Meet the As-A-Jew who was disgusted when John Fetterman referred to Hamas as "barbaric" ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, November 12, 2025

Meet the As-A-Jew who was disgusted when John Fetterman referred to Hamas as "barbaric"

In The Nation, Leah Abrams writes about her very brief stint as a worker for the John Fetterman campaign in 2023:

[I]n the early days, I saw something in him that excited me: a candidate fluent in the informal parlance of the Internet; a man who flouted DC’s fancy suits and traditions; a politician who openly called for universal healthcare and labor rights on a national stage. For a year, it was a dream come true; the realization of a progressive, idealistic fantasy. I was 24, a young speechwriter, and I’d landed a job making memes, dunking on conservative chuds, writing statements about immigration and racial justice. Was there anyone luckier?

Ah, but then things turned dark for our heroine. And here's where it all started going south:

[T]o the best of my knowledge, it started like this. On October 9, 2023, my coworkers and I woke up to a statement released from the Senate Office that junior staff on the campaign side had not seen. It ended with a line that continues to resound against the walls of my brain, even all this time later: “I also fully support Israel neutralizing the terrorists responsible for this barbarism.”

I remember reading the dog whistles “neutralize” and “barbarism” and feeling the room spin around me.

Yes, referring to Hamas as barbaric and wanting to see them pay for their pogrom made Leah Abrams, poster child Jew-when-it-helps-her-career, physically ill.

As a good progressive, the rapes didn't bother her at all. Burning families is Palestinian resistance, that's understandable. But wanting to destroy a terror group? Sickening!

Her piece goes on to describe her diary entries as she spun into a deep vortex of shame, like these:

October 17, 2023: “Back to work. So beyond depressed. Completely, utterly… A hospital in Gaza got bombed to the ground.”

October 18, 2023: “Everything changed today. Had a bunch of dumb meetings, was up late writing and early doing Nida [Allam] op-ed… Then John put out a statement that was so vile. ‘Now is not the time for a ceasefire.’ Awful… I tried to be normal but by end of day it hit me so hard and I couldn’t stop crying. I can’t be complicit in this. I can’t…. I’m done.”

I looked around at my colleagues, wondering who was writing these statements. Every single one of them became a suspect, a conspirator in this grand operation to betray voters, to spend their money on blowing up a hospital based on the ludicrous idea that Hamas was somewhere in the IVs.

The hospital that Abrams claimed Israel blew up and "bombed to the ground" was, of course, the Al Ahli Hospital whose courtyard was hit by an errant Islamic Jihad rocket and which suffered no damage besides scorch marks.

Neither Abrams nor The Nation bothered to mention those little facts. No, to people like Abrams and outlets like The Nation, Israel is always guilty ab initio, and if the facts don't fit, just ignore or twist those facts.

That's journalism!

Abrams quit her job several days later, and immediately cowrote what was perhaps the first "As A Jew" open letter denouncing Israel as "genocidal" - less than a month after October 7.

The letter included a performative nod to October 7 with a "both sidesism" that is itself disgusting: "We condemn the recent attacks on Israeli and Palestinian civilians and mourn such harrowing loss of life. In our grief, we are horrified to see the fight against antisemitism weaponized as a pretext for war crimes with stated genocidal intent."

Raping Jewish women don't elicit any visceral reaction from Leah Abrams. But saying that Hamas is antisemitic? That's horrifying! It is time to trot out "Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof" to prove that real Jews know who the bad guys are - their own people!

The current fashion to reflexively twist every fact into an "Israel is genocidal" lens is not new. The desire to treat every Hamas press release as the Torah and every IDF statement as Third Reich propaganda is no recent innovation.

It was done by self-professed Jews like Leah Abrams two years ago.

(h/t JW)