Sick stew of identity politics now has youth standing up for Hamas because ‘Jews deserved it’

How is it that the generation that thinks we should ‘believe all women’ has turned on a dime and now justifies Hamas’s reign of sexual terror against Israeli and women?

One of the most bizarre features of our current era is that so many of the same people who stand for “believe all women” have now found common cause with the most deranged gang of sexual terrorists since the Red Army stormed across Germany in 1945.

But thanks to the moral sewer of intersectional identity politics, which does away with old fashioned ideas about individual dignity to instead assign value to people depending on what “groups” they can be identified with and how much “oppression” they suffer, all the old moral consistencies are out the window.

A depressing snapshot of just how far this dreary ideology has penetrated Western society – particularly among the young – was revealed this week by the prestigious Harvard-Harris poll.

What it found confirmed that among 18-24 year olds the crimes of Hamas, which Hamas terrorists themselves filmed and broadcast in a sick theatre of depravity, have largely been excused or denied on the basis that the Palestinians are the anointed victims.

And as for Israel?

Women gather at the abandoned site of the Supernova music festival after the attack by Hamas militants on October 7, near Kibbutz Reim in southern Israel. Picture: AFP

Well, again, you’d have to go back to the Nazi era to find so many people convinced that the Jews are really the oppressors, powerful baddies who deserve what’s coming to them.

Among 18-24 year olds surveyed, six out of ten thought that Hamas’s killing of 1200 Israeli civilians and kidnapping of a further 250 could “be justified by the grievance of Palestinians.”

Demonstrators hold a banner and a placard during a rally organised by the Rape is Rape committee to "denounce the silence of international and feminist organisations" on rapes committed during the attack of October 7, 2023 on Israel, in front of UNESCO headquarters in Paris on December 1. Picture: AFP

Some 51 per cent of those in this age group also agreed that the best solution to the crisis would be for “Israel to be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.”

In the name of social justice, then, a tolerant multi-ethnic democracy whose annual Tel Aviv Pride Week boasts one of the largest parties in the world should be replaced by an Islamist theocracy that refuses elections, subjugates women, and executes gays.

How utterly progressive. How very peaceful. Can you feel the tolerance?

Other questions revealed equally disturbing insights into young peoples’ thinking.

A quarter – 24 per cent – of 18-24s even tried to minimise Hamas’s crimes, saying it was “not the case” that the terror group “committed rapes and other crimes against women” on October 7.

Two-thirds of this age group also thought Hamas’s attacks were genocidal and 73 per cent thought they met the definition of a terrorist attack, which suggests that when identity politics take hold there is little to stop the moral slide.

Presumably oppressors deserve what’s coming to them, even genocidal terrorism.

For those who wondered whether the attacks on statues of the past few years might one day translate into attacks on people, here is your answer.

Activists gather outside US State Department for a pro-Palestine rally on November 29, 2023 in Washington, DC. Picture: Getty Images via AFP

And while the poll was taken in the US, there is no reason to think that even if the numbers were different the trend of young people taking the side of Hamas over Israel would not be replicated in Australia.

The exact same focus on identity and identity politics is being pushed in Australian schools and universities too, and the country just went through a referendum campaign that was ultimately rejected but saw young people support entrenching racial division in the constitution.

When the questions were broadened out to look at identity politics as a whole, an overwhelming majority agreed with the basic tenets of the ideology, which is basically a warmed over Marxism that replaces class warfare with race/gender/identity conflict.

When asked whether “white people are oppressors” and that “certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favoured today at universities and for employment,” 79 per cent, or four out of five, said they agreed and supported this idea.

At the same time, 65 per cent of those surveyed over all said they opposed this idea.

And while 73 per cent of respondents overall disagreed with the idea that “Jews as a class are oppressors” and should be treated as such, 67 per cent of 18-24s said they agreed with the idea.

Protesters storm Melbourne Central Shopping Centre, with round 2 of students protesting for Palestine, demanding an end to the Genocide in Gaza. Picture: NCA Newswire

To put it another way, the generation that has supposedly raised and marinated in a soup of tolerance and kindness and “anti-racism” also endorses bonkers theories about Jews and justifies the most horrific violence against them.

So how did America – and the West – get to this point, where the rising generation that was supposedly taught the tolerance of To Kill a Mockingbird wound up with views more akin to Mein Kampf?

A clue was revealed in a largely sympathetic American magazine article about Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP, that found that ignorance plus identity has become a powerful, toxic brew.

Sean Eren, an SJP organiser, explained to The New Yorker that “the idea is to appeal to people who know nothing,” something that will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever quizzed a newly minted pro-Palestine activist only to discover they can’t find Gaza on a map.

“We go from apartheid to understanding what settler colonialism means. And then, from settler colonialism, we move to imperialism,” he said.

“And then, for example, what does Marxism have to do with Palestine?”

It’s not hard to see where this is going, or if with so many young people infected with these views it is too late to change course/