Too many turn the world upside down until support for Israel's enemies—whatever these enemies stand for, however they behave—is a left-wing duty. For example, Judith Butler, a leading US academic, said Hamas and Hezbollah, two of the most murderous anti-Semitic organizations in the world, must be understood as "social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left, is extremely important."

Well, "leading US academic," classic weasel words, enshrines both an appeal to authority and a straw man argument. The extract quoted is wilfully out of context and misrepresents her views on Hamas and Hezbollah. Not only that, the unqualified description of Hamas and Hezbollah in that sentence is nakedly Islamophobic. We may not like what Hamas and Hezbollah do but we bloody well know how they started and why they're there, and what we know doesn't exactly cast successive Israeli regimes in a good light. Their supporters calling Hamas and Hezbollah "murderous" are applying a double standard that, in terms of outrage, trumps anything in that confounded "definition."

To put the record straight for bobad and others who like to be highly selective in what they quote and who clearly can't read anything that is more that the length of a Daily Mail headline, here's the real lowdown on Judith Butler, who is actually an outstanding campaigner for non-violent resistance. Shame on you, bobad. From wiki.

Butler was criticized for statements she had made about Hamas and Hezbollah. She had described them as "social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left".She was accused of defending "Hezbollah and Hamas as progressive organizations" and supporting their tactics.

Butler responded to these criticisms by stating that her remarks on Hamas and Hezbollah were taken completely out of context and badly, if not wittingly, distort her established views on non-violence. She has repeatedly condemned the violence and non-democratic actions of these groups while clearly advocating for a politics committed to non-violence. In a recent interview she explained that Hamas and Hezbollah are "progressive" insofar as they do address infrastructural needs that are quite acute under occupation. Precisely because such groups are supplying important social services, it becomes harder—yet more urgent—to find ways of persuading people not to support their violent tactics.