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Arena's avatar

Everything you say rings true, but I would add a few notes:

What Hamas did (with no small amount of outside support) was not just terrorism. It was specifically and clearly genocide. The ritual slaughter of babies, children, the elderly was an eliminationist act on par with the Holocaust. This was not a political act, but a psychopathic act of unbridled hatred.

The identity politics that drove otherwise bright Harvard students (et al) to reflexively side with genocide is ultimately rooted in Marxism and reflects the Left's success in its long March through institutions.

As for the follow up tidal wave of ignorance and pat phrases about Israel (apartheid state, stolen land, etc.), this reflects the Left's pathological aversion to history. As they say, for the Left the future is always certain, it is just the past that keeps changing.

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Elana Gomel's avatar

The left's betrayal of its supposed principles has deep and dark historical roots. Consider the nauseating story of Gareth Jones who in 1932 reported on the Holodomor (Terror-Famine) in Ukraine and was denounced by the leading progressives of the time, including the NYT Walter Duranty. Of course, the dominant ideologies of the left mutate, from communism to what Yascha defines as "identity synthesis", but the underlying impulse to see the world as black and white, victims and oppressors, remains the same. And this impulse leads to worse cruelty than any greed or corruption. Nothing is as dangerous as a true believer. No matter how many pictures of deliberately murdered children you show, idealists will only see the faces of the "enemy", whether it be the kulaks or the colonialists.

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