Scott beat me to a post on the kill-the-Jews rally at England’s Glastonbury music festival. Anti-Semitism is now trendy. In videos from Glastonbury, you can see “Palestinian”–read, pro-Hamas–flags flying. That has become a common sight on American college campuses, too.
Across the globe, liberals are lining up on the pro-Hamas side. Their history of events in Israel begins on October 8. To hear them tell it, Israel launched a weirdly unprovoked attack on Gaza and its elected leaders from Hamas.
Of course, events since then have not gone well for Hamas and its Gazan supporters, who were certainly a large majority until things started to go badly in the war. But at this point, with most of its leadership dead and Gaza in ruins, just as Berlin was in ruins in 1945, how does what is left of Hamas cling to power?
From the Telegraph: “Hamas tortures Gazans to silence protests.”
The face of the young man staring into the camera as the crowd streams around him is strong and defiant.
In his hands, the 26-year-old holds a banner bearing an incendiary message: “Hamas does not represent us.”
An accompanying video shows him spurring on others, openly fanning the flames of dissent while many of the people around him nervously avert their faces to avoid being identified on camera.
That man is Ahmed al-Masri, one of the key organisers in northern Gaza of the protests that rocked the enclave in April and May.
Remember how liberals used to say that dissent is the highest form of patriotism? That isn’t how Hamas sees it:
This week, pictures emerged of the same man on a stretcher, a frightened and helpless look in his eyes, his legs a bloodied mess.
According to multiple sources who spoke to The Telegraph, Mr Al-Masri was abducted by Hamas gunmen in Beit Lahia, near the northern border with Israel, whereupon he was brutally tortured.
His feet were deliberately broken with large stones and iron crowbars; he was also shot in the legs.
Al-Masri is not, of course, the only victim:
In recent weeks, reports have multiplied of people being dragged out of aid lines, tortured in basements, or simply executed in broad daylight.
One video, published gleefully by Hamas-affiliated social media accounts, showed masked figures using a long metal pole to smash a blindfolded man’s kneecaps.
His agonised screams and pleas for mercy are too visceral to properly describe.
***
In another notorious incident earlier this month, Hamas gunmen allegedly taunted victims they had shot up earlier by preventing them entering a hospital, leaving them to writhe around outside.
This is what Western liberals, who absurdly claim a mantle of moral superiority, are supporting. Do they understand that they are defending and helping to perpetuate such outrages against human decency?
One might instinctively say that they must not understand. But I am not sure that is correct. Sadism has always been a huge, if insufficiently acknowledged, element of leftism. I think that howling mobs like the one we saw at Glastonbury, like the Germans who cheered on Hitler, like the Russians who adored Stalin, like the Chinese who participated in the sadistic “Cultural Revolution,” have a pretty good idea of whose side they are on. In my opinion, they are not misguided. They are evil.
