In theory, no. In practice, you never seem to have to scratch an "anti-Zionist" particularly deeply to find the rabid Jew-hater beneath the respectable veneer.
Your reply is melodramatic and is an effort to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-semitism. Does your comment apply to Jews who are anti-Zionist? Why do you believe there is so much hatred of Jews?
> Neither does slaughtering and subjugating thousands of innocent Palestinians over the last seventy-five years.
Never happened. But thank you for outing yourself as someone willing to spread blood libel at the slightest provocation.
> Who are these influential voices
Did you not read the article?
> and are you saying half of society is antisemitic?
Close. I'm saying half of society is strongly primed to be receptive to antisemitism. And in a lot of them, particularly the younger ones, the priming is paying off now.
>> Neither does slaughtering and subjugating thousands of innocent Palestinians over the last seventy-five years.
> Never happened.
If it isn't too much trouble, would you mind expanding on the precise meaning you intend to convey with the phrase "never happened". Is this to say that thousands of Palestinians HAVE NOT died as a consequence of military or political action, completely leaving aside the aspect of whether those actions were or were not "justified" (an extremely popular phrase in Western culture *and media* when war is discussed....depending on who it was that started the war)?
"Never happened. But thank you for outing yourself as someone willing to spread blood libel at the slightest provocation."
It is happening right now. And your gratuitous remark, 'someone willing to spread blood libel at the slightest provocation,' is wrong. Blood libel is an allegation that Jews murder Christians. That is a centuries-old narrative. Bringing religion into this discussion is a non sequitur. I have no interest in religion...murder is wrong, whatever the excuse. Most of those being killed currently are Muslims.
It is too funny when a Jew complains about 'influential voices.'
This is BS. I have never met a Jewish person in the US that wasn't empathetic to how Palestinians are treated in the Israeli apartheid state. As a matter of fact, these are the people who explained to me not only the plight of Muslims in Israel, but also how Palestinian Christians are third class citizens there. You seem to be an AIPAC shill, Bob.
"Neither does slaughtering and subjugating thousands of innocent Palestinians over the last seventy-five years."
"Never happened"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! ROFL!!!! Love it! "Look, I'm a magician, see? I wave away any unpleasant truth with a wave of my words-POOF!" LOL! LOL! LOL! Whooooeee!!! That was good! I needed a good laugh-thanks! heeheeheehee! :-D
Interesting reinvention of language. Especially "slaughtering" "subjugating" and "innocent." One could argue that Hamas does that, in actuality.
He's not saying half of society is antisemitic. He knows - like all Jewish people know - that probably 75% of society is antisemitic. They just have learned until recently that it's bad optics to make it publicly known.
Can you even imagine the furor if someone were to say "why do you think there's so much hatred for black people?" in a context like this? And yet somehow, when it's Jews, it's apparently a perfectly respectable thing to insinuate that they brought it upon themselves.
> He's not saying half of society is antisemitic. He knows - like all Jewish people know - that probably 75% of society is antisemitic. They just have learned until recently that it's bad optics to make it publicly known.
When you say "know", are you using that term in a formal academic sense, such as JTB (Justified True Belief) in epistemology, or are you using the much more popular (normative) colloquial meaning, which equates it to confidently held beliefs?
Could you possibly explain what method you use for acquiring accurate knowledge about the intentions of people you encounter on social media message boards? Is your method based on science, or perhaps more "supernatural" methods? 🤔
I ask because I am working on a project related to this phenomenon.
Interesting. 95% of "white" Americans are racist and think blacks are inferior. What I'd like to know is how blacks can be as successful as Jews, given the similar, though obviously higher, level of built - in hatred against us? I hear you guys have a greatly disproportionate;y high representation of achievements, status and wealth in spite of the whole world hating your guts. That is what I call impressive!!! How do the Jews do it? Care to share? Does it have anything to do with Western Jews deciding to identify as "white" and joining them in looking down on us, too? Would that work for us? Thanks for any advice you can share, brother!
"Interesting reinvention of language. Especially "slaughtering" "subjugating" and "innocent." One could argue that Hamas does that, in actuality."
Reinvention of language? All those words can be found in any English dictionary. Currently, the Israeli government is hell-bent on doing what I described.
"He's not saying half of society is antisemitic. He knows - like all Jewish people know - that probably 75% of society is antisemitic."
What do you think causes 75% of society to be antisemitic?
> Bob didn't even attempt to answer the question that Realist asked of him.
It's a pretty clear and straightforward answer: people hate Jews because they were taught to by influential, malicious people, as noted in the article. If you know all about "epistemology" and all this deconstructionist drivel you're throwing around as if it makes you look clever, but whiff on basic reading comprehension, a) it does the opposite of making you look clever and b) you really ought to question the value of the deconstructionist drivel.
Have you spotted an issue in my reading comprehension? If so, I would appreciate if you could bring it to my attention so I can learn and improve my cognitive abilities. Please be as specific and harsh in your criticism as possible.
> it does the opposite of making you look clever
Do you consider this claim to be objective (~all people share this same experience and would *necessarily* agree with you), or subjective (both now, and at the time you made the comment)?
> you really ought to question the value of the deconstructionist drivel.
Here we are in luck! I have already done so, and in my opinion it is highly valuable...though, *extremely* unpopular.
The state of Israel was founded on land occupied by Palestinians. What I am proposing is that the state of Israel stop expanding on Palestinian land. Israel should be confined to its original 1949 border.
Really? Define Zionist, in all of it's current forms, please. Do you think of it as 'The Zionist Project' or just belief that a Jewish State should exist? Are you aware of the history of settlers since 1947 and how the Israeli government just basically responded to it with a shrug?
That simply isn't true. Most Jewish people have sadly, in the midst of great success, giftedness, survival, strength, achievement, etc., remained embedded in the self-pity, the proudly displayed perpetual victimhood that Zionists carefully cultivated for decades as a power base. They turn it on for cameras, for anyone who is watching when any of their unreasonable demands are not immediately indulged. Tears instantly flow, then the campy acting with lines about the "Holocaust!", and this by people who are too young to have even felt a whisper of it, but instead have lived comfortable lives of privilege, safety, security. Not all Jews are like this, of course-the sincere lovers and observes of Torah, who do not demand what "G-d gave them" while ignoring how G-d told them to live, are true examples of Judaism based on a Torah that cares for the stranger, loves and obeys G-d instead of using Him when convenient and discarding Him when He doesn't fit the nationalist power plans or the catering to selfishness and perversion. The Zionist demands that the world agree that they can do no wrong, and if you dare to see anything wrong, you are an "anti-semite", end of story. Clever strategy indeed, narcissism in action, and an admirable imitation of the "superiority" loving colonialist Britain, the racist America, the genocidal Hitler. Yes, we see you, not all of us are so easily manipulated. The rhetoric is complex, the strategies are deep, but they are all old, old, old. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But some of us do learn from it.
b) What methodology did you use to (at least try to) remove measurement error (assuming the thought even crossed your mind in the first place, and you did something about it)?
True means true. Just look at how long it didn't take for this one individual (Realist) to go from "being anti-Zionist doesn't necessarily mean being antisemitic" to invoking the "Jews control the media" conspiracy theory.
That's my "methodology:" look at people individually and see what they do. It's as simple as that, and attempting to use rhetorical tricks to make it seem more complicated discredits you, not me.
"True means true. Just look at how long it didn't take for this one individual (Realist) to go from "being anti-Zionist doesn't necessarily mean being antisemitic" to invoking the "Jews control the media" conspiracy theory."
That bullshit of throwing the phrase 'conspiracy theory' on any view you don't like doesn't work anymore...it never did with me.
"The paper “Attention is All You Need” introduced a groundbreaking neural network architecture called the Transformer, which revolutionized natural language processing (NLP) tasks."
Tautologies are *sometimes* useful, but watch out: they are a double edged sword, especially if one is inexperienced in wielding them.
> Just look at how long it didn't take for this one individual (Realist) to go from "being anti-Zionist doesn't necessarily mean being antisemitic" to invoking the "Jews control the media" conspiracy theory.
Is this to say that the notion is *only* a conspiracy, and is not in fact to some degree supported by valid statistics?
Also: am I to accept yet another claim of fact from you, after the conversations we've already had in this comment section? That's a big ask!!!
> That's my "methodology:" look at people individually and see what they do. It's as simple as that, and attempting to use rhetorical tricks to make it seem more complicated discredits you, not me.
Right: so you are LITERALLY ACKNOWLEDGING that you are expressing your subjective opinion.
I am not even joking: do you genuinely have no more powerful techniques at your disposal than that?
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
So not wanting a people, who have been subjected to mass murder and pogroms for much of their history, to have a safe sanctuary in their own country that exists in their historical homeland is not "being against them"? Please explain.
"So not wanting a people, who have been subjected to mass murder and pogroms for much of their history, to have a safe sanctuary in their own country that exists in their historical homeland is not "being against them"? Please explain."
The point is not that Jews should be denied a safe sanctuary and homeland; they should not be. The complaint is how the 'sanctuary' was obtained and the expansion of that territory resulting in the expulsion and murder of the people who lived there.
What do you think has caused Jews to have been subjected to mass murder and pogroms for much of their history? Please explain.
You expose yourself. There’s always a ‘reason’. When others are victimized, there is sympathy and outrage. When Jews are victimized, it’s what did they do to deserve it? Must be something!
Are you referring here to the past behaviour of Realist, or might you be imagining the behaviour of other people and projecting that imagination onto Realist (your sub-perceptual mental model of him, that you perceive to be the actual thing because you grew up in a primitive and corrupt culture who does not make a distinction between the two), and believing that the dream your mind has concocted is The Real Thing?
No projection. Responding directly to the rhetorical implication of the question he wants The WAbbot to 'explain'. Yes, in the context of other postings, it doesn't strike me a question being asked in good faith since his mind is made up.
If there was, would you *necessarily* be able to realize it? Surely you aren't asking us to believe that you are perfectly rational, are you?
> Responding directly to the rhetorical implication of the question he wants The WAbbot to 'explain'.
Technically, you are responding to your interpretation of it - your interpretation may be perfect, but it may not. Also, that is not the only cognitive service in play, but only one of many.
> Yes, in the context of other postings, it doesn't strike me a question being asked in good faith since his mind is made up.
> The point is not that Jews should be denied a safe sanctuary and homeland; they should not be. The complaint is how the 'sanctuary' was obtained and the expansion of that territory resulting in the expulsion and murder of the people who lived there.
Once again, you're spouting lies that are diametrically opposite to the truth. The land that was originally set aside for a Jewish homeland was much larger than the New Jersey-sized parcel they have to squeeze into today; it originally included the Transjordan region as well (now referred to simply as "Jordan") until a bunch of Arabs pitched a violent fit over it and the gutless British administrators cut the Jewish land way down to placate them. But that wasn't enough; it never is and never has been.
> I do not know where your love of Zionism comes from
A fundamental sense of justice and fairness. Everyone is entitled to their home, and has the right to defend it against aggression and theft. Jews are a part of "everyone," therefore they have that right too.
The safe sanctuary was obtained by a few means: 1) Jews purchasing land in their historical homeland and 2) United Nations Resolution 181 3) the civilized world recognizing the State of Israel.
As Man of Aran noted, the original land set aside for the State of Israel was much larger than what constitutes modern Israel.
"What caused the Jews to to have been subjected to mass murder and pogroms?" Would you ask why American Blacks in the Jim Crowe South were subjected to lynchings and other unimaginable brutality? There must have been a reason, right? As Jean Renoir said, "The terrible thing about life is that everyone has their reasons". Would like to share yours?
In theory it’s not, in practice, it is. It is usually unintentional. Here are the common mistakes I see anti-Zionists make:
* Equating diaspora Jews with Israel. Examples: expecting American Jews to answer for Israel, complaining that menorahs are up while people in Gaza suffer, saying that Israel makes Jews look bad (imagine saying that the genocide in Darfur justifies mistreatment of black Americans).
* Saying that Zionists are evil. The large majority of Jewish people are Zionists (meaning we believe that Israel has a right to exist as a primarily Jewish state. People who support a two state solution are Zionists). If you say that all Zionists are uniquely evil, you have necessarily condemned the large majority of Jews.
* Holding Israel to a wildly different standard than we hold our other allies. Most Palestinians live in the nations surrounding Israel. Accepting “right of return” as Palestinians understand it would flip Israel from 80% Jewish to 30% Jewish. Even if Israel did not accept full right of return, it would be <50% Jewish. We would never expect France or Japan to accept that kind of ethnic flip. *Every* nation on the Earth, with the possible exception of America and Canada is effectively an ethnostate, and demanding Jews in Israel do something different is a massive double standard.
* Along the same lines, Palestinian “right of return” is wildly out of step with what the U.N. defines as right of return, which applies to the original refugees, not all of their descendants. Even first generation refugees in practice usually do not get right of return. Certainly no Jews expelled from MENA expect it.
* Expecting Israel, a nation that came into being with violence, be *disbanded*, when every single other country on earth came into being with violence.
* Willful naïveté on what the likely outcome of a single state would be, which is civil war.
* Assuming Israel is an oppressor partly based on the misunderstanding that Israel is a white oppressor of brown Palestinians. Israel is primarily brown and black, and Jews are still by far the biggest target of hate crimes in America and Europe than any other ethnic group. This is not to say that Israel is not oppressing people in the West Bank. It definitely is. But saying this is simply criticism of Israel, not anti-Zionist.
So, it’s not as simple as “you hate Israel because you think Jews are subhuman.” But it still reflects some underlying prejudice, and lack of concern about what would happen to half the world’s Jews if anti-Zionists got their way.
Jews of all people should understand why a people from Canaan/Israel/Palestine feel very attached to it. I mean Jews returned after 2000 years! Expecting, Palestinians, many of whom were expelled from their ancestral land within living memory to just accept it, no questions asked, is frankly ridiculous.
*Demanding Israel not be an ethnostate is not a double standard. I know its difficult for some older Jewish people to accept but most young non-Jews grew up in an environment where multiculturalism and diversity are promoted and thus will not find your argument convincing. Most Western countries, even the supposedly ethnostate ones like France, went from being ~0% non-European to 10-20% non-European and even higher in major cities within a generation or two. And the trend is only going up.
I do not accept 2,000 land claims. And “as a Jew,” I understand in my bones that sometimes it’s better to accept you’ve lost, and it’s time to start somewhere else. I’m American, obviously all my Jewish ancestors are from somewhere else.
As a normie liberal, I of course accept that country demographics will change. The problem is that this position (though self-evidently correct to people like us) is wildly unpopular across the world. Democrats would be unelectable in Europe with our immigration policies. We forget how liberal America is on immigration. But even for us, expecting an immediate shift, one year 80% a majority ethnicity, in a country explicitly designed to be a refuge for one people, to 30%, is ludicrous.
And yes, after 75 years of war, it’s time to take the L. I very much support Ukraine, but if they are still fighting Russia in the year 2100, I would tell them to give up.
What you personally think is not the issue. What matters is that the Jewish community as a whole didn't take the L. If they had done so, the State of Israel would not exist. You really can't expect the Palestinians to give up after just 75 year when the Israeli example is staring right at them(well you can expect whatever you want, doesn't mean its right or going to happen).
Regarding mass immigration. I love when people support mass immigration to country A but oppose it for country B. You may be able to square that circle, don't expect most others to do the same.
I’m losing interest in this argument. But. Zionism formally got started after the Russian pogroms. It was inspired by, once again, the need to flee. Jews have, in the past century, fled from Russia (multiple times), Eastern Europe (multiple times), the rest of Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa. We’re plenty experienced in fleeing. We have a legal right to the land in Israel. This time, we’re staying.
And yes, you can absolutely give up after 75 years. In fact, Palestinians would have been better off if they’d given up immediately, or twenty years later, or twenty-five years later, or fifty years later, or sixty years later. Their hand has only gotten weaker.
Feeling morally superior to people is always pleasant, and I don’t blame you for enjoying the feeling when it comes to immigration. As a Jew, I am obviously in a tiny minority in America. While I am also of both black and PI descent, I present as white and identify as such. I live in a minority-majority city. I believe that the US will become majority-minority in the next few decades. That’s fine. I am very, very pro-immigration.
I also recognize that this is not the case for any of our allies besides Canada. It’s not true of Japan, it’s not true of Australia, it’s not true of South Korea, or France, or Saudi Arabia. And I think they should be more open to immigration, especially when demographic disaster is staring them in the face. But I’m not particularly outraged by it, and I don’t think you are either. This is why I specified this as holding Israel to a wildly different standard.
At present Australia has the highest rates of immigration in its history, the proportion of our population that was born overseas is the highest that it has ever been, and the proportion of our population with one or both parents born overseas is the highest that it has ever been. Looking at our two largest cities, 63.6% of the population of Greater Sydney and 61.6% of the population of Greater Melbourne had one or both parents born overseas as of the 2021 Census, and these proportions have undoubtedly grown since then.
So, if I believe that the people who invaded a land, then raped and pillaged and enslaved its residents, that those people should all return to where they cam from, I am not a racist?
Good, then Arabs should all go back to Arabia as they have no place in Africa, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq or Iran. Arabs invaded those lands and brutalized them in a way that could only be compared to the Nazis in Eastern Europe (not those sissy Nazis in Belgium and France).
We today accept that groups that stole lands (Turks in Turkey, whites in the Western Hemisphere, Arabs in the Middle East outside of the Arabian peninsula) are now allowed to stay there since it has been many generations since they got there via unethical methods.
Jews were in Israel long before Arabs. The fact that Jews returned does not justify Arab violence and genocide. If anti-Zionism is okay, then anti-Arabian imperialism and genocide should be fine as well. Pakistan could certainly use all of that wasted oil Iran and Iraq are exporting. We could help them out on such a venture. I suspect the ISI could clean up Gaza in a month or two. and allow poverty-stricken men in Karachi to obtain wives, not to mention reduce all those organ donor waiting roles.
I am not a Jew, but I do know some history. If it becomes socially acceptable to be anti-Zionist, then it will become acceptable to demand that all non-European be expelled from Europe. It will almost certainly inspire white nationalists in the US to engage in acts of terrorism against non-white Americans. Promoting ethnic hatred is bad when you live in a multi-ethnic state.
As much as I would love for the US to abandon all of its middle eastern embassies and simply refuse entry to everyone from that region, save for Zoroastrians of course, we actually need to pay attention to the idiocy of those death cults because their creativity in terrorism spreads. We do not want Palestinian-style "resistance" spreading to our part of the world. No one here has the tolerance and capacity for forgiveness that those Holocaust survivors in Israel had. If anything, the Palestinians have proven that ethnic cleansing is the only way to establish peace.
Anti-Zionism is not automatically antisemitism but it is not automatically *not* antisemitism either. You need to look at the actual content of specific cases of anti-Zionist speech or imagery, rather than choosing between one or other of two simplistic generalisations.
Jonathan Haidt, thanks for continuing to be a voice of reason in a mad world. We all have to do our part in whatever way possible to call out this madness each time we see it, or it will persist.
I'm almost as interested in the sealioning and the narcissistic self-regard of a couple of 'anti-Zionist' commenters in these replies. It's interesting that they aren't engaging with the piece, but trolling the people who reacted positively. There's been a lot of this leftishist slacktivism since the storm in a teacup over that handful of n*zis on Substack.
Yes! Truly. ‘Why Antisemitism Sprouted So Quickly on Jon Haidt’s Article’. My experience is that they never read the article, or subsequent replies to their almost mimeographed lies and provocations. They catch a whiff of blood off a trigger word or two, and then wallow their ungainly, fishy carcass over, find a target willing to engage, and start bellowing.
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
the real origin of the victim/oppressor dichotomy in the American academy is cultural anthropology which first inhaled the work of Fanon, Foucault and others. As America becomes much less white quickly, we need to see ALL of this as part of a real power struggle in our major institutions..because that's the struggle Fanon and Foucault were asking for...it's too easy to dismiss the simplistic nature of the dichotomy from a privileged intellectual viewpoint...there is a real power struggle ongoing that is not reducible to an intellectual or thought problem...
I was there and we were the only academic discipline obsessed with the anti-colonial struggle in the 1970s, 1980s and onwards. Post-colonial activists like Fanon also targeted anthropologists early on for 'complicity' in perpetuating colonial power dynamics between the West and the colonized. Edward Said's famous book Orientalism forced most of us to take sides, because the inherent racism of so much writing about Asia and the Middle East is very hard to ignore when you study it linguistically. These debates are very old in the anthropology discipline, because most of us studied abroad in former colonies. A parallel protest occurred in the 1970s from the American Indian Movement, also aimed at white anthropologists dominating the discourse on Native American culture. The Palestinian rage being discussed is absolutely that of the colonized; it is very familiar to those who have done fieldwork abroad. It is simply new in the United States to hear Palestinians and Arab-Americans so vocal. To me, it is simply the latest group to acquire a voice. Having lived abroad in India, this struggle for respect and power vis a vis the white man is not new or shocking. It is misunderstood easily by those who sit on urban campuses and have never immersed themselves in the former colonies.
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
Oh I see, protesting against ethnic cleansing and indiscriminate killing of civilians is antisemitic. It's also antisemitic to read Israeli newspapers which report on what is being said by the highest levels of government (Netanyahu's disturbing comments about Amalek, etc), and very, very, very antisemitic to read the fairly unequivocal report that Israel is, in fact, indiscriminately killing Gazans on purpose using AI targeting by the Israeli outlet 972 Magazine:
Those Israelis are antisemitic and so is anyone who so much as reads the facts.
It's also antisemitic to point out that groups such as Jewish Voices for Peace are exactly that, Jewish, and are not antisemitic. They are antisemitic and so are those who think they aren't; Haidt is clearly a master of logic here because such twisted mind contortions couldn't be clearer.
It's antisemitic hatred to see view Israel as an occupying power under international law, and the slow ethnic cleansing they have been performing for decades is wrong. Man that is pure blind hate! And to say Palestinians actually have the legal right in international law to fight back against an occupying power, just like any other, whoa. Antisemitic hatred is exploding everywhere. Israel is the same as every other country with he same responsibilities? There's only one answer: antisemitic!
Oh and to even mention the plan for destruction of the Dome of the Rock and replacement by the Third Temple, as widely discussed in Israel (https://www.jpost.com/tags/third-temple) is massively antisemitic, but only if you think it's wrong. How could somebody hate Jews so much???
It's also antisemitic to point out that all these years of hating on "wokeness" and their "cancel culture" and censorship was 100% empty rhetoric because now all those mouth breathers want to cancel and censor anyone who so much as thinks maybe Israel is going too far. It isn't that cancel culture "wokeness" is wrong, clearly it's just that the wrong people are doing it. Call it what it is: conservative wokeness.
No, you are completely insane to think college students protesting this bloodbath are doing the wrong thing. I have entirely lost interest if you think. Bill Ackman, that Harvard alumni attacking kids for protesting Israel and trying to pressure corporations to never hire them, is a fascist scumbag and should be treated like any other fascist. If you attack children and try to ruin their lives simply for disagreeing with you then you deserve the worst, even if your issue is Israel. It's really that simple.
By wielding the word "antisemitism" as a political club against those who protest Israel you have rendered meaningless. That's 100% on you and don't expect sympathy now you don't deserve it.
I am not a regular poster here and am sympathetic to the argument that Israel is wrong in how it is responding to the 10/7 attacks by Hamas. They do have a moral responsibility to be more surgical in their strikes and to avoid the massive suffering they are causing (just like the US had post 911 and failed to live up to). I think pointing these facts out, while also acknowledging the context if which they are occurring (you know, the initial slaughter/kidnapping/terror attacks) is important in understanding why the current situation is so horribly complex and intractable. It is also important in building a coalition aimed at reducing the harm caused by Israel's reaction to Hamas' provocation and also punishing Hamas sufficiently that it (and similar groups) will be disincentivized to commit similar acts in the future.
Both sides have done things wrong in the past and continue to do things wrong currently. Kind of like all humans, everywhere and at all times. I was just listening to a history of WW2 in the Pacific and the atrocities committed by the US (including wearing peoples body parts are ornaments) is only understandable in the context of the atrocities committed by Japan.
However, most of the arguments against Israel these days seem to lack the ability to see both sides of this conflict. I find it tragicomic that people will put so much effort into documenting and highlight all the horrible things done by Israel but completely overlook the fact that Hamas started the latest round of violence, with the specific intention of getting Israel to react in this manner. It like Israel, out of nowhere and for no reason, just started attacking people in the Gaza strip and or doing things like cutting off power.
Guess what...Israel is reacting how Hamas wants them to...that was their goal. They launched the initial attack to create this situation. That might make the Israeli response to this stupid, kind of like the US response to 911, but does create a shared responsibility that seems to get ignored.
Yes, Israel is wrong in how it is REACTING to the 10/7 attacks. But, Hamas' strategy was explicitly designed to provoke this kind of response. Both sides are in the wrong, have done wrong, will do wrong in the future, but in my moral calculus Hamas bears a great deal more responsibility for the current situation. I do not see any acknowledgement of this in your post. I see a lot of excuses about why you're not antisemitic though. This seems to be feed by a massive hunt for reasons to convince yourself this is the case.
I suspect that if it was a marginalized group or if Jews met your definition of a marginalized group, and they acted in the manner Israel has that you would have come to the opposite conclusion and be searching for reasons to justify the actions or switch blame (which is what you are doing by shifting blame from Hamas to Israel).
I think the focus on the binary, victim/oppressor mentality drives the kind of confirmation bias prevalent in arguments such as yours. You can exhibit all kinds of blind spots and overlook all kinds of horrible action by one party but will spend inordinate amounts of energy building a case against the "oppressor."
It's the kind of thinking discussed in kind of moral blind spot discussed in the Righteous Mind.
These kinds of arguments probably sell well at campus events and are great virtue signals but are not convincing to people who do not share the victim/oppressor world view, because they lack nuance and to believe them you have to be into the binary oppressor/oppressed world view.
So, for what is worth, I do not think you are an antisemite, just that your analysis is driven by world view, instead of your analysis informing your worldview.
Thank you. I cannot believe how glibly it is presumed that in whatever context a “victim/oppressor mindset” is found in play, there couldn’t possibly be an actual oppressor or actual victim. Haidt’s understanding of Israel/Palestine is non-existent.
This is an excellent post. I hope that it is widely read and shared. I wonder if there is a way to urge schools (especially high schools and colleges) to *teach* 'The Coddling of the American Mind.' Perhaps if more people were exposed to the ideas in your book, it would help them reflect on everything else they are being indoctrinated with. I know you have Heterodox Academy but that seems largely geared to college age, by which point it is too late. What if you created a fellowship, internship, or some other prestigious program (a summer institute?) for high school students that focused on actively teaching the book and the value of free inquiry/ truly free speech? I do not think you can rely on the schools to turn back the clock and rid us of DEI run amok.
> In the days after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, university campuses immediately distinguished themselves as places set apart from the rest of American society—zones where different moral rules applied.
You say this as if that hadn't already been the case for decades. But it has, quite openly so. The term "Berzerkeley" dates back to the late '50s, and "college students being crazy and stupid on campus" has been a distinct film genre for almost as long.
Like the proverbial "overnight success after 10 years of hard work," this moral rot on our campuses has been building for a long, long time before abruptly gaining widespread recognition.
> The new morality driving these reforms was antithetical to the traditional virtues of academic life:
> ...
> This new morality, we argued, is what drove universities off a cliff.
Again, this has been a known problem for a long, long time.
" There are those who believe that a new modernity demands a new morality. What they fail to consider is the harsh reality that there is no such thing as a new morality. There is only one morality . All else is immorality." -- Theodore Roosevelt
"The so-called new morality is too often the old immorality condoned." -- Hartley Shawcross
> > Efforts in red-state legislatures to constrain, control, or defund higher ed will now find a great deal more public support than anyone could have imagined before 2015. If they are to regain public trust, university leaders will need to understand the victim/oppressor mindset and how their own institutions are encouraging it. Then they will need to take bold action and make deep changes.
The disappointing thing is just how few people are talking about (or even know about to begins with) the actual root of the problem: a well-meaning but ultimately disastrous Supreme Court ruling that created the degrees-as-credentials system lying at the root of most of the problems in higher education today. (I wrote about it here: https://robertfrank.substack.com/p/the-most-significant-case-youve-never .) If we're actually serious about fixing the problems of higher education, rolling back the Griggs decision is an essential prerequisite to actually getting anything meaningful done.
Technically, they *believe* Hamas is to blame here. "Know" has a very particular meaning in epistemology, but then rare is the human who prefers epistemology over Maya (from Hinduism).
"Are you able to explain why it is *necessarily* true? I suspect you are not even able TO TRY to do so."
You may (or may not) have noticed THAT YOU DID NOT EVEN TRY. As I said, I believe you literally cannot even try. If I am incorrect, you could demonstrate that I am by trying (but watch out: I also asked an extremely(!) difficult question, that I will also try to get you to answer).
It is becoming increasingly difficult to believe that I am not starring in The Truman Show.
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
It seems you lack an understanding of language nuances.
When people use "know" in this context, they usually mean "believe [what I consider to be] the self-evidently true thing." It's like if you said "Even my five year old knows it's wrong to scream in someone's face." That would technically be a belief, but we all understand the intended meaning.
Rather than needle people on their chosen words, you could just proceed with your best good faith interpretation. No one is impressed by your condescending questions and lessons.
> It seems you lack an understanding of language nuances. When people use "know" in this context...
That people make no distinction between belief and knowledge is the very phenomenon I am complaining about.
> ... they usually mean "believe [what I consider to be] the self-evidently true thing." I
Here you are making an assertion about the mental state of all people - what you are describing is your belief about the matter, as it is not possible to acquire knowledge of such things. Do you see the irony here? Do you see how pervasive and fundamental this problem is to reality? Do you see how difficult it is to not accidentally fall victim to it?
> That would technically be a belief, but we all understand the intended meaning.
You may believe that all people do, but you have no way of proving that out. I'd bet that you wouldn't even be able to try, as your mind would classify the notion as absurd, or find some other trick to refuse to allow you to engage it.
> Rather than needle people on their chosen words, you could just proceed with your best good faith interpretation.
a) This assumes a certain level of free will on my part.
b) I prefer to do otherwise, because it is important and I know of no other human being who is doing it, and there are A LOT of problems in this world (war, climate change, etc) that may need addressing in a non-delusional manner.
> No one is impressed by your condescending questions and lessons.
Once again: this sensation that you have omniscient knowledge of the mental states of other humans is an illusory side effect of consciousness and culture.
I write as a retired clinical social worker who has read and who deeply respects your work Jon, and your integrity. As someone who has travelled into four of America's counter-insurgency war zones in Latin America in the 1990's I've seen enough human suffering to last a lifetime. Suffering that my nation was deeply complicit in through the support of corrupt dictators, military and even death squads. I never considered that my active opposition to those policies in any way made me somehow "anti-American." The poor young men in Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala often had few choices - join the military, be conscripted into a death squad or join the guerrillas. In Israel one serves in the military - while in Palestine that young man might join Hamas. I see no "good guys" vs "bad guys" in this Israel/Palestine equation.
All of that said, I do find it troubling that with 20,000 dead, 8,000 of which are children and 6,200 of whom are women - that many of the people I respect most who have a public voice in our society are not calling for an end to the bombing and a ceasefire. Instead most of the conservative voices which I have deeply appreciated for example, for their defense of the rights of biological women being eroded by gender-ideology and who stood in opposition to the suppression of free speech and "cancel culture" - seem completely preoccupied not with the actual physical death and destruction that is ongoing in Gaza - but instead much like the "woke" - their focus seems to be on - "words as violence" - particularly on campus or in protests. Many voices I have deeply respected seem comfortable labeling anyone like myself who simply does not see any "virtue" in the ongoing mass violence as being somehow - "anti-semitic." To say I am stunned by the tone-deafness of it all would be putting it mildly.
"20,000 dead, 8,000 of which are children and 6,200 of whom are women..."
gonna need a source for this claim pls, and not Hamas.
Hamas committed an act of war and war is what they wanted and are getting. It's not Israel's fault that these bloodthirsty cowards hide behind children and hide their weapons in schools and under hospitals.
War is very ugly but I don't remember anyone weeping gallons of crocodile tears and crying Think of the Children! when the Allies marched to Berlin or General Sherman burned down Atlanta.
If Hamas laid down their weapons and released the hostages there'd be peace, all blame belongs to them (and to their useful idiots in the West).
> It's not Israel's fault that these bloodthirsty cowards hide behind children and hide their weapons in schools and under hospitals.
Are you referring to the causality that underlies those actions?
> War is very ugly but I don't remember anyone weeping gallons of crocodile tears and crying Think of the Children! when the Allies marched to Berlin or General Sherman burned down Atlanta.
Perhaps you do not possess omniscient knowledge of the actions of all humans.
Regardless: does this prove out some point, or justify certain actions?
> If Hamas laid down their weapons and released the hostages there'd be peace, all blame belongs to them (and to their useful idiots in the West).
Again, it sounds like you are referring to causality here - are you?
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
Glenn Greenwald has been excellent on conservatives who have made their livings in recent years railing against censorship and cancel culture, only to turn on a dime over Israel/Gaza, and make the exact same arguments with respect to Jews that the Woke make about black, queer and trans people.
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
Yes, the parochialism of a lot of the editorial content in the US has been surprising to me. I guess there is just human limits at play that mean we can't see the other side where there is emotional connection to the issue. But it doesn't help perceptions of hegemony in the media and institutions broadly which then add to revolutionary fervour.
Agree with all this, and especially appreciate you and Zach compiling and sharing all the polls you can find on sentiment towards Israel. I appreicate that you compile and share data publicly, generally.
Thank you so much for speaking up against the growing threat of Jew-hatred, which is spreading fast from the university campuses to the mainstream society worldwide!
An analysis of one important factor of leftist anti-Semitism that seems very sound.
May I ask why you consider "the other side" to be pro-Palestinian? Frankly, this seems to be a misunderstanding that is the result of decades of propaganda. Israel, Israelis and the majority of the Jews worldwide are either neutral or explicitly pro-Palestinian, just not pro-terror, and calling those who call for the end of Israel, or those who are in favour of jihadism and islamism "pro-Palestinian" doesn't seem correct, implying those opposing the Hamas atrocities are anti-Palestinian. In fact, even considering the horrifying approval figures in polls among Palestinians, this seems just as as unfair to Palestinians, simply equating Palestinians with terrorists.
I'm also curious, as you seem to make a point of it, why you consider the West Bank occupied by Israel. I obviously do see what makes people use this term, but that's usually done in an unreflected way. For what it's worth, I think that the Jewish settlements weren't and aren't helpful, and that a two-state solution would have had some chance in theory, the theory being that the Soviet and Arab side would have played along. Even now I see some potential there. But occupied? The area was historically a mix of mostly Aramaeans, Arabs and Jews of Muslim, Christian, Jewish, secular and other convictions. Those who, still only to a degree, identify as Palestinians, were a mix of Aramaeans, even Jews, and then local Arabs (ie 7th-19th century immigrants) and a large amount of late-18th-20th century immigrants from all Egypt via Syria up to the Caucausus. Again - I accept that the purposefully, externally invented people of Palestinians today is a real identity - that's their right, and it's commonly accepted. The "occupied" area was just as much and as little "Palestinian" as the area that is green-line Israel today, or Jordan, for that matter. Legally, as far as I know, it's no man's land, after the British Mandate ended and the Arab world declined the UN plan. It was conquered from Jordan, it's ruled by the PA in a deal with Israel. Complex, but not "occupied from the Palestinians by Israel". That is a shortcut forcefully and intentionally propagated by Soviet propaganda in the 1960s that successfully spread.
The arguments here about antisemitism seem to miss the mark. The problem on campus is that political criticism of Israel has turned into personal hostility toward Jewish students. While such animosity may also easily be perception on the part of Jewish, I don't think it is entirely imaginary. It's equally a problem if we were speaking about Palestinian students (or Muslim, or Christian, or Arabic, or whatever, etc.). This is a different subject than the politics of Israel and Hamas.
Once upon a time we might be talking Japanese Americans or German Americans etc. This is the problem on campus. Not political disagreements.
Anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism.
In theory, no. In practice, you never seem to have to scratch an "anti-Zionist" particularly deeply to find the rabid Jew-hater beneath the respectable veneer.
Your reply is melodramatic and is an effort to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-semitism. Does your comment apply to Jews who are anti-Zionist? Why do you believe there is so much hatred of Jews?
> Does your comment apply to Jews who are anti-Zionist?
Of course. For as long as there have been groups, there have been traitors. Why should this group be any different?
> Why do you believe there is so much hatred of Jews?
Well, having a few influential voices that dominate the attention of half of society preaching antisemitism and blood libel really doesn't help...
"Well, having a few influential voices that dominate the attention of half of society preaching antisemitism and blood libel really doesn't help..."
Neither does slaughtering and subjugating thousands of innocent Palestinians over the last seventy-five years.
Who are these influential voices, and are you saying half of society is antisemitic?
> Neither does slaughtering and subjugating thousands of innocent Palestinians over the last seventy-five years.
Never happened. But thank you for outing yourself as someone willing to spread blood libel at the slightest provocation.
> Who are these influential voices
Did you not read the article?
> and are you saying half of society is antisemitic?
Close. I'm saying half of society is strongly primed to be receptive to antisemitism. And in a lot of them, particularly the younger ones, the priming is paying off now.
https://graboyes.substack.com/p/antisemitisms-sharp-left-turn
>> Neither does slaughtering and subjugating thousands of innocent Palestinians over the last seventy-five years.
> Never happened.
If it isn't too much trouble, would you mind expanding on the precise meaning you intend to convey with the phrase "never happened". Is this to say that thousands of Palestinians HAVE NOT died as a consequence of military or political action, completely leaving aside the aspect of whether those actions were or were not "justified" (an extremely popular phrase in Western culture *and media* when war is discussed....depending on who it was that started the war)?
"Never happened. But thank you for outing yourself as someone willing to spread blood libel at the slightest provocation."
It is happening right now. And your gratuitous remark, 'someone willing to spread blood libel at the slightest provocation,' is wrong. Blood libel is an allegation that Jews murder Christians. That is a centuries-old narrative. Bringing religion into this discussion is a non sequitur. I have no interest in religion...murder is wrong, whatever the excuse. Most of those being killed currently are Muslims.
It is too funny when a Jew complains about 'influential voices.'
This is BS. I have never met a Jewish person in the US that wasn't empathetic to how Palestinians are treated in the Israeli apartheid state. As a matter of fact, these are the people who explained to me not only the plight of Muslims in Israel, but also how Palestinian Christians are third class citizens there. You seem to be an AIPAC shill, Bob.
"Neither does slaughtering and subjugating thousands of innocent Palestinians over the last seventy-five years."
"Never happened"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! ROFL!!!! Love it! "Look, I'm a magician, see? I wave away any unpleasant truth with a wave of my words-POOF!" LOL! LOL! LOL! Whooooeee!!! That was good! I needed a good laugh-thanks! heeheeheehee! :-D
Interesting reinvention of language. Especially "slaughtering" "subjugating" and "innocent." One could argue that Hamas does that, in actuality.
He's not saying half of society is antisemitic. He knows - like all Jewish people know - that probably 75% of society is antisemitic. They just have learned until recently that it's bad optics to make it publicly known.
People like you are always looking for horns.
Can you even imagine the furor if someone were to say "why do you think there's so much hatred for black people?" in a context like this? And yet somehow, when it's Jews, it's apparently a perfectly respectable thing to insinuate that they brought it upon themselves.
> He's not saying half of society is antisemitic. He knows - like all Jewish people know - that probably 75% of society is antisemitic. They just have learned until recently that it's bad optics to make it publicly known.
When you say "know", are you using that term in a formal academic sense, such as JTB (Justified True Belief) in epistemology, or are you using the much more popular (normative) colloquial meaning, which equates it to confidently held beliefs?
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/#KnowJustTrueBeli
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/psychology-normative-cognition/
> People like you are always looking for horns.
Could you possibly explain what method you use for acquiring accurate knowledge about the intentions of people you encounter on social media message boards? Is your method based on science, or perhaps more "supernatural" methods? 🤔
I ask because I am working on a project related to this phenomenon.
Interesting. 95% of "white" Americans are racist and think blacks are inferior. What I'd like to know is how blacks can be as successful as Jews, given the similar, though obviously higher, level of built - in hatred against us? I hear you guys have a greatly disproportionate;y high representation of achievements, status and wealth in spite of the whole world hating your guts. That is what I call impressive!!! How do the Jews do it? Care to share? Does it have anything to do with Western Jews deciding to identify as "white" and joining them in looking down on us, too? Would that work for us? Thanks for any advice you can share, brother!
"Interesting reinvention of language. Especially "slaughtering" "subjugating" and "innocent." One could argue that Hamas does that, in actuality."
Reinvention of language? All those words can be found in any English dictionary. Currently, the Israeli government is hell-bent on doing what I described.
"He's not saying half of society is antisemitic. He knows - like all Jewish people know - that probably 75% of society is antisemitic."
What do you think causes 75% of society to be antisemitic?
"People like you are always looking for horns."
Explain what are 'people like me'?
>> Why do you believe there is so much hatred of Jews?
> Well, having a few influential voices that dominate the attention of half of society preaching antisemitism and blood libel really doesn't help...
I find this exchange interesting because Bob didn't even attempt to answer the question that Realist asked of him.
I wonder if Bob had conscious awareness that his answer dodged the question.
I wonder if Bob has the ability to be at least somewhat curious about whether his beliefs `are:
a) epistemically sound
b) actually true
Gosh I love observing humans in their natural habitat, discussing "reality".
> Bob didn't even attempt to answer the question that Realist asked of him.
It's a pretty clear and straightforward answer: people hate Jews because they were taught to by influential, malicious people, as noted in the article. If you know all about "epistemology" and all this deconstructionist drivel you're throwing around as if it makes you look clever, but whiff on basic reading comprehension, a) it does the opposite of making you look clever and b) you really ought to question the value of the deconstructionist drivel.
> It's a pretty clear
You have several problems here, I will note just two and then observe how "you" respond to them:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
> "epistemology"
I am curious why you put quotation marks around epistemology.
> as if it makes you look clever
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology)
> but whiff on basic reading comprehension
Have you spotted an issue in my reading comprehension? If so, I would appreciate if you could bring it to my attention so I can learn and improve my cognitive abilities. Please be as specific and harsh in your criticism as possible.
> it does the opposite of making you look clever
Do you consider this claim to be objective (~all people share this same experience and would *necessarily* agree with you), or subjective (both now, and at the time you made the comment)?
> you really ought to question the value of the deconstructionist drivel.
Here we are in luck! I have already done so, and in my opinion it is highly valuable...though, *extremely* unpopular.
The state of Israel was founded on land occupied by Palestinians. What I am proposing is that the state of Israel stop expanding on Palestinian land. Israel should be confined to its original 1949 border.
Really? Define Zionist, in all of it's current forms, please. Do you think of it as 'The Zionist Project' or just belief that a Jewish State should exist? Are you aware of the history of settlers since 1947 and how the Israeli government just basically responded to it with a shrug?
https://robertfrank.substack.com/p/what-exactly-is-palestine-anyway
That simply isn't true. Most Jewish people have sadly, in the midst of great success, giftedness, survival, strength, achievement, etc., remained embedded in the self-pity, the proudly displayed perpetual victimhood that Zionists carefully cultivated for decades as a power base. They turn it on for cameras, for anyone who is watching when any of their unreasonable demands are not immediately indulged. Tears instantly flow, then the campy acting with lines about the "Holocaust!", and this by people who are too young to have even felt a whisper of it, but instead have lived comfortable lives of privilege, safety, security. Not all Jews are like this, of course-the sincere lovers and observes of Torah, who do not demand what "G-d gave them" while ignoring how G-d told them to live, are true examples of Judaism based on a Torah that cares for the stranger, loves and obeys G-d instead of using Him when convenient and discarding Him when He doesn't fit the nationalist power plans or the catering to selfishness and perversion. The Zionist demands that the world agree that they can do no wrong, and if you dare to see anything wrong, you are an "anti-semite", end of story. Clever strategy indeed, narcissism in action, and an admirable imitation of the "superiority" loving colonialist Britain, the racist America, the genocidal Hitler. Yes, we see you, not all of us are so easily manipulated. The rhetoric is complex, the strategies are deep, but they are all old, old, old. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But some of us do learn from it.
a) What is your sample size?
b) What methodology did you use to (at least try to) remove measurement error (assuming the thought even crossed your mind in the first place, and you did something about it)?
a) One. And then another one. And then one more. And one more, and they just keep coming. And it holds true each individual time.
b) That's far less of a concern when you're looking at individuals rather than grouping them together.
> a) One. And then another one. And then one more. And one more, and they just keep coming.
I see. But back to my question: what is your sample size?
> And it holds true each individual time.
Are you using "true" in a technical sense, or colloquial sense?
> b) That's far less of a concern when you're looking at individuals rather than grouping them together.
1. Can you explain why this is (why you believe it to be)?
2. Nonetheless, are you opposed to revealing what methodology you used?
True means true. Just look at how long it didn't take for this one individual (Realist) to go from "being anti-Zionist doesn't necessarily mean being antisemitic" to invoking the "Jews control the media" conspiracy theory.
That's my "methodology:" look at people individually and see what they do. It's as simple as that, and attempting to use rhetorical tricks to make it seem more complicated discredits you, not me.
"True means true. Just look at how long it didn't take for this one individual (Realist) to go from "being anti-Zionist doesn't necessarily mean being antisemitic" to invoking the "Jews control the media" conspiracy theory."
That bullshit of throwing the phrase 'conspiracy theory' on any view you don't like doesn't work anymore...it never did with me.
Bob,
Two items for your consideration:
"The paper “Attention is All You Need” introduced a groundbreaking neural network architecture called the Transformer, which revolutionized natural language processing (NLP) tasks."
https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2017/file/3f5ee243547dee91fbd053c1c4a845aa-Paper.pdf
Large Language Models From Scratch:
https://youtu.be/lnA9DMvHtfI?si=KVIlVvGLEpKEg9FL
Bob: if you put that big brain to work, can you come up with any theories on why I might have posted these two links for your consideration? ;)
Will you ever reveal your sample size, human?
> True means true.
Tautologies are *sometimes* useful, but watch out: they are a double edged sword, especially if one is inexperienced in wielding them.
> Just look at how long it didn't take for this one individual (Realist) to go from "being anti-Zionist doesn't necessarily mean being antisemitic" to invoking the "Jews control the media" conspiracy theory.
Is this to say that the notion is *only* a conspiracy, and is not in fact to some degree supported by valid statistics?
Also: am I to accept yet another claim of fact from you, after the conversations we've already had in this comment section? That's a big ask!!!
> That's my "methodology:" look at people individually and see what they do. It's as simple as that, and attempting to use rhetorical tricks to make it seem more complicated discredits you, not me.
Right: so you are LITERALLY ACKNOWLEDGING that you are expressing your subjective opinion.
I am not even joking: do you genuinely have no more powerful techniques at your disposal than that?
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
So not wanting a people, who have been subjected to mass murder and pogroms for much of their history, to have a safe sanctuary in their own country that exists in their historical homeland is not "being against them"? Please explain.
"So not wanting a people, who have been subjected to mass murder and pogroms for much of their history, to have a safe sanctuary in their own country that exists in their historical homeland is not "being against them"? Please explain."
The point is not that Jews should be denied a safe sanctuary and homeland; they should not be. The complaint is how the 'sanctuary' was obtained and the expansion of that territory resulting in the expulsion and murder of the people who lived there.
What do you think has caused Jews to have been subjected to mass murder and pogroms for much of their history? Please explain.
You expose yourself. There’s always a ‘reason’. When others are victimized, there is sympathy and outrage. When Jews are victimized, it’s what did they do to deserve it? Must be something!
That's your answer/excuse? LOL.
Are you referring here to the past behaviour of Realist, or might you be imagining the behaviour of other people and projecting that imagination onto Realist (your sub-perceptual mental model of him, that you perceive to be the actual thing because you grew up in a primitive and corrupt culture who does not make a distinction between the two), and believing that the dream your mind has concocted is The Real Thing?
No projection. Responding directly to the rhetorical implication of the question he wants The WAbbot to 'explain'. Yes, in the context of other postings, it doesn't strike me a question being asked in good faith since his mind is made up.
> No projection.
If there was, would you *necessarily* be able to realize it? Surely you aren't asking us to believe that you are perfectly rational, are you?
> Responding directly to the rhetorical implication of the question he wants The WAbbot to 'explain'.
Technically, you are responding to your interpretation of it - your interpretation may be perfect, but it may not. Also, that is not the only cognitive service in play, but only one of many.
> Yes, in the context of other postings, it doesn't strike me a question being asked in good faith since his mind is made up.
And yours is not?
> The point is not that Jews should be denied a safe sanctuary and homeland; they should not be. The complaint is how the 'sanctuary' was obtained and the expansion of that territory resulting in the expulsion and murder of the people who lived there.
Once again, you're spouting lies that are diametrically opposite to the truth. The land that was originally set aside for a Jewish homeland was much larger than the New Jersey-sized parcel they have to squeeze into today; it originally included the Transjordan region as well (now referred to simply as "Jordan") until a bunch of Arabs pitched a violent fit over it and the gutless British administrators cut the Jewish land way down to placate them. But that wasn't enough; it never is and never has been.
https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/dane_geld.html
I do not know where your love of Zionism comes from, but I believe we are through here.
> I do not know where your love of Zionism comes from
A fundamental sense of justice and fairness. Everyone is entitled to their home, and has the right to defend it against aggression and theft. Jews are a part of "everyone," therefore they have that right too.
The safe sanctuary was obtained by a few means: 1) Jews purchasing land in their historical homeland and 2) United Nations Resolution 181 3) the civilized world recognizing the State of Israel.
As Man of Aran noted, the original land set aside for the State of Israel was much larger than what constitutes modern Israel.
"What caused the Jews to to have been subjected to mass murder and pogroms?" Would you ask why American Blacks in the Jim Crowe South were subjected to lynchings and other unimaginable brutality? There must have been a reason, right? As Jean Renoir said, "The terrible thing about life is that everyone has their reasons". Would like to share yours?
Can you explain?
Anti-zionism is the gateway drug to anti-semitism.
LOL
Meme Magic is the gateway to cultural delusion, corruption, and unnecessary suffering.
You adult Normies deserve everything you get imho, but it would be nice if children could be spared.
In theory it’s not, in practice, it is. It is usually unintentional. Here are the common mistakes I see anti-Zionists make:
* Equating diaspora Jews with Israel. Examples: expecting American Jews to answer for Israel, complaining that menorahs are up while people in Gaza suffer, saying that Israel makes Jews look bad (imagine saying that the genocide in Darfur justifies mistreatment of black Americans).
* Saying that Zionists are evil. The large majority of Jewish people are Zionists (meaning we believe that Israel has a right to exist as a primarily Jewish state. People who support a two state solution are Zionists). If you say that all Zionists are uniquely evil, you have necessarily condemned the large majority of Jews.
* Holding Israel to a wildly different standard than we hold our other allies. Most Palestinians live in the nations surrounding Israel. Accepting “right of return” as Palestinians understand it would flip Israel from 80% Jewish to 30% Jewish. Even if Israel did not accept full right of return, it would be <50% Jewish. We would never expect France or Japan to accept that kind of ethnic flip. *Every* nation on the Earth, with the possible exception of America and Canada is effectively an ethnostate, and demanding Jews in Israel do something different is a massive double standard.
* Along the same lines, Palestinian “right of return” is wildly out of step with what the U.N. defines as right of return, which applies to the original refugees, not all of their descendants. Even first generation refugees in practice usually do not get right of return. Certainly no Jews expelled from MENA expect it.
* Expecting Israel, a nation that came into being with violence, be *disbanded*, when every single other country on earth came into being with violence.
* Willful naïveté on what the likely outcome of a single state would be, which is civil war.
* Assuming Israel is an oppressor partly based on the misunderstanding that Israel is a white oppressor of brown Palestinians. Israel is primarily brown and black, and Jews are still by far the biggest target of hate crimes in America and Europe than any other ethnic group. This is not to say that Israel is not oppressing people in the West Bank. It definitely is. But saying this is simply criticism of Israel, not anti-Zionist.
So, it’s not as simple as “you hate Israel because you think Jews are subhuman.” But it still reflects some underlying prejudice, and lack of concern about what would happen to half the world’s Jews if anti-Zionists got their way.
Jews of all people should understand why a people from Canaan/Israel/Palestine feel very attached to it. I mean Jews returned after 2000 years! Expecting, Palestinians, many of whom were expelled from their ancestral land within living memory to just accept it, no questions asked, is frankly ridiculous.
*Demanding Israel not be an ethnostate is not a double standard. I know its difficult for some older Jewish people to accept but most young non-Jews grew up in an environment where multiculturalism and diversity are promoted and thus will not find your argument convincing. Most Western countries, even the supposedly ethnostate ones like France, went from being ~0% non-European to 10-20% non-European and even higher in major cities within a generation or two. And the trend is only going up.
I do not accept 2,000 land claims. And “as a Jew,” I understand in my bones that sometimes it’s better to accept you’ve lost, and it’s time to start somewhere else. I’m American, obviously all my Jewish ancestors are from somewhere else.
As a normie liberal, I of course accept that country demographics will change. The problem is that this position (though self-evidently correct to people like us) is wildly unpopular across the world. Democrats would be unelectable in Europe with our immigration policies. We forget how liberal America is on immigration. But even for us, expecting an immediate shift, one year 80% a majority ethnicity, in a country explicitly designed to be a refuge for one people, to 30%, is ludicrous.
And yes, after 75 years of war, it’s time to take the L. I very much support Ukraine, but if they are still fighting Russia in the year 2100, I would tell them to give up.
What you personally think is not the issue. What matters is that the Jewish community as a whole didn't take the L. If they had done so, the State of Israel would not exist. You really can't expect the Palestinians to give up after just 75 year when the Israeli example is staring right at them(well you can expect whatever you want, doesn't mean its right or going to happen).
Regarding mass immigration. I love when people support mass immigration to country A but oppose it for country B. You may be able to square that circle, don't expect most others to do the same.
I’m losing interest in this argument. But. Zionism formally got started after the Russian pogroms. It was inspired by, once again, the need to flee. Jews have, in the past century, fled from Russia (multiple times), Eastern Europe (multiple times), the rest of Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa. We’re plenty experienced in fleeing. We have a legal right to the land in Israel. This time, we’re staying.
And yes, you can absolutely give up after 75 years. In fact, Palestinians would have been better off if they’d given up immediately, or twenty years later, or twenty-five years later, or fifty years later, or sixty years later. Their hand has only gotten weaker.
Feeling morally superior to people is always pleasant, and I don’t blame you for enjoying the feeling when it comes to immigration. As a Jew, I am obviously in a tiny minority in America. While I am also of both black and PI descent, I present as white and identify as such. I live in a minority-majority city. I believe that the US will become majority-minority in the next few decades. That’s fine. I am very, very pro-immigration.
I also recognize that this is not the case for any of our allies besides Canada. It’s not true of Japan, it’s not true of Australia, it’s not true of South Korea, or France, or Saudi Arabia. And I think they should be more open to immigration, especially when demographic disaster is staring them in the face. But I’m not particularly outraged by it, and I don’t think you are either. This is why I specified this as holding Israel to a wildly different standard.
Grouchy, hello from Brisbane, Australia!
At present Australia has the highest rates of immigration in its history, the proportion of our population that was born overseas is the highest that it has ever been, and the proportion of our population with one or both parents born overseas is the highest that it has ever been. Looking at our two largest cities, 63.6% of the population of Greater Sydney and 61.6% of the population of Greater Melbourne had one or both parents born overseas as of the 2021 Census, and these proportions have undoubtedly grown since then.
I have lost interest too because I see your views as unabashedly hypocritical.
Still may one day Israel be blessed with the mass immigration that you support for America. Bye.
So, if I believe that the people who invaded a land, then raped and pillaged and enslaved its residents, that those people should all return to where they cam from, I am not a racist?
Good, then Arabs should all go back to Arabia as they have no place in Africa, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq or Iran. Arabs invaded those lands and brutalized them in a way that could only be compared to the Nazis in Eastern Europe (not those sissy Nazis in Belgium and France).
We today accept that groups that stole lands (Turks in Turkey, whites in the Western Hemisphere, Arabs in the Middle East outside of the Arabian peninsula) are now allowed to stay there since it has been many generations since they got there via unethical methods.
Jews were in Israel long before Arabs. The fact that Jews returned does not justify Arab violence and genocide. If anti-Zionism is okay, then anti-Arabian imperialism and genocide should be fine as well. Pakistan could certainly use all of that wasted oil Iran and Iraq are exporting. We could help them out on such a venture. I suspect the ISI could clean up Gaza in a month or two. and allow poverty-stricken men in Karachi to obtain wives, not to mention reduce all those organ donor waiting roles.
I am not a Jew, but I do know some history. If it becomes socially acceptable to be anti-Zionist, then it will become acceptable to demand that all non-European be expelled from Europe. It will almost certainly inspire white nationalists in the US to engage in acts of terrorism against non-white Americans. Promoting ethnic hatred is bad when you live in a multi-ethnic state.
As much as I would love for the US to abandon all of its middle eastern embassies and simply refuse entry to everyone from that region, save for Zoroastrians of course, we actually need to pay attention to the idiocy of those death cults because their creativity in terrorism spreads. We do not want Palestinian-style "resistance" spreading to our part of the world. No one here has the tolerance and capacity for forgiveness that those Holocaust survivors in Israel had. If anything, the Palestinians have proven that ethnic cleansing is the only way to establish peace.
You are replying to an article that is four months old!!! Stay current or walk east till your hat floats.
Anti-Zionism is not automatically antisemitism but it is not automatically *not* antisemitism either. You need to look at the actual content of specific cases of anti-Zionist speech or imagery, rather than choosing between one or other of two simplistic generalisations.
Define "Zionism". Go on. The word gets bandied about quite frequently, yet no one seems to be able to define it for some reason.
Jonathan Haidt, thanks for continuing to be a voice of reason in a mad world. We all have to do our part in whatever way possible to call out this madness each time we see it, or it will persist.
A fish rots from the head down. The Harvard Corporation board hired and refuses to fire Claudine Gay because they are also compromised. Naming and shaming will expose all of the rot in higher education: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-get-into-harvard-gay-bobo-corporation
I'm almost as interested in the sealioning and the narcissistic self-regard of a couple of 'anti-Zionist' commenters in these replies. It's interesting that they aren't engaging with the piece, but trolling the people who reacted positively. There's been a lot of this leftishist slacktivism since the storm in a teacup over that handful of n*zis on Substack.
Yes! Truly. ‘Why Antisemitism Sprouted So Quickly on Jon Haidt’s Article’. My experience is that they never read the article, or subsequent replies to their almost mimeographed lies and provocations. They catch a whiff of blood off a trigger word or two, and then wallow their ungainly, fishy carcass over, find a target willing to engage, and start bellowing.
This is some impressive prose, but I wonder the degree to which it is true?
Do you wonder the degree to which it is true also?
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
Might I be one of the people you refer to Mike? If so, I encourage you to ask me a few questions about my sealioning.
the real origin of the victim/oppressor dichotomy in the American academy is cultural anthropology which first inhaled the work of Fanon, Foucault and others. As America becomes much less white quickly, we need to see ALL of this as part of a real power struggle in our major institutions..because that's the struggle Fanon and Foucault were asking for...it's too easy to dismiss the simplistic nature of the dichotomy from a privileged intellectual viewpoint...there is a real power struggle ongoing that is not reducible to an intellectual or thought problem...
> the real origin
I am curious what sort of methodology you used to determine that this proposition is true - could you share?
I was there and we were the only academic discipline obsessed with the anti-colonial struggle in the 1970s, 1980s and onwards. Post-colonial activists like Fanon also targeted anthropologists early on for 'complicity' in perpetuating colonial power dynamics between the West and the colonized. Edward Said's famous book Orientalism forced most of us to take sides, because the inherent racism of so much writing about Asia and the Middle East is very hard to ignore when you study it linguistically. These debates are very old in the anthropology discipline, because most of us studied abroad in former colonies. A parallel protest occurred in the 1970s from the American Indian Movement, also aimed at white anthropologists dominating the discourse on Native American culture. The Palestinian rage being discussed is absolutely that of the colonized; it is very familiar to those who have done fieldwork abroad. It is simply new in the United States to hear Palestinians and Arab-Americans so vocal. To me, it is simply the latest group to acquire a voice. Having lived abroad in India, this struggle for respect and power vis a vis the white man is not new or shocking. It is misunderstood easily by those who sit on urban campuses and have never immersed themselves in the former colonies.
>>> the real origin
>> I am curious what sort of methodology you used to determine that this proposition is true - could you share?
> I was there
Let the record reflect that this human acknowledges that their "methodology" is their personal subjective experience / perception.
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
Oh I see, protesting against ethnic cleansing and indiscriminate killing of civilians is antisemitic. It's also antisemitic to read Israeli newspapers which report on what is being said by the highest levels of government (Netanyahu's disturbing comments about Amalek, etc), and very, very, very antisemitic to read the fairly unequivocal report that Israel is, in fact, indiscriminately killing Gazans on purpose using AI targeting by the Israeli outlet 972 Magazine:
https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/
Those Israelis are antisemitic and so is anyone who so much as reads the facts.
It's also antisemitic to point out that groups such as Jewish Voices for Peace are exactly that, Jewish, and are not antisemitic. They are antisemitic and so are those who think they aren't; Haidt is clearly a master of logic here because such twisted mind contortions couldn't be clearer.
It's antisemitic hatred to see view Israel as an occupying power under international law, and the slow ethnic cleansing they have been performing for decades is wrong. Man that is pure blind hate! And to say Palestinians actually have the legal right in international law to fight back against an occupying power, just like any other, whoa. Antisemitic hatred is exploding everywhere. Israel is the same as every other country with he same responsibilities? There's only one answer: antisemitic!
Oh and to even mention the plan for destruction of the Dome of the Rock and replacement by the Third Temple, as widely discussed in Israel (https://www.jpost.com/tags/third-temple) is massively antisemitic, but only if you think it's wrong. How could somebody hate Jews so much???
It's also antisemitic to point out that all these years of hating on "wokeness" and their "cancel culture" and censorship was 100% empty rhetoric because now all those mouth breathers want to cancel and censor anyone who so much as thinks maybe Israel is going too far. It isn't that cancel culture "wokeness" is wrong, clearly it's just that the wrong people are doing it. Call it what it is: conservative wokeness.
No, you are completely insane to think college students protesting this bloodbath are doing the wrong thing. I have entirely lost interest if you think. Bill Ackman, that Harvard alumni attacking kids for protesting Israel and trying to pressure corporations to never hire them, is a fascist scumbag and should be treated like any other fascist. If you attack children and try to ruin their lives simply for disagreeing with you then you deserve the worst, even if your issue is Israel. It's really that simple.
By wielding the word "antisemitism" as a political club against those who protest Israel you have rendered meaningless. That's 100% on you and don't expect sympathy now you don't deserve it.
I am not a regular poster here and am sympathetic to the argument that Israel is wrong in how it is responding to the 10/7 attacks by Hamas. They do have a moral responsibility to be more surgical in their strikes and to avoid the massive suffering they are causing (just like the US had post 911 and failed to live up to). I think pointing these facts out, while also acknowledging the context if which they are occurring (you know, the initial slaughter/kidnapping/terror attacks) is important in understanding why the current situation is so horribly complex and intractable. It is also important in building a coalition aimed at reducing the harm caused by Israel's reaction to Hamas' provocation and also punishing Hamas sufficiently that it (and similar groups) will be disincentivized to commit similar acts in the future.
Both sides have done things wrong in the past and continue to do things wrong currently. Kind of like all humans, everywhere and at all times. I was just listening to a history of WW2 in the Pacific and the atrocities committed by the US (including wearing peoples body parts are ornaments) is only understandable in the context of the atrocities committed by Japan.
However, most of the arguments against Israel these days seem to lack the ability to see both sides of this conflict. I find it tragicomic that people will put so much effort into documenting and highlight all the horrible things done by Israel but completely overlook the fact that Hamas started the latest round of violence, with the specific intention of getting Israel to react in this manner. It like Israel, out of nowhere and for no reason, just started attacking people in the Gaza strip and or doing things like cutting off power.
Guess what...Israel is reacting how Hamas wants them to...that was their goal. They launched the initial attack to create this situation. That might make the Israeli response to this stupid, kind of like the US response to 911, but does create a shared responsibility that seems to get ignored.
Yes, Israel is wrong in how it is REACTING to the 10/7 attacks. But, Hamas' strategy was explicitly designed to provoke this kind of response. Both sides are in the wrong, have done wrong, will do wrong in the future, but in my moral calculus Hamas bears a great deal more responsibility for the current situation. I do not see any acknowledgement of this in your post. I see a lot of excuses about why you're not antisemitic though. This seems to be feed by a massive hunt for reasons to convince yourself this is the case.
I suspect that if it was a marginalized group or if Jews met your definition of a marginalized group, and they acted in the manner Israel has that you would have come to the opposite conclusion and be searching for reasons to justify the actions or switch blame (which is what you are doing by shifting blame from Hamas to Israel).
I think the focus on the binary, victim/oppressor mentality drives the kind of confirmation bias prevalent in arguments such as yours. You can exhibit all kinds of blind spots and overlook all kinds of horrible action by one party but will spend inordinate amounts of energy building a case against the "oppressor."
It's the kind of thinking discussed in kind of moral blind spot discussed in the Righteous Mind.
These kinds of arguments probably sell well at campus events and are great virtue signals but are not convincing to people who do not share the victim/oppressor world view, because they lack nuance and to believe them you have to be into the binary oppressor/oppressed world view.
So, for what is worth, I do not think you are an antisemite, just that your analysis is driven by world view, instead of your analysis informing your worldview.
Excellent.
Thank you. I cannot believe how glibly it is presumed that in whatever context a “victim/oppressor mindset” is found in play, there couldn’t possibly be an actual oppressor or actual victim. Haidt’s understanding of Israel/Palestine is non-existent.
This is an excellent post. I hope that it is widely read and shared. I wonder if there is a way to urge schools (especially high schools and colleges) to *teach* 'The Coddling of the American Mind.' Perhaps if more people were exposed to the ideas in your book, it would help them reflect on everything else they are being indoctrinated with. I know you have Heterodox Academy but that seems largely geared to college age, by which point it is too late. What if you created a fellowship, internship, or some other prestigious program (a summer institute?) for high school students that focused on actively teaching the book and the value of free inquiry/ truly free speech? I do not think you can rely on the schools to turn back the clock and rid us of DEI run amok.
> In the days after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, university campuses immediately distinguished themselves as places set apart from the rest of American society—zones where different moral rules applied.
You say this as if that hadn't already been the case for decades. But it has, quite openly so. The term "Berzerkeley" dates back to the late '50s, and "college students being crazy and stupid on campus" has been a distinct film genre for almost as long.
Like the proverbial "overnight success after 10 years of hard work," this moral rot on our campuses has been building for a long, long time before abruptly gaining widespread recognition.
> The new morality driving these reforms was antithetical to the traditional virtues of academic life:
> ...
> This new morality, we argued, is what drove universities off a cliff.
Again, this has been a known problem for a long, long time.
" There are those who believe that a new modernity demands a new morality. What they fail to consider is the harsh reality that there is no such thing as a new morality. There is only one morality . All else is immorality." -- Theodore Roosevelt
"The so-called new morality is too often the old immorality condoned." -- Hartley Shawcross
> > Efforts in red-state legislatures to constrain, control, or defund higher ed will now find a great deal more public support than anyone could have imagined before 2015. If they are to regain public trust, university leaders will need to understand the victim/oppressor mindset and how their own institutions are encouraging it. Then they will need to take bold action and make deep changes.
The disappointing thing is just how few people are talking about (or even know about to begins with) the actual root of the problem: a well-meaning but ultimately disastrous Supreme Court ruling that created the degrees-as-credentials system lying at the root of most of the problems in higher education today. (I wrote about it here: https://robertfrank.substack.com/p/the-most-significant-case-youve-never .) If we're actually serious about fixing the problems of higher education, rolling back the Griggs decision is an essential prerequisite to actually getting anything meaningful done.
The lady who does my nails and the lady who does my hair / both didn’t attend college /both know Hamas is to blame here.
Technically, they *believe* Hamas is to blame here. "Know" has a very particular meaning in epistemology, but then rare is the human who prefers epistemology over Maya (from Hinduism).
Actually they know.
If this is true, you should be able to explain why it is *necessarily* true.
Are you able to explain why it is *necessarily* true? I suspect you are not even able TO TRY to do so....but let's see!
Let’s see what? That I play your juvenile word games?
Let's see if:
"Are you able to explain why it is *necessarily* true? I suspect you are not even able TO TRY to do so."
You may (or may not) have noticed THAT YOU DID NOT EVEN TRY. As I said, I believe you literally cannot even try. If I am incorrect, you could demonstrate that I am by trying (but watch out: I also asked an extremely(!) difficult question, that I will also try to get you to answer).
It is becoming increasingly difficult to believe that I am not starring in The Truman Show.
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
It seems you lack an understanding of language nuances.
When people use "know" in this context, they usually mean "believe [what I consider to be] the self-evidently true thing." It's like if you said "Even my five year old knows it's wrong to scream in someone's face." That would technically be a belief, but we all understand the intended meaning.
Rather than needle people on their chosen words, you could just proceed with your best good faith interpretation. No one is impressed by your condescending questions and lessons.
> It seems you lack an understanding of language nuances. When people use "know" in this context...
That people make no distinction between belief and knowledge is the very phenomenon I am complaining about.
> ... they usually mean "believe [what I consider to be] the self-evidently true thing." I
Here you are making an assertion about the mental state of all people - what you are describing is your belief about the matter, as it is not possible to acquire knowledge of such things. Do you see the irony here? Do you see how pervasive and fundamental this problem is to reality? Do you see how difficult it is to not accidentally fall victim to it?
> That would technically be a belief, but we all understand the intended meaning.
You may believe that all people do, but you have no way of proving that out. I'd bet that you wouldn't even be able to try, as your mind would classify the notion as absurd, or find some other trick to refuse to allow you to engage it.
> Rather than needle people on their chosen words, you could just proceed with your best good faith interpretation.
a) This assumes a certain level of free will on my part.
b) I prefer to do otherwise, because it is important and I know of no other human being who is doing it, and there are A LOT of problems in this world (war, climate change, etc) that may need addressing in a non-delusional manner.
> No one is impressed by your condescending questions and lessons.
Once again: this sensation that you have omniscient knowledge of the mental states of other humans is an illusory side effect of consciousness and culture.
I write as a retired clinical social worker who has read and who deeply respects your work Jon, and your integrity. As someone who has travelled into four of America's counter-insurgency war zones in Latin America in the 1990's I've seen enough human suffering to last a lifetime. Suffering that my nation was deeply complicit in through the support of corrupt dictators, military and even death squads. I never considered that my active opposition to those policies in any way made me somehow "anti-American." The poor young men in Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala often had few choices - join the military, be conscripted into a death squad or join the guerrillas. In Israel one serves in the military - while in Palestine that young man might join Hamas. I see no "good guys" vs "bad guys" in this Israel/Palestine equation.
All of that said, I do find it troubling that with 20,000 dead, 8,000 of which are children and 6,200 of whom are women - that many of the people I respect most who have a public voice in our society are not calling for an end to the bombing and a ceasefire. Instead most of the conservative voices which I have deeply appreciated for example, for their defense of the rights of biological women being eroded by gender-ideology and who stood in opposition to the suppression of free speech and "cancel culture" - seem completely preoccupied not with the actual physical death and destruction that is ongoing in Gaza - but instead much like the "woke" - their focus seems to be on - "words as violence" - particularly on campus or in protests. Many voices I have deeply respected seem comfortable labeling anyone like myself who simply does not see any "virtue" in the ongoing mass violence as being somehow - "anti-semitic." To say I am stunned by the tone-deafness of it all would be putting it mildly.
"20,000 dead, 8,000 of which are children and 6,200 of whom are women..."
gonna need a source for this claim pls, and not Hamas.
Hamas committed an act of war and war is what they wanted and are getting. It's not Israel's fault that these bloodthirsty cowards hide behind children and hide their weapons in schools and under hospitals.
War is very ugly but I don't remember anyone weeping gallons of crocodile tears and crying Think of the Children! when the Allies marched to Berlin or General Sherman burned down Atlanta.
If Hamas laid down their weapons and released the hostages there'd be peace, all blame belongs to them (and to their useful idiots in the West).
> It's not Israel's fault that these bloodthirsty cowards hide behind children and hide their weapons in schools and under hospitals.
Are you referring to the causality that underlies those actions?
> War is very ugly but I don't remember anyone weeping gallons of crocodile tears and crying Think of the Children! when the Allies marched to Berlin or General Sherman burned down Atlanta.
Perhaps you do not possess omniscient knowledge of the actions of all humans.
Regardless: does this prove out some point, or justify certain actions?
> If Hamas laid down their weapons and released the hostages there'd be peace, all blame belongs to them (and to their useful idiots in the West).
Again, it sounds like you are referring to causality here - are you?
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
Glenn Greenwald has been excellent on conservatives who have made their livings in recent years railing against censorship and cancel culture, only to turn on a dime over Israel/Gaza, and make the exact same arguments with respect to Jews that the Woke make about black, queer and trans people.
Greenwald has always hated Israel. Always.
No one is waging a war of genocide against black, queer and trans people, but nice false equivalence.
No one on American college campuses is waging a war of genocide against Jews.
No claim of equivalence was bade, Bob - rather, you have only imagined that one has due to your mind misinterpreting the text.
Another example of Johnnytwofingers using pseudo-intellectual buzzwords from philosophy to cover up that he is dodging a real debate on the relationship between Critical theory and anti-semitism and defending anti-semites on American campuses.
Why would you devote so much energy trying to humiliate people who dislike anti-semitism?
You must logically be either an anti-semite, or a supporter of Critical theory who is finally confronting that the theory naturally leads to anti-semitism
Yes, the parochialism of a lot of the editorial content in the US has been surprising to me. I guess there is just human limits at play that mean we can't see the other side where there is emotional connection to the issue. But it doesn't help perceptions of hegemony in the media and institutions broadly which then add to revolutionary fervour.
Agree with all this, and especially appreciate you and Zach compiling and sharing all the polls you can find on sentiment towards Israel. I appreicate that you compile and share data publicly, generally.
Thank you so much for speaking up against the growing threat of Jew-hatred, which is spreading fast from the university campuses to the mainstream society worldwide!
An analysis of one important factor of leftist anti-Semitism that seems very sound.
May I ask why you consider "the other side" to be pro-Palestinian? Frankly, this seems to be a misunderstanding that is the result of decades of propaganda. Israel, Israelis and the majority of the Jews worldwide are either neutral or explicitly pro-Palestinian, just not pro-terror, and calling those who call for the end of Israel, or those who are in favour of jihadism and islamism "pro-Palestinian" doesn't seem correct, implying those opposing the Hamas atrocities are anti-Palestinian. In fact, even considering the horrifying approval figures in polls among Palestinians, this seems just as as unfair to Palestinians, simply equating Palestinians with terrorists.
I'm also curious, as you seem to make a point of it, why you consider the West Bank occupied by Israel. I obviously do see what makes people use this term, but that's usually done in an unreflected way. For what it's worth, I think that the Jewish settlements weren't and aren't helpful, and that a two-state solution would have had some chance in theory, the theory being that the Soviet and Arab side would have played along. Even now I see some potential there. But occupied? The area was historically a mix of mostly Aramaeans, Arabs and Jews of Muslim, Christian, Jewish, secular and other convictions. Those who, still only to a degree, identify as Palestinians, were a mix of Aramaeans, even Jews, and then local Arabs (ie 7th-19th century immigrants) and a large amount of late-18th-20th century immigrants from all Egypt via Syria up to the Caucausus. Again - I accept that the purposefully, externally invented people of Palestinians today is a real identity - that's their right, and it's commonly accepted. The "occupied" area was just as much and as little "Palestinian" as the area that is green-line Israel today, or Jordan, for that matter. Legally, as far as I know, it's no man's land, after the British Mandate ended and the Arab world declined the UN plan. It was conquered from Jordan, it's ruled by the PA in a deal with Israel. Complex, but not "occupied from the Palestinians by Israel". That is a shortcut forcefully and intentionally propagated by Soviet propaganda in the 1960s that successfully spread.
I find the conclusion of “our universities hitting rock bottom” overly optimistic. I do not think they have yet. But boy, do I hope to be mistaken!
Ok, six months later. Alas I wasn’t mistaken.
Defund DEI!!
The arguments here about antisemitism seem to miss the mark. The problem on campus is that political criticism of Israel has turned into personal hostility toward Jewish students. While such animosity may also easily be perception on the part of Jewish, I don't think it is entirely imaginary. It's equally a problem if we were speaking about Palestinian students (or Muslim, or Christian, or Arabic, or whatever, etc.). This is a different subject than the politics of Israel and Hamas.
Once upon a time we might be talking Japanese Americans or German Americans etc. This is the problem on campus. Not political disagreements.
Apologies for my poor texting skills!