24 Comments
Oct 13Liked by Line Editor

I just shake my head that Matt and Jen have to get into the detail about that rape and baby killing is off the spectrum during war. How far we have fallen that we have to provide education to the left on this atrocity. What we have here is the Hamas behaving exactly or even more depraved as Nazi Germany - and the libprogs playing denialist as bad as any Jew hating right wing extremist.

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Oct 13Liked by Line Editor

My wife and I were in Israel for my cousin’s son’s wedding when these horrors unfolded. My mother was Jewish, but my last name made the decision to identify as Jewish as mine alone. Finding shelter under the Iron Dome and in a bomb shelter is something I am still processing. We experienced the embassy being MIA. We managed to find our way out through my American Express card. I am a life long lefty. Seeing the progressive response has shaken me. The anti-semitism is palpable. The mechanism of dehumanizing the victims is as old as history itself. When actual apartheid states fell after decades of civil war (South Africa and Zimbabwe) these sorts of atrocities did not occur. In any event, great column.

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It is evident that progressives only uses virtue as a weapon in their political, and ultimately power grabbing goals. It's about control and being at the top of the zero-sum societal pyramid, as progressives believe this is how the world works.

(They are wrong about that btw. Perhaps that is why they tend to suck at business?)

It never was about altruism with the progressives, projecting that was only the path to least resistance with them. When will people finally figure that out?

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I will grant you that my knowledge of the history of Israel is surface level at best, but are Jews not Indigenous to that land? Why is this the only case in which the far left doesn’t care about thousands of years of invasions, occupations, and expulsions? (Asking rhetorically. I know exactly why)

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Oct 14Liked by Line Editor

It’s been profoundly depressing seeing another example of people engaging in a childish refusal to change their minds. When confronted with damning facts, they try to explain it away or deny the facts are real. So, Hamas atrocities either didn’t happen (Israeli lies about the protagonists in their story! The lies are a further example of the perfidy of the Israeli villains!) or are justified (Look how horrible the Israelis must be to have forced our protagonists to do such things!)

What doesn’t seem to have occurred to these people is that accepting these facts doesn’t mean you have to become an enthusiastic Zionist. They could continue to support the Palestinian cause while deciding that the approach taken by Hamas is evil and counterproductive to that end. They could even admit that the Palestinian plight is real, but the endemic antisemitism among Palestinians complicates any solution immensely.

Unfortunately, people seem to want the clean, uncomplicated story where your side is good and the other side is bad. Refusing to acknowledge the complexity prevents us from properly engaging with problems and finding practical solutions. The current problems with drug addiction and homelessness is another example: the problem gets worse and worse because a lot of people are sympathetic to their plight. However, as a nurse I know recently observed, people don’t seem to realize that most homeless drug addicts are actually assholes. Their sympathizers don’t see it and don’t want to see it, which enables them to keep supporting approaches that only exacerbate the problem.

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founding

Matt is absolutely correct in what he said about Targeting and the rules of war. I received training in both during my career in the RCN

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Oct 14Liked by Line Editor

I’ve just listened to the podcast and I want to thank you for your raw response to this fresh horror. You both named a couple of the triggers that have kept me awake this week: the sexual violence/mass rape and the murder of babes (I was foolish enough to log onto Twitter/X after midnight last Friday night, Matt, only to find myself watching a real-time pogrom. Kyrie eleison). And yes, the multiple accounts of fathers attempting to save their kids were overwhelming to me, too. As a Dad, I get that. The deep parental desire to protect that has been bubbling up as made this week especially hard.

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Thank Critical Theory teachings from the grievance study wizards - I mean progressive professors - that are programming the youth in university. Brainwashed, envious, hateful, violent, soulless, and stupid. Chanting evil slogans like ‘by any means necessary’ is a precondition for another holocaust ffs. Coming out of this national embarrassment should be a discussion about deradicalization in universities and defunding education aimed at corrupting society.

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founding

Dead Palestinian civilians is Hamas' strategic objective. The leaders are fully aware of what the Israeli response would be. They hoping that Palestinian die in the thousands in order to drive a wedge between Isreal, Arab nation and the west.

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Oct 14·edited Oct 14

More reasons to dislike Netanyahu: His hard line may have pushed/provoked Hamas; his hubris prevented him from anticipating what he had provoked; and his dishonesty caused him to blame others instead of apologizing. He continues to be poison.

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I have been appalled by all of those self-proclaimed progressive activists who are either to dull to see their own anti-Jewish prejudice or too blind to understand that Hamas and its ilk are reprehensible murderers.

Thank you, Jen and Matt, for your sharp coverage of this issue.

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founding

Matt, for me it was the image of the woman with the groin of her pants soaked in blood. That kept be awake a few night thinking of my wife and two daughters.

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