Appease and Be Punished

By Abe Greenwald

One minor consolation in watching Democrats try to appease the revolutionary left is that we also get to watch the revolutionary left tell the sniveling Democrats that they want more. And they always want more. More socialism, more anti-Semitism, more crazy. 

As mortifying as left-liberal politics has become, there’s a small measure of twisted justice in watching the cosplay Israel-bashers get rejected and punished by the dissatisfied true believers. 

We saw it a couple of weeks ago, when California state senator Scott Wiener was harassed out of the San Francisco trans march. Although Wiener had turned against Israel, he didn’t turn aggressively or quickly enough to satisfy the global intifada’s LGBTQ brigade. So they showed him exactly what kind of movement he’s thrown in with. 

And now, the Israel obsessives are coming for Congressman Ro Khanna. In recent months, Khanna has done little else but bash Israel, AIPAC, and “the Epstein class.”  If he opens his mouth, it’s only to let out another anti-Jewish dog whistle. Khanna’s rebranding effort reached its apogee in a poorly engineered hoax last week in the West Bank, where he claims crazed Jewish settlers held him at gunpoint. You can’t say he’s skimping on the theatrics.

But the radicals Khanna is trying to win over don’t want theatrics. They want blood. 

So when Khanna took part in a live-streaming event hosted by the self-described “anti-establishment” outlet Drop Site yesterday, the revolutionaries let him know what was expected of him. The site’s Jeremy Scahill attempted repeatedly to force Khanna to say that Hamas has a “right” to kill Israelis. “You know, do Palestinians have a right to kill Israeli soldiers, Congressman?” he asked. “On October 7, when they attacked the military bases in the Gaza envelope, did the Al-Qassam Brigades and Saraya al-Quds have a right to kill Israeli soldiers? Yes or no?" On and on it went.

Scahill’s argument was that Khanna holds Hamas—a terrorist organization—to a cruel and unreasonable double standard. "You're saying there are ways that Israel should be able to kill Palestinians,” he charged, “but there is never a condition under which Palestinians can attack armed uniformed soldiers of a force that is still considered an occupying force under international law." 

Khanna came face to face with the lunacy of the mob that he’s been trying to please with tweets, speeches, stunts. And he let Scahill down by refusing to speak the monstrous words that would have admitted him into the esteemed ranks of the radicals. Khanna instead called October 7 a terrorist attack, denied Hamas’s right to kill Israelis, and offered some mush about nonviolent resistance. 

Here’s the thing: If you genuinely believe the terrorists’ narrative about apartheid, genocidal Zionists, and the righteous Palestinian resistance, then Scahill has the more “logical” argument. If you buy into an insane premise, you will necessarily arrive at an equally insane conclusion. 

Khanna, like Scott Wiener before him, wants credit for agreeing to the radicals’ premise without having to pay the price of following through. He’s now learning that the radicals, like the terrorists they support, will not be pacified by anything short of lawless violence. There’s some hope in this. Because as the radicals reject Democrat after simpering Democrat, the liberal establishment will be forced to rethink its calculated acceptance of leftist anti-Semitism. Hey, Gavin Newsom, Rahm Emanuel, hope you’re watching.

Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.