Hamas and the Battle over “Cool”

The First Post-Modern War and the new Battlefield

This war has not gone well for Iran and their allies as Israel has decimated Hezbollah, caused the fall of the Assad regime and now damaged Iran’s reputation in the middle east from regional hegemon to unreliable and incapable ally. Hamas too has seen its senior leadership killed and a good part of Gaza destroyed. Israel has not (yet) won there but they have been reduced to an organization that is holding 20 living hostages and the bodes of 30 more on the one hand and is dependent upon stealing food from their own people on the other. Hamas is still alive and kicking but victory they do not and will not have in Gaza.

However, that does not mean that they have not won victories on other fronts and don’t have something to teach their Iranian overlords. Iran only threatened to kill Jews and destroy Israel with a single bomb, but that in itself was not enough. Dara Horn has said the “world loves dead Jews”, but Hamas has taught the anti-Semitic world that real victory means not just dead Jews but raped, mutilated and tortured Jews. The main victories of Hamas can be seen in the New York City mayoral election, in the western European capitals, in the British Labor Party and maybe in the American Democratic party, too.

Sometimes it’s the small things that, added up all together, point to a Hamas victory in western elite culture. Here are four examples, two public knowledge and two I have heard about privately and therefore will keep the details to myself.

- In New York City at a hospital started by Jewish money over 150 years ago, the organizers of a conference were told to move the conference “off campus” because some of the speakers were Israeli.

- In a major midwestern university a PhD candidate was told she could not write her dissertation on anti-Semitism because the subject was too controversial.

- In a private school in northern Virginia three Jewish children were expelled because their parents complained that the school was not defending them against anti-Semitic bullying . The school also hung a Palestinian flag in the school gym, for good measure.

- The acting President of Columbia emailed Board colleagues complaining that the Jewish member was a “mole” – more of the classic dual loyalty anti-semitic trope - and wondered how they can get an Arab board member.

While the Ukraine-Russia war looks like a more advanced replay of WWII or even WWI – the world’s first “modern” wars, the Israel-Iran war, broad based, is the world’s first post-modern war fought not only on multiple military fronts but also on multiple non-military fronts. While all past wars had they diplomatic front and even the PR front with patriotic jingoism, this war is global in a multi-dimensional way that other wars were not. Where WWII brought the first real war that included major air battles, the Israel-Iran war is also being fought underground and even in space as ballistic missiles are being launched and even shot down, beyond the earth’s atmosphere. Satellites are not yet being shot out of the sky but this is an introduction to that much as the WWI aces were the introduction to the B17’s, Spitfires and Mustangs of WWII.

The underground battle is in Gaza is the main reason why Israel has not yet been able to defeat Hamas in the battlefield. The underground centrifuges in Iran are the only reason why the US had to join this war for a night as Israeli firepower overwhelmed all other Iranian assets. Afghanistan could be said to be an introduction to this aspect of the war.

On the diplomatic and legal front, Hamas has been able to weaponize “international law” not only in order to place Israel and its leaders in the dock but have so panicked the IDF’s legal eagles that many Israeli soldiers are dying in what can be seen only as a fearful and strict obeyance of an international law no one else seems to keep. Even the so-called “humanitarian aid” has been used not only to fund Hamas terror in Gaza but has been used by the UN and other “international humanitarian aid” organizations to deny organizations not under the control of Hamas to distribute the aid. The organization that is now delivering aid and being fired upon by Hamas is not recognized by the UN. In Switzerland the authorities are closing down the GHF offices there since people are being killed near their distribution points - by Hamas of course but that is not the point. All aid not directed to Hamas, the legitimate Gazan government in the eyes of the world, is considered illegal. Israel must not be allowed to feed Gazans.

On the diplomatic and legal front denying Hamas the ability to decide who in Gaza eats and who doesn’t is now considered a crime against international law. That is one front in the war that Hamas has clearly won. The “international community” including the UN, Western Europe and even “neutral” Switzerland now agree that Hamas must control the Gazan food supply. This also seems to have been the view of the Biden administration.

However, Hamas’s greatest victory has been on the cultural front where artists and artistes of all sorts have adopted the Hamas cause and agree that genocide against Jews is acceptable but defending against that genocide is genocide itself. From classical cellists to rappers, from distinguished journalists to hack journalists the Hamas narrative has been adopted as unquestioned truth and declaring and supporting “death to Jews” of all sorts, in all parts of the world is now an acceptable response to Jewish self-defense.

Most of all, Hamas has conquered the region of “cool”. There is no denying the power of “cool” in forming the long term opinions of young people. Just look at the flower children of the sixties where even the most reformed conservatives still have a soft spot in their hearts for the draft dodgers and will read any justification of the Vietnam war as false revisionism. It was cool to protest against the war and the draft and repeating stories to your grandchildren on how cool it was at Woodstock or Kent State or the Pentagon protests (even if you weren’t actually there) still brings a smile to those who lived through that era.

The keffiyeh (which Palestinians don’t actually wear) and the childish chants at the protest actions would never have been made cool if Hamas had not raped, tortured and burned their way through communities on October 7. It was not and it is not the destruction and punishment of Gaza that has motivated “Hamas cool” but Hamas’s slaughter and the way they went about it. This allowed the young and not so young to imagine themselves participating in the cruelest fantasies they have ever “experienced” or “witnessed” in video games, TV shows and sadistic rap lyrics. They were now participants in the coolest event of the century. To be an antisemite is to be cool in a way that to be pro-trans or gay or a feminist is no longer. Those causes ran their course. A new cause was needed to cement this generation as “cool” and the rape and murder of Jews was the “cause” that propelled it forward.

The fight against the new cool is not one that the IDF can win nor is it one that the stolid old Jewish organizations can win. It is not a battle of reason and PR. It is a battle of the young against the young and cannot be ignored. Young Jews and their allies are in a world-wide cultural battle that will control the conversation about Jews for the next few decades. These Jews, in Israel, the United States, France, England, Australia, Germany and so many other countries either have to face this new cool head on – or lose the front they are destined to fight. I don’t know how to fight this battle – not being cool in any sense of the word – but it must be fought.

In the current world where truth is no more, proving you are right and moral no longer wins arguments. Sadly, we are in this argument where reason is not allowed to participate. The post-modernists begged for more openness and freedom, for more spirituality and creativity but what they brought upon us is the Dionysian worship of cruelty and sadism over reason and God. To lose God AND reason in one generation is too much for civilization to withstand – and what we have now is a “cool” both cruel and godless.

For those in the Jewish exile in Europe and North America you can lead your regular lives until the “then what?”. But the “then-what” is already here. It doesn’t have to wait for a Holocaust. If the mayor of New York can be an anti-Semite and the cowardly Jewish US Senator from NY can support him – if the president of major universities think there needs to be a balance against complaints of antisemitism and doctoral dissertations on antisemitism are too controversial – the “then what” is here already. If the young can’t be Jewish in any symbolic let alone meaningful way in the public square, the “then what” is already here.

You can choose whether to fight or not. If you don’t decide to ruthlessly fight to change the “Hamas cool”, there will be no victory even if the IDF kills every last Hamas terrorist in Gaza.