a leftist equate abortion with murder, but hey, I’m sure that’d not what you “intended.” Oh wait! Intent is irrelevant, right? So now you’re pro-life. Weird.
After listening to a man on the Dan O’Donnell show this morning who claims not to be antisemitic but just hates Jews. Accused them of starting WW2, pornography and a holocaust denier and then reading about Prince McCree the 5 year old beaten to death by a 15 and 27 year old in Milwaukee. My question is can our society drop any lower? Can we still be called the Human Race?
First question…yes. The second…no.
That’s called a troll. It’s someone saying outrageous things for political purposes. They don’t believe it, they are playing a role so that O’Donnell can drum up “proof” for whatever lies he’s peddling. I don’t believe this is uncommon in the talk radio circuit.
Rollie: you are a racist because you look at everything through a racial lens. I’ve never once said people of color are inferior. People are inferior because they are inferior for many different reasons. You apparently only look at skin color and always fail to take into account the cultural rot that has infected the African-American population. You’ve Lost Your moral compass because you claim moral equivalency between Hamas, the Palestinians and israel. Your argument plays like a broken record that is indeed broken.
Moral equivalency… I’m not sure that these words mean the same thing to all of us. All I hear is gobble-gook about it.
Yes, I think the killing of any child is morally equivalent. I don’t care if it’s at the push of a button in an airplane cockpit or with a person’s bare hands. If you’re interested in ranking the relative evil of child killers feel free, but leave me out of it. After Gaza’s children were murdered, I would have suggested restraint and forgiveness but apparently Hamas had other ideas. Now Israeli children have been murdered, and while I suggest restraint and forgiveness, Israel has other ideas. Backwards and forward in time, repeat repeat repeat. Until the world forces an end to this madness.
Progressivism: where logic goes to die and there is no “right or wrong”.
Omg, I just noticed you wrote a “cultural rot has infected the African-American population”. And you still believe that is not a racist statement. Okey-dokey.
But funny you say I don’t distinguish right from wrong. I say killing is wrong. Others here rank killing according to context, wherein some killings are ok and others are not. Who doesn’t know right from wrong again?
Kooter’s not alone noticing that a “cultural rot has infected the African-American population”; many, Many Many Conservative Blacks (even some not so Conservative) observe and speak out about the very same thing.
Professor Carol Swain Doesn’t Mince Words
Neither does Glenn Loury
To no one’s surprise, it’s received none too well by despicable Lefty…
The Gotch
Look here, I’ve found people of African descent who believe the same racist things I do!
“Look here, I’ve found people of African descent who believe the same racist things I do!”
Oh my! The damning irony through which you cluelessly slogged to type that!
“To no one’s surprise, it’s received none too well by despicable Lefty…”
Priceless!
One more thing.
Hasn’t despicable Lefty told us the benighted that bLack people can’t be RAYcist…?
Why yes…yes…despicable Lefty HAS told us the benighted that bLack people can’t be RAYcist.
Priceless 2.0
The Gotch
Check out what slave owners used to say. “Africans have cultural rot. They’re savages. They’re snakes. They’re not suitable for civilization…” These ideas live on, clearly. And oh boy, if a slave had the audacity to strike back against a “civilized” man…
“These ideas live on, clearly.”
Do tell!
From another blogge:
“According to television advertisers, all black people are happily married (often to a white person!) and living in fabulous houses.
“Black fathers are working from home and taking care of their children.
“Why do these people need reparations or to get into an Ivy league school? They’re already on a gravy train with biscuit wheels”
The Gotch is astounded that rampant White Supremacy and virulent RAYcism most foul, which the talented Rollie sees lurking…welp…everywhere, has allowed this disproportionate opportunity.
It’s almost, like, you know…discriminatory…
Rollie, There you go with that all or none thinking again. You’re more of an idiot than I thought if you don’t think some killings are justified. You’ve essentially Illustrated the point that you cannot distinguish between right and wrong.
For as Christian as Republicans like to pretend to be:
What’s the Christian justification for killing? WWJD?
Rollie @8:45. Show me on the dolly, Rollie, where America oppressed you.
Rollie @ 5:06. Describe the honor of Hamas.
Rollie, I said people are inferior because they’re inferior “for a variety of reasons”, one of which is cultural rot. There are many others that I’ve discussed previously. I’m sorry, didn’t think I’d have to list everything again for you. Please make the leap from literal to general. You’re hiding behind your racism.