In Gaza, the Hamas propaganda machine is still spewing that Israel’s defensive operations in Hamastan are motivated by the need for non-Jewish children’s blood to make matza for Passover. From his comfortable perch in the U.S., Andrew Sullivan offers complementary “blood libel” spin worthy of Julius Streicher: “Both [Putin and Netanyahu] have been riding nationalist waves of xenophobia – and have done their best to inflame it some more; both believe that military force is the first resort when challenged; both have contempt for the United States under its current president; both regard Europeans as pathetic weaklings and moral squishes; both use a pliant mass media to instill the tropes of paranoia, wounded pride and revenge; both target “infiltrators” in their midst, whether it be African immigrants and Palestinians or gays and Westerners; and both have invaded and threatened their neighbors. Perhaps most important of all: both have lost control to the even more enraged extremists to their right. “Now consider the vigilantes who poured gasoline down the throat of a young Palestinian and burned him alive. Do you think they come out of a vacuum? Or the horrifying tweets of young Israelis proudly urging genocide of Arabs. Or the cheers from the hilltops outside Sderot as Israelis celebrate the slaughter of civilians in Gaza. Or the fact that Netanyahu’s endless provocations have led to a cabinet even more hawkish than he and a country ever further away from any reconciliation with the people whose land it took decades ago. “Both men have the supreme self-confidence of fools; and the political instincts of geopolitical arsonists. Our only hope in restraining them is to watch them slowly hoist by their own canards. The problem is that hundreds of civilians in an airplane and in the crowded streets of Gaza keep becoming the collateral victims of their posturing.” It would take a book to unpack Sullivan’s lies and hypocrisy.