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1d ago
I have no interest in going back in time on this issue. We are not going back to a place when any criticism of Jews are called antisemitism.
If somehow we ranked a groups political power. Jews probably control in the neighborhood of 25% of global power despite having a minimal population. If you could some how measure influence, tech, military, etc. So yes we can criticize Jews.
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1d ago
Most recently study I see - Israel was 44% Ashkenazi and 8% mixed. So about half and shrinking. They were the founders and basically until today the only ones that matter in the country.
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1d ago
I though all DNA test on specifically Ashkenazi have shown 50% European DNA and they lived in Europe or Russia for the past 1000 years.
Calling them European would seem to be significantly factually correct. We aren’t going back to the old days where truth telling is a slur or racists.
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1d ago
Correct. Sometimes we forgot that not all Jews are Ashkenazi. In America and in global affairs it’s always an Ashkenazi.
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1d ago
I think most people here would accept these two things:
- Most human beings have a loyalty to their own tribe. As thus Jews have interests not shared by other Americans.
- Jews likely made up 30-40% of the highest IQ Americans for decades. This may be lower now with the large amount of filtered immigration the US had between roughly 1970-2010.
So I do think a very high in human capital group with their own interests is something the rest of society should notice.
And yes it was a Jew Scott Alexander who made me aware of AIPACs ability to target political races on a small budget. It’s there very high human capital that gives the group an ability to do things like AIPACs political lobbying. So yes there isn’t some Jewish hive mind working in perfect coordination, but Jews do have tribal interests. As does every tribe.
I’ve never met a Jew I didn’t get along with. I think I likely have more than a few Jewish traits. As an Italian American and as genetic testing has improved it turns out Italians and Ashkenazis share a bunch of common ancestors especially on the mother’s side. They are much more my cousins than Anglos.
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1d ago
I believe there is a theory that Palestinians are the Jews who were bad at reading. Judaism requires a large amount of reading sacred text so the ones who were bad at reading left the tribe. NYC folks and West Virginia folks dislike each other so the conflict makes sense.
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1d ago
Getting the Jews to leave would be difficult. But the logistics of leaving would be trivial. But might makes right. They wanted their historical homeland. And to be honest most of the elites in the ME now like the Jews and find them as useful allies.
For Jewish wealth and ability to expand as a tribe there are likely better places for them to be. They could probably find better land in S America. Argentina doesn’t seem overpopulated. And legally their is an interesting provision in the Argentina constitution that would basically guarantee the right of Israel en masse to immigrate: Article 25 “The Federal Government shall encourage [or foster] European immigration; and it may not restrict, limit, or burden with any tax whatsoever the entry into Argentine territory of foreigners whose purpose is tilling the soil, improving industries, and introducing and teaching the sciences and the arts.”
European and good at science you say?
It would be much easier to find a place in Argentina to grow Israel to 50m people than in Israel.
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1d ago
Am I super autistic or just a unicorn or I don’t technically fall under this definition: “ you can map with nearly 100% consistency someone who is "critical of Israel" or "anti-Zionist" to "really hates Jews."
I’m not anti-Zionists. I guess might makes right? I am critical of Israel. I hate the ADL. I hate AIPAC and how they interfere with our elections. I also have many Jewish friends. Tonight I made dinner for an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn. I get concerned that 75% of the largest political donations in the 2020 election were Jewish. I semi-like Larry Ellisons new media empire because I think it will back the right but still concerned that he’s a Jew and could turn on my interests at a future point.
So yes I get concerned that 1% of the population with super high incomes that will generate half of the richest people in my country and 40% of the Nobel Laureates might have interests that disagree with my interests.
The problem with the ME are the people. Even many leftist are just admitting you don’t want them as immigrants (unless highly filtered like the US). I believe Yglesias said this week that you don’t want European style unfiltered Middle East immigration and been seeing a few people I think are at least partially left saying it saying it on twitter. I’ve seen a Pakistani friend whose a Doctor go back to Pakistan and say I thought all brown people were smart but this was awful. Yglesias literally wrote a book “One Billion Americans” in 2020. positively selected Muslim immigrants No longer a billion Americans. Just skim the top 1-3% from Pakistan.
I think I’ve heard Yglesias and Noah Smith types are best described as the ones who say wrongthink right before it’s acceptable for people on the left to think something.
I think during the founding of Israel the did things that fit the genocide definition that’s established by a Jew at the UN. Though I don’t believe post Oct 7 actions are genocide but legitimate military action to neutralize military action taken against them.
I don’t know. I also don’t think it’s necessarily a %. If the US killed 2% of the Iraqi civilian population or we could use Japan with nukes I don’t think I would call it a genocide. In the case of the Nakob the purpose of civilian deaths was to get the civilians to leave. So not purely military/political control. In the case of Japan we didn’t drop bombs on civilian populations with the goal of replacing Japanese people. The goal was to get them to militarily surrender. So 2% with geographic removal seems like genocide to me.
So with the Nakob it feels like genocide to me because it seems like their undocumented evidence that Israel was willing to kill as many civilians as possible until they removed themselves from their land.
I guess it’s a fair question that you can argue well you have to kill x% of a group to call it a capital letter GENOCIDE instead of something like cultural genocide but I think it’s also fair to put the Nakob in the category of genocide. It was still state led violence and murder against civilian population for specifically demographic change. Germans didn’t want to live with Jews; Jews didn’t want to live with Arabs.
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2d ago
They would just build pipelines. It’s one reason why in the past pipeline politics are complicated. But now that Syria is western friendly it’s believed pipelines become easier.
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2d ago
It’s like murder. A person kills one person is a murderer. A contract killer who killed 30 people over the years is also a murderer.
You can call both the Nakba and the Holocausts as genocide but conclude the Holocausts as worse.
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2d ago
From Grok:
“There is substantial historical evidence—drawn from declassified Israeli military and state archives, David Ben-Gurion’s personal diary, and contemporary British, Arab, and Red Cross reports—that Haganah (and later IDF) forces conducted a secret biological warfare operation in 1948 called “Operation Cast Thy Bread” (Hebrew: Shallah Lahmekha). This involved deliberately contaminating drinking water wells and aqueducts in Palestinian Arab villages, towns, and areas used by invading Arab armies with typhoid and dysentery bacteria. The goal was to disrupt civilian populations, prevent refugees from returning to depopulated villages, and hinder enemy forces.   Key Evidence and Timeline • Israeli archival documents and Ben-Gurion’s diary: Historians Benny Morris and Benjamin Z. Kedar (both Israeli scholars with access to IDF and state archives) published detailed findings in 2022–2023 based on newly examined primary sources. These include explicit orders such as “Place in the wells material of the Cast Thy Bread type” and references to supplying bacteria from the Haganah’s Science Corps (HEMED). Ben-Gurion’s diary entry from April 1, 1948, discusses “the development of science and speeding up its application in warfare,” with later entries noting intercepted Egyptian reports about captured operatives. The operation began around April 1948 (before Israel’s formal declaration of independence) and continued into May–June. Delivery was initially handled by regular units, then shifted to undercover mista’arvim (Arab-disguised sabotage teams“
WMD usage on civilian populations you are refusing to call genocide? Is this correct?
Wow blocked me.
They literally killed a minimum of 2% of the population in those areas. Poisoned drinking water. The Jews killed enough civilians until the rest left.
You denying a genocide is what I’m talking about “Jews can do no wrong”. And I’m not even calling this genocide wrong. Groups have interests. Killing the tribe next door is something every civilization has done.
Ok I’ll play - so what do you consider a genocide? 10% of civilian population murdered? 50%? 75%?
This is a bit like the old joke: “ I asked a women if she would have sex with me for a $1 million and she said yes. I then asked her if she would go to bed with me for $100 and she said “What do you think I’m a whore”? We’ve established what you are now we are just quibbling over price.
I assume you would consider the Holocausts as a genocide. High end figures said 67% of European Jews died. But if the Jews would have just left then no genocide.
If we are doing official UN definitions: “Genocide is the deliberate, systematic destruction—in whole or in part—of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, according to the UN Genocide Convention. It involves specific acts committed with the intent to destroy the group, such as killing members, causing serious harm, or creating conditions leading to their physical destruction.”
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2d ago
The obvious example of this: “ Also, can you give a few specific examples of people "insist[ing] Jews have never done anything bad"?”
Would be you yourself. You are being highly critical and sarcastic about me staying Jews did genocide. There has long been a taboo that any criticism of Jews is antisemtic in America.
Why is it so hard for you to call the Nakba a genocide? For the most part I am a supporter of the Nakba.
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3d ago
I agree with the definitions you have described as genocide. The systematic killing of another group due to the it ethnicity is genocide.
Apartheid is a little stretching. One group has more rights than another group.
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3d ago
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This is obviously genocide. Palestinians didn’t leave Israel because they wanted to. They left because Jews were killing them. It’s backed by declassified Israel intel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight#:~:text=During%20the%201948%20Palestine%20war,an%20instance%20of%20ethnic%20cleansing.
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Israel would never let political power shift to a point that Jews do not have overwhelming decision making ability. That’s apartheid.
Not sure why people need to insist Jews have never done anything bad. Or perhaps in this case normal things nation-states do to creat country’s.
I am making no claim that other country’s including the US haven’t done similar things. We genocide the Indian which I’m fine with.
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3d ago
Israel obviously did genocide when the State was founded. And some elements of apartheid seem obviously true. Those it’s fine to say might makes right. I sort of believe segregation is good.
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4d ago
I don’t love the term “terrorism” here since the electronics were clearly aimed at military targets and not civilians. No one calls it terrorism when you bomb an army base but some collateral damage kills civilians too. Terrorism I think by definition is causing civilian harm to change politics.
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4d ago
They have been largely hosting US troops for decades as a tripwire against Iran and maybe a lesser extent Iraq decades ago.
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4d ago
So he decided he wanted to be Italian? Anglos are out. Everyone wants to be Catholic and Italian now
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5d ago
I feel like I am now probably in the Covid denier anti-vaxx camp. And I believe it’s correct. I have a reasonable basis for believing I am usually smarter than others, but I think the true science says it was rational that I locked in before lock-downs but quit doing anything 2 months later (as an under 40 not fat person). I only got vaccinated once because I had an asymptomatic covid case and the first jab (probably signaling an immune response from having covid) knocked me out for 2 days. Which to me both signaled I had immunity and it’s just stupid to take a shot that puts you in bed.
Locking down did make sense to me as we didn’t have a full understanding of the virus for a few weeks.
Questions I would asks would be why were politicians probably a full week late shutting down. And why did locking down, 5 doses of vaccine (for younger people), wearing a stupid cotton masks became things for so long. Was it:
- Politicians are mostly dumber than me
- I’m autistic
- Changing policy is like turning the Titanic
- People just like playing political games. Calling righties a death cult and stupid was far too fun of a game to play that many people were ok suffering a lot themselves personally if they got to play that game.
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5d ago
Hardware versus software. Russia was very clear they weren’t going to let Ukraine culture be Ukraine culture but would Russify it.
“I think therefore I am” - Rene Descartes.
If at the barrel of a gun I am forced to change how I think then it kind of feels like death to me. Russia’s goals were not to change lines on a map but cultural control thru violence.
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5d ago
The humans there don’t die in a physical sense. But the do die in terms of having any sense of agency or an independent cultures. The best offer Ukraine has received is something like become the equivalent of a Native American tribe. You live but not as a society.
It’s never been that “stupid” for them to fight as a poster claimed.
Sitting here an American; the Revolutionary War was orders of magnitude stupider. It was over a tax of 2-3% and of course thousands did in war.
Jews and white men are privileged. We do have higher human capital. But the conclusions are different than the wokes. I don’t believe in DEI.
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