Today America faces a profound choice: Should we analyze the Israeli-Palestinian conflict using our large human brains, or instead respond to it with the enraged hooting and screeching of baboons?

One popular method they use to oppose thinking, especially as Israel’s attack on Gaza has intensified, is to call all actions supporting a ceasefire “pro-Hamas.” Given the Hamas atrocities of October 7, which killed about 1,400 Israelis, this is simultaneously vicious, dangerous, and extraordinarily stupid.

Ron DeSantis declared that students in his state are making “common cause with Hamas.” Nikki Haley spoke about “everybody that’s protesting on these college campuses in favor of Hamas.” Vivek Ramaswamy was slightly more generous, explaining that student demonstrators were “fools” who “have no idea what the heck they’re even talking about when they’re siding with Hamas over Israel.” Meanwhile, 22 Democrats voted for a resolution censuring Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib for having “defended” Hamas’s October 7 attack.

There’s protesters generally, foreign students, colleges, Google employees, South Africa, Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, and (obviously) Joe Biden.

In retrospect, of course, it’s clear that protesters were not in fact “pro-Saddam,” but rather “anti-pointless carnage that will help take the lives of 4.5 million people.” Nonetheless, the same factions that used this tactic before are bringing it back for a return engagement, at a moment when over 10,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s bombing campaign, with many more destined to die.

Then more recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained to his party’s caucus that he permitted Qatar to send huge amounts of money to Hamas because this would separate Gaza and the West Bank and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

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