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Slavoj Žižek: Hamas massacre of Israelis must be condemned, no ifs or buts

Slavoj Žižek, a Slovakian philosopher, cultural critic, and self-described "moderately conservative communist", affirmed Israel's right to destroy Hamas in Gaza, and further spoke on the subsequent rise in antisemitism in an interview given to the YouTube channel PoliticsJOE published on Friday.

He has often taken a very critical stance against Israeli policy, particularly in the West Bank and this has led to accusations of antisemitism. He references at the beginning of his interview that he gave a speech in Frankfurt that condemned terrorism and affirmed Israel's right to destroy Hamas but also criticized Israeli policy in the West Bank for contributing to the event. Thus, he started an op-ed piece for Project Syndicate, an online opinion site that hosts a variety of commentators, by writing that "the barbarism that Hamas has unleashed on Israel should be condemned unconditionally, with no 'ifs' or 'buts.' The massacres, rapes, and abductions of civilians from villages, kibbutzim, and a music festival was a pogrom, confirming that Hamas’s true goal is to destroy the state of Israel and all Israelis." He expressed his horror during the interview with PoliticsJOE at how Hamas deliberately attacked communities of people who had been pushing for peace with those in Gaza and had worked to make that a reality, "by hiring them and helping them [to go to hospitals in Israel]".

They attacked there "not only because it was most practical," he said, "Because the real aim of this attack was to eternalize war, to prevent any possibility of peace for decades." He attacked both Hamas as well as Netanyahu and his government, specifically National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for producing radical programs that call for exclusive control of the region by one ethnic group, Arabs and Jews respectively.

Žižek sees the main goal as not to fall for radicalism and to recognize that "The key point here is not to fall into this trap of Palestinian versus Israeli, but that those who are now playing opposite roles are really playing a very similar game." "Hamas and Israeli hardliners are two sides of the same coin," he writes in his op-ed. "The choice is not one hardline faction or the other; it is between fundamentalists and all those who still believe in the possibility of peaceful co-existence."

What an absolute fucking monstrous dipshit. We're reaching entirely new levels of dumbfuck bothsidery.