The once excellent atheist/anti-theist moral philosopher Sam Harris, who had previously written intelligibly regarding threats from Islamist ideologies has, in recent years, lamentably exposed himself as quite tribalistic and hypocritical in his opposition to theocratic nationalism. Imagining himself a proponent of secular, liberal democracy and Universal Rights (and unquestionably believing himself to be just that) he, and others like him (such as Bill Maher), have rejected the nearly unanimous findings regarding Israeli actions in Gaza by every independent international Human Rights group and multinational aid organization — including the International Criminal Court — dismissing them all as somehow in league with a worldwide antisemitic conspiracy, and instead blindly choosing to embrace the self-serving propaganda of perpetual victim-hood coming out of the theocratically nationalist government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Undeniably, there exist such morally confused people who, failing to oppose Human Rights violations in all instances, condemn only those committed against their chosen tribe. That is the essence of tribalistic bigotry: wherein Their tribe can do no wrong. In such grotesque displays of schadenfreude did certain people celebrate the Hamas atrocity before Israel ever began their response, creating facile justifications and morally bankrupt excuses for the violence perpetrated against helpless Israeli civilians. Likewise do supporters of Israel blindly excuse an active ethnic-cleansing against helpless Palestinian civilians which continues to be perpetrated on a scale of magnitude far greater, by virtue of Israel being a modern militarized state supplied by the USA, than anything approaching what was possible for a mere terror group (however much they may have wished to do the same).

In such grotesque displays of schadenfreude did certain people celebrate the Hamas atrocity before Israel ever began their response, creating facile justifications and morally bankrupt excuses for the violence perpetrated against helpless Israeli civilians. Likewise do supporters of Israel blindly excuse an active ethnic-cleansing against helpless Palestinian civilians which continues to be perpetrated on a scale of magnitude far greater, by virtue of Israel being a modern militarized state supplied by the USA, than anything approaching what was possible for a mere terror group (however much they may have wished to do the same).

While people like Sam Harris appropriately condemn the inexcusable atrocities of the Islamist Hamas terror campaign on the 7th of October 2023, he simultaneously excuses every ongoing genocidal act of the Zionist Israeli Defense Force. While we may play at semantics, quibbling over the euphemisms and definitions of phrases like ethnic-cleansing and mass-murder, or indeed try to redefine the very meaning of words like culpability and intent, these must not be allowed to obfuscate that which matters most of all: the Result.

(Due to our limited access to empirically verifiable information) as of late 2024, the direct toll we can be sure is due to the Israeli invasion of Gaza was 118,908 people dead, an astounding 5.4% of the population, which is nearly 100 times as many people killed by the IDF as were killed by Hamas in 2023. Revoltingly, the Vast majority of Israel’s victims are in fact children and other non-combatants. According to international aid workers on the ground, as of Oct 2024, Israel has killed 2,100 Palestinian babies and toddlers since beginning their assault in Oct 2023, a death-toll higher than all Israeli fatalities during the entire First Intifada, the entire Second Intifada, And the Oct 7th attack Combined. Such vile depravity only makes sense if the Israeli leadership wished to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for generations to come as a warning to the future, and to eradicate those children who might have grown up to become adversaries (which, now, they would have had every reason to be). Such is the rationale of every primitive, divinely-inspired butchering army whenever they decide to salt the earth and to exterminate children by, for example, dashing the infants upon the rocks. That modern-day Hebrews have a high-tech fleet of drones serves only to make Israeli terrorism against the mothers of Palestine that much more complete. On the other hand, if such slaughter of unarmed civilians, and destruction of entire cities were Not the intent, it would constitute the most incredible failure of Israel’s military apparatus to date. Alarmingly, such mass-death is only a by-product of the unceasing, years-long suffering and starvation of the Palestinian people, to the end that certain pro-Palestinian Arabs have actually opined that it might be more merciful if Israel’s military simply completed its genocide instead of dragging out the misery of trapped and starving children. As a calculated famine is enforced and cities are literally razed to the ground, one has to wonder how anyone but a fascistic sadist could possibly continue to defend such an openly blatant atrocity.

Given Sam’s insistence on trotting out his defense of Israel’s (internationally recognized) war-crimes into nearly every podcast he does, it seems unlikely he is unaware of the currently mounting civilian death-toll in Gaza. Even the most ingeniously prolific use of human shields by Hamas would in no way excuse the vicious disregard of Israelis in their mass-murder of such unarmed hostages. You, Sam (and company), must understand that a professional military operating in an urban environment is bound even More (not less) by their responsibility to civil rules of engagement. It is why the crimes of Putin-controlled Russia against Ukrainian civilians (and captive soldiers) have been so universally (and justly) condemned. But, apparently, because Putin has failed to cite enough ancient scriptural precedents for his barbarous crimes against Humanity, he does not get to enjoy the same seemingly infinite benefit of the doubt from atheists like Sam as does Netenyahu.

Of course people like Harris have also tried out the argument that the Western pro-Palestinian crowd simply dont understand the complexity of urban warfare. As veterans, we can put it quite simply to aid Sam in his moral confusion: It does Western Values no favours when the armies alleging to be on the side of The West are mass-murdering unarmed and famished children. The excuses of collateral damage as accidents of intelligence/incompetence (or even just a casual disregard for civilian life) fail to rescue even the most charitable interpretations of the persistent repetition of Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip. Such cities-leveling ineptitude is far better explained by the quite intentional ethnic-cleansing repeatedly and explicitly described by Israeli officials, up to and including the quoting of genocidal passages from The Book of Joshua as justification for their divine right atrocities in Gaza.

Of course, the warmongers on both sides claim to be on the side of the more oppressed. For example, if removed from the motivation that is the ancient barbarity of theocratic nationalism, the Western secularists who ideologically supported Palestinians At The Expense Of Israelis (even before the current genocide) used the excuse of oppression-occupation while those secularists (again, even if removed from the ancient barbarity of theocratic nationalism) who support Israelis At The Expense Of Palestinians (even during the ongoing genocide) use the excuse of a global conspiracy of antisemitism to pardon any failures of the humanitarian imperative on the part of the Israeli state. In reality, to insist on Israel remaining a theocratic ethno-state — and the only alleged safe-space for Jews in the world — plays exactly into the tribalistic hands of the worst people on both sides. Both sides, in other words, claim systemic oppression and victim-hood as a justification for their respective orgies of violence against each other.

All that is not to conflate the two: there is no equivalence of scale, only the similarity of theocratically fueled, morally confused violence. And, unfortunately for the Palestinian civilians, the comparison is not in Israel’s moral favor.

For the IDF, this is not some desperate battle for survival, but rather the clearly targeted use of overwhelming force upon an unarmed and captive population. The (frankly understandable) existence of militant resistance cells within that population is no excuse for any law-abiding military to target civilians, journalists, and aid workers, as Israel continues to do. Those are the actions of a rogue state, more reminiscent of a Mongol Horde than any modern defenders of democratic values. In terms of Human Rights, those who choose to be tribalistic in their ethics, and worse yet, choose to excuse the side causing 100x greater harm to the helplessly innocent, are being orders of magnitude more immoral in their bigoted values.

Further, the conflation of racism against any people of Jewish ancestry, with alarm over the murderous actions of the Israeli state (or indeed, criticism of explicitly genocidal dictates endemic to the Hebrew scriptures) is As Much a fallacy as conflating bigotry against Arabs as-a-people with every Jihadist attack (or any critiques of violent Islamist doctrines which, like Christianity, originate from those same aforementioned Hebrew scriptures). If unencumbered by Islamism or Zionism, both the pro-Palestinian and the pro-Israeli secularist could also claim to be a defender of democracy: The Palestinian people deserve to be free, and you too would fight your oppressors by any means necessary if you were them, the Palestinian partisan cried, even as eager martyrs raped and murdered helpless kids at a music festival, and rolled fragmentation grenades into crowded bomb-shelters (all while Israeli Defense Forces remained inexplicably absent for those six straight hours of terror). Or: Israel is the guiding light of science, democracy, and Western values in the Middle East, therefore everything they do is ultimately worth it, the Israeli partisan still shrills, even as children’s hospitals, refugee camps, and international aid groups continue to be repeatedly and explicitly targeted for dismemberment by US-built bombs (all while Hamas hides for years alongside their Israeli captives). It seems apparently inconceivable to these tribalists to both oppose the atrocities of Islamists And the crimes of Zionists. The binary narrative has been artificially set, one must pick a side, and people like Harris have clearly chosen theirs, along with all the accompanying excuses and rationalizations which spit in the face of Universal (non-tribalist) Human Rights.

The whole point of the Universal part of Human Rights, Sam, is that there can be No Exceptions. They Must apply equally to All people. An exception (excuses/rationalizations) against this Universal rule is, by definition, a Violation of Human Rights. The point should not be to take the side of whoever we think has it worse and then tribalistically (mindlessly) defending that position no matter what happens next. The point is to Not empower the absolute worst impulses of viciousness and barbarity on Either side. One should not be on the side of Hamas or IDF, one should be on the side of the Civilians, period: full Human Rights entire. Whether the innocents (noncombatants) are Palestinian or Israeli should be irrelevant to the Humanist. Why such a basic concept needs to be explained to a professional ethicist is baffling. How a renowned anti-theist can come away on the side of a modern-day Ancient Abrahamic barbarity is simply obscene.

For a more complete reference, also see: Sam Harris Making Sense podcast. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Humanism and Its Aspirations: Humanist Manifesto III The Open Letter from American Medical Professionals Who Served in Gaza The Nov 21 2024 International Criminal Court issuance of arrest warrants for Hamas leader Mohammad Deif, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes. The entire Book of Joshua, especially: *10:40 – So Joshua conquered all the land… He left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel had commanded. *11:20 – For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that He might utterly destroy them, and that they might receive no mercy… *11:22 – None of the Anakim were left in the land of the children of Israel they remained only in Gaza… *11:23 – So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had said to Moses and Joshua gave it as an inheritance to Israel…