Thread by @RichardHanania

John Spencer, expert in urban warfare, explains to Sam Harris what was unique about the October 7 footage. First, Hamas members were absolutely euophoric as they were going off to rape and murder. As someone who has led men into battle, he tells us that “this is not normal”.

Most striking was the reaction to the sound of a young boy moaning to death. In a normal battlefield situation, even when there is an enemy combatant, there is usually an instinct to render aid. Here, a boy’s eyes were gone, his father just killed, and the Hamas fighter nonchalantly goes and grabs a beverage from the refrigerator.

This war has clarified so much for me. I keep talking about why Hamas is worse than Nazis, and the moral culpability of Palestinian civilians. People don’t like these opinions. They still remain true. If you have a position on this conflict other than “Israel keeps going until Hamas is destroyed” you have failed one of the great moral tests of our time.

Sam Harris on the overwhelming sadistic joy regular Palestinians felt at seeing Jewish mothers clutching their babies, and defiling the bodies of dead girls.

We simply refuse to face the truth about this culture.

Harris points out the obvious truth that there would be no appetite to parade Palestinian women around Tel Aviv.

Spencer: “Militaries are reflections of their societies.”

Few things about all this are more outrageous than people treating these two sides as morally equal.

Spencer: Hamas wants “as many of their civilians to die as possible…there are 400 miles of tunnels within Gaza and not one civilian is allowed in them. The entire population, 2.2 million, could fit in Hamas’s tunnels with ease.”

Israel took unprecedented steps to get civilians out of harm’s way. Hamas would snipe at civilians who were leaving on the designated roads and fire mortars at them. Hamas’s strategy is to kill as many Palestinians as possible. And now the West wants to reward them for it.