Nimrods
The only group of people actually buying into the "free Palestine" fever dream have suddenly gone radio silent. Let's discuss.
Some housekeeping. I hope that you will all join me in wishing a speedy recovery to one of my favorite Substack writers, Matt Taibbi of Racket News. If you subscribe to Racket, you are aware that Matt suffered a fall and a probable concussion last week and is still a bit under the weather. Be well, Matt.
Matt’s note to readers this morning came with an explanation, an apology and a bit of chagrin. He could have left the last two out of it. I consider the direct connection between writers and readers, even with occasional ups and downs, to be a feature rather than a bug of new media. It’s worth the ride because I feel that I know enough about Taibbi’s background and where he’s coming from that I can trust his opinions on a well-defined range of topics. And, just as importantly, those few I cannot. This is more difficult anymore with large news operations, where traditional journalism is considered passé among most of the staff.
None of us are without bias. The difference between new media and The New York Times is that only one of these entities gets that. I generally know when to trust personality-driven new media. I generally know that I can trust the NYT about as far as I can throw the skyscraper at 620 Eighth Avenue, NY, NY, or Nikole Hannah-Jones, she of neutron star-dense cranial matter. Whichever is less. I’m not sure.
I’m more than willing to tolerate the vagaries of single-person media operations in exchange for that trust—something that the NYT is unlikely to earn from me no matter how much they publish like clockwork. Nor the journos at, for instance, CNN, who are so out of tune with most of America that they are without a clue as to why no one gives a shit about what Anthony Bourdain would have done.
I’m working on a longer piece that should be in your email tomorrow. As always, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting Howlin’ at the Moon. Let’s get into it.
Just after I uploaded last week’s column, It’s been 732 days. I still got you, Israel reached a Trump-brokered ceasefire agreement with Hamas. In exchange for the cessation of hostilities, Israel agreed to return 2000 Palestinians currently detained in Israel, and Hamas agreed to return all 48 hostages, living or dead.
Since then, four things of interest to me have come to the fore.
Even Egypt, Turkey and Qatar evidently have their standards. It’s now completely apparent that Hamas has no friends left in the region—not even pretend friends. Hamas’s only allies are far-removed Ivy Leaguers, the progressive media, some European pols, and willfully ignorant NGOs.
Hamas has already failed to honor their side of the agreement by withholding hostages. Although these hostages are all supposed to be deceased, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if a few of them were alive and being held deliberately. When dealing with criminals—and despite self-identifying as freedom fighters, that’s who comprises Hamas—you’ll do well to comprehend the criminal mindset. Criminals never cede any edge they may have. Never. One of the bodies returned has been definitively identified as belonging to someone who was not a hostage—something that Hamas tried the last time hostages were exchanged. I’m seeing a pattern here. Hamas knew this demand was coming, and it’s difficult to believe they were that unprepared. There’s more to this, I think, than meets the eye.
Though Palestinians have ceased hostilities with Israel (at least for the time being), they are now turning on each other, with various factions gunning for others over control of what few resources are left in Gaza (and in some cases just for the sake of animosity) in a Sunni version of The Hunger Games. The struggle between Hamas and Israel was never about finding peace; it was about hatred and power. Who didn’t see this coming?
Every progressive nimrod in this country has suddenly gone radio silent after vociferously expressing solidarity with the Palestinians and demanding peace just last week. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Trump facilitated the peace and the Palestinians have now turned on each other, or if it’s just some weird coincidence. That’s rhetorical, by the way, in case you just found your way here by accident.
Perhaps the least surprising thing about any of the above is how completely evident it now is that no one in the Middle East wants anything to do with Hamas. This has always been true, but heretofore beyond comprehension among oblivious progressives, academics, journos, European government officials and others.
Egypt refused to open the border it shares with Gaza to assist Palestinian refugees at any point during the conflict because it was aware of the significant trouble that would come from doing so. They aren’t, as it turns out, as opposed to self-preservation as a lot of Palestinian shills in the Ivy League.
The only people in this country who are gullible enough to buy into the nonsense Hamas and their enablers have been peddling are leftist academics, progressive media and people with purple hair who aren’t sure which bathroom to use. You have to be fucking stupid to argue that people who kidnapped kids at concerts, beheaded infants, and murdered civilians indiscriminately, with no clear purpose apart from ginning up sympathy among idiots, are victims—especially when, granted a reprieve, they turn on each other. That’s world-class dumbassery right there, both ways.
All of these people, Hamas and their nimrod defenders, deserve each other. Should we take up a collection to open a branch campus for Columbia in Gaza?
Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on X at @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.
Witheringly stringent, sir. One has come to expect no less moral clarity from your spirited perambulations through that crystal mountain air. Reminded me of the first sip of a perfectly pristine gin martini. Keep on shakin’.
There actually is a Columbia "Global Campus" network I had to cover occasionally which seem to essentially be diploma mills for sheer profit. There's already one in the middle east, but surely out of the goodness of the university's heart they could at least put in a field office.