Tagged: Hamas

Populism In Microcosm

The U.S. Libertarian convention has chosen its presidential nominee, i.e., has chosen the man who will be the flagbearer for freedom defined as the liberty to get stoned or marry your dog — if that is your “rational preference.” There was one moment in Chase Oliver’s acceptance speech — captured and disseminated by Al Jazeera, for obvious reasons — when the new figurehead...

Genocide In Gaza

A lot of people on the progressive side of modern reality (the dim side), whether of the socialist left or the populist right, have gotten swept up in the rhetoric of “genocide” to describe the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza in the weeks since October 7th. It is sensational language, and by definition incriminating in the most extreme way. It therefore...

Notes on The Wars, Major and Minor

No war strategy is rational which does not include a sober accounting for how you will live next to your former enemy after the fighting has ended. How will relations be normalized? How will past conflicts be put aside under the new post-war conditions? How can some measure of good faith and good will be achieved in the aftermath of the extreme measures...

Movers and Motives

Benjamin Netanyahu has acted as a blowhard, a media hound, and a flatterer of thugs, tyrants, and autocrats for years. He fawned humiliatingly over Donald Trump to get what he wanted from the manipulable orange fool. He has been a waterboy for Vladimir Putin for years, right up to Israel’s refusal — almost unique among allegedly free countries — to take a hard...

The Latest War News

Everyone’s favorite congress-barmaid Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has shocked the world by reminding everyone that not only is Israel guilty of the moral crime of defending itself against a gigantic infiltration by a well-organized tribe of murdering, torturing, immolating, kidnapping lunatics, but, even worse, that same racist and sexist nation had the audacity, back in 2019, to deny visas to two of her older and...

Notes From Beyond the Tinderbox

Contrary to the implicit and socially-imposed assumption of our era, it is not inherently antisemitic to disagree with, or even to soundly criticize, the policies or actions of the Israeli government, including during a time of conflict. The Israeli government is comprised of the elected representatives of the people of Israel. If Israelis themselves decided that they no longer trusted the leadership of...

The Moral and the Political

You can completely and vociferously sympathize with Israel’s position, and unequivocally condemn the ends and methods of Hamas and its radical Islamic allies, without necessarily believing that it is your country’s official duty to give material support to Israel’s self-defense. To take this position, one merely has to have the intellectual subtlety to grasp the distinction between the moral and the political, private...

Musings On the Secondary War

American interest pretzels.– The case for denying new military funding to Israel in the aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attack of October 8th is far stronger, and far less morally dubious, than the case for cutting off funds for Ukraine, although so many American politicians are taking exactly the reverse position. In all matters involving Israel, the double stench of virtue signalling and...

Could We Make This Any More Obvious?

Here is a new social media post from the leading candidate for Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (and also for Chief Toilet Brush at Mar-a-Lago), in response to current events in Israel: Rockets are raining down on Israeli towns right now. We need to immediately help replenish Israel’s stockpile of Iron Dome missiles to protect more innocent civilians from getting killed....