Losing the plot completely

The article Hamas Clarifies They Meant To Start The Type Of War Where They Get To Do Whatever They Want And No One Fights Back (Babylon Bee) is just one in a large set of really tone-deaf and unfortunately unsurprisingly one-sided headlines from this supposedly satirical online newspaper. A good satirist would somehow note that that headline may reflect how Hamas currently feels, but also how Israel was acting a few weeks ago.

There are many more irony-free and completely non-self-aware headlines from the Babylon bee like this one these days.

In the same vein, a usually reasonable and judicious Eugene Volokh goes all-in on Jews == Israelis and writes in a libertarian magazine that Some Cancellations are Justified by Eugene Volokh (Reason). Hey, cool, that’s what liberals/progressives think too! Nice to see you all have so much in common.

At the same magazine, you’ve now got the already usually fatuous Ilya Somin arguing that the problem is that Israel has been taking it too easy on the Palestinians in the article Hamas Attack Should Teach Us the Folly of Hostage Deals with Terrorists by Ilya Somin (Reason). Some people’s bloodlust is never slaked.

I can’t even read Scott H. Greenfield lately because he’s literally babbling in every article, as if he’d sustained a grievous head injury. For example, Short Take: The Death of “But For Video” by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice) is only about how things that people allege Hamas has done are all true, even without any proof. When he needs horrific things to be true in order to justify the horrific things his “side” is perpetrating and will perpetrate, then his usual adherence to evidence is right out the window. And he doesn’t even seem to notice it.

I can’t imagine writing a comment gently trying to remind him of his former adherence to a higher standard, you know…when the victims weren’t Jewish. One person tried by writing “Is there any place for genuine discussion about Israel’s misdeeds in the current situation?” to which Greenfield riposted—in what he clearly assumes is a manner that he wears well—“There is a place for that discussion: a sophomore critical studies classroom. Just not among reasonable or knowledgeable people.” I.e., anyone who mentions prior, ongoing, or upcoming Israeli war crimes or tries to contextualize at all is sophomoric, a child, neither reasonable nor knowledgable, unlike Greenfield, whose opinions are so unimpeachable as to be fact. It’s his blog, but man, I miss the reasonable guy who used to run it rather than the Zionist maniac who’s running it now.

Like the Babylon Bee, he seems completely unable to see the irony of his statements, as they would apply to Israel just as well as to Hamas, e.g., from a comment of his, “It’s unclear whether or how many babies were beheaded although there is no question that they beheaded adults. After all, murdering babies by shooting, burning, dismembering or otherwise is totally less barbaric.”

All of these authors are ordinarily capable of talking about justice in relatively detached terms, when it doesn’t involve them or “their people”. Now that Israel has been attacked, they literally throw all of their principles out the window and start to bend over backwards to justify genocide or to simply not care about proof, or whatever. The point is that they are incredibly hypocritical and that I’m kind of disappointed. I’ll survive, of course, but it’s a shame. I wonder if they experience any regret about what they’ve written?[1]

I tried again with NYT Still Trying To Salvage Its Lost Dignity Over Hamas by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice), but he’s still quite resistant to knowing anything that he didn’t already know yesterday.

“On the one side, there’s the claim of Hamas, a terrorist group that had just raped, kidnapped, murdered and beheaded women, children and the elderly, and had a bit of a public relations problem on their hands, claiming Israel bombed a hospital when it turned out that the hospital was never bombed, but only a courtyard parking lot, and there is no evidence whatsoever to support any claim Hamas made.”

I’m honestly still surprised at how Greenfield still hasn’t gotten a hold of himself and started to apply his usual rigor to this topic. As he writes further down, “[…] the New York Times reported that Israel bombed a hospital and killed 200 500 800 471 Palestinians.” He writes the other numbers supposedly to show how disingenuous this whole affair is—because they can’t even get the number right immediately. He ends up at 471, which is a high number for a “parking lot”, no?

But he doesn’t think to research and find out that the hospital grounds had been converted to a refugee camp, which is what was hit in the parking lot. He does no research to try to find out whether Israel bombing a hospital and then lying about it is something that has happened with depressing regularity.

He doesn’t even change his opinion when Israel just quickly admitted to having bombed a church just the other day. He probably won’t even reconsider once Israel admits that it was one of their bombs (because only they really have that kind of firepower; if Hamas had it, Israelis would be in a good deal more danger than they currently are). Greenfield considers none of this because he’s been in a blind rage for weeks now. It’s unclear whether he’ll ever come back. He’s doubling down again and again.

Just to show that I’m not just cherry-picking his articles, here is the very next one he published, called Short take: When Terrorism Goes Mainstream by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice). He’s clutching his pearls that people are now all of a sudden supportive of terrorism, not because of the entire western leadership’s enthusiastic support of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza, but because the hoi polloi are shockingly willing to be critical of it, especially those dastardly—nay, amoral—young people.

Although the poll asked whether people were “willing to be critical of Israel”, he generously extends that to mean “supportive of terrorism”—presumably because of their callous ability to consider all acts of terror reprehensible rather than just those of Hamas.[2]

Percentages of people's attitude to toward Israel by generational cohort

He ends his article with,

“Up until now, no matter what the cause or how righteous the goal, the use of terrorism was wrong and unacceptable. Terrorism was never the answer.

“Terrorism is, at least to a cohort of the young, now the answer.”

Jesus. Sanctimonious and hypocritical much? Greenfield is an American citizen, and is pleading Israel’s case. He is representing so much terrorism and he ignores all of it, pretending that only Hamas terror counts as terror, that state terror doesn’t exist. He didn’t used to be like, even quite recently. It’s like reading a breakdown in real-time.

Greenfield’s only defense to the accusation of being a n”OK for me, but not for thee” person is that he is woefully, shockingly, and suspiciously ignorant of his beloved Israel’s tactics—to say nothing of his own actual home country’s tactics.

He exhibits a complete and utter lack of irony, zero knowledge of what’s happened in the last three weeks—to say nothing of the last forty years—just whispering “I’m in my happy place” over and over to himself. I don’t think he’s happy, though. I hope he gets there soon.[3]