I’ll offer a book to the reader who asked for some help in clarifying the Palestinian situation: _The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace_ by Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz. Short synopsis: the Palestinians want the Jews out of Israel in order to “reclaim” their homeland. It isn’t going to happen and giving encouragement to the Palestinians does nothing more than prolong their misery.
I think this is particularly applicable now. Hamas obviously cannot stand against the IDF, and they're smart enough to know it. They just hope to hold out long enough for enough pressure to be put on Israel that Israel lets them go. The protests of the UN and the US government are only feeding the hope and prolonging the war; a true peace initiative should *begin* with the demand for surrender and dissolution of Hamas.
Not entirely accurate. I think there is strong evidence that it is not “to ‘reclaim’ their homeland” that they seek, but to humiliate, torment, and kill the Jews. From long before the founding of Israel to the present moment, there have been countless points at which they have had to choose some amount of one or some amount of the other—and their choices have been absolutely consistent.
Wilf is part of the Israeli left, which is defined by immovable romanticization of Israel’s hostile neighbors. (Later edit: Schwartz, too. I hadn’t already known him, but I just looked him up.)
Muslims have hated and killed Jews since Mohammed but they've gotten a bit of a pass in the western media because most Jews in the west are Ashkenazim so the story of Muslim Jew hatred has not been told. Also, the Muslims get additional slack because Christians were particularly good at killing Jews and keeping the ones who were alive mostly poor. "The Golden Age of Jews Under Islam" = "they didn't kill us as much or as frequently as the Goyim in Europe did".
Israel is now made up mostly of Jews who have at least one Mizrachi grandparent.
If the mostly Ashkenazi Jews who made up the Israelis in 1948 weren't going to give up, you think the grandchildren of Jews who fled Morocco and Iraq and Yemen are going to surrender? They've heard their grandparents' stories about living under Muslim rule and they have no intention of ever doing that.
75% of the Israeli population supports how Netanyahu and the war cabinet are conducting the war. They want the IDF to finish off Hamas in Rafah, and then move Hezb'allah north of the Litani River.
As for the plight of children in Gaza, as they say in Hebrew, לא אכפת לי, look it up on Google translator. I left my last Eff to give about Palestinian kids somewhere on the road from Ma'alot.
The Golden Age is quite a lesson. In Spain, for example, Jews served in high positions--advisors and financiers to Moorish kings. But their life was quite tenuous. Their possessions were really the property of the ruler, who could seize them at will. Ideally a financier wanted to occupy a sweet spot where the king was borrowing enough from him that he would leave the financier alone--but not borrowing so much as to tempt the king to kill him as a way of debt cancellation. Then, there were the various laws of dhimmitude.
Nicely put. It is noble of you to want to help, but they are unlikely to follow the link you send precisely because they are Israel-critically “incurious.”
Rhodes comments in The NY Times you quoted went on to say that he/they would load the 27 year old reporters with what they wanted them to report and set them loose as a way to promote the administrations point of view. It was a shocking admission given without the slightest apology.
As Winston Churchill noted, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.... I would posit that in the days of social media, that lie has done endless circuits of the earth, before the proverbial pants get put on....
There is little point engaging. Even should your counterparty hear or read you out, he *cannot* comprehend what you are saying, and could in any case shift to any of a million other excuses for his motivated reasoning.
You suppose you are arguing “over his head” to those with open minds. I doubt it. If there are any left, they are unlikely to find their way through the roar of propaganda noise to your argument.
People probably gave the same advice to Churchill in the mid-1930s or, in the case of eugenics, to G. K. Chesterton in the 1920s. Their reasoning would have been sound. I'm glad Churchill and Chesterton didn't listen. ... In "Annie Hall," a flashback shows the Woody Allen character at age 9, giving up on studies because he has learned that the universe will end some day, so, he figures, what's the point?
Jews who tried to persuade Jew-haters died in the Holocaust. Jews who don’t give up have to do better than trying to persuade Jew-haters.
For example, they have to found their own country—and defend it, over and over, forever. But Churchill’s advice is correctly directed to them … and their allies, if they have allies.
I have multiple purposes in writing these pieces. I am interested, for example, in providing parents with arguments to present to their own children (or educators to present to their students).
Lots of supporters of Israel have their hearts in the right place, but lack the organized arguments to converse with their own kids. (Somewhat equivalently, an Orthodox rabbi once told me that you can always tell the Jewish contestants on Jeopardy!, because they’re the ones who can’t answer any of the questions about the Bible.)
Another reason for my article(s) is simply to bolster the spines of people who agree with us—a mutual support group.
Yes, but Churchill, Chesterton, and the fictional Alvie Singer were not trying to explain an innocent-Jew truth to a Jew-hater. I defy you to find an instance of someone having done that without wasting his time and effort.
There have been times and places when arguing “over his head” to open minds was worth persisting at. The noise making that unlikely to work now is no accident.
Despondent resignation is not my chosen mode. As I often mention, I grew up in the Jim Crow South, and I have seen many, many abject racists and antisemites find their way out of the darkness. It may all be futile, as you suggest, but in some analog to Pascal's Wager, I'll take the long-shot wager that such is not the case.
I’m not for despondent resignation. I am for raging defiance. However, I am also for picking one’s ground and tactics.
Let me ask you this: of those abject racists and antisemites who found their way out of darkness, do you know of one who was led out of darkness by the logical arguments or empirical evidence provided by someone with whom he was interacting? If so, please do tell me the story.
Combination of logic, jolting experiences, shocking news, religious awakening. I can think of a few stories, but I’ll abstain from telling them. Some of them are current friends and readers, and reminders might not be pleasant.
But as I said elsewhere, I’m especially interested in providing ammo for parents and educators whose kids have half-formed views and are still reachable.
I will mention a heart-thermostatic story of non-change.
I knew a Georgia boy not so much Jew-hating as Jew-ignorant. Bright enough to go to CalTech, but once there never suspected his (first) roommate of Jewishness because I have no horns. Not joking.
When he clued me in about Jews’ horns, I somehow managed to keep my composure and nod respectfully. I figured that telling him the truth (or laughing in his face) would likely embarrass him, and would besides be a bit like killing the last unicorn.
No, the word “cannot” was carefully chosen. It is not an act of will, in my judgment. If you’re deep enough in the Kool-Aid, you *can’t* see the other perspective anymore.
Hamas is the sole cause of Arab suffering in Gaza. It assuredly knew the repercussions of its acts on Oct. 7 and assessed that they were a feature, not a bug. Hamas knows it cannot possibly defeat the IDF militarily and is thus almost entirely dependent on the propaganda war. It is not coincidental that so-called "civilian" death statistics are somehow churned-out with clock-like precision despite the IDF breathing down Hamas's neck. The strategy is to inflame the Muslim world and other useful idiots by reinstating a blood libel against the Jewish state. That is the key to victory. And a look at the news and pundits at any given moment makes one realize that these evil barbarians are also uncannily savvy.
The attack on October 7 is straight out on episode in season 2 of Fauda. A Hamas leader was planning a sarin attack to bring such an attack that the world would come down on Israel. That episode was from 2015 (?). Life imitating art or vice versa.
I'll say that Hamas is the proximate cause of suffering in Gaza. The UN, NGOs, media, and many national governments are partners in crime. Hamas does what it does because it knows that they have willing lapdogs spread around the globe.
Thank you for this. I have also found the discussion by Russ Roberts on EconTalk to be informative about the current situation and what went before (e.g., interviews with Michael Oren, Hillel Cohen, Daniel Gordis)
I am strongly of the opinion that Israel needs to err on the side of more violence than less to counter the poisonous myths of Hamass and others that any loss that is not abject is in fact a victory. This is of course aided by the way that the "great and the good" in the Western world seem to bend over backwards to blame Israel and pour more money in aid into Gaza where Hamass and co can use it to build more rockets and tunnels to attack Israel.
I wrote about this on my substack this weekend, where I tried to explain why I support Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.
I must say, Mr. G., that the number of comments suggests that you have successfully argued “over the head” of the Jew-hater. But I suggest that your corps of commenters are really Jew-non-haters, not undecideds.
Again, my presumption is that there is some sliver of persuadable people in the world. My goal is to produce tools with which potential persuaders can reach them.
Nice break down of the comment. I’ve been baffled all of my life regarding antisemitism - it just doesn’t compute in my brain. Jewish Americans have been part of the fabric of America life since the founding of the US - they are an integral part of who we are as Americans. I just can’t understand anyone believing a terrorist organization over a people who’ve held together for millennia, and contribute so much to humanity.
Historically, the puzzle of American Jew-hatred is not that it has been so common but that it has been so rare, especially in the golden age which has just ended.
This is not to suggest that Jew-hatred is in any sense just. Of course not; I am proud to be a Jew, and I don’t think we’ve done anything wrong. But there is no denying that the historical norm is the opposite opinion.
Not that Jews deserve the level of hatred, but not every Jew is tzadek. I live in the Detroit area, where the Purple Gang was active. George Soros is evil, and yeah, the Frankfurt School hasn't had a positive influence on America. The thing is, every group has its rogues and gonifs. The fact that there are Jews who are bad people means that Jews are a normal human group, not categorically evil.
Jew-hatred may be irrational and self-destructive on individual and societal levels but it is part of the existential reality of being a Jew. It's part of our covenant with God. We get to survive as a group even if not individually because of aforementioned Jew-hatred. Generations of Jews have decided that the juice is worth the squeeze because we continue to circumcise our sons and marry our daughters off under a chuppah. Everybody's got to die some day and many deaths seem so meaningless. If God decides to make me a martyr, I'd consider it a privilege even if I'd want to forestall the day as much possible.
Let me cite an atheist. Gad Saad is an evolutionary psychologist. Regarding "virtue signaling," he says that it's cheap and not a genuine signal. Real signals have costs, like a diamond engagement ring. Martyrdom has the ultimate cost, so it's a very real and strong signal.
A Torah Jew believes we persist because we have a mysterious but cosmic part to play in the salvation of the world—not because other people dislike us. Better if they don’t. Obviously, I would have thought.
I must have missed the part of the covenant where the hatreds of other peoples are part of it. Feel free to cite.
True. But that is not because we are properly chastened by their bad opinion, but by His.
It strikes me that Adonai could for once demonstrate His existence to the world by punishing someone else. Moreover, for someone omniscient, omnipotent, and ubiquitous, He doesn’t seem to evince much of a talent for demonstrations convincing to anyone else, or even to half of us!
I once asked my rav, R' Avraham Jacobowitz, why did God punish the Egyptians so severely as they were part of His plan for the Jews, prophesized before Yaakov's sons went down to Goshen? His answer was that the Egyptians relished the job.
Robert, as always a joy to read. I don’t think I can add much to the conversation but to add a little remembered but important book “From time Immemorial” by Joan Peters. She discusses the origins of the Arab population in what became Israel. Many if not most of the Arab population in what became Israel were new comers to the land having emigrated from surrounding position centers as the economic revival of the land increased as Jews emigrated to the area. Also note before 1948 the people living in what was to become Israel called Palestinian’s were
Jews, the other people living there were called Arabs. The Arab population took on the name in the 1960’s to create a people distinct from the surrounding countries. Since that time they have become distinct because of where they live (Israel) and where they live and are discriminated against (camps in other countries). This won’t change a closed minded person’s opinion but could help some people understand the history of population movements in the area.
Unfortunately, Peters' book is out of print. It was reissued by a small publisher about 20 years ago but it's not easy to find.
One thing that has struck me about Peters' book as well as the works I mentioned by Tauber and Karsh is that the same script gets played out over and over. How much different in motivation, if not scope, was the "Al Aksa Flood" of Oct. 7th, from the Hebron massacre in 1929 over Jews allegedly taking over the Temple Mount? Arab leaders lied about Deir Yassin (convincing many other Arabs to flee) and now they lie about babies in hospitals.
Haviv Retig Gur says that the Arabs of Palestine have always misunderstood the Zionist Jews as imperial colonizers, thinking that they've successively represented the interests of (rather than relying on their power) in sequence, czarist Russia, Britain, communist Russia, Britain and France, then the U.S. That's probably true but I think that's because they won't admit that it's ultimately a religious struggle. The idea of degraded dhimmis not just laying claim to land Muslims consider to be wakf, under Muslim domain, but making a success out of it and defeating Muslims militarily at the same time, is such an affront to Muslim ego, that it cannot be tolerated.
Just last Friday, in the main mosque of Mecca, the imam preached about cleansing Palestine of the Jews' polluting presence.
Alas, poor Gur thinks that if only the Palestinian Arabs understood him—that he is no colonizer and cannot go away—they would stop. If you (and I) are right, at most the Palestinians’ spokesmen would change the theories under which they publicly justify killing Jews.
I had to look that one up. Surprisingly, Rhodes' admission wasn't one of the examples listed. :) Should have been. It got a bit of attention at the time but only in certain quarters, if you get my drift. Read nothing further about it in the Times. Maybe the editor was sacked.
I recommend this recent book by Robert Spencer: 'The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process." This book includes the Balfour Declaration but starts well before that. The book states that the root cause of the conflict is Islam, as presented in the Quran, Hadith, and Sunna.
As usual, their claims simply reverse what they've done. A number of former hostages have testified to their surgeries without anesthetic. Some examples:
I’ll offer a book to the reader who asked for some help in clarifying the Palestinian situation: _The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace_ by Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz. Short synopsis: the Palestinians want the Jews out of Israel in order to “reclaim” their homeland. It isn’t going to happen and giving encouragement to the Palestinians does nothing more than prolong their misery.
I think this is particularly applicable now. Hamas obviously cannot stand against the IDF, and they're smart enough to know it. They just hope to hold out long enough for enough pressure to be put on Israel that Israel lets them go. The protests of the UN and the US government are only feeding the hope and prolonging the war; a true peace initiative should *begin* with the demand for surrender and dissolution of Hamas.
Hamas is superb at playing this game.
Not entirely accurate. I think there is strong evidence that it is not “to ‘reclaim’ their homeland” that they seek, but to humiliate, torment, and kill the Jews. From long before the founding of Israel to the present moment, there have been countless points at which they have had to choose some amount of one or some amount of the other—and their choices have been absolutely consistent.
Wilf is part of the Israeli left, which is defined by immovable romanticization of Israel’s hostile neighbors. (Later edit: Schwartz, too. I hadn’t already known him, but I just looked him up.)
Muslims have hated and killed Jews since Mohammed but they've gotten a bit of a pass in the western media because most Jews in the west are Ashkenazim so the story of Muslim Jew hatred has not been told. Also, the Muslims get additional slack because Christians were particularly good at killing Jews and keeping the ones who were alive mostly poor. "The Golden Age of Jews Under Islam" = "they didn't kill us as much or as frequently as the Goyim in Europe did".
Israel is now made up mostly of Jews who have at least one Mizrachi grandparent.
If the mostly Ashkenazi Jews who made up the Israelis in 1948 weren't going to give up, you think the grandchildren of Jews who fled Morocco and Iraq and Yemen are going to surrender? They've heard their grandparents' stories about living under Muslim rule and they have no intention of ever doing that.
75% of the Israeli population supports how Netanyahu and the war cabinet are conducting the war. They want the IDF to finish off Hamas in Rafah, and then move Hezb'allah north of the Litani River.
As for the plight of children in Gaza, as they say in Hebrew, לא אכפת לי, look it up on Google translator. I left my last Eff to give about Palestinian kids somewhere on the road from Ma'alot.
The Golden Age is quite a lesson. In Spain, for example, Jews served in high positions--advisors and financiers to Moorish kings. But their life was quite tenuous. Their possessions were really the property of the ruler, who could seize them at will. Ideally a financier wanted to occupy a sweet spot where the king was borrowing enough from him that he would leave the financier alone--but not borrowing so much as to tempt the king to kill him as a way of debt cancellation. Then, there were the various laws of dhimmitude.
The Golden Age of Jews *UNDER* Islam.
I really liked your comments at Bastiat’s Window, and I miss them—and not I alone, I strongly suspect. Where have you been? Are you okay?
Thanks for the recommendation.
Bookmarked to send to my incurious Israel-critical acquaintances.
Send away!
Nicely put. It is noble of you to want to help, but they are unlikely to follow the link you send precisely because they are Israel-critically “incurious.”
I fear you’re right. But ,I hope my reputation as a careful thinker and dispassionate observer might cut through a hardened heart.
You cannot imagine—well, maybe you can, but you will have to contemplate the Holocaust first—how much I wish the process to which you allude worked.
A brilliant and point-by-point destruction of an emotionally driven comment by using facts.
I concur!
Nobly said. But of course emotionally driven comments (of this kind) are immune to point-by-point destruction, however brilliant.
Probably. But I had multiple reasons for writing this.
Everything we do probably has multiple motives.
Many thanks.
Rhodes comments in The NY Times you quoted went on to say that he/they would load the 27 year old reporters with what they wanted them to report and set them loose as a way to promote the administrations point of view. It was a shocking admission given without the slightest apology.
I’ve always found the comment by Rhodes to be dripping in irony as he wasn’t much more than a 27 yr old himself, also a product of the same education.
Well, he got a cushy job (surely with no thanks to his well-placed brother), so therefore he must be every bit as smart as he thinks he is.
Kinsleyan Gaffe.
As Winston Churchill noted, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.... I would posit that in the days of social media, that lie has done endless circuits of the earth, before the proverbial pants get put on....
Before the pants are out of the closet.
There is little point engaging. Even should your counterparty hear or read you out, he *cannot* comprehend what you are saying, and could in any case shift to any of a million other excuses for his motivated reasoning.
You suppose you are arguing “over his head” to those with open minds. I doubt it. If there are any left, they are unlikely to find their way through the roar of propaganda noise to your argument.
People probably gave the same advice to Churchill in the mid-1930s or, in the case of eugenics, to G. K. Chesterton in the 1920s. Their reasoning would have been sound. I'm glad Churchill and Chesterton didn't listen. ... In "Annie Hall," a flashback shows the Woody Allen character at age 9, giving up on studies because he has learned that the universe will end some day, so, he figures, what's the point?
To use another bit of wisdom from Churchill “Never, never, never give up!”
Never Give Up! Never Surrender!
Oh wait that's Galaxyquest :)
Jews who tried to persuade Jew-haters died in the Holocaust. Jews who don’t give up have to do better than trying to persuade Jew-haters.
For example, they have to found their own country—and defend it, over and over, forever. But Churchill’s advice is correctly directed to them … and their allies, if they have allies.
I have multiple purposes in writing these pieces. I am interested, for example, in providing parents with arguments to present to their own children (or educators to present to their students).
Okay. That might frame the argument differently.
Lots of supporters of Israel have their hearts in the right place, but lack the organized arguments to converse with their own kids. (Somewhat equivalently, an Orthodox rabbi once told me that you can always tell the Jewish contestants on Jeopardy!, because they’re the ones who can’t answer any of the questions about the Bible.)
Another reason for my article(s) is simply to bolster the spines of people who agree with us—a mutual support group.
Yes, but Churchill, Chesterton, and the fictional Alvie Singer were not trying to explain an innocent-Jew truth to a Jew-hater. I defy you to find an instance of someone having done that without wasting his time and effort.
There have been times and places when arguing “over his head” to open minds was worth persisting at. The noise making that unlikely to work now is no accident.
Despondent resignation is not my chosen mode. As I often mention, I grew up in the Jim Crow South, and I have seen many, many abject racists and antisemites find their way out of the darkness. It may all be futile, as you suggest, but in some analog to Pascal's Wager, I'll take the long-shot wager that such is not the case.
I’m not for despondent resignation. I am for raging defiance. However, I am also for picking one’s ground and tactics.
Let me ask you this: of those abject racists and antisemites who found their way out of darkness, do you know of one who was led out of darkness by the logical arguments or empirical evidence provided by someone with whom he was interacting? If so, please do tell me the story.
Combination of logic, jolting experiences, shocking news, religious awakening. I can think of a few stories, but I’ll abstain from telling them. Some of them are current friends and readers, and reminders might not be pleasant.
But as I said elsewhere, I’m especially interested in providing ammo for parents and educators whose kids have half-formed views and are still reachable.
Well, okay then.
I would bet my chips on the jolting experiences, shocking news, and most especially religious awakening.
I will mention a heart-thermostatic story of non-change.
I knew a Georgia boy not so much Jew-hating as Jew-ignorant. Bright enough to go to CalTech, but once there never suspected his (first) roommate of Jewishness because I have no horns. Not joking.
When he clued me in about Jews’ horns, I somehow managed to keep my composure and nod respectfully. I figured that telling him the truth (or laughing in his face) would likely embarrass him, and would besides be a bit like killing the last unicorn.
Not so much "cannot" I think as will not.
No, the word “cannot” was carefully chosen. It is not an act of will, in my judgment. If you’re deep enough in the Kool-Aid, you *can’t* see the other perspective anymore.
Hamas is the sole cause of Arab suffering in Gaza. It assuredly knew the repercussions of its acts on Oct. 7 and assessed that they were a feature, not a bug. Hamas knows it cannot possibly defeat the IDF militarily and is thus almost entirely dependent on the propaganda war. It is not coincidental that so-called "civilian" death statistics are somehow churned-out with clock-like precision despite the IDF breathing down Hamas's neck. The strategy is to inflame the Muslim world and other useful idiots by reinstating a blood libel against the Jewish state. That is the key to victory. And a look at the news and pundits at any given moment makes one realize that these evil barbarians are also uncannily savvy.
The attack on October 7 is straight out on episode in season 2 of Fauda. A Hamas leader was planning a sarin attack to bring such an attack that the world would come down on Israel. That episode was from 2015 (?). Life imitating art or vice versa.
Fauda's writers apparently had an October 7-type scenario under discussion, but decided that it would seem too far-fetched.
I'll say that Hamas is the proximate cause of suffering in Gaza. The UN, NGOs, media, and many national governments are partners in crime. Hamas does what it does because it knows that they have willing lapdogs spread around the globe.
Point by point rational and logical exploration of emotional accusations- thank you!
But of course emotional accusations (of this sort) are immune to point by point rational and logical exploration.
And thank you, Dafna.
Thank you for this. I have also found the discussion by Russ Roberts on EconTalk to be informative about the current situation and what went before (e.g., interviews with Michael Oren, Hillel Cohen, Daniel Gordis)
Thx!
I am strongly of the opinion that Israel needs to err on the side of more violence than less to counter the poisonous myths of Hamass and others that any loss that is not abject is in fact a victory. This is of course aided by the way that the "great and the good" in the Western world seem to bend over backwards to blame Israel and pour more money in aid into Gaza where Hamass and co can use it to build more rockets and tunnels to attack Israel.
I wrote about this on my substack this weekend, where I tried to explain why I support Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.
https://ombreolivier.substack.com/p/supporting-ukraine-israel-and-taiwan
I get the feeling that a lot of Western governments don't actually want to see either Russia or Hamass utterly defeated and I really don't get it
I'll look forward to reading it.
I must say, Mr. G., that the number of comments suggests that you have successfully argued “over the head” of the Jew-hater. But I suggest that your corps of commenters are really Jew-non-haters, not undecideds.
Again, my presumption is that there is some sliver of persuadable people in the world. My goal is to produce tools with which potential persuaders can reach them.
Well, okay then.
Nice break down of the comment. I’ve been baffled all of my life regarding antisemitism - it just doesn’t compute in my brain. Jewish Americans have been part of the fabric of America life since the founding of the US - they are an integral part of who we are as Americans. I just can’t understand anyone believing a terrorist organization over a people who’ve held together for millennia, and contribute so much to humanity.
Historically, the puzzle of American Jew-hatred is not that it has been so common but that it has been so rare, especially in the golden age which has just ended.
This is not to suggest that Jew-hatred is in any sense just. Of course not; I am proud to be a Jew, and I don’t think we’ve done anything wrong. But there is no denying that the historical norm is the opposite opinion.
This parallels the story I told of crime in New York City in "DEATH AND LIFE IN GREAT AMERICAN CITIES" in a recent post: https://graboyes.substack.com/p/on-the-mortality-of-new-yorkers-presidents.
Not that Jews deserve the level of hatred, but not every Jew is tzadek. I live in the Detroit area, where the Purple Gang was active. George Soros is evil, and yeah, the Frankfurt School hasn't had a positive influence on America. The thing is, every group has its rogues and gonifs. The fact that there are Jews who are bad people means that Jews are a normal human group, not categorically evil.
Of what other group would “we haven’t done anything wrong” be answered with a qualifier like your post?
Jew-hatred may be irrational and self-destructive on individual and societal levels but it is part of the existential reality of being a Jew. It's part of our covenant with God. We get to survive as a group even if not individually because of aforementioned Jew-hatred. Generations of Jews have decided that the juice is worth the squeeze because we continue to circumcise our sons and marry our daughters off under a chuppah. Everybody's got to die some day and many deaths seem so meaningless. If God decides to make me a martyr, I'd consider it a privilege even if I'd want to forestall the day as much possible.
Let me cite an atheist. Gad Saad is an evolutionary psychologist. Regarding "virtue signaling," he says that it's cheap and not a genuine signal. Real signals have costs, like a diamond engagement ring. Martyrdom has the ultimate cost, so it's a very real and strong signal.
I appreciate the response - that’s not a perspective I’ve considered before.
A Torah Jew believes we persist because we have a mysterious but cosmic part to play in the salvation of the world—not because other people dislike us. Better if they don’t. Obviously, I would have thought.
I must have missed the part of the covenant where the hatreds of other peoples are part of it. Feel free to cite.
Amos 3:2
רַ֚ק אֶתְכֶ֣ם יָדַ֔עְתִּי מִכֹּ֖ל מִשְׁפְּח֣וֹת הָאֲדָמָ֑ה עַל־כֵּן֙ אֶפְקֹ֣ד עֲלֵיכֶ֔ם אֵ֖ת כׇּל־עֲוֺנֹתֵיכֶֽם׃
You alone have I singled out
Of all the families of the earth—
That is why I will call you to account
For all your iniquities.
From Deut 29, it seems that when God punishes the Jews, it demonstrates His existence to the world.
True. But that is not because we are properly chastened by their bad opinion, but by His.
It strikes me that Adonai could for once demonstrate His existence to the world by punishing someone else. Moreover, for someone omniscient, omnipotent, and ubiquitous, He doesn’t seem to evince much of a talent for demonstrations convincing to anyone else, or even to half of us!
I once asked my rav, R' Avraham Jacobowitz, why did God punish the Egyptians so severely as they were part of His plan for the Jews, prophesized before Yaakov's sons went down to Goshen? His answer was that the Egyptians relished the job.
Good reason. It could only happen to the “Palestinian” Arabs.
Robert, as always a joy to read. I don’t think I can add much to the conversation but to add a little remembered but important book “From time Immemorial” by Joan Peters. She discusses the origins of the Arab population in what became Israel. Many if not most of the Arab population in what became Israel were new comers to the land having emigrated from surrounding position centers as the economic revival of the land increased as Jews emigrated to the area. Also note before 1948 the people living in what was to become Israel called Palestinian’s were
Jews, the other people living there were called Arabs. The Arab population took on the name in the 1960’s to create a people distinct from the surrounding countries. Since that time they have become distinct because of where they live (Israel) and where they live and are discriminated against (camps in other countries). This won’t change a closed minded person’s opinion but could help some people understand the history of population movements in the area.
Thanks much, and you correctly grasp why I write these pieces. And your history of the region is quite correct.
Quite so. We have only three months to prepare a gift, should we wish to give one, for the fifty-seventh birthday of the Palestinian Arab People.
Unfortunately, Peters' book is out of print. It was reissued by a small publisher about 20 years ago but it's not easy to find.
One thing that has struck me about Peters' book as well as the works I mentioned by Tauber and Karsh is that the same script gets played out over and over. How much different in motivation, if not scope, was the "Al Aksa Flood" of Oct. 7th, from the Hebron massacre in 1929 over Jews allegedly taking over the Temple Mount? Arab leaders lied about Deir Yassin (convincing many other Arabs to flee) and now they lie about babies in hospitals.
Haviv Retig Gur says that the Arabs of Palestine have always misunderstood the Zionist Jews as imperial colonizers, thinking that they've successively represented the interests of (rather than relying on their power) in sequence, czarist Russia, Britain, communist Russia, Britain and France, then the U.S. That's probably true but I think that's because they won't admit that it's ultimately a religious struggle. The idea of degraded dhimmis not just laying claim to land Muslims consider to be wakf, under Muslim domain, but making a success out of it and defeating Muslims militarily at the same time, is such an affront to Muslim ego, that it cannot be tolerated.
Just last Friday, in the main mosque of Mecca, the imam preached about cleansing Palestine of the Jews' polluting presence.
Good points, Mr. Schreiber.
Alas, poor Gur thinks that if only the Palestinian Arabs understood him—that he is no colonizer and cannot go away—they would stop. If you (and I) are right, at most the Palestinians’ spokesmen would change the theories under which they publicly justify killing Jews.
I had to look that one up. Surprisingly, Rhodes' admission wasn't one of the examples listed. :) Should have been. It got a bit of attention at the time but only in certain quarters, if you get my drift. Read nothing further about it in the Times. Maybe the editor was sacked.
Absolutely.
I recommend this recent book by Robert Spencer: 'The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process." This book includes the Balfour Declaration but starts well before that. The book states that the root cause of the conflict is Islam, as presented in the Quran, Hadith, and Sunna.
As usual, their claims simply reverse what they've done. A number of former hostages have testified to their surgeries without anesthetic. Some examples:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/released-hostage-mia-schem-says-she-was-held-in-gaza-hospital-operated-on-without-painkillers/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/freed-hostage-itay-regev-gazan-doctor-pulled-bullet-from-my-leg-without-anesthesia/
How unusual for an Internet post: you actually cite facts! Splendid!
Everybody look! See how it’s done!
I'll try harder next time. 🤣
No. Just like that! 👌
Quite some articles.