Playboy vs. the Squad: A Morality Play

Earlier today, Jim Geraghty detailed the moral failures of many of the United States’ elected leaders. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Cori Bush each issued statements conflating Israel and Hamas. Yes, that is the same Hamas that spent the weekend rampaging across southern Israel, killing, raping, mutilating, and uploading videos of their vicious crimes for the world to see as if some sort of trophy. As Noah Pollak wrote in the Free Press in a piece I urge everyone to read, Hamas terrorists used the same tactics as the Nazis did when clearing out Jewish villages during the Holocaust. And yet, no moral outrage from the cohort of congresswomen who speak the language of “justice” more than any other.

As Jim notes:

As of this writing, at least 900 Israelis are dead; 124 were soldiers and 41 were police, leaving about 735 or so civilians — men, women, children, ordinary young people attending a music festival, senior citizens — all dead because Hamas spent a year planning this, and the Iranians were right there alongside them, providing “military training and logistical help as well as tens of millions of dollars for weapons.” This is worth our anger.

It is worth our anger. It’s worth the whole world’s anger. But it’s apparently not worth the anger of lawmakers associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, who have held rallies “in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to resist 75 years of occupation and apartheid” — rallies where protesters flashed Nazi emblems, rallies on which our pearl-clutching members of Congress have yet to comment — with the exception of Ocasio-Cortez, who waited a full day after the event took place before signaling her disapproval in an equivocating statement.

You know who has addressed the rabid antisemitism we’re seeing in the wake of the Hamas attack, though? Who has spoken in no uncertain terms about the horror that terrorists wrought on Israeli civilians? You know who has a stronger moral compass than people elected to the United States Congress? Believe it or not, Playboy magazine. 

In a series of since-deleted and altogether bloodthirsty posts on X (formerly Twitter), former porn star and continual dimwit Mia Khalifa pronounced her support for the attacks. She urged Hamas to “flip their phones and film” videos horizontally so she could more fully enjoy footage of murder. She compared a photo of terrorists — likely on their way to slaughter Jewish children like the SS did 80 years ago — to a “Renaissance painting.” And she somehow had the gall to say that watching the footage and looking at the pictures coming from Israel — naked, bloody bodies lying on the ground with Hamas barbarians posing over them like hunters with their kill — should prompt sympathy for the Palestinian cause.

“If you can look at the situation in Palestine and not be on the side of Palestinians, then you are on the wrong side of apartheid, and history will show that in Time,” she wrote.

Playboy responded, announcing it has cut ties with Khalifa (whose real name is Sarah Joe Chamoun and who is a Lebanese Christian) in an email to its “creator community.”

As the note sent to the wider roster of Playboy “creators” mentioned, the publication’s leadership shared the letter it wrote to Khalifa/Chamoun/whatever you’d like to call her, which listed the Hamas atrocities she so gleefully celebrated:

Somehow, Playboy has the high ground over a bevy of American lawmakers, none of whom has issued a statement with nearly the clarity of the pornographic magazine’s.

Maybe it’s worth subscribing to Playboy — for the articles, of course. No, really.