I'll consider the possibility that the DSA is just motivated by genuine if misguided horror at the casualties the arabs have suffered in their aggression against Israel when I see them harrassing random mosques or persian community centers to protest Iran's murder of tens of thousands of protesters or picketing Chinese Community Centers to protest the persecution of Tibet and the Uighurs or Russian Orthodox churches over the war in Ukraine. There is only one side of one conflict that they pay any attention to and only one where random co-religionists of that side are harassed to denounce their co-religionists.
I think you are demonstrating part of the point Jesse made. That any mention of discomfort with Israelis actions is met with this kind of response. It makes it unspeakable, difficult to discuss rationally and therefore some people end up pushed to the DSA type rhetoric.
That's what I took from it anyway and I think it's a good point.
Okay, but what is the right time or context to point out that these people have a singular focus on Israel? The only armed conflict mentioned on the national DSA's website under "Working-Class Foreign Policy" is Palestine.
I went to an "intro to DSA" meeting after the Iranian regime murdered tens of thousands of protestors and asked whether there was any interest in organizing anything in support of the Iranian people. The DSA people in attendance said nobody had mentioned it and the only "foreign policy" they had was about Palestine, for which they have a lot of content. (And this is in a city with a tiny Arab or Muslim presence--this is being driven entirely by overeducated white progressives.)
Or were you just making a general point about the DSA unrelated to anything Jesse said at the end of the show? If so who is this for? What is the point?
The point is “why is Israel-Palestine a relevant, let alone salient, issue for the DSA?”
It’s a distraction from any actual “socialist” issues, and the DSA does not have a consistently humanitarian stance on any other foreign policy issues.
Not to mention that, because this is what the current far left does, they infantilize the poor brown people by holding Israel to a higher ethical standard. They not only ignore that the conflict was initiated by Hamas and downplay the viciousness of the attack against Israeli civilians, they disregard that Hamas/Palestine had two years to release the hostages and stall the aggression. Plus they built their military tunnel network under hospitals, schools and other civilian facilities, which obviously led to higher casualties. I'm not saying Israel is perfect by any means, but Palestine is not without fault either. Why the hypocrisy?
I see almost no examples of 'discomfort with actions of israelis'. Instead our discourse is absolutely dominated with obvious and grotesque lies that are generated and spread by some of the most prominent media organizations in society. These lies about genocide, starvation, rape dogs whatever have been said since the day of the october massacres before Israel had even retaliated for them and they go on and on no matter how many times they are disproved or how many anti-semitic murders they inspire. If I see any actual criticism of israel I'll be happy to respond to it but I don't see any point in humoring blatant and obvious jew-hatred.
You don't listen to the Podcast 'Blocked and Reported'? You haven't seen some of the response on these very threads when J or K have expressed that exact discomfort? Nothing so blind etc etc.
I wasn't. I was talking about why people may become sympathetic to the DSAs views on this.
When you shut down reasonable questions people get pushed to extremist views. It's the whole theme of the podcast and it's completely embraced when it's any topic *other* than Israel.
Who is shutting down reasonable questions? Even the most insane attacks on israel are given headlines in the new york times and bbc. Even the most moderate and hedged defenses get you fired or attacked by actual mobs.
I understand that people want to distance our foreign policy from Israel post-Gaza, but I think they are totally delusional thinking that that’s what the DSA wants to do. “Abolish Israel” (which they claim “doesn’t exist” - not sure how you abolish something that doesn’t exist) is not a policy position. If you wanted to “abolish Israel,” you’d need a costly Middle East forever war, which I’ve been told people don’t much like.
I think this was best exemplified by the Pod Save America reaction to the Scott Wiener video. The PSA hosts couldn’t believe what they were watching because they are under the false impression that the far left wants policy changes like they do. They were shocked to learn that “but he said genocide” doesn’t actually work for these people.
The complete disregard for where the Jewish Israelis would go when the sainted Palestinians take over Israel belies the "not antisemitic" narrative. Particularly in light of why they're there in the first place.
The people insisting that they have a right to criticize Israel are really missing the point. This is a question of due diligence, and the pro-palestine crowd *universally* has not exhibited the diligence that is due. Israel is an extremely meritocratic democracy with a strong mandate. It has 25% Arab representation, 3/4 of which is Muslim, and due to their parliamentary system, they have approximately 25% of the representation.
If you have one molecule of humility in your body, you should recognize that table stakes for "criticizing" such a thing are very high. I think I am not exaggerating when I assert that exactly zero weight is given to this fact, especially by young college students. Despite the obviousness of the principle, most humans do not internalize any version of Chesterton's fence until well into adulthood.
It's not a question of whether or not you have a "right" to criticize Israel, it's a question if there is any conceivable way in which you could be claiming to do so in good faith.
My response to *you* was a wall of text saying that they were stupid for thinking that. I argue with people where they are at. I believe that my record *fully* corroborates this.
Thats fine and all and maybe the majority of people on all sides are just stupid but, again, that isnt really the theme of the pod is it? Its more about how messaging impacts that stupidity.
And, you know, this is the vibe here in our space isnt it? Completely different rules applied to criticism of Israel and criticism of Trump.
When Jesse makes the, valid, point that calling Trumps supporters fascist hasnt worked and also they arent what does everybody have to say about that? What's the top related comment? How does the dissent fare?
When have *I* ever joined onto a bandwagon calling Trump a fascist? I argue against TDS slightly less aggressively than I argue against BDS, but only because I don't want to get cancelled here. I will defend the administration on the exact same principle.
I think my comment might have been the top of the episode thread in which Jesse said that he doesn't care if the boats we bombed were drug boats or gun boats or fishing boats, but still insisted on calling them fishing boats. This is a catastrophic failure of skepticism of exactly the kind outlined above.
I think a sizeable proportion of October 8th jews like me have had their TDS shaken out of them in parallel, and walked away with the same general principle of conservatism.
It’s about the land. On bluesky people are making excuses for Egypt not taking refugees. One it would diminish their claim to the land; they are quoting an Egyptian official on this. It’s important not to take refugees, let them get killed instead, because if they leave and go somewhere safe they lose the claim to Palestine. This to me is horribly devaluing of human lives for very little reason, because borders change. They just do. Two they’re claiming Israel wouldn’t let Egypt do that (this isn’t strictly true: early in the conflict they did let some like wounded and old people go to Egypt). I think they’d def let women & kids & old people at least leave again.
But this mostly I think is about people being historically illiterate and seeing Israel as a colonial project, ok? They see the Jews who settled there as like the French or English subjugating indigenous people, which is batshit insane to me. Jews got expelled from England before any other European country in the Middle Ages. France didn’t protect them during WWII, Petain sold them out. They’re not the colonizers stepping wealth from a region; they’re like someone who got a nice lawsuit settlement after almost being killed, and it’s like ‘hey use some of that on therapy, you need it.’
Young people who aren’t very historically savvy can’t see Jews as people who were dispossessed over & over again. They don’t remember that it wasn’t just the Holocaust in Germany, it was also the Soviet Union & the pogrom in Baghdad in the 40s. It became very clear to the US & UK & sone other countries that Jews needed a state where they were in the majority and an army to defend it, or this would keep happening.
So people who are mad about ‘ethnostates’ and don’t understand like…Jews are a prosocial minority group who were getting attacked and chased out of everywhere. They were assimilating, getting educated, doing charity, living life and that wasn’t good enough — they were still getting murdered en masse out of resentment.
That’s very different from Palestinians who could prob go to another country and assimilate ok, because everyone around them is an Arab and most are Muslim like them, too. They have a shared identity & no one is as outsider coded as Jews typically have been historically
I don’t have high hopes about any of this resolving nicely. But the anger is clearly about Jews having land and having self determination.
Muslims in the region in general want to stake a claim on the land and they’re trying to say the Jews are England, the Muslims are Ireland, and Netanyahu is worse than Cromwell. And I don’t think that holds up to scrutiny because Israel was created as a safe haven for a minority. The British & Irish were both Christian. The British were a powerful country with the best Navy & wealth. They were not a political entity created because the Irish & French kept killing white people with bad teeth en masse. The Israeli Jews are the Irish in the analogy, or should be, not the British.
Israel isn’t nearly as powerful as these people imagine and like, I don’t think they should let a bunch of Arab Muslims into their govt or they will just get displaced and killed again. They prob do have to let some in. But too many: they’ll get slaughtered again. As has happened over & over again, over centuries, out of resentment.
The whole point of Israel is to be an ‘ethnostate’ for protection & safety in numbers. Netanyahu — Trump should be pressuring him to step down, he’s being insane. But I think the issue is this generation has a total misread of the situation & the actual history.
And everyone has also conveniently forgotten that on Oct 7th Israel was attacked. This is an overkill response to an attack, but it is also a response to an attack including on a kibbutz that was hiring and advocating for Palestinians. They wanted to hire more people, help them integrate. And in exchange at least one of the Palestinian workers gave intel on the layout to I guess Hamas so they could be killed.
If Israel tries to let these people assimilate or accumulate more power that’s naive. Because Israel is run by a minority that’s very maligned in the region. Their neighbors want the land back under Muslim Arab control, period, and it just is not wise to proceed as if they’re not going to keep attacking Israel indefinitely.
And those other nations like Egypt etc, they one don’t want Muslims to ‘lose’ to Jews. They’ll sacrifice millions and not even try to get them out, just to keep the land claim. Two, they don’t want Palestinians coming in competing for jobs & resources. The last time they took in large numbers of refugees they wouldn’t let them work and the Palestinian men got violent and kicked off…just like they do against Israel. Egypt knows they’re going to be a problem and they don’t want them around.
In a real sense these countries like Egypt basically want Gazans dead too, perhaps even more than Netanyahu does. It becomes a stick to hit Israel with, all these innocent kids dying, and it means they don’t have to help Gazans in a concrete way and risk them becoming a local problem in their backyards.
But I mean, I feel like I’m in crazy town when I see some of these takes on Israel here & elsewhere. Yes, it’s an ethnostate; that’s the point. Hitler killed a lot of ham eating non religious Jews he went back like generations in family trees. The Spanish inquisition went after like second generation conversos mostly as a pretense to seize their assets. 1940s: pogrom in Baghdad of a Jewish community that’d been there for thousands of years. Israel does need to exist, and it does need to keep a substantial level of control in the hands of the Jewish population.
Maybe there should be a two state solution, but Israel is not Europe or the US. Here disease killed a lot of indigenous people and then later the gov’t targeted them. But we mostly get along now. Christians don’t pogrom the Mohawk and Cherokee. The Mohawk and Cherokee don’t suicide bomb federal buildings, try to stage insurrections by taking over the post office, etc. You can’t put some kind of pluralist US/Canada/modern UK govt in Israel, because the Muslims region wide don’t want there to be an Israel. It’s not like how I was raised Catholic and think Wiccans are goofy, but can do business with them, get coffee with them, be on a committee with them. Nations in the area largely — not every individual but politically at the macro level — want the land back and the Jews gone. I think that’s sad as a state of affairs. But I also think it’s true
When you say "It has 25% Arab representation, 3/4 of which is Muslim, and due to their parliamentary system, they have approximately 25% of the representation." I thought I'd check. The Knesset has 120 seats and I counted 12 Israeli Arabs, if you include 2 Druze (and they might not). So that's 8-10%, depending on how you slice it. Less than half of their proportion in the general population.
Where does this "25% Arab representation" figure come from?
Are you under the impression that Arabs have to vote for Arabs in order to be represented? Parliamentary systems allocate seats to parties in proportion to the vote share that they receive.
No, of course not, but I did think you were implying it.
But to the point, I thought when you said "they have approximately 25% of the representation" you were making a statement about the number of Arab-Israeli Knesset members, not a more general statement about proportional representation in a parliamentary system.
Yes, it was a general statement about proportional representation in parliamentary systems. I meant to contrast it with the American system where the case for proportional representation for minorities is much harder to make.
Because it's the only kind of response that's warranted when people bring up "discomfort with Israel's actions".
What specifically is it about Israel and no other country has you so hot and bothered? If you genuinely want to be a good person, then it's worth introspectng and analyzing with scrupulous honestly and self reflection.
No need for insults. I meant the general "you" synonymous with "one". One must introspect rigorously if one wants to be good. Surely you agree? There are so many ways to go awry, e.g. slandering the Jewish state with genocide and colonization.
As a rationalist, for literal years, I have tried to get someone to give me good faith, rational arguments against Israel. Unfortunately, there have been none.
Asking someone why they are so exercised over Israel and not Turkmenistan (for instance) is a reasonable question. Perhaps they have a good answer. Labeling the question itself as outside the bounds of rationality just seems like more of the same rhetorical tricks that pro-Pals use to shut down forward momentum.
I don't think this is accurate framing. It implies the push back against anti-israel sentiment is triggered by reasonable discussion or simple expression of concern.
That's not the case. It's a claim often put out there, but I simply haven't seen a single person expressing measured concern being dismissed as an anti-semite or having an unhealthy focus on Israel.
There really plenty of generally pro-Israel persons consistently expressing concern over some of the military and logistic decisions being made in Gaza. There's no shortage of liberal, pro-zionist condemnation of much of Netanyahu's administration.
The push back doesn't come from "mention of discomfort". It comes from extreme accusations without good evidence. Genocide, murdering children on purpose, various conspiracies about the Jewish Cabal influencing politics, claims of famine (that simply don't exist) and pushing a narrative that somehow Israel is a singularly evil and extreme perpetrator of these crimes......when objectively the opposite is quite true.
And coupled with absolute silence on a myriad of other past and present atrocities that are orders of magnitude greater in the exact same region. . . but don't happen to involve a certain demographic.
Let's call it the UN Human Rights Committee Effect.
Any one of the resolutions against Israel could often be taken in isolation, considered, and may even point to an area warranting concern or investigation.
But when you look at their history and Israel has received more resolutions than ALL other countries combined. More than North Korea, China, Russia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria....more than the entire world combined.
It would be dishonest not to look at that and wonder if maybe, just maybe, there's something else other than actions alone that attracts their singular focus.
They're basically Gish Galloping their way across grievances. Sooner or later, you have to call that out and refuse to play until they start behaving rationally again.
I think there are two things. Firstly I have seen people reacting like that to expression of concerns in these very substack threads. Most obviously Jesse and Katies voiced concerns.
Secondly I think you are probably somewhat right and perhaps my framing is off. People *feel*the discomfort and look for information and we know what's out there for them. Defences of Israel are tedious or simplified but call 'them' stupid or antisemitic. Condemnation of Israel confirm their discomfort. Tell them they are right and actually it's worse than they even imagined. So by the time they are expressing it, yes you are right it's moved on from that. But that is how it starts.
I've only seen push back when K&J gloss over highly controversial claims as if they're established fact.
Like when Jesse (paraphrasing) said something along the lines of "_Obviously_ I'm against the war and what's going on there is genocide."
So when they speak from a position along the lines of "we can all agree Israel's committing genocide, but that doesn't justify the anti-semitism...." and so on that deservedly gets push back since that claim is highly controversial and was not found plausible on the merits by the ICJ. Claims come from biased sources.....starting with a redefinition of genocide that trivializes _actual_ genocide that we've seen historically.
In these cases, glossing over things like claims of genocide as uncontroversial facts is exactly the opposite of simply expressing concern or discomfort.
To be clear. Genocide means the Gaza war was committed with the express intent to destroy in whole or part all Palestinians. Meaning the decision makers sat in a room and said "Ok, here's the plan. We're going to murder every Palestinian man, woman, and child until their culture and their heritage no longer exists and any survivors are permanently scattered. How can we execute this plan?"
Ben Gvir has made some pretty openly genocidal statements about Lebanon if not Gaza. I think Israel was attacked and has a right to defend itself but at some point they did cross a line.
I also side eye neighboring countries like Egypt not insisting on evacuating non combatants. Like maybe everyone military aged is seen as a threat by Israel, but what about all these kids in Gaza?
When did Hamas refusing to release the hostages for two years while their babies were allegedly being intentionally targeted by the IDF start crossing a line? Why did people cheer on the people tearing down posters of missing Israeli children after 10/7 but before retaliation by Israel, start crossing a line? When did Hamas, building hundreds of miles of tunnels under civilian developments and using their civilians as shields start crossing a line? I agree that Netanyahu has crossed a line, but it took a lot of other line crossing to get him there. And 60% of young liberals support "Hamas," no longer falsely couched as Palestine, according to a recent poll. Boggles the mind when you consider their record against women and LGB people.
Part of what makes this issue so challenging is that in some circles any criticism of Israel is seen as anti-semitism while in other circles anti-semitism is masquerading as 'criticizing israel.'
I find these comparisons really unconvincing. The scale of the destruction, not just of lives but of homes, infrastructure, and whole cities, is on a whole other scale. Also, Israel is a liberal democratic country. It is normal for people to expect more of a democracy than of authoritarian regimes. If France started treating their Uighur population the way China does, there would legitimately be more uproar than when China does it. If Israel wants the prestige of being a modern democratic country, it also carries the expectations of a modern democratic country.
You are simply wrong. The destruction of the wars in Syria or Ukraine exceeds that in Gaza by an order of magnitude. The destruction inflicted on cultures and people by the CCP exceeds it by multiple orders of magnitude. Israel does hold itself to a higher standard. No other state in modern history has been expected to carry on a conventional war against an enemy that attacked it *and continues to launch attacks against it* while also feeding and providing utilities to its enemy's entire population as Israel is doing. And the idea that we should hold democracies to standards that prevent them from defending themselves from the totalitarian states trying to destroy them is simply suicidal insanity. We didn't hold ourselves to such standards when we defended ourselves from Germany and Japan and if we had we simply would have lost.
I just don’t know how you compare what has happened across most of Gaza to Ukraine. Mariupol yes, and a few other isolated locations. But the country has not been systematically flattened. Kiev is still Kiev, as are most other Ukrainian cities. I already addressed the point about China.
And as another commenter noted, we have put sanctions on Russia and have condemned its excesses.
What’s strange to me is that Israel’s own army leaders are more critical of Israeli excesses than are its defenders on this side of the pond. It stretches the imagination to me that a war led by the likes of Bibi or Itamar Ben-Gvir, wouldn’t have excesses. Look at their own rhetoric - these are not people aiming for proportionality. They go well beyond what their own military recommend, with no clear path to achieving goals. There is ample room to support Israel’s need to respond militarily (I supported it) while criticizing the extremity of the approach they have taken.
This is a perfect sentiment, thank you, I didn't know how to say it. Israel, from this side of the pond, seems to have a very professional military that is increasingly commanded by civilians who are anything but professional and continue to enable the worst of Israeli society. And of course the ironic part is this worst part of society doesn't even serve in the military.
We haven’t seen entire Ukrainian cities reduced to rubble and the population living in refugee tent encampment while the military that destroyed homes also controls and prevents the flow of food, medicine, building supplies and electricity.
We've (America) put sanctions on Russia for what they are doing in Ukraine, and we are funding and helping what Israel is doing in Gaza.
Hamas hang glided into a music festival and killed people, and attacked lefty hippies on a communal farm. Ukraine was just sitting there
I know some people in Poland who were volunteering at centers to help refugees at the start of that conflict.
Egypt except for very limited like wounded people a couple months after the war hasn’t really been taking refugees
So these aren’t directly comparable at all, IMO. Poland was like they were attacked we need to help these people. Egypt seems afraid they could stage attacks from there somehow
So while I feel for Palestinians who are not in Hamas esp children, like this is not happening out of nowhere. Hamas did attack Israel. And no one wants them attacking from their countries so the refugee thing is tougher
Israel is being way, WAY over the top and hurting their own cause. Trump could probably force Bibi out by threatening funding but he won’t. So like: here we are. It’s complicated
"The destruction of the wars in Syria or Ukraine exceeds that in Gaza by an order of magnitude."
About 45,000 Ukrainians have died in Russia's genocidal war of aggression against Ukraine, against a national population recorded at 36.7 million this year. Or 28 million after subtracting refugees (who will presumably mostly return). Civilian deaths are around 14,000. Never mind the casualties.
Russia currently controls about 17% of Ukraine. This size of Ukraine is about 233,062 sq miles.
The Gaza strip, at 141 sq miles, is home to just a little over 2 million people, and about 100 times as densely populated as Ukraine. Since the most recent Israeli military action against Gaza began, that government's military has killed about as many people in Gaza as Russia has in Ukraine, low estimate. About half have been women and children. The Israeli military controls 70% of Gaza, while the natives are packed into the remainder and asked politely to leave. By which I mean occasionally picked off by sniper fire.
As many dead as in a country with 15-18 times the population. A proportionately greater loss in life and land. Never mind the history, because even if the world blinked into existence on Oct. 6th 2023, this would still be criminal.
Speak up against Russia, praise the sanctions, who will even call you Rusophobic? A smattering of deranged tankies and bots. But god forbid that you suggest, even short of BDS, that the US even *try* to disentangle itself militarily from Israel. Must be antisemitism. No other rational explanation.
Likewise Karmelo Anthony was only convicted of murder because of racism, doncha know?
"It was a small knife! That White boy shoved him! White people are allowed to get away with murder, so why are we always holding young Black men to a higher standard?"
What about...look over there! They had it coming! There's something morally wrong with you if you're not okay with this, some bigotry in your soul that makes you measure these lives equally.
I was going of a statement from an interview with Zelensky for military, and for civilian it could have been UN or it could have been somewhere else. I don't have it in front of me at the moment.
I realize that I am a very vengeful person when I hear arguments like this.
If Canada conducted a Viking style raid on the USA like Hamas did to Israel, I would feel ok about burning it to the ground.
The vast numbers of men willing to commit mass rape and murder exposes a sick society. A fucked up value system, a culture which views women as garbage.
They hide their fighters among civilians and count on Israel
to back down- because they know Israel cares more for innocent life than they do.
They count on it!!
I completely understand why israel said no more and went after Hamas.
The fact that civilians were/are killed is on Hamas, not Israel.
Nobody gets to come to my country and rape and kill thousands.
I recall a lot of hand-wringing about Israel's response to 10/7 not being "proportional."
Well, if Hamas hits Israel's civilians *as hard as they can*, then a proportional response would be for Israel to hit back *as hard as they can*. The fact they haven't done this is a show of restraint.
Exactly. Gaza and all its people could no longer exist and it would be a totally "Proportional response" to the last 100 years. Play with fire, get burned.
So many people posting about this conflict like it is happening in their cul de sac or daycare and not in the actual world where people die and don't come back.
A bunch of Wisconsinites make an organized attack on my neighborhood and kill a bunch of random neibhors, fuck you, your immediate family, your cousin, your teacher, the person you bought a cheesehead from. Who if we are going to be honesty, probably 60% of them were actively supporting you anyway. You are all targets.
The long decades since WWII have made people in the west incredibly out of touch with how the world actually works. They will remember at some point when a real war happens again and people are popped out of their cloistered bubbles of ease.
If Theodoric had asserted that Mamdani had not condemned Modi, that would really be an excellent clap-back. However, the observation was that the sheer volume of displacement dwarfs the Nakba, not that Mamdani is OK with what happened in India. Let's visit the historical record. Below is the place, the years, and the number of displaced people:
Mamdani’s parents are Indian, but his father is Muslim. Zohran is basically taking the Muslim side of two big blood feuds, giving a pass to the atrocities of one side (7-8 million non Muslims were displaced in the Partition of India, and religious minorities continue to face severe systemic persecution in Pakistan, including cases of forced conversion).
Agreed. I really don't get the left's love affair with Mamdani and Islam as a whole. They must think of Islam as an edgier version of Christianity. Its manifest violence is just due to its fair share of misguided, backward fundamentalists reacting to Western moral failing. Suggesting it is inherent to the theology is verboten.
You're making vibes, but you are not talking coherently.
This about a Uganda-born American Muslim of Indian descent talking about anti-Muslim attacks in the 2000's in the area of India that his family was from, condoned by that nation's current president. The point is presented as a counter to your sly dig that "Pogroms happen all the time, it's no big deal, look at the nation that America's New Best Leftist descends from, they do it, and who even talks about that?" He does.
And now it's his parents are Indian, "but" his "father" is Muslim, as if being Muslim is an exception to being Indian (Modi, is that you?), and as if Mamdani isn't himself Muslim.
Then it's a frankly addled dismissal of the complexity of the post-colonial division of India/Pakistan, which was not just some "blood feud" we can hand-wave away, nor something that only harmed non-Muslims, then accusing Mamdani of "taking sides" in said 79+ years old so-called "blood feud", etc
Hope I paraphrased your intent okay, but given the follow up I'm not sure you even know what you were trying to say other than "Look over there and stop caring!" Sad.
It's also important to note that about 1,000,000 jews were displaced from Arab states during the same period as the Naqba.
These jews were living peacefully in those countries for 1000s of years. But were targeted through pogroms and expulsion _because they were jewish_.
The Naqba was the culmination of decades of insurgency, terrorist activity, civil war, and an Arab invasion. A lot of innocents got caught up in it. And the totality of refugees came from multiple causes that spanned specific targeting by extremists and military factions, voluntary migration, many leaving at the direct request of Arab military (so they could invade and purge the jewish population), some fled general fighting and conflict.
But they were not targeted _because_ of their Arabness or ethnically cleansed in the way the Jews were. The pattern is squarely within the kinds of population churns you see in civil wars...which it was.
Case in point, the post purge Jewish population in Arab states was less than 1% of its previous levels. Post Arab population in Israel was 20% its previous level.
And unlike the Palestinian refugees, who even to this day receive extensive aid and support, the world gave exactly zero shits about the Jewish refugees. It's barely even acknowledged today. Why were all these Jews immigrating to Israel? What a mystery. Must be colonial white supremacy.
"It's also important to note that about 1,000,000 jews were displaced from Arab states during the same period as the Naqba."
Yeah man I wonder what horrible crime happened to spark that horrible crime oh wait it's the last word of the sentence.
"The Naqba was the culmination of decades of insurgency, terrorist activity, civil war, and an Arab invasion."
Insurgency and terror by Zionist right-wing paramilitaries included, to be sure. Lehi. Irgun.
The Arab "Invasion" came after pograms emptied dozens of villages and towns. And it stopped nothing.
"But they were not targeted _because_ of their Arabness or ethnically cleansed in the way the Jews were."
Bullshit. The Zionists decided they were not going to tolerate being a numerical minority. If you're arguing that it matters whether or not in their hearts they were attacking people out of hate or self love, out of bigotry or pragmatism, I can't agree that it does.
To be sure the displacement of Jews from Arab lands is also horrible, but wasn't like that happened all at once in a mass push like the Nakba. There was persecution against Jews, which rose after the violent rise of Israel, but there was also Israel actively soliciting for more immigrants. It went on for decades, but that doesn't make it right, and any Jew who wants to return to their country of origin should have the right, just as they should have the right to live in peace where they're settled.
"In this light, it is curious, the vitriol maintained for Israel and no other country."
There's vitriol for India's current crimes, and similar whining defenses from its rightist Hindu nationalists.
This defense is even worse, really. Crude to say "When 5% of these people were expelled it was worse than when it happened to more than half of these other people, because volume." Volume. Proportions. Perhaps I care more about proportions, sparing more grief for the Shoah than the still inexcusable crimes of the India/Pakistan partition due to proportions, but perhaps your preference for volume would land you on the other side. Regardless, this is an asshole's premise, and when you find yourself reduced to bean counting to weight crimes you are still acknowledging that there are crimes afoot.
You bring up “proportions” and then accuse others of bean counting.
The post WWII post colonial landscape is strewn with sectarian violence with villains on all sides.
Yet only one of these conflicts, only one of these people awarded a nation-state in the great map reshuffle, has become a litmus test for membership in a political party ostensibly focused on economic justice for Americans.
On only one of these conflicts has the DSA welcomed with open arms members of one particular side of that conflict (a side with curiously little in the way of economic progressivism to offer).
1. Ukraine is too complicated, the belligerents are both white and Christian and so the conflict can't easily be mapped onto a Marxist grievance matrix
2. The Uygher persecution is fake and/or justified, also China can do no wrong
3. Tibet is a lost cause, also China can do no wrong (I've also heard "the Dalai Lama is a CIA asset")
I've never really bought this argument. One reason many Americans focus on Israel is that we are a source of significant financial support to Israel, including weapons. We don't financially support China or Iran or Russia.
Many Americans don't want their tax dollars being used to support what Israel is doing, and you don't have to be antisemitic to feel this way
What's your complaint about AIPAC? This is just the name that American zionists have given their lobby. They don't accept foreign donations. These are American citizens lobbying for American policy. What could you possibly have to complain about here?
I'm not complaining. My point was to show that there is visible, organized political support for a foreign country that has enormous political influence. In my view it is a factor (along with real anti-semitism and what happened in Gaza) contributing to the decline in US support for Israel across the political spectrum. When people fairly point out that the US provides aids to other countries committing war atrocities, there is not an analogous organization for said country so it is less visible and feels less salient. This adds to a perception that Israel has an outsized amount of influence in our politics.
The U.S. sold weapons to Saudi Arabia during the Yemen conflict. I don't think we provided them with actual "American money" - do you have a source? By contrast, the U.S. provides cash to Israel in order to purchase American weapons. So there's a difference.
And of course Israel gets more media attention than other countries doing terrible things. It's been a close ally of the U.S. for 80 years, and the U.S. has significant cultural ties dating to it's founding. And, as I already said, we provide direct aid. Nothing weird or hypocritical or antisemitic in focusing more attention on Israel.
Do we give foreign and military aid to China, Iran, or Russia? No. Maybe if our taxes wouldn't be helping Israel destroy Gaza Americans would be less outraged
The US government already opposes those countries and those actions you listed. So what would be the point of protesting?
The problem is we not only supported but helped expand these military actions and minority suppression by Israel - unlike similar actions of china russia etc which we as a country oppose.
A better comparison would be if you had said that Israel is like Ukraine - why support Ukraines actions which do include some civilian casualties, but not Israel? And indeed people have made this very comparison - mostly on the far right.
We are (or have) funded Ukraine - indeed there’s a whole back and forth about how responsible the USA is for the Maidan Revolution (the national DSA released a statement blaming NATO for the Russian invasion).
We massively support the Chinese economy through trade, obviously - where’s the BDS movement for China?
I don’t think it’s a mystery why support for Israel has dropped, separate from the rise of antisemitism. But I think a big part of it is an ignorance of what war is. The last 70 years in the West has been uniquely peaceful. There has not been a major great power conflict. Europe has been at peace, because the US defense alliance made intra-European conflict largely impossible and deterred Soviet invasion. But war is….hell. It’s a cliche, but true. Urban warfare is some of bloodiest and most difficult, before considering hamas’s tunnel system.
I have seen no evidence that Israeli conduct has violated the rules of war. They have warned civilians of upcoming operations and tried to create zones for them. The fact that Hamas tried to keep people from fleeing is not Israel’s false. Please look at photos of what urban warfare. Over 100k German civilians died in Berlin in 2 weeks. The city looked like a moonscape. Was Israel not going to respond? After the largest murder of Jews, anywhere on the planet, since 1945? Would any state not immediately seek to destroy an entity, like Hamas, on its border, which seeks in destruction and demonstrated a willingness to act on it?
If Mexican troops crossed the border and killed 1,200 Americans, the US military would invade Mexico. There would be no real opposition domestically.
It always boggles my mind when people accuse Israel of “disproportionate force”.
Is not the sole means of winning a war the ability to deliver a disproportionate force than that of your enemy? So much so that they are either too decimated to fight or no longer view the cost ad worth continuing and surrender.
I think “disproportionate force” refers to the Geneva conventions addition protocol 1. So force used shouldn’t cause civilian harm which is disproportionate to the military advantage gained. Not that you can’t use force that’s a hell if a lot greater than your opposing army can muster. Note this doesn’t mean you can’t use force against your enemies in a situation just because some civilians may be harmed, but there’s supposed to be some kinda limit (although what the limits have been found to be in caselaw is a bit beyond my pay grade)
Uhh all this should be taken with the fact that I only studied this stuff for one semester and I’ve been celebrating a friend’s birthday today but: I think October 7 was horrific. The murder and rape of innocent civilians. No justification for it whatsoever. I dunno how hamas would be categorised in this situation though (maybe someone else knows more?); the laws of war were drawn up in a time of conflict between nation states with uniformed armies (there’s a bunch of laws about when it’s acceptable or not for soldiers to not wear uniforms etc). So is Oct 7 best categorised as an act of terror or an act of war? Bearing in mind that there’s no international definition of terrorism. I honestly don’t know. And ofc Israel having to fight a non-traditional enemy (not a bunch of squaddies in uniform on a battlefield ) makes it a lot harder for them. But I read some articles (I think in Haaretz?) about how they changed their targeting strategy for aerial bombing to allow for greater % civilians killed vs combatants, which as a centrist dad kinda person I think is a bit not so good
Hah, well not to be an annoying asshole about this (although what else is a law degree for?) but you’re getting into the question of what is a country. Iircc to be a state you need to have a defined territory, a people, some kinda state/administration and you also need recognition by the international community. I know a bunch of countries have recognised Palestinian statehood, but I dunno what they’re recognising tbh. Territory and people, sure I guess, but which administration? Are they just recognising the West Bank under the pla? Or extending the pla’s authority to Gaza too?
Its standard to have a number for acceptable civilian casualties. All militaries do it. And the number is often updated depending on the situation, target, etc. Urban targets will always have a higher expectation civilian casualty ratio.
Sure. The question is where does the tipping point lie between “acceptable” and “unacceptable”? It’d be nice if there was some bright line that we could draw, but unfortunately the real world is, as Jesse would say, complicated.
“Proportionate” has been a weasel word. The best example I heard - you can target the floor of a building to get a target. You can’t flatten an entire city block to kill one person.
Can you imagine if Israeli had acted “proportionately” to October 7th? Using the same methods and tactics? That would be an atrocity.
There are customs and “rules” of war that have developed over centuries. Generally, don’t kill POWs. If you kill POWs, the other side will kill your people.
In this war, Israel is held to a higher standard, and responsible when Hamas breaks them 🤷♂️
Unfortunately, I think you are completely wrong on that last point. Of course the entire far-left would apologise for at very least, if not outright cheer on a massacre of Americans by Mexico, or really any “white” people (includes Hindus, East Asians, others) by “brown” people. Respectable liberals would launder that sentiment, and pretty soon the politically correct sentiment would be that those Chicanos had to die.
I don't really think anti-Zionists are being that inconsistent. They explicitly support mass migration/political integration of Muslims into Israel such that it loses its Jewish majority, as well as general terrorism, and do so for their own countries as well! These are the same people who thought Charlie Hebdo cartoonists had it coming for being racist, and I doubt that a single major hard left political figure would assent to any form of restriction on Muslim immigration were the making of their nation into a majority Islamic one contemplatable; they'd huff and puff and call the interviewer a racist.
I listened to an old Triggernometry episode where Konstantin mentioned that American Vietnam War vets* are the last living westerners to have been subject to a military draft, and it blew my mind.
* I’m guessing we can now throw in the Ukrainians there with them.
My take is Hamas knew exactly how Israel (or anyone) would respond to Oct. 7. That's why they did it so harshly. Israel had to respond like that. Hamas knew well with modern tech (TikTok etc) they could use the reaction (rubble, dead children etc) as catnip for "progressives" worldwide, especially young ones in America, to turn against Israel. The bizarre "settler colonialism" narrative was already in place in many college kids, and antisemitism was waiting as always just below the surface for a catalyst. The combination was incredibly powerful. Brilliant strategy really.
Sorry but if you owe New York State hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes and you insist on being an asshole online, you’re very clearly going to get called out and you kind of deserve it. Better to keep your head down if you’re actively breaking the law.
Jesse is a coward for refusing to watch the October 7th footage while simultaneously complaining about the "pile of [Palestinian] bodies" he is seeing on social media.
What I find frustrating is that his social media feed is basically a result of his choices on what to engage with. If he's seeing "piles of Palestinian bodies," it's because that's what he's *chosen* to engage with. At the same time, he openly admits he's afraid to watch the October 7th footage.
He is *choosing* not to see his own people's suffering in favor of seeing the suffering of others.
How is it a false equivalence? Jesse is choosing to engage with Palestinian victimization porn on social media while refusing to look at the suffering inflicted on Israelis. That's a choice he is making and publicly discussing! And I think he's admitted that he is doing this out of cowardice.
I like the podcast and think Jesse and Katie are great when they stay in their lane, but their positions on Israel-Palestine (and especially Jesse's) are just so, so bad.
All equivalences are false, so you can always whip this out whenever an analogy manages to breach the outer walls of your rhetorical fortress. It makes me want to write a book entitled “How to believe whatever you want”.
Syrnerson: Oh. My understanding is that the "disagreement" goes back over 3,000 years. As Jesse likes to say "It's complicated." Sigh, Jesse used that phrase so much today I thought I was listening to a rom-con.....
I'm not sure I agree with Jesse's conclusion that the Dan Goldman thing wasn't discrimination because it's all about his positions as a member of Congress. Maybe if this applied equally to every member of Congress, but it seems like there is a LOT more focus on and anger at Jewish politicians' views on Israel than anyone else's (the Dan Goldman and Scott Wiener incidents here, setting fire to Josh Shapiro's residence). But maybe I'm just not remembering or aware of all the cases--have we seen much in the way of this kind of personal singling out of non-Jewish politicians? Jesse isn't wrong that Goldman's views are more relevant to the public than some random Jew, but it seems like there is a heightened level of scrutiny on Jewish politicians.
I think he was trying to make a point that it was because he’s in politics. If I saw JD Vance and he wasn’t with his family I might heckle him about being a bad catholic. That’s not because he’s Catholic, it’s because he’s a politician trying to weaponized his faith even as he gets everything about it wrong. (The excerpts from his new book — bro either did not do RCIA or he was not paying attention)
It’s both the religion & the political role, and the religion is just the stick to hit him with because he clearly doesn’t even know the doctrine.
But if I saw a nun or priest I wouldn’t be gratuitously mean or try to debate them on doctrine. I perceive Vance as a dick because of his politics and personality. But I give normies a wide berth.
Also, I'm sorry but was it me or did we never get an answer as to how the owner identified Dan Goldman? He's a very nondescript looking man and he certainly isn't the only person in Brooklyn with that name.
I haven’t finished the episode, but the coffee shop portion made me laugh about an incident I had in my personal life. I run parking in downtown Boston and one of the biggest aspects of my job is working with nearby businesses and giving their employees discounted parking. One of the companies I work with is Tatte which I found out through this interaction is owned by a Jewish family who also support the State of Israel. Another restaurant owner noticed their employees parking in the garage and attempted to educate me on the subject via email. I responded basically saying I don’t care about the politics of the people in my garage or the companies I work with my whole goal is to make money. Well then this person tried to get me fired by emailing the owners of the company I work for which was just a “I hate Zionist” manifesto. The funny part is she did absolutely no research on who owns my company which are a group of Jewish people who very much support Israel. So I was then instructed to inform the restaurant owner she is no longer allowed to park with us effective immediately. She was also blacklisted from parking in any of my companies garages which put her in a bit of a kosher pickle in downtown Boston.
There’s a Tatte near my company’s office in DC and there was a random day where there were protestors outside. Most people ignored them, but they tried to hand a flier to a delivery guy going in and he SCREAMED at them “YOU GUYS NEED TO GET SOME REAL PROBLEMS!” It was intensely satisfying.
Haha I live in the Boston area and for the longest time I thought Tatte was just a coffee show so I never went there because I don't drink coffee. Then this online stuff with Tatte happened and this led to me finding out they're have a whole menu. I went there and the food was really good. Now it's part of my rotation of places to go to when I'm downtown. Thanks antisemites!
I think Jesse is falling into a very common trap with the Poetica stuff. I am not saying it is discrimination, but it certainly has yellow flags for potential discrimination. discrimination protects discrimination based on national origin, and Israeli is a national origin! the owner absolutely implied that he would not serve Israelis, which is pretty obvious discrimination. The tendancy to talk about Israel in relation to Judaism crowds out the fact that it is a country that exists that has people born in it.
No shit. This Goldman isn't exactly pro Israel, unless you take that to mean support Israel to the same extent that a random US citizen supports Mongolia. And the actions of the coffee shop really do imply that an Israeli would not be welcome there.
Somehow the debate around Israel has been reframed so that, for analogy, anyone who is against the mandatory death penalty for all criminals is seen as pro criminal. That's insane, and is not the way any other country is treated.
(ignore the genocide accusations, because any honest look at those either lead to rejection of the term, or to the realisation that every single battle fought with modern weapons is actually genocide, I do actually respect Jesse and Katie's journalistic ability, so I would like them to approach this topic with that lens. Look at definitions, the historical ones, look at what does and does not fall into the category of genocide, look at what the bar actually is, and then look into the history of accusing Israel of genocide. It would be valuable for them to apply the same rigor to this, as they did to stonewall)
Honestly, it wouldn't. Go through an archive of news articles (maybe there's an AI), see when genocide was first leveled against Israel. Take a few times it has happened, examine the circumstances, and see where else similar circumstances have occurred and not been called genocide. This wouldn't be exhaustive, but it would be revealing.
As someone who wrote a whole paper on international law last year, I don’t think Israel will be found guilty of genocide by the ICJ unless something vastly changes. I think they could have a similar ruling to Serbia where individuals were found to have committed genocide in certain areas and Serbia was found to have not prevented genocide, but if they didn’t get Serbia on that charge, they won’t get Israel.
It’ll be years until we get a ruling in this case, but it does bother me how genocide is used today very broadly instead of for very specific incidents.
When you type "“See, here at Poetica, we don’t serve racists, fascists, homophobes, genocide enablers, or anyone in between. Too bad we didn’t recognize you right away, or we would have turned you away." you're opening up yourself to some discrimination investigations.
"Turning people away." "Everyone in between." That's a pretty sweeping statement.
I do wake up in the morning excited about capitalism and why the fuck shouldn’t I? Other than science, it is the biggest force that has raised billions of people out of poverty over recent decades. It’s hard to think of anything with a bigger disconnect between what the evidence says and what people’s emotional reactions are. Just walk outside and look at the relative paradise we now live in thanks to the productive power of market forces compounded over decades. Take a second to show some fucking appreciation people!
I think part of the problem is that people associate capitalism with free market absolutists. But you don’t need to think that the water utility should be privatized to appreciate that millions of products are delivered to millions of store shelves daily in the most complex logistical feat in human history, all without centralized planning, allowing us to have anything we want when we want it all day every day all year long - and allowing us to choose our own career path or live in the woods or be eccentric or be anything we want, unlike any centrally planned country.
There’s a weird asymmetry between the words “capitalist” and “communist.” Like you can be a “communist” by believing a set of principles about the best economic system, but to be a “capitalist” seems to imply you own a significant amount of capital, or you’re a big business owner or something. This has always struck me as kind of a pr issue for capitalism (along the lines of what Jesse and Katie say.) If you’re say a professional person who works an average salaried job but thinks capitalism works great and has done a great job of making people richer, as you say, then what are you? Capitalism has this weird property in the English language in that it gatekeeps who can be a “capitalist.” That’s not true for socialism or communism!
Yeah well said. Part of this is just valence: words come with emotional connotation, and it’s negative with this word. Like, I once met someone who works in logistics, and i said, “wow, it’s like you’re the bloodstream of capitalism,” and he thought i was criticizing him.
Bill Easterly once pointed out that much of the left-wing talk of “emergent complex systems” is indistinguishable from Hayek’s pro-free market ideas. The difference is purely PR.
It’s the lying. You can’t use birth certificates if they’ve changed the sex. The reason all these sex ID methods are being brought up in that ballot measure is because of the lying.
It’s like what happened during the McCarthy period. It was official policy of the Communist Party that members must lie about their affiliation. Hence, you couldn’t believe what people swore under oath. So, witch hunts happened, and there were actual spies but hard to tell who was spying because of the lying.
Likewise, the official position of trans activists is to lie. Lie about sex. So you can’t believe what some people say. There will be boys claiming to be girls with incorrect birth certificates. What to do?
Sorry—it’s the TRAs who are responsible for whatever overreach Katie is complaining about.
I don’t know the specifics about state laws and birth certificates of minors or anything really, but I do know a man got to punch several women in the face and won a medal for it because the passport said F. How about we just do the swabs because it’s a clear and irrevocable answer, only needs to be done once, and is about as invasive as the first five seconds of a dental exam.
"How about we just do the swabs because it’s a clear and irrevocable answer, only needs to be done once, and is about as invasive as the first five seconds of a dental exam." And that is exactly why AOC et al. are spreading the lie that "genital inspections of teenage girls" are what's required.
Swabs aren't even necessary. Medical records are already accessible as part of PPEs, and transgender or intersex status can easily be ascertained from that. Trans-identified males aren't ending up in women's sports because the organizations don't know. They're aware and choose to put them in anyway.
That could be true in most cases, but I believe that in some places and in some medical systems they change the sex information in the medical records. I believe this has been a problem in the UK at least. Gender practitioners also misrepresent treatments: labeling the use of cross sex hormones as “endocrine disorder” in order to hide what is really happening.
Moreover, we have too many activist clinicians who would probably be happy to lie about someone’s sex because they believe it’s the right thing to do.
No, I am not confident in anything but cheek swabs because data that should be factual (birth certificates, medical records) have been compromised.
Yep, because the swab would prove Semenya is male but the birth certificate sex would be an assumption but not a test result. Thus you have to test all girls.
Apparently someone has to pay for them—Katie was objecting to the possibility of every girl’s family having to pay. Perhaps there could be a solution for that.
Correct, in WA you can have the sex on your birth certificate changed - which presents problems beyond youth sports, of course. I was surprised that Katie didn’t mention this. Also, my daughter’s pediatrician did actually check (briefly) “under the hood” as part of a physical, so while it may not be universal, it’s not an insane notion. And adolescents can get pelvic exams; that used to be routine once you started menstruating, though that’s no longer the case. A pelvic exam is more invasive than any sports “genital check” could ever be, but I don’t hear anyone intimating that it’s somehow pervy for a doctor to perform one on a teenager. That’s how this “genital check” nonsense is always made to sound.
They usually like, feel that area below your stomach and above your vadge. When they press the pubic area they can sometimes tell if there’s something wrong with the bladder , ovaries, etc. They aren’t necessarily looking inside you or touching your vulva but they usually do touch around that area in my experience and could probably tell if something odd was going on there.
“Genital checks” is some great scare tactic marketing on the part of trans activists. Our pediatrician briefly checked “under the hood” of both my son and daughter at every annual check up, and I think that’s a good thing. (I was in the room with them for it until they were about 12) It’s a pretty important part of the body to be checked on periodically. Since physicals are required for participation in sports anyway, and as long as you can have the physical done by your family dr, what’s the problem? If drs get caught lying about the sex of their patients, that’s a different issue.
It sounds like the Washington law is vaguely written. A person's sex should be easily ascertained from their medical record, and while a sports physical doesn't always involve a genital exam, it SHOULD always involve a review of their medical record. In the system I work, sex and gender are annoyingly muddled in the chart (a patient's sex and name might show up differently depending on how you open the chart), but there is a section where you can see the patient's "SEX" and has comments such as, "this person has a uterus" and things like that. So I think it is definitely an exaggeration to say that the law requires genital inspections. But, we do know that activists' harping on that can actually influence clinicians to believe it, much as anti-abortion laws that explicitly have exemptions for e.g. ectopic pregnancies have actually resulted in clinicians getting confused and not appropriately treating ectopic pregnancies (I am not in favor of those laws, to be clear, but using it as an example of how the media and activists can actually will an outcome into existence). So I could see how a law that obviously doesn't require genital inspections could de facto become that.
Dollarsandsense has the right of this. Trans activists have proven that they will use any rhetorical loophole or categorical uncertainty to advance their agenda, and any law they'll oppose must account for this. There can be no vagaries, no loosely defined terms, and no other opportunity for activist fuckery.
Depending on where you go, you can get SRY testing for under $100. Will insurance cover it? If it's part of a sports physical, probably. I'm not sure that the cost is that big a deal.
Agree! I have several progressive Jewish friends who fall into this trap and I've always wondered if it's because they are in denial and scared (as they should be) of antisemitism being mainstreamed. More comfortable just taking personal blame for other's behaviour than to think the other person's behaviour is the problem. It's the same logic they apply to Israel actually - if only they were nicer, the Palestinians wouldn't hate them!
what people slowly need to get is that the single issue for these people isn't Palestine, it's not healthcare or even progressive smokescreen like trans rights: it's the deeply ideologically hatred of America, the West, Europe, you name it.
Enjoy elite led, reborn Third Worldism.
That's how you get to firebombing a Jewish granny in front of a synagogue & so fourth.
I think it’s more grievance culture than a fully formed philosophy. So like, they have been trained ‘colonists bad.’ They can’t see or don’t recall that Jews had a hard time in the USSR and were pogromed in Baghdad around the time of WWII. They don’t remember that Hitler was going after Jews who were assimilated, eating pork, marrying gentiles etc.
So like they see Israel as ‘colonial’ not as like ‘well actually these people must have a safe place to get to, and an army to defend it, this keeps happening and as a group they’re pretty pro-social. We can’t just keep letting this happen to them.’
The other thing, wealthy Arabs and Asians want to access the American market. They are often still very into hierarchy, nepotism, look down on working people etc. Not ALL, but it’s noticeable. They don’t care about our culture here and are happy to dismiss it as being a non-culture or trying to keep middle class people from competing with their kids for internships, university admissions, etc.
They are also very gleeful about insisting to white people you hurt the indigenous people! You killed the Native Americans! They get off on making white people in particular uncomfortable, and if you do actually have native ancestry they’ll tell you you’re faking and it’s a myth etc. This is extremely frustrating because like: not a lot of women came over; a lot of white women died of various stuff, and they did intermarry with native people.
So it’s not I think a coherent philosophy here in the US. It’s spoiled people jockeying for position and trying to undermine the culture and opportunities open to others. But that’s just financially motivated.
Our immigrants are not usually as working class as many of the Muslims in Europe, working class Latinos come here. Still a smattering of working class Irish. But in general it’s a little different here.
The absolute seethe of that “fetishizing ugly colonizer women” tweet. You can be mad your crush went and dated a white girl without making it a political stance (that’s now gained praise from David Duke).
I'll consider the possibility that the DSA is just motivated by genuine if misguided horror at the casualties the arabs have suffered in their aggression against Israel when I see them harrassing random mosques or persian community centers to protest Iran's murder of tens of thousands of protesters or picketing Chinese Community Centers to protest the persecution of Tibet and the Uighurs or Russian Orthodox churches over the war in Ukraine. There is only one side of one conflict that they pay any attention to and only one where random co-religionists of that side are harassed to denounce their co-religionists.
I think you are demonstrating part of the point Jesse made. That any mention of discomfort with Israelis actions is met with this kind of response. It makes it unspeakable, difficult to discuss rationally and therefore some people end up pushed to the DSA type rhetoric.
That's what I took from it anyway and I think it's a good point.
Okay, but what is the right time or context to point out that these people have a singular focus on Israel? The only armed conflict mentioned on the national DSA's website under "Working-Class Foreign Policy" is Palestine.
I went to an "intro to DSA" meeting after the Iranian regime murdered tens of thousands of protestors and asked whether there was any interest in organizing anything in support of the Iranian people. The DSA people in attendance said nobody had mentioned it and the only "foreign policy" they had was about Palestine, for which they have a lot of content. (And this is in a city with a tiny Arab or Muslim presence--this is being driven entirely by overeducated white progressives.)
Okay but you are still doing it now.
Or were you just making a general point about the DSA unrelated to anything Jesse said at the end of the show? If so who is this for? What is the point?
The point is “why is Israel-Palestine a relevant, let alone salient, issue for the DSA?”
It’s a distraction from any actual “socialist” issues, and the DSA does not have a consistently humanitarian stance on any other foreign policy issues.
Yes. The DSA sounds bad, I didnt think that was up for discussion.
Not to mention that, because this is what the current far left does, they infantilize the poor brown people by holding Israel to a higher ethical standard. They not only ignore that the conflict was initiated by Hamas and downplay the viciousness of the attack against Israeli civilians, they disregard that Hamas/Palestine had two years to release the hostages and stall the aggression. Plus they built their military tunnel network under hospitals, schools and other civilian facilities, which obviously led to higher casualties. I'm not saying Israel is perfect by any means, but Palestine is not without fault either. Why the hypocrisy?
I see almost no examples of 'discomfort with actions of israelis'. Instead our discourse is absolutely dominated with obvious and grotesque lies that are generated and spread by some of the most prominent media organizations in society. These lies about genocide, starvation, rape dogs whatever have been said since the day of the october massacres before Israel had even retaliated for them and they go on and on no matter how many times they are disproved or how many anti-semitic murders they inspire. If I see any actual criticism of israel I'll be happy to respond to it but I don't see any point in humoring blatant and obvious jew-hatred.
The DSA’s mission statement boils down to “Hate the Jews. Give people “free” stuff”.
If this is what’s on offer from the Dems now, I’m a Republican.
You don't listen to the Podcast 'Blocked and Reported'? You haven't seen some of the response on these very threads when J or K have expressed that exact discomfort? Nothing so blind etc etc.
We're talking about the DSA.
I wasn't. I was talking about why people may become sympathetic to the DSAs views on this.
When you shut down reasonable questions people get pushed to extremist views. It's the whole theme of the podcast and it's completely embraced when it's any topic *other* than Israel.
Who is shutting down reasonable questions? Even the most insane attacks on israel are given headlines in the new york times and bbc. Even the most moderate and hedged defenses get you fired or attacked by actual mobs.
As the mother of three kids in their 20’s, I can tell you why people are sympathetic to the DSA: tik tok propaganda.
I understand that people want to distance our foreign policy from Israel post-Gaza, but I think they are totally delusional thinking that that’s what the DSA wants to do. “Abolish Israel” (which they claim “doesn’t exist” - not sure how you abolish something that doesn’t exist) is not a policy position. If you wanted to “abolish Israel,” you’d need a costly Middle East forever war, which I’ve been told people don’t much like.
I think this was best exemplified by the Pod Save America reaction to the Scott Wiener video. The PSA hosts couldn’t believe what they were watching because they are under the false impression that the far left wants policy changes like they do. They were shocked to learn that “but he said genocide” doesn’t actually work for these people.
The complete disregard for where the Jewish Israelis would go when the sainted Palestinians take over Israel belies the "not antisemitic" narrative. Particularly in light of why they're there in the first place.
The people insisting that they have a right to criticize Israel are really missing the point. This is a question of due diligence, and the pro-palestine crowd *universally* has not exhibited the diligence that is due. Israel is an extremely meritocratic democracy with a strong mandate. It has 25% Arab representation, 3/4 of which is Muslim, and due to their parliamentary system, they have approximately 25% of the representation.
If you have one molecule of humility in your body, you should recognize that table stakes for "criticizing" such a thing are very high. I think I am not exaggerating when I assert that exactly zero weight is given to this fact, especially by young college students. Despite the obviousness of the principle, most humans do not internalize any version of Chesterton's fence until well into adulthood.
It's not a question of whether or not you have a "right" to criticize Israel, it's a question if there is any conceivable way in which you could be claiming to do so in good faith.
Yeah, this is just more of what I mean.
'I saw a report that over 1000 babies in Gaza have died of malnutrition, surely Israel are wrong for this'
And the response is your wall of text essentially calling them stupid for thinking that.
It didn't work with Trumpies and it hasn't worked here.
My response to *you* was a wall of text saying that they were stupid for thinking that. I argue with people where they are at. I believe that my record *fully* corroborates this.
Thats fine and all and maybe the majority of people on all sides are just stupid but, again, that isnt really the theme of the pod is it? Its more about how messaging impacts that stupidity.
And, you know, this is the vibe here in our space isnt it? Completely different rules applied to criticism of Israel and criticism of Trump.
When Jesse makes the, valid, point that calling Trumps supporters fascist hasnt worked and also they arent what does everybody have to say about that? What's the top related comment? How does the dissent fare?
When have *I* ever joined onto a bandwagon calling Trump a fascist? I argue against TDS slightly less aggressively than I argue against BDS, but only because I don't want to get cancelled here. I will defend the administration on the exact same principle.
I think my comment might have been the top of the episode thread in which Jesse said that he doesn't care if the boats we bombed were drug boats or gun boats or fishing boats, but still insisted on calling them fishing boats. This is a catastrophic failure of skepticism of exactly the kind outlined above.
I think a sizeable proportion of October 8th jews like me have had their TDS shaken out of them in parallel, and walked away with the same general principle of conservatism.
It’s about the land. On bluesky people are making excuses for Egypt not taking refugees. One it would diminish their claim to the land; they are quoting an Egyptian official on this. It’s important not to take refugees, let them get killed instead, because if they leave and go somewhere safe they lose the claim to Palestine. This to me is horribly devaluing of human lives for very little reason, because borders change. They just do. Two they’re claiming Israel wouldn’t let Egypt do that (this isn’t strictly true: early in the conflict they did let some like wounded and old people go to Egypt). I think they’d def let women & kids & old people at least leave again.
But this mostly I think is about people being historically illiterate and seeing Israel as a colonial project, ok? They see the Jews who settled there as like the French or English subjugating indigenous people, which is batshit insane to me. Jews got expelled from England before any other European country in the Middle Ages. France didn’t protect them during WWII, Petain sold them out. They’re not the colonizers stepping wealth from a region; they’re like someone who got a nice lawsuit settlement after almost being killed, and it’s like ‘hey use some of that on therapy, you need it.’
Young people who aren’t very historically savvy can’t see Jews as people who were dispossessed over & over again. They don’t remember that it wasn’t just the Holocaust in Germany, it was also the Soviet Union & the pogrom in Baghdad in the 40s. It became very clear to the US & UK & sone other countries that Jews needed a state where they were in the majority and an army to defend it, or this would keep happening.
So people who are mad about ‘ethnostates’ and don’t understand like…Jews are a prosocial minority group who were getting attacked and chased out of everywhere. They were assimilating, getting educated, doing charity, living life and that wasn’t good enough — they were still getting murdered en masse out of resentment.
That’s very different from Palestinians who could prob go to another country and assimilate ok, because everyone around them is an Arab and most are Muslim like them, too. They have a shared identity & no one is as outsider coded as Jews typically have been historically
I don’t have high hopes about any of this resolving nicely. But the anger is clearly about Jews having land and having self determination.
Muslims in the region in general want to stake a claim on the land and they’re trying to say the Jews are England, the Muslims are Ireland, and Netanyahu is worse than Cromwell. And I don’t think that holds up to scrutiny because Israel was created as a safe haven for a minority. The British & Irish were both Christian. The British were a powerful country with the best Navy & wealth. They were not a political entity created because the Irish & French kept killing white people with bad teeth en masse. The Israeli Jews are the Irish in the analogy, or should be, not the British.
Israel isn’t nearly as powerful as these people imagine and like, I don’t think they should let a bunch of Arab Muslims into their govt or they will just get displaced and killed again. They prob do have to let some in. But too many: they’ll get slaughtered again. As has happened over & over again, over centuries, out of resentment.
The whole point of Israel is to be an ‘ethnostate’ for protection & safety in numbers. Netanyahu — Trump should be pressuring him to step down, he’s being insane. But I think the issue is this generation has a total misread of the situation & the actual history.
And everyone has also conveniently forgotten that on Oct 7th Israel was attacked. This is an overkill response to an attack, but it is also a response to an attack including on a kibbutz that was hiring and advocating for Palestinians. They wanted to hire more people, help them integrate. And in exchange at least one of the Palestinian workers gave intel on the layout to I guess Hamas so they could be killed.
If Israel tries to let these people assimilate or accumulate more power that’s naive. Because Israel is run by a minority that’s very maligned in the region. Their neighbors want the land back under Muslim Arab control, period, and it just is not wise to proceed as if they’re not going to keep attacking Israel indefinitely.
And those other nations like Egypt etc, they one don’t want Muslims to ‘lose’ to Jews. They’ll sacrifice millions and not even try to get them out, just to keep the land claim. Two, they don’t want Palestinians coming in competing for jobs & resources. The last time they took in large numbers of refugees they wouldn’t let them work and the Palestinian men got violent and kicked off…just like they do against Israel. Egypt knows they’re going to be a problem and they don’t want them around.
In a real sense these countries like Egypt basically want Gazans dead too, perhaps even more than Netanyahu does. It becomes a stick to hit Israel with, all these innocent kids dying, and it means they don’t have to help Gazans in a concrete way and risk them becoming a local problem in their backyards.
But I mean, I feel like I’m in crazy town when I see some of these takes on Israel here & elsewhere. Yes, it’s an ethnostate; that’s the point. Hitler killed a lot of ham eating non religious Jews he went back like generations in family trees. The Spanish inquisition went after like second generation conversos mostly as a pretense to seize their assets. 1940s: pogrom in Baghdad of a Jewish community that’d been there for thousands of years. Israel does need to exist, and it does need to keep a substantial level of control in the hands of the Jewish population.
Maybe there should be a two state solution, but Israel is not Europe or the US. Here disease killed a lot of indigenous people and then later the gov’t targeted them. But we mostly get along now. Christians don’t pogrom the Mohawk and Cherokee. The Mohawk and Cherokee don’t suicide bomb federal buildings, try to stage insurrections by taking over the post office, etc. You can’t put some kind of pluralist US/Canada/modern UK govt in Israel, because the Muslims region wide don’t want there to be an Israel. It’s not like how I was raised Catholic and think Wiccans are goofy, but can do business with them, get coffee with them, be on a committee with them. Nations in the area largely — not every individual but politically at the macro level — want the land back and the Jews gone. I think that’s sad as a state of affairs. But I also think it’s true
When you say "It has 25% Arab representation, 3/4 of which is Muslim, and due to their parliamentary system, they have approximately 25% of the representation." I thought I'd check. The Knesset has 120 seats and I counted 12 Israeli Arabs, if you include 2 Druze (and they might not). So that's 8-10%, depending on how you slice it. Less than half of their proportion in the general population.
Where does this "25% Arab representation" figure come from?
Are you under the impression that Arabs have to vote for Arabs in order to be represented? Parliamentary systems allocate seats to parties in proportion to the vote share that they receive.
No, of course not, but I did think you were implying it.
But to the point, I thought when you said "they have approximately 25% of the representation" you were making a statement about the number of Arab-Israeli Knesset members, not a more general statement about proportional representation in a parliamentary system.
Thanks for clarifying.
Yes, it was a general statement about proportional representation in parliamentary systems. I meant to contrast it with the American system where the case for proportional representation for minorities is much harder to make.
Because it's the only kind of response that's warranted when people bring up "discomfort with Israel's actions".
What specifically is it about Israel and no other country has you so hot and bothered? If you genuinely want to be a good person, then it's worth introspectng and analyzing with scrupulous honestly and self reflection.
What, specifically, about reading do you find so difficult? If you want to look like less of a moron try reading something slowly before responding.
No need for insults. I meant the general "you" synonymous with "one". One must introspect rigorously if one wants to be good. Surely you agree? There are so many ways to go awry, e.g. slandering the Jewish state with genocide and colonization.
As a rationalist, for literal years, I have tried to get someone to give me good faith, rational arguments against Israel. Unfortunately, there have been none.
Asking someone why they are so exercised over Israel and not Turkmenistan (for instance) is a reasonable question. Perhaps they have a good answer. Labeling the question itself as outside the bounds of rationality just seems like more of the same rhetorical tricks that pro-Pals use to shut down forward momentum.
I don't think this is accurate framing. It implies the push back against anti-israel sentiment is triggered by reasonable discussion or simple expression of concern.
That's not the case. It's a claim often put out there, but I simply haven't seen a single person expressing measured concern being dismissed as an anti-semite or having an unhealthy focus on Israel.
There really plenty of generally pro-Israel persons consistently expressing concern over some of the military and logistic decisions being made in Gaza. There's no shortage of liberal, pro-zionist condemnation of much of Netanyahu's administration.
The push back doesn't come from "mention of discomfort". It comes from extreme accusations without good evidence. Genocide, murdering children on purpose, various conspiracies about the Jewish Cabal influencing politics, claims of famine (that simply don't exist) and pushing a narrative that somehow Israel is a singularly evil and extreme perpetrator of these crimes......when objectively the opposite is quite true.
And coupled with absolute silence on a myriad of other past and present atrocities that are orders of magnitude greater in the exact same region. . . but don't happen to involve a certain demographic.
Let's call it the UN Human Rights Committee Effect.
Any one of the resolutions against Israel could often be taken in isolation, considered, and may even point to an area warranting concern or investigation.
But when you look at their history and Israel has received more resolutions than ALL other countries combined. More than North Korea, China, Russia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria....more than the entire world combined.
It would be dishonest not to look at that and wonder if maybe, just maybe, there's something else other than actions alone that attracts their singular focus.
They're basically Gish Galloping their way across grievances. Sooner or later, you have to call that out and refuse to play until they start behaving rationally again.
I think there are two things. Firstly I have seen people reacting like that to expression of concerns in these very substack threads. Most obviously Jesse and Katies voiced concerns.
Secondly I think you are probably somewhat right and perhaps my framing is off. People *feel*the discomfort and look for information and we know what's out there for them. Defences of Israel are tedious or simplified but call 'them' stupid or antisemitic. Condemnation of Israel confirm their discomfort. Tell them they are right and actually it's worse than they even imagined. So by the time they are expressing it, yes you are right it's moved on from that. But that is how it starts.
I've only seen push back when K&J gloss over highly controversial claims as if they're established fact.
Like when Jesse (paraphrasing) said something along the lines of "_Obviously_ I'm against the war and what's going on there is genocide."
So when they speak from a position along the lines of "we can all agree Israel's committing genocide, but that doesn't justify the anti-semitism...." and so on that deservedly gets push back since that claim is highly controversial and was not found plausible on the merits by the ICJ. Claims come from biased sources.....starting with a redefinition of genocide that trivializes _actual_ genocide that we've seen historically.
In these cases, glossing over things like claims of genocide as uncontroversial facts is exactly the opposite of simply expressing concern or discomfort.
To be clear. Genocide means the Gaza war was committed with the express intent to destroy in whole or part all Palestinians. Meaning the decision makers sat in a room and said "Ok, here's the plan. We're going to murder every Palestinian man, woman, and child until their culture and their heritage no longer exists and any survivors are permanently scattered. How can we execute this plan?"
That's just absurd at face value.
Ben Gvir has made some pretty openly genocidal statements about Lebanon if not Gaza. I think Israel was attacked and has a right to defend itself but at some point they did cross a line.
I also side eye neighboring countries like Egypt not insisting on evacuating non combatants. Like maybe everyone military aged is seen as a threat by Israel, but what about all these kids in Gaza?
When did Hamas refusing to release the hostages for two years while their babies were allegedly being intentionally targeted by the IDF start crossing a line? Why did people cheer on the people tearing down posters of missing Israeli children after 10/7 but before retaliation by Israel, start crossing a line? When did Hamas, building hundreds of miles of tunnels under civilian developments and using their civilians as shields start crossing a line? I agree that Netanyahu has crossed a line, but it took a lot of other line crossing to get him there. And 60% of young liberals support "Hamas," no longer falsely couched as Palestine, according to a recent poll. Boggles the mind when you consider their record against women and LGB people.
If that's all you seen you arent looking.
Part of what makes this issue so challenging is that in some circles any criticism of Israel is seen as anti-semitism while in other circles anti-semitism is masquerading as 'criticizing israel.'
Yep. It’s so fundamentally dishonest.
Those poor, innocent Israelis. I wonder why “the Arabs” are mad at them. Relatedly, why don’t Ukrainians like Putin?
I find these comparisons really unconvincing. The scale of the destruction, not just of lives but of homes, infrastructure, and whole cities, is on a whole other scale. Also, Israel is a liberal democratic country. It is normal for people to expect more of a democracy than of authoritarian regimes. If France started treating their Uighur population the way China does, there would legitimately be more uproar than when China does it. If Israel wants the prestige of being a modern democratic country, it also carries the expectations of a modern democratic country.
You are simply wrong. The destruction of the wars in Syria or Ukraine exceeds that in Gaza by an order of magnitude. The destruction inflicted on cultures and people by the CCP exceeds it by multiple orders of magnitude. Israel does hold itself to a higher standard. No other state in modern history has been expected to carry on a conventional war against an enemy that attacked it *and continues to launch attacks against it* while also feeding and providing utilities to its enemy's entire population as Israel is doing. And the idea that we should hold democracies to standards that prevent them from defending themselves from the totalitarian states trying to destroy them is simply suicidal insanity. We didn't hold ourselves to such standards when we defended ourselves from Germany and Japan and if we had we simply would have lost.
I just don’t know how you compare what has happened across most of Gaza to Ukraine. Mariupol yes, and a few other isolated locations. But the country has not been systematically flattened. Kiev is still Kiev, as are most other Ukrainian cities. I already addressed the point about China.
And as another commenter noted, we have put sanctions on Russia and have condemned its excesses.
What’s strange to me is that Israel’s own army leaders are more critical of Israeli excesses than are its defenders on this side of the pond. It stretches the imagination to me that a war led by the likes of Bibi or Itamar Ben-Gvir, wouldn’t have excesses. Look at their own rhetoric - these are not people aiming for proportionality. They go well beyond what their own military recommend, with no clear path to achieving goals. There is ample room to support Israel’s need to respond militarily (I supported it) while criticizing the extremity of the approach they have taken.
This is a perfect sentiment, thank you, I didn't know how to say it. Israel, from this side of the pond, seems to have a very professional military that is increasingly commanded by civilians who are anything but professional and continue to enable the worst of Israeli society. And of course the ironic part is this worst part of society doesn't even serve in the military.
We haven’t seen entire Ukrainian cities reduced to rubble and the population living in refugee tent encampment while the military that destroyed homes also controls and prevents the flow of food, medicine, building supplies and electricity.
We've (America) put sanctions on Russia for what they are doing in Ukraine, and we are funding and helping what Israel is doing in Gaza.
While I agree that it is different because there are sanctions on russia just to put it in perspective:
The Russians have displayed over 10 Million people in Ukraine. More than 4 times than the total inhabitants of Gaza.
The Russians lack the airpower to flatten cities. But they have depopulated them.
Hamas hang glided into a music festival and killed people, and attacked lefty hippies on a communal farm. Ukraine was just sitting there
I know some people in Poland who were volunteering at centers to help refugees at the start of that conflict.
Egypt except for very limited like wounded people a couple months after the war hasn’t really been taking refugees
So these aren’t directly comparable at all, IMO. Poland was like they were attacked we need to help these people. Egypt seems afraid they could stage attacks from there somehow
So while I feel for Palestinians who are not in Hamas esp children, like this is not happening out of nowhere. Hamas did attack Israel. And no one wants them attacking from their countries so the refugee thing is tougher
Israel is being way, WAY over the top and hurting their own cause. Trump could probably force Bibi out by threatening funding but he won’t. So like: here we are. It’s complicated
"The destruction of the wars in Syria or Ukraine exceeds that in Gaza by an order of magnitude."
About 45,000 Ukrainians have died in Russia's genocidal war of aggression against Ukraine, against a national population recorded at 36.7 million this year. Or 28 million after subtracting refugees (who will presumably mostly return). Civilian deaths are around 14,000. Never mind the casualties.
Russia currently controls about 17% of Ukraine. This size of Ukraine is about 233,062 sq miles.
Since the comparison was made....
The Gaza strip, at 141 sq miles, is home to just a little over 2 million people, and about 100 times as densely populated as Ukraine. Since the most recent Israeli military action against Gaza began, that government's military has killed about as many people in Gaza as Russia has in Ukraine, low estimate. About half have been women and children. The Israeli military controls 70% of Gaza, while the natives are packed into the remainder and asked politely to leave. By which I mean occasionally picked off by sniper fire.
As many dead as in a country with 15-18 times the population. A proportionately greater loss in life and land. Never mind the history, because even if the world blinked into existence on Oct. 6th 2023, this would still be criminal.
Speak up against Russia, praise the sanctions, who will even call you Rusophobic? A smattering of deranged tankies and bots. But god forbid that you suggest, even short of BDS, that the US even *try* to disentangle itself militarily from Israel. Must be antisemitism. No other rational explanation.
Likewise Karmelo Anthony was only convicted of murder because of racism, doncha know?
"It was a small knife! That White boy shoved him! White people are allowed to get away with murder, so why are we always holding young Black men to a higher standard?"
What about...look over there! They had it coming! There's something morally wrong with you if you're not okay with this, some bigotry in your soul that makes you measure these lives equally.
You're off on military deaths by an order of magnitude. They're closer to 150,000. Not 45k. And military casualties have topped 600k.
Civilian deaths are a bit of an unknown. We may not know for years, but it's likely 10s of thousands more than the 14k-16k.
I was going of a statement from an interview with Zelensky for military, and for civilian it could have been UN or it could have been somewhere else. I don't have it in front of me at the moment.
I realize that I am a very vengeful person when I hear arguments like this.
If Canada conducted a Viking style raid on the USA like Hamas did to Israel, I would feel ok about burning it to the ground.
The vast numbers of men willing to commit mass rape and murder exposes a sick society. A fucked up value system, a culture which views women as garbage.
They hide their fighters among civilians and count on Israel
to back down- because they know Israel cares more for innocent life than they do.
They count on it!!
I completely understand why israel said no more and went after Hamas.
The fact that civilians were/are killed is on Hamas, not Israel.
Nobody gets to come to my country and rape and kill thousands.
Exactly this.
I recall a lot of hand-wringing about Israel's response to 10/7 not being "proportional."
Well, if Hamas hits Israel's civilians *as hard as they can*, then a proportional response would be for Israel to hit back *as hard as they can*. The fact they haven't done this is a show of restraint.
Exactly. Gaza and all its people could no longer exist and it would be a totally "Proportional response" to the last 100 years. Play with fire, get burned.
So many people posting about this conflict like it is happening in their cul de sac or daycare and not in the actual world where people die and don't come back.
A bunch of Wisconsinites make an organized attack on my neighborhood and kill a bunch of random neibhors, fuck you, your immediate family, your cousin, your teacher, the person you bought a cheesehead from. Who if we are going to be honesty, probably 60% of them were actively supporting you anyway. You are all targets.
The long decades since WWII have made people in the west incredibly out of touch with how the world actually works. They will remember at some point when a real war happens again and people are popped out of their cloistered bubbles of ease.
If you think the Nakba was bad, look into the history of other ethnostates created from colonial remnants in the post-WWII years.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, a hint is that one of them is the country Mamdani’s ancestors hail from.
Mamdani has condemned Modi too, as is right and proper.
https://nypost.com/2025/05/26/us-news/zohran-mamdani-slams-india-prime-minister-narendra-modi-as-war-criminal/
If Theodoric had asserted that Mamdani had not condemned Modi, that would really be an excellent clap-back. However, the observation was that the sheer volume of displacement dwarfs the Nakba, not that Mamdani is OK with what happened in India. Let's visit the historical record. Below is the place, the years, and the number of displaced people:
Pakistan / India Partition 1947 ~14,500,000
India 1947 ~14,500,000
Palestine / Israel 1947–1949 ~700,000
Finnish Karelia 1940, 1944 ~420,000
East Prussia 1944–1950 ~2,000,000
Silesia 1944–1950 ~3,000,000
Pomerania / eastern Brandenburg 1944–1950 ~2,000,000
Sudetenland / Czechoslovakia 1945–1947 ~3,000,000
German expulsions from East-Central Europe 1944–1950 ~12,000,000
Poland's Kresy / eastern borderlands 1944–1948 ~1,750,000
Western Ukraine / southeastern Poland 1944–1947 ~1,640,000
Hungarians in Czechoslovakia / Slovakia 1945–1948 ~85,000
Hungary / Czechoslovakia population exchange 1946–1948 ~130,000
Yugoslavia's German communities 1944–1948 ~400,000
Hungary's German communities 1945–1948 ~200,000
Romania's German communities 1945 onward ~70,000
Istria, Fiume/Rijeka, Dalmatia 1943–1960s ~300,000
Trieste / Free Territory of Trieste 1947–1954 ~50,000
Jewish DPs in Europe 1945–1950s ~250,000
Jews from Arab and Muslim-majority countries late 1940s–1970s ~875,000
Korea 1945–1953 ~5,000,000
Vietnam 1954 ~1,000,000
Bangladesh / East Pakistan 1947, 1971 ~10,000,000
Sri Lanka / Ceylon 1948 onward ~700,000
Myanmar / Burma 1948 onward ~650,000
Malaysia / Malaya 1957, 1963 N/A
Cyprus 1960, 1974 ~250,000
Algeria 1962 ~800,000
Morocco / Algeria borderlands 1950s–1960s N/A
Eritrea / Ethiopia 1952, 1962, 1993 ~570,000
Sudan / South Sudan 1956, 2011 ~4,000,000
Crimean Tatars 1944, 1967–1990s ~200,000
Chechens and Ingush 1944, 1957 ~490,000
Kalmyks 1943–1944, 1950s ~95,000
Balkars 1944, 1950s ~37,000
Karachays 1943, 1950s ~70,000
In this light, it is curious, the vitriol maintained for Israel and no other country.
Mamdani’s parents are Indian, but his father is Muslim. Zohran is basically taking the Muslim side of two big blood feuds, giving a pass to the atrocities of one side (7-8 million non Muslims were displaced in the Partition of India, and religious minorities continue to face severe systemic persecution in Pakistan, including cases of forced conversion).
Agreed. I really don't get the left's love affair with Mamdani and Islam as a whole. They must think of Islam as an edgier version of Christianity. Its manifest violence is just due to its fair share of misguided, backward fundamentalists reacting to Western moral failing. Suggesting it is inherent to the theology is verboten.
"but his father is Muslim"
"but"
"his father"
"Pakistan"
You're making vibes, but you are not talking coherently.
This about a Uganda-born American Muslim of Indian descent talking about anti-Muslim attacks in the 2000's in the area of India that his family was from, condoned by that nation's current president. The point is presented as a counter to your sly dig that "Pogroms happen all the time, it's no big deal, look at the nation that America's New Best Leftist descends from, they do it, and who even talks about that?" He does.
And now it's his parents are Indian, "but" his "father" is Muslim, as if being Muslim is an exception to being Indian (Modi, is that you?), and as if Mamdani isn't himself Muslim.
Then it's a frankly addled dismissal of the complexity of the post-colonial division of India/Pakistan, which was not just some "blood feud" we can hand-wave away, nor something that only harmed non-Muslims, then accusing Mamdani of "taking sides" in said 79+ years old so-called "blood feud", etc
Hope I paraphrased your intent okay, but given the follow up I'm not sure you even know what you were trying to say other than "Look over there and stop caring!" Sad.
It's also important to note that about 1,000,000 jews were displaced from Arab states during the same period as the Naqba.
These jews were living peacefully in those countries for 1000s of years. But were targeted through pogroms and expulsion _because they were jewish_.
The Naqba was the culmination of decades of insurgency, terrorist activity, civil war, and an Arab invasion. A lot of innocents got caught up in it. And the totality of refugees came from multiple causes that spanned specific targeting by extremists and military factions, voluntary migration, many leaving at the direct request of Arab military (so they could invade and purge the jewish population), some fled general fighting and conflict.
But they were not targeted _because_ of their Arabness or ethnically cleansed in the way the Jews were. The pattern is squarely within the kinds of population churns you see in civil wars...which it was.
Case in point, the post purge Jewish population in Arab states was less than 1% of its previous levels. Post Arab population in Israel was 20% its previous level.
And unlike the Palestinian refugees, who even to this day receive extensive aid and support, the world gave exactly zero shits about the Jewish refugees. It's barely even acknowledged today. Why were all these Jews immigrating to Israel? What a mystery. Must be colonial white supremacy.
"It's also important to note that about 1,000,000 jews were displaced from Arab states during the same period as the Naqba."
Yeah man I wonder what horrible crime happened to spark that horrible crime oh wait it's the last word of the sentence.
"The Naqba was the culmination of decades of insurgency, terrorist activity, civil war, and an Arab invasion."
Insurgency and terror by Zionist right-wing paramilitaries included, to be sure. Lehi. Irgun.
The Arab "Invasion" came after pograms emptied dozens of villages and towns. And it stopped nothing.
"But they were not targeted _because_ of their Arabness or ethnically cleansed in the way the Jews were."
Bullshit. The Zionists decided they were not going to tolerate being a numerical minority. If you're arguing that it matters whether or not in their hearts they were attacking people out of hate or self love, out of bigotry or pragmatism, I can't agree that it does.
To be sure the displacement of Jews from Arab lands is also horrible, but wasn't like that happened all at once in a mass push like the Nakba. There was persecution against Jews, which rose after the violent rise of Israel, but there was also Israel actively soliciting for more immigrants. It went on for decades, but that doesn't make it right, and any Jew who wants to return to their country of origin should have the right, just as they should have the right to live in peace where they're settled.
"In this light, it is curious, the vitriol maintained for Israel and no other country."
There's vitriol for India's current crimes, and similar whining defenses from its rightist Hindu nationalists.
This defense is even worse, really. Crude to say "When 5% of these people were expelled it was worse than when it happened to more than half of these other people, because volume." Volume. Proportions. Perhaps I care more about proportions, sparing more grief for the Shoah than the still inexcusable crimes of the India/Pakistan partition due to proportions, but perhaps your preference for volume would land you on the other side. Regardless, this is an asshole's premise, and when you find yourself reduced to bean counting to weight crimes you are still acknowledging that there are crimes afoot.
You bring up “proportions” and then accuse others of bean counting.
The post WWII post colonial landscape is strewn with sectarian violence with villains on all sides.
Yet only one of these conflicts, only one of these people awarded a nation-state in the great map reshuffle, has become a litmus test for membership in a political party ostensibly focused on economic justice for Americans.
On only one of these conflicts has the DSA welcomed with open arms members of one particular side of that conflict (a side with curiously little in the way of economic progressivism to offer).
“Why that one in particular” is a fair question.
Finally someone admitting they hold Israel to a higher standard. That's a whole different discussion.
1. Ukraine is too complicated, the belligerents are both white and Christian and so the conflict can't easily be mapped onto a Marxist grievance matrix
2. The Uygher persecution is fake and/or justified, also China can do no wrong
3. Tibet is a lost cause, also China can do no wrong (I've also heard "the Dalai Lama is a CIA asset")
I've never really bought this argument. One reason many Americans focus on Israel is that we are a source of significant financial support to Israel, including weapons. We don't financially support China or Iran or Russia.
Many Americans don't want their tax dollars being used to support what Israel is doing, and you don't have to be antisemitic to feel this way
American money, logistics and weapons went to Saudi Arabia during their war with Yemen.
85,000 children are believed to have starved to death (cite: Haviv Rettig Gur). Hundreds of thousands of civilians died from American weapons.
No protests. No major movements demanding we divest from Saudi Arabia.
Israel gets excessive media attention, and I think that's a big reason why everyone cares about it.
Is there a Saudi equivalent of AIPAC that has (up until recently) had a powerful influence on American politics and politicians?
Americans lobbying American politics is fine
What's your complaint about AIPAC? This is just the name that American zionists have given their lobby. They don't accept foreign donations. These are American citizens lobbying for American policy. What could you possibly have to complain about here?
I'm not complaining. My point was to show that there is visible, organized political support for a foreign country that has enormous political influence. In my view it is a factor (along with real anti-semitism and what happened in Gaza) contributing to the decline in US support for Israel across the political spectrum. When people fairly point out that the US provides aids to other countries committing war atrocities, there is not an analogous organization for said country so it is less visible and feels less salient. This adds to a perception that Israel has an outsized amount of influence in our politics.
Why do I have the impression that you're just now discovering that AIPAC isn't a foreign organization.
So your argument is that it is possible to tell Saudi Arabia and Israel apart? What do you think of CAIR?
Saudi money has been a huge influence on US politics since the 80s?
The U.S. sold weapons to Saudi Arabia during the Yemen conflict. I don't think we provided them with actual "American money" - do you have a source? By contrast, the U.S. provides cash to Israel in order to purchase American weapons. So there's a difference.
And of course Israel gets more media attention than other countries doing terrible things. It's been a close ally of the U.S. for 80 years, and the U.S. has significant cultural ties dating to it's founding. And, as I already said, we provide direct aid. Nothing weird or hypocritical or antisemitic in focusing more attention on Israel.
Do we give foreign and military aid to China, Iran, or Russia? No. Maybe if our taxes wouldn't be helping Israel destroy Gaza Americans would be less outraged
Posted above:
American money, logistics and weapons went to Saudi Arabia during their war with Yemen.
85,000 children are believed to have starved to death (cite: Haviv Rettig Gur). Hundreds of thousands of civilians died from American weapons.
No protests. No major movements demanding we divest from Saudi Arabia.
Israel gets excessive media attention, and I think that's a big reason why everyone cares about it.
The US government already opposes those countries and those actions you listed. So what would be the point of protesting?
The problem is we not only supported but helped expand these military actions and minority suppression by Israel - unlike similar actions of china russia etc which we as a country oppose.
A better comparison would be if you had said that Israel is like Ukraine - why support Ukraines actions which do include some civilian casualties, but not Israel? And indeed people have made this very comparison - mostly on the far right.
The US government isn't funding China or Ukraine or Iran. We are funding Israel and the images from that conflict are terrible.
We are (or have) funded Ukraine - indeed there’s a whole back and forth about how responsible the USA is for the Maidan Revolution (the national DSA released a statement blaming NATO for the Russian invasion).
We massively support the Chinese economy through trade, obviously - where’s the BDS movement for China?
I don’t think it’s a mystery why support for Israel has dropped, separate from the rise of antisemitism. But I think a big part of it is an ignorance of what war is. The last 70 years in the West has been uniquely peaceful. There has not been a major great power conflict. Europe has been at peace, because the US defense alliance made intra-European conflict largely impossible and deterred Soviet invasion. But war is….hell. It’s a cliche, but true. Urban warfare is some of bloodiest and most difficult, before considering hamas’s tunnel system.
I have seen no evidence that Israeli conduct has violated the rules of war. They have warned civilians of upcoming operations and tried to create zones for them. The fact that Hamas tried to keep people from fleeing is not Israel’s false. Please look at photos of what urban warfare. Over 100k German civilians died in Berlin in 2 weeks. The city looked like a moonscape. Was Israel not going to respond? After the largest murder of Jews, anywhere on the planet, since 1945? Would any state not immediately seek to destroy an entity, like Hamas, on its border, which seeks in destruction and demonstrated a willingness to act on it?
If Mexican troops crossed the border and killed 1,200 Americans, the US military would invade Mexico. There would be no real opposition domestically.
It always boggles my mind when people accuse Israel of “disproportionate force”.
Is not the sole means of winning a war the ability to deliver a disproportionate force than that of your enemy? So much so that they are either too decimated to fight or no longer view the cost ad worth continuing and surrender.
I think “disproportionate force” refers to the Geneva conventions addition protocol 1. So force used shouldn’t cause civilian harm which is disproportionate to the military advantage gained. Not that you can’t use force that’s a hell if a lot greater than your opposing army can muster. Note this doesn’t mean you can’t use force against your enemies in a situation just because some civilians may be harmed, but there’s supposed to be some kinda limit (although what the limits have been found to be in caselaw is a bit beyond my pay grade)
What would you call Palestine's actions on 10/7 relative to this protocol?
Uhh all this should be taken with the fact that I only studied this stuff for one semester and I’ve been celebrating a friend’s birthday today but: I think October 7 was horrific. The murder and rape of innocent civilians. No justification for it whatsoever. I dunno how hamas would be categorised in this situation though (maybe someone else knows more?); the laws of war were drawn up in a time of conflict between nation states with uniformed armies (there’s a bunch of laws about when it’s acceptable or not for soldiers to not wear uniforms etc). So is Oct 7 best categorised as an act of terror or an act of war? Bearing in mind that there’s no international definition of terrorism. I honestly don’t know. And ofc Israel having to fight a non-traditional enemy (not a bunch of squaddies in uniform on a battlefield ) makes it a lot harder for them. But I read some articles (I think in Haaretz?) about how they changed their targeting strategy for aerial bombing to allow for greater % civilians killed vs combatants, which as a centrist dad kinda person I think is a bit not so good
Considering that Hamas rules the country. It is not an act of terrorism but an act of war.
Hah, well not to be an annoying asshole about this (although what else is a law degree for?) but you’re getting into the question of what is a country. Iircc to be a state you need to have a defined territory, a people, some kinda state/administration and you also need recognition by the international community. I know a bunch of countries have recognised Palestinian statehood, but I dunno what they’re recognising tbh. Territory and people, sure I guess, but which administration? Are they just recognising the West Bank under the pla? Or extending the pla’s authority to Gaza too?
Its standard to have a number for acceptable civilian casualties. All militaries do it. And the number is often updated depending on the situation, target, etc. Urban targets will always have a higher expectation civilian casualty ratio.
Sure. The question is where does the tipping point lie between “acceptable” and “unacceptable”? It’d be nice if there was some bright line that we could draw, but unfortunately the real world is, as Jesse would say, complicated.
There is basically no such thing as caselaw here. This is one of two intractible problems with international law.
“Proportionate” has been a weasel word. The best example I heard - you can target the floor of a building to get a target. You can’t flatten an entire city block to kill one person.
Can you imagine if Israeli had acted “proportionately” to October 7th? Using the same methods and tactics? That would be an atrocity.
There are customs and “rules” of war that have developed over centuries. Generally, don’t kill POWs. If you kill POWs, the other side will kill your people.
In this war, Israel is held to a higher standard, and responsible when Hamas breaks them 🤷♂️
Unfortunately, I think you are completely wrong on that last point. Of course the entire far-left would apologise for at very least, if not outright cheer on a massacre of Americans by Mexico, or really any “white” people (includes Hindus, East Asians, others) by “brown” people. Respectable liberals would launder that sentiment, and pretty soon the politically correct sentiment would be that those Chicanos had to die.
I don't really think anti-Zionists are being that inconsistent. They explicitly support mass migration/political integration of Muslims into Israel such that it loses its Jewish majority, as well as general terrorism, and do so for their own countries as well! These are the same people who thought Charlie Hebdo cartoonists had it coming for being racist, and I doubt that a single major hard left political figure would assent to any form of restriction on Muslim immigration were the making of their nation into a majority Islamic one contemplatable; they'd huff and puff and call the interviewer a racist.
Los Angeles would be like ‘all of this was Mexico anyway! Give it back’
I listened to an old Triggernometry episode where Konstantin mentioned that American Vietnam War vets* are the last living westerners to have been subject to a military draft, and it blew my mind.
* I’m guessing we can now throw in the Ukrainians there with them.
That isn't true at all, lots of 'western' countries still have the draft. See here: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-mandatory-military-service
Drafted *into war*
All that, and well, there are no "rules of war". "Rules of war" are whatever rules the winners decide after the war is over.
Or the broader international community/global hegemon decide if you are only a regional power.
There are no rules, once you are fighting a war all sorts of unthinkable things become thinkable, particularly for the losing/weaker side.
Lemay was right.
"His philosophy on the “rules” of war was shaped by his belief that war is about killing people until they stop fighting"
Truer words have never been spoken.
About bombing Japan? No argument here.
About the hypocrisy of handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.
My take is Hamas knew exactly how Israel (or anyone) would respond to Oct. 7. That's why they did it so harshly. Israel had to respond like that. Hamas knew well with modern tech (TikTok etc) they could use the reaction (rubble, dead children etc) as catnip for "progressives" worldwide, especially young ones in America, to turn against Israel. The bizarre "settler colonialism" narrative was already in place in many college kids, and antisemitism was waiting as always just below the surface for a catalyst. The combination was incredibly powerful. Brilliant strategy really.
Hamas is still there and oppressing the people who are not with them. Is that not proof that no disproportionate force was used?
Sorry but if you owe New York State hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes and you insist on being an asshole online, you’re very clearly going to get called out and you kind of deserve it. Better to keep your head down if you’re actively breaking the law.
The justice system is unfairly weaponized against criminals!
Jesse is a coward for refusing to watch the October 7th footage while simultaneously complaining about the "pile of [Palestinian] bodies" he is seeing on social media.
I couldn't agree more. He is so curious and engaged about anything other than this topic, where his mind is firmly made up.
What I find frustrating is that his social media feed is basically a result of his choices on what to engage with. If he's seeing "piles of Palestinian bodies," it's because that's what he's *chosen* to engage with. At the same time, he openly admits he's afraid to watch the October 7th footage.
He is *choosing* not to see his own people's suffering in favor of seeing the suffering of others.
100%
His own people, lmao
Don't you think a grownup can decide for himself who his people are?
Then he and Katie should stop referring to him being a Jew.
Again, as if you get to decide that. Bonkers!
He wants to be one of the “good Jews”. As opposed to the bad Jews, like me.
It's useful to know which wolf he's feeding.
Holy false equivalence Batman
This comment section always cracks me up, so many people paying for this podcast while hating one of the hosts.
How is it a false equivalence? Jesse is choosing to engage with Palestinian victimization porn on social media while refusing to look at the suffering inflicted on Israelis. That's a choice he is making and publicly discussing! And I think he's admitted that he is doing this out of cowardice.
I like the podcast and think Jesse and Katie are great when they stay in their lane, but their positions on Israel-Palestine (and especially Jesse's) are just so, so bad.
All equivalences are false, so you can always whip this out whenever an analogy manages to breach the outer walls of your rhetorical fortress. It makes me want to write a book entitled “How to believe whatever you want”.
Just what a false equivocateur WOULD say!
No, you just disagree and can't seem to handle that.
Did I miss something? I thought Palestine attacked first and genocide a lot of Israelis? So now Palestine is now blameless?
It's also ironic that those trans people support Palestinians. If they ever showed up there they'd be killed.....
Yes, you seem to have missed the past 2.75 years of anti-Israeli/pro-Palestinian messaging.
Syrnerson: Oh. My understanding is that the "disagreement" goes back over 3,000 years. As Jesse likes to say "It's complicated." Sigh, Jesse used that phrase so much today I thought I was listening to a rom-con.....
"Palestinians" were invented 60 years ago, and Islam isn't 3,000 years old.
Every time Jesse says “it’s complicated”, 5¢ of your Primo subscription is refunded.
Are you saying that killing 50+ thousand Palestinians kids is ok because hamas is anti trans??
Yes you missed the fact that Israel has been bombing Gaza off and on for the last 16 years
Did you miss the fact that Palestinians have been shooting rockets into Israeli towns for the last 16 years?
I'm not sure I agree with Jesse's conclusion that the Dan Goldman thing wasn't discrimination because it's all about his positions as a member of Congress. Maybe if this applied equally to every member of Congress, but it seems like there is a LOT more focus on and anger at Jewish politicians' views on Israel than anyone else's (the Dan Goldman and Scott Wiener incidents here, setting fire to Josh Shapiro's residence). But maybe I'm just not remembering or aware of all the cases--have we seen much in the way of this kind of personal singling out of non-Jewish politicians? Jesse isn't wrong that Goldman's views are more relevant to the public than some random Jew, but it seems like there is a heightened level of scrutiny on Jewish politicians.
I was genuinely surprised to hear this take. The fact that Dan Goldman is a Jew seems highly relevant to the fact that he was harassed.
I think he was trying to make a point that it was because he’s in politics. If I saw JD Vance and he wasn’t with his family I might heckle him about being a bad catholic. That’s not because he’s Catholic, it’s because he’s a politician trying to weaponized his faith even as he gets everything about it wrong. (The excerpts from his new book — bro either did not do RCIA or he was not paying attention)
It’s both the religion & the political role, and the religion is just the stick to hit him with because he clearly doesn’t even know the doctrine.
But if I saw a nun or priest I wouldn’t be gratuitously mean or try to debate them on doctrine. I perceive Vance as a dick because of his politics and personality. But I give normies a wide berth.
There is an active campaign to bully Jewish lawmakers. It’s pretty clear.
Also, I'm sorry but was it me or did we never get an answer as to how the owner identified Dan Goldman? He's a very nondescript looking man and he certainly isn't the only person in Brooklyn with that name.
Talking about the “opposite of FOMO”, and you left “Hope Of Missing Out” right on the table 🤦
I loved the FOBI idea--never hear that. I'm afraid of being included, all. the. time.
Happy to be left alone for most things.
I haven’t finished the episode, but the coffee shop portion made me laugh about an incident I had in my personal life. I run parking in downtown Boston and one of the biggest aspects of my job is working with nearby businesses and giving their employees discounted parking. One of the companies I work with is Tatte which I found out through this interaction is owned by a Jewish family who also support the State of Israel. Another restaurant owner noticed their employees parking in the garage and attempted to educate me on the subject via email. I responded basically saying I don’t care about the politics of the people in my garage or the companies I work with my whole goal is to make money. Well then this person tried to get me fired by emailing the owners of the company I work for which was just a “I hate Zionist” manifesto. The funny part is she did absolutely no research on who owns my company which are a group of Jewish people who very much support Israel. So I was then instructed to inform the restaurant owner she is no longer allowed to park with us effective immediately. She was also blacklisted from parking in any of my companies garages which put her in a bit of a kosher pickle in downtown Boston.
There’s a Tatte near my company’s office in DC and there was a random day where there were protestors outside. Most people ignored them, but they tried to hand a flier to a delivery guy going in and he SCREAMED at them “YOU GUYS NEED TO GET SOME REAL PROBLEMS!” It was intensely satisfying.
They need a better hobby
Haha I live in the Boston area and for the longest time I thought Tatte was just a coffee show so I never went there because I don't drink coffee. Then this online stuff with Tatte happened and this led to me finding out they're have a whole menu. I went there and the food was really good. Now it's part of my rotation of places to go to when I'm downtown. Thanks antisemites!
Side note: Tatte is really good.
The food is good, but the coffee is absolutely mid
I love it!
May you make absolute fuck-tons of money!
Well that is the point
If these DSA nuts think America is so terrible then they haven't lived in other countries and I wish they would.....
We really, really take for granted what we have here.
It's pretty easy to see the irritating things (especially when there is an entire industry devoted to it), but man, this place is really really great.
I think Jesse is falling into a very common trap with the Poetica stuff. I am not saying it is discrimination, but it certainly has yellow flags for potential discrimination. discrimination protects discrimination based on national origin, and Israeli is a national origin! the owner absolutely implied that he would not serve Israelis, which is pretty obvious discrimination. The tendancy to talk about Israel in relation to Judaism crowds out the fact that it is a country that exists that has people born in it.
No shit. This Goldman isn't exactly pro Israel, unless you take that to mean support Israel to the same extent that a random US citizen supports Mongolia. And the actions of the coffee shop really do imply that an Israeli would not be welcome there.
Somehow the debate around Israel has been reframed so that, for analogy, anyone who is against the mandatory death penalty for all criminals is seen as pro criminal. That's insane, and is not the way any other country is treated.
(ignore the genocide accusations, because any honest look at those either lead to rejection of the term, or to the realisation that every single battle fought with modern weapons is actually genocide, I do actually respect Jesse and Katie's journalistic ability, so I would like them to approach this topic with that lens. Look at definitions, the historical ones, look at what does and does not fall into the category of genocide, look at what the bar actually is, and then look into the history of accusing Israel of genocide. It would be valuable for them to apply the same rigor to this, as they did to stonewall)
It would involve A LOT more work than Stonewall. Which was reading a few articles and watching some interviews.
Wouldn't expect it to be forthcoming.
Honestly, it wouldn't. Go through an archive of news articles (maybe there's an AI), see when genocide was first leveled against Israel. Take a few times it has happened, examine the circumstances, and see where else similar circumstances have occurred and not been called genocide. This wouldn't be exhaustive, but it would be revealing.
As someone who wrote a whole paper on international law last year, I don’t think Israel will be found guilty of genocide by the ICJ unless something vastly changes. I think they could have a similar ruling to Serbia where individuals were found to have committed genocide in certain areas and Serbia was found to have not prevented genocide, but if they didn’t get Serbia on that charge, they won’t get Israel.
It’ll be years until we get a ruling in this case, but it does bother me how genocide is used today very broadly instead of for very specific incidents.
I would love to see him defend a shop that kicked out a black congressperson who supported BLM because the shop thought BLM was a bunch of grifters.
When you type "“See, here at Poetica, we don’t serve racists, fascists, homophobes, genocide enablers, or anyone in between. Too bad we didn’t recognize you right away, or we would have turned you away." you're opening up yourself to some discrimination investigations.
"Turning people away." "Everyone in between." That's a pretty sweeping statement.
I do wake up in the morning excited about capitalism and why the fuck shouldn’t I? Other than science, it is the biggest force that has raised billions of people out of poverty over recent decades. It’s hard to think of anything with a bigger disconnect between what the evidence says and what people’s emotional reactions are. Just walk outside and look at the relative paradise we now live in thanks to the productive power of market forces compounded over decades. Take a second to show some fucking appreciation people!
I think part of the problem is that people associate capitalism with free market absolutists. But you don’t need to think that the water utility should be privatized to appreciate that millions of products are delivered to millions of store shelves daily in the most complex logistical feat in human history, all without centralized planning, allowing us to have anything we want when we want it all day every day all year long - and allowing us to choose our own career path or live in the woods or be eccentric or be anything we want, unlike any centrally planned country.
There’s a weird asymmetry between the words “capitalist” and “communist.” Like you can be a “communist” by believing a set of principles about the best economic system, but to be a “capitalist” seems to imply you own a significant amount of capital, or you’re a big business owner or something. This has always struck me as kind of a pr issue for capitalism (along the lines of what Jesse and Katie say.) If you’re say a professional person who works an average salaried job but thinks capitalism works great and has done a great job of making people richer, as you say, then what are you? Capitalism has this weird property in the English language in that it gatekeeps who can be a “capitalist.” That’s not true for socialism or communism!
Yeah well said. Part of this is just valence: words come with emotional connotation, and it’s negative with this word. Like, I once met someone who works in logistics, and i said, “wow, it’s like you’re the bloodstream of capitalism,” and he thought i was criticizing him.
Bill Easterly once pointed out that much of the left-wing talk of “emergent complex systems” is indistinguishable from Hayek’s pro-free market ideas. The difference is purely PR.
I rarely comment and never do so disagreeably but I nevertheless have a haunting fear that I am somehow the one asshole.
I don’t think it’s you.
We are all one asshole
As with narcissism and sociopathy, if you’re afraid that you have it, you don’t have it
I just said this. Lol
No. It's me.
It’s the lying. You can’t use birth certificates if they’ve changed the sex. The reason all these sex ID methods are being brought up in that ballot measure is because of the lying.
It’s like what happened during the McCarthy period. It was official policy of the Communist Party that members must lie about their affiliation. Hence, you couldn’t believe what people swore under oath. So, witch hunts happened, and there were actual spies but hard to tell who was spying because of the lying.
Likewise, the official position of trans activists is to lie. Lie about sex. So you can’t believe what some people say. There will be boys claiming to be girls with incorrect birth certificates. What to do?
Sorry—it’s the TRAs who are responsible for whatever overreach Katie is complaining about.
I don’t know the specifics about state laws and birth certificates of minors or anything really, but I do know a man got to punch several women in the face and won a medal for it because the passport said F. How about we just do the swabs because it’s a clear and irrevocable answer, only needs to be done once, and is about as invasive as the first five seconds of a dental exam.
"How about we just do the swabs because it’s a clear and irrevocable answer, only needs to be done once, and is about as invasive as the first five seconds of a dental exam." And that is exactly why AOC et al. are spreading the lie that "genital inspections of teenage girls" are what's required.
Swabs aren't even necessary. Medical records are already accessible as part of PPEs, and transgender or intersex status can easily be ascertained from that. Trans-identified males aren't ending up in women's sports because the organizations don't know. They're aware and choose to put them in anyway.
That could be true in most cases, but I believe that in some places and in some medical systems they change the sex information in the medical records. I believe this has been a problem in the UK at least. Gender practitioners also misrepresent treatments: labeling the use of cross sex hormones as “endocrine disorder” in order to hide what is really happening.
Moreover, we have too many activist clinicians who would probably be happy to lie about someone’s sex because they believe it’s the right thing to do.
No, I am not confident in anything but cheek swabs because data that should be factual (birth certificates, medical records) have been compromised.
Indeed. As long as we accept the letter on a piece of paper people will work to find ways to change that letter. Chromosomes can’t be edited.
Well but what about Caster Semenya who had undescended testicles?
It’s a badly written law
Yep, because the swab would prove Semenya is male but the birth certificate sex would be an assumption but not a test result. Thus you have to test all girls.
Apparently someone has to pay for them—Katie was objecting to the possibility of every girl’s family having to pay. Perhaps there could be a solution for that.
Emma Hilton is working on an inexpensive test apparently: https://x.com/FondOfBeetles/status/2065328378945601931 And of course being accused by India Willoughby of genocide in so doing.
Wow that’s great. Then the expense issue would be moot.
Correct, in WA you can have the sex on your birth certificate changed - which presents problems beyond youth sports, of course. I was surprised that Katie didn’t mention this. Also, my daughter’s pediatrician did actually check (briefly) “under the hood” as part of a physical, so while it may not be universal, it’s not an insane notion. And adolescents can get pelvic exams; that used to be routine once you started menstruating, though that’s no longer the case. A pelvic exam is more invasive than any sports “genital check” could ever be, but I don’t hear anyone intimating that it’s somehow pervy for a doctor to perform one on a teenager. That’s how this “genital check” nonsense is always made to sound.
Yes, I wasn’t sure of that but *obviously* if birth certificates can be changed, then cheek swabs would be necessary. Katie’s objections puzzle me.
They usually like, feel that area below your stomach and above your vadge. When they press the pubic area they can sometimes tell if there’s something wrong with the bladder , ovaries, etc. They aren’t necessarily looking inside you or touching your vulva but they usually do touch around that area in my experience and could probably tell if something odd was going on there.
“Genital checks” is some great scare tactic marketing on the part of trans activists. Our pediatrician briefly checked “under the hood” of both my son and daughter at every annual check up, and I think that’s a good thing. (I was in the room with them for it until they were about 12) It’s a pretty important part of the body to be checked on periodically. Since physicals are required for participation in sports anyway, and as long as you can have the physical done by your family dr, what’s the problem? If drs get caught lying about the sex of their patients, that’s a different issue.
It sounds like the Washington law is vaguely written. A person's sex should be easily ascertained from their medical record, and while a sports physical doesn't always involve a genital exam, it SHOULD always involve a review of their medical record. In the system I work, sex and gender are annoyingly muddled in the chart (a patient's sex and name might show up differently depending on how you open the chart), but there is a section where you can see the patient's "SEX" and has comments such as, "this person has a uterus" and things like that. So I think it is definitely an exaggeration to say that the law requires genital inspections. But, we do know that activists' harping on that can actually influence clinicians to believe it, much as anti-abortion laws that explicitly have exemptions for e.g. ectopic pregnancies have actually resulted in clinicians getting confused and not appropriately treating ectopic pregnancies (I am not in favor of those laws, to be clear, but using it as an example of how the media and activists can actually will an outcome into existence). So I could see how a law that obviously doesn't require genital inspections could de facto become that.
I wonder how much of such mistaken interpretations are the result of ideological blinders.
Dollarsandsense has the right of this. Trans activists have proven that they will use any rhetorical loophole or categorical uncertainty to advance their agenda, and any law they'll oppose must account for this. There can be no vagaries, no loosely defined terms, and no other opportunity for activist fuckery.
Depending on where you go, you can get SRY testing for under $100. Will insurance cover it? If it's part of a sports physical, probably. I'm not sure that the cost is that big a deal.
I love Jesse, but everyone got his blind spot and with Jesse it's antisemitism.
Understandably, it make it easer to think that people hate you because something you said or did and not because who you are.
Agree! I have several progressive Jewish friends who fall into this trap and I've always wondered if it's because they are in denial and scared (as they should be) of antisemitism being mainstreamed. More comfortable just taking personal blame for other's behaviour than to think the other person's behaviour is the problem. It's the same logic they apply to Israel actually - if only they were nicer, the Palestinians wouldn't hate them!
What is this supposed blind spot? Jesse did an entire episode about the Jews don't count thing which I thought was pretty informative.
what people slowly need to get is that the single issue for these people isn't Palestine, it's not healthcare or even progressive smokescreen like trans rights: it's the deeply ideologically hatred of America, the West, Europe, you name it.
Enjoy elite led, reborn Third Worldism.
That's how you get to firebombing a Jewish granny in front of a synagogue & so fourth.
Greetings from Europe.
I think it’s more grievance culture than a fully formed philosophy. So like, they have been trained ‘colonists bad.’ They can’t see or don’t recall that Jews had a hard time in the USSR and were pogromed in Baghdad around the time of WWII. They don’t remember that Hitler was going after Jews who were assimilated, eating pork, marrying gentiles etc.
So like they see Israel as ‘colonial’ not as like ‘well actually these people must have a safe place to get to, and an army to defend it, this keeps happening and as a group they’re pretty pro-social. We can’t just keep letting this happen to them.’
The other thing, wealthy Arabs and Asians want to access the American market. They are often still very into hierarchy, nepotism, look down on working people etc. Not ALL, but it’s noticeable. They don’t care about our culture here and are happy to dismiss it as being a non-culture or trying to keep middle class people from competing with their kids for internships, university admissions, etc.
They are also very gleeful about insisting to white people you hurt the indigenous people! You killed the Native Americans! They get off on making white people in particular uncomfortable, and if you do actually have native ancestry they’ll tell you you’re faking and it’s a myth etc. This is extremely frustrating because like: not a lot of women came over; a lot of white women died of various stuff, and they did intermarry with native people.
So it’s not I think a coherent philosophy here in the US. It’s spoiled people jockeying for position and trying to undermine the culture and opportunities open to others. But that’s just financially motivated.
Our immigrants are not usually as working class as many of the Muslims in Europe, working class Latinos come here. Still a smattering of working class Irish. But in general it’s a little different here.
The absolute seethe of that “fetishizing ugly colonizer women” tweet. You can be mad your crush went and dated a white girl without making it a political stance (that’s now gained praise from David Duke).
Who is the base of the Democratic Party if not colonizer women!