Ben Shapiro’s addresses three comforting lies “provided in significant supply by the hard Left and its allies in the legacy media” regarding the Hamas-Israel war. The first is one promoted by Presidents Biden and Obama that I have noted a few times:

The first lie is that Israel must be warned not to engage in human rights violations.

We hear this nostrum all the time: from the president of the United States, from the United Nations, from the media. The idea is that if Israel’s leadership isn’t reminded in the wake of the worst pogrom since the Holocaust, those rude Jews might carpet-bomb Gaza. The purpose of the lie is simple: to get Israel to stop defending itself at the first available opportunity. If you warn the world that Israel is likely to pursue atrocities, and then — as inevitably happens in war — something terrible happens, Israel can quickly be shoved back into the box of moral equivalence.

Voila! Status quo ante restored.

Of course, this lie is a lie. And it is a stupidly offensive lie, in the same way that it is a lie when the United Nations warns the United States about human rights violations. [The IDF] is a professional military that abides by the rules of war. [Israel’s] enemies openly cheer the death of civilians, both Israel’s and their own. By all rights, the entire political and media infrastructure ought to be using their supposed moral suasion on human rights to convince Hamas to release hostages and protect their own citizens. But, of course, there’s no real interest in that. The lie must be maintained. Israel has to be warned about human rights, because secretly, the Jews are just like Hamas.

Unlike Hamas, however, the Israelis can be restrained by President Biden and the United States. Shapiro’s column is “The middle.”

NOTE: For an itemization of the restraints imposed by the Biden administration on Israel see Gadi Taub’s Tablet column “The three nos.”