Some commentators are still MIA

A few days back, I wrote Losing the plot completely, describing several previously useful commentators who’d gone completely off the script after October 7th. As of November 3rd, the article Is “Humanitarian Pause” A Real Thing? by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice) reveals the current state of mind for at least one of the authors. It ends with this incoherent and clearly unedited babble.

“The newly-beloved phrase, “humanitarian pause,” seems so ripe for the moment to “do something” (remember the syllogism?) to help the Gazans suffering under the Israeli seige and whose lives are squandered by Hamas as worthless, but after the public relations value of the phrase wears off, should Israel pause while Hamas holds the hostages (whose release shouldn’t be conditions on anything), seized whatever aid the naive hope will go to the Gazans and continue to fire rockets into Israel.

“Maybe they will raid a few more kibbutz during the “pause,” or rearm their fighters, repair their tunnels, and prepare for the next round of their holy war to destroy Israel one baby in an oven at a time. After which, the phrase “humanitarian pause” will be forgotten as it will no longer serve its pretense that the Gazans’ nightmare can be wished away any more than the Israelis’.”

He’s still very firmly in the camp that Israel is on the back foot, struggling mightily against the incomprehensibly evil and raw power that is Hamas. Now he’s positing that Hamas yearns to put Jewish babies in ovens (his words), that their goal is to destroy the Jewish state. This is the stated purpose of some members of Hamas, yes. I’m not well-informed enough to say that it’s their official platform, but it’s definitely how a good number of Hamas members feel, according to their own statements.

The sharp mind of Greenfield can’t see that this is also how a good part of the Israeli population feels about Palestinians. Many high-level, very powerful, and very influential members of the Israeli government and military share this opinion. Netanyahu just had a speech citing the Old Testament, “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.”[1] The leader of your team quoting a genocidal God from the Bible should really be a wake-up call, but some people—even those who’d not previously identified as especially religious—see stuff like that as “proof” of the rightness of their cause.

Or, maybe, they just didn’t hear about it. It’s almost criminal negligence to not follow what one’s one side of a conflict is doing, and to continue to support that side with Greenfield’s level of unquestioning enthusiasm. Wouldn’t you want to keep your side from becoming the baddies? Or do people really not care? They just want their team to win?[2]

Israel is in a much better position for achieving their goal than Hamas is. Whereas Hamas achieving their goal of wiping out Israel is essentially a pipe dream, Israel has moved forward with a final solution[3] for their decades-long Palestinian problem. It’s very possible that, within a few months, all Palestinians will be in Egypt or Jordan—and there’s precious little that anyone is going to be able to do about it. Israel is closer to their long-sought ethnic cleansing than they’ve ever been—and they have a lot of wind in their sails from all the most important players, like Europe and the U.S.

Israel has the overwhelming power here, and doesn’t legitimately have to fear a follow-up attack with anything approaching the magnitude of the initial one. In that way, it’s very similar to where the U.S. stood after 9–11. The reaction of the recently wounded, but still overwhelmingly powerful state could have been to handle the attack as a police matter, at the international level. Israel could still pull back, beg forgiveness for its rash retaliation, and take Hamas to court for its attack. But neither the U.S. nor Israel acknowledges the ICC.

Nor do any commentators consider what I’ve outlined above—which should seem eminently reasonable in a world governed by laws—to be in any way realistic. Instead, they double down again and again.

Greenfield, for his part, makes up fairy tales about Hamas smuggling in more weapons or being able to make more raids against a still-mighty Israeli military that is in an incredibly heightened state of alertness. There’s barely any food going in—how are weapons going to get in? Or does Greenfield not have any idea of what it looks like on the ground there? The IDF and Israeli newspapers would be happy to inform him, if he’s interested.[4]

The U.S., Israel, and the IDF all freely admit to the basic parameters that Greenfield doesn’t even seem to notice. Is it deliberate ignorance so that he doesn’t have to reexamine his assumptions? That’s not usually his style. Is he really just not hearing about what even his own “side” is reporting about what’s happening in the war he supports? Did he really stop absorbing information on October 7th?

It’s a shame, but he’s still sidelined. You can almost see the spittle dotting his lips as he’s rage-writing those paragraphs, patting himself on the back the whole time for his eloquence in expressing how incredibly obvious his point-of-view is. HOW COULD YOU SUPPORT THOSE BABY-EATERS IN HAMAS?

Look at what Hamas has done to Gaza:

Gaza 11.2023

Palestine, why are you hitting yourself?

On a final note, when what can only be called a lot of people protested in Washington DC in support of Palestinians, he wrote in Holding Biden Hostage by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice) that,

“For the grown-ups in the room, their cries range from childish to idiotic, recognizing that there can be no ceasefire given the circumstances. Despite the collateral deaths of Gazans upon which Hamas thrives, the alternative is the death of Israelis on perpetual terror raids and rockets that will never be stopped if Israel can’t stop Hamas. Biden gets it. Nancy Pelosi gets it. Even Blinken gets it […]”

Anyone calling for a ceasefire is a child, according to him. A puling welp who doesn’t “get it”. He’s worried that Biden “the outraged woke have figured out a way to leverage their embrace of terrorism to coerce Biden to capitulate to their whims”. “Leverage their embrace of terrorism”! Oh, my goodness are you deep down that rabbit hole. Keeping digging, brother! You’ll get there! Where? Wherever you think you’re headed with that line of argument.

He’s terrified that people are actually going to vote their interests, and that their interests don’t lie with what the Biden administration is doing, so,

“Biden either abandon’s Israel and backs the terrorists, “from the river to the sea,” or the progressive wing of the Democratic party will abandon Biden.”

This is craziness. He’s now hating on democratic pressure from below, per se, because it doesn’t press in the direction that he wants. He’s afraid that Biden will either not capitulate and keep supporting Israel in its … current behavior, which means that Biden loses to Trump in 2024, the other giant bugaboo of Greenfield’s of late. He finishes up by comparing progressives to Hamas. I kid you not. See for youself,

“[…] the schism has turned Biden into a hostage of the radical left. Hostage taking, it seems, is all the rage these days. If it works for Hamas, why not for progressives?”

He’s in a tight spot, indeed. That’s going to be a tough needle to thread. Luckily, he has ideological support! Biden, Pelosi, and Blinken are the people to whom he looks for support in his viewpoint. They “get it”. Kissinger and Cheney provide backing with their versions of the 100% doctrine. Strange bedfellows, indeed. It’s going to be a long road back for this guy.

Am I done reading him? Of course not. I’ve read him for a over a decade. This, too, shall pass.[5] Or maybe it won’t. In the meantime, it’s quite entertaining and offers insight into how a good part of the influential class thinks.