What changed in this latest round? Certainly not the conditions on the ground in the Middle East. A close look at nearly every bout of fighting reveals that Hamas’ leadership needed a violent escalation to stay in power in the face of an increasingly disgruntled Gaza population and civil service. What changed was the ideological environment in the US—namely, the ascendance of woke ideology. “What’s new,” states Ungar-Sargon, “is the ubiquity of such (woke) discourse in mainstream American media. In the past, we didn’t see ‘Israel’s Colonialist Project’ in Washington Post headlines, nor did
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