In late January, an undercover Israeli unit disguised as medics carried out a covert operation against Hamas forces in a hospital in the West Bank. The Israeli fighters carried props such as baby carriers and folded wheelchairs through the corridors of the hospital before executing three Hamas fighters, one of whom was identified by the Israel Defense Forces as having recently planned another Oct. 7-style attack in Israel.
Of course, the IDF could have easily used its superior air power to level hospitals in the West Bank and beyond; it did not need to endanger its own forces in a high-risk operation against a terrorist organization that hides in hospitals and schools and uses its people as shields. But Israel has made great efforts to minimize civilian casualties, despite growing international outrage over the number of collateral civilian deaths in Israel’s counteroffensive against Hamas, fueled by breathless news media reports that parrot “statistics” provided by the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza. News of the covert hospital strike makes this self-evident.
But for many in the progressive Left sphere, it was simply more evidence of Israel’s malevolence.
“About 10 members of Israeli special forces dressed in civilian clothes went to the third floor [of the hospital], where they killed the men using weapons fitted with silencers,” posted former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan in response to reports of the operation. “In any other country, we’d call this a government death squad. Sheesh.”
Of course, it is no surprise that Hasan, along with other rabid anti-Israel journalists of prominence, has never called Hamas a “government death squad.” While the progressive Left has acknowledged Israel’s right to defend itself (on occasion and with great pain), Hasan’s post gives the game away. There is nothing that Israel could do to appease its critics in the effort to repel its enemies. There is no amount of civilian casualty minimization that could alter the perception of Israel as a colonialist and inherently racist power that should never have come into existence in the first place.
This isn’t news to anyone who’s been paying attention to leftist rallies across the globe in recent months, including those shamefully held on our university campuses with the explicit approval of university administrations. The ubiquitous rallying cry at these events, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is a direct call for the annihilation of the state of Israel, which, of course, occupies the space between the river and the sea. They are not being subtle; they’ve made their intentions plain.
And yet, there is tremendous resistance among political and corporate leaders aligned with the Left to acknowledge the inherent meaning of such a call. Their silence is both dangerous and cowardly. Should Israel suffer another unthinkable attack — should, for instance, Hamas actually succeed in carrying out a chemical weapons attack — it will be remembered by history.
On occasion, the anti-Israel fervor causes Democrats and their corporate allies to squirm, such as when anti-Israeli student activists interrupted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech at Columbia University last weekend by calling her a “war criminal” and a “white supremacist.” But on the whole, “responsible” Democrats appear unwilling to stand for the inconvenient truth if it means sacrificing votes in Dearborn, Michigan.
None of this is to say that there aren’t legitimate criticisms of the Israeli government in recent times, particularly during the most recent Benjamin Netanyahu administration. But following the horrors of Oct. 7 that saw a literal government death squad swoop into southern Israel on hang gliders, not to mention the repeated attempts by antisemitic forces to eradicate Jews from the planet in the past century, such critiques ring hollow. The Jewish people are, as ever, in a fight for their very survival.
Here’s a question for the Hasans of the world: What could Israel do short of disappearing that would make you happy? What exactly would be good enough?
The progressive Left should be pressed on this point. Surely, they will evade and pose an endless string of inane “whataboutisms” in response. That’s because admitting Israel’s right to exist and defend itself would defy dogma. There is no two-state solution between the river and the sea.
BlackTower CIO Ari Paul hit the mark in his response to Hasan on X: “We can read between lines. Don’t bomb with collateral damage, don’t flood the tunnels, also don’t do targeted special ops missions. So …don’t take down Hamas. We get it.”
We do, indeed.
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Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, and the National Catholic Register.
