The Mirage of Moderation

(Essay: A paean to Hamas’s patrons)

Illustration by the author (India ink on cardboard)

It’s time again to talk about a tiny, shimmering place.

A sandbar of grand, radical ambitions and gas reserves that somehow found its way into the bloodstream of the Western world. Its population could fit inside Michigan Stadium three times over, yet its influence reaches into our universities, our media, our politics, even our moral vocabulary.

It presents itself as modern—glass towers, good manners, a sleek authoritarian chic—and somehow convinces even its critics that it’s on speaking terms with enlightenment. You can’t quite call it evil; it smiles too much for that. Then again, doesn’t it always smile?

The trick is money, of course. But not the kind that’s stuffed in duffel bags. This is money that seeps quietly, decorously, into endowments, fellowships, editorial boards, and the imaginations of those who long for a touch of grandeur.

I once taught at a university in the Midwest, not far from one of the Great Lakes. A solid place, proud of its ethics. And even there, in that clean northern light, I could feel the reach of this mirage. The school where I taught had a satellite campus near that sandbar. There was talk of “cross-cultural learning,” of “global dialogue.” All the right words. It’s all about words at the end of the day. Oh yes—and money too. Big words and dazzling sums of money.

Another venerable institution built its school of diplomacy there. Others, schools of science. All under the benevolent gaze of a government whose generosity came with no explicit conditions, except perhaps one—that the recipients never look too closely at the source. Would you like me to turn out the lights, or would you prefer blackout shades?

It’s easy to see the logic. Why infiltrate the great towers of learning when you can simply build your own, staffed with grateful guests from the West? Why plant spies when you can plant scholarships?

And then there are the individuals—respectable, bipartisan, impeccably credentialed—who, for a “modest” honorarium, have agreed to share their wisdom with this sandbar of enlightenment. They come from both left and right, believers in free markets and social justice alike, and they all return home with the same tan and the same carefully worded admiration.

I once asked a friend what he’d do if offered a hundred thousand dollars to say something nice about such a place.
“Never,” he said. “Under no circumstances.”
I didn’t doubt him. I only knew he hadn’t yet been offered the money.

We like to think of ourselves as incorruptible—until the offer arrives. Until the flattery feels so gentle it hardly registers as flattery at all.

Meanwhile, far from the panel discussions and the conference hotels, there were hostages. Real people. Real blood. Real torture. They were held in tunnels by men who prayed to the same god the donors claimed to revere.
And somewhere above those tunnels, the polite architects of diplomacy were still clinking glasses.

Oh, I almost forgot—the sandbar state had learned a thing or two about making an impression. A billion here, another billion there, and voilà: an entire news agency devoted to terrorists. Genius, in its way. How smart do you have to be to convince most of the Western world that killing Jews is a moral virtue? Scratch that. In retrospect, it seems it wasn’t that hard. Again—a stream of big words, beautiful newscasters, and big, big money.

And when those hostages were finally released, it wasn’t because of anyone’s moral awakening. It was leverage. A flyover, a few strategic bombs—and suddenly fear sets in. Wait, we’re not as safe as we thought. SOS. A trade. A quiet calculation between those who finance terror and those who depend on them for airfields and access.

No invasions. No threats. Just partnerships. Memoranda of understanding. Endowments. A handshake, a photo op, a faint whiff of jasmine in the corridor. Perhaps that same scent lingers still in the four-hundred-million-dollar gift to the world’s most powerful man.

And above it all, a protective umbrella—the roaring kind. A vast airfield filled with American planes.

What began as a clever strategy has become an art form: exporting ideology beneath the banner of moderation, laundering fanaticism through the language of education, and teaching the free world to purr contentedly as it’s being bought dollar by endless dollar.

I’ve learned not to underestimate these folks. They understand us far better than we understand them. They know what humans, flawed as we are, crave: recognition, relevance, the comforting belief that an exalted position signifies an exalted nature.

They know that the modern West can forgive almost anything—oppression, misogyny, even terror—if it’s presented with enough glass and steel, and an invitation to the gala dinner. A first-class flight to the desert paradise doesn’t hurt either.

They’ve discovered, in other words, that conscience is a negotiable instrument.

And maybe that’s what makes their brilliance so terrible: they didn’t invent our weakness; they simply fed and watered it.

We were all for sale. Only the price varied.

And that, perhaps, is the most elegant—and the most egregious—diplomacy of all.