As the cultural landscape in America shifted from “no means no” to affirmative consent, wreaking havoc as it was untethered from any viable definition and was saddled with a litany of excuses making it nearly impossible to defend, whether true or false, the mantra embraced by the woke was “believe women.” As Brett Stephens shows, those good ol’ days are over, at least when the victims of rape are Israeli.
On Oct. 7, Hamas invaded Israel and filmed itself committing scores of human-rights atrocities. Some of the footage was later captured by the Israeli military and screened to hundreds of journalists, including me. The “pure, predatory sadism,” as Atlantic writer Graeme Wood described it, is bottomless.
Yet Hamas denies that its men sexually assaulted Israelis, calling the charges “lies and slanders against the Palestinians and their resistance.” And Hamas’s fellow travelers and useful idiots in the West, most of them self-described progressives, parrot that denialism in the face of powerful and deeply investigated evidence of widespread rapes, documented most recently in a United Nations report released on Monday.
Among serious people, there was never any doubt about widespread rape. Images were available from the start of women bleeding from their crotches, naked mangled dead bodies in the back of pickup trucks to be paraded as trophies of their glorious victory. Later, the stories came out about women being gang raped while their breasts were cut off, until a bullet was fired into the back of their head even as the rape continued.
While regretted sex after a few years was excoriated as horrific rape here, a new litany of excuses emerged why Hamas’ rapes never happened.
One method is to acknowledge, as one recent article put it, that “sexual assault may have occurred on Oct. 7,” but nobody has really proved that it was part of an organized pattern. Another is to raise questions about various details in stories to suggest that if there’s even a single error, or a witness whose testimony is at all inconsistent, the entire account must also be false and dishonest. A third is to treat anything an Israeli says as inherently suspect.
These are the ordinary tools of denialism, wielded as willingly by the useful idiots on the left. They would never be tolerated if raised about enthusiastic consent to sex by a college sophomore here who had a beer and later claimed impaired capacity to consent. But then, the victim here wasn’t Israeli and the rapist here wasn’t Hamas.
And finally, there is the point that there are barely any witnesses to the assaults. Where are the women who were allegedly raped? Why aren’t they speaking out?
The answer to that final question is the grimmest: Overwhelmingly, the women who could have spoken out are dead, for the simple reason that any Israeli who got close enough to a terrorist to be raped was close enough to be murdered. As for the credibility of Israeli witnesses, who else — other than the early responders who encountered the victims at first hand — should be interviewed and quoted by anyone investigating this?
Much as Israel was caught unprepared by the attack on October 7th, it was similarly unprepared for the unduly passionate to flip on one of its gravest outrages, an outrage that was so horrific that social justice demanded that innocent men be sacrificed lest no woman who claimed rape went unvindicated. Screw the facts. Screw due process. Screw evidence. Screw reason. If a woman felt she was raped, whether now or years from now, believe her. Who knew there was a caveat, “unless she’s Israeli”?
How quickly the far left pivots from “believe women” to “believe Hamas” when the identity of the victim changes. If, God forbid, a gang of Proud Boys were to descend on Los Angeles to carry out the kinds of atrocities Hamas carried out in Israeli communities, I’m pretty sure no one on the left would devote any energy trying to poke holes in who got raped, much less how or when.
Over the past decade, we’ve been told with extreme prejudice that the horrors of “rape,” whether it was rape or not, were so awful, so traumatic, so inexcusable, that there would be no tolerance of doubt. A long list of excuses was manufactured to rationalize why it was rape, whether the accuser remembered the facts or told six different stories, complained immediately or years later, was incapacitated or had one beer. And the list goes on. And on.
A core tenet of progressive thought is that the ends justify the means, the opposite of what a principled person would believe. The rest is just window dressing, making up excuses to justify their desired outcome and pounding it over and over until the weak-minded believe and the less weak capitulate for the sake of social acceptance. If the issue was rape, then there would be no question.
But as with almost all progressive causes, it’s replete with inherent hypocrisy which is eventually exposed when the horrific never-acceptable act is performed by the oppressed and favored rapist. And so the woke do a flip without any shame because the Palestinians are victims, Hamas are Palestinian freedom fighters, and so they will say and believe whatever is necessary to achieve their desired outcome.
Judith Butler describing the October 7 massacre as armed resistance: “We can have different views about Hamas as a political party, we can have different views about armed resistance. But […] the uprising of October 7th was an act of armed resistance.[…] This was an uprising” pic.twitter.com/YWqak847lx
— Joseph Hirsch (@josephhirsch5) March 4, 2024
Is raping women, burning babies and kidnapping grandmothers resistance? If it has to be to let the woke sleep at night, then it is because nothing matters more than believing whomever they’re told to believe. Even Hamas.
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There is a suggested rule that when two progressive priorities come into conflict, the conflict is almost always resolved in a way that harms women.
Seems to be spot in the case for Hamas.
I’ve tried to come up with some rational explanation for the facial hypocrisy of progressive beliefs. Could it be that rape is merely a weapon to be used in favor of oppressed women and against oppressor men, and so it fails when the rapes are committed by Hamas because Palestinians are higher on the hierarchy of the oppressed than women?
Except that black men are disproportionately falsely accused of rape by white women, and given the “Karen” narrative, black men are higher on the victim hierarchy than white women and this presents no issue for the woke. So that makes no sense. Maybe someone has a not-completely-bullshit explanation for the inconsistency and inherent conflict of the ideology, but I cannot.
“Rape”/“Rape Cultue” are trigger words to engage women and student voters via social media. Michele Dauber is the one who said that they (Democratic Party since she was a Dem Cauvus Rep) discovered that the issue of domestic and sexual violence brought women out to vote in droves. #MeToo was criticized for being too white so Tarana Burke got a Wikipedia page. Comparing students in U.S. to “Isis” and “Al Qaeda terrorists “ and “Donald Trump or Brett Kavanaugh was all
About herding lemmings for politics into witch hunt group think.
The ideology is not a thing, in and of itself.
The ideology is a parasite.
A tick on the back of a rabid wolf.
The ideology cannot live until certain conditions exist.
The first is the belief that consciousness is a purely material thing with no spiritual component whatsoever.
Next is the adoption of subjective morality, which in time leads to complete moral bankruptcy and mental illness.
Then comes the ideology.
It fills the empty space left by the things that the conditions took away.
Without the former conditions, the later cannot exist or ever make sense.
You should be glad that you don’t understand it.
I was going to write about the lack of irony in Progressive thinking, but you have already hit all of my points.
So I will just leave with the observation that this activity is nothing less than Holacaust Denisl 2. Same methods, same intentions, same deliberate avoidance of mountains of documented evidence.
Rule #1, the world can only reach Utopia if the right people have power. The stated beliefs are a path to obtaining power for the right people. Everything else is secondary.
For something to be termed “resistance”, there must, at a minimum, be some force against which to resist. One does not “resist” against a music festival, or tattoo artists, or old ladies asleep in their beds.
I feel I have to Gertrude here, because I don’t think there is nearly as much awareness of Israeli terrorism against Palestinians as there is of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis. What Hamas did on October 7th was disgusting, wrong, and obviously terrorism.
However, there absolutely is Israeli terrorism against Palestinians. There is a fantastic New Yorker article about it recently (Google “Israeli Settlers attacking Palestinians” and “New Yorker” if you’re interested – no link as per rules). The article is mainly about the violence following October 7th, but it’s been an ongoing campaign for decades, primarily by settlers, and with the tacit support of the Israeli military.
So, as disgusting as the Oct 7th attacks were, it’s disingenuous to say they weren’t retaliation because there was nothing to retaliate for. There was. The tit for tat has been going on since the creation of Israel. Sometimes the tit is disproportionate, sometimes the tat is disproportionate, but neither side has clean hands. Does that mean targeting children and non-combatants is ok? Absolutely not. But again, neither side has clean hands.
Against my better judgment, I posted your comment because it’s an insanely false comparison (and no, an article in New Yorker hardly makes it legit). Raping women and burning babies is never resistance for anything ever, and to believe otherwise is deeply, fundamentally twisted.
Thank you for posting my comment even though you disagree.
I agree, it is not “resistance” which is why I replied to DaveL’s comment rather than making a stand-alone comment. (Also I thought the post was primarily about progressive hypocrisy and only secondarily about Hamas terrorism.) To the question “were the terrorist attacks of October 7th resistance?” the answer is “no,” and I’m discouraged that even when I clearly stated the attacks were “disgusting, wrong, and obviously terrorism” my comment was interpreted differently.
My comment was specific to DaveL’s observation “there is nothing to resist against.” This is incorrect. There certainly is. There is Israeli terrorism against Palestinians as well as ongoing land theft, and that terrorism predated October 7th. Equating target Israeli settlers as targeting “a music festival, or tattoo artists, or old ladies asleep in their beds” suggests an ignorance of settler violence tacitly supported by the Israeli government.
I am not equating the violence by Hamas on October 7th to the settler violence against Palestinians. I’ll go ahead and say it again; they are not equivalent. What Hamas did was beyond defense, and rightfully the subject of military action. Settler violence could easily be resolved by Israeli enforcement of existing laws and is orders of magnitude less terrible.
What a ridiculous way to twist my words. Were the attacks of Oct 7th resisting against a music festival? Against people sleeping in their beds? No. There was nothing in the victims’ actions that could be considered anything to resist against.
The fact that Hamas had other grievances from other actions – real forcible actions – does not turn their attacks against the innocent into “resistance”. I can’t break into your house and punch you in the nose and claim I was fighting back against a mugger who took my wallet last week. Not even if he was your brother. Not even if he gave you some of the cash from it.
“…it’s disingenuous to say they weren’t retaliation because there was nothing to retaliate for.”
No one said this. The only one being disingenuous is you. But as Scott said, raping and murdering women isn’t “retaliation.” It’s just rape and murder.
How many terrorists has Hamas arrested, tried, and punished for violence against Israelis?
Dear Alex:
You wandered into a Hotel filled with lawyers and judges, but not just the lawyers and judges you might have met. This here Hotel is overflowing with thinking people: they actually do the heavy lifting of thinking beyond what they’re told or what they hear. They think more than what is told. They understand what evidence really is; they understand how facts play into reasoning. A nitwit’s reasoning is never accepted, even if that nitwit works for a big newspaper. That’s proof of nothing.
What you say is wrong; what you try to think is wrong. You are wrong.
The best place for you to to provide your thoughts is in an email to yourself.
Dear Skink;
I’ve been reading and posting for 15 years now at SJ, and have been an attorney longer than that. I don’t feel the need to spout off like some of the regulars who submit talking points on every post. I am likewise aware our host has no desire to have a cheer squad on every post we agree with. I know exactly where I am and who I’m talking to. If it is controversial to call the acts of some Israeli settlers terrorism for killing and using terror tactics against Palestinian owners of land in order to seize it for themselves then the echo chamber here has become worse than I realized.
I mentioned the New Yorker article because I had ignorantly assumed until fairly recently that Israel was expanding settlements through some form of eminent domain. Perhaps you are also ignorant? I hear there isn’t much journalism available in the swamp.
Back when those horrific accounts of the rapes were made known by the very people that had been the victims ( witnessing is among many things a psychological victim) it made me viscerally react.
So this phrase comes to mind , not to be cute, not to be clever but because it actually fits.
Who ya gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes.
The woke are about “two legs bad, four legs good.” Bleating the slogan du jour is more important than having any actual values or principles. It’s a giant, brainless game of “Simon says.”
” the uprising of October 7th was an act of armed resistance” says Judith Butler, known for her activism in promoting feminism and queer theory. Her comment re-defines “armed resistance” downward to the point where it can be draped over pretty much any mass criminal rampage imaginable. When your cause leads to the mass slaughter and rape of unarmed civilians it might be time to reconsider the righteousness of your beliefs.
” . . . anguishing, it was anguishing . . .”
Even better are the layers she nests that in: “I have gotten in trouble for saying it was for me anguishing”
Seems unlikely the trouble was “stop making it about you.”
No one in their right mind believes the Hamas narrative. The people who believe such acts are part of the “resistance” aren’t progressives, they are just plain evil.
Thats it.
Have a good friend who, along with her parents, was ejected from communist East Germany about six months prior to perestroika. She was nine years old at the time.
Her father was a college professor and had been jailed for approximately five of those nine years on unspecified charges. After their train passed the last military check point (and the third check of their “papers”) at the edge of no-man’s land they all assumed that being released into West Germany was a setup and that they would be pulled from the train and executed for attempting to escape before they actually arrived at the West German checkpoint a kilometer or so away. Fortunately, that did not happen. She still has no idea why.
Her opinion, and mine, is that the constant fluidity of acceptable “truth” is the lifeblood of a totalitarian regime. It matters little if that regime is political, social, religious or educational. If what is real and true changes monthly if not weekly and there are real consequences for not keeping up with those changes then most people hunker down psychologically, trusting only in a dark sense of humor when among family to maintain some personal sanity and fluent deception about support for the truth of the month when questioned.
Or, as she so colorfully puts it, “I’ve lived with rats. I know how rats sound and smell. I hear and smell them again here in America and I want to cry.”
The innkeeper will find this strange and I might get fired, but I’ll buy you a drink in this here broken-down Hotel.
A swamp critter and a desert rat walked into a bar. . .
Here’s mud in your eye Skink, and thank you.
The explanation is simple.
Most people start from the twin assumptions that their views are correct and that anything which challenges those views is almost certainly wrong.
If you start with those assumptions, you do not seek to analyse a situation but rather look for arguments to rebut them – very much like a trial lawyer when confronted with difficult evidence.
A person who has formed opinions hostile to Israel will, when something attacks that view, seek to explain events in such a way as to maintain their pre-existing opinion rather than accept that their prior thoughts were incorrect.
It was the same with communist apologists until the fall of the Soviet Union and likewise for many Catholics who had fallen in with the IRA before it embarked upon armed slaughter.
In more modern times it has applied to race and sex – no matter what Thomas Sowell or Roland Fryer demonstrate about the black community in the US they are ignored or derided. Ditto Jordan Peterson or J.K. Rowling with respect to women and transsexuals.
As for Hamas, while there may be exceptions I have not seen one person of influence who has said that the 7 October attacks caused them to review their opinions of the Arab/Israeli conflict. I do not expect to hear from any.
That, I think, is how they sleep at night – in their minds they are right and inconvenient facts are to be refuted, not considered.