In a more serious roundtable discussion on Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the panel covered the atrocious terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. The October 7 attacks are Israel’s 9/11, and the stand-up comedian had James Kirchick of Tablet Magazine and Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders, on the show to discuss these atrocities.
All three agreed that Israel had the right to defend itself and retaliate in the wake of this barbarism by Hamas. Maher also took issue with reactions among the American media and the Left that there was moral equivalency in this debate. Maher feels rightly that Israel has always held the moral high ground.
Maher added that Israelis don’t purposefully kill children—they might be killed as collateral damage, but that’s an entirely different situation. Israelis regret when civilians are killed, Hamas celebrates it, which is the crucial difference. The IDF has littered Gaza for days, warning civilians to vacate known Hamas sites as they are targeted in airstrikes.
Duss wanted to get into the other aspects of this debate, namely that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t an actor who wants peace, noting a 2019 report that showed Likud wanted to bolster Hamas to ensure the Palestinian people are forever split, rendering the creation of a state impossible. At its core, both sides need to share this land, and how do we get there?
It’s a question that remains unanswered as more Arabs would instead devote their time and energy to finding ways to kill Jews than peacefully coexist. It’s why Kirchick repeated a saying about the current situation: if Arabs put down their arms, there would be peace. If the Jews did the same, they would be annihilated in the Middle East. Maher also noted that the Israeli position in the past ten years has become so hardline due to a 75-year history of constant attacks. Duss agreed.
But the HBO host then turned to his new favorite topic, calling out the Left for their idiocy. Maher is not a conservative, but he’s finding himself more at odds with his side on free speech, cancel culture, and political correctness. He’s also been a years-long critic of radical Islam, which has often irked progressives.
Maher listed a few values that we, as a liberal democracy, tend to support or tolerate but are non-existent in Hamas’ Gaza. These include free and fair elections, gay rights, equality for women, religious tolerance, and free speech. It amazed the host that to this day, there are people, and they’re in more significant numbers, who think we should align with Hamas, who share none of our values.
The comedian noted that he sees these “queers for Palestine” signs, which Kirchick interjected, “Did you hear their sister organization black for the KKK?”
“I’m a gay man. I’ve lived in Berlin. This is a level of masochism that even I cannot comprehend,” Kirchick added.
Kirchick added that the past few days have been a day of reckoning for the American Left regarding this issue, while Duss concluded that the only way to have an effective movement on the Left is one where Jews feel they are welcome. That was not seen in Times Square and numerous college campuses after October 7. Both Duss and Kirchick agreed that this is a small but vocal minority, which drew skepticism from Maher. In a way, the segment on values exposes that the American Left is incapable of understating terrorism if they’re that blind to what transpired on October 7.
Either way, it was a more grounded panel discussion, where the HBO host once again showed how unspooled the Left has become on a host of issues, especially regarding radical Islam. He warned the Israelis that they shouldn’t follow our lead after 9/11 and keep that moral high ground.