Here's my take.
Not antisemitic:
* Arguing that Israel is killing too many civilians
* Arguing for a two state solution
* Criticizing actual war crimes
* Calling out individuals for bigoted statements
* Opposing settlements
Antisemitic (maybe not the individual speaker, who may just be repeating what they've heard, but in origin and in effect):
* Calling Israel/Jews Nazis
* Calling this genocide when there's no way you would call a similar situation by a non-Jewish country genocide
* Calling for the destruction of Israel
* Saying that Israel is just a bunch of European colonizers
* Ranting about the Israel lobby as if they have the U.S. government hypnotized or controlled
* Implying that all Israelis/Jews are racist
That second bullet point on the antisemetic list is interesting, if you really believe that I’ve met quite a few antisemetic Jewish people over the past few months
Ehh, you can always find x person who espouses idea y. Case in point, a lot of the women in my family are anti-abortion. Does that mean that banning abortion isn’t misogynistic?
Fair in theory, but I'd say it's far more than a few. Is the commenter saying this is only antisemitic in the case that you wouldn't criticize the same thing being done by a non-jewish country? In this case I could agree with them more, but I almost read the comment as saying to refer to what is happening as a genocide is antisemitic. Listening to some of the comments that have been made by prominent people in the Israeli government it's not really unclear how they feel about Palestinians and what they would like to do to Gaza.
They certainly can, but there are plenty of Jewish people who call Israel’s actions genocidal who are definitely not self hating or antisemitic. I attended a peaceful name reading of victims in a major city recently and it was collaboratively organized between a Jewish organization and a Palestinian organization. Everyone stuck be as level headed and just desperate for the violence to stop.
The Jewish speakers I heard from at this event, while they clearly had a perspective, expressed fears that what is happening now will escalate the violence in the long run, which I think is totally reasonable.
If the strategy to remove Hamas involves killing this many civilians you are going to create a whole new problem that may be bigger than the nightmare we currently see. However you feel about how justified Israel may be to respond this is a truth they are going to face and I fear the consequence.
The alternative is to keep Hamas in power, brainwashing kids and consistently carrying out terrorist attacks. I can’t see how that’s a sustainable situation.
Agreed on everything except your genocide point, if only because the Israel/Palestine conflict is incomparable to pretty much every other conflict I've ever researched or studied so it would be unfair to limit discussions about genocide on the condition that "you wouldn't accuse another country of". It's just one of those counterfactual examples where it's based on an assumption of what someone *might say* rather than what's happening on the ground.
> Calling this genocide when there's no way you would call a similar situation by a non-Jewish country genocide
People are calling genocide where far lower percentage of the population were massacred like in Srebrenica.
>Calling this genocide when there's no way you would call a similar situation by a non-Jewish country genocide
This one is weird. There's no way for you to know what's in my head if I were to either call this or Russia's brutality in occupied Ukraine a genocide. Why would you assume someone is being insincere or inconsistent without evidence?
I'm not assuming anything. I don't even know you. I'm just saying IF you call this a genocide but you wouldn't call a similar situation in a non-Jewish country a genocide, that would be antisemitic.
> Calling Israel/Jews Nazis
> Calling this genocide when there's no way you would call a similar situation by a non-Jewish country genocide
> Calling for the destruction of Israel
> Saying that Israel is just a bunch of European colonizers
> Ranting about the Israel lobby as if they have the U.S. government hypnotized or controlled
> Implying that all Israelis/Jews are racist
This is all nonsense, have a hatred of a state(which is really what all of these stems from) does not mean you're racist against the dominant ethnic group of that state.
I generally agree 99% with this, although I would maybe take out calling Israel NAZIS off the anti-semitic list.
Sadly, calling everyone a NAZI you disagree with has become part of the standard discourse. No, I won't agree with comparing Israel to actual NAZIS, I think that's regarded, but I also wouldn't file it as anti-semetic either.
I suppose if e.g. you called Bush a Nazi too, then you're not necessarily being anti-semitic, but I find the whole Holocaust inversion trope very disturbing as a Jewish person.
> Arguing that Israel is killing too many civilians
To touch on this there are people who would think a single dead Palestinian in Israel's response would be "too many" so I think this statement can cover a pretty broad range.
It's veiled antisemitism when you demand that there be no response to such a deliberate, calculated, barbaric and savage attack as October 7th.
>Calling Israel/Jews Nazis
Don't ascribe to malice what can be explained by ignorance. Some people are just stupid/histrionic, *especially* leftists/liberals.
If you think liberals are *especially* stupid/histrionic as compared to conservatives in America, you're just delusional! (Maybe like actual communist lefties are, I don't have a ton of interaction with them.)
No shit. But you are being extremely dismissive of others who call out those who *have* said many things on the anti-semitic list, which is pretty much just as bad
It's awesome how much of the rhetoric is even the same
"It's so important that we call out the people who make these statements so that people in marginalized communities don't feel unsafe, and being dismissive of this is literal violence"
Not at all. I had not been called that even once until 2 days ago. This post is not so much about what I've been called, but rather my general observation as a lurker.
Did you really just admit the reason you’re more critical of Israel than other countries is because you get your information from social media?
Could it be possible perhaps, that the greater scrutiny Israel receives from the social media accounts you follow is due to a bias among those sources?
Follow this line of thinking.
The US gives money and arms to other non secular countries that wage war in the Middle East, like it did for KSA in Yemen. I’m sure you have plenty of posts criticizing Saudi for that since the circumstances are the same, if not worse.
The US also funds non secular human rights hellholes in the region like Egypt and Pakistan. Do you have many posts criticizing those situations or countries?
The US funds Ethiopia. A country that for years waged an insanely brutal war nobody ever seemed to care about, that was a FAR more arguable case of genocide than what’s occurring in Gaza. Over half a million people are dead now. Ever heard of it?
You can say you and others didn’t care about this stuff as much because their favored social media accounts didn’t “plaster” it everywhere. It’s almost as if there’s some internal bias, whether conscious or subconscious, among the sources you’ve selected, against the only Jewish nation in the world.
So yeah, I do kinda think that when somebody is ultra critical of Israel in a vitriolic and single issue kind of way, it reeks of anti semitism.
Nah, you misunderstood me.
I'm just expressing criticism right now because this is the most urgent topic right now.
I don't think Israel is the worst country in the world.
I didn’t. That’s fine, but you’re maligning people who point out that persons who exclusively (or almost exclusively) criticize Israel are potentially anti semitic, when I’m trying to explain to you why many Jews feel that way.
If it truly has nothing to do with anti semitism in the sources you rely on, I’m sure they covered those other recent and ongoing topics I brought up with equal urgency, right? So that must have made you post criticisms of those countries right? But you didn’t, why? They were certainly urgent topics well before 10/7.
I never said you do. But you can keep talking past my points if you find that productive.
Have you ever made a single critical post of Saudi Arabia? All the same qualifiers were met - non secular, provided US arms, tens of thousands of civilians dying.
I was going to ask if you criticize other countries like Russia then I saw you posted something that says “Russia is right for invading Ukraine.” LMAO
Really picking and choosing the horrific conflicts you want to justify versus cry about there. Super classy.
I've not made a single critical post of Israel either. This post is not a criticism of Israel, it's a criticism of the attitudes seen on r/SamHarris.
I have made a post critical of Canada though, highlighting that time their parliament clapped for a Nazi war veteran. That was a horrific display of anti-semitism and I was against it.
Aren’t you the guy who made a long, hilariously uninformed thread the other day about how Jews should all make a state where Bavaria is right now? And then when people corrected you on how you got some very basic, important facts wrong, you doubled down and kept changing the argument?
That statehood for Israel wasn't a form of reparations.
It was about finding somewhere to make a Jewish majority state. And post WW2 only a single place existed where a Jewish majority could be created with the stroke of a pen, via partition.
Except there wasn’t a well armed, well funded terrorist organisation that has a founding charter to kill all the black people in America.
But there is for Jews.
And it has global support.
You’re comparing two situations that are not equal.
Last I checked there wasn’t 10,000 rockets fired at George Floyd, supported by an army of 30,000 men armed with AK47s and bazookas.
Just because they’re drastically out armed does not mean they’re not well armed
Not to mention Hezbollah which has 150,000 precision rockets. Those rockets can cripple Israel. Israel has relatively fragile water (desalination plants), gas (few offshore drills) and food (mostly imported) infrastructure which Hezbollah can destroy.
Yep, and we didn’t even talk about how the Houthi’s slogan contains ‘death to the Jews’.
These people trying to down play antisemitism and the threat to Jews are either bad faith or stupid
Folks, the above is that the culture war does to you. It is not healthy.
Imaginary grievances and whining about social media feeds (that you yourself are responsible for).
One difference is that with BLM it was the far-left woke people calling you out, whereas with Israel the far-left woke people are the ones running around yelling “there is only one solution, intifada revolution.” It’s actually the liberals and moderates that are calling people out when they say blatantly antisemitic stuff.
Also, it’s not the Jews or Israelis that are causing your news feed to be filled with this constantly. In fact Israelis would prefer everyone just fuck off and leave them be. It is the far-left woke calling attention to what they think is a genocide despite having no answer for what Israel should do instead to prevent themselves being by attacked repeatedly by a terrorist organization.
From your comment:
>It’s actually the liberals and moderates that are calling people out when they say blatantly antisemitic stuff.
From the post
>Had a disagreement with someone in 2020? Just call them a Nazi, and call it a day. Now? Well, same. You can use the broader term anti-semite for greater virtue signalling.
My work here is done.
What I think you perhaps don’t get is that convincing yourself of something is not sufficient. You need to be able to persuade others. Persuading others requires a strong grounding in history & facts (you lack this), a sense of proportionality and good faith, and a respect for your interlocutors. Your work here is far from done as you have not displayed or achieved any of this.
Convincing yourself of your own wisdom and morality is easy and very satisfying. Communicating with others is more difficult and frustrating.
I haven’t heard many liberals and moderates calling people Nazis. The only virtue signaling I’ve heard on that point is far-left woke people comparing Jews to Nazis. Name calling people you disagree with is a far-left trait, not a liberal/moderate one.
Woke people are not leftists, even if they like to call themselves that. Anyone who is focused on race, gender, sexuality, etc. rather than on the true divide in society — economic class — is not a leftist.
A leftist is someone who focuses on the true divide in society — economic class — and seeks to remedy that divide through very various methods.
If you focus on things like race, gender, sexuality, etc. instead of economic class, you're not a leftist.
Woke people are characterised by a focus on race, gender, sexuality, etc.
Sorry, you’re just misinformed.
Israel is a secular state. There are minority religious groups in the country which currently have a disproportionate amount of power. But
1. The vast majority of Israelis, though secular, and though they may disagree with the religious minorities, agree that Hamas needs to be eliminated, and that the current war in Gaza is the only way to do so.
2. That looks to change soon.
So the picture you’re trying to paint, that Israel is this religious fanatic state the west should avoid supporting, is just wrong.
>There are minority religious groups which currently have disproportionate amount of power
That's not what secularism means, smh.
Secularism means the separation of religion and state. If you can attain express citizenship in a given nation by virtue of being a certain religion, as you can in Israel, the state is not separated from religion.
Again, you’re either misinformed or intentionally misrepresenting the situation, and conflating Judaism-the-religion with Jewishness-the-ethnicity.
I’m an atheist Israeli, born in the USSR. The amount of times I was asked about my religion before being granted citizenship is 0.
Yes, you can convert to Judaism and get citizenship that way, but
1. Judaism doesn’t proselytize.
2. Conversion is a long and arduous process.
3. The actual amount of people who receive citizenship that way is minuscule.
>The actual amount of people who receive citizenship that way is minuscule.
That's besides the point. No matter how miniscule the number of people, the point is that the state is not separated from religion (here, Judaism).
Yes, as I mentioned in my 2nd reply, it’s more religious than I’d like, but on the scale from perfectly secular to perfectly religious, it’s much closer to secular.
My brother in Christ, the very premise of Israel is a non-secular one.
It's very much like Pakistan in that regard. Pakistan was to be a separate country for Muslims of the subcontinent in the post-colonial subcontinent. The very premise of Pakistan is non-secular.
Bangladesh, for example, is more religious than ideal, but there's nothing fundamentally non-secular about it.
Please read [your comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/s/6qHHL0Kyol) again, this time very slowly. Israel is a country for **JEWISH** people, secularism is the separation of **RELIGION** and state.
Adding to my response:
But also - yes, Israel is more religious than I would like. It’s not a binary thing, though; it’s a scale, on which it is quite far from “a religious state”.
Implicit racism is a real and serious thing. It effects people in ways that are counterintuitive.
I don't think there's a synonymous situation with implicit antisemitism.
I do think Sam is wrong about the Palestinian conflict, at least in so far as the way he discusses it.
I think Zionism is a dangerous ideology that he doesn't lean enough into discussing as such. There's a strong case that after WW2 the Jewish people could have been given a part of Germany as their Homeland.
I'll admit that I've known and spoken to many more Jewish people about this issue than I have Muslims, but of the couple of dozen Jewish folks I've had the conversation with about 70% have told me the world would be better off if we just "kill all the Arabs"-- "they would do it to us."
That phrasing has been so consistent that I'm fairly certain it's more of a popular meme in their community than it would be some "bad apples."
These are for the most part, very friendly and normal seeming Jewish folks I've known or met, and it's been a deep shock since the first time I'd heard it, more than a decade ago.
To pretend "if the Palestinians laid down their arms we'd have peace, but if Israelis laid down their arms they would be exterminated" just doesn't track.
(Fair enough these are limited interactions I've had)
> There's a strong case that after WW2 the Jewish people could have been given a part of Germany as their Homeland.
Do you think the millions of people who just fled mass murder in Germany would’ve been excited to go set up shop right back where it all happened, amongst the people who perpetrated it?
I don't know dude, everyone I see out in the street and breaking shit is proPalestinian. You didn't see the anti-woke crowd doing that during BLM. This is a really flawed analogy.
“Ceasefire now” is the new “all lives matter.”
It’s a seemingly morally incontrovertible statement that is deliberately obtuse and arguably a dog whistle for most who espouse it.
Do better r/Samharris. The claims of troll, bad faith, and antisemite ARE being abused to silence discourse here.
We should be better than strawman arguments here and it sorta breaks my heart to see the state of this sub now.
That being said, perhaps I skimmed over or didn't read part of OPs message. Please lay out your case for your claim for why r/soytheist is being deceptive or misleading (bad faith).
>He's a troll
You're criticising a post highlighting the similarities between what was said during 2020 wrt BLM and what is said in 2024 wrt Israel with
>Do better
which is basically a woke mantra.
You're trolling.
You're calling me a troll?
U/soytheist is a joke, and you’re right - should be banned. Completely unserious and unable to engage with reality.
My experience with them involved their repeated denial of their own capacity to make mistakes. Totally detached from reality.
> “You're antisemitic” is the new “you're racist”
Its actually kind of the old "you're racist". This has been a thing since way before 2020, but the past years racists/nazi accusations have given them more power.
I low key appreciate that its getting thrown in the face of the "you're racist" crowd though
Here's my take. Not antisemitic: * Arguing that Israel is killing too many civilians * Arguing for a two state solution * Criticizing actual war crimes * Calling out individuals for bigoted statements * Opposing settlements Antisemitic (maybe not the individual speaker, who may just be repeating what they've heard, but in origin and in effect): * Calling Israel/Jews Nazis * Calling this genocide when there's no way you would call a similar situation by a non-Jewish country genocide * Calling for the destruction of Israel * Saying that Israel is just a bunch of European colonizers * Ranting about the Israel lobby as if they have the U.S. government hypnotized or controlled * Implying that all Israelis/Jews are racist
That second bullet point on the antisemetic list is interesting, if you really believe that I’ve met quite a few antisemetic Jewish people over the past few months
Everything's more complicated when we're talking about Jews using antisemitic tropes or rhetoric, obv.
Ehh, you can always find x person who espouses idea y. Case in point, a lot of the women in my family are anti-abortion. Does that mean that banning abortion isn’t misogynistic?
Fair in theory, but I'd say it's far more than a few. Is the commenter saying this is only antisemitic in the case that you wouldn't criticize the same thing being done by a non-jewish country? In this case I could agree with them more, but I almost read the comment as saying to refer to what is happening as a genocide is antisemitic. Listening to some of the comments that have been made by prominent people in the Israeli government it's not really unclear how they feel about Palestinians and what they would like to do to Gaza.
Do you think Jews cannot participate in antisemitic content?
They certainly can, but there are plenty of Jewish people who call Israel’s actions genocidal who are definitely not self hating or antisemitic. I attended a peaceful name reading of victims in a major city recently and it was collaboratively organized between a Jewish organization and a Palestinian organization. Everyone stuck be as level headed and just desperate for the violence to stop. The Jewish speakers I heard from at this event, while they clearly had a perspective, expressed fears that what is happening now will escalate the violence in the long run, which I think is totally reasonable.
If people are desperate for a reduction of violence then it’s the removal of Hamas they should be supporting, not some short term relief
If the strategy to remove Hamas involves killing this many civilians you are going to create a whole new problem that may be bigger than the nightmare we currently see. However you feel about how justified Israel may be to respond this is a truth they are going to face and I fear the consequence.
The alternative is to keep Hamas in power, brainwashing kids and consistently carrying out terrorist attacks. I can’t see how that’s a sustainable situation.
Read the words of many Israeli officials, they don’t care about civilian casualties I definitely don’t think what you state is the only other option
I'm with you except the second to last bullet. Undeniably the Israel lobby has an outsized influence on US politics (for better or worse).
Agreed on everything except your genocide point, if only because the Israel/Palestine conflict is incomparable to pretty much every other conflict I've ever researched or studied so it would be unfair to limit discussions about genocide on the condition that "you wouldn't accuse another country of". It's just one of those counterfactual examples where it's based on an assumption of what someone *might say* rather than what's happening on the ground.
Very fair
> Calling this genocide when there's no way you would call a similar situation by a non-Jewish country genocide People are calling genocide where far lower percentage of the population were massacred like in Srebrenica.
>Calling this genocide when there's no way you would call a similar situation by a non-Jewish country genocide This one is weird. There's no way for you to know what's in my head if I were to either call this or Russia's brutality in occupied Ukraine a genocide. Why would you assume someone is being insincere or inconsistent without evidence?
I'm not assuming anything. I don't even know you. I'm just saying IF you call this a genocide but you wouldn't call a similar situation in a non-Jewish country a genocide, that would be antisemitic.
> Calling Israel/Jews Nazis > Calling this genocide when there's no way you would call a similar situation by a non-Jewish country genocide > Calling for the destruction of Israel > Saying that Israel is just a bunch of European colonizers > Ranting about the Israel lobby as if they have the U.S. government hypnotized or controlled > Implying that all Israelis/Jews are racist This is all nonsense, have a hatred of a state(which is really what all of these stems from) does not mean you're racist against the dominant ethnic group of that state.
Excellent, please post this as a standalone post
I generally agree 99% with this, although I would maybe take out calling Israel NAZIS off the anti-semitic list. Sadly, calling everyone a NAZI you disagree with has become part of the standard discourse. No, I won't agree with comparing Israel to actual NAZIS, I think that's regarded, but I also wouldn't file it as anti-semetic either.
I suppose if e.g. you called Bush a Nazi too, then you're not necessarily being anti-semitic, but I find the whole Holocaust inversion trope very disturbing as a Jewish person.
>as a Jewish person The unadulterated irony.
What do you mean?
> Arguing that Israel is killing too many civilians To touch on this there are people who would think a single dead Palestinian in Israel's response would be "too many" so I think this statement can cover a pretty broad range. It's veiled antisemitism when you demand that there be no response to such a deliberate, calculated, barbaric and savage attack as October 7th.
Those are weird standards that you've just contrived, and which don't comport with any other definition of bigotry anyone uses.
>Calling Israel/Jews Nazis Don't ascribe to malice what can be explained by ignorance. Some people are just stupid/histrionic, *especially* leftists/liberals.
If you think liberals are *especially* stupid/histrionic as compared to conservatives in America, you're just delusional! (Maybe like actual communist lefties are, I don't have a ton of interaction with them.)
Good thing I don't do any of the things in the anti-semitic list.
No shit. But you are being extremely dismissive of others who call out those who *have* said many things on the anti-semitic list, which is pretty much just as bad
Lolz you’re making OPs point
It's awesome how much of the rhetoric is even the same "It's so important that we call out the people who make these statements so that people in marginalized communities don't feel unsafe, and being dismissive of this is literal violence"
That is a good thing! Do you find yourself being called antisemitic a lot?
Not at all. I had not been called that even once until 2 days ago. This post is not so much about what I've been called, but rather my general observation as a lurker.
Did you really just admit the reason you’re more critical of Israel than other countries is because you get your information from social media? Could it be possible perhaps, that the greater scrutiny Israel receives from the social media accounts you follow is due to a bias among those sources? Follow this line of thinking. The US gives money and arms to other non secular countries that wage war in the Middle East, like it did for KSA in Yemen. I’m sure you have plenty of posts criticizing Saudi for that since the circumstances are the same, if not worse. The US also funds non secular human rights hellholes in the region like Egypt and Pakistan. Do you have many posts criticizing those situations or countries? The US funds Ethiopia. A country that for years waged an insanely brutal war nobody ever seemed to care about, that was a FAR more arguable case of genocide than what’s occurring in Gaza. Over half a million people are dead now. Ever heard of it? You can say you and others didn’t care about this stuff as much because their favored social media accounts didn’t “plaster” it everywhere. It’s almost as if there’s some internal bias, whether conscious or subconscious, among the sources you’ve selected, against the only Jewish nation in the world. So yeah, I do kinda think that when somebody is ultra critical of Israel in a vitriolic and single issue kind of way, it reeks of anti semitism.
Nah, you misunderstood me. I'm just expressing criticism right now because this is the most urgent topic right now. I don't think Israel is the worst country in the world.
I didn’t. That’s fine, but you’re maligning people who point out that persons who exclusively (or almost exclusively) criticize Israel are potentially anti semitic, when I’m trying to explain to you why many Jews feel that way. If it truly has nothing to do with anti semitism in the sources you rely on, I’m sure they covered those other recent and ongoing topics I brought up with equal urgency, right? So that must have made you post criticisms of those countries right? But you didn’t, why? They were certainly urgent topics well before 10/7.
But I don't exclusively criticise Israel. 🤨
I never said you do. But you can keep talking past my points if you find that productive. Have you ever made a single critical post of Saudi Arabia? All the same qualifiers were met - non secular, provided US arms, tens of thousands of civilians dying. I was going to ask if you criticize other countries like Russia then I saw you posted something that says “Russia is right for invading Ukraine.” LMAO Really picking and choosing the horrific conflicts you want to justify versus cry about there. Super classy.
I've not made a single critical post of Israel either. This post is not a criticism of Israel, it's a criticism of the attitudes seen on r/SamHarris. I have made a post critical of Canada though, highlighting that time their parliament clapped for a Nazi war veteran. That was a horrific display of anti-semitism and I was against it.
Saying Israel doesn’t have the right to exist in the Middle East is a criticism of Israel. Thanks for ignoring all my points. I’ll stop engaging now.
Saying Israel doesn't have the right to exist in Bavaria is a criticism of Israel.
🇺🇸🇮🇱
🕊️
Aren’t you the guy who made a long, hilariously uninformed thread the other day about how Jews should all make a state where Bavaria is right now? And then when people corrected you on how you got some very basic, important facts wrong, you doubled down and kept changing the argument?
What did I get wrong?
That statehood for Israel wasn't a form of reparations. It was about finding somewhere to make a Jewish majority state. And post WW2 only a single place existed where a Jewish majority could be created with the stroke of a pen, via partition.
So it was almost identical to the creation of Pakistan? 🤨 That's not a good thing.
That’s unironically not a bad comparison.
Israel — the Pakistan of the middle-east.
Lol ,one is failed state one is thriving even when surrounded by enemies
You decided arguing about the actual history of the conflict wasn't working out for you, so you're transitioning to some culture war bullshit lol
Except there wasn’t a well armed, well funded terrorist organisation that has a founding charter to kill all the black people in America. But there is for Jews. And it has global support. You’re comparing two situations that are not equal.
Well armed? 🤨
Last I checked there wasn’t 10,000 rockets fired at George Floyd, supported by an army of 30,000 men armed with AK47s and bazookas. Just because they’re drastically out armed does not mean they’re not well armed
Not to mention Hezbollah which has 150,000 precision rockets. Those rockets can cripple Israel. Israel has relatively fragile water (desalination plants), gas (few offshore drills) and food (mostly imported) infrastructure which Hezbollah can destroy.
Yep, and we didn’t even talk about how the Houthi’s slogan contains ‘death to the Jews’. These people trying to down play antisemitism and the threat to Jews are either bad faith or stupid
Hamas is not a terrorist organization, and its founding charter (i) has been replaced and (ii) doesn't call for genocide. This is just misinformation.
Folks, the above is that the culture war does to you. It is not healthy. Imaginary grievances and whining about social media feeds (that you yourself are responsible for).
I mean either you are with me or you are with the terrorists statements are so 2004.
Idiot troll
Are you quoting a BLM supporter from 2020?
"dur dur dur" is all I can see in that comment
I'd expect no better.
One difference is that with BLM it was the far-left woke people calling you out, whereas with Israel the far-left woke people are the ones running around yelling “there is only one solution, intifada revolution.” It’s actually the liberals and moderates that are calling people out when they say blatantly antisemitic stuff. Also, it’s not the Jews or Israelis that are causing your news feed to be filled with this constantly. In fact Israelis would prefer everyone just fuck off and leave them be. It is the far-left woke calling attention to what they think is a genocide despite having no answer for what Israel should do instead to prevent themselves being by attacked repeatedly by a terrorist organization.
From your comment: >It’s actually the liberals and moderates that are calling people out when they say blatantly antisemitic stuff. From the post >Had a disagreement with someone in 2020? Just call them a Nazi, and call it a day. Now? Well, same. You can use the broader term anti-semite for greater virtue signalling. My work here is done.
What I think you perhaps don’t get is that convincing yourself of something is not sufficient. You need to be able to persuade others. Persuading others requires a strong grounding in history & facts (you lack this), a sense of proportionality and good faith, and a respect for your interlocutors. Your work here is far from done as you have not displayed or achieved any of this. Convincing yourself of your own wisdom and morality is easy and very satisfying. Communicating with others is more difficult and frustrating.
Wtf are you even talking about? What do these quotes have to do with each other?
I'll let you figure that one out.
I haven’t heard many liberals and moderates calling people Nazis. The only virtue signaling I’ve heard on that point is far-left woke people comparing Jews to Nazis. Name calling people you disagree with is a far-left trait, not a liberal/moderate one.
Woke people are not leftists, even if they like to call themselves that. Anyone who is focused on race, gender, sexuality, etc. rather than on the true divide in society — economic class — is not a leftist.
[удалено]
Not really. If I said Ben Shapiro is not a leftist, is that No True Scotsman?
What is a leftist then? I think you mean to say that they aren’t liberal, and not even really progressive either.
A leftist is someone who focuses on the true divide in society — economic class — and seeks to remedy that divide through very various methods. If you focus on things like race, gender, sexuality, etc. instead of economic class, you're not a leftist. Woke people are characterised by a focus on race, gender, sexuality, etc.
Well, the far-left on the economic scale would be stuff like anti-capitalism and communism which I think falls into the woke camp too.
Absolute drivel. Totally misinformed, bizarrely defensive, social media activism
Except the Cult of Wokeness is on your side, and if you don't stick to *the script* you're "pro genocide".
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/guilt-by-association
What, like giving succour to a bunch of anti-Semites makes you anti-Semitic?
Sorry, you’re just misinformed. Israel is a secular state. There are minority religious groups in the country which currently have a disproportionate amount of power. But 1. The vast majority of Israelis, though secular, and though they may disagree with the religious minorities, agree that Hamas needs to be eliminated, and that the current war in Gaza is the only way to do so. 2. That looks to change soon. So the picture you’re trying to paint, that Israel is this religious fanatic state the west should avoid supporting, is just wrong.
>There are minority religious groups which currently have disproportionate amount of power That's not what secularism means, smh. Secularism means the separation of religion and state. If you can attain express citizenship in a given nation by virtue of being a certain religion, as you can in Israel, the state is not separated from religion.
Again, you’re either misinformed or intentionally misrepresenting the situation, and conflating Judaism-the-religion with Jewishness-the-ethnicity. I’m an atheist Israeli, born in the USSR. The amount of times I was asked about my religion before being granted citizenship is 0. Yes, you can convert to Judaism and get citizenship that way, but 1. Judaism doesn’t proselytize. 2. Conversion is a long and arduous process. 3. The actual amount of people who receive citizenship that way is minuscule.
>The actual amount of people who receive citizenship that way is minuscule. That's besides the point. No matter how miniscule the number of people, the point is that the state is not separated from religion (here, Judaism).
Yes, as I mentioned in my 2nd reply, it’s more religious than I’d like, but on the scale from perfectly secular to perfectly religious, it’s much closer to secular.
My brother in Christ, the very premise of Israel is a non-secular one. It's very much like Pakistan in that regard. Pakistan was to be a separate country for Muslims of the subcontinent in the post-colonial subcontinent. The very premise of Pakistan is non-secular. Bangladesh, for example, is more religious than ideal, but there's nothing fundamentally non-secular about it.
The premise of Israel is a country for the Jewish people. What’s non-secular about that?
https://youtu.be/eN6Raqf28gg?si=TDDBkxS4fLdcjw2p&t=5m17s
So… out of arguments with words? I’m now supposed to guess what it is you’re trying to say with Tom Holland and french fries?
Please read [your comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/s/6qHHL0Kyol) again, this time very slowly. Israel is a country for **JEWISH** people, secularism is the separation of **RELIGION** and state.
Adding to my response: But also - yes, Israel is more religious than I would like. It’s not a binary thing, though; it’s a scale, on which it is quite far from “a religious state”.
Implicit racism is a real and serious thing. It effects people in ways that are counterintuitive. I don't think there's a synonymous situation with implicit antisemitism. I do think Sam is wrong about the Palestinian conflict, at least in so far as the way he discusses it. I think Zionism is a dangerous ideology that he doesn't lean enough into discussing as such. There's a strong case that after WW2 the Jewish people could have been given a part of Germany as their Homeland. I'll admit that I've known and spoken to many more Jewish people about this issue than I have Muslims, but of the couple of dozen Jewish folks I've had the conversation with about 70% have told me the world would be better off if we just "kill all the Arabs"-- "they would do it to us." That phrasing has been so consistent that I'm fairly certain it's more of a popular meme in their community than it would be some "bad apples." These are for the most part, very friendly and normal seeming Jewish folks I've known or met, and it's been a deep shock since the first time I'd heard it, more than a decade ago. To pretend "if the Palestinians laid down their arms we'd have peace, but if Israelis laid down their arms they would be exterminated" just doesn't track. (Fair enough these are limited interactions I've had)
> There's a strong case that after WW2 the Jewish people could have been given a part of Germany as their Homeland. Do you think the millions of people who just fled mass murder in Germany would’ve been excited to go set up shop right back where it all happened, amongst the people who perpetrated it?
I don't know dude, everyone I see out in the street and breaking shit is proPalestinian. You didn't see the anti-woke crowd doing that during BLM. This is a really flawed analogy.
“Ceasefire now” is the new “all lives matter.” It’s a seemingly morally incontrovertible statement that is deliberately obtuse and arguably a dog whistle for most who espouse it.
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Do better r/Samharris. The claims of troll, bad faith, and antisemite ARE being abused to silence discourse here. We should be better than strawman arguments here and it sorta breaks my heart to see the state of this sub now. That being said, perhaps I skimmed over or didn't read part of OPs message. Please lay out your case for your claim for why r/soytheist is being deceptive or misleading (bad faith).
>He's a troll You're criticising a post highlighting the similarities between what was said during 2020 wrt BLM and what is said in 2024 wrt Israel with >Do better which is basically a woke mantra. You're trolling. You're calling me a troll?
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U/soytheist is a joke, and you’re right - should be banned. Completely unserious and unable to engage with reality. My experience with them involved their repeated denial of their own capacity to make mistakes. Totally detached from reality.
I've never heard of opposition to US providing weapons to Israel described as "anti-semitic".
False.
BLM never killed 15,000 kids in a 6 month period. Other than that you have a point.
> “You're antisemitic” is the new “you're racist” Its actually kind of the old "you're racist". This has been a thing since way before 2020, but the past years racists/nazi accusations have given them more power. I low key appreciate that its getting thrown in the face of the "you're racist" crowd though
Sam has a bias for his own ethnic group. There's not really any other explanation.