The Nasrallah Inversion

I can’t even.

On Saturday, Israel confirmed the death of Hassan Nasrallah, the Islamic Republic’s most powerful terrorist outside Iran.

For many years, Nasrallah oversaw attacks on Israel, including the most recent 11 months of near-daily rocket barrages, displacing more than sixty-five thousand civilians in the north. He was also responsible for immiserating untold numbers of innocent civilians in Lebanon and Syria, and “for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror,” as President Biden wrote in his official statement.

The elimination of the top Hezbollah terrorist capped an incredible series of events: In addition to Nasrallah, Israel’s campaign appears to have eliminated at least half of Hezbollah’s leadership council, along with potentially more than 1000 Hezbollah terrorists. Through heavy airstrikes, the IDF significantly diminished the terrorists’ weapons capabilities. And in what may be the most precisely targeted operation in military history, Israel blew up thousands of terrorists’ pagers and walkie-talkies, knocking out not only the communications structure, but injuring thousands of terrorists and killing dozens of them.

After the announcement of Nasrallah’s death, many in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon danced in the streets. Women in Iran posted on social media about their secret celebration. President Biden called Israel’s success “a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.”

The media fawned over Netanyahu. The AP called him “charismatic & shrewd.” The Washington Post reported that he was “respected by millions.” And the New York Times noted that Netanyahu was “beloved among many… in the Arab world.”

Just kidding. That’s how those media platforms referred to Nasrallah.

To quote every pre-teen girl: I can’t even.

(The Washington Post article was written by the same writer, Bassem Mroue, who wrote the AP piece, and the New York Times article was anonymously written.)

Thankfully, after Israel’s string of unprecedented military successes, journalist David Frum provided some badly needed comic relief, tweeting, “It seems that Hamas and Hezbollah grossly over-estimated the deterrent capabilities of student protesters at elite college campuses.”

Since we’re on the topic of Hamas-boosters, can we finally stop referring to anti-Israel demonstrators as “pro-Palestinian,” “anti-war,” and “critical of the Israeli government”?

It’s not “pro-Palestinian” to “globalize the intifada.” It’s pro-terrorism. It’s not “anti-war” to call for a ceasefire while Hamas is still capable of attacking Israelis and still holds hostages — ranging from babyhood to elderly. It’s anti-Jewish, and anti-civilization. And calls to “free” Palestine “from the river to the sea” are not merely “critical of the Israeli government” when what exists between the river and the sea is the sovereign state of Israel. They are calls for another genocide of Jews.

If anyone had any doubts about the antisemitic nature of these demonstrations, the Columbia Antisemitism report should remove them. Below is the piece I wrote for Psychology Today about that report. It includes only a handful of the antisemitic incidents the school’s Jewish and Israeli students faced last year, and the gaslighting they were subjected to when they reported it.

The task force correctly identified that “it is neither empirically accurate nor desirable to divide identity groups into two master categories, marginalized and privileged.” They admitted that “in this typology, Jews are considered privileged” and that this idea that has often been “supported by DEI offices.”

And in 7 days it will be one year since the most horrific day for Jews in post-holocaust history.

More to come…