By request

Sure, I'll state my position

A friend challenged me, because she had the impression Americans on the left did not believe that “Jewish lives matter,” to say whether I approved of Hamas’ attacks last weekend.

All framing issues aside, I have no trouble condemning the rape, murder, torture and abduction of civilians.

I feel the same way about other such atrocities — including those conducted over the years by American servicemembers, by the IRA, and by the Irgun in Palestine.

This doesn’t mean I’m against America, Ireland, or Israel — though I can not only imagine such a reductive reading, but vividly remember it from the days after 9/11. You probably do, too: You’re Either With Us Or Against Us, Watch What You Say, Fifth Column etc.

In fact I’m guessing a lot of people who are holding their tongues over the current situation are doing so because they also remember that era, and how the usual suspects seized the opportunity to drive us all into spectacularly insane military adventures. Suddenly Saddam Hussein, about whom I’d previously heard only a few complaints in 1990-1991, and the Taliban, who last I’d heard were our heroic Mujaheddin freedom fighter friends in Afghanistan, were monsters about whom we had to do something. Rape Rooms! Buddhist statues! Have You Forgotten etc.

The morons who thought it was a bigger crime to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan than it was to plunge it into chaos for 20+ years show the lingering effects of this brain-poison gas.

Since our preferred nexus of propaganda has switched from CNN and Scud Studs to Social Media and Disinfo Elmo, that’s where I’ve been seeing the current insane expressions of bloodlust and eliminationism against Palestinians — sometimes from Israeli officials and U.S. Senators. These people are like opportunistic infections of the spirit, finding where people are wounded and vulnerable and rushing to infect them with hate.

I don’t associate myself with such remarks or such people, and I can understand why even reasonable Americans who understand the horror of the weekend’s attacks would not want to even implicitly associate themselves with them.

But it’s easier for me, because I have a little time and space to say what I mean. What I don’t have time and room for are tendentious questions like “What if you could save [X] by killing one civilian” — sorry, I remember that shit from 24; not gonna play. Let’s not play time traveler thought experiment, either, unless you have an actual time machine, in which case I’m going to Greenwich Village 1955 and staying there.

Maybe I’ll have more to say after Netanyahu absolutely makes this a hundred times worse, but for now that should do.