Propaganda Watch
Surrender, Hamas
If you care about Palestinian civilians
That photo is not from 2024, or 2023, or 2021, but 2018, as explained by this Alec Dent fact-check three years ago. Some images are iconic, and, sadly, timeless.
Moderate Americans can find ourselves torn over the Gaza War. This scale of civilian suffering, especially children, is tough for anyone who’s not a Nitzschean master-moralist to witness.
It’s possible to hold these conflicting, stress-inducing thoughts in one’s head simultaneously:
- Zionism is questionable
- The Gaza Strip is a reservation/ghetto … if not quite an open-air prison
- Hamas is the democratically elected government of the Gaza Strip
- Oct 7 was terrorism, with an arguably genocidal element
- The Palestinians are entitled to armed resistance
- The Israelis are entitled to combat it
- Hamas’s use of civilian shields is a war crime stretching back decades
Bottom Line not-quite Up Front: Anthony Blinken had it right back in December when he called upon the world community to urge the fastest resolution to the civilian suffering, Hamas’s surrender. Granted, that would not resolve the larger mess in the Levant.
One step at a time.
In that spirit, I applaud the Biden administration’s unilateral plan to bring relief in from the sea, Netanyahu’s objections be damned. I hope the EU and other friendlies will join in.
