The Compatible Left and Gaza

As Israel brings genocide to Gaza some leftists are afforded prominent media space to blame the left

Although most Americans have never heard of Cord Meyer (1920-2001) they’re probably familiar with his work. When they see a pundit or activist on the political left elevated to a position of status for pushing a line that is compatible with the American empire they’re watching the continuation of a propaganda strategy Meyer devised.

Examples of this abound. I think of Owen Jones, one of the few people in the United Kingdom who actually received that increase in British living standards former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn campaigned on. While Corbyn was at the helm a completely baseless and nonsensical smear campaign was deployed against the Labour party accusing it of widespread antisemitism. Owen Jones dutifully propagated this under a guise of false concern. ‘Yes I am voting for Corbyn, but he still has an obligation to answer when exactly he stopped beating his wife.’

A sketch of the man who devised this media management playbook is in order. Cord Meyer was a CIA agent who served as head of the agency’s International Organizations Division (IOD) from 1954 to 1962. In this capacity he oversaw US propaganda efforts in Europe and was identified by journalist Deborah Davis as the “principal operative” in Operation Mockingbird, the commonly accepted name for CIA operations to control and influence domestic US media that became exposed in the wake of the Watergate scandal.  

Meyer advised that the CIA should “court the compatible left” and in doing so coined a term that gives us some understanding of the role played by people like Owen Jones. During Meyer’s day this strategy consisted of seeking out those persons and organizations on the left who were anti-Soviet Union, even if they were otherwise critics of the US government, and providing them with funding whose provenance had been carefully concealed by several pass-throughs. Today the Soviet Union is gone but there is always a new enemy of the United States for compatible leftists to bash. Their payment may no longer come directly from the CIA but the consolidation of US media into a situation where six corporations control 90% of what we see, hear, and read means those who aid the empire rarely hurt for remuneration and publicity. 

I hope you’ll permit me a brief digression to note that Cord Meyer was one of hundreds if not thousands of men who had the unpleasant experience of having his wife fucked by President Kennedy. As such it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that when fellow CIA agent and Watergate burglar Howard Hunt was on his deathbed he identified Cord Meyer as being involved in the assassination of JFK. Less than a year after Kennedy’s death Meyer’s ex wife, Mary Pinchot Meyer, would be shot to death execution style while out for a walk in Washington DC. The day after that murder CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton and Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee broke into her house and burned her diary. The case is still unsolved. 

With that out of the way let’s go to Gaza. 

On October 7th, 2023 Hamas launched from Gaza what can either be called a military operation or a terrorist attack against Israel depending on which side of the conflict you take. We’ll return to the details in a minute but what I found most interesting was seeing who on the political left would be given prominent placement to share their opinion on what had just happened.

In New York Magazine Eric Levitz, in Dissent magazine Joshua Leifer, and in the Guardian Naomi Klein would be afforded the chance to write progressively worse versions of the same article. The premise of all three is that, as leftists, they are horrified and ashamed to see a refusal to condemn Hamas along with so much celebration of terrorism and mass murder on the left. 

Taking them in order from abominable to merely unreadable Naomi Klein’s article reminds us why she’s the most overrated and overpaid thinker on the left today. Reading it feels like trying to eat air. I have never seen a person use 500 words, all of which are in the English language, to communicate so little. 

She says that some of her “comrades on the left…minimize massacres of Israeli civilians” and “even seem to celebrate them.” She doesn’t bother to name any of these comrades or give an example. Her original article contained zero instances of the word “Palestine” or “Palestinians” but after pushback she edited it and you’ll now find the word “Palestinians” once. Thanks Naomi. 

Klein had a sharp mind and a real sense of justice at one point. That disappeared by the time she was paid a six figure salary (and not low six figures) by the Intercept to drop in every three months and babble in an opinion column about whatever nonsense happened to be on her mind (did you know sometimes people confuse her for Naomi Wolf? If you care, congratulations on being the first). I’m sure passion for burning down the system cools a bit when it affords you so much for doing so little.

In Dissent magazine Joshua Leifer provides an upgrade over Klein’s citation of nobody with the citation of some tweets. I disagree that the tweets he links to glorify violence but is finding tweets going to be the standard now? Let’s go over to Zionist Twitter and see what’s happening there…

In New York Magazine Eric Levitz notes that Students for Justice in Palestine declared the Hamas attack “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance” on Instagram (they’ve since deleted it). He also informs us the Connecticut chapter of the DSA called it “unprecedented anti colonial struggle.” Perhaps it’s not politically wise for an organization trying to implement socialism in one of the richest states in the Union to be so blunt but did we all forget about the movie The Battle of Algiers? It’s not a value judgment or a glorification to say that yes, as a matter of fact this is what anti-colonial resistance often looks like (Levitz later mentions Algeria but hand waves the comparison because not every Israeli settler is European).

A speaker at a rally in New York provided the clearest case of insensitivity either Leifer or Levitz could find when he used his turn at the podium to note that Hamas “took out at least several dozen hipsters” at a rave. It’s not a defensible remark but what are we even doing here? You found a guy with a microphone in New York saying something shitty? It’s called a stand up comedy show, they happen seven nights a week. 

There’s a few more examples. Leifer has a minor meltdown because somebody used the phrase “historical inevitability”, Levitz excoriates a Harper’s editor for writing some word salad that might actually advocate violence but I can’t figure it out. What I would say is that all three articles wasted our time. I wasted my time reading them and I wasted your time by even telling you what they said. They couldn’t find anybody of any prominence on the US or European left who actually condoned or glorified the killings. 

And let’s just suppose they could have produced a qualifying example. How much ink is it worth expending on an internal struggle session at the very moment Israeli bombs are being dropped on the Palestinians we claim are our friends? Is this how the western left sheds its reputation for navel gazing?

What moves me from bored disagreement to disgust is the fact that none of them saw fit to even mention the Great March of Return (word limits I’m sure). Writers must condense and they must leave things out but you cannot responsibly explain the current violent resistance in Gaza or the left’s reaction to it without acknowledging what happened when nonviolent resistance was tried just 4 years ago. The chorus of people on Twitter demanding that Palestinians embrace the tactics of Gandhi and MLK shows just how completely this event has been erased from first world memory.

By way of background Gaza is a tiny strip of coastal land that measures 5 miles by 25 miles. It borders Egypt and Israel and it is completely fenced in and blockaded by Israel. Boats that go more than a couple miles out to sea are sunk by the Israeli Navy. People that get closer than 300 meters to the fence are shot by Israeli snipers. It has been like this since 2007. The name for this is a concentration camp. 

From March 2018 to December 2019 the prisoners of Gaza tried to bring the attention of the world to their plight. For more than a year and a half they would, every Friday, march peacefully towards the fence of the open air prison they live in. Every Friday they would be shot by Israeli snipers. For a year and a half. 

Their bravery is staggering to me. Every Friday you would march to the gates of your concentration camp without a weapon knowing either you or one of your friends would be shot that day. To keep doing that. To keep getting shot for a year and a half. How do you not stop after a week?

At least 214 were killed, several thousand were left with permanent injuries. On the most horrific day, May 14th 2018, the Israelis shot more than 1,200 people. In one day they shot 1,200 unarmed people engaging in the tactics of MLK and Gandhi. The reaction of the international community to this was less than a shrug. Every person in Gaza knows this story. On October 7th we saw the lesson they learned from it.

In writing this I leave myself open to charges of being a hipster advocating for violence from the comfort of my Brooklyn apartment so I want to respond to that. First of all I live in Queens. Second, no I do not advocate or condone violence. I’ve just opened a history book so I understand what causes it and I’m not going to publicly act like a doe eyed infant when a population forced into subjugation engages in it. It’s as close to a law of history as you are ever going to find.

After the liberation of Dachau US Army soldiers were so horrified at what they saw that they summarily shot 20-30 SS guards who had surrendered. Another 25-30 unarmed guards were beaten to death by prisoners, sometimes under the watch of Army soldiers. I believe in rule of law, the right to face your accuser, all that gay liberal bullshit. The SS guards should have been tried in a courtroom. At the same time I cannot condone nor condemn the traumatized prisoners who beat them to death. I cannot imagine what I would do if I lived through that hell and I can only thank God for that.

For those who find the Dachau analogy distasteful we could cite Nat Turner’s slave rebellion, the killing of French civilians by the FLN in Algeria, or the mass murder of whites that occurred after the Haitian revolution among countless other examples. It was never the responsibility of abolitionists to condemn Nat Turner. They were the ones who warned that the system of slavery would result in exactly that kind of bloodshed. So it is with the prisoners of Gaza. 

Nat Turner and his band killed women and children in their homes. With regards to the Hamas attacks there are reports of the same, though many of their targets were military in nature. The most wanton killing of civilians occurred at the Nova Festival rave of which it is necessary to say a few things. 

First, the location of the rave was moved two days before it occurred. The operation by Hamas was planned at least months in advance and as such the rave could not have been their target. It was either unfortunate happenstance or something more sinister that caused this party to be relocated next to Re’im Army base.

I suggest it might have been something more sinister because we know Egyptian intelligence gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government at least 3 to 10 days warning that this attack was coming. Netanyahu ignored it and allowed this to happen for his own political purposes. It is not inconceivable that civilians could have been put directly in the pathway in order to ensure the propaganda value of their deaths. 

There are videos of Hamas fighters shooting unarmed civilians and there are eye witness reports of them going house to house and killing those Israelis within. Soldiers in the field who commit war crimes should be punished. At the same time it is clear that a significant number of the civilian deaths came from crossfire in shootouts between the IDF and Hamas. Right now we just don’t know how many of these deaths were deliberate murder and how many were collateral damage. It is irresponsible for anyone who reports on this conflict to simply take the IDF at its word.

This is because if you know anything about Israel-Palestine you know the IDF lies all the goddamn time. Just last year they assassinated journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and said the Palestinians killed her. Wait for the evidence before you hit publish. 

I am sure Naomi Klein, Eric Levitz, and Joshua Leifer are well meaning and sincere in their convictions. We all share an abhorrence at what has happened and a desire for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations. The left should be a place of free speech and vigorous debate. Their views, simplistic and naive as they may be, are welcome at the table. What concerns me is how those leftists who share their views are elevated into positions of media prominence by a blood thirsty empire. Willingly or unwillingly they become part of a propaganda machine that punches left and does everything it can to make irrelevant noises that draw attention away from the crimes Israel is currently committing in Gaza. 

With regards to the motivations of myself and my comrades Eric Levitz says that “pointedly refusing to condemn Hamas’s atrocities might help a leftist to perform a more radical solidarity than squishy liberals can muster and thus win some points in a subcultural status game.” So I will close not by citing any radical communist or a third worldist thinker but by echoing the words of a liberal. What we say is what the President who fucked Cord Meyer’s wife said. "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."