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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.
This is not accurate, and you know it's not accurate. "I'd be banned if the shoe were on the other foot!" is the favorite complaint of people who are never actually saying the equivalent thing but something entirely different.
Unless you kept doing this after being warned, you would not be banned. You would be warned to address the actual arguments being made and not the person, and not to uncharitably project motives onto them that they have not expressed.
I don't recall anyone saying this explicitly (though I don't doubt you read it that way), but even if someone did say that, there is no rule against making such arguments. People are allowed to make outrageous, specious, or offensive arguments (as defined by the reader) - you are allowed to take issue with them.
Yes, and you're allowed to talk about Jews. As you do. Constantly.
To be clear I am criticizing your comment, not the person who you are responding to (I agree they deserve a warning; although blocking someone and then insulting them is IMO cowardice). Yours comes from a mod position and —
You are implying that I am motivated by “Jew hatred”. But I am not. I have made comments criticizing Islam and mainstream Christianity. Off the top of my head, I think a few months ago I posted about danger of Islam in the West, and some time ago about how bad the “HeGetsUs” campaign was for Christianity. I think I have also made comments about the “religion-ness” of secular progressive America.
Then I will quote:
I suppose it depends on what you mean by “explicit”. Not that the comment deserves to be dinged, but it is an example of how “Jew-hater” does not turn into “Palestinian-hater” when inverted. Even though that comment (clarified in the thread context) implies it is okay to take others’ land if they are less intelligent or developed.
I don’t think I make many top posts on the topic anymore. The “Jewish billionaire group chat” I felt was of legitimate political and cultural interest. I mostly stick to replying when someone else makes a thread on some issue.
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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.
I'd say Matthew 25:40 gets pretty close.
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