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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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Another day, another controversy about what is antisemitism and what is legitimate criticism of Israel.

This time, a German architecture prize was rescinded over the recipient signing a letter condemning Israel.

The Athens-based artist and author James Bridle, [...], was announced in June as the recipient of the Schelling Architecture Foundation’s theory prize, [...]

Bridle was informed in an email that the foundation’s committee had decided unanimously not to award them the prize because Bridle was among the several thousand authors who signed an open letter calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions.

Of course, the Guardian is not quite sure how the founder of the prize is called, oscillating between Schelling and Schilling:

The foundation’s prizes, which have been awarded since 1992, are named after the late German architect Erich Schilling.

The letter in question is here. Key passages:

the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century.

We still have 3/4 of that century to go, but good job being optimistic!

This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months.

This would at least be debatable.

Therefore: we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.

Fair enough.

the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law.

That would be the the general right self-determination of peoples, as mentioned in the UN charter? Does this also apply to the Uighur, the Kurds, the Basques, the Catalans and so on?

Or is the relevant law the limited recognition of Palestine, or the Oslo Accords?

Was the Hamas rule before the Oct 7 a shining example of self-determination?

Personally, I am somewhat sympathetic to calls to stop the IDF from bombing the hell out of Gaza. I am also fine with demanding that Israel should stick to the Oslo accords in the West Bank and dismantle their illegal settlements.

But to demand political autonomy in the context of Gaza is where I get off the train. The force of political autonomy in Gaza is called Hamas. Their primary objective is to sabotage any peace process by murdering random residents of Israel. Asking for political autonomy for Gaza is like asking for political autonomy for Germany in 1946.

Overall, I don't think that the letter is plainly antisemitic. If the author had signed a similar pledge against Chinese institutions for the Uighur genocide, and also demanded self-determination for the Kurds, I would tend to call them a general advocate for oppressed people. If their only political topic is Israel, then that would be a bit dubious.

This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months.

I really hate these weasel words, you see this all the time. It's also true to say "this isn't a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for month." Because clearly there is strongly differing opinions on this controversial major international conflict. But I suppose "this is or isn't a genocide depending on which experts you ask to support your politicial position" isn't particularly useful to the purpose of the letter.

And I say this as somone who is probably more favourable to the Palestinians than most people here.

I find overly obsessing about anti black racism, antisemitism, misogyny to be an example of being a racist in favor of blacks, Jews, sexist in favor of women, etc, etc. The whole ism obsession is about people who are racists in favor of these groups and against other groups. It is stupid to take the concept seriously and when doing so one becomes a gullible useful idiot to people who are ironically far worse racists than the people they whine about.

A lot of people through such one sided obsessions become that despite their virtue signalling. To overly discuss antisemitism and not anti palestinian racism, does not make the first truer and the second false, it just makes people biased and ironically worse or actual racists over most people they complain about.

They are just accusations to get people to be foolishly overly guilty about what they oughtn't be.

The reality is that Jews but also non Jewish Jewish supremacists both behave like and take positions that strongly disrespect the rights of other nations. At times like today, with murderous consequences. In addition to the ridiculous war crimes including, rape and protests in favor of raping, in the USA for example majority of American Jews even more than black Americans oppose over 70% the preservation of European civilization when polled.

Jewish supremacists who are those using these term (like most whining about anti black racism are black supremacists) are completly incapable of being even handed and compromising with the continued existence and rights of other ethnic groups and compromising with moderate nationalism. The Jews as a people have a strong pervasive immoral Jewish supremacist ideology of which zionism is one angle. Zionism isn't about opposing migration, or keeping a limited Israel that compromises with other nations including Palestinians, as majority Jewish, but is expansionist and extreme nationalists.

Similiarly on the basis that european nationalism can threaten Jews and other so called minorities, they are unable to compromise with even the existence of European nations.

In all honesty, although I notice patterns and will make accurate negative accusations about ethnic groups where the patterns apply, I am willing to accept existence of exceptions and I am a curious observer who hope for improvement and want to see how behaviors among groups evolve. I don't expect miracles though. I have a problem with people who don't belong in groups that such narratives are widespread, who are supremacists for such group, while I am not going to be an asshole to someone who might belongs to a bad behaving group but isn't a supremacist, of which non compromising with the collective ethnic group of rights is an important component. Whether someone is doing it openly as a nationalist, or being sneaky about it, its the same to me and I don't buy or care for any excuses. Albeit a nationalist who is nationalist for X group while arguing that Z group doesn't exist or doesn't have a right to exist, and is sneaky about it, is just being a sneaky supremacist.

In regards to the concept of racism, I consider it to be about unfair treatment, and much of the things that people whine as racism are not only not unfair treatment but those whining are promoting unfair treatment. Like if a communist complained I am classist for not giving my home to the entire community. The communist way of understanding isms is utterly broken and ought to be abandoned.

When a group of people behaves horribly towards others it becomes quite rich to obsess about racism towards them. Only in a very limited manner is unfairness towards them a legitimate issue and only when aknowledging the harm they do to others and taking more seriosuly what is in fact a more serious issue. It is the only way to objectively take this issue.

So you can't choose to be a racist in favor of the Jews so pro Jewish racists don't call you a bad name.

A negative reaction to horrible behavior is one of the only ways to control it. Secondly, if group X is trying to dig the grave of group Y and Z, it is insane to obsess about whether you are insufficiently sympathetic to them. People who are massive pro X racists who never strive to be at all fair or objective and so quick to label others as haters and ists, should not be taken seriously.

Ideally, groups try to strive for a win win position. If a group's position is I win, and fuck you all the rest, and you need to support me, or you are evil racist, and fuck your sovereignty and your own interests, then the idea of obsessing about being unfair towards them is a tool for being racist in their favor. But also it is more about being foolish and insane.

So the concept of the, to use a Jewish word, schmuck is a more useful way to understand the whole bullshit issue over the issue of racism/antisemitism. It is the key element of it.

It is actually incredibly dangerous how Jewish supremacists promote totalitarianism and since Stalin made antisemitism a death penalty crime, he has found many admirers of this kind of behavior, not just because of persecuting people but because the issue is also about interest prioritations. If Palestinians or Europeans have human rights, or even Lebanese, then that is antisemitism. If in addition to rights of not being bombed to death for greater Israel, or preserving their nation and not self destruction, or not being discriminated, or not being dominated by a foreign lobby ngos (whose existence is also antisemitism supposedly to akwowledge according to the dishonest). My view on the matter is that these isms that are about supremacy and zero rights of those slandered, is the number one problem.

So my approach would be to criminalize all organizations including political parties doing so, or reform them so this agenda ends by making the agenda illegal but the organization can continue if it abandons it. Some organizations that is what they are about should just be made outright illegal though. And to start arresting those who are part of attempts to strip people of their national rights, of rights to tell the truth, such as those who lobbied or voted for hate speech laws. And also to remove defamers from controlling platforms and treat such defamation as rhetoric we are better without and not something to pollute dominant public discourse. And to the extend and countries that there has been persecution on the issue to apply the rules on the persecutors while being more willing to forgive randoms who spewed some BS but weren't out to keep promoting propaganda, and didn't abuse a significant position of power, or have sufficiently saw the light on the issue and changed teams.

But there must a genuine idea of defaming people as all sorts of ists by people who are pro jewish or pro black or pro migrant or anti XYZ racists, is a very big deal, and something to be condemned and not to be tolerated. If such people were to be subject to condemnation and removal from the position to spew their poison, humanity would avoid future catastrophes and fix the current massive problems created by this shit movement. Principles of which include things Communist defame as ism, like the existence of nations and people (albeit most people pretending to be against nations are hardcore blood and soil nationalists about some ethnic groups at least) need to be reasserted. While those who pretend to hold principles like universal nationalism and self determination only to play motte and bailey and disrespect it completely and support the destruction of their ethnic outgroups, need to be sidelined.

Unfortunately Jewish supremacists do this (and are the dominant strain of Jewish influence and even of non Jews who are pro Jewish), but not only those. You will find many people who are pro Palestinians but also support mass migration in the west and whine about fascism, nazi, racism when it comes to the existence of European nations. In general this is a guarantee for never ending conflict and I prefer nationalism for your own but with limits in favor of existence of foreign nations elsewhere. The Jewish way, that is copied by others is to look for schmucks, who will buckle under the pressure of being defamed, or manipulated by some disingenuous argument, under the presumption that you will always keep getting away with it, until you create your Jewish Reich. I don't think it will work as well as Jewish supremacists think it will and it is disgustingly immoral as well.

Morally speaking too, we need to sideline these kind of people over those who are in favor of a system of coexistence, and continued existence of different nations and civilizations. That is national sovereignty, enforced borders, preservation of ethnic groups, and where possible nation states. Where it isn't possible, for example in a place that has been historically multiethnic, you at least can preserve the country, and you don't promote that the native ethnic group doesn't exist, and allow them to follow a path to being eliminated from history.

The Jews as a people have a strong pervasive immoral Jewish supremacist ideology of which zionism is one angle.

Similiarly on the basis that european nationalism can threaten Jews and other so called minorities, they are unable to compromise with even the existence of European nations.

Unlike the letter signed by the architect, these statements are strangely congruent with old European tropes of antisemitism. Per Wikipedia, some 8% to 11% of the 'eligible' Jewish population (that is, the ones being allowed to migrate to Israel) live in Europe. Are you seriously suggesting that their purpose is to destroy their nations from the inside to further some Jewish-controlled New World Order? (Also, the reason that there are not more of them is that in 1945, there were very few Jews left in Europe due to antisemitism, and quite a few were understandably reluctant to return after the war.)

When a group of people behaves horribly towards others it becomes quite rich to obsess about racism towards them.

I disagree. Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, behaved pretty horrible, but that does not invalidate your concerns about racism against Gazans. No matter what you and the wokes think, most conflicts in the world are not one-sided fights between the heroic freedom fighters and evil oppressors. Look at the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and you will find that there is plenty to blame on all sides.

Likewise, the Israel-Palestine conflict -- decades of behavior ranging from shitty to crimes against humanity on both sides have locked both sides in a defect-defect equilibrium which is much worse for human striving than a compromise solution would be.

Or the BLM protests. I believe that the median Black shot by US police is a gang member who had it coming. However, that does not mean that there are no victims of excessive police violence fueled by racist perceptions. And that in turn does not mean that the riots were justified.

Whining about false antisemitic tropes follows to the letter pro Jewish anti gentile racist tropes. Just cause you have a bingo card of isms like feminists do, that doesn't make it a valid argument.

You are perpetuating racism and slander by doing so.

Lets not forget that the USSR that made antisemitsm a death penalty crime murdered millions of Christians, a USSR in which Jews were very overepresented among political comisars and among some of the worst and most notorious mass murdering personalities were Jewish. Now, I won't pin all the blame on the Jews, but this and other incidents such as thousands of Jews migrating to fight in Spanish civil war and taking part in murderous conduct against Christians, points that there is a danger and a connection between antisemitism complaining and violence.

We see this with the behavior towards Palestinians.

Of course, I think there is a potential for trouble by different ethnic groups if they are too fanatic in their favor and disrespectful of other groups. And other groups have a right of self defense but also when one behaves badly a reciprocal bad behavior is to be expected. Unlike your one sided rhetoric that wants it all for the Jews, I explained the choice for mutual coexistence and compromise. Those who reject compromise and treat others rights as antisemtisim, supremacy, etc, etc, choose to be the worst racists and not only others have a right of self defense, but when you choose to screw over others, you ought to expect to get screwed over as well. You can't leave people no choice but destruction and boot on their face forever, and make demands to be happy with it. And slander them besides!

Unlike the letter signed by the architect, these statements are strangely congruent with old European tropes of antisemitism. Per Wikipedia, some 8% to 11% of the 'eligible' Jewish population (that is, the ones being allowed to migrate to Israel) live in Europe. Are you seriously suggesting that their purpose is to destroy their nations from the inside to further some Jewish-controlled New World Order? (Also, the reason that there are not more of them is that in 1945, there were very few Jews left in Europe due to antisemitism, and quite a few were understandably reluctant to return after the war.)

American Jews oppose European self preservation. Yes they support destroying European civilization.

Jewish organisations support mass migration, oppose european nationhood, and attack those who push otherwise as nazis, white supremacists, antisemites, etc.

Yes the left and the dominant agenda of American Jews and Jewish influence and the most influential Jewish organisations and dominant agenda on the european question of rich Jewish donors is to destroy Europeans as a people.

It is really incredible for groups (both ideological and a where it is a majority among ethnic groups) to have a disgusting insane extremely destructive agenda and then because their agenda might sound insane and extreme because it is so extreme, pretend the issue is a racist accusation. It is the fault of those who support this agenda that is its so destructive and extreme. Nobody forces majority of X or Y group including other migrant descendant groups than Jews, to follow this destructive agenda.

This is like the Norm McDonald joke of worrying about the backlash if Islamists nuked europe, where the backlash and recognising the issue is the issue he worries about, not the actual problem.

The problem is this agenda, not the recognition. But those who have it and those who deny it and the oscillate between having this agenda and denying it.

You are committing racist rhetoric that is completely false in a manner that is verifiable when claiming that anti European Jews are victims of antisemitism when others say the truth that they are anti european Jews. They should stop being racist against Europeans.

It isn't even a plausible theory, which would still be justifiable, it is the blatant agenda of Jewish organisations, influential Jews, and the majority of American Jews who are quite willing to use their influence.

are you seriously suggesting that their purpose is to destroy their nations from the inside to further some Jewish-controlled New World Order? (Also, the reason that there are not more of them is that in 1945, there were very few Jews left in Europe due to antisemitism, and quite a few were understandably reluctant to return after the war.)

it isn't ridiculous as you are insinuating, it is the opposite, it is ridiculous to deny it.

I am not suggesting anything but stating the situation. This isn't an issue that is actually up to debate, because the facts are not unknown. Jewish anti european racism that supports both the eventual extinction, and Europeans as a lower caste is not an issue where the facts are up to question for you to arrogantly deny and make dark insinuations about people pulling things from their heads. Jews should stop being anti european racists and pro Jewish racists, including non Jews, should stop justifying it and make that demand of Jews and of themselves.

Jews deliberately are pushing for more influence for themselves and others. Whether in greater Israel or in the collective influence of Jewish organisations, laws against antisemitism, preferential treatment, and march on institutions, there is a Jewish supremacist agenda.

There is also a crossover between a Jewish agenda and a leftist/neocon/fake conservative agenda. It is not only Jews who deserve blame here but they do deserve blame. Also some of the non Jews promote this agenda on behalf of Jews and some other ethnic groups and are part of the Jewish supremacists I complain about. There is in fact an agenda to destroy European countries and to create societies dominated by other ethnnic groups that have a caste system of which Jews are a superior caste to Europeans in their homelands. I don't doubt that many of Jews involved in such agendas might love to rule as the superior caste from all, (others seem to also like that but also buy into intersectionality with whites screwed) but maybe the agenda that they have to compromise might be an intersectional one. Or maybe with Jews on top and groups like Muslims or blacks bellow and Europeans at the bottom.

The caste system already exists and is expanding. As is the agenda of denying national existence, representation, demonizing it as nazism and even an agenda of extinction. You are part of this with your false rhetoric about antisemitism towards those who oppose the caste system and oppose the agenda for national extinction of Europeans. Or oppose the agenda against the extinction of national sovereignty and self determination. While if you accepted both the caste system and the agenda for extinction and agreed that is in fact a bad, destructive and immoral racist agenda, you would be progressing into decent behavior.

To empathize again, this agenda is not speculative but a fact. Even if there were speculative elements in ones claims those could be backed by evidence. That is a legitimate field to explore for on issues of fact there can be some relevant issues to explore that aren't fully known. But it is not at all speculative that the Jewish supremacists are a faction today who push their agenda through and then pretend their actual agenda is racism and false accusation from others. When the Jewish supremacists are doing in a verifiable manner exactly what they deny doing.

For example, if someone pushes that people should be subservient to Jews because of the bible, and god blesses those who bless Jews. That is Jewish supremacy.

If it is because of holocaust, oppression, antisemitism, or because if he you don't do that and fail to align you are called a nazi, antisemite, woke, blah, blah, blah, that is the same.

Jewish supremacists who want the destruction of European nations and the strengthening and continuing influence of Jewish nation which includes Jewish organisations and strong Jewish identity is a faction. One that doesn't exist only in Israel. It also includes some non Jews. And there is a crossover between that and the general intersectional coalition. Jewish supremacists are a very core component of it.

Really absurd for people who are a part of this faction to call others woke.

I disagree. Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, behaved pretty horrible, but that does not invalidate your concerns about racism against Gazans. No matter what you and the wokes think, most conflicts in the world are not one-sided fights between the heroic freedom fighters and evil oppressors. Look at the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and you will find that there is plenty to blame on all sides.

Where did I paint Hamas as heroic freedom fighters? This demonstrates once again how Jewish supremacist worldview requires what is dishonest labeling to function. Its the blood it operates.

The reality is that Israel has murdered many thousands and has pushed openly genocidal policies. Jews are openly ridiculously sadistic, and the place is full of torture rape prisons. This is a society that the majority are for raping Palestinians and are protesting in favor of releasing members of Israeli military that raped Palestinians. The racism of greater Israel types throwing crocodile tears about antisemitism, looking for schmucks is legendary.

The reality is also that your position is ridiculously pro jewish racist and anti palestinian and anti european racist. And you want to push a completly immoral position that is utterly unfair towards Palestinians and Europeans, by promoting dishonest rhetoric about woke (as if you who converges with the ADL are supposedly antiwoke), antisemitism and

Instead of constantly examining antisemitism which includes as part of it, questioning and examining pro jewish racism, you need to actually stop the slogans of painting an attempt of being even handedness as tropes or antisemitism, and examine anti european and anti palestinian pro Jewish racism. Examine whether you are actually exhibiting this type of racism.

It is part and parcel of those whining about antisemitism. Just like many blacks whining about racism, their way of thinking about racism is to be racist against others and to see any opposition as anti black racism.

Or as a feminist who starts from the idea that everything is misogyny and those opposing their dogma of misandry are misogynists.

Well, Jewish supremacists have a dogma that in the same manner falsely pretends unfairness towards Jews while it is actually racist for Jews and against other ethnic groups like European ethnic groups or Palestinians.

Note that my tangible complaints against Jewish organisations, and influence and opinion against Europeans and Palestinians is a legitimate issue and not like the antisemitism, misogyny, black identitarian conception of racism, which is about dishonest dogmatism that always takes the sides of such groups and paints the situation even where they wrong others and need to change, as one where they are victimized.

It is precisely about the situation of where people are willing to compromise and respect the rights of others, or want it all for themselves. Grey areas exist that can be debateble, but the Jewish supremacists are definetly in a black and white manner, operating outside any gray area. Ideally people wouldn't be cowards and challenge their dishonest racist agenda.

Throwing slogans that are projections about wokeness works as a tactic of using soldiers as arguements but for anyone who wants to engage on such things honestly, trying to copy Jonathan Greenblat and activists is a road towards a very destructive ideology and being a fanatic who says falseties after falseties.

Now, people copy influential figures and unfortunately, in addition to the completely malicious we have those who think that dishonest activists who are actually racist supremacists but call everything and anything antisemitism and anti whatever, are the kind of people whose rhetoric they must follow. Because of a march in institutions, influential networks, and the elites going sufficiently along with it and these kind of people having victories.

So there are those who try to mimic them wanting to experience cancelling heretics. We really need to fix civilization and both stop this rhetoric, have the Greenblat's of the world and their fellow travelers lose influence, sufficiently punished to stop this moral hazard and their actual crimes and be condemned. That way we can actually promote good behaviors for others to mimic for a change. We ought to have positive role models for people to follow. That, and unfortunately too many people would rather join forces and side with evil if it is called good, and oppose good, if they are called evil. Which is why we need to align labels with content. And call bad as bad, even if it breaks immoral rules that people like Greenblat have implemented and you have followed. Rules such as when X group behaves abominably, we should spare them the judgement, and condemn their targets for hostility towards X, whatever the consequences to their victims.

And sorry, but I am actually interested in some level of respect for human rights, and some good and not in the commie sense, but in the sense of not having your country being taken from you, or your group subject to mass murder, rape and other genuine abuses. As for the commie pretense, you don't have a right to take others countries under Commie/marxistoid idea that they belong to everyone that is usually promoted dishonestly and one sidedly by people who are very hostile against those who lose under this predicament and is destructive insane extremism anyhow. Reciprocal principles are good. We are better off with people being loyal to their group but also loyal to principles over being loyal in a cult of personality towards foreign groups like Jews. Or being insantiable uncompromising ultranationalists for their own group who try to use rhetorical tricks and monopolize the idea of oppression so they can monopolize nationalism and disregard the rights of others. Or those Principles are important and are a part of the the reason much of the world hates Israel conduct and even votes to recognize Palestine. Everyone else aren't Hamas supporters or racists but are in fact responding negatively to Israel's bad conduct.

In my view, someone boycotting Israel could, theoretically not be anti-Semitic, but I don't know of any organised movement that qualifies.

For such a movement to demonstrate not being anti-Semites, they would need to state conditions XYZ, such that:

  1. Israel could fulfil XYZ without jeopardising its existence, and
  2. the movement declares that, if Israel fulfils XYZ, they will end the boycott.

However, doing this would lose the support of those who oppose Israel not out of sympathy for Palestinian children but anger that the Jews have somewhere where they can exist without the permission of the Nations.

If you think that people opposing the transfer of weapons and advanced military technology to a nation currently engaged in what is widely agreed to be ethnic cleansing and genocide is "anti-Semitic" you're degrading the term and thoroughly stripping it of any ability to reach people or convince them that what you're criticising is in any way bad. The majority of people, especially on the left, will regard providing material support for a genocide to be infinitely worse than being told they're being racist against a population that they largely consider white - you are welcome to try and convince people on the left that Jerry Seinfeld and Sheldon Adelson are people of colour and victims of discrimination, but I don't think you're going to have much luck.

However, doing this would lose the support of those who oppose Israel not out of sympathy for Palestinian children but anger that the Jews have somewhere where they can exist without the permission of the Nations.

That is a very uncharitable way to say "The rules of war that you say we have to follow, you have to follow them too." How many people who were complaining about the "kids in cages" at the southern border are ardent Zionists and don't see any inconsistency in their beliefs about the morality of border enforcement? Chuck Schumer is one of these types of people, in 2007 he went to a fundraising gala for Efrat, an Israeli anti-abortion lobby group while being 100% pro choice when it comes to American fetuses.

How many Zionists would tolerate what's happening to Gaza if Gaza were located in South Africa?

Interesting how such "isolated demands for rigor" regarding how America is run never seem to apply to Israel.

I think if Gaza, South Africa we’re doing what Gaza, Israel is and has been doing, it might at least be seen as a low grade war. The Gaza situation arose because of a pretty serious terrorist attack. But even before that, the state had been lobbing missiles into the rest of Israel. And the history before the Hamas takeover of Gaza was one of repeated intifadas and terrorist attacks.

I’m not going to suggest that the Jews did nothing wrong, nor that they’re not doing anything wrong now. Obviously bombing hospitals and refugee encampments is a bad thing, to say the least. Flattening all of Gaza isn’t a good look here. But I think a lot of the over the top reactions are based on the Israeli fear that this might be the last time that they can do anything on Gaza because of world sentiment, and the frustration of thinking that these attacks will happen again as soon as the pressure is off.

If a war like that between two countries that hate each other, or even a civil war, I’m not sure how much anyone would care. Nobody cares about the Uyghur. Nobody is boycotting Saudi goods over Yemen. There’s been a low grade civil war between the Colombian government and FARC for decades. How many people care about the various other low grade wars going on? And how many would care if there weren’t sizeable Muslim and Jewish enclaves in major countries?

Obviously bombing hospitals and refugee encampments is a bad thing, to say the least.

Obviously it's a bad thing, but it's not obvious that the bombers are to be considered the ones responsible for the bad thing. The Geneva Conventions authors weren't quite solid enough on game theory to write that attacks on human shields are always and entirely the responsibility of the defenders-cum-war-criminals who used human shields, but they did write that such attacks are permissible when the military gain is proportionate to the harm to civilians. Building military bunkers under a hospital is only a war crime, not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

The South African government was widely condemned and sanctioned for its campaign against the ANC when the ANC was an actual literal terrorist group.

How many people who were complaining about the "kids in cages" at the southern border are ardent Zionists and don't see any inconsistency in their beliefs about the morality of border enforcement?

I don't see any inconsistency between "when policing a border, a certain level of stringency and invasiveness is required when the people trying to enter the country include underage terrorists who have been groomed into committing suicide bombings; but that level of stringency and invasiveness is inappropriate when policing a border to prevent economic migrants from gaining illegitimate access to a country".

Frankly I think it’s a miracle that we haven’t seen any kind of massive cross-border terrorist attack like the one portrayed in Sicario: Day of the Soldado. And I think if the border isn’t secured it’s only a matter of time before that kind of thing happens. Especially given that the State Department keeps antagonizing multiple peer adversaries that could easily fund and coordinate that kind of attack. The security situations on the American border and the Israeli borders are very similar, but many people of various political and ethnic stripes engage in ridiculous casuistry to differentiate them.

It's less a miracle and more of a consequence of how the cross-border dynamic of human smuggling works. In short, the cartels have strong incentives to not only not go along with it, but to punish defectors (other cartels who might), and this lack of reliability and secrecy renders it not particularly feasible for state actors.

The cartels have been competing with the US government and mexican authorities for a long time, but part of that is also because they selective cooperate to take down rivals / settle feuds / use the MEX/US authorities to go after their business rivals rather than themselves. Since the drug business is profit-motivated, unnecessary conflict with the US authorities is generally avoided up to a point. This is one of the reasons that the Mexican drug wars, while bloody in absolute terms, have been relatively low-collateral damage to American citizens- if you do something high profile against the US, not only have you put a target on your back from increased US attention, but your competitors have a prime opportunity to bring you low. This is how you get Mexican cartels killing their own as a sort of apology for getting Americans killed. This is without going into how the drug cartels themselves are penetrated by Mexican / American law enforcement agencies.

Why this matters for the state-terrorism angle is that other countries know this, not least because back in 2011 an Iranian attempt to use Mexican cartel hitmen to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the US made the minor oops of hiring an FBI informant as the assassin.

Further, state terrorism is actually a pretty poor strategy for direct competition because if you were willing to launch the equivalent of a missile strike in the first place (several bombs on objectives), you'd just use missiles in the first place (which countries like Iran and Russia have). The advantage of terrorism isn't the damage, but the non-attribution... but if you're going to be attributed anyways (say because you take credit, or because you are compromised by untrustworthy Mexican cartels you relied upon to get across the border who are belatedly trying to cover their own ass), you're not any less vulnerable to a retaliatory missile strike than if you did something more overt.

Terrorism / bombings work in an insurgency context because of the ability to hide within the population which negates the ability / wisdom of retaliation. However, a cross-border migration attack wouldn't be able to hide amongst the American side or the Mexican cartels.

There are ways this could change- and it's a policy argument against trying to declare mexican cartels as terrorist organizations (as then they'd have less to lose from working with actual terrorists)- but without credible plausibility a terror-bombing is just a way to get into a direct military conflict with a country who the perpetrators primary national security strategies are about not coming into direct conflict with.

Agreed. The last thing that the cartels want is some 9/11 type attack which causes the US to ramp up their action against organized crime to GWB's war on terror level. That would be terrible for their profits and life expectancy.

I am not even sure that the Iranian government would want to sponsor large terror attacks on US soil. Sponsoring Hamas and Hezbollah is one thing, but poking the US in the eye would go badly for them. (Of course, a government administration is made out of people, whose goals are not always aligned with their country, but getting the US to bomb the shit out of them would likely not benefit anyone in power.)

There are lots of people who claim to have run into Arabs- like actual from the Middle East Arabs- pretending to be Mexican or Guatemalan to get into the U.S. and behaving in ways that are more suspicious than usual for illegal immigrants(most of those who report it are illegals or adjacent to that community themselves). My guess is that most of these are just economic migrants whose odd behavior can be chocked up to cultural differences, but it’s certainly not implausible that there are eg Iranian assets hiding among the illegal immigrant population for whatever purpose. Obviously the lack of terrorism indicates that they’re not committing mass terror.

My understanding from stories ive heard is that those sorts seem to have a habit of coming to a bad end or otherwise just "disappearing" presumably for the very reasons @Dean describes.

That is a very uncharitable way to say "The rules of war that you say we have to follow, you have to follow them too."

Hamas does not follow the rules of war. Furthermore, the rules of war do not say half the things Israel's opponents claim they say.

How many people who were complaining about the "kids in cages" at the southern border are ardent Zionists and don't see any inconsistency in their beliefs about the morality of border enforcement?

Does it matter? Anyway, how many Mexicans were launching rockets at El Paso and San Diego? Was there some operation where an organized group directed by the Mexican government (or whatever group controlled the territory) came in and killed and kidnapped a bunch of random Americans? The situations aren't all that similar.

How many people would tolerate what's happening in Gaza if Gaza were located in South Africa?

Depends on who was doing it and who was getting it done to, naturally.

Anyway, how many Mexicans were launching rockets at El Paso and San Diego?

Not quite rockets, but the cartels are absolutely using drones to track the Border Patrol, and electronic warfare devices to disrupt our own, signalling quite sophisticated capabilities.

Of course, the reason they're not shooting rockets at us is because the cartels have no interest in trying to destroy the U.S., because we're the cash cow they milk their money out of, whether in the form of smuggling fees for migrants trying to gain access to our labor markets, or sales figures for drugs they supply to our hedonism markets. If October 7 had been a coordinated drug-smuggling operation instead of a violent attack, I somehow don't think the Israelis would have responded with bombs.

Was there some operation where an organized group directed by the Mexican government (or whatever group controlled the territory) came in and killed and kidnapped a bunch of random Americans?

Yes. Pancho Villa's attack on the U.S. Army garrison and nearby town of Columbus, NM. Militarily, it was much less effective than 10/7 - the attackers suffered far more casualties (over 100) than they inflicted (17). It still provoked a months-long US invasion that reached hundreds of miles into northern Mexico by U.S. troops and several small pitched battles against both rebel and Mexican government forces that resulted in several hundred casualties. The only reason it wasn't bloodier was that the terrain of Northern Mexico was so inhospitable and so lightly-settled that all belligerents were limited to small cavalry (or automotive) patrols. So there's actually a parallel here.

How many people would tolerate what's happening in Gaza if Gaza were located in South Africa? Depends on who was doing it and who was getting it done to, naturally.

There was an actual genocide perpetrated by U.S. backed "rebels" against arab religious minorities such as the Yezidi during the Obama administration, complete with the taking of women as sex slaves (at least one of whom "wound up" - three guesses as to how - in Gaza and was recently rescued by the IDF, actually). Barely anyone gave a shit.

The Arab world is currently engaging in a "near genocide" of Christians which is definitely an ethnic purge. I don't see any breathless news coverage of this.

During the recent civil war in Ethiopia a couple years ago, the Tigray people in the north of the country appear to have been subjected to an attempted genocide. Don't remember any huge news coverage about that - we were too busy freaking out about the end of the Trump Administration.

South Sudan appears to be undergoing yet more hideous racial violence between arabs and black african tribes which has displaced more people than the fighting in Gaza, and is being characterized as an attempted genocide. Don't see that leading headlines in U.S. papers, or causing protest movements on U.S. campuses.

There were plenty of war crimes committed in Myanmar's counterinsurgency/anti-drug fight in the Shan during the last decade or so - here's a few from an Amnesty International Report. This one made a bit of a splash because one of the groups being repressed were the muslim Rohingya group, which dovetailed well with reflexive American senses about who is oppressed and thus is an appropriate target for pity. But I don't recall it generating nearly as much vitriol as the Gaza war.

This was just 30 minutes of Googling by a semi-aware person. I'm sure I could find more...there's no shortage of suffering in the world.

There was an actual genocide perpetrated by U.S. backed "rebels" against arab religious minorities such as the Yezidi

Isis wasn't US backed. Do you mean some precursor groups? I thought Isis were mostly sunni militias led by ex-baathist officers.

complete with the taking of women as sex slaves (at least one of whom "wound up" - three guesses as to how

That actually interests me, but it's not in the article. Some hamas fighter was in isis and brought her home as a souvenir ? That's my best guess, I give up. How?

Isis wasn't US backed.

Not directly, but we sure backed a lot of "moderate" Sunnis in Syria that turned out to be Al Qaida wannabees or even affiliates. To say nothing of what we did indirectly through NATO via the Turks (who, to be fair, were mainly focusing their special hatred on the Kurds)

Some hamas fighter was in isis and brought her home as a souvenir ? That's my best guess, I give up. How?

It's actually worse than that, somehow. I'd post the substance of it here, but it's really quite NSFL; if you want the gory details, go to the link. TL;DR - she was captured by ISIL, had horrible shit happen to her, was sold at least five times as a child sex slave before finally being forcibly "married" at 15-ish to a Gazan fighter. He was captured by coalition forces, but then smuggled through Syria and Turkey to Egypt, from whence he took her back to his family in Gaza. There she was kept as a sex and domestic slave for the family - she was at one point married a second time to this guy's brother. The children of rape she bore them are still in Gaza, being raised as Arab muslims.

Was there some operation where an organized group directed by the Mexican government (or whatever group controlled the territory) came in and killed and kidnapped a bunch of random Americans?

Are you familiar with the story of Mexican separatist Pancho Villa and the Battle of Columbus, NM (1916)? That led to an uninvited US expeditionary force wandering around in Mexico looking for Villa, but only finding his subordinates.

Alright, tell you what, when AIPAC gets disbanded and we get a formal apology for the Epstein-Island blackmail operation, I'll stop bringing up Israel's ongoing genocide every chance I get. Nobody American under 65 cares about Israel, the umbilical cord is getting cut sooner or later, and if they want someone to fight Iran, they need to do it themselves.

PS: Israel having free college and free healthcare while we don't is also a sore spot to your average Democrat voter, Israel should align their social spending to be more like ours if they don't want us to resent sending them money.

PS2: I could write a book pointing out specific hypocritical political arguments pushed by dual-citizenship types and you'll just say "That's not the Israeli government, you can't hold the actions of the diaspora against the state Israel, that's collective punishment and immoral." That would be a great argument if Israel hadn't been using indiscriminate bombing and food/water/electricity/medical aid denial as collective punishment this entire time.

As an aside, do you remember what happened to the activist Rachel Corrie back in 2003? The IDF crushed her with a bulldozer quite intentionally as dozens of people watched, and nothing ever came of it. I was pretty young when that happened and it made a lasting impact in how I view the Israeli government. Don't the US and Israel supposedly have a "special relationship" like we have with the UK? I don't think the British would discourage Americans activists from protesting in the UK by turning one into a soggy pizza using heavy machinery. Not very friendly at all.

PS3: Yes, I am Jewish, how can you tell? (half the people at the campus protests were too)

PS3: Yes, I am Jewish, how can you tell? (half the people at the campus protests were too)

So are half the people here, including the person you’re replying to of course, and including me. That Jews would advocate against their own identity is unsurprising, gentile whites do it all the time. The question is what you hope to gain from it.

Not that it really matters (as you point out, the Jews on this board have opinions all over the political spectrum), but I thought @The_Nybbler was of Italian descent, not Jewish.

I'm of Italian and Ashkenazi Jewish descent; this is an ethnicity of its own arising after WWII; our native homeland includes much of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, as well as large parts of Hudson, Bergen, Essex, and Union Counties in New Jersey. Naturally we also have an exclave in South Florida.

Interesting. Thanks! I had no idea there was significant intermarriage between those two groups.

The question is what you hope to gain from it.

I'm not one of them, but there are a lot of young jews with left wing political views, and those views have a very clear and definite position on what's taking place in Gaza right now. The left wing generally views ethnic cleansing in defence of a blood-and-soil ethnostate to be one of the greatest possible crimes you can commit, the sort that would stain the history of a people forever (just look at Germany). You don't actually need to "gain" anything material from opposing something you consider deeply immoral(though I suppose this means that what they 'gain' is satisfaction of emotional needs), and the footage being posted to the internet by both Palestinians and Israelis is really impossible to ignore if you're young and on social media. If I knew that my country was taken over by ethnonationalists and was about to start burning jewish people alive in their hospital beds, I'd protest against it even if I wasn't gaining anything from it (especially so if my only relation to "my" country was that they have the same ethnicity as me and I lived somewhere completely different) and I don't think that's a particularly extreme or hard to understand position.

I'm not one of them, but there are a lot of young jews with left wing political views, and those views have a very clear and definite position on what's taking place in Gaza right now.

I suspect the majority of these people are only Jewish by parentage and don't actually live their lives in any way that's discernably Jewish (happy to be proven wrong on this), and therefore their being Jewish doesn't lend any particular credibility to their position on the issue. It's much the same as me saying "as a gay person I disagree with the democrats position on LGBT rights" when I've never actually had sex with men myself, but I happen to have a close relative who's gay.

The left wing generally views ethnic cleansing in defence of a blood-and-soil ethnostate to be one of the greatest possible crimes you can commit, the sort that would stain the history of a people forever (just look at Germany).

That doesn't explain the pre-occupation with Israel. If what they're doing is ethnic cleansing, then it's the most ineffectual example I've ever heard of.

I suspect the majority of these people are only Jewish by parentage and don't actually live their lives in any way that's discernably Jewish (happy to be proven wrong on this)

This is an old argument that we've seen a lot of times before. "I suspect the majority of these people are only Scottish by parentage, and don't actually live their lives in any way that's discernibly and truly Scottish". But either way there's a decently sized population of orthodox jews who reject Israel for scriptural reasons as well.

Your second point is being litigated in another post so I won't respond to it here.

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The left wing generally views ethnic cleansing in defence of a blood-and-soil ethnostate to be one of the greatest possible crimes you can commit

Gaza is already ethnically spotless.

What @hydroacetylene said. Claiming Israel is ethnically cleansing Gaza is nonsense. The term seems to be used as some sort of odd compromise between "genocide" and "war", but it's not.

I have no idea what you are trying to say - are you joking about the fact that the Israelis have already murdered huge swathes of the population?

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Israel is not committing a genocide in Gaza, they’re winning a war in an urban environment.

It’s really not that different than anything Russia did in Grozny or Aleppo. And it’s definitely more humane and circumspect than what America did in Dresden, or Hiroshima, or Pyongyang, or Hanoi, or Cambodia. Although many (though certainly not all) strong supporters of Israel will weep bitter soyjack tears when such tactics are used by any other party in any other situation.

strong supporters of Israel will weep bitter soyjack tears when such tactics are used by any other party in any other situation.

It is more often the inverse in my experience.

Maybe it’s just the sites I go to but what I mostly see is:

Pro-Israel/Pro-Ukraine (“I am an Eglin Air Force Base shill-bot”)

Pro-Palestine/Pro-Ukraine (“I support the Current Thing at my Ivy League university”)

I think there is a faction of Pro-Russia/Pro-Palestine third-worldist tankies (“GLORY TO COMRADE DOLEZAL! GLORY TO R/STUPIDPOL!”), but those are considerable rarer.

I’ve literally never seen a Pro-Israel/Pro-Russia poster in the wild, probably because those people are all posting on Hebrew or Russian language websites.

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Your grab-bag of non sequiturs is not impressive at all.

Could you elaborate? Are you going to argue that Epstein wasn't Mossad-linked? Are you saying that AIPAC getting extreme deference from both parties isn't raising eyebrows amongst young people in the US? Are you saying that you think Israel taking American funds while having far more generous social services than the US doesn't embitter people saddled with student loans? Do you think Rachel Corrie's death didn't shock young people when it happened? Do you disagree that protesting the UK government probably wouldn't get an American citizen killed? What exactly are you objecting to? These aren't non-sequiturs, they are valid reasons that an American progressive of my generation would think poorly of the Israeli government without any need for "antisemitism".

Wasn't the topic we were discussing "Is criticizing Israel inherently antisemitic?" and "What conditions would need to be fulfilled in order to appease Israel critics?" I think I answered both those points, but I'll try to be more organized next time.

Are you going to argue that Epstein wasn't Mossad-linked? Are you saying that AIPAC getting extreme deference from both parties isn't raising eyebrows amongst young people in the US?

I am saying neither Epstein nor AIPAC is relevant to what's going in Gaza now.

Do you think Rachel Corrie's brutal death didn't shock young people when it happened?

I'm sure it shocked some people. It's also not relevant.

Do you disagree that protesting the UK government probably wouldn't get an American citizen killed?

Also not relevant.

Epstein-Island and AIPAC were both created to increase support for the Israeli government among US leaders and both contributed to the decision to invade Iraq and waste trillions of dollars on middle-eastern forever-wars. They aren't irrelevant.

And how is anything irrelevant when it comes to the formation of opinions? I could be upset about the Israeli cultural appropriation of hummus and while stupid that still isn't antisemitic. Calling someone's emotional opinion irrational or antisemitic isn't going to make them like you more.

What about the position that it’s perfectly fine and dandy for the Jews to have somewhere they can exist, but that it should be somewhere other than the Levant?

A great many peoples of the world currently reside somewhere other than where their primordial ancestors lived thousands of years ago. If every ethnic group on earth were welcome to pursue irredentist claims on territory that changed hands in the Iron Age, the planet would be consumed by wanton slaughter.

Let’s take, I don’t know, Poland. The current geographic boundaries of Poland are substantially different from the political boundaries of Polish-speaking people 300 years ago. The current borders were carved out of the former territory of states that were defeated in the World Wars, leading to the forced deportations of huge numbers of non-Poles from the newly-delineated territories. If I were to argue that this was a bad policy and that the Poles should have continued to occupy their previous borders, it would be risible to accuse me of hating Polish people, of not wanting Poles to exist, etc.

Similarly, Ashkenazi Jews have occupied several different territories throughout Europe since their ethnogenesis as a people. What if I say, “Why don’t you build your homeland in the old Pale Of Settlement instead? It’s more fertile, has more natural resources, more space, and is not in the middle a powder keg of religious hatred which will require you to be a nuclear-armed siege state for the rest of your national existence?” Is that anti-Semitic? Now, certainly there are plenty of totally valid rejoinders to such an argument - and to be clear, such an argument is not my position - but I don’t see how it’s questioning the Jewish people’s right to exist or to have their own territory. It’s a practical argument about what territory is realistically defensible for the Jews to carve out.

Saying "it would be great if the US decided to gift what is currently New Mexico to Israel, and Israel and all of its Jewish inhabitants would elect to move there and gift the territory previously claimed by Israel to the Palestinians" does not sound antisemitic to my ears.

It also is not a realistic proposal, however. Current borders are the results of random happenstances, but it is rare that they can be moved without bloodshed, which makes them practically sacrosanct. Thus, I oppose both new Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Hamas slogan "from the river to the sea", because both would entail the forced displacement of the people presently living in these areas.

This is basically my position - I think it would be great if Australia (for example) gave the Jews a chunk of their desert or whatever. But as you say, not going to happen.

What about the position that it’s perfectly fine and dandy for the Jews to have somewhere they can exist, but that it should be somewhere other than the Levant?

That would not necessarily be anti-Semitic, if it were argued in good faith, and the proposal involved the alternate Jewish homeland being an independent state, with a Jewish majority, and whichever country it was carved out of renouncing all claim to the territory.

Why don’t you build your homeland in the old Pale Of Settlement instead? It’s more fertile, has more natural resources, more space, and is not in the middle a powder keg of religious hatred which will require you to be a nuclear-armed siege state for the rest of your national existence?

I have some bad news for you about current events in Ukraine.

Right, yes, again, there are perfectly legitimate counterarguments. I’m just saying that this would not be an antisemitic argument.

What about the position that it’s perfectly fine and dandy for the Jews to have somewhere they can exist, but that it should be somewhere other than the Levant?

"Should be" or "should've been"? Because they're already there, and as the US immigration discussions tell us, deporting 10M people is pretty hard, particularly if there's currently not an existing country to deport them to.

Right, I agree that at this point Israel is where it is and needs to make the best of it. I guess I could imagine a potential future in which Israel in its current location becomes so untenable that the people there are forced to relocate to, I don’t know, the greater NYC metropolitan area. This seems unlikely, though, given the recent track record of Israeli foreign policy victories. All I’m saying is that it’s perfectly reasonable for someone to believe that the measures necessary for Israel to thrive in its current location are morally unacceptable, not worth the tradeoffs, etc., and for that to not be an anti-Semitic position.

It's entirely possible to not be antisemitic and not want the State of Israel to exist.

There are some lefty Jewish organizations that boycott Israel and ask for one state solutions. I think it'll be difficult to argue that these in particular are antisemitic.

Moreover, you can't just argue that anarchists or people who boycott all operators of concentration camps on principle hate a particular ethnos.

Yes, it's possible. Some socialists are absolutely against strengthening ethnonationalist impulses. FdB wrote an insipid piece on it not too long ago.

You can say, as a matter of principle, that no ethnostate should exist.

The problem is that it practically seems to end up as "Israel in particular should dissolve itself first". People find that suspicious.

You can say, as a matter of principle, that no ethnostate should exist.

The problem is that it practically seems to end up as "Israel in particular should dissolve itself first". People find that suspicious.

I believe that Israel might very well be the only justified ethno-state; every invocation of '109 countries' by certain political tendencies only serves to strengthen that conviction.

Ok, but the Jews aren’t the only ethnic group with a long history of persecution.

Now that I think of it, another ethnic group whose entire history consists of persecution is one of Israel’s immediate neighbors. Do the Maronites have the right to build an ethnostate and maintain it at whatever the cost?

Do the Maronites have the right to build an ethnostate and maintain it at whatever the cost?

Wasn't that the basis of the foundation of Lebanon?

If, as the right (persuasively) argues, it is racist towards Anglos / French / Germans to flood these countries with migrants, ending their former status as (de facto) ethnostates, then opposition to Israel as a Jewish state is likewise antisemitic. The destruction of Japan by the arrival of a hundred million of the kind of tribesmen who lived there before the ancestors of the Yamato immigrated would be likewise transparently anti-Japanese behavior. I have no opinions on German policy in this area or the awarding of the prize. Nevertheless, advocating a people should no longer be a majority in their sole ethnostate is damning them in a way, whether it’s done to Gauls or Greeks, to Swedes or Serbs, and so on. The Arabs still have many homelands and there was no distinct Palestinian identity before Israeli independence.

Aren’t Palestinians genetically the same people who resided on that land 2000 years ago? Sure there’s Arab admixture, but it seems strange to say this is a matter of ethnicity. Indian🪶Americans who were christianized don’t suddenly lose their ancestral roots to the land. If anything this is a good ol religious war.

On one side you have semites fighting for an artificial state created by the British against a coalition of distinct ethnic groups united by their religion.

And on the other side. Israel.

This whole conflict has always been saturated with a strange form of omnidirectional irony.

God always had a sense of humor.

From what I recall reading, there was a high amount of conversions from Judaism to Islam (and before that Christianity) because Rabbinical Judaism pushed literacy to fully participate in the religion. It’s difficult to be a pastoral and agricultural society and have everyone be literate. Not before the printing press. This means that the ancient Jews who were excluded from the literacy-centric benefits of rabbinical judaism were pressured to convert to alternative religious systems. So the masses of “ancient Jews” stayed in their homeland and became Christian and Muslim, whereas the upper-class rabbinical Jews (descendants of the scribal Pharisees) migrated to urban centers to utilize their literacy skills in trade and moneylending. If this is true, then there’s an interesting class dimension to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the privileged classes of ancient Judaism returned home to supplant the working classes of ancient Judaism.

Zvi Eckstein has papers on this. From Farmers to Merchants: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish Economic History writes —

The transition of the Jews away from agriculture into crafts, trade, and finance occurred in the eighth century mainly in Mesopotamia and the entire Muslim empire, and later in western Europe where the Jews migrated […] The Jewish religion made primary education mandatory for boys in the first century when the high priest Joshua ben Gamala (64 CE) issued an ordinance that "teachers had to be appointed in each district and every city and that boys of the age of six or seven should be sent." In the first century CE, the Jewish warrior and writer Josephus underlined that children's education was the principal care among the Jews […] From the second to the sixth century, Jewish leaders promoted further the learning and reading of the Torah and the recently redacted Mishna and Talmud by degrading the status of those who remained illiterate ("am ha-aretz"). The compulsory education for boys and the reading of the Torah, Mishna, and Talmud became the essence of Judaism. The monumental work of Goitein (1967-1988) from the documents of the Cairo Geniza provides extensive evidence of the full implementation of mandatory primary schooling for boys in the Jewish communities in the Mediterranean at the turn of the millennium.

The model's other important implication is that the cost of children's education for farmers makes a certain proportion of Jewish farmers convert to non-Jewish religions in each generation. The question is whether historically these conversions were significant. According to historians (Baron 1952, 210; 1971) and demographers (DellaPergola 2001), the key demographic fact in the first millennium was the sharp decrease in the world Jewry from about 4.5 million in the first century to about 1-1.5 million in the sixth century. This is the period when Jews worldwide were still farmers and, yet, education became the center of the Jewish religion. At the same time, Christianity emerged as a segment of Judaism that did not assign the same importance to literacy and education. Historical sources indicate that about one million Jews lost their lives during the revolts against the Romans in Judaea (70 and 135 CE) and in Egypt (115 CE). There is also evidence of some forced conversions to Christianity, but the description of these episodes of conversions from the fourth to the sixth century cannot account for the remaining reduction (2 million) of the Jewish population. The model's prediction of a slow process of decrease in the Jewish low-educated population due to conversions is supported by the historical evidence.

The model's prediction regarding migrations is that Jewish farmers with high preference for Judaism would migrate to centers of Jewish life if in their own country economic conditions deteriorate. The large migrations from Egypt and Palestine to Babylon in the second and third centuries provide evidence in favor of this prediction. Another prediction related to migration is that once Jews become merchants (as they did in Mesopotamia where about 70 percent of the world Jewry lived in the second half of the millennium), they would have an incentive to migrate to new urban cities where crafts, trade, and finance provide high returns to their high human capital. The fast migration of Jews during the ninth and the tenth centuries to western Europe and the high standard of living acquired by them in these locations is consistent with this prediction.

All this evidence supports Result 3 (i-iii) that uneducated Jewish farmers with very low levels of attachment to Judaism converted to Christianity (and later to Islam). Other uneducated Jewish farmers did not convert and remained within Judaism, but they became the ammei ha-aretz outcast within the Jewish communities under the influence of rabbinic Judaism from the second century on. The Jewish leaders were not concerned about conversions of the ammei ha-aretz to other religions because they wanted them out of the Jewish fold. Consistent with Result 3 (v-vi) the historical evidence indicates that conversion from Judaism into non-Jewish religions was a slow but significant process that mainly occurred when Jews were farmers, but almost stopped when they became merchants.

I was originally interested in this topic because it has cool implications for ancient Christianity. (Been meaning to write a post about Scott’s last two posts about ancient Christianity…). There’s a theory that an obscure sect of ancient Jews called the “Essenes” influenced Christianity, and this group was at odds with the Pharisees (precursors to rabbinical Judaism), Sadducees (priestly class of ancient Judaism who just sort of… disappeared), and of course Samaritans (surprisingly still around). The Essenes are linked to the Dead Sea community (Qumran etc) and their scroll cache. This is what Josephus has to say about the Essenes:

The Essenes are Jews by birth, and seem to have a greater affection for one another than the other sects have. These Essenes reject pleasures as an evil, but esteem abstinence, and the conquest over our passions, to be virtue. They do not marry, but choose out other peoples’ children, while they are pliable, and fit for learning, and judge them to be their family, and form them according to their own manners. […] These men despise riches and hold their property in common as raises our admiration. Nor is there any one to be found among them who has more than another; for it is a law among them, that those who come to them must let what they have be common to the whole order […] They do not buy or sell anything to one another; but every one of them gives what he has to him that wants it, and receives from him in return what he wants; and although they do not pay, they are fully allowed to take what they want from whomsoever they please […] They condemn the miseries of life, and are above pain…. And as for death, if it will be for their glory, they esteem it better than living always; and indeed our war with the Romans gave abundant evidence what great souls they had in their trials, since, although they were tortured and distorted, burnt and torn to pieces, and went through all kinds of instruments of torment, that they might be forced either to blaspheme their legislator, or to eat what was forbidden them, they could not be made to do either of these things … or to shed a tear; but they smiled in their very pains, and laughed to scorn those who inflicted the torments upon them, and resigned up their souls with great willingness, since they expected to receive them again […] There are also those among them who foretell the future by reading the holy books, and using several sorts of purifications, and being perpetually conversant in the discourses of the prophets; and their predictions are seldom wrong.

That such an interesting group of ancient Jews, known to Josephus in the first century, is omitted by the gospel and first Christians is striking. But it would make sense if the Essene community is what influenced or even created the Christian religion; there’s no need for Christ to have a discourse with the Essenes if he is the Essenes. Note that the desert sea scrolls are known for their emphasis on the “teacher of righteousness”, and how closely the above passage by Josephus vibes with what we know about Christ’s actual blood relatives. Anyway, an Essene-origin theory of Christianity would explain why they critiqued the Pharisees and scribes, while elevating the status of the poor and ignorant. We begin to see a divorce between the lower/middle class Jews and the upper class Jews. There’s the economically universal religion and then an exclusive, literacy-focused religion. When Islam came around, they took on this “universal religion” aspect of Christianity which would result in even more conversions.

As a last point, Eckstein’s theory is kind of an argument against the authenticity of Zionism. If literate Jews willingly left the holy land to accrue wealth in foreign lands, serving foreign kings, then how much did they really value the holy land? The historical evidence does not support the story that every Jew was exiled from the ancient lands of Israel and forbidden from returning or anything like that. If you willingly sell your land and move overseas to make more money, the revealed preference is that you’re not actually attached to your old land. Ironically, the continuing Palestinian presence indicates a greater affection to their homeland. And the agrarian Palestinian lifestyle has much more in common with the ancient Jewish lifestyle: Noah, David, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were all agrarian workers and pastoralists. Agrarian metaphors are the universal language of the Old Testament.

Very interesting, thank you for the response.

If, as the right (persuasively) argues, it is racist towards Anglos / French / Germans to flood these countries with migrants, ending their former status as (de facto) ethnostates, then opposition to Israel as a Jewish state is likewise antisemitic.

I agree that anti-Zionism is fundamentally anti-Semitism, sorry to say to so many "anti-Zionists" who want to make the distinction, but you also need to decide if not supporting the Jewish state is the same as opposition. Does Israel give huge amounts of military aid to the US and England to preserve its ethnostate? Don't make me laugh. The thrust of Zionist influence in the West has been vehemently pro-mass third world immigration with organizations like the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, of which our DHS Secretary was on the board...

There's also the argument that it's not "racist" to oppose a state that opposes me. Israel doesn't support my right to live among other White people, and Jews are likely, especially in the face of this election, the demographic and political force that is the most pro-mass third world immigration to the West in the entire world. Why is it racist for me to oppose them when they oppose me?

You just want us on the Right to be suckers, to support Zionism with no expectation of reciprocity. You want us to support them even as they throw all of their own economic and political and cultural influence on opposing us in the West.

If Zionists oppose keeping the US and Europe White the Right should not be suckered into political support for keeping Israel Jewish.

That comparison might make more sense if white people had been a minority in every country for c. 2,000 years, been treated as second-class citizens when tolerated, expelled whenever the majority needed a scapegoat, and then subjected to attempted extermination with everyone prescient enough to try to escape refused entry by every country they tried to flee to.

Unless and until that happens, I see no contradiction in asserting that Jewish people are entitled to a state in which they are a majority, while white people are not.

I agree that Jews should have a majority state, but I don’t think it follows that other groups should be prevented from such a state. The list of genocides in history is long and the subjects are totally random. The unifying theme is that groups that fall out of dominance are at risk of genocide. It’s reasonable, then, for every group to desire a clear majority territory in order to decrease their risk of being genocided. It’s unreasonable to say, “because this group has already been subject to genocide, they should have an eternal homeland”, because that’s an arbitrary rule that favors the groups that happen to survive the genocide. It arbitrarily hurts the groups who are totally eliminated (now or in the future), or who lack the global capital and political pull to demand an ethnostate post-genocide. (It’s not as if former genocided peoples have commiseration for other genocided peoples; Israel refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide last I checked). Ironically, this standard favors the groups that are least likely to be genocided in total, because only an already-influential group can demand an ethnostate and then supply the necessary funds to establish it. (Eg, the richest family in the world supplied the funds for Zionism). If our wish is to decrease the number of genocides, then a preventative approach is better than a survivorship bias approach.

I don’t think it follows that other groups should be prevented from such a state.

That follows from the principle of "Ethnonationalism Considered Harmful" leading to the notion that, usually, it is not justifiable to take coercive measures to keep certain ethnicities in the majority.

The list of genocides in history is long and the subjects are totally random.

Not totally random. Some groups have been dis-proportionally targeted; this pattern becomes more visible with a data-set that includes sub-genocidal persecution.

It’s reasonable, then, for every group to desire a clear majority territory in order to decrease their risk of being genocided.

No, because not every group has the same risk.

It’s unreasonable to say, “because this group has already been subject to genocide, they should have an eternal homeland”

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that "Because this group has been subjected repeatedly to genocidal and lesser persecutions, and were turned away and sent to their deaths when they tried to flee the most recent attempt, they should have a homeland as long as there is widespread animus against them and government control over immigration."

If the passengers on the MS St. Louis, and all the other Jewish people fleeing the Nazis, had been allowed into America, there would have been a lot less impetus for the formation of a Jewish State.

If all other countries had open borders, showed no sign of any desire to change this, and that situation continued for several decades, it would be reasonable to urge Israel to follow suit.

(Often cast is the accusation of wanting 'open borders for every country except Israel'. I think a better description, at least of those whose political opinions reside on Level 1, would be open borders for every country, with Israel bringing up the tail end of the process. [Those on Level 3, on the other hand, {if their social circle consists of the kind of people in the Respectable Media} will oppose immigration enforcement in the U. S. because their friends do, support Israeli policies because their friends do, and give no more regard to resolving any apparent contradiction in their ideas than they would give to ensuring that their ideas are expressed in sentences ending in words with an odd number of letters. {The same applies to people whose social circle consists of college radicals yelling "From the river to the sea" without any knowledge of the bodies of water to which that slogan refers.}])

The principle “usually, it is not justifiable to take coercive measures to keep certain ethnicities in the majority” has a big exclusion for “unless it prevents genocide”. Just a cursory look through the annals of history shows that every group which lacks dominance over a territory risks genocide, and that these happen at mostly unpredictable times. Therefore, it is justifiable to take coercive measures to keep an ethnic group in the majority of some territory (or subsection thereof) to prevent its genocide, as this is the best way to protect against genocide. To reiterate my original point, it’s silly to only have a principle in place for when a genocide is currently ongoing, because at that point annihilation has the greatest odds, and surely our interest is in reducing the amount and extent of genocide in total. With all this said, there are ways to reduce the amount of coercion involved in majority-fying a territory, like with payments and subsidities. Additionally, we frequently supersede the right to property when there is a distinct majority interest as in the case of eminent domain, and there is no majority interest greater than not being genocided.

”It’s reasonable, then, for every group to desire a clear majority territory in order to decrease their risk of being genocided.” No, because not every group has the same risk

If Jews have the greatest risk of genocide, it doesn’t follow that we should ignore the 90%+ of genocides which will happen to other groups (going by history). There’s so much randomness that it’s impossible to divine who will face genocide. Who would have guessed that Anatolian Greeks would have been genocided, or the Armenians? The Iraqi Turkmen had no expectation of genocide by ISIS, or the Darfuri people. You can’t go by pure “number or recency of past genocides” because this has little predictive value. For instance, it’s only recently that white people have lived alongside other people in racially-blind democracies, so the absence of past white genocides doesn’t tell us about the future. South Africa does not exactly paint an optimistic future of what happens if they become a minority.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that "Because this group has been subjected repeatedly to genocidal and lesser persecutions[…]”

This is an argument for why, if we had to pick one group to give a homeland to, we should all pick Jews getting one. But this is not an argument for why other groups should not get a homeland. Because again, if you look at a list of genocides in history, the vast majority of genocides happen unpredictably to formerly safe populations which aren’t Jewish. If we only protected Jews from genocide, going by history we would be allowing 90%+ of genocides. Shouldn’t our interest be in reducing genocides down to 0%?

The principle “usually, it is not justifiable to take coercive measures to keep certain ethnicities in the majority” has a big exclusion for “unless it prevents genocide”.

The exception is more 'unless a group has been repeatedly been persecuted by many other groups, to a degree greatly above background, and given no refuge when they tried to escape a mad-man bent on their extermination.'

Just a cursory look through the annals of history shows that every group which lacks dominance over a territory risks genocide, and that these happen at mostly unpredictable times. Therefore, it is justifiable to take coercive measures to keep an ethnic group in the majority of some territory (or subsection thereof) to prevent its genocide, as this is the best way to protect against genocide.

But this is not an argument for why other groups should not get a homeland. Shouldn’t our interest be in reducing genocides down to 0%?

Such a plan would be very destructive to human freedom and well-being; furthermore, even if it had been accomplished fifty years ago and every ethnic group had their own country, the division between ethnicities is not a constant throughout history.

Therefore, to prevent genocides from occurring, the best method is to

  1. establish a principle that members of ethnic minorities ought to be treated as equals, and that the relevant subject of moral/ethical concern is not 'a group of people defined by distant¹ blood-relation' but 'an individual human being', and
  2. establish that if an individual is at risk of being murdered by the country they live in because their neighbours have decided that their ethnic group are undeserving of life, other countries ought to let them in.

Once this has been accomplished, and the ideas that 'an individual is less worthy of concern because they are of a different ethnicity' or 'we have the right to send an individual back to a country where they will be murdered rather than risk them causing some inconvenience² to us' are taken no more seriously anywhere among the Nations than the idea that '2.00 + 2.00 = 5.00', then we can discuss whether the State of Israel is justified in limiting the number of Arab citizens to less than the number of Jewish citizens.

¹'Distant' meaning 'far enough apart that even the Medieval Church wouldn't object to them marrying.'

²Such as 'they're poor enough that they might cost us money in social support', 'letting in 10,000 of them might contain one or two people who might wish us harm³', or 'we can't distinguish which ones are in actual danger, so avoiding type II errors (deporting someone who will then be murdered) will cause type I errors (some people might move here for economic opportunity, even if we have told them not to!).

³During the interbellum period, some Unitedstatesian opinionists opposed the admission of Jewish refugees on the grounds that Germany might hide saboteurs among them.

Let’s suppose that Jews do indeed have the greatest past history of genocide, and that this makes them the most liable to be genocided again, and that as a consequence they ought to be first in line for a homeland. I can follow this line of thinking. What I fail to see is why any white person would be persuaded to abstain from forming their own homeland. It is reasonable to think as follows: genocides are the worst event that can happen to you; genocided nations eagerly wish to create a majority homeland; history tells us that 90% of genocides cannot be predicted (imo); without an influential and wealthy diaspora, it is difficult to create a homeland post-genocide. Given this, why would anyone abstain from forming a majority homeland? Genocides can happen to white people, history tells us they are hard to predict, and they are the worst thing that can happen. So, it’s entirely reasonable to hedge against an apocalyptic threat that can happen to your people.

Such a plan would be very destructive to human freedom and well-being

But, as in the case of Israel, this is justified on the grounds of protection against genocide. Let us say that Israel has an 80% chance of protecting against a 500-year-storm genocide. Well, white people have no way to know their own risk of genocide because “gradual minority status” is new to them. Certainly, South Africa doesn’t look too good. I would say that a homeland is justified even if protects against a 5% chance in a 500-year period. After all, it’s the worst thing that can happen to a population. So I fail to see why Israel’s uniquely strong interest in a homeland in any way negates white people’s very apparent interest in a homeland. A starving man should get food, and he should get food first, but this has nothing to do with my interest in eating for my nutritional needs.

furthermore, even if it had been accomplished fifty years ago and every ethnic group had their own country, the division between ethnicities is not a constant throughout history.

Sure, but this applies to Israel as well. Perhaps in a century, some subsection of Israeli Jewish society will no longer be considered Jewish. It’s hard to predict this stuff. What if DNA finds a hiccup in the maternal line?

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Personally I am very tired of powerful interest groups saying it’s okay to be hypocritical because of how oppressed they’ve been. If you’re not being oppressed now I don’t give a damn.

On the subject of Israel, I am happy to support the Jewish ethnic homeland exactly to the extent that they support mine. To the best of my knowledge, this is no support at best, but who knows? That could change.

how oppressed they’ve been

It's not 'how oppressed they've been', per se, so much as 'how likely are they to be oppressed in the future'.

The former is largely relevant as evidence of the latter.

I am happy to support the Jewish ethnic homeland exactly to the extent that they support mine

This would be reasonable if there were a danger, supported by historical precedent, of your ethnic group, if a minority in every country, being declared unwelcome in your country of residence, denied admission to other countries, and then targeted for mass murder. (I don't know what ethnicity you are, so I cannot say for certain that that is not the case. If it is, than your group would also be justified in wanting its own country in which it is the majority. 'White people', on the other hand, do not fit this criterion; if that were to change, then you would have an argument for wanting to live in a white-majority country.)

I mean, do you really think there’s going to be another Holocaust? Antisemitism is a joke among westerners who matter; you’d be surprised how quickly attendees at E Michael Jones lectures drop it at the slightest excuse.

Iran officially calling for another Holocaust is an irrelevancy. Jews will be safe in the west for the foreseeable future, at least as much as ‘white people’(and BTW I agree with you that ‘white people’ are not a group that has a solid argument in favor of needing an ethnostate, although I suppose some white ethnic groups probably do, but not whites as a whole).

do you really think there’s going to be another Holocaust? ... Jews will be safe in the west for the foreseeable future ....

In 1900, would anyone have thought the Shoah would have been started by Germany?

If you brought someone forward from that era, told them that there would be a persecution and mass murder of Jews on an un-precedented scale, and asked them to guess what country it would come from, I suspect most people' first guess would be Russia, possibly followed by France.

I would’ve guessed Russia or the Ottoman Empire was fairly likely to do mass killings of Jews in 1900 and that Jews living in the pale of settlement would be at risk due to a continental war between Russia and Germany, which is predicting that Jewish genocide might be a thing. I wouldn’t have guessed ‘camps run by Germany’ but it’s kind of irrelevant whether totenkopf or Cossack does the mass murder; the point is ‘Jews in Eastern Europe having near to mid term future genocide risk’ was foreseeable at the time.

On the contrary, there is not a major jewish population with a foreseeable near or mid future genocide risk today(you can, I’m sure, name one that not-delusionally-histrionic-about-antisemitism people can agree is in danger or genocide or ethnic cleansing if you disagree).

Unless and until that happens, I see no contradiction in asserting that Jewish people are entitled to a state in which they are a majority, while white people are not.

I mean, you can maintain that position, but younger generations of Right Wingers are just going to not support Israel no matter how much you harp about Jewish oppression. The tap of Ecclesiastical support of Israel from the brainwashed Christian Right is going to run dry and you are going to be left with a generation of people wondering why we should support Israel when Israel doesn't support us. And your answer is far from convincing to us.

The US took in the Jews and didn't treat them as second-class citizens, but apparently that didn't earn the US any claim to maintain a White population in your mind? It certainly failed to earn the ethnic loyalty of Jews to White Americans. Loyalty is a two-way street, you can't demand loyalty and give none in return. The US just has to support Israel while accepting that Zionist Jews are going to agitate for demographic replacement in all the political and cultural institutions they control? No thanks. Oh, they need aid from the US? Pound sand.

That's not realistic in the short term, but younger generations are skeptical of Israel and this equilibrium consensus of "nobody question Israel" is going to change very fast, especially with growing pressure from the Right Wing along with the Left Wing from different angles of critique.

AOC recently tweeted about AIPAC. Taboos can fall fast and hard, and they are going to in this case. You can't cling to "you have to support us unconditionally because we're so oppressed" for much longer.

but younger generations of Right Wingers are just going to not support Israel

IME young red tribe normies(far and away the most important demographic for determining what ‘younger generations of right wingers’ support) often don’t think the events of eighty years ago oblige us to pick any particular side, but usually have a superstitious terror of opposing Israel as bad juju/bringing the curse of God, or are prejudiced against Israel’s enemies, or support the outpost of capitalist democracy even if they don’t want to pay for its wars, or….

The US took in the Jews

Except for the ones on the MS St Louis.

and didn't treat them as second-class citizens

Except when they did.

but apparently that didn't earn the US any claim to maintain a White population in your mind?

No. You're not supposed to treat people as second-class citizens, just like you're supposed to take care of your children and not end up in gaol.

Furthermore, even if white Americans had shown supererogatory virtue, that would still not entitle them to an ethnic majority, because, in the general case, 'being entitled to an ethnic majority' isn't a thing. We make an exception in the case of Israel and the Jewish people due to their long history of being regularly persecuted, combined with the post-WWI implementation of modern border controls. (If I had a magic 'open borders, for everyone except horrifying predatory criminals [judged on an individual basis], in every country including Israel, I would at least be tempted to press it, knowing that Jewish people facing anti-Semitic persecution would always be able to leave any country which persecuted them. However, in a world in which countries claim a general right to refuse entry for any or no reason, it is anti-Semitic to expect Jewish people to bet their lives on the hope that the Nations will be feeling generous.)

It certainly failed to earn the ethnic loyalty of Jews to White Americans.

Ethnic loyalty? No, largely because Jewish people sympathetic to ethno-nationalism mostly live in Israel! Jewish Americans sympathetic to civic nationalism show loyalty to American ideals such as the Constitution.

No, largely because Jewish people sympathetic to ethno-nationalism mostly live in Israel! Jewish Americans sympathetic to civic nationalism show loyalty to American ideals such as the Constitution.

There is a factual disagreement here that can be resolved: How common are influential Jews outside Israel that support Zionism but oppose White nationalism?

There is a difference between supporting Zionism because "we'd rather stay here, but just in case they decide they don't want us here..." and supporting Zionism because "the normal purpose of a country is as a home for a specific ethnic group; we were born with an un-changeable primary duty towards our group's homeland."

'being entitled to an ethnic majority' isn't a thing. We make an exception in the case of Israel and the Jewish people

Sovereign is he who decides on the exception. "We" didn't do anything. I do not acknowledge your "exception" and young people are skeptical of it. The Right Wing shouldn't support a people that don't support them, and none of your "Jews are so oppressed" or "we made an exception" lines of dialogue are remotely convincing for why I should support Israel.

Ethnic loyalty? No, largely because Jewish people sympathetic to ethno-nationalism mostly live in Israel!

This is a hilarious lie, Jews are overwhelmingly sympathetic to Israel. If accepting them and handing them power failed to earn their loyalty to the ethnic stock that took them in, you should wonder why they were expelled so much throughout history. As if handing them the levers of power would have won them over- we know now apparently not. In fact, it's silly to even fathom that Jews would show loyalty towards the people that brought them in and gave them power.

The Right Wing shouldn't support a people that don't support them

Many Jewish people do support the right wing, at least the more idea-focused parts. More might have done so if they didn't get the impression (whether accurate or not) that "You support us, we'll support you" meant something along the lines of "You obey and agree with us in every way, and we'll grudgingly let you live in the crappiest parts of our land instead of leaving you to be slaughtered, as long as you acknowledge us as your superiors."

Also, not everything ought to be transactional. Sometimes, one should help people not because they have done or will do something for you, but because it is the right thing to do.

Jews are overwhelmingly sympathetic to Israel.

Sympathy is not the same as loyalty. Many Jewish American citizens have sympathy towards Israel, because they have relatives there whom they know personally, and because they need there to be a place where they are allowed to exist even if every Gentile doesn't want them.

(Also, some people complain that Jewish U. S. citizens don't have enough loyalty to Israel.)

If accepting them

Grudgingly, when at all.

and handing them power

The Jewish people were not 'handed power' as a group. They were, in fact, often systematically kept away from power.

failed to earn their loyalty to the ethnic stock

Or don't consider an 'ethnic stock' to be a thing one can be loyal to.

you should wonder why they were expelled so much throughout history

My hypothesis is that a religion founded on arguing with G-d, and which has a big book consisting of centuries of arguments by its clergy over every minute detail of Scripture, is likely to be inconvenient for any person or group whose agenda relies on being able to say that black 0.4–0.7 μm albedo < 0.01 is white 0.4–0.7 μm albedo > 0.99 and have everybody reject the evidence of their own eyes and ears. This would explain the rise of anti-Semitism among the wokists SJWs PJFTMWTIAATUftSSaPCYDs.

However, I don't think it matters why they were not welcomed. What matters is that millions of human beings, each with hopes, dreams, feelings, people they loved, eyes, hands, organs, senses, dimensions, were denied a safe place to live, and sent back to be slaughtered.

That is why Jewish people are justifiably not confident that they are safe if they are a minority in every country; the same logic does not apply to white people.

You using the holocaust as a card to justify the extinction and mistreatment of whites who are currently hated and targeted give special treatment of the Jews at expense of other ethnic groups is precisely why what you are doing ought to be criminalized.

It should be a crime for people to use slavery, holocaust, colonialism, or "We are unique at being at threat of oppression" bullshit narratives to excuse a permanent boot to their ethnic outgroup's neck or their destruction, and for their favorite group to lord over others.

To the extend we need to protect people from malicious racists, we got it backwards, we need to destroy the disgusting racist holocaust lobby. Which includes creating an environment where people like you wouldn't have the opportunity to make these arguments. At least not for long.

Obviously the idea that whites aren't at threat of being treated rather badly when they become minority is preposterous. They are already mistreated and those who hate them have shown intensions to intensify things in the future. It isn't even true that multiple white ethnic groups haven't been victimized through genocide and mass murder. Including by Jews in eastern europe. Or blacks in Africa. Or by foreign ethnic nationalists such as Turkish nationalists and muslims as in Greeks who were subject to genocide in Anatolia along with other Christian groups.

Even subject to genocide by other Europeans and even by the Nazis. But even the Germans were also subject to genocide as well.

Even if someone did find a group that was historically more lucky than the Jews, which isn't the case here with all groups in white category in modernity, that wouldn't justify this repulsive argument. Being more lucky historically does not justify, OBVIOUSLY, this idea that you aren't at threat, or don't have a right to exist and should accept your own extinction.

It's why any distinction of what you are selling with the worst woke extremist is completely fake.

This idea that fuck whites, they have no right to not go extinct, or of national self determination because they can't be oppressed like Jews (and if you disagree with the narrative of Jewish oppression you are evil of course out to murder Jews) is obviously disgusting in general, but shouldn't be tolerated especially in any white society.

It falls completely under categories such as treason, genocidal racist extremist rhetoric, absurdly intense racist hatred, hypocrisy, etc, etc. And it threatening in a murderous way since currently Palestinians are defined by Jews as an illegitimate ethnic group while the Jews doing so are happy to support attrocities against them. If whites are not a legitimate ethnic group, and you deny any of their historical suffering, trying to greedilly concetrate all suffering just to the Jews, perhaps you are willing to support and are after for even worse things.

Perhaps you aren't sincere when you claim that whites won't be mistreated as a minority but you expect them to be mistreated, and are just out to support and deny it. The general concept of X ethnic group not existing of X group never having suffered, and not being capable to suffer, (especially when they demonstratably are and you are denying the truth) makes future mass violence towards such group a much more likely possibility.

This is the ethnic version of the Trotskyist idea that the people of the revolution can do no wrong and classifying other classes as oppressors that can't be wronged. There is no fixing this and no way to have a peaceful, prosperous world if this rotten ideology of genocidal antiwhite Jewish supremacy is not rooted out. Same applies to other versions of this disgusting ideology with a different ethnic group on top as the exception.

The idea of destroying other nations except the Jewish one is an insane megalomaniac ideology that ironically shares plenty with pop culture idea of Nazism. Albeit you are a bit more sneaky about it.

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If, as the right (persuasively) argues, it is racist towards Anglos / French / Germans to flood these countries with migrants, ending their former status as (de facto) ethnostates, then opposition to Israel as a Jewish state is likewise antisemitic.

This is funny to me because I usually approach the thought experiment here from the other side: If, as the left (IMO not completely persuasively) argues, that it is The Right Thing (tm) for the residents of Springfield, Ohio to accept a bunch of Haitian refugees seeking asylum granted by a far-off government and to think otherwise is obvious bigotry, then why can't we tar Palestinians who reject living next to Jewish refugees (who were in 1948 fleeing far greater persecution than Haitians in 2024) granted part of the land by a far-off government (the UN in New York) similarly? Surely only an antisemite doesn't appreciate whatever the Israeli equivalent of a taco truck is!

Of course, in the real world these things are more nuanced, and I don't really find either case completely compelling: there are legitimate arguments against poorly-controlled immigration, but IMO far fewer in favor of violent ethnic cleansing campaigns against immigrants. Although the parallel between Hamas and the Klan as anti-immigrant militias seems at least interesting to consider.

Surely only an antisemite doesn't appreciate whatever the Israeli equivalent of a taco truck is!

Lol

But seriously, beyond the usual "these rules don't apply to non-whites" position that many leftists implicitly or explicitly hold, one way I've seen people try to resolve this cognitive dissonance is that they claim that Arabs voluntarily took in and sheltered large numbers of Jews escaping from the Holocaust, and only later decided they wanted to kill all of them because the Jews started oppressing them, or something.

This is funny to me because I usually approach the thought experiment here from the other side

Same here. I also find it instructive to note how certain individuals will argue that Ukraine should simply acquiesce to the obviously superior military, cultural, and economic might of Russia only to suddenly rediscover the concept of "nuance" when the same arguments are applied to Arabs in the Levant.

Its almost as if they're treating arguments as soldiers/ammunition instead of sincerely trying to test an idea.

As one of the people you're ostensibly talking about (given that I both think Ukraine should surrender to Russia immediately and that Israel should stop the genocide and either adopt a one or two state solution) I feel like that's not actually how I'd present those arguments. I think that Ukraine and Israel are in extremely different circumstances that make the comparison fruitless. Russia is a much larger and much more powerful state than Israel, and Israel faces a lot of serious problems that Russia simply does not. There's no state on Russia's northern border peppering them with so many missile attacks that large numbers of civilians are forced to abandon their homes and jobs to stay in Moscow hotels, and there's no group of rebels disrupting shipping to Russia to the point that major ports go bankrupt.

There's no state on Russia's northern southern border peppering them with so many missile attacks that large numbers of civilians are forced to abandon their homes and jobs to stay in Moscow hotels

Growth Mindset!

I was referring to Lebanon - if you've got evidence of something similar happening to Russia right now I'd love to see it.

I know you are, and I'm cracking a joke about Ukraine firing missiles into Russia.

Out of these examples, the flooding of Japan by hundreds of millions of, let's say, cloned Ainu and the surrender of Israeli territory to Palestinian Arabs are the two that strike me as different and more justifiable, and I suspect that I may not be alone in that view.

It's not hard to come up with a fairly coherent principle that rationalises this pattern: if your homeland gets seized by another people, your people get a perpetual moral claim to reconquer it from the people that seized it, but not from anyone else that may further seize it from those people and thus has not perpetrated a direct injustice against you and yours. This way, the German/French/... claim against Arabs is live; the Arab claim against Israelis is live; the Jomon claim against Yayoi Japan is, somewhat surprisingly, still live; but the Israelis only have a claim to the Levant against the Romans who scattered them, which is long dead.

Under this framework, in fact, the Jews have a much more plausible claim against the various peoples of Europe who expelled them (especially, if you want to appy the "invader" framework to their whole history, where they settled on lands that changed hands to some entity that was later cut down to size by someone else). This agrees with my long-standing intuition that after WWII a Jewish State should actually have been carved out of the losing nations in Europe (which I remember @Southkraut taking great offense at for reasons that still strike me as insufficiently thought through; imagine the different trajectory many things could have taken had Germany been allowed to discharge its blood debt with soil in this way).

which I remember @Southkraut taking great offense at for reasons that still strike me as insufficiently thought through

They are. The thought terminates at "Rightful German clay must remain in German hands."

I always liked (perhaps a bit sardonically) Michael Chabon's solution in the The Yiddish Policemen's Union. They turned the southern bit of Alaska, the area around Juneau, into Israel. The US didn't miss it. I always think about that whenever the discussion of what to do with the Palestinians comes up. If everyone is so concerned...give them the cold wilderness no one else wants to deal with. (This is just a silly thought experiment, not meant as a serious solution)

That was actually a real proposal that was kicked around by the Roosevelt administration, which is where Chabon got the idea. I don’t think it got particularly far in real life, but it was considered.

As the old line goes, the socialists will never forgive the Jews for surviving the Holocaust.

The solution was supposed to be "final", yet 80 years later here we are.

As the old line goes, the socialists will never forgive the Jews for surviving the Holocaust.

Fascists, not socialists.

Tomatoh, Tamatah.

Contra the last 50 years of leftist propoganda, national socialism and international socialism resemble each other far more then either resembles any other ideology.

National socialism is still socialism.

I got as far as the subhead:

Since they liquidated socialists by the score and opposed everything we believe, Nazis were not leftists.

Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin also liquidated socialists by the score, and opposed "everything we believe in" at one time or another.

It's not hard to come up with a fairly coherent principle that rationalises this pattern: if your homeland gets seized by another people, your people get a perpetual moral claim to reconquer it from the people that seized it, but not from anyone else that may further seize it from those people and thus has not perpetrated a direct injustice against you and yours

This is only coherent if you set the clock at a completely arbitrary cutoff and commit to ignoring the fact that nearly every slice of land on the planet has changed hands numerous times. The “Germans” are only considered a coherent people now, in hindsight, as a result of millennia of mutually-hostile civilizations slaughtering each other. Why do “the Germans” have a legitimate claim against “the Arabs”, but the Western Hunter-Gatherers of 20,000 years ago (themselves certainly not a unified ethnic group) do not have a permanent claim against any descendants of Neolithic Farmers and/or Proto-Indo-European pastoralists?

This is only coherent if you set the clock at a completely arbitrary cutoff

Only semi-arbitrary. We cut it off post-WWII because that's when we realised that the seizure of territory by force of arms was increasingly damaging, and thus could not be allowed to continue in the future. Thus we set the cut-off at 'now' as a Schelling point, because we had to set it somewhere, and 'now' was the least disruptive.

because that's when we realised that the seizure of territory by force of arms was increasingly damaging, and thus could not be allowed to continue in the future

No, that's when the American Empire completed its conquest of most of the world, and as the sovereign thus deny lesser/client states the right to wage war on neighboring states. There are 5 countries with the de facto right to do this and 2 of them (Britain and France) are mostly just US vassals at this point anyway.

The Americans and the Russians are in a hot proxy war right now. "We" is clearly just self-serving American bullshit, something they inherited from the English; the "all wars are defensive" stance, by contrast, is straight out of the Roman Republic.

the right to wage war on neighboring states. There are 5 countries with the de facto right to do this and 2 of them (Britain and France)

Eh? When did the Brits wage war on a neighbour post WW2? I assume you’re not talking about rearguard colonial stuff in the late 40s.

and 2 of them (Britain and France) are mostly just US vassals

Brits tried it with Suez (until being politely reminded that the only power they had was at the US’ pleasure for anti-Soviet reasons- Argentina was a gimme though), and then there’s the French in Indochina and, importantly, Vietnam.

And regionally, they’re still relatively powerful, as Libya found out in the early 2010s. But they don’t have the power they used to before the European Civil Wars.

Brits tried it with Suez (until being politely reminded that the only power they had was at the US’ pleasure for anti-Soviet reasons- Argentina was a gimme though

Right. Britain clearly does not have the power to make war on neighbouring (ie European) states, which is why it confuses me so much that OP claims otherwise. Argentina was purely defensive: the settlements are British and have been for centuries.

Did you actually read my post? I'm not setting arbitrary clock cutoffs (see: my opinion regarding the case of the Japanese), but instead using cultural continuity as acknowledged by the people involved. The present-day Germans think of themselves as the same people as the Germans from 100 years ago, before any significant Arab immigration commenced; and conversely there is a continuous chain from the ones of 100 years ago to the present ones where older generations thought of younger generations replacing them as "their people". It's an interesting question whether the same reasoning should apply to wider or narrower circles of ingroup status as well, rather than just those at the scale of a "nation"; but if there actually were descendants of Western Hunter-Gatherers alive today that had some semblance of this sort of continuity, I would at least be open to considering it valid if they demanded that Indo-Europeans should gtfo back to the steppe.

The present-day Germans think of themselves as the same people as the Germans from 100 years ago

This is actually more complicated than you are making it sound! The thorny questions of German “nationhood” were the source of many wars over the course of centuries. There was a dialect continuum of German (or German-adjacent) languages, but the extent to which these various peoples were culturally- and politically-unified was very much in dispute for a very long time. “German” identity in many ways had to be imposed from top-down. (And we can see the extent to which this process was not completely achieved by, for example, the existence of a separate Austrian state.) The same is equally true of “the French” as a people. Once you start digging into the specifics, the “unbroken chains of continuity” start to look more like frayed ropes held together by tape.

I picked 100 years rather than a larger figure on purpose (and I'm reasonably familiar with German history; that's where I got my passport and most of my schooling!), and I'm happy to elaborate the rule as being against irredentism in case of doubt (so no German pre-Bismarck claims survive). The situations I opined on just all seem to be fairly clear-cut cases of nationhood continuity.

An even easier solution might be to posit a one-sided onus based on present-day claims of inheritance - so e.g. a hypothetical Russian Empire acquisition of North Africa would be morally open to a claim by descendants of the Carthaginians the moment the Imperial Russian government opens its mouth to say something about being the "Third Rome".

(I'm not trying to propose a counterintuitive-but-defensible rule, but rather some simple rule that aligns with intuitions about right and wrong that I have independently, as one does in analytic philosophy.)

The Arabs still have many homelands and there was no distinct Palestinian identity before Israeli independence.

That argument isn't going to convince Arabs, it isn't meant for the jewish population. It is an argument for Europeans meant to justify a massive refugee crisis on Europe's doorstep. The arab states have absolutely no reason in aiding a mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. For us in Europe we have zero reason to want to see millions of arabs move. Even if it is to other arab states it is still a disaster as it is destabilizing.

Israel has not only been involved in plenty of wars that has ended up with migrants in Europe. The ADL and plenty of other jewish groups have been pushing hard for mass migration into Europe.

So if not living in your own ethnostate makes it perfectly fine to evict people there is no problem if the rest of the world forcefully evicts all jews?

So it would have been completely fine to ethnically cleanse all Finns and Estonians pre 1918 as they had never had a state? Basques have never had an ethnostate so are they free game?

The ADL

The American ADL has been pushing for .. mass migration into Europe? I don't like it at all, but that seems rather far from its notional remit.

Thanks. I mostly know them for getting people to kiss the ring on TV...typically after saying something critical of Israel or more rarely, Jews.

I wonder how many people read that .. it's an exercise in tedium that in the end amounts to basically nothing except "you must censor people" and "pass hate crime laws" and doesn't even try to explain how low or no immigration is bad.

Absolutely. They have put enormous pressure on social media companies. They have also helped many pro migration NGO:s.

On top of that there are several other lobbying groups that have pushed hard for mass immigration.

Do you have some concrete evidence that they put the thumb on the scale about European migration? It would be a bit surprising to see, since one would think the opportunity cost of not investing that money in the American political market would matter more for them.

The overwhelming impact they have had on social media has absolutely played a major role. They have also sponsored multiple NGOs in Europe.

Which ones? Can you provide some concrete data of that and relevant pressure on social media companies?

*Here is an article about the ADL pressuring social media to stop criticism of its agenda.

*Here is an ADL press release with policy recommendations to criminalize opposition to mass migration to Europe, reacting to Lauren Southern's documentary about the NGO-run Libya to Italy boat migration route.

*Here is a more detailed look at the human-smuggling NGOs ferrying migrants from Libya to Italy.

*Here is an animation made from the ship tracking data of the NGO boats in question.

*Here is an ADL press release from 2015 condemning the rise of anti-migrant sentiment in Europe.

*Here is the ADL's propaganda packet made for high school teachers focused on pushing the youth to see migrants to Europe sympathetically using that viral photo of the drowned boy on the beach in Turkey.

*Here is an article from the Daily Forward about the Zionists of America criticizing the ADL for fighting anti-refugee activism in Europe because the mass migration of muslims into Europe was causing increased antisemitism.

I hope this infodump is enough to convince you.

More comments

This time, a German architecture prize was rescinded over the recipient signing a letter condemning Israel.

I wish someone could come up with a zinger viral label for an award, title or qualification that is contingent on holding the correct ideological opinions. Then all of the ones that are could be labelled and de-legitimised in the eyes of the larger public. Everything from the Oscars, to Nobel Prizes, to Hugo Awards. Even the College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO) that sent Jordan Peterson to the Commissars for 're-education'.

Once these things are properly deemed farcical, it might be the first step in a course correction. Let people striving for these things know in black and white what their opinions must be in order to receive and keep them. Then maybe you'll get college students/neophytes going 'nah, I don't want to have to be a communist/environmentalist/progressive/ultra-conservative so I'll just pick a different career' so they don't have to deal with it. With the wellspring of aspirants in cut off, the awards risk becoming irrelevant and might feel pressure to change their ways.

Better yet they actually would become irrelevant and fade into obscurity.

DEI aka "Didn't Earn It"

For the first step of coining a term and pushing its use - I think one recent invention was by Tucker Carlson who, after being rebuked by the corporate team of Zyn, called them a “Pronoun Company” (even though trans was not at issue) and started his own competing product line. Pronoun Company might not gain traction but it is succinct and brings to mind a host of HR/DEI pathologies that infect organizations.

Should we ask Grok to coin some for awards ceremonies?

But to demand political autonomy in the context of Gaza is where I get off the train. The force of political autonomy in Gaza is called Hamas. Their primary objective is to sabotage any peace process by murdering random residents of Israel. Asking for political autonomy for Gaza is like asking for political autonomy for Germany in 1946.

Did you know that this was basically part of Israeli strategy? Netanyahu approved dividing the Palestinians up between the feckless Palestinian Authority and Hamas. He said that supporting Hamas was a good idea precisely to prevent any single coherent movement for independence and a Palestinian state, at a Likud part conference in 2019. Presumably there's also a desire to play the Assad govt's favourite card: ' we're fighting terrorism!!!'.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/