naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #3
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.
While I am not an anti-Semite and could reasonably be described as mildly philo-Semitic, goddamn this kind of thing looks terrible from the perspective of anyone that isn't particularly Islam-friendly. To be blunt about it, I don't like Islam and wish there had never been any Muslim immigrants to Western nations. To the extent that Muslim immigration to Western nations is tolerable, it's the extent to which those Muslims practice a liberalized, watered-down form of Islam that is barely recognizable as anything other than generic monotheism with a couple idiosyncrasies of diet thrown in. Having places with women in beekeeper outfits everywhere sucks and I think most Americans and Brits that are being bluntly honest about the matter agree.
Of course, saying that out loud plays terribly, because somehow we decided that "Islamophobia" is a sin. Unless, apparently, you're Jewish, in which case you're able to write things like the above. Saying, "how are Brits supposed to live with this?" is off the table, but catering to the tiny segment of British Jews, that is an important consideration when it comes to whether having a bunch of jihad enthusiasts in London is a bad idea. If someone like me that likes Jews, likes Israel, and basically agrees with the claim in the Tweet finds this style of thinking grating, I'd wager that the anti-Semites would be just about apoplectic.
To steelman, the Jerusalem Post columnist is less responding to "pro-Palestine marches", but what he sees as specifically pro-Hamas and often pro-October 7th protests. It's a little less easy to provide examples in the United Kingdom, given the officially-steep punishments for support of Hamas or violence, but to everyone's non-surprise enforcement is a more complex matter and explicit support of Hamas, intifada, or generally "from river to sea" style not-very-deniable stuff were supposedly pretty common. And the head of police decided that the police shouldn't be making charges for hate crimes acts where it's political or anything.
To break that steelman, even that has been a sin to other alliances and allegiances. Reacting to "KillAllMen" or "EndWhiteness" or Solanas fangirling or the like hasn't been acceptable in mainstream discourse for literally a decade, if not longer. For whatever these laws and rules and norms that the Post author wants to bring down might have claimed equal protection and equal restriction to all, in practice they exist to protect 'the powerless', where this is defined in some coincidentally very political directions.
So in many ways, it's 'just' that Freeman is surprised to find that groups he likes are on the other side of that scale for once. And there's certainly people for whom that's a cutting criticism, not just of their current arguments but their entire philosophy -- Chemerinsky is the punching-bag du jour, as he's provided long and significant philosophical support and institutional inaction -- but it's not clear Freeman, specifically, is a particularly central example of that set. He's no universalist hero who complained when other people's ox were getting gored, don't get me wrong, but neither was he waiting until this moment to notice that his group was often pushed to the outside.
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Notes -
Related, but not exactly the same topic, this Tweet from a Jerusalem Post columnist in response to pro-Palestine protest marches in London really struck me:
While I am not an anti-Semite and could reasonably be described as mildly philo-Semitic, goddamn this kind of thing looks terrible from the perspective of anyone that isn't particularly Islam-friendly. To be blunt about it, I don't like Islam and wish there had never been any Muslim immigrants to Western nations. To the extent that Muslim immigration to Western nations is tolerable, it's the extent to which those Muslims practice a liberalized, watered-down form of Islam that is barely recognizable as anything other than generic monotheism with a couple idiosyncrasies of diet thrown in. Having places with women in beekeeper outfits everywhere sucks and I think most Americans and Brits that are being bluntly honest about the matter agree.
Of course, saying that out loud plays terribly, because somehow we decided that "Islamophobia" is a sin. Unless, apparently, you're Jewish, in which case you're able to write things like the above. Saying, "how are Brits supposed to live with this?" is off the table, but catering to the tiny segment of British Jews, that is an important consideration when it comes to whether having a bunch of jihad enthusiasts in London is a bad idea. If someone like me that likes Jews, likes Israel, and basically agrees with the claim in the Tweet finds this style of thinking grating, I'd wager that the anti-Semites would be just about apoplectic.
To steelman, the Jerusalem Post columnist is less responding to "pro-Palestine marches", but what he sees as specifically pro-Hamas and often pro-October 7th protests. It's a little less easy to provide examples in the United Kingdom, given the officially-steep punishments for support of Hamas or violence, but to everyone's non-surprise enforcement is a more complex matter and explicit support of Hamas, intifada, or generally "from river to sea" style not-very-deniable stuff were supposedly pretty common. And the head of police decided that the police shouldn't be making charges for hate crimes acts where it's political or anything.
To break that steelman, even that has been a sin to other alliances and allegiances. Reacting to "KillAllMen" or "EndWhiteness" or Solanas fangirling or the like hasn't been acceptable in mainstream discourse for literally a decade, if not longer. For whatever these laws and rules and norms that the Post author wants to bring down might have claimed equal protection and equal restriction to all, in practice they exist to protect 'the powerless', where this is defined in some coincidentally very political directions.
So in many ways, it's 'just' that Freeman is surprised to find that groups he likes are on the other side of that scale for once. And there's certainly people for whom that's a cutting criticism, not just of their current arguments but their entire philosophy -- Chemerinsky is the punching-bag du jour, as he's provided long and significant philosophical support and institutional inaction -- but it's not clear Freeman, specifically, is a particularly central example of that set. He's no universalist hero who complained when other people's ox were getting gored, don't get me wrong, but neither was he waiting until this moment to notice that his group was often pushed to the outside.
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