At a certain point I worry that this gets to be more philosophy than deduction, but I would say that my reasoning is largely under-girded by two things.
First, I’m a realist, a materialist, and a consequentialist: if someone repeatedly does things that produce a consistent outcome, eventually I conclude – regardless of what they may say – that clearly that is the outcome they prefer.
Second, my impressions regarding anyone based the same thing as anyone’s: observing what people and groups say and do by following the news and testing how well various mental models predict and explain observed behavior.
Here’s an example: from reading Jewish Currents, 972 Magazine, Mondoweiss, The Intercept, The Forward, etc. I’m aware that the head of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, has been a controversial figure even among his ideological peer group. Even within the ADL and like-minded organizations such as J Street critics have complained that Greenblatt demonstrates a bias against criticism of Israel and zionism that seems to routinely impede the overall mission of the ADL.
And now we’re at a point where the ADL has become wholly deferential to Elon Musk. They are not just passive toward him, they actively defend a man who has flatly stated that he believes Jews engage in media manipulation and act to enrich themselves even at the expense of any national allegiance. But: he’s also made clear that he’s prepared to support a Jewish ethnostate without reservation as long as he feels that the Jews refrain from challenging his own power and priorities.
This is just a case study. Greenblatt is not a uniquely important case. The point is that I look at this, and I have a mental model of Jonathan Greenblatt. I think about what I was raised to believe, and I understand how a man like Greenblatt can lie to himself all the way to quietly accepting the richest man on Earth unapologetically performing a sieg hiel salute in public. But going back to my point about being a realist and a consequentialist, it does not matter how convincingly one may insist that circumstances forced their hand, and that they made the best hard choice among bad options. It doesn’t matter how hard one insists that they’re a conflicted defender of human rights. If every time a group further yokes the rights and dignity of another group you say ‘Well… I’ll let it slide just this once’, then forgive me if I use the same mental model to predict your actions as I’d use for an embarrassed fascist. If you don’t like it, behave in a way that doesn’t conform so well to that ideological framework.
I consume credible journalism and analysis and follow where it leads. A great example is this analysis of the Sde Teiman riot. “A riot for impunity shows Israel’s proud embrace of its crimes” [+972 Magazine]. There are a lot of people like the ones described here who have dropped any pretense of opposing genocide. And it’s reasonable to conclude that the people who knowingly support them do to. And we can say the same about the people who knowingly support them. And when you apply this to the settlement of the West Bank and destruction of homes in East Jerusalem over the last decade, you’re left with a bewildering but unavoidable conclusion. Obama certainly criticized Netanyahu for subsidizing the obvious ethnic cleansing he was doing. But he never stopped sending crucial supplies and vetoing UN resolutions about it. The companies that build factories that rely on the labor of an oppressed class living under apartheid cannot claim not to know that they’re benefiting from and working to uphold ethnic exploitation. They know well enough that they seek to censor people who try to bring awareness to it. In other words, what do words of support for a two-state solution mean in the face of actively collaborating in the primary strategy that was employed to curtail any possibility of a two-state solution? It’s kind of a “2+2=4” situation.
But here’s where I think we can wrap up: Biden is retired. He lives in history now. I’m not interested in shaming anyone, I just want to help people figure out what is right and do it. And right now, that is (1) opposing genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid and (2) recognizing attempts to justify or deflect from these practices and then calling these out for what they are. That’s what I’d encourage everyone to do. If you have a brain, use it; and if you have a mouth, use it too.
So where do the aforementioned liberal Jews go? What do they do? The simple existence of a homeland, a space where they will never be chased out and destroyed is what they’re looking for. They disagree 100% with what is going on, and have never supported it.
I think we’re throwing some of the babies out with the bathwater is another way of asking that I guess.
I think Jews in Israel should continue to live in Israel while accepting full citizenship for Palestinians under a constitution that guarantees safety and equal rights for all.
I think settlements in the West Bank should be governed by a provincial government like Canadian provinces. And that government should afford those settlements infrastructure no greater than that of Palestinian villages, along with a robust and accountable justice system that strictly forbids terrorism and hate crimes, and offers Palestinians displaced by settler terrorism the right to return and rebuild their destroyed villages, financed by taxes on settlements that were illegally constructed until those villages are rebuilt.
None of this is any more preposterous than the American Reconstruction, end of Apartheid in South Africa, or Irish Independence. However as in those examples, this will absolutely need to be forced upon controlling interests against their protests. It is unfortunate but how emancipation works.
There is also a very unlikely precedent in zionism itself!
Before 1948, zionism was a fringe (almost utopian) project no less audacious than the abolition of slavery or end of colonial rule anywhere. And an Israel that included the existing residents of the land was widely claimed to be a goal. So I often point this out: if the heroes of zionism could boldly envision founding a state and living in peace when the first half was considered utterly impossible and then they got so far as to complete the first half of that, then what on god’s green earth kind of excuse do any zionists today have to justify condemning part 2 as impossible?
It was in the same decade that genocide was inflicted on Jews that the dream of a homeland was realized. So how can it be suggested as farfetched for us to simply declare that we all must now afford the same thing to Palestinians? I can say it no better than the grandfather of zionism himself, Theodor Herzl: “If you will it: it is no dream.”
Absolutely but I mean, aren’t those people there now wanting that? Why do they have to secretly love what the IDF and Likud are doing? That is to say, I don’t think they do.
That’s my hang up with the premise - I know OF people who fit the Likud profile, and I know of “liberal Jews” who fit the profile we’ve established here, but I don’t know of liberal Jews who are secretly happy with Likud. Not that there can’t be any, I just have never seen it.
And, for the record, if I do see it, I don’t count them in the “liberal Jewish” category because they’ve expressed a preference for war crimes. I put them in the same category as the Jews-for-trump; very wrong.
At a certain point I worry that this gets to be more philosophy than deduction, but I would say that my reasoning is largely under-girded by two things.
First, I’m a realist, a materialist, and a consequentialist: if someone repeatedly does things that produce a consistent outcome, eventually I conclude – regardless of what they may say – that clearly that is the outcome they prefer.
Second, my impressions regarding anyone based the same thing as anyone’s: observing what people and groups say and do by following the news and testing how well various mental models predict and explain observed behavior.
Here’s an example: from reading Jewish Currents, 972 Magazine, Mondoweiss, The Intercept, The Forward, etc. I’m aware that the head of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, has been a controversial figure even among his ideological peer group. Even within the ADL and like-minded organizations such as J Street critics have complained that Greenblatt demonstrates a bias against criticism of Israel and zionism that seems to routinely impede the overall mission of the ADL.
And now we’re at a point where the ADL has become wholly deferential to Elon Musk. They are not just passive toward him, they actively defend a man who has flatly stated that he believes Jews engage in media manipulation and act to enrich themselves even at the expense of any national allegiance. But: he’s also made clear that he’s prepared to support a Jewish ethnostate without reservation as long as he feels that the Jews refrain from challenging his own power and priorities.
This is just a case study. Greenblatt is not a uniquely important case. The point is that I look at this, and I have a mental model of Jonathan Greenblatt. I think about what I was raised to believe, and I understand how a man like Greenblatt can lie to himself all the way to quietly accepting the richest man on Earth unapologetically performing a sieg hiel salute in public. But going back to my point about being a realist and a consequentialist, it does not matter how convincingly one may insist that circumstances forced their hand, and that they made the best hard choice among bad options. It doesn’t matter how hard one insists that they’re a conflicted defender of human rights. If every time a group further yokes the rights and dignity of another group you say ‘Well… I’ll let it slide just this once’, then forgive me if I use the same mental model to predict your actions as I’d use for an embarrassed fascist. If you don’t like it, behave in a way that doesn’t conform so well to that ideological framework.
I consume credible journalism and analysis and follow where it leads. A great example is this analysis of the Sde Teiman riot. “A riot for impunity shows Israel’s proud embrace of its crimes” [+972 Magazine]. There are a lot of people like the ones described here who have dropped any pretense of opposing genocide. And it’s reasonable to conclude that the people who knowingly support them do to. And we can say the same about the people who knowingly support them. And when you apply this to the settlement of the West Bank and destruction of homes in East Jerusalem over the last decade, you’re left with a bewildering but unavoidable conclusion. Obama certainly criticized Netanyahu for subsidizing the obvious ethnic cleansing he was doing. But he never stopped sending crucial supplies and vetoing UN resolutions about it. The companies that build factories that rely on the labor of an oppressed class living under apartheid cannot claim not to know that they’re benefiting from and working to uphold ethnic exploitation. They know well enough that they seek to censor people who try to bring awareness to it. In other words, what do words of support for a two-state solution mean in the face of actively collaborating in the primary strategy that was employed to curtail any possibility of a two-state solution? It’s kind of a “2+2=4” situation.
But here’s where I think we can wrap up: Biden is retired. He lives in history now. I’m not interested in shaming anyone, I just want to help people figure out what is right and do it. And right now, that is (1) opposing genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid and (2) recognizing attempts to justify or deflect from these practices and then calling these out for what they are. That’s what I’d encourage everyone to do. If you have a brain, use it; and if you have a mouth, use it too.
So where do the aforementioned liberal Jews go? What do they do? The simple existence of a homeland, a space where they will never be chased out and destroyed is what they’re looking for. They disagree 100% with what is going on, and have never supported it.
I think we’re throwing some of the babies out with the bathwater is another way of asking that I guess.
I think Jews in Israel should continue to live in Israel while accepting full citizenship for Palestinians under a constitution that guarantees safety and equal rights for all.
I think settlements in the West Bank should be governed by a provincial government like Canadian provinces. And that government should afford those settlements infrastructure no greater than that of Palestinian villages, along with a robust and accountable justice system that strictly forbids terrorism and hate crimes, and offers Palestinians displaced by settler terrorism the right to return and rebuild their destroyed villages, financed by taxes on settlements that were illegally constructed until those villages are rebuilt.
None of this is any more preposterous than the American Reconstruction, end of Apartheid in South Africa, or Irish Independence. However as in those examples, this will absolutely need to be forced upon controlling interests against their protests. It is unfortunate but how emancipation works.
There is also a very unlikely precedent in zionism itself!
Before 1948, zionism was a fringe (almost utopian) project no less audacious than the abolition of slavery or end of colonial rule anywhere. And an Israel that included the existing residents of the land was widely claimed to be a goal. So I often point this out: if the heroes of zionism could boldly envision founding a state and living in peace when the first half was considered utterly impossible and then they got so far as to complete the first half of that, then what on god’s green earth kind of excuse do any zionists today have to justify condemning part 2 as impossible?
It was in the same decade that genocide was inflicted on Jews that the dream of a homeland was realized. So how can it be suggested as farfetched for us to simply declare that we all must now afford the same thing to Palestinians? I can say it no better than the grandfather of zionism himself, Theodor Herzl: “If you will it: it is no dream.”
Absolutely but I mean, aren’t those people there now wanting that? Why do they have to secretly love what the IDF and Likud are doing? That is to say, I don’t think they do.
That’s my hang up with the premise - I know OF people who fit the Likud profile, and I know of “liberal Jews” who fit the profile we’ve established here, but I don’t know of liberal Jews who are secretly happy with Likud. Not that there can’t be any, I just have never seen it.
And, for the record, if I do see it, I don’t count them in the “liberal Jewish” category because they’ve expressed a preference for war crimes. I put them in the same category as the Jews-for-trump; very wrong.