Trumpian Israel Meets Arab Medievalism
Seeing past the Western Left’s one-sided assessment of the Israel-Hamas conflict
Have you ever been disappointed by some independent news source you used to admire, because you learned suddenly that this source isn’t as objective or fair-minded as you once assumed?
I had this sense of letdown as I followed YouTube’s Breaking Points (BP) channel in its coverage of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Prior to Hamas’s October seventh terrorist attack, the BP duo used to intrigue me with their radical, anti-establishment but informed perspectives. And to be sure, BP’s Krystal and Saagar still provide that insightful coverage on other topics. But they used to strike a more balanced chord, without sounding like cranks spewing screeds. After all, that’s a danger of being a marginal radical: you can stew in your juices, as it were, and lose touch with reality.
As Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza went on, however, BP’s one-sidedness on the issue became obvious. Whereas Saagar is supposed to be the conservative, for example, in relation to the progressive Krystal, you could contrast the pair’s coverage with the fiery debates between the Hill’s libertarian Robby Soave and progressive Briahna Joy Gray on the same issue. Without being a blinkered partisan supporter of everything Israel…
