Hate and It's Children (January 2008)

"Hate and it's children" is a long-form stream of consciousness posted at my old blog about fifteen years ago. Much has changed since then including the disappearance of links and personalities as the appearance of Substack and podcasts replaces old-fashioned blogging. This backup enables me to add editorial adjustments since I have no control over the original Hootsbuddy's Place. 

This morning's post by The Anchoress is one of those treasures worth keeping, found on the shore of the ocean we call the blogworld. I'll get to that in a moment, but first I want to address a question someone asked me a few days ago.

I told one of my children who does graphic design work that for Christmas I wanted some cards, like business cards, that I could give to people I meet identifying my blog. A blog card, if you will, instead of a business card. She came up with a layout of ten to be printed on photo paper that I chop up into cards. I gave one to someone who asked what made me start blogging and I realized I didn't have an answer. Not a good one, anyway.

In the beginning there was a fantasy about becoming well-known as a sage or thinker, someone whose insights and opinions would be sought by those seeking clever or wise commentary about matters large and small. I admired the wit of James Lileks, sharp insights of Michelle Malkin, over-the-top excesses of Rachel Lucas, timely scoops from Matt Drudge, and catholic attention to the whole universe by Glenn Reynolds. I knew that Steven Den Beste and Bill Whittle were writing long pieces that were atypical of blogs generally, but even they had respectable followings. I could tell by the comment threads how people were perceived. This was before the TTLB ecosystem emerged as a gold standard for traffic and links. All I knew was that the ocean was out there and the water looked fine, so in I jumped.

I realized as time passed that the sites that had excited me most shared a common political undercurrent I had not noticed at first. I saw myself as a veteran of the Civil Rights movement, a child of the Sixties whose anti-war predilections led me to change my draft status to conscientious objector, later to be drafted as such to serve two years as an Army medic. Yet here I was, twenty or thirty years later, having gone into the world of business, serving as a manager and boss, attracted to the Conservative wing of political writing like an ant to sugar. Like Freddy said to Eliza, "It's the new small talk...you do it so awfully well!" I didn't particularly appreciate the content, but the form was truly wonderful.

Oh, there were places from what can be called "the Left" that also were pumping out stuff. But they were the lunatic fringe, you know...conspiracy theorists, astrologers, practitioners of exotic (typically Asian) alien philosophies, Marxists (who never tire of endless fountains of words, words, words) and other cranks who were hard to peg. Pejorative use of the word "moonbat" came about quite naturally because those of us from the nether edge of the political spectrum do tend to be poorly coordinated, less focused on practical details and more taken with crazy dreams. (Two of my favorite lines are Will Rogers' I'm not a member of any organized political party...I'm a Democrat and Ambrose Bierce's definition of a "Conservative" as One enamoured with prevailing evils as opposed to a Liberal who wished to replace them with new ones.)

Pajamas Media represents the Right perfectly, creases pressed and colors coordinated, small points of discussion notwithstanding. That venerable assembly preceded Netroots by a few years, but that latter-day rag-tag outfit with all its profanity and outrage, emerged as the Left's reply to Pajamas. I have watched helplessly as the aftermath of 9/11 and a knee-jerk reaction have polarized national politics to the point that I no longer identify easily with either pole. When I started blogging I felt comfortable with a messy but principled Left, such as it was, but I have been embarrassed by extremes from that side. Excoriating the name of General Petraeus and failing to recognize positive efforts by the president to bring about meaningful immigration reform come to mind (not to mention uncoupling health insurance from employment, an idea which has great practical appeal to me but which no one is speaking about openly...though it is an idea specifically from the White House).

Anyway, getting to what The Anchoress said, she opens by describing an important difference between what I call partisan hate and personal hate. Partisan hate is rather generic, enabling the hater to close ranks with others of like persuasion in a feeling of power or solidarity. Personal hate, on the other hand, tends to be individual, more inner-directed and as a result more corrosive to one's character and temperament than an outburst at a rally or surge of excitement seeing one's letter to the editor in print. Personal hate is like tinnitus, always ringing or buzzing in your head, never going away. Sometimes, even in your sleep, grinding teeth and nightmares nurture the poison, leaving a kind of mental pus staining the rest of life, dampening happiness and excitement into dull tolerance.

That is the end of Part One of my thinking this morning.

In order to fully appreciate the pain and suffering that grows from what I have termed Personal Hate, go there now and read this woman's incredible confession, self-examination, and journey toward absolution. She is articulate to the point of tears. Her description of personal hate and how her family members, the angels that God has given her to let her know He loves her, lead her out of her darkness into the light that only comes from faith.

What upset me more than anything is that for the first time in my life, I was actively hating someone. I’ve never hated anyone - not even people who have done me physical and spiritual harm. But I was hating this fellow. And hating him even more for “making me” hate him.

Which, of course, he could not do. No one can “make” you hate; I simply allowed hate in; I welcomed it in, gave it an honored chair and fed it. And fed it. And it was incredibly destructive and oppressive - to me, mostly - but it did nothing good for anyone who had to be around me if the subject had my head. My whole family, and a few friends, have had to endure watching me give myself over to this resentment, allowing it to have its way with me, and to own me, body and soul.

I'll wait here while you read the rest. She tells her story better than any excerpt can capture.

(The Anchoress is the blog name of Elizabeth Scalia who is still blogging but her old posts are not easily found. She also has an X account these days.)

§§§§§

For Part Two I want to redirect the reader's attention to what I have called Partisan Hate. 
Partisan hate is importantly different from personal hate. Partisan hate derives from groups more than individuals, although individuals plant the seeds and nurture its growth. What impulse attracts others to this or that category of hate is not clear. The reasons are probably as diverse as the numbers attracted. My instinct is that partisan hate may be an outgrowth of personal hate, but I don't want that laid on me. MY partisan hate is not as bad as YOURS, of course, so we know there are exceptions to such a rule.

I don't want to run down that road too far because it will have us all running in circles. What I want to point to is a partisan argument now developing over the use of the word "fascism." Individuals are involved in the discussion, so I want to be clear here: my aim is not to "disrespect" (I think that's the right modern usage of that neologism) any person, but to point to an idea or trend with which I find problems.

With September 11, 2001 now six years past, we divide contemporary history into Pre- and Post-9/11 eras. Thanks to what seems to have been a carefully-orchestrated narrative America's response to that event has had two misleading concepts at the core.
• The first is that there is no significant difference between Muslim extremists and Muslims as a population.
• The second is that the attack on the World Trade Center was an act of war, not just an act of terrorism.

Recently a voice of reason in Britain finally pointed to the naked king, stating the obvious:

The Director of Public Prosecutions said: 'We resist the language of warfare, and I think the government has moved on this. It no longer uses this sort of language."

London is not a battlefield, he said.

"The people who were murdered on July 7 were not the victims of war. The men who killed them were not soldiers," Macdonald said. "They were fantasists, narcissists, murderers and criminals and need to be responded to in that way."

His remarks signal a change in emphasis across Whitehall, where the "war on terror" language has officially been ditched.

This important moment has gone unnoticed both there and here but a few people have taken note and perhaps one day in the future, when more reflective than reflexive observers are doing an analysis of the post-9/11 era that moment will find "new" meaning.

Regarding the other misleading idea, that there is little or no difference between Muslim extremists and Muslims as a population, it was plain to me from the start that there was a serious disconnect between the Muslim faith and terrorism. Having worked with a few people who were Muslim, both devout and nominal, I had and continue to have a clear impression of them standing in sharp relief to the images being fashioned and fed to Americans for popular consumption.

Helplessly I watched as preparations for the invasion of Iraq got underway. I had mixed feelings about what was being advanced as a "preemptive" invasion, and along with everyone else I gave credibility to the "threat"scenario. Once the war was underway, matters got out of control and there was little that anyone could do to bring about coitus interruptus in an international violent rape.

In the aftermath we see that General Petraeus and his insights should have been involved from the start, but you know what they say about hindsight...

Underscoring my instincts, I heard General Sir Michael Rose say in an interview last night that "by invading Iraq, of course we were going to make it almost impossible for the West to be able to mobilize the very people we need to help us fight Al Qaeda and that are the Muslim people of the world."

Which leads me to a neologism that has bothered me ever since I first heard it: Islamofascist. I'm not sure where the term originated, but I don't think it came from any confessing Muslim. Since no one wants to be associated with fascism (even those who are by definition fascists, I believe) it becomes a perfect label to attach to any group or individual one wants to discredit. Since the end of World War II the word fascism has the same stench to the children of the Allies that terms like Commie and fellow-traveler had in the Fifties or Nigger-lover had in the deep South about the same time. In fact, the term fascist is worse. I know people not ashamed to have been associated with the idealistic Communists of the past. And I, myself am satisfied -- no, honored, to be called Nigger-lover.

But that word fascist is another matter. I haven't met anyone who wants to own that designation, just as I have yet to meet anyone (or hear of anyone) pleased to be called Islamofascist.

All of which gets me to the point of this post.

The book Liberal Fascism and it's cute logo, a happy face with a Hitler-type mustache, is emerging, thanks to its provenance, from the mire of pulp slime trolling to the status of acceptable commentary. If a less well-known writer had produced this book it would not have attracted as much attention. It certainly would not have been viewed with as much respectability. But we are living in a time when the Ron Pauls of the world can go tromping across the national carpet with muddy boots and get away with it because what they say scratches a national itch that just keeps getting worse.

I saw the logo before I saw reference to the book. I dismissed it as so much sillyness. Then I saw it was a book, but I didn't pay much attention. We who openly call ourselves Liberal are accustomed these days to all kinds of personal invective. Then I noticed David Niewert's remarks followed by Jonah Goldberg on C-SPAN talking about his book. That got my attention. I see now that a heated argument is underway among pundits, historians and other experts regarding the pros and cons of Goldberg's book.

It's not hard to discern which side of this discussion is which.

I'm not enough of a scholar to say comment about the derivation of the word fascism. Moreover, I'm not interested in doing the homework when people like David Niewert are on duty. (Someone in the comment thread even linked to a critical review by Michael Ledeen.)

But I am smart enough to know it is an execrable insult to anyone to be called a fascist. There is an old saying in the South that even a dog knows when he's been kicked. There's a difference between being kicked and being tripped over. And I, as a self-identified Liberal, feel kicked and it really pisses me off. I'm not to the point of personal hate as referenced above, but it is fair to say that in the same way that The Anchoress draws the line between partisan hate and personal hate, I have to say I am full in the glow of partisan hate, resentment and insult.

This rant is as far as I will allow myself to go. But the issue has been stuck in my craw ever since I became aware and I had to get it out so I can move on with my blogging.

Israel/Hamas Thread by Mouin Rabbani

Mouin Rabbani is a Dutch-Palestinian Middle East analyst specializing in the Arab-Israeli conflict and Palestinian affairs. Rabbani is based in Amman, Jordan and was a Senior Analyst for the International Crisis Group, the Palestine Director of the Palestine American Research Center, a Project Director for the Association of Netherlands Municipalities, and a volunteer and General Editor for Al Haq. Rabbani is currently a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, a co-editor of Jadaliyya, and a Contributing Editor to the Middle East Report. 

THREAD:

On 7 October Israel vowed to destroy Hamas. To eradicate it as an organization. To neuter it as a military force, political movement, and governing entity. More recently Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in true mob boss style, stated that he had given Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, orders to assassinate all Hamas leaders residing in exile. 

Fifty days into the war, how close is Israel to achieving its objectives? The short answer is that it requires zero knowledge of military affairs to conclude that 

•  Israel’s proclaimed objectives are unattainable, and 
• Israel has additionally failed to significantly degrade either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). 

The elimination of Hamas is unattainable for several reasons. Most importantly, unlike for example ISIS or the European Union, Hamas has – much like the IRA/Sinn Fein or Facebook, in the decades since its establishment in 1988 become deeply rooted within society, and today exists wherever Palestinian communities are to be found. So even if Israel succeeded in eradicating Hamas from the Gaza Strip – or, more accurately, driving it underground – the organization will survive in the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan, and elsewhere. 

Indeed, the combined efforts of Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank since 2007 have yet to succeed in eliminating either its military, political, or social presence. FYI it is now 2023. 

Previous campaigns to eradicate Palestinian movements have not only generally failed, but as a rule enhanced their stature. The scale of the current onslaught has catapulted Hamas’s stature to unprecedented levels among Palestinians, and indeed among Arabs and in the Global South more generally. That’s not a challenge that can be resolved by a fleet of F-35s armed with tons of high explosives. 

Israel’s extraordinary self-regard and capacity for self-glorification notwithstanding, the elimination of Hamas is a non-starter, least of all at the hands of the thoroughly mediocre Israeli military and intelligence capabilities revealed on 7 October. Let’s for example take a closer look at those charged with assassinating Hamas leaders abroad. 

When a Mossad cell tried to poison Hamas leader Khalid Mashal in Amman in 1997, the assassins were caught and arrested by one – just one– of his bodyguards, after a long chase. On foot. 

King Hussein threatened to publicly execute the James Bond wannabes, and Israel (in the person of none other than Netanyahu) was forced to deliver to Jordan not only the antidote that saved Mashal’s life but also imprisoned Hamas founder/leader Shaikh Ahmad Yassin. 

In 2010, when the Mossad inexplicably dispatched a team of some two dozen agents to Dubai to assassinate a single Hamas operative, Muhammad Mabhouh, they forgot to observe elementary principles of operational security (e.g. hiding their faces from hotel CCTV monitors), and all ended up on Interpol’s wanted list. Their amateurish use of foreign passports additionally strained relations with key international allies, like Israel acolyte Stephen Harper of Canada. 

There’s no indication the agency has gotten any better during the intervening years. Unless you’re watching a Hollywood movie produced by Mossad asset Arnon Milchan, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency is not your go-to outfit for a campaign of high-profile foreign assassinations against an organization on high alert. I suspect American and European intelligence agencies are slowly reaching similar conclusions. 

Mossad’s domestic counterpart, Shin Bet, hasn’t fared better. Not only because it has been unable to eliminate Hamas military chief Muhammad Deif for decades, but more importantly because Hamas was able to arm, prepare, and launch the 7 October attacks right under its noses, and it hadn’t a clue. While Israel was busy “mowing the lawn” in the belief it was keeping Gaza’s armed groups in check, the Palestinians constructed an entire rainforest in plain sight. 

Israel may well get a few high-profile scalps and proclaim the End of History, but the organizational impact will be minor and temporary. Yassin was assassinated in 2004, a time when the most powerful rocket in the Hamas arsenal had difficulty making it across my living room. Its successful assassination of Hizballah leader Abbas in Mussawi in 1992 produced Hassan Nasrallah, Israel’s worst nightmare. In 2006, a daring midnight wartime raid in the Bekaa Valley finally captured Hassan Nasrallah. But there was a minor hiccup: the Mossad, which constantly proclaims itself the greatest and most sophisticated intelligence agency in recorded history, confused the head of Hizballah with a greengrocer bearing the same name. 

Similarly, Israel’s assassination campaign against Iranian nuclear scientists has been – to put it mildly – ineffective. Even the 2004 assassination of Yassir Arafat was counterproductive, as it set the stage for not only the obedient non-entity that is Mahmoud Abbas but also made possible the rise of Hamas as a genuinely national movement. 

But I digress. How significantly has Israel weakened Hamas since 7 October? If you listen to Daniel Hagari (the tunnel meme celebrity), Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (who looks like death warmed over when delivering good news), or Netanyahu, it’s clear there is very little left of the Palestinian movements, their leadership, or infrastructure. Antony Blinken, Jake “All Quiet on the Western Front” Sullivan, and John “Tearstosterone” Kirby, who seem to prefer receiving news after it has been vetted by the Israeli military censor, appear similarly confident. 

But once you step outside their echo chamber, reality tells a very different story. 

A significantly degraded organization would not have been able to uniformly and simultaneously cease firing throughout the Gaza Strip at the very moment a truce went into effect. 

Or to continue firing coordinated rocket barrages until moments before. Or to record, edit, and centrally broadcast video footage of its military operations from multiple locations on a nearly daily basis. Or collect and deliver captives from multiple locations, to multiple locations, during the truce – including deliberately choosing a location in central Gaza City that the Israeli military claimed is under its control. The most important functions of any military organization – command and control, communications, logistics, reconnaissance, PR, and last but not least the ability and will to fight, appear intact and at best marginally affected. 

As pointed out previously, Israel has killed more UN staff than Hamas commanders. The same in fact holds true for journalists and medical personnel. And the Israeli military has yet to unearth a fraction of the tunnels found in Hagari memes. It's inconceivable that Hamas has not been weakened and degraded during the past 50 days, or not lost important cadres and commanders, or depleted a significant proportion of its arsenal. But significantly degraded? The evidence for this is entirely absent. The Israeli military is admittedly a highly efficient killing machine, but also a mediocre fighting force, particularly in ground operations. 

Wars are not won by slaughtering children by the thousands, or turning Gaza City into rubble and depriving an entire society of basic necessities. The Germans tried this in the Soviet Union, and the Americans in Iraq, and it didn’t end well for either of them. 

Many have expressed disgust at the video of an Israeli major dedicating the destruction of a building to his daughter on her second birthday. One could also point out that when a military reaches the point of celebrating the demolition of an apartment building, it should repurpose as a municipal engineering corps and can no longer be considered a serious fighting force. 

This also helps explain why the US – by any standard an active participant in this war – and Israel decided to not only negotiate with Hamas, but specifically with Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the 7 October attacks, and to accept most Hamas’s conditions for the agreement reached several days ago. 

Before the truce was concluded US and Israeli officials – who previously rejected anything of the sort – explained that it would be an important agreement because it would legitimize a subsequent continuation and escalation of the war against the Gaza Strip. Several additional months on the scale of what we have witnessed this past month or even greater, as Gallant and Hagari keep promising, now seems increasingly unlikely. 

To be sure, Israel has an overwhelming advantage in military power. But when a serving cabinet minister advocates using a nuclear weapon against the Gaza Strip (a threat that has yet to be acknowledged by a single Western leader), it suggests the conventional military is having difficulty succeeding. Given its overwhelming power Israel can of course inflict very severe damage on not only Palestinian society but also Hamas. It will almost certainly make another effort to do so in the coming days or weeks. 

But it seems increasingly unlikely it is prepared to expend the blood and treasure required to achieve a meaningful military result. Its US and European sponsors also appear to be reaching a point where they would prefer to gradually wind this down before it gets completely out of hand and Israeli conduct ends up damaging rather than promoting their interests in the region. Israel’s systematic, deliberate attacks on the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, and systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, should be understood in this context. 

In addition to being motivated by a lust for revenge and desire to achieve a body count many time higher than that inflicted by the Palestinians on 7 October, such campaigns, for example by the Nazis in occupied Europe, the French in Algeria, the British in Kenya, the US in Iraq and before that in Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia, and indeed Israel in Palestine and Lebanon, deliberately target civilian society in order to put pressure on armed groups that superior military force is unable to eliminate. The British after all pioneered the concentration camp during the Boer War for this objective, decades before the Nazis repurposed it for mass extermination. 

Given the above examples one might conclude that such tactics rarely end well for the occupiers. They often don’t. 

Yet it is also true that the dustbin of history is littered with just causes. In the case of Israel and the Palestinians, and despite the colossal imbalance of power, it appears that Israel is increasingly losing the plot. END

The world was warned about Hamas years ago

Few people now remember that Fatah was elected in Gaza in 2006 -- nearly eighteen years ago -- in an election approved even by Israel and monitored by none other than Jimmy Carter, the president whose diplomatic acumen had yielded the Camp David Accords. 

Soon after that Carter issued plain advice on how positive results of that election could be lost if Israel and her allies failed to respond carefully.

During this time of fluidity in the formation of the new government, it is important that Israel and the United States play positive roles. Any tacit or formal collusion between the two powers to disrupt the process by punishing the Palestinian people could be counterproductive and have devastating consequences.

Unfortunately, these steps are already underway and are well known throughout the Palestinian territories and the world. Israel moved yesterday to withhold funds (about $50 million per month) that the Palestinians earn from customs and tax revenue. Perhaps a greater aggravation by the Israelis is their decision to hinder movement of elected Hamas Palestinian Legislative Council members through any of more than a hundred Israeli checkpoints around and throughout the Palestinian territories. This will present significant obstacles to a government's functioning effectively. Abbas informed me after the election that the Palestinian Authority was $900 million in debt and that he would be unable to meet payrolls during February. Knowing that Hamas would inherit a bankrupt government, U.S. officials have announced that all funding for the new government will be withheld, including what is needed to pay salaries for schoolteachers, nurses, social workers, police and maintenance personnel. So far they have not agreed to bypass the Hamas-led government and let humanitarian funds be channeled to Palestinians through United Nations agencies responsible for refugees, health and other human services.

This common commitment to eviscerate the government of elected Hamas officials by punishing private citizens may accomplish this narrow purpose, but the likely results will be to alienate the already oppressed and innocent Palestinians, to incite violence, and to increase the domestic influence and international esteem of Hamas. It will certainly not be an inducement to Hamas or other militants to moderate their policies.

President Carter's good intentions notwithstanding, even at the time he spoke Hamas was already a clearly malevolent group. This is from another source I came across at the time.

Calling the Hamas "militant" is more than an understatement. It is like saying Stalin was an "outspoken activist." Hamas began about 1985 as a seemingly innocuous charity and religious group that even got the support of the Israeli government. However, when the first Intifada started, Hamas turned militant. They drew up their charter, which explains their views on negotiations and what might be called "the Jewish question." It is hard to imagine a more racist and terrifying document. Some quotes:

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "

There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying."

 The Hamas victory was also noted by 3Quarks Daily at the time. 

Journalist and blogger, Laila el-Haddad, on the Palestinian elections and Hamas' victory in The Guardian's news blog.

The latest events can only be described as a political earthquake, both locally and regionally. Not only are these the first truly democratic and hotly contested elections in the Arab Middle East, but also the first time an Islamic party has come to power through the system and the popular will of the people.

To say we are entering a new stage is an understatement. Everyone knew Hamas would do well in these elections and that they would constitute a significant challenge to the ruling party. But this well?

Voters in Gaza were shocked.

"I cast a sympathy vote for Hamas but truthfully I did not expect them to win at all. It was a surprise to everyone; no one expected this to happen," a young college student said.

Even Hamas members and supporters were surprised.

"We thought we'd get at most 50% of the votes," one Hamas insider told me.

"We didn't expect the security forces and the upper classes to vote for us, but it seems they might have tipped the balance. I guess we're more popular than we realised."

How the new government will take shape and whether western positions towards it will evolve have all yet to answered. It's likely that Hamas will form a kind of national unity government, or a coalition of some sort, with a mixture of other parties. The burden of the sudden and overwhelming responsibility for running a state and answering to their constituents' long and varied list of demands may be more than they can deal with alone at the moment.

That "burden of the sudden and overwhelming responsibility for running a state and answering to their constituents' long and varied list of demands" did, in fact turn out to be "more than they can deal with alone at the moment."

Moreover, from that day to this Israel's response to that election has been to seize the moment and make it a divide-and-conquer strategy (Hamas vs. Fatah) controlling and overcoming the entire Palestinian population inside the official borders of the country, in Gaza and the Occupied Territories (aka the West Bank).

Gaza was already tightly controlled, but since then Hamas has, in fact become more militant than before, and Israel's controls have become progressively more severe, making it one of the world's biggest open-air prisons, housing a civilian population half or more of whom may not have even born when when Hamas was elected. 

I don't know if these links will be active as I publish this post. I gleaned them from my old blog which has somehow survived for searches but with no one in charge. When I go there I see many now-inactive urls but the old ship without a captain somehow survives somewhere in the cloud...