New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg called out American liberals who have been “justifying” or “celebrating” Hamas’ “atrocities” against the Jewish people in Israel last weekend.
In her column Thursday, Goldberg targeted members of various Democratic Socialist and other progressive groups who put out messages of support for Hamas and the Palestinian people following the deadly Hamas terror attack that murdered more than 1,200 Israelis.
Goldberg called these progressives “edgelord anti-imperialists,” who have made democratic socialism as a movement an “embarrassment to most politicians associated with it.”
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New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg has called out pockets of the left for their opposition to Israel. (Getty Images)
The author declared the need for a “decent and functional left” at this moment.
Goldberg began her column by recalling recent accounts she heard from her Rabbi friend about his progressive New York congregation’s “lefty friends.” According to the rabbi, the synagogue goers were shocked at that many of their normal progressive compatriots were “were either justifying Hamas’s atrocities or celebrating them outright.”
Goldberg added, “This sense of deep betrayal is not limited to New York. Many progressive Jews have been profoundly shaken by the way some on the left are treating the terrorist mass murder of civilians as noble acts of anticolonial resistance.”
She mentioned multiple groups by name.
“There was the giddy message put out by the national committee of Students for Justice in Palestine, which proclaimed, ‘Today, we witness a historic win for the Palestinian resistance: across land, air and sea,'” Goldberg wrote. “New York’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America promoted a rally where speakers applauded the attacks, and the Connecticut D.S.A. enthused, ‘Yesterday, the Palestinian resistance launched an unprecedented anticolonial struggle.’”
Goldberg added, “The president of N.Y.U.’s student bar association wrote in its newsletter, ‘I will not condemn Palestinian resistance,'” and noted that Black Lives Matter Chicago wrote “I stand with Palestine” and “posted a photo of a figure in a paraglider like those Hamas used to descend on a desert rave and turn it into a killing field.”
“But part of what makes the depravity of the edgelord anti-imperialists so tragic is that a decent and functional left has rarely been more necessary,” the Times columnist concluded.
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Demonstrators attend an “emergency rally for Gaza” outside the Israeli Consulate in New York City, New York on Monday, October 9, 2023. (Jennifer Mitchell for Fox News Digital)
After spending a beat decrying Hamas’ attacks and warning that Israel and its supporters must spare violence and killing of innocent Palestinians in its response to the massacre, Goldberg returned to condemning the left’s support for Hamas.
She wrote, “It is not just disgusting but self-defeating for vocal segments of the left to disavow those universal ideas about human rights, declaring instead that to those who are oppressed, even the most extreme violence is permitted.”
Goldberg also mentioned that “Students for Justice in Palestine” is holding “Day of Resistance demonstrations across the United States and Canada,” and noted that the events’ planning document calls Israel a “settler colony” and further designates that “Settlers are not ‘civilians’ in the sense of international law, because they are military assets used to ensure continued control over stolen Palestinian land.”
She wrote, “Perhaps such hideous dogmatism shouldn’t be surprising. The left has always attracted certain people who relish the struggle against oppression primarily for the way it licenses their own cruelty; they are one reason movements on the left so reliably produce embittered apostates… plenty of leftists have long fetishized revolutionary violence in poor countries, perhaps as a way of coping with their own ineffectuality.”
Goldberg also that the most “sympathetic reading” of what’s going on with these leftists, “is that their nihilism is a function of despair.” She continued, “By valorizing terrorism, these voices on the left are effectively choosing to stop contending for power in a serious way — a slow and grinding process rife with setbacks — and indulge instead in messianic projection.”
The columnist claimed that because of such antics, a group like the Democratic Socialists of America – which “seemed to be emerging as a political force, with several of its members, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, ascending to Congress. Now has made itself an embarrassment to most politicians associated with it.”
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