naraburns nihil supernum
7mo ago
(text post)
29976 thread views
Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
This is catching my eye. Maybe more culture war than war. There’s a lot of canceling going on of people expressing antisemitism but I do think there’s a red line and the phrase they are using I would define as the genocidal anti-semitism. I do think social media allows for kids to do dumb shit and gets magnified too much.
The particular phrase is “Palestine shall be free from the river to the sea”. I wouldn’t have a problem with “Palestine shall be free” then maybe some kind of Gandhi type saying. That seems like normal do-gooder leftist that was quite normal in the ‘90’s to about 2010.
“From the river to the sea” sounds like straight up Hitler type solutions. I’m gonna call that bad. Whose indoctrinating these 15-22 year olds with this ideology. Do these kids understand the difference between Gandhi type stuff and Hitler? Is this me not being intune to tick-tock channels and the kids are just picking up a catchy chant but don’t really understand they are calling for genocide.
Americans not knowing about geography is unfortunately fairly common, and it's at least plausible for them to not know what river (or even sea) is in mention, or think it's a shortcut given Gaza being at one and the West Bank at the other. While a modern-day college student should know better or at least check, most don't; cfe Vox's famous 'land bridge'.
Further toward the outside bounds of plausible charitable, a lot of people do clearly want Israel gone but might be advocating a Palestinian single-state solution, either having ludicrously optimistic hopes of a peaceful Palestinian single state or expecting the Israelis to flee. The latter is still ethnic cleansing under international law, but it's not mass murder.
...
But there's a lot of stuff that's not really got that excuse, with either a transparent fig leaf or none at all. Sometimes the authors can't plausibly be mistaken: when Coates calls one of the largest Israeli cities and the one furthest from any Palestinian claims, Haifa, part of Palestine, he doesn't have the excuse that a dumbass college student might. There's a lot of celebration of October 7th, especially paraglider symbolism, with people trying to pretend that it's plausible to celebrate the military or territory victories (which ones, you might ask?) from the mass murder of civilians. There's a lot of people who just hate those 'Zionist' Journalists, with about the same level of fortitude and intellectual coherency as you'd expect from conventional actualfa.
And then you have people who just think the final solution wasn't final enough (caveat: the author has given not-very-compelling claims he was 'hacked'; no one seems interested in verifying that, nor has his publisher spoken out one way or the other).
On its own, that's not a huge surprise! There have been a lot of anti-'Zionism' that happened to care about anything involving non-Israeli Jews or domestic Israeli politics, and there's nutty antisemitism around most political aisles.
What's really concerning is the institutional support. The rehabilitation of Al Sharpton and the curious willingness to treat with Farrakhen-adjacents has long been a problem for principled anti-racists, but for the most part this had at least tried to keep invisible -- less visibly with internal conflicts for the Women's March, famously up to and including the Obama dinner meeting that wasn't. That doesn't really seem on the table, or even considered, by a lot of people now. It's not weird that a handful of nutty Harvard students exist; it's a problem when they're going to get paid for it. The students in question here might get marked absent, if the teachers don't play along, but I doubt we'll be seeing them face the sort of opprobrium that calling the walkout stupid might.
(though note that this points to the org behind the walkout and that particular video being bugnuts, who probably do mean at least the Israeli-exclusionist version of 'from the river to the sea'; note the approving retweet of this October 8th CNN piece that's still up).
I'm not sure if it reflects changes in the leadership of the Democratic coalition -- beyond the number of recent immigrants from countries with a lot of anti-Israeli politics, who tbf often themselves aren't often the nuttiest, there's just a lot of people who were raised around anti-Israeli -- or the passing wake of the Bush era, or if it's more a philosophical thing, or if it's another "march through institutions" bit where this was always present but it's reached a tipping point where (people believed) it stopped being expensive to say publicly.
I clicked thru the organizations power point for talking points. In their chants they don’t have “from the river to the sea” they have “from Palestine to Mexico” and from “Palestine to the Philippines”.
The kids could be dumb. And even if they know what it means it’s the adults training them who are far more culpable. I think I fairly claim the two phrases I listed are dog whistles for river to sea. The organization I’m going to assume did give them river to sea in non published material and are fully aware of what it means.
There’s certainly an organization behind the message that is giving it to the kids or spreading it on tick-tock who 100% know what they are selling.
The Sharpton rehabilitation etc I have strong suspicion that the ADL has been playing with these groups and it well it sort of backfired on their primary mission. Training people who actually hate you.
As far as culpability I wouldn’t punish high school students. They just haven’t put enough thoughts in their head yet to make distinctions. College kids are getting their but exploring some heretical ideas is ok. Both of these groups get some training as punishment. The adults and law school students especially from elite backgrounds should be able to make these distinctions.
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This is catching my eye. Maybe more culture war than war. There’s a lot of canceling going on of people expressing antisemitism but I do think there’s a red line and the phrase they are using I would define as the genocidal anti-semitism. I do think social media allows for kids to do dumb shit and gets magnified too much.
The particular phrase is “Palestine shall be free from the river to the sea”. I wouldn’t have a problem with “Palestine shall be free” then maybe some kind of Gandhi type saying. That seems like normal do-gooder leftist that was quite normal in the ‘90’s to about 2010.
“From the river to the sea” sounds like straight up Hitler type solutions. I’m gonna call that bad. Whose indoctrinating these 15-22 year olds with this ideology. Do these kids understand the difference between Gandhi type stuff and Hitler? Is this me not being intune to tick-tock channels and the kids are just picking up a catchy chant but don’t really understand they are calling for genocide.
https://twitter.com/theeliklein/status/1715002198550257918?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
Americans not knowing about geography is unfortunately fairly common, and it's at least plausible for them to not know what river (or even sea) is in mention, or think it's a shortcut given Gaza being at one and the West Bank at the other. While a modern-day college student should know better or at least check, most don't; cfe Vox's famous 'land bridge'.
Further toward the outside bounds of plausible charitable, a lot of people do clearly want Israel gone but might be advocating a Palestinian single-state solution, either having ludicrously optimistic hopes of a peaceful Palestinian single state or expecting the Israelis to flee. The latter is still ethnic cleansing under international law, but it's not mass murder.
...
But there's a lot of stuff that's not really got that excuse, with either a transparent fig leaf or none at all. Sometimes the authors can't plausibly be mistaken: when Coates calls one of the largest Israeli cities and the one furthest from any Palestinian claims, Haifa, part of Palestine, he doesn't have the excuse that a dumbass college student might. There's a lot of celebration of October 7th, especially paraglider symbolism, with people trying to pretend that it's plausible to celebrate the military or territory victories (which ones, you might ask?) from the mass murder of civilians. There's a lot of people who just hate those 'Zionist' Journalists, with about the same level of fortitude and intellectual coherency as you'd expect from conventional actualfa.
And then you have people who just think the final solution wasn't final enough (caveat: the author has given not-very-compelling claims he was 'hacked'; no one seems interested in verifying that, nor has his publisher spoken out one way or the other).
On its own, that's not a huge surprise! There have been a lot of anti-'Zionism' that happened to care about anything involving non-Israeli Jews or domestic Israeli politics, and there's nutty antisemitism around most political aisles.
What's really concerning is the institutional support. The rehabilitation of Al Sharpton and the curious willingness to treat with Farrakhen-adjacents has long been a problem for principled anti-racists, but for the most part this had at least tried to keep invisible -- less visibly with internal conflicts for the Women's March, famously up to and including the Obama dinner meeting that wasn't. That doesn't really seem on the table, or even considered, by a lot of people now. It's not weird that a handful of nutty Harvard students exist; it's a problem when they're going to get paid for it. The students in question here might get marked absent, if the teachers don't play along, but I doubt we'll be seeing them face the sort of opprobrium that calling the walkout stupid might.
(though note that this points to the org behind the walkout and that particular video being bugnuts, who probably do mean at least the Israeli-exclusionist version of 'from the river to the sea'; note the approving retweet of this October 8th CNN piece that's still up).
I'm not sure if it reflects changes in the leadership of the Democratic coalition -- beyond the number of recent immigrants from countries with a lot of anti-Israeli politics, who tbf often themselves aren't often the nuttiest, there's just a lot of people who were raised around anti-Israeli -- or the passing wake of the Bush era, or if it's more a philosophical thing, or if it's another "march through institutions" bit where this was always present but it's reached a tipping point where (people believed) it stopped being expensive to say publicly.
I clicked thru the organizations power point for talking points. In their chants they don’t have “from the river to the sea” they have “from Palestine to Mexico” and from “Palestine to the Philippines”.
The kids could be dumb. And even if they know what it means it’s the adults training them who are far more culpable. I think I fairly claim the two phrases I listed are dog whistles for river to sea. The organization I’m going to assume did give them river to sea in non published material and are fully aware of what it means.
There’s certainly an organization behind the message that is giving it to the kids or spreading it on tick-tock who 100% know what they are selling.
The Sharpton rehabilitation etc I have strong suspicion that the ADL has been playing with these groups and it well it sort of backfired on their primary mission. Training people who actually hate you.
As far as culpability I wouldn’t punish high school students. They just haven’t put enough thoughts in their head yet to make distinctions. College kids are getting their but exploring some heretical ideas is ok. Both of these groups get some training as punishment. The adults and law school students especially from elite backgrounds should be able to make these distinctions.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link