The Hamas charter calls for killing all Jews (not just Israelis), so how could it be that there are Jewish groups, such as If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace, who carry water for Hamas? Hamas and other Islamist groups punish gays with death, so why are there LGBTQ+ groups that are pro-Hamas? Given the way that Iran and Islamists treat women, why do some feminists back them?

The Jewish groups are the most perplexing. Placing the blame for the barbaric terrorist attack of October 7th squarely on Israel, they are busy lobbying Congress to stop sending military aid. Anti-semitic harassment does not seem to concern them, and their rallies have led to headlines that surely make Hamas leaders gleeful: “Progressive Jewish Groups Blame Israeli ‘Apartheid’ for Hamas Violence” (Newsweek) and “Hundreds Arrested as US Jews Protest Against Israel’s Gaza Assault” (The Guardian) are but two examples.

This phenomenon is not new. Lenin supposedly called people of this sort “useful idiots” and, as the phrase suggests, he had utter contempt for them, especially the liberals of the Kadet (Constitutional Democratic) party.

[There’s another category that gets less attention than it should, which I call the “moral idiots.” These are people who are clearly grasping that Hamas is a genocidal death cult but who think that Israel’s domestic policies are somehow a much worse issue. They’re the people who rush to tell you that Gaza is an ‘open-air prison’ without explaining how the ‘inmates’ have managed to shower rockets at Israel almost continuously for 17 years. They are the elites who sniff that the supposed colonizers of Israel are the Jews rather than the Arabs that have for the last 76 years launched wars to seize their land — recognized as such by the United Nations. The moral idiots are by far the worse problem … although I grant you, there may be significant overlap between them and the useful idiots. — Ed]