Founded in 1971 to combat white-supremacist groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) won a number of important legal battles against the Ku Klux Klan, various neo-Nazi groups, and other opponents of desegregation. Now it generates materials like its “field guide to anti-Muslim extremists”: a list of fifteen individuals that includes the historian Daniel Pipes, the apostate Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and the British Muslim critic of jihadism Maajid Nawaz. Among Nawaz’s crimes are having tweeted a cartoon portraying Jesus and Muhammad, “despite the fact that many Muslims see [such depictions] as blasphemous.” Nick Cohen comments on what he calls “the white left’s first fatwa”:

Nawaz . . . and his Quilliam Foundation have struggled against both the white far right and the Islamist far right. They have defended liberal Muslims and, indeed, all of us from lethal blasphemy taboos and the threat of terrorism. They respect freedom of speech, including the freedom of their enemies to speak. . . . They think they should try to stop young Muslims joining Islamic State, not just for the sake of the Yazidis they will take into sex slavery, or the civilians they will tyrannize and kill, but for the sake of the young Muslims themselves.

A significant faction on the left hates them for upholding the values they have forgotten, and will use any smear to denigrate them. . . .

In the liberal orientalist world view the only “authentic” Muslim is a barbarian. A battery of insults fires on any Muslim who says otherwise. They are “neoconservatives,” “native informants,” and “Zionists”; they are as extreme as the jihadists they oppose or, let’s face it, worse. In short, a section of the Western left has adopted the ideology of the Salafists, Khomeinists, and Islamists. . . .

Of course they could not leave alone Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who became an atheist and denounced the faith of her childhood, and is hated by a section of the white left for doing what they do all the time. That Hirsi Ali needs bodyguards to protect her from Islamist assassins in no way restrained our Alabama witch finders.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.