P.S. There is no need to engage in "both sidesism" when condemning gang rape and murder

Only a truly immoral ideology can cause people to experience cognitive dissonance when thinking about condemning brutal gang rape and murder

In her otherwise highly admirable article in The Guardian (referenced in my previous posting), journalist Gaby Hinsliff, in the service of asking why it is that so few progressive feminists have condemned the heinous sexual violence committed against young Israeli women by Hamas terrorists, includes the following as the penultimate paragraph of her article:

Almost two months have now elapsed since 7 October, and in that short time, the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry says that more than 15,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza. The current truce may not hold much longer, and the consequences if the fighting spreads to the impossibly overcrowded south don’t bear thinking about. The war crimes allegedly committed by Israel against Palestinians during this conflict obviously require investigation every bit as urgently as the ones that triggered it, and the UN’s ability to investigate rape claims has doubtless not been helped by the Netanyahu government’s reluctance to engage with a body that has been repeatedly and justifiably critical of Israel’s past actions in the occupied territories.

In this paragraph, Ms. Hinsliff takes pains to assure the reader that she is one of them — in the sense that, while condemning Hamas terrorists for their monstrous acts of sexual violence, she also feels the pain of the Palestinians who have died as a result of the Hamas-provoked response by Israel. She also makes sure her readers know that she feels that Israel’s response to the Hamas attack is as deserving of being condemned as involving war crimes as are the brutal rapes committed by the Hamas terrorists.

Why would Ms. Hinsliff include this paragraph in her article? One possibility is that she herself feels uncomfortable about condemning even gang rape and murder if those committing those acts are members of what she considers to be an oppressed group – and therefore feels the need to balance her condemnation of the Hamas monsters with equal condemnation of (unspecified) Israeli actions. Alternatively, Ms. Hinsliff may herself fully understand that it is possible to be a good person who is supportive of the Palestinians and still acknowledge Hamas-committed atrocities – but she holds such a low (albeit undoubtedly accurate) view of the members of her imagined audience that she thinks that they need to be reassured of the same point – that is, that even good people can condemn those who gang rape an innocent young women and then execute her by shooting her through the head and chest while still raping her

Whichever of these two explanations is correct (and I suspect it’s both), what Ms. Hinsliff’s inclusion of this paragraph in her article highlights is the moral rot at the core of the progressive ideology that (perhaps) has infected Ms. Hinsliff’s own mind —and which she certainly believes has infected the minds of members of her target audience. I can think of no clearer illustration of the essential immorality of progressive oppressor/oppressed ideology than Ms. Hinsliff’s own belief that her progressive readers need to be reassured that it’s OK to condemn gang rape and murder – that even good people can acknowledge that such actions are wrong.