Hamas, Its Origins, Its Groupies
A dozen Bastiat's Window essays that followed the invasion of October 7, 2023
HISTORY
[1] From Hitler to Hamas (and Hezbollah): Nazi Germany was the incubator for what would become Hamas and Hezbollah.
You can’t understand Hamas without knowing that it’s a fervent local chapter of an organization whose early funding, rituals, and philosophy came directly from Nazi Germany. This essay offers a downloadable chapter (“Islamic Jihadism: The Legacy of Nazi Antisemitism”) from Professor David Patterson’s book, Judaism, Antisemitism, and Holocaust: Making the Connections (Cambridge University Press, 2022). This chapter is the most compact, comprehensive account I’ve found of the historical, organizational, and philosophical connections between 1930s Nazism and contemporary Jihadism. (3/9/25)
[2] The Jew-Movers Are Back: “We put ‘em in the wrong place, so let’s move ‘em again!”
To many, “From the river to the sea,” implies “No Jews in present-day Israel.” How long have “Jew-Movers” been forcibly relocating Jews? How did European and Arab governments force Jews to move to what is now Israel? Where do Jew-Movers imagine Israelis might go? What would happen if Israel’s Jews suddenly left Israel en masse? (12/1/2023)
[3] Jews, Massacres, and U.S. Presidents: Hamas’s atrocities and Biden’s visit to Israel have old, old antecedents
Who was the first president of the United States to intervene in or around modern-day Israel to halt the ongoing wholesale slaughter, injury, kidnapping, rape, and torture of Jews by Arab terrorists? Hint: This particular president preceded Netanyahu, The Six-Day War, Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the UN Partition Plan, the Balfour Declaration, Britain’s Palestine Mandate, and the very existence of Zionism itself. (11/15/2023)
IDEOLOGY
[4] Intellectual Tyrants Beget True Believers: The Essential Book for Times of Madness
In America and Europe, disturbingly large numbers of academicians, students, activists, and politicians—mostly on the political left—openly celebrated, rationalized, minimized, sidestepped, or ignored Hamas’s atrocities. Paradoxically, many of the pro-Hamas enthusiasts are members of the very demographic groups whom Hamas has openly sworn, in writing and deed, to murder. None of this is inexplicable or even surprising, if one has read a small but unfathomably deep book, published in 1951, by one of the most profound thinkers of the past century. That book is The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, by longshoreman/philosopher Eric Hoffer. (10/29/2023)
[5] A Field Guide to Guaranteed, Certified, Definitely-Not-Antisemitic, We-Are-Hamas Global-Intifada Free-Range Encampments: Five Lessons on the Nature of Pro-Hamas Students, Professors, and Administrators
Here are some reasons why western universities exhibit a counterintuitive and terrifying priapism toward Hamas. (5/10/2024)
[6] Antisemitism’s Sharp Left Turn: An Open Letter to My Left-of-Center Friends
This essay argued that right-wing antisemitism is real, but that leftist antisemitism is presently a bigger problem. Since this piece appeared, certain figures on the right (e.g., Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens) have worked feverishly to ramp up right-wing antisemitism, but thus far, the problem remains greater on the left. (12/10/2023)
[7] Grasping the Whirlwind: After October 7, a left-of-center British reader despairs over his former allies
This left-of-center writer was blindsided by the vitriol and animus shown toward Jews by people he had viewed as his friends and allies—a story that has played out across Europe and is playing out in America, too. (1/4/2024)
[8] Zola, Weiss, and “J’Accuse...! 2023”: Bari Weiss: “You Are the Last Line of Defense”
Barely a month after October 7, Bari Weiss (now head of CBS News) sounded the alarm on the Western left’s enthusiasm for Hamas and for its horrific invasion of Israel. Weiss, a politically eclectic, somewhat left-of-center, LGBTQ+ mother in a same-sex marriage, offered her remarks to a gathering of politically conservative attorneys, many of whom (she said) likely disapprove of her marriage. (11/18/2023)
INSTITUTIONS
[9] Hamas and the Shill Game: Israel is guilty until proven innocent—and guilty AFTER proven innocent.
As Winston Churchill noted, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Israel, unfortunately, faces an endlessly recurring pattern in its news coverage. Hamas issues wild accusations; the UN, NGOs, and press amplify them; activists rage on social media, and in the streets; Hamas issues new accusations as the old ones prove untrue; the UN, NGOs, media, and activists move on till the next accusations prove untrue. Lather, rinse, repeat. (3/17/2024)
[10] Hamas-UN Bullshit Blood Libel: The United Nations casually concedes the falsity of its incendiary Gaza casualty data
Hamas can’t or won’t produce water, electricity, food, jobs, or prosperity, but the terrorist organization is adept at producing bullshit statistics and contorted logic for antisemitic, gullible, and/or servile Westerners. In fact, Hamas propagandists aren’t very competent with statistical science, but the United Nations has always been happy to validate the output and share it with earth’s least discriminating audience. (5/16/2024)
[11] Antisemitism and Universities: It’s not the prevalence in the population that matters. It’s the virulence of the variant.
Off-campus antisemitism may, in fact, be more widespread than on-campus antisemitism, but it is at universities that the most virulent, impactful varieties flourish. (2/29/2024)
[12] Columbia Delenda Est: Destroy one university to salvage the rest
As an alumnus of Columbia University (MPhil and PhD), I recommended that every peaceful, legal means available be employed to destroy the reputation of my alma mater—an institution that had chosen to make itself Ground Zero for Jew-hatred in America. Cato the Elder’s entreaty—“Carthago Delenda Est” (“Carthage Must Be Destroyed”)—was intended not only to punish the Carthaginians, but also to warn other states from behaving as Carthage had. Since this essay appeared, Columbia has paid substantially—though not nearly enough—for its behavior. (4/26/2024)
Great post. There is no rational explanation for the Jew Hatred on the left or the right. There is a religious component to the hatred from Islamists and that is rational if taken in the light of their religious ideology. Which Russian was it that said, and I paraphrase, "show me what it is that you hate the Jews for and I will show you what is sick about your society? We are called Communists by the Fascists and Fascists by the Communists. That also works for some free market advocates. I think that is almost always a matter of projection. It is almost funny to see a recent immigrant to the US, Canada or Europe calling Jews colonizers and invaders as they sit in their new country and have not a speck of irony about them.
Nobody wants to destroy Israel so the Jews will go somewhere else. They want to destroy Israel so the Jews will die.