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Notes -
A couple of weeks ago, the NYT Magazine had a long in-depth article about certain factions of Israeli society who tend toward violence against Palestinians. If you ignore the click-baity title of the article, the body seems mostly descriptive, and like the sort of investigative journalism I want to see more of. It's not an overview of the entire conflict, not about the Palestinians, and mostly not about the many Israelis who don't do this. It focuses on groups connected to Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, and their respective Mafdal-Religioius Zionism and Jewish Power parties, which together have 11.67% (14/120) of seats in the Knesset and got 10.84% of the votes in the last election back in November 2022. (Ignoring the existence of Noam for simplicity.)
The upshot seems to be that there's an active minority of Israelis who are intentionally engaging in hostilities against Palestinians, and who are subverting attempts to mitigate those hostilities. The only comparisons that come to mind are areas where gangs and mafia have hollowed out the state, and the example of the US South after the Civil War, working around Reconstruction. Since the number is at least 10%, we have to assume that they're present at most levels of civil society and the military.
Then there were these tweets from Haaretz, about the IDF command losing control over some units. It didn't sound like full "Apocalypse Now" donkey-slaughtering, but still worrisome.
(And there was the IDF reservist who posted a video which effectively threatened mutiny. Of course, it would be wrong to judge an entire group based on the most extreme thing one of them posted online.)
I've got questions in two main areas.
First, how accurate is all this? This stuff passes my "bounded distrust" filter: it seems plausible from what I know of human nature and society, matches what information I have about conditions in Israel and the settlements, and makes sense of some contradictions I'd been seeing regarding the Gazan war. But I'm hoping that people who know more (@Dean seems like one) will chime in. Maybe I'm suffering from Gell-Mann amnesia.
Second, assuming this is roughly accurate, what the heck does Israel do about it? More generally, how can a state recover when a substantial minority refuses to go along with its orders? As anarchists delight in telling anyone who'll listen, a lot of what we think of as "government" is a consensual hallucination. There's fiction about what happens when people say "I won't" or "mind your own business" or "fuck off", but how often does it happen in real life? If we're supposed to "never give an order that won't be obeyed", where does that leave legitimacy when 10% won't obey certain types of orders? Maybe an Israeli Eliot Ness could put together a modern day group of Untouchables, but (going by vote totals) there's over 500,000 Israelis who at least nominally support this agenda. And the political factions that represent them are in the government coalition.
Of course the guys fighting are going to be mad and talk some wild shit. Some of them might even do something about it.
It's called a war. That's how things work.
Go ask the lads in the 82nd Airborne how they'd prosecute the war in Gaza. Even without the personal connection, you'd get an earful.
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You punish them, like any other state should. Failure to punish is complicity.
Punishment will continue until morality improves. They can implement mandatory educstional curricula that aims to dismantle notions of Jewish supremacy. Failure to do this is evidence of complicity.
But they seem incapable. The article looks at how the Shin Bet (Israeli FBI?) is systematically hampered in investigating crimes by settlers against Palestinians, at all levels, and can't even trust its own members.
In my city, there's been a massive increase in gun violence since the BLM protests in 2020. It doesn't seem gang-related, it seems like people feuding, independent drug dealers warring over turf, that sort of thing. The police, in addition to being demoralized, are largely incapable of doing anything about it because the surrounding community won't talk to them, and at least in some cases actively works to hide evidence. Are those police complicit?
We've also had a wave of petty crime because a city attorney refused to prosecute certain types of crime. Eventually this meant that the police stopped making arrests, and then people stopped reporting the crime (and then the crime rate statistics went down, but not because crime stopped happening). That was from just one guy in government making a stand, backed by enough political support that he couldn't be easily replaced. It sounds like Israel has many more people like that.
I suppose the boring answer is to, in whatever order possible, a) get those parties out of government, b) reform government agencies at all levels to enforce the law even-handedly, and c) actually go after anyone and everyone involved in the crimes and cover-ups. Hopefully with a side order of d) removing the settlements completely. But I literally cannot recall an instance of a modern state pulling something like this off. That might well be on me, though - if you've got some examples, I'm all ears.
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Not only is this Gell-Mann amnesia, it's the literal ur example of it. You don't trust the NYT when they imply (never outright say) that MAGA republicans want to destroy American democracy, so why do you trust them with the equivalent reporting on another country? Do you understand Israeli politics well enough to know why ~10% of the Israeli population will vote religious-right regardless of who's leading it? Probably not, and it would take actually living here to get it.
The equivalent is if a European would think that 50% of Americans want to turn the US into literal hands-maid tale. It's a not-even-wrong level understanding.
OK. Perhaps you could try to explain? That's one of the things I was asking for. Just a few paragraphs would help; there's no need for a 5,000 word essay.
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Better to provide light, and real information, than to throw shade. Could you tell us more about things like, what do these 10%ish parties actually believe and want? What's the range of opinion on them in other segments of Israeli society? To what extent is it, I really hate those guys, they're just making everything harder, versus, well I don't agree with them, but I don't mind using them - tell the Palestinians that we'll rein them in if they play nicer, or turn them loose if they don't. Or something else maybe.
He asked if he’s suffering from Gell-Mann amnesia, I answered in the affirmative. It’s not throwing shade, it’s telling a person who doesn’t know algebra and calculus that he can’t contribute to advanced physics. Your response is “well teach him!”, to which I reply: “no”.
I'd really appreciate it if you could teach all of us the basics of what we should know of Israeli politics. I'm sure we'd still be hideously underinformed, but slightly less so.
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I'm always interested in learning more about the domestic politics of other countries. What are some things you think are important to understand that media outlets like the NYT don't tell people?
Politics is a bit similar everywhere, in that people don’t actually vote on policy and the resulting government is nobody’s 1st choice. But when reporting on Israel, suddenly this fact is forgotten.
Israeli politics is tribal, and foreigners don’t understand the tribal landscape. The religious right gets most of its power from the “zionist religious” portion of the population, which is mostly a religious caste. There’s competition over who gets to wield this power, but it’s basically a constant portion of the population that they get to “represent”. That’s with a small caveat, that Likud also has representation from the religious right these days so they’ve also started siphoning those votes a bit.
Nope. Want me to explain why not?
Aside from that, you are making a fully general argument against trusting any sort of institutional reporting, ever. I wouldn't blame you for not reading the article - it's long - but I don't see how you can be this critical in good faith without having read it.
As for the NYT, it gets plenty of details wrong, but it's better than most other American institutional media, and most of its bias comes from selective omission and overt editorializing. If the NYT says that Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, I'll believe them. If NYT says that Trump fell down the steps and hit his head and died, I'll believe them. If they print a quote saying "Trump will take the vote away from women", I'll believe them that someone said those words, although the person might have been reading from a script provided by the reporter.
Why do you think they said that? I certainly didn't say that, and I don't recall them saying it either. But again, it's a long article, maybe it's in there somewhere. Someone would have to read it again to find out.
Again a fully general counterargument with no reference to any details.
This isn't new, or unique to Israel. It has a history in America, although it's harder to see with our FPTP system incentivizing 2 parties, and the increasing nationalization of politics is destroying it, but I remember people who lived in it. It didn't always have the religious angle, but most were close enough. There've been political machines, one-party counties, locally dominant religious groups, political dynasties, and in general, groups of people who vote one way because that's just what people like them do. The ones I'm most familiar with are varieties of "yellow dog Democrat" types in the South. They voted for a particular type of person, for particular reasons. Some of those reasons were more innocent ("I don't like my home being burnt to the ground") and some were not.
And a relevant similarity is that some people categorized as this group were also associated with low-grade terrorism against a disenfranchised population. That is, the various incarnations of the KKK, other similar groups, and independent actors. You can think of it as concentric circles. The circle of people who actually went out and did terrorist stuff was small. The circle of people who provided support and aid was larger. The circle who did neither, but approved of the results of the terrorism, was larger still. And largest was the circle of people who didn't participate, didn't help, didn't even approve, but still provided cover and stonewalled any attempt to stop the terrorism. Because they were still members of the group, and loyalty to the group is a high virtue, and you don't betray members of the group to outsiders.
And that's exactly what the article reminds me of. (Notice I didn't say that the article said that?)
It is generally true that unless you live in a culture, you don’t actually understand it. This is why an anthropologist who wants to have any meaningful understanding of a different society will embed himself in it, and why those who don’t can’t produce any meaningful insight. I don’t mind this point being “fully general” and don’t see this is a counter argument at all. Until you actually get a different culture, you can only project your own background axioms on it.
By the way, it’s almost equally hard to explain American culture (or sub-cultures) to Israelis. Since American media reigns supreme, many Israelis assume that they understand America. In truth they just think of Americans as being Israelis that live in a different place and speak English. The first thing I try to explain to other Israelis about the US is how socially distant your society is in relation to us (no offense, but I usually say “socially retarded” to get the point across). That usually doesn’t help, they’ll still assume that the modal American has e.g a group chat with other parents at day care, or that you talk politics at work, or that everyone wants kids and talks about it openly, or whatever else small background details that they take for granted but is missing in the states (and if you don’t think they’re missing, you’re proving the point).
Also, yes, you shouldn’t trust institutional media. In general, I’d say that most of the world outside one’s close realm of knowledge is almost unknowable without investing considerable effort. I think we only delude ourselves into thinking we know anything about far-away places and domains because it’s hard to admit the opposite.
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What's the tribal landscape like? It it Ashkenazi vote one way while Mizrahi vote another way, or do things split in some other way?
Complex. I’ll try to simplify as much as possible, and keep in mind these are general statements that obviously won’t apply to every individual voter.
First order: Jewish or Arab. Arabs vote for Arab lists (or the Arab list when they unify). Other groups are slightly represented in Jewish parties, but are very minor blocs anyway.
Second order: Jewish religiosity. There are several factions, but in general various Mizrahi-Haredi vote Shas, various Ashkenazi-Haredi vote Yehadut HaTorah (or don’t vote at all, if they’re anti-Zionist), Zionist Religious vote whatever current flavor of Zionist Religious list in this cycle or Likud. Secular and Traditional are the remaining majority.
Third order: Left-Right. This is almost meaningless in terms of policy, and doesn’t conform well to the American Left-Right dynamic, despite that influence continuously seeping in. For example, the right-coded government just implemented food stamps, and the left-coded Meretz stated they’d lower taxes last cycle (they didn’t get in). In broad strokes, ‘right’ leans slightly Mizrahi, slightly poor, rural-but-not-farming, urban poor, and a hawkish rhetoric. Left is the opposite: urban middle-class, rural-farmer and kibbutzim, slightly Ashkenazi, rhetoric can be anything re: Arabs. There are more flavors of left and centre to choose from than right, since Likud ate up most of the right (and is now being eaten from the inside by various pressure groups).
Cool!
If i can bother you for more info - what tribal allegiances have shifted as Israel has moved to the right? E.g. who do all the people who used to vote Labour vote for now?
I don’t know if I’m qualified enough to give you a good answer, to be honest. Labour was strongest before I was born, I wasn’t there to see it.
As far as I can tell, the Israeli left gradually lost power both due to demographic changes and because socialism in Israel failed economically. The biggest turning point was in the late ‘70s when labour lost the plurality vote for the first time, following… a whole bunch of stuff, really. Wiki has a long list under ‘history’ on the 1977 election. As I understand it, and again I wasn’t there, hyper-inflation was one of the biggest factors here. Older people tell of going back to a barter system for some items.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Israeli_legislative_election
I’d say the second biggest inflection point was the stabilization program in the mid 80’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Israel_Economic_Stabilization_Plan
After the Labour-led government distanced itself from socialism in practice, it lost the ideology it was previously offering. Today Labour is less socialist than Shas, and mostly serves as a vehicle for whoever wins leadership there to enter politics. Case in point, Yair Golan just won leadership of Labour - two years ago he lost when trying to gain leadership in Meretz. He just won because he’s perceived as a hero (rightly, I think) due to his actions on October 7.
The same tribe who used to vote Labour today vote for Yesh Atid (Yair Lapid) or Benny Gantz (I don’t even remember his party’s bame off the top of my head). They’re both kinda generic ‘centre’ parties, saying they like good things and dislike bad things. It’s not a good time for Israeli politics, honestly. The tribe’s biggest issue is that they (we?) don’t have as many children as everyone else, so over time the left-urban section of the population has lost a lot of electoral power.
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It lines up with what I've read about the Israeli far right too. MAGA supporters aren't literally like, settling parts of black communities or Mexico to create their own little villages and occassionally killing black people or Mexicans in the process. That's what the Israeli settlement movement is. Ben Gvir, one of the actual most important politicians in Israel and not just a fringe lunatic, is a settler himself. He has faced criminal charges from Israel over hate speech. He was convicted of supporting Kach, which Israel itself classifies a terrorist group. It's not just Gvir, there are other far right politicians like Smotrich too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_Ben-Gvir
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezalel_Smotrich
Claiming that all Israelis support them, or that 50% of Israelis support them, would be wrong I think. Claiming 10% of Israelis support them, I think is accurate.
Maybe you think the Palestinians are all barbarous demons and that the Israeli far right is justified. But the descriptive parts of the NYT article would still be accurate about describing the far right's actions.
LOL. Shortening Ben Gvir to ‘Gvir’ is like shortening ‘McDonald’ to ‘Donald’. You’re betraying a ridiculous lack of familiarity.
You seem confused about the analogy, as well. The analogous act would be that republicans tried to overthrow American democracy on January 6th, and that your former president told you to grab women by the pussy. Does that make more sense now?
Yeah I'm not that familiar. If you want to provide a good defense of why his actions are acceptable instead of just criticzing my familiarity, go ahead.
Those were pretty bad too. Better or worse than Ben Gvir's? I'm not sure.
Why should I defend Ben Gvir? He’s a criminal scumbag. But what do you think he actually did?
You’re still not getting it re: Jan 6th. I’m not passing judgement on it, I mean that the way it’s portrayed by some outlets is ridiculous and over-hyped.
He was a settler, did hate speech, supported a far right terrorist group. If those aren't enough for you or you want specifics I can get them but you seem to agree that he's a criminal scumbag.
It's over hyped in that it isn't literally the worst thing ever, but it's still pretty terrible and Trump is going to trial over it, and it's a major factor in why I think Trump is literally one of the worst major Republicans ever. Similarly, I think the stuff Ben Gvir did was terrible and he has gone to trial and I don't know many Israeli politicians but he sounds like he's one of the worst. In my ideal world both Trump and Ben Gvir would have no public support, and instead more centrist leaders like Romney and Benny Gantz would have popular support.
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You only make assertions but don't back them up
I say trivial things that require no citation. Water is wet, some birds can fly, Trump didn’t actually say he supports Nazis in Charlottesville but some people act like he did.
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The NYT is a Jewish-dominant newspaper filled with Democrats. Of course they will relentlessly malign Trump, because that helps them. But it’s not so clear that they have an interest in criticizing Israel to the same extent. Especially because there is moneyed interest at stake. No one is withdrawing support for the NYT because of misrepresentation about Trump (it was never there to begin with), but they may for criticism about Israel. As we saw with Ivy League schools and the conspiratorial group chat of Jewish billionaires that WaPo wrote about.
is a meme. Is there any evidence that experts by and large find that the NYT misrepresents findings in their field?
Maybe he does? I hate this idea that only Jews living in Israel have the esoteric moral knowledge regarding Israel. Sorry but you have been a controversial nation for decades, lots of people know how Israeli politics work.
This appears to me to be a nonsensical excuse.
It's absolutely a thing.
Any time a NYT article pops up on Meddit you'll see tons of discussion about how incredibly inaccurate the medical content is, often to the point where we can't figure out what the hell is supposed to be going on or what they are talking about.
And I'm not talking things that are political or if you squint have political content (although that stuff always happens) I'm talking full on "they are saying this patient was upset about her cancer but what they are describing isn't a malignancy???"
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The NYT is a public company, but is completely controlled by the Sulzberger family who own a majority of super-voting shares as part of a trust so secure that even they are prohibited from selling them to non-family-members. That is to say that except for the very limited provisions against extreme failures in corporate governance overseen by the SEC and other federal regulators, other shareholders could do nothing if they ran the company into the ground. The current generation Sulzberger has a Jewish grandfather on his father’s side but is otherwise 75% WASP, largely Episcopalian and certainly does not identify as Jewish or practice as such; he is not Jewish even by the standards of most committed antisemites.
What moneyed interest is at stake?
They lose subscription revenue and advertising revenue if they lose the support of organized Jewish groups. They lose advertising because businesses may decide against advertising in the NYT in the same way businesses decided against advertising in Twitter. They may lose subscription revenue through a secondary means: AIPAC, ADL, whoever can damage their pristine image among progressives by finding some misconduct and enlarging it into a narrative.
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Yeah, I don't completely trust the NYT regarding coverage of the Gaza war, but they're not as bad as on some other issues. It's not so much that they're unbiased, but that they seem to have several conflicting biases which sometimes cancel out but sometimes produce divergent biased narratives. This particular article seemed much better than average, maybe because of its historical focus, on a particular issue, that in a certain sense doesn't have anything directly to do with the Gazan conflict.
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Really? Can you explain in detail the Israeli parliamentary system, the various factions that are currently part of the government coalition, how Haradim are currently seen by the right and the left, exactly when the Israeli left and support for a two-state solution collapsed (hint: long before October 7), and numerous other surface-level details about Israeli politics? Not even getting into esoteric or political wonk territory? Do you know how the feelings of Israelis in Tel Aviv and in the settlements differ? Do you know why Netanyahu was on the verge of being turned out just before October 7? Can you explain the controversy that was the top Israeli political issue the day before October 7?
I don't think you can (you, specifically, because your analysis of Israel always begins and ends with "Jews"), and I think very few people can, especially outside of Israel, in the same way that most people in the world have a general understand of American politics (they know we're essentially a two-party system with Republicans=conservative and Democratics=liberal), but how many of them understand the electoral college and why there is so much emphasis on "swing states," the implications of mid-term elections, the factions within the Republican and Democratic parties, and other more complicated details that only someone who is actually knowledgeable about the political system can describe?
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The NYT is a liberal, secular- and reform-Jewish-dominant newspaper. These people are just about fully-assimilated WEIRD anti-nationalists, and have no more love for the conservative religious right in Israel than they do for the conservative religious right in the U.S.
But the article is saying there is a systemic issue in Israel generally, not just regarding the right in Israel. They are also jeopardizing their Democrat interests by publishing things which may lead Zionists shifting to the Republican Party. It’s not as simple as “they are liberal therefore criticize Israel”.
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Re: NYT, it’s a stand-in for media in general. I couldn’t care less about the NYT specifically.
Gell-Mann amnesia is exactly what’s on display here. Like it or not, this is a perfect example: trusting a media report about a subject he’s less familiar with, despite already knowing how the media falsely represents subjects he’s closely familiar with.
I know he doesn’t understand Israeli politics by the things he says in the post. Again, thinking that 10% of Israelis want to because they vote for the same party they’ve always voted for is as ridiculous as thinking anyone who votes R wants to strip women of rights, and everyone who votes D wants to trans all the kids. It’s not even surface level understanding, it’s cartoonish thinking.
“You’ve been controversial for decades”, said the people living on lands stolen by genociding the natives and importing slaves. Who cares what you think?
I mean, republicans aren’t stripping women of rights other than the right to have an abortion. The Israeli settlers are forcibly expelling Palestinians.
You say he doesn’t understand the Israeli religious right. I’ll buy that he’s wrong- what is it, then? What’s its place in Israeli politics, its main appeal to voters, strongest policy positions?
You think people vote according to policy positions? Are you new to politics? They vote to the religious-right party because of the type of kippah they wear - knitted. They vote for the party that has an MK that’s a friend of a friend. They vote the same way their dad did. Does that explain it? Is it any different where you’re from?
Basically every republican could tell you a policy reason or two for supporting republicans(abortion, guns, fossil fuel regulations, tax rates); the majority of non-black democrats could as well, although there's definitely more democrats who vote D because that's what dad did and who don't actually know the difference between the parties and african-americans vote democrat because that's how the ethnic-based political machine lines up(a shocking number of them hold actual policy positions closer to a typical republican).
If what you're saying is that Israeli politics is mostly ethnoreligious political machines, that's certainly believable, although it seems like you could have said so earlier in the thread.
I’m being honest in the way people here actually operate, and I don’t think it’s very different to the US. In the states, I get the impression that people vote for whoever they see as less “icky” rather than based on any actual policy positions. I think this is also evidenced by the way your political campaigns are done, normally without touching much on policy and more on personal details on the opposition.
If you want to know the official party line for any party in Israel you can just google it, you don’t need me for it and you won’t learn anything interesting about the world either.
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Not hydroacetylene, but yes, very. I don’t know anyone who decides his vote based on the candidates’ sartorial choices, and I would severely judge anyone would did. I have relatives who are active in both Democratic and Republican politics, and I would find it unimaginable to vote for someone whose policies I disagreed with just because we happened to be friends. Finally, my grandfather is a die-hard Democrat, my parents are both solid Republicans, and I frequently vote third party. Are you really saying that these are all completely foreign patterns to Israelis?
“Knitted kippa” refers to a specific movement in Judaism. It’s like saying that someone votes for a candidate based on the color of his tie - red or blue. Wikipedia is uncharacteristically helpful here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kippah
Re: voting for friend-of-a-friend, you have the causality reversed. They vote for their party, and in their party they are represented. The MKs that end up in the knesset will be friends-of-friends regardless, because they’re part of the same movement. They’ll know a guy who knows a guy through synagogue. Just like I’m a whatsapp message away from e.g. my mayor, or my own party’s MKs. Do you get what I mean by this? It’s a matter of community, not nepotism.
(Also, you don’t vote for a person, you vote for a party ticket)
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Blue dog democrats campaigning in cowboy boots out of the back of a pickup truck is almost a trope at this point, and I'd guess that a knitted kippah is probably the same place in Israeli society- it indicates a certain level of cultural affinity more than simply being a fashion statement.
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It’s generally acknowledged that humans have moved past 19th century norms. We treat natives as fully human now, and most of the globe also considers Palestinians human now too. So the moral questions are significant. And in the article the oppression of Palestinians is considered both factual and significant by none other than —
Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, once head of Israel’s Central Command
Ami Ayalon, head of Shin Bet from 1996 to 2000
Mark Schwartz, American three-star general, once the top military official working at the United States Embassy in Jerusalem from 2019 to 2021
Judith Karp, then Israel’s deputy attorney general for special duties
These are not exactly renowned antisemites we are talking about. I don’t know anyone more important whose testimony should be heard short of Yahweh appearing on Mt Sinai again with a PowerPoint on his tablet.
To make your defense more explicit, are you arguing that now that you’re done with the genocide, it has become immoral? Was it not immoral in the 19th and 18th centuries, only arbitrarily now when it’s convenient for you?
I get that it's poor form to call out other posters like this, and maybe I'll get punished by the mods, but @coffee_enjoyer is a pretty hardcore Jew-hater*, I wouldn't recommend engaging with him/her for good good-faith takes on anything relating to Jews or Israel.
*This isn't a "boo outgroup" thing btw, I'm pretty sure the poster in question proudly embraces this label.
I don’t mind speaking to actual Nazis, even. I prefer the openness of it really. But thanks for the warning.
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It is poor form - you can note that you know what someone's biases are and that you expect them to have a certain perspective (I have done so myself, because you're not wrong about @coffee_enjoyer) but don't just jump into a conversation to tell someone "Hey, don't waste your time arguing with this guy." It's the same sort of insufferable thing you see everywhere else on the Internet: "Reminder: JK Rowling is a transphobe, Thou Shalt Not Engage with her!" People talking to @coffee_enjoyer can usually figure out for themselves where he's coming from, he doesn't exactly hide it.
Understood, I'll be less snarky in the future. I appreciate the work you guys do.
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“This person’s comments are motivated by pure racial animus” is uncharitable. Were I to say that a Jewish poster who continually defends Israel is motivated by unadulterated racial hatred against Palestinians, and smeared him as an Arab-hater, clearly that would be rule-breaking and I would be banned. Yet there have actually been commenters who have cited the IQ of Jews as reason for why they deserve their illegal territorial conquest.
“Jews” have been a steady culture war issue this year because of Israel and the protests. And because of their over-representation in influential American positions of power, organized Jewish groups have been worthy of discussion for previous years and for years into the future. Since Twitter has become unmoderated it has been shown that normative American discourse includes discussion of the group power dynamics as well. So it is not even a dissident idea anymore.
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I think there are some bad things in the religion, like ethnocentrism.
No more than a Jew who critiques Christian culture is a Christ-hater.
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That’s essentially correct. Morality requires knowledge, so those developments required the moral-scientific realization that humans are equal in regards to basic humanity, and that their primary nature isn’t due to their bloodline. Morality also involves mutually-decided rules of conduct, so nations formed the UN to develop rules on how to treat people (Israel is currently in violation of some UN rules). There was in fact a time when people thought that a slave’s nature was categorically different than a free person’s nature, I think you find that in Aristotle.
Perhaps this highlights the differences between old-style Jewish thought versus new / non-Jewish thought. Traditional Jews believe that God gave them all the rules that they need a long time ago, in the written law of the Torah and in the oral law (despite no evidence of an oral law in pre-first century BC Jewish life). As such there can’t be “moral developments” which hinge on human realization because this would violate a precious dogma.
I don’t think it was knowledge. We stopped supporting slavery once machines were capable of at least somewhat reducing human inputs. A slave thus became less necessary. We stopped thinking of genocide as a viable response to natives once we’d finished taking all the valuables land in the West. Genocide is still on their table because there’s still valuable land to be takin and the natives aren’t yet pacified enough to live next to.
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Oh, did you guys miss “though shalt not murder” back then?
Since you bring up the Bible, I'm not really sure anyone can take the Bible seriously. I mean there are people who say they take it seriously, but generally they cherrypick the things they want to, in order to justify what they want to justify all along. The flip-side of this is, "ha but what about 'thou shalt not murder'" is the exact same tactic, but in the opposite direction: someone cherrypicking one part of the bible in order to justify what they want.
the Bible already sets a precedent that genocide and war is OK, especially if it's the in-group perpetrating it. The moral-scientific realization that humans are equal is not in the Bible and "thou shalt not murder" is not that realization, at all.
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It is true but historically the extremists pull back when the IDF does. Settlers left the Sinai. Settlers left Gaza. Raze their houses and let the enemy move in and they run scared pretty easily. Most extremist religious Zionists aren’t angry young men, they’re large families with huge numbers of women and children, they’re easy targets.
I don't really care about the settlements, as buildings on pieces of land. It's more the faction of the population that acts in these ways, and said faction happens to be associated with the settlements, and the existence of the settlements puts the faction in proximity to West Bank Palestinians (who have their own set of problems).
If the settlements were razed today, and all the people in them were pulled back deep into Israeli territory, those people wouldn't instantly change their views. They'd still vote, and would still be in the IDF and the police and all other branches of the government. They'd still have access to Israeli Palestinians. And anything going on in Gaza that's attributable to them, would still be happening. Or at least, that's what it seems like to me?
Pretty much. Or at least, it's a very reasonable understanding. Your bounded distrust filter seems healthy.
All I'd additionally add is the reminder is that there are many, many forms (and reasons) of non-compliance/active subversion of a state, such that it can be anti-value to conflate groups and rationals too aggressively lest you start implying/believing that all groups conduct [worst act of subversion A] for [worst rational D] when really groups doing [subversion A] are doing so for [less malign rational C] and groups with [worst rational D] are reasonly only doing [marginal acts of subversion B]. If there's a reason to be hesitant about the NYT piece, it's in this conflation risk.
As for what you do about different groups, that depends on the groups and the nature of the subversion and the nature of your democratic checks and balances. Military groups in particular, however, can generally be cracked down on with military law, as a refusal to abide by lawful orders is anathema to the principles of civilian control of the military when said lawful orders are derived from civilian leadership-set policies. Others parts, however, may be prosecued on criminal lines, or may not be criminal at all- the ability to challenge the state is inherent to an actual democracy.
But ultimately, a lot of government is based on deference to the government from the bottom up, not top-down control. Non-compliance and apathy, let alone active disagreement or opposition, routinely subvert government attempts at policy implementation.
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