This is the first added footnote Sam draws my attention to. But it seems to me to prove my point. He is saying here he won’t debate anyone who denies that Hamas is a death cult. Well I don’t deny that. And I still think Israel committed war crimes. And Sam won’t debate me either.

As for his denial that he is giving a blank check to Israel, what else can this sentence mean:

“I’m not interested in exploring all the ways that Israel has missed the mark.”

He’s “not interested” in addressing claims of excessive civilian deaths, torture, ethnic cleansing, etc. Why? Because the Islamists will always be worse. Which must mean a blank check. Or denial. When he refers to the claim of torture - the fact of torture - in Ben Gvir’s gulag - he waves it off by saying that

“War crimes are war crimes, and they should be prosecuted. And Israel is precisely the sort of society that we expect to prosecute such crimes—unlike its enemies, which revel in them.”

Has Sam listened to Smotrich lately? Or does he only read the Wall Street Journal ed page? In point of fact, IDF guards recently were caught on tape, beating a prisoner to a pulp, rupturing his rectum and were subsequently allowed to go free, hailed by Netanyahu as heroes and lionized on television.

Sam is “not interested” in even acknowledging, let alone debating that. And I understand why.