Yup, you guessed it: my unwillingness to accept an oppressive police state’s presentation of events from another oppressive police state’s media wing is basically a vote for someone to the right of Pat Buchanan.

Trauma happens in war zones. Hamas at the absolute best didn’t care about civilian casualties, and likely much worse, including fighters committing sexual assault of various forms. We’ve also seen massive shifts in the narrative of how the events of October 7 played out, including evidence that a large number of civilian casualties were caused by Israeli soldiers and not by Hamas fighters as was originally claimed.

My issue with this piece is that it puts forth unconfirmed reports of horrific torture from people who admit they didn’t see it happen and admits that they have not confirmed the accounts. If they reported on video that the BBC had been able to authenticate, I wouldn’t have an issue with the narrative. But there’s been a huge amount of video people have posted that when analyzed is not from Gaza at all, or is not from October 7, so I tend to be skeptical of accounts that admit they haven’t been confirmed.