That universal enmity made it hard to imagine how this state of many names — the Islamic State, ISIS, Daesh — could long survive. The atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against innocent Israelis, the snuff films, mutilations and delight in simple cruelty, inspired immediate analogies to the Islamic State’s depredations. Yes, a movement deliberately going to extremes risks the Islamic State scenario, where you isolate yourself so completely that you end up first morally delegitimized and then cornered and destroyed. Suppose you turn southern Israel into an abattoir and you don’t end up like the Islamic State thereafter? Well, then, as Damir Marusic writes in a troubling essay this week, you have achieved a “revolutionary legitimacy” that you didn’t have before.

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Persons: opprobrium, Yair Rosenberg, Damir Marusic Organizations: ISIS, Bolsheviks, Islamic State, Islamic Locations: Jordan, Israel, Islamic State, Russia, American, statelessness, Palestine, Saudi, Gaza