The Hamas Vote

How the Middle East’s new war might scramble 2024.

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Pro-Palestinian protesters carry Palestinian flags and signs as they march by the Washington Monument during a demonstration calling for a ceasefire in Gaza on October 21, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A conservative, the saying goes, is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality. And there have been a whole lot of muggings in recent days.

Democrats horrified by Hamas’ pogrom in Israel on October 7 have spent the weeks since absorbing the fact that some of their progressive allies either don’t care about the bloodletting or are downright gleeful about it.

For the past few weeks, social media has been teeming with videos (usually from an American campus somewhere) of protesters chanting about the elimination of Israel, spitefully tearing down “missing” posters of Israeli hostages, or intimidating Jews nearby. Pro-Palestinian sympathizers have also been active online, policing rhetoric that they deem too morally sympathetic to Israel. When a writer at New York magazine pointed to one grisly account of the atrocities committed on October 7, he was pressured into issuing a clarification the next day: Just because Israeli babies were found afterward without heads, he acknowledged, doesn’t prove that they were beheaded.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    This analysis makes a lot of sense to me. This issue is likely to tear apart the left and hurt Biden (unless he plays things very well and also gets lucky with the events which are outside his control). Trump will try to play both sides like a scumbag and weirdly will actually succeed in persuading a few people. The New Right will tear itself further apart.

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    Mandy B.

    I am so sickened by Islamist cruelty and wanton evil, it beggars belief that anyone could support it. There is nothing more to say.

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    Normb1442

    The population of Gaza is about 2 million, of which half is age 18 or less. According to analyses of the Israeli bombing thus farm, 42% of the homes in Gaza City have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. The math works out to close to half a million Gazan children who are now homeless. Children grow up. To expect them to blame Hamas for this instead of Israel is a fool's errand.

    To advise the Israelis to temper their actions in Gaza is not the act of an enemy or even one who sympathizes with an enemy. It is the action of a friend who warns that flattening Gaza does nothing more than to ensure another horror show down the line. Israelis want revenge for October 7; so do I. But revenge is not a program.

    I don't know how to thread this needle, but I do know two things. One is that the present Israeli government is incapable of doing it. The other is that until it is done, the events of October 7 will be repeated ad infinitum. It would be nice if some in these pages would try to act as if Israel's treatment of Palestinians is not totally blameless for what is happening there and that saying so isn't to defend October 7 in any way, but to try to prevent future October 7ths. Instead, I get Jonah Goldberg splitting hairs with leftist academics over what constitutes colonization, in the service of siding with those whose idea of a solution is to give Israel cover for actions which make a repeat of October 7 a certainty.

    I'm sorry that it's complicated, but it is.

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  4. Dnels

    If Tucker and the rest move MAGA to the pro-Palestinian side, the installation of 70s liberal politics will be complete. Pro-Putin, pro-China, pro-Israel, pro-big spending, anti-US power and prestige. That sounds like the "Blame America Firsters". Quite an accomplishment for them, turning Reagan's party into the movement he ran against. Can abandoned conservatives turn the Dem's back into the party of JFK?

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    1. Avatar photo
      Ben Connelly

      Yep. Jonah Goldberg (and me, and a bunch of others) said in 2015 that Trump was a leftist’s caricature of a rightist and was moving the Republican Party to the left while destroying the conservative movement. Fast forward and the New Right’s entire project seems to be to “make the Right left again.”

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  5. Avatar photo
    Soniak21

    >>When a writer at New York magazine pointed to one grisly account of the atrocities committed on October 7, he was pressured into issuing a clarification the next day: Just because Israeli babies were found afterward without heads, he acknowledged, doesn’t prove that they were beheaded.<<

    When I first saw this "clarification," I pointed out with what I think is grisly logic that the babies WERE in fact beheaded. If you want to argue that WOLVES did it—with the remarkably systematic m.o. of snatching only the heads and leaving the bodies—I suppose you can do that. But it's still beheading, is it not? If your dog beheads a rabbit or chicken, isn't that still the right word for it?

    The only alternative is that these babies were BORN without heads... which seems too unlikely to allow for. Even more unlikely than the wolves.

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  6. Besht2003

    People snarked at my first attempt as being too jargonny. I will try again. Biden has a lot of Obama era staff and is very sensitive to the left wing. He also thought that a "bear hug" could allow him to shape IDF response. Since then there have been endless leaks/public statements about Israel needing to avoid war crimes, provide international aid. etc. It is way too early though for *election politics* to be forecast or play out. Biden's key meetings are with non-domestic parties. Final point, even if Biden fully goes public with Obama-era, progressive/liberal Democrat "root cause" sympathy to the Palestinian demands for the IDF to halt, the IDF campaign may continue. Biden would likely need to then back a Security Council resolution demanding cease-fire and Israeli halt and we would see. This would be before any pre-election fall-out and clear factional divides. imo BIden's problems is he likes to give his emotional, big-principle speeches as long as he doesn't face difficult blowback. lHe could have been less I-feel-your-pain I-am-with-you-till-the-end upfront but now moving forward with Israel is not easy but backing off could also be complicated. Still 2024 is a long way away.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Anne W (Raw5254)

    Nick, you are such an interesting writer, and I can see why you are so popular. You are definitely there to dole out the bad tasting medicine, with no relief in sight. I appreciate your honesty, but I will say that there are times when I finish reading, and wish I could erase everything from my mind. No offense, but this is one of those times.

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  8. Jfan

    "A conservative, the saying goes, is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality."

    That's not the version I remember. The original version was "A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is a conservative who's been arrested."

    Someone later wrote "A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality."

    Yet later someone wrote "A neoliberal is a liberal who's been mugged by reality but refuses to press charges."

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  9. Fidlerrich

    Okay. I'm dizzy. Feel like I just got off the Teacup Ride at Disney World. Nick, do you think you could come up with a flow chart or something?

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    Stephanie

    Well, just look who's been pro-Hamas all this time:

    "Mr. Netanyahu, having led Israel for a total of more than 16 years, has worked hard to consummate the burial of the idea of Israeli and Palestinian states living side-by-side in peace and security. In his current government, he has appointed Itamar Ben Gvir as minister of national security. A far-right, pro-settler politician, Mr. Ben Gvir stole the hood ornament off Mr. Rabin’s Cadillac in 1995 and proclaimed, 'Just as we got his car, we’ll get him, too.'

    All means were good to undo the notion of Palestinian statehood. In 2019, Mr. Netanyahu told a meeting of his center-right Likud party: 'Those who want to thwart the possibility of a Palestinian state should support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfer of money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy.'

    The peace camp increasingly hung by a thread. 'The propaganda against peace activists has been horrible,' said Mickey Gitzin, the director of the New Israel Fund in Israel, an organization dedicated to the protection of liberal democracy in Israel. 'We were the traitors, the anti-Zionists, the anti-Israelis! We were supposedly the naïve ones who did not know the game. But we have been screaming that strengthening Hamas in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority was wrong.'"

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/22/world/middleeast/peace-activists-israel-palestinian.html

    I'd like to read some more reporting with context, about this.

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    1. Ken Motamed

      Maybe you didn't get the memo, but Palestinians, especially Hamas, are not interested in peace.

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        Normb1442

        Hamas, yes, isn't interested in peace. The Palestinians of the west bank are, as long as "peace" doesn't mean "lie down and take it while we treat you like dirt."

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        Stephanie

        No, I didn't get the memo. Who issued it?

        I don't subscribe to right wing dogma, though. And there is abundant commentary from reliable sources to contradict what you say.

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        1. Dougrhon

          HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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            Stephanie

            I just now found this in my Spam folder. (Maybe it sorted itself based on the contents?)

            It looks like you, like Ken, think Hamas = all Palestinians.

            Can you explain how you came to this conclusion.

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