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.
What is this place?
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.
If in doubt, please post it!
Rules
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The Iranian Tehran Times released an alleged recording of the ADL freaking out about the generational divide in Israel support, as well as Iranian influence in anti-Israel advocacy groups. I do not recommend reading the article because it’s literally Iranian propaganda, but the audio recording is on their page here if you scroll down. Do you think this is legitimate or AI-generated? There’s nothing that struck me as obviously wrong with Greenblatt’s voice. It would be a weird thing to fake, because Iran shouldn’t want to promote the idea that they are behind Western anti-Israel advocacy.
If it’s legitimate, it’s insightful in four ways. The ADL does not believe that support for Israel is Left-Right but instead young-old. The ADL believes that some anti-Zionist organizations are taking their talking points from Iran (eg using the term “Zionist entities”). Iran has access to important meetings of ADL members. And lastly, the ADL has access to the inner circle memorandums of anti-Zionist groups.
Given the source I'm suspicious. Even more so it's weird to me how he goes on and on about "Iranian propaganda" in true "omg Russian bots!" fashion as if the Iranian deep state has arms in every American university and anti-Zionists need Iran of all places to tell them Israel is a violent apartheid state. Given the source, again, it seems very complimentary to Iran. On the other hand, if it's a fake it's good in its organic American dialog - no awkwardness or weird translations here.
But assuming it's true. The the thing that jumps out to me is the line: "The number of young people who think Hamas's massacre was justified is shockingly and terrifyingly high".
To me this indicates he drinks his own kool-aid. One of the more annoying things about Israel apologists and Zionists to me is how they constantly attack this weird strawman of anyone that disagrees with them is pro-Hamas. How they repeat Hamas Hamas Hamas like it's a brain virus. It's hilarious to think it's a relatively recent post 2006 phenomenon in Israel-Palestine. The way some people speak it's as if Hamas Hamas Hamas was the singular bad force ruining everything and if it weren't for these ultra-monsters, well shucks, good ol boy Israel wouldn't have to act so bad.
I always assumed it's a talking points memo for public propaganda. It's clearly from the "when did you stop beating your wife" school of distraction & attack. Focus on Hamas and mention it as much as possible. No one wants to defend them, and any talk about them is not talking about all the people Israel is killing while creating a constant negative mental association. Anyway, I have literally never seen this mythical Western pro-Palestinian pro-Hamas "liberal".
Here we see Greenblatt privately believing this psycho BS that the only way anyone could be anti-Zionist is that they are totally fans of Hamas and pro-massacre of civilians. It would never occur to a principled person to notice Zionism's evil actions without being crypto Islamic theocrats. Absurd and wildly detached from the mind of your average Zionist critical secular university aged student. The Zionist equivalent of believing all Trump supporters are literal Nazis.
Wasn’t greenblatt a true believer in the Russia narratives? Not surprising he reaches for a similar toolkit.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link