Standing With Israel Means Standing Against Inhumanity
As for the progressive Left, it is now dead to me

The weeks since the October 7 massacre in Israel have been a time of great clarification. And while the Israel-Palestine situation has always seemed complex, it is important to underscore some simple and important truths:
- The October 7 massacre by Hamas was unprovoked, and may have been the result of ulterior motives. Even on its own, the October 7 attack, which included cold-blooded murders, kidnappings, rapes, and the public desecration of corpses, was an orgy of depravity, regardless of whether or not there was any sort of provocation on Israel’s part. But there is speculation in some circles that Hamas may have carried out these atrocities for the purpose of derailing peace talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which, if true, would make an already-unconscionable attack exponentially more nihilistic (which is saying a lot).
- Standing with Israel, of course, doesn’t preclude holding its leaders accountable, questioning the appropriateness of their responses to the events of October 7, nor considering them infallible in their management of Israel’s relationship with Gaza and the West Bank. After all, they are just politicians, and as such are prone to the errors of judgement that come with being human. Nevertheless, even if Israel’s subsequent bombing runs could be considered heavy-handed, this still implies that some sort of armed response was necessary. Any discussion around heavy-handedness (real or imagined) is, by definition, a debate around the degree of the response.
- Further to the above, it’s not Israel’s fault that Hamas treats Palestinians as human shields (and thus dehumanizing them) by stockpiling weapons in sensitive locations, such as under hospitals and schools. In doing so, Hamas is deliberately putting its own citizens in harms way for strategic reasons, especially given its recent aggression towards Israel. Loss of innocent life is tragic under any circumstance, but in the case those lost in Gaza, the blood is on Hamas’ hands, as that group is putting its own geopolitical ambitions ahead of the humanity of innocent Palestinians, most of whom are Muslims. Ergo, Hamas is the real threat to Palestinian Muslims, not Israel. (Let that sink in.)
- What the “Free Palestine” movement gets wrong is that Palestinians are captive not to Israel, but to extremist ideologies that see them as useful idiots. If Palestine is to be truly free, it needs to liberate itself from those who see violence and depravity as a means to eradicate Israel, and thus also keeping Israel on a war footing, as it has been since its inception after World War II.
- The Left is dead to me, and it should be to you, too. The “progressive” celebration of the Hamas attack shows that Leftism is a worldview of destruction, and that its usual championing of minority populations is disingenuous at best. For example, witness the trajectory from #MeToo and #BelieveAllWomen, to this supposed concern for female safety completely disappearing if the female victims of rapes, murders, and beheadings happen to belong to a demographic that is aligned with Western civilization, or here in the West if a perpetrator happens to be a transwoman. Ditto for the Left’s habit in recent years of calling everybody who disagrees with them (even incrementally) a “nazi”, followed by the unabashed displays of antisemitism disguised as sympathy for Palestinians. I am disgusted just thinking about previous times in my life when I considered myself a left winger — but while one of my mantras in recent years has been, “I didn’t leave the Left, the Left left me”, I now believe that the Left was never with me to begin with, nor with the vast majority of its unwitting adherents. Shame on me for not figuring that out much, much sooner. As queer theorist Judith Butler recently pronounced, “Hamas and Hezbollah are social movements that are progressive, and are part of the Global Left.” (Thank you, Judith. That’s all I needed to hear.)
I write the above as someone who has, over the years, expressed concern for the plight of Palestinians, even if in retrospect I may not have been looking at the bigger picture. Heck, at one point I even composed and released a piece of instrumental music entitled, “Free Palestine”. (To be clear, I was thinking of the idea of Palestine existing within a peaceful two-state solution that now seems like a fool’s errand, and not of the terrorist group of the same name.)
I firmly believe in the idea of a Jewish homeland, as embodied in the State of Israel — not only because Jews have a right to it, but also because Israel is humanity’s best hope in that part of the world. I have nothing against Islam as a religion, nor against any person for adhering to it. If anything, I worry that terrorist groups such as Hamas, and its opportunistic left wing supporters here in the West, unwittingly harm Islam by unfairly cementing it in the minds of non-Muslims as a religion of inhumanity.
And so I stand with Israel because I stand against inhumanity, and with anyone who sees their fellow human beings, every last one of them, as having been created in the image of God, and respects them accordingly. If people are to look for heroic Muslim role models, rather than Hamas terrorists, they should look to and celebrate someone like Awad Darawshe, an Arab Israeli paramedic who sacrificed his own life when he insisted on staying behind at the Supernova Music Festival in southern Israel, trying to save as many lives as possible amidst the unfolding chaos of the October 7 massacre.

May his memory be a blessing, as well a beacon of hope and inspiration for all.
His example is proof that a better and more peaceful life is possible for people in that part of the world — but they have to want it more than anything else. Yes, it would mean putting aside ancient hatreds, refusing to be used and abused as proxies by other hostile states (hello, Iran), and co-existing with a people they’ve been taught to despise. As former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir famously put it, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”