Hamas

The war in Gaza has claimed another victim — this time on American soil. Airman Aaron Bushnell died on Sunday night after lighting himself on fire in protest of the war. Bushnell filmed his protest in front of the Israeli Embassy on Sunday and livestreamed it on Twitch, quickly becoming a martyr for the far left. Well, some of them. “I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” Bushnell said in the video. “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all.” Bushnell then lit himself on fire while screaming, “Free Palestine,” until he fell to the ground. The video shows police officers working for more than a minute to put the fire out.

The migraine arrived suddenly and unexpectedly — a headache of global proportion that made every sound a shrieking cacophony, impossible to ignore. Tuning it out, as the Democratic coalition had managed to do successfully for the better part of a decade, was no longer an option. The nightmare had arrived, and it had a throbbing mantra, carried across the bluest corners of the country in pixels and TikToks and in the bellow of a boiling mass of blathering, megaphone-wielding youths: “From the river to the sea.” Even before the horror of the October 7 attack and the war on Hamas that followed, Israel has carried the potential to cause political tribulation for Democrats in the post-Obama era.

Beyond Hamas’s ruthlessness — and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fecklessness — one thing that’s become increasingly clear since the October 7 attack on Israel is that social justice groups and identity crusaders no longer possess even a shred of seriousness. How could they, with feminist organizations still questioning the legitimacy of Hamas’s sexual violence against Israeli women? Or lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans groups insisting that “queer issues are Palestinian issues” — despite Hamas’s paper trail of violent queer death? Or the folks from #BlackLivesMatter unwilling even to consider in the slightest that Jewish lives matter too?

Hamas’s most valuable assets are the American hostages it holds. That simple fact means the terrorist organization will demand the highest value in return. What can America give Hamas in exchange? Not prisoners, since the US doesn’t hold any Hamas fighters. That means the US cannot follow the Israeli pattern of giving Hamas three Palestinian prisoners in exchange for every one held by Hamas. Nor can America provide boatloads of cash, as the Biden administration has for Iran. Biden could continuing giving Iran money, but that is much harder in the midst of war. And it is untenable politically to pay Hamas directly while the fighting continues. The Biden team might promise to help rebuild Gaza later, but that’s not valuable to Hamas right now, as it fights for its life.

If there could ever be a positive that comes out of the horrific terrorist attacks in Israel in October, it’s this — the battle lines have never been clearer. That may seem obvious in the context of Israel versus Hamas, but for Americans, watching the drawing of the fault lines has been extremely clarifying. In the hours that followed the atrocities, the people who reject any sort of nuance in politics wanted to “put into context” the murders of 1,400 Jews — including elderly Holocaust survivors, women and children. The Manhattan chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez remains a member, tweeted support of Palestine and its intention of holding a rally in Times Square.