Hi! I think the media has inflated the degree to which the left has defended Hamas’ massacre or deemed it to be legitimate resistance. I think there were isolated pockets - wrong and repugnant as it is. There was a piece in the Nation rebutting that take on DSA’s March. I sincerely think most of the left was aiming to articulate that Hamas’ rage was a grotesque expression of otherwise legitimate resistance after decades of blockade and occupation. That Hamas’ attack can’t be understood (not justified) without reference to post-Oslo history.
That said, I do think that I was one of those who did make the initial profound mistake of jumping from the massacre to denouncing Israel because I was so afraid of precisely this ethnic cleansing taking place. I did not fully register the horror that took place … I’m glad people called me out on that. Very glad.
I imagine I wasn’t the only one who jumped too quickly - but I don’t think that was primarily because people defended what Hamas did, but because they knew the conditions out of which it arose and which would only deepen.
Thank you, Rebecca, for taking the time to read and respond to my piece. I agree that that reflexive, uncritical celebration of Hamas as a “resistance movement” was expressed by only a subset of the Left. And, as we know, the Left is not and has never been a homogenous political tendency and has always contained infantile and authoritarian elements that hunger for unambiguous villains and heroes. Nevertheless, that subset is real, vocal, and audible well beyond their numbers. And, as you note, we are all subject to those momentary regressions under conditions of trauma. It remains a responsibility for the rest of us to confront those tendencies in ourselves and others and offer up a genuinely emancipatory vision, which means, at minimum, a multi-ethnic democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Part of what I wanted to emphasize in this article is that whether the exterminationist Jihadis are Jewish or Islamic, civilians in Israel and Gaza are nothing but blithely sacrificed chess pieces in a holy war for ethnic purity and territorial dominance. It is horrifying to see Netanyahu’s genocidal regime give Hamas the “clash of civilizations" they have long craved. It has been equally disgusting to witness the Biden administration's pearl-clutching complicity in that – mouthing empty words about bombing more nicely and giving the Israeli Right the means to carry out their "final solution" to the Palestinian problem.
2. What % of lefties do you think are in the category you describe?
3. Let's imagine that we are able to articulate policy for the current situation in Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Russia, and China. Your move.
1. To add to the madness, the Substack software won't allow me to correct the misplaced apostrophe as it appears on Facebook, only here.
2. No way for me to know. But they are certainly an audible plurality.
3. Glad I don't have that job. But my intuition is that what might be regarded as the most idealistic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be the most practical one -- a Marshall Plan in which there are negotiations for contiguous territory that would comprise a Palestinian state and internationally supervised democratic elections. That would be accompanied by Palestinian-led process akin to de-nazification in Gaza to counter generations of anti-semitic propaganda and early jihadi "education." Will that happen? Highly unlikely.
Hi! I think the media has inflated the degree to which the left has defended Hamas’ massacre or deemed it to be legitimate resistance. I think there were isolated pockets - wrong and repugnant as it is. There was a piece in the Nation rebutting that take on DSA’s March. I sincerely think most of the left was aiming to articulate that Hamas’ rage was a grotesque expression of otherwise legitimate resistance after decades of blockade and occupation. That Hamas’ attack can’t be understood (not justified) without reference to post-Oslo history.
That said, I do think that I was one of those who did make the initial profound mistake of jumping from the massacre to denouncing Israel because I was so afraid of precisely this ethnic cleansing taking place. I did not fully register the horror that took place … I’m glad people called me out on that. Very glad.
I imagine I wasn’t the only one who jumped too quickly - but I don’t think that was primarily because people defended what Hamas did, but because they knew the conditions out of which it arose and which would only deepen.
Thank you, Rebecca, for taking the time to read and respond to my piece. I agree that that reflexive, uncritical celebration of Hamas as a “resistance movement” was expressed by only a subset of the Left. And, as we know, the Left is not and has never been a homogenous political tendency and has always contained infantile and authoritarian elements that hunger for unambiguous villains and heroes. Nevertheless, that subset is real, vocal, and audible well beyond their numbers. And, as you note, we are all subject to those momentary regressions under conditions of trauma. It remains a responsibility for the rest of us to confront those tendencies in ourselves and others and offer up a genuinely emancipatory vision, which means, at minimum, a multi-ethnic democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Part of what I wanted to emphasize in this article is that whether the exterminationist Jihadis are Jewish or Islamic, civilians in Israel and Gaza are nothing but blithely sacrificed chess pieces in a holy war for ethnic purity and territorial dominance. It is horrifying to see Netanyahu’s genocidal regime give Hamas the “clash of civilizations" they have long craved. It has been equally disgusting to witness the Biden administration's pearl-clutching complicity in that – mouthing empty words about bombing more nicely and giving the Israeli Right the means to carry out their "final solution" to the Palestinian problem.
Hi, Stephen -
1. Isn't it Hamas', rather than Hama's?
2. What % of lefties do you think are in the category you describe?
3. Let's imagine that we are able to articulate policy for the current situation in Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Russia, and China. Your move.
1. To add to the madness, the Substack software won't allow me to correct the misplaced apostrophe as it appears on Facebook, only here.
2. No way for me to know. But they are certainly an audible plurality.
3. Glad I don't have that job. But my intuition is that what might be regarded as the most idealistic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be the most practical one -- a Marshall Plan in which there are negotiations for contiguous territory that would comprise a Palestinian state and internationally supervised democratic elections. That would be accompanied by Palestinian-led process akin to de-nazification in Gaza to counter generations of anti-semitic propaganda and early jihadi "education." Will that happen? Highly unlikely.
IMHO the fact that we all discuss these conflicts = we are groping toward decent policy. And thank you.