Sympathy for Hamas: people will do almost anything to hang onto their belief systems

The New Neo Posted on by

When I started this blog almost two decades ago (!), my main motivation was to tell my change story. It seemed interesting to me but not so very out of the ordinary. But since then, although I’ve followed the tales of many other “changers,” I’ve come to understand that the title of my series on the subject – “A mind is a difficult thing to change” – is really an understatement. Change seems to be very very difficult, and most people will do almost anything to retain their beliefs.

Cognitive dissonance is painful. It occurs when a belief is challenged by facts or events that are difficult to deny. People dealing with cognitive dissonance of that type have a number of choices. The first is denial – these new facts or events didn’t really happen, or didn’t happen that way. The second is rationalization and excuse-making – the new facts or events don’t really challenge the belief system and can be looked at in some way that makes the dissonance go away. And the third is changing the original set of beliefs and looking at things in a different way, incorporating the new facts or events into a changed point of view.

That last is the hardest; people usually choose one or even both of the first two.

If you’re puzzled by how many people on the left who aren’t Palestinians or Arabs can defend what Hamas did on October 7, think about cognitive dissonance. A lot of these people, many of whom are college students, are deeply invested in a belief system that calls israelis colonizers and oppressors, and sees Palestinians as the suffering oppressed. These opinions make the leftist students feel good about themselves. They are on the side of the underdog, on the side of goodness and compassion.

So when the news of the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 came out, denial was a common line of defense. It simply didn’t happen, said some. The videos Hamas took to document the events were fakes. Some went so far as to say that Israelis actually killed and tortured their own people and blamed it on Hamas. This requires a serious divorce from reality, but reality isn’t all that real to young people who live their lives mostly on computers anyway, and who have been stuffed full of pro-Palestinian attitudes and slogans by so many of their teachers.

Approach number two – the rationalization and excuse-making – are mechanisms that come with the leftist territory. Because the Palestinians are defined as oppressed “brown” people, their violence is labeled “resistance” and excused as the only “tool” available to them when fighting the technologically superior “white” Israelis. This is an all-purpose excuse and serves well to reduce the anxious feeling cognitive dissonance causes. Pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas demonstrations put those who see it this way in the company of many many other people who also see it this way, creating the feeling of solidarity, unity, and strength in numbers.

And then we have college administrators who ought to know better, offering mealy-mouthed reactions such as these:

There have been a spate of articles trying to stoke terror at the prospect of a Trump dictatorship

The New Neo Posted on by

The extreme demonization of Donald Trump continues, with articles such as this one by Robert Kagan. Oh, the horror of a possible Trump presidency:

Republicans who have tried to navigate the Trump era by mixing appeals to non-Trump voters with repeated professions of loyalty to Trump will end that show. As perilous as it is for Republicans to say a negative word about Trump today, it will be impossible once he has sewn up the nomination. The party will be in full general-election mode, subordinating all to the presidential campaign.

Kind of like with most candidates? Oh, but with Trump, it’s done out of terror of what this Caligula-like figure will do to anyone who defies him.

More:

But Trump will not only dominate his party. He will again become the central focus of everyone’s attention. Even today, the news media can scarcely resist following Trump’s every word and action. Once he secures the nomination, he will loom over the country like a colossus, his every word and gesture chronicled endlessly.

Probably the case, but whose fault is that? Not Trump’s. Even Kagan is participating – already.

This next is almost humorous in its Orwellian twisting:

Trump intends to use the trial to boost his candidacy and discredit the American justice system as corrupt — and the media outlets, serving their own interests, will help him do it.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because the trial is a bogus Beria-like show trial on its face. Maybe that’s the thing Trump is “using” to “discredit the American justice system as corrupt.”

More:

Biden, as some have pointed out, does not enjoy the usual advantages of incumbency. Trump is effectively also an incumbent, after all. That means Biden is unable to make the usual incumbent’s claim that electing his opponent is a leap into the unknown. Few Republicans regard the Trump presidency as having been either abnormal or unsuccessful.

That’s because it wasn’t unsuccessful, especially compared with Biden’s term. Was it abnormal? Yes. It was abnormal in what the opposition did to try to frame him and destroy him.

Further:

Biden must carry the world’s problems like an albatross around his neck, like any incumbent, but most incumbents can at least claim that their opponent is too inexperienced to be entrusted with these crises. Biden cannot. On Trump’s watch, there was no full-scale invasion of Ukraine, no major attack on Israel, no runaway inflation, no disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. It is hard to make the case for Trump’s unfitness to anyone who does not already believe it.

Oh, unlucky Biden and lucky son of a gun Trump! Fancy that; none of those things happened on Trump’s watch, but only on Biden’s. What a strange coincidence. What an odd set of circumstances – and yes, it is hard to make the case for Trump’s unfitness, and just as hard to make the case for Biden’s fitness. Even Kagan isn’t doing a very good job of it.

Kagan doesn’t even seem to really believe Trump is guilty of the crimes with which he’s charged – certainly not all of them. His defense of those who have charged Trump is that Trump is so terrible they really must try everything to stop him:

It is hard to fault those who have taken Trump to court. He certainly committed at least one of the crimes he is charged with; we don’t need a trial to tell us he tried to overturn the 2020 election. Nor can you blame those who have hoped thereby to obstruct his path back to the Oval Office. When a marauder is crashing through your house, you throw everything you can at him — pots, pans, candlesticks — in the hope of slowing him down and tripping him up. But that doesn’t mean it works.

Caesar, Hitler, Napoleon; the comparisons keep coming. Trump won’t obey the Supreme Court – although he always has. Trump will try to run for a third term, because he doesn’t care what the Constitution says. The scaremongering goes on and on, but this fits both the mood and the belief system of most Democrats today.

Here’s one more quote to give you a flavor of the sort of thing Kagan sees as something Biden and the Democrats would never, never ever, do:

So, the Trump administration will have many avenues to persecute its enemies, real and perceived. Think of all the laws now on the books that give the federal government enormous power to surveil people for possible links to terrorism, a dangerously flexible term, not to mention all the usual opportunities to investigate people for alleged tax evasion or violation of foreign agent registration laws.

No, that’s not a joke, although it reads like a roadmap of what Democrats have done lately to the right. But in Kagan’s universe, only the dangerous would-be dictator Trump would stoop to such tactics.

Hostages and nightmare

The New Neo Posted on by

A nightmare is different than an anxiety dream, although the latter is bad enough. But whereas an anxiety dream makes a person feel uneasy, a nightmare transports the dreamer into a world of pure evil in which the sleeper feels a much deeper sense of dread and dislocation. It is a relief to wake up and realize it’s only a dream. But the nightmare reveals our deepest fears and the vulnerability that comes with being human.

Fairy tales are powerful because they often deal with nightmare scenarios that are then overcome. The hero meets the witch or ogre or troll or wild animal that wishes to kidnap or eat or kill, and the plucky little boy or girl has to call on cleverness, goodness, kindly spirit animals, fairy godmothers, or other benign forces that exist as well in the universe of the dream and manage to help the child counteract the evil.

The child knows, or senses, that vulnerability. Something might lurk under the bed or in the closet, something might come to get the child and snatch him or her away from the comfort and protection of home. But fortunately that happens very rarely.

And yet it happens. The Israeli children kidnapped on October 7 are examples of the horror of a nightmare come true. This also is true for any kidnapped child (or adult, actually), some of whom have become quite well-known. Elizabeth Smart, for example. Those three girls in Cleveland, Ohio – remember? – kept in captivity for about 10 years by the sadistic Ariel Castro. Steven Stayner. And many more.

All of those kidnap victims I just mentioned were sexually abused. You may or may not be familiar with the details, and yet that was a prominent part of what happened to them. Some managed to heal quite well after they were freed, and some did much less well.

Yet another kidnapped sexual abuse victim was Patty Hearst, whom I’ve written about previously in this post. Many people are unaware of that aspect of her kidnapping, perhaps because she was a bit older (19) when it happened and probably because she seemed to voluntarily join her kidnappers in their crimes later on. But she was tortured first: blindfolded, kept in a closet for weeks, and raped.

Now that almost all of the Israeli children Hamas kidnapped have come home, their stories are coming out. And it’s clear that they have experienced extremely serious trauma, on par with nightmare. Here is a discussion of some of what happened:

These children – and their families – were suddenly plunged into a truly nightmare world. I mean that in the literal sense, although of course they were awake and not asleep. Their real world because nightmarish. The protection and love on which children rely had disappeared, except for the slightly luckier ones who were with family or people they knew and loved. But they were all – including those adults – completely at the mercy of evil people. And as Patty Hearst herself said much later on (in a 2002 Larry King interview):

You know how when people have been held hostage, one of the first questions they get asked is, how were you treated? And the answer is almost always I was treated, you know, pretty well. And by that, they usually mean they weren’t killed.

I am very glad the children are back. I assume it will take most of them a long time to heal and attain a semblance of normalcy, but I also assume they never will be the same. But I hope they will – as Hemingway said – be strong at the broken places.

Is Hamas becoming a weak horse?

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember what Osama bin Laden said:

“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”

That is especially true in the Middle East. The Biden administration has been perceived as a very weak horse, particularly after the ignominious Afghanistan withdrawal. Biden would like to make Israel into a weak horse as well, but Israel is having none of that so far.

Since October 7th, I have found the group in this video to have some of the best and most insightful commentary, with details unavailable elsewhere. They may not be the most charismatic crew, but they are knowledgeable. Here’s an excerpt that is even – dare I say the word? – a mite encouraging, and that is relevant to the strong/weak horse dynamic:

Hamas may be increasingly perceived as a weak horse by the Palestinians. That doesn’t mean they are dropping their hatred of Israel. But over time – perhaps a great deal of time – there is at least a possibility that they will see support for terrorism as a losing game that only leads to their own suffering.

Muslims in swing states threaten to “abandon” Biden in 2024

The New Neo Posted on by

Biden started out with Israel-supportive rhetoric. But it was always clear that, once Israel showed it meant business about eliminating Hamas, Biden would pressure the Israelis to back off, go easy, and even accept a ceasefire. Not only is the Biden administration wedded to old ideas of two-state solutions and denial of the Palestinian aim of destroying Israel, but Biden and his aides realize that much of his base is both anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish.

In a state like Michigan, Muslim voters matter, and even Biden’s pressure on Israel to make nice to the Palestinians isn’t good enough for them. According to Politico:

Muslim leaders from several swing states on Saturday descended on Dearborn, Michigan, to launch a national campaign against the reelection of President Joe Biden — a response to his handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Organizers from Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania are calling the campaign #AbandonBiden, vowing to ensure that Biden is a one-term president. These leaders have run separate pressure campaigns in their respective states, members of the coalition said, but they felt now was the time to coordinate their response ahead of the 2024 election.

“We’re looking into finding ways to build a mechanism of coordination between all the swing states so that we’re constantly working together to ensure that Muslim Americans will come out in all of these states, and that Mr. Biden will lose each and every one of them,” said Hassan Abdel Salam, a professor at the University of Minnesota and a member of the #AbandonBiden National Coalition during a press conference Saturday. “Right behind me, what Mr. Biden should see is 111 electoral votes. And he won last time with 74.”

But before you get too excited about this development, here’s how I see it: very very few of these voters will actually vote for Trump or any other Republican nominee. What’s more, if Biden is the Democrat nominee, they will almost certainly vote for him rather than allow the Republican to win. What I believe this current movement is about is scaring Biden and company, pressuring him into twisting the Israelis’ arms further and forcing some sort of ceasefire. The Muslim voters’ hope is that just the threat will be enough for them to get the results they want: Israel letting Hamas live to fight another day.

They are still persecuting/prosecuting J6-ers who did next to nothing wrong

The New Neo Posted on by

And this guy must be especially galling to them because he’s a black Trump supporter.

They’re not supposed to exist. But they do. And their numbers appear to be growing.

Here’s the story of Siaka Massaquoi:

Los Angeles-based actor Siaka Massaquoi was arrested Thursday night at a Los Angeles airport on four misdemeanor charges related to his peaceful participation in protests in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. Massaquoi and his pregnant wife were returning from Nashville, where they attended the premiere of the Daily Wire’s new film “Ladyballers.”

Massaquoi, who ran for the California State Assembly in 2022, currently serves as the first vice-chair of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County. He is also a RedState columnist.

Although the charges (trespassing, parading, and disorderly conduct) are misdemeanors, FBI agents took Siaka to jail, where he was kept overnight until being released on a $1,000 OR bond at the end of the day Friday.

More at the link.

And then there’s this:

The video captures the unsettling scene of police hurling not one, not two, but three concussion grenades into an apparently peaceful crowd at the Capitol on January 6.

In this eye-opening footage, the peaceful atmosphere is shattered by the deafening blasts of concussion grenades.

It made me wonder, “Why hasn’t this been shown?”

It’s the kind of reality check that sends shivers down your spine. But here’s the kicker: the January 6 Committee, the supposed guardians of truth in the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection, has kept this video, and probably many others, under wraps.

Also this:

Why did the hostage deals end?

The New Neo Posted on by

I can only guess at an answer to that question, but I think it’s not just as simple as “Hamas broke the agreement and Israel got fed up.” Those things are true, but I’ve noticed a few more that might be playing into the decision.

One is the Hamas announcement – perhaps true, perhaps false – that the two Bibas children and their mother died while in captivity. One of those children was the youngest hostage of all, a ten-month-old baby, and the other was (is?) all of four. Israel has also confirmed the deaths of four other hostages while in captivity:

The kibbutz named them as Aryeh Zalmanovich, 85, the oldest of the 240 people kidnapped by Hamas, Maya Goren, 56, a legendary kindergarten teacher in the community, and Ronen Engel, 54, whose wife and two daughters were returned to Israel earlier this week after being abducted alongside him.

The Israel Defense Forces later confirmed their deaths, along with that of fellow Nir Oz resident Eliyahu Margalit, 75, whose daughter was released from Hamas captivity on Thursday.

Another death in captivity was this one. And a suspected hostage death is also this. Israel is mum so far on how these deaths have been “confirmed.” It could be through intelligence obtained from Gazan sources, or it could be through reports from the released hostages. We simply don’t know. Nor do we know how they died – although Hamas will of course claim Israeli airstrikes, their all-purpose excuse.

There was also this curious statement from a Hamas leader:

They don’t know the number; the number is not important, according to this vile person. That can be interpreted in quite a few ways, but one that occurs to me is that more of the hostages have died in captivity and Hamas doesn’t want to disclose that fact, or how many, because it would harden Israel’s resolve still further, and might even cause Biden/Blinken to support that hardening. Dead hostages are still worth something to Hamas – Israel and the families want the remains in order to properly bury them, and Hamas can keep trying to claim that the hostages were actually killed by Israel. But there is no question in my mind that living hostages are much more valuable to Hamas.

However, if a significant number of hostages have already died, that could be one of the reasons Hamas violated the terms of the deal: they may have wanted the deal to end, rather than explain they couldn’t hand over these particular living hostages because they are actually no longer alive. Hamas may have decided they’ve milked what they can from the deals. And Israel may know more about this than it’s letting on – although the additional deaths can’t be confirmed, they may be suspected, in part based on the testimony of the returned hostages.

NOTE: One thing that’s been clear for quite some time, though, is that the hostages are not being kept in a centralized place, and that they’re not even all being held by Hamas. The numbers do matter, but they are Israeli guesswork to a certain extent.

Soros and Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

By Dershowitz:

Musk has been falsely accused of antisemitism because of his criticism and mockery of George Soros. …

Soros is Jewish by heritage. Musk is not. But their religious backgrounds should play no role in evaluating the charges and counter-charges. The facts and history of both men should be evaluated. …

No single person has done more to damage Israel’s standing in the world, and especially among so-called progressives, than George Soros. Without his support, the two major organizations that have done the most to shift the left-wing paradigm against Israel, would not have the pernicious influence they currently possess.

Human Rights Watch was founded by publisher and human rights advocate Robert Bernstein. For years it critiqued the denial of human rights by all countries based on two criteria: the seriousness of the human rights violations in any particular nation; and the inability of the citizens of that nation to protest and remedy such violations. Then a Soros-funded radical anti-Israel zealot named Kenneth Roth took over the organization and turned it into an organization that specialized in demonizing Israel without regard to the previously outlined criteria. The Israel bashing became so one-sided and extreme that Bernstein wrote:

“As the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.”

Soros gave the organization a hundred million dollars as well.

The other organization is J Street; Dershowitz also describes Soros’ contribution there.

The idea that any criticism of Soros is anti-Semitic is absurd – but useful to the left – and it’s an old topic that I discussed at some length in a two-parter back in 2018. Part I is here and Part II is here.

I wrote in Part I:

Remember when every type of criticism of Obama was called racist? Of course it wasn’t actually racist if you were criticizing his behavior. You were criticizing the man and the president, Barack Obama, not his race.

Same with Soros and being a Jew. With Soros there’s also the fact that, that although he was born a Jew by the Nazis’ definition — in other words, he was born in Hungary to parents of Jewish ancestry — he was never given any instruction in Judaism and his parents had actually repudiated Judaism. They weren’t just non-practicing Jews (although they were indeed that), they were actually anti-Jewish, according to Soros himself, who said that he “grew up in a Jewish, anti-Semitic home,” and called his parents “uncomfortable with their religious roots.”

So Soros’ heritage could more properly be called anti-Semitism. It is absolutely possible for people of Jewish heritage to be anti-Jewish. In fact, given the prevalence and longevity of anti-Semitism, being of Jewish origin and yet trying to give out the message “I’m not one of those Jews, and I’ll prove it by hating them and working against them” is actually not all that unusual.

However, Soros was not a Nazi collaborator, although that’s a favorite accusation against him on the right (see this post of mine on that).

I’m very much in agreement with Dershowitz on Soros.

NOTE: In addition, in 2022 I wrote this post entitled, “It occurs to me that Elon Musk is somewhat the anti-Soros.” This was prior to any dust-up between them.