In psychology, there is a cognitive bias called the Law of the Instrument, sometimes called Maslow’s Hammer, which posits that to someone with a narrow world-view, they believe that all solutions fit neatly within their pre-existing perspective. As Maslow put it, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

To many commentators who fancy themselves experts on the Middle East, it is easy to fit the complexities of Israel and the Arab world into contemporary pseudointellectual concepts.

A January 24 opinion column in The Hill Times, “The jig is up on western imperialism,” written by Erica Ifill, the Calgary-based co-host of a podcast, typifies this outlook closely.

Ifill, who describes herself as an “anti-oppression journalist,” argues that the lack of peace between Israelis and Palestinians is due to Israel’s leadership, which has rejected a two-state solution, curiously censoring Hamas’ genocidal Islamic outlook which explicitly calls for the violent destruction of Israel.

Though Ifill chooses not to acknowledge this, Israel has repeatedly offered the Palestinians statehood, most famously in 2000, when then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinian leadership the Gaza Strip, Judea & Samaria (called the West Bank by news media outlets), and eastern Jerusalem.  His offer was rejected, and met with a violent jihadist uprising instead.

Ifill makes mention of the “24,000 lives lost in Gaza,” failing to tell readers that this unverifiable number comes entirely from Hamas and its so-called “Gaza Ministry of Health,” which neither distinguishes between civilians and terrorist combatants, or between those killed by Israel or by Hamas, instead falsely presenting it as if it were fact.

Showing a tendency to gullibly accept claims with little to no investigation, Ifill castigates Canadian news media outlets for silence over the alleged “extreme number of journalists killed by the IDF in Gaza.” Unsurprisingly, Ifill ignores extensive evidence suggesting that many of the so-called “journalists” killed in Gaza were anything but.

Ifill’s newfound concern for human life is a departure from her previous grotesque praise for the murder of innocent people. In 2022, she wrote that “The Irish Republican Army did us a solid when they eliminated Louis Mountbatten, Prince Philip’s uncle.” Mountbatten was murdered by the terrorist group, along with two teenage boys who were on the boat with him, including his grandson and a young crew member, in 1979.

Ifill’s column, while ostensibly meant to be a serious commentary, makes a serious entry into the comedy field when the author writes that “the Global South is fast becoming the world’s moral compass,” citing South Africa’s recent accusation of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, but making no mention of Pretoria’s selective application of international law, namely its refusal to arrest war criminal and former president of Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir.

South Africa does not become a beacon of morality simply because it takes an action that Ifill agrees with. In fact, the country ranks lower than most Western democracies on freedom indices, and is below Israel on all metrics.

It’s not just South Africa that Ifill praises, it’s also the “western populations” that are “out in the streets protesting for a ceasefire and Palestinian liberation.” But noisy and loud protests, particularly from those who are paid to show up to anti-Israel rallies, do not equate to representing most Canadians, as public opinion surveys have shown.

The Middle East is a complicated place, but to ideological extremists, it’s always straightforward. Hamas, for its part, offers a simple solution to the conflict in the region: the destruction of Israel and in its place, the creation of an Islamic State-style caliphate. Ifill, of course, does not tell readers this, instead positioning the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel as a result of Israel’s intransigence, and not the explicit fanatical ideology expressed repeatedly and proudly by Hamas.

Erica Ifill’s column in The Hill Times, where she frames the Hamas-Israel war from the lens of “western imperialism,” may be a comfort to the ideologically converted, but follows the same torpid tendency to blame Israel for daring to protect its population from a rabid medieval death cult.