The useful idiots of global Jihadism

Hamas scuttled Palestinian statehood, oppresses millions of Gazans, and crushed regional hope for peace. Its Western backers are imbeciles.

Photo by Kajetan Sumila via Unplash

The progressives rallying for Hamas on US campuses are missing something simple: Supporting the Palestinians, whose cause is noble enough, obligates a rational person to not support Hamas. Hamas is the enemy of Palestine, and a genuine scourge to all humanity.

Hamas opposes any accommodation with Israel and seeks its destruction—that is the meaning of “from the river to the sea”—and its imams have spoken of war to the finish with all Jews based on genocidal interpretations of Islam. Thus it has devoted huge efforts to preventing a two-state solution for Palestine. Preventing—not furthering.

Its favorite tactic, since the 1990s, has been suicide bombings meant to sow hatreds, discredit peace efforts and move Israelis rightward politically. Hamas correctly assumed that the Israeli right, led for most of that period by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would be its useful idiot — a phrase often applied last century to naive and ignorant critics of the West who unwittingly assisted the communist cause.

In this case the Israeli right indeed did the bidding of Hamas, torpedoing the peace efforts from the Israeli side, ramping up Jewish settlements on occupied land, and oppressing the Palestinians in creative ways.