Quote of the Day

No small number of supposed leftists found in [Hamas’s recent violent and murderous incursion into southern Israel] cause for celebration. Others, meanwhile, loudly refused to condemn Hamas’s atrocities, insisting it was not their place to decry the “military strategy” or “violent resistance” of oppressed Palestinians.

In my view, these responses constitute a betrayal of the left’s most fundamental values. Either one upholds the equal worth of all human lives, opposes war crimes, and despises far-right ethno-nationalist political projects or one doesn’t. What’s more, cheering (or publicly announcing your refusal to condemn) the murder of children isn’t just morally grotesque but also politically self-defeating.

The West’s apologists for Palestinian war crimes have far less power than its apologists for Israel’s brutal domination of the Palestinian territories and discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel. But precisely because left-wing critics of Israeli apartheid lack power, we must not forfeit our moral authority. For decades, the Israeli government’s knee-jerk defenders have sought to equate opposition to the occupation with contempt for the security of Jewish Israelis. Now, a loud minority of Palestine’s self-styled champions are blithely affirming this smear, insisting that solidarity with Palestine requires callous indifference toward (or, at the very least, silence about) the mass murder of Jews. In so doing, they are making it easier for their adversaries to discredit and marginalize the broader cause of Palestinian liberation.

And that cause has never been more vital. It is therefore imperative for progressives to disavow all apologia for Hamas’s atrocities and for the broader public to understand that the left’s analysis of the conflict’s origins, and its prescriptions for its resolution, are wholly extricable from the blood lust of a loud minority of pseudo-radicals.

– Eric Levitz
Excerpted from “A Left That Refuses
to Condemn Mass Murder Is Doomed”
New York Magazine
October 11, 2023

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Something to Think About


Related Off-site Links:
How to Think Morally About the Israel-Hamas War – Zack Beauchamp (Vox, October 11, 2023).
Benjamin Netanyahu Made Hamas Stronger and Compromised Israeli Security: An Interview with Zack Beauchamp – Rising (October 16, 2023).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• In the Midst of the “Great Unraveling,” a Visit to the Prayer Tree
• Phyllis Bennis: “If We Are Serious About Ending This Spiraling Violence, We Need to Look at Root Causes”
• “Nothing About Today is ‘Unprovoked’”
• “The Mistreatment and Discrimination Against Palestinians Is Not Unprecedented. It’s Baked Into the Foundation of the Political System in Israel”
• Noura Erakat: Quote of the Day – May 15, 2018
• For Some Jews, Israel’s Treatment of Palestinians is Yet Another Jewish Tragedy
• Remembering the Six-Day War and Its Ongoing Aftermath
• David Norris: Quote of the Day – August 12, 2014

Image: Violeta Santos Moura / Reuters.