The Great Hamas Unmasking

How a Jewish massacre exposed progressive racism

Hamas has now carried out the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Decent people everywhere were appalled and sickened by the unspeakable horrors, outraged on behalf of Israelis and fearful for the lives of Palestinians. Israel formally declared war for the first time since 1973 and ordered 1 million Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza ahead of an expected ground invasion.

The attack began early Saturday when Hamas fired 3,000 missiles into Israel then broke through the border barrier into the Negev desert. They raced on motorcycles to the kibbutz of Be’eri and went home to home slaughtering whole families including women, children and infants. They reached the Nahal Oz kibbutz and massacred families there. They massacred families at the kibbutzim of Holit and Nir Oz. They massacred families at the moshav of Netiv HaAsara. They killed more than 260 kids at a music festival in Re’im. They abducted 200 people including children. They attacked 70 towns and villages and took more than 1,300 innocent lives.

The Israeli prime minister’s office posted images online of babies burned by Hamas. Israeli network i24NEWS correspondent Nicole Zedeck reported on the horrors at the kibbutz of Kfar Aza:

Some soldiers say they found babies with their heads cut off, entire families gunned down in their beds. About 40 babies and young children have been taken out on gurneys — so far.

Beyond the suffocating cruelty of such evil is the agony of those left behind, such as a father so torn apart by fear for what might be done to his missing daughter that he was relieved to learn she had been killed.

When the news hit, I frantically reached out to loved ones in Israel. Most got back right away and told me they were safe. I breathed a sigh of relief. But that evening, playing with my daughter, I could think of nothing but the people who will never see their kids again. Then one of my beloveds got back to me saying her friend had been taken. Then another friend told me his family member had been at the musical festival and was murdered.

Then came the online videos and images of celebration. Hamas had perpetrated the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and progressives in the West were celebrating. They were not merely protesting for Palestinian liberation, as Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah has dishonestly suggested. They did not celebrate for Gaza while denouncing Hamas atrocities. Nor did they celebrate for Palestinians while condoning the violence with their silence. They specifically celebrated the atrocities.

It was not an isolated incident either. It was not limited, as you might imagine, to the most freakishly extreme Islamist fanatics. The celebrations and festivities took place in city streets and on campus grounds across the United States and in Western cities worldwide. Major progressive organizations participated. The Democratic Socialists of America promoted a rally in Times Square where celebrants held signs saying “Resistance Is Justified—By Any Means Necessary” and one speaker joked about the music festival massacre:

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.

Dozens of the kids at the festival had fled into the open desert where they were hunted down on motorcycle and easily picked off. A group of them found a small concrete shelter where they crammed inside and huddled together in terror, but Hamas found them and threw multiple grenades into the shelter, blowing their limbs off and killing everyone except a few who survived by covering themselves with body parts.

Black Lives Matter Chicago posted a cartoon image of a Hamas hang glider and commented, “That is all that is it!”

Imagine the reaction by BLM activists if a militia of white men slaughtered 1,300 blacks in the United States with the stated goal of lynching every black person in the country, and then people all across the nation marched and sang in celebration waving cartoon images of the killers while black families mourned their murdered mothers and babies.

Do you think BLM would consider the celebrants racist?

The Somali-American writer Najma Sharif mocked people for ever thinking that decolonization would be anything else. Of course Palestinian liberation was going to include the slaughter of innocent people, burning babies and raping girls—what did you think we meant, you sweet summer child?

Karen Attiah, who actually wrote an opinion essay arguing that no one was saying this kind of thing and that it was all being taken out of context, “liked” Sharif’s remark.

American universities became host to some of the most despicable displays. A Harvard student group wrote a letter saying, “the apartheid regime is the only one to blame.” Students at the University of Washington celebrated Palestinian “resistance” while Jewish students at the school tearfully begged Ed Taylor, head of undergraduate academic affairs, “How are you allowing this? They want us dead!”

At the University of California, Los Angeles, students gathered on campus and screamed, “Intifada! Intifada!”

The generous interpretation here is that these UCLA students do not understand that while intifada means ‘resistance,’ it is historically associated with the murder of innocent Jews. Disregarding material impact to focus exclusively on the literal meaning of the word is no different than saying ethnic cleansing improves society because “cleansing” means to remove harmful substances.

But UCLA students know this. That’s why they and BLM activists protested pro-police author Heather Mac Donald being allowed to speak on campus. They consider “law and order” rhetoric racist precisely because the material impact matters while the literal meaning of the phrase, they have always argued, does not.

Cornell University professor of history Russell Rickford—a long-time BLM supporter and member of the DSA—spoke at an event where he too celebrated the pogrom:

It was exhilarating! It was exhilarating! It was energizing! And if they weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, the shifting of the violence of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated.

Part of what’s happening here is that these kids are smashing a square peg into a round hole by viewing Israelis as white colonizers and Gazans as brown oppressed people. This framing allows them to “understand” the conflict in terms that make more sense in Atlanta than in Nablus, because the truth is far more complicated. For one thing, Israelis are not white. There are Sephardim, Mizrahim, Asian Israelis and Arab Israelis.

Progressive activists prefer to erase these identities and view the conflict through the delusional US-centric lens of white imperial colonizer vs. brown native people. The fact that Israel is aligned with the United States and is a liberal democracy with Enlightenment values only reinforces this framing.

But even those who did not celebrate the atrocity cheered for what they saw as a great Gazan victory, ignorant of the most basic lesson of Israel-Palestine relations. Namely, that this is a cycle and that every act of violence leads to more violence.

Israel responded to the attack by sending in fighter jets and taking out more than 800 targets within the first 24 hours—the homes of Hamas officials, tunnels, internet towers and other military sites. But innocent lives were also lost, such as 19 members of the same family killed in a Gazan refugee camp.

Within days, Israel had killed more than 2,200 Gazans. Before the week was out, we began to see videos of Gaza in ruins and the agony of those left behind on the other side of the war, such as a father comforting his baby daughter with Muslim prayers to lay her soul to rest after she was killed in an Israeli airstrike. More than 2,800 people in Gaza have been killed so far.

As a result of these vile celebrations and festivals, which is what they were, many on the left had a moral awakening. Even those who had already identified the racism of so-called anti-racists, BLM activists and progressives more generally, who had noticed the violent misogyny within the trans movement or bloodthirsty antisemitism within the pro-Palestinian movement, even they were left with gaping jaws.

Others, like Jewish Currents journalist Joshua Leifer, tried to reconcile what they were witnessing without rejecting groups such as BLM or progressive politics overall.

I sympathize with the intention here but I am not convinced any of those who tried successfully presented an argument that actually can reconcile these things.

One of the most moving awakenings of this kind that I read came from Jonathan Rosenthal, the Economist’s Africa editor, who posted on X:

I have been struggling to articulate the complex emotions I've been feeling since Saturday morning as a Jew, a liberal/progressive, a believer that Palestinians and Jews have a right to a homeland, to safety and dignity.

Firstly I still feel sick and worried. I have family and friends in Israel. Some were in communities near those that were attacked. Others have children, nephews, grandchildren who have been called up to the IDF. I have friends and colleagues exposed to danger to report.

Many (but not all) of my friends and family in Israel are firmly in the “peace camp” of Israeli politics, have argued or campaigned for an end to the occupation and protested against Bibi Netanyahu’s right wing government and built bridges between Jews and Palestinians.

They are angry at the bungled response, which left people alone for hours. But they are also furious at Netanyahu, whose judicial reforms divided the country, even when he was warned that this would harm security, and whose rabidly racist coalition has inflamed tensions.

I'm angry too. On Saturday I was stunned that Israel's defences had so badly failed to protect its citizens. I was shocked by the barbarity of Hamas (though should not have been, given its past barbarism, including against Fatah members in 2007).

But I was also hurt by the response of many outside Israel, including some people I had once respected, who even as hostages were still being taken and Jews were being slaughtered, were blaming the victims and justifying the horrors.

Some do so in the cloak of intellectualism (saying “this was inevitable” or waffling on about Fanon and decolonisation), some in the guise of evenhandedness, arguing there is no moral distinction between Israel and Hamas (even before the first IDF plane had responded).

To these people, many of whom are decent and well-meaning: If your first words in response to this unspeakable horror were not an unequivocal condemnation of it, then you have no right to criticise Israel’s response. By your logic Israel’s retaliation is just as inevitable.

Some have responded with undisguised joy. This, they say, is “resistance”, as if every youngster gunned down at a rave, every rape, every kidnapping of a mother, a child, a grandmother, will take Palestine closer to being free.

To you I now have nothing but hate and contempt. Hate not just for your moral bankruptcy, inhumanity and antisemitism, but also because you are as much barriers to peace and a free Palestine as the ultra-nationalist and right-wing Jews are. You are mirrors of each other.

By celebrating (or even excusing) the crimes of Hamas, you are telling Israelis and Jews everywhere who still live with the trauma of the Holocaust that the world does not value their lives, that they will never be safe living alongside a free Palestine.

And then there are my mixed feelings about the Israeli response. I understand why Israel cannot allow Hamas to remain intact, to plan and prepare new and more horrific ways of killing Jews (and other innocents, including Thais, Israeli Arabs and anyone else in their way).

Yet I am also horrified at the blood of innocent Palestinians that will be spilled in Gaza and the suffering and fear imposed on civilians there. I am worried sick about the sons and daughters of my friends and family in the IDF who will be in danger going into Gaza.

I do not accept any suggestion that there is any moral equivalence between what Israel must do now and what Hamas chose to do on 7/10. One abides, as best as it can, with international law and tries to minimise harm. The other revels in genocide, proudly broadcasting it live.

But I also think that Israel should do still more to protect innocent Palestinian lives. It cannot be acceptable to cut off food and water from 2m people, and to bomb a confined strip yet not to offer passage for non-combatants to safety, whether in Egypt or the West Bank.

Some say that holding Israel to a higher standard is itself antisemitic. But surely that higher standard one Israel itself aspired to when its declaration of independence established a state “based on precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew prophets”.

The reason I am trying to raise my kids as Jews is to pass on a 2,000-year-old tradition that teaches us “tikkun olam” or “healing the world”. Jews are not better, or smarter, or more moral or less moral than others. But we have our ways. This is one worth keeping.

The coming days will be hard for Israelis and Palestinians. It will be painful even for those of us in safety who care deeply about the place and its people. I only hope that once the dust settles, both sides will decide the killing must stop and get serious about peace.

To this, Tablet magazine columnist Vladislav Davidzon replied:

We are observing a cascade of normal liberals having to parse and publicly square their fidelity to insane identity academic nonsense (“progressives” who really do want to decolonize and don’t just mean that they want redistribution of resources and college seats) with the fact that they have normal moral intuitions and are not cruel and insane. It’s been a spectacle.

Vladislav is a good friend who wrote the essay “Hitler and the Seattle Times” about my experience being fired from the paper’s editorial board. When I saw his comment above, I added some thoughts of my own:

This is the exact argument I articulated that got me fired from @seattletimes. When the same animals who now cheer Hamas atrocity called me a Nazi, the paper fired me, specifically for clarifying my family were not Nazis.

Anyone who thought my argument was academic or pointless, look around you. We are witnessing the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Yet progressives are cheering for Palestine. Some for Hamas. Others criticize Israel. Others remain silent.

To remind you, I argued US progressives have selective outrage. They decry our “rape culture” but condone the legal rape in Arab states. They decry our “white supremacy” but condone explicit racial supremacy in China. They decry US “imperialism” but condone Russian imperialism.

They decry anti-black racism and say it is not enough not to be racist. We must be anti-racist. We must speak out. “Silence is violence.” Then 1,200 Jews are slaughtered in a racist massacre and their anti-racism is found missing.

BLM says “defund the police.” Progressives promote police abolition. Last year, police killed 12 unarmed blacks out of a population of 45 million. Hamas just killed 1,200 Israelis out of a population of 9 million. And BLM activists are cheering for Palestine.

BLM is outraged at the situation Gaza has experienced for so long. But now BLM and other anti-police groups are promoting events where speakers openly joke about the massacre of Jews at a music festival. So yes, there is a problem of selective outrage on the left.

The example I used was that of the statue of Vladimir Lenin in Fremont, Seattle. People think it’s funny or they admire it. Yet these same people become livid over a Confederate statue. Or a statue of George Washington.

You’d think the same opposition to atrocity that leads them to revile Confederate statues or Christopher Columbus would necessarily lead them to revile Lenin, that the same logic that leads them to support Palestine would lead them to support Israel now. But you’d be wrong.

In the argument that got me fired, I said these people would never tolerate a Hitler statue but they embrace Lenin, which is especially disturbing since Hitler was a delusional sociopathic racist and the only thing more evil is to pursue the same horrors with no delusion.

We are seeing this part of my argument also play out now, because I’m willing to believe that some Palestinians who support Hamas do so out of a combination of desperation, racist brainwashing, intergenerational violence, etc.

In other words, they are delusional. They support Hamas believing it will free them. It will not. But they believe it. And again, the only thing more evil is to support such atrocity knowing full well the victims pose no threat, the harm is not justifiable—and supporting it anyway.

I don’t think this actually applies to most Palestinians, who are effectively so profoundly brainwashed it’s unclear whether any of them fully understand what’s going on. But academics and journalists and activists in the West know better.

They have access to better news. They are not living under harsh conditions that sour the brain. They are not soaked in racist brainwashing propaganda all their lives. They are not taught to see Jews as an existential threat. In short, they are not delusional. They’re lucid.

When you see US leftists cheering these horrors, remember they know what they are doing. Arguably more than pro-Hamas Palestinians. I see so many folks on this app reacting with disbelief as their fellow progressives show their true colors. LOTS of shocked faces in the crowd.

My advice would be, use this shock. Shake the cobwebs from your head. If you find yourself unable to comprehend your fellow progressives’ surprising support for Hamas, now would be a good time to revisit your views on BLM, BDS, antiracism, woke ideology in general, all of it.

This kind of experience is heartbreaking, I know. I've seen a few of my own friends reveal themselves in this way. But it offers a gift. Momentary cognitive plasticity, moral clarity. Don’t let it slip by.