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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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A few days ago, a Jewish event at UC Berkeley was violently shut down and now an upcoming event with Tzipi Livni at UCLA is being moved online for fear of violent disruptions. Worth noting that Ms. Livni is a liberal secularist with a history of arguing for the necessity of negotiations and a path to peace.

How representative are these of a broader shift against Israel within the left? The polls are mixed. On the one hand, the US public appears to be overwhelmingly favoring Israel over Hamas (>80%), but I am not sure if this means as much as Israel's supporters claim. I've seen many pro-Palestinians and anti-Zionists denounce Hamas for other reasons and I got the sense that not all of them were for sake of optics. And even many who refuse to condemn Hamas do so out of a "an oppressed people has a right to resist" framework rather than a genuine sympathy for the group.

It's worth recalling that even before Oct 7th, the sympathies for Israel among democrats in America were collapsing. My sense is that this trend was halted - and perhaps even reversed somewhat - in the immediate aftermath of the attack but soon began to resume its plunge. It now appears to be very difficult for even liberal Zionists to get a fair hearing among only Jewish audiences on progressive campuses, let alone to a wider public.

While it is true that the core groups making these interruptions are small and heavily concentrated among muslim and "POC" demographics, along with a few white leftists, what's remarkable to me is the wider silence among the broader progressive coalition. Many Jews have remarked upon this, that sympathy seems to be muted or even absent. There is an unwillingness to police these radicals among the wider liberal public, which seems to suggest a hidden reserve of silent sympathy which is not being publicly expressed.

The former AIPAC president Steve Rosen once said that the Israel lobby is like a nightflower: it best operates in the shade. That is now becoming impossible as progressives with a national profile such as AOC are publicly likening them to NRA. Another very important principle has been bipartisan support. Israel needs Western backing and among all Western countries, the US stands heat and shoulder above the rest. America was unique among Western countries that Israel had broad support among both the left and right for so long, whereas in Europe the left gave up on Israel early. The UK Labour party's Keir Starmer may try to resurrect matters after the Corbyn years, but one gets the sense he is fighting against his own base which is usually not ending well for leaders in the long run.

But this exceptionalism now appears to coming to a close as well. Support for Israel among the right-wing is as strong as ever, but being a Zionist is now increasingly a right-coded statement. It was remarkable to see Biden in his latest interview with Seth Myers to state publicly that he is a Zionist. It's an uncontroversial statement for a man of Biden's age, but I suspect it will be a toxic statement for liberals under the age of 40, at least among non-Jewish liberals. I think Israel becoming a bipartisan football is ultimately bad for the country, but I don't see how it ends any other way. And given how liberals dominate elite institutions in America, I'd argue that this does not augur well in the long run. If Biden loses in 2024 because of Michigan, then a narrative will be set that you cannot be too pro-Israel as a democrat anymore.

On the one hand, the US public appears to be overwhelmingly favoring Israel over Hamas (>80%), but I am not sure if this means as much as Israel's supporters claim. I've seen many pro-Palestinians and anti-Zionists denounce Hamas for other reasons and I got the sense that not all of them were for sake of optics.

It really fustrates me to no end how many pro-Israel hawks present a false dichotomy between Israel and Hamas, and imply Palestine is necessarily synonymous with Hamas. It doesn't even make sense as a direct comparison - it really should be Israel and Palestine. It's incredibly disingenuous.

Apparently, the Israel-Palestine conflict only began in 2005 with the creation of Hamas. It was all peaceful before that.

Palestinians generally support Hamas.

What's your point?

I read you as suggesting supporting palestine in some manner, but not Hamas. I was trying to say that Palestinians like Hamas, so support for (for example) an independent Palestine will just get you another Hamas.

Did I misread you? With the last comment, you might actually be saying the opposite of what I initially thought—that conflict with Israel is broader than just Hamas.

Israel is conducting an operation that by all accounts seems very bloody and, to say the least, not one where they are deliberately trying to avoid civilian casualties. Taking this into account, these polling results would appear to show American support for Israel to be notably strong, among both parties.

Is there a realistic operation that is less bloody, deliberately avoids civilian casualties and actually punishes the perpetrators of oct 7th stuff and makes sure it will be hard to happen again. Hamas will avoid pitch battles and dig themselves in the tunnels.

I will say that the details of October 7th seem like they were clearly designed to make it as hard as possible to respond with restraint.

Which makes it all the more disappointing that Israel chose to do exactly what Hamas wanted them to do.

Just curious, what response do you think would go against what Hamas wanted Israel to do?

Using the public outpouring of sympathy to sign lasting diplomatic deals with the Gulf Arab monarchies, and put pressure on countries like Turkey to cut Gaza off. Putting Israel on a positive footing, while steadfastly refusing to provide Hamas with footage of dead Arab children.

Hamas' intent was always to provoke Israel into committing violence against Arab civilians, which would preclude diplomatic cooperation with Muslim powers. Israel has gone above and beyond to make sure Hamas got what it wanted.

Gaza is already cut off even from neighboring Egypt. So what Israel should have done is basically no change - meaning that they should continue providing water, electricity and support the Gaza in the same way as in the past. Basically pretend that nothing changed, correct?

Gaza depended on billions in aid, much of it in cash, from sponsors in Qatar, SA, Turkey, and Malaysia, along with other countries in the Dar Al Islam. The long term key to eliminating Hamas and securing Israel's future is reducing that international support.

An Israel with the diplomatic and public support of Turkey and SA would be a major change, not necessarily to Hamas' benefit.

I mean, you had pro-Palestinian protests all over the place immediately after Israel was attacked. I don't think there'd have been much appetite for "collective punishment" by cutting aid money.

While it is true that the core groups making these interruptions are small and heavily concentrated among muslim and "POC" demographics, along with a few white leftists, what's remarkable to me is the wider silence among the broader progressive coalition. Many Jews have remarked upon this, that sympathy seems to be muted or even absent. There is an unwillingness to police these radicals among the wider liberal public, which seems to suggest a hidden reserve of silent sympathy which is not being publicly expressed.

As this plays out, I keep thinking of James Baldwin's riveting essay, Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White.

For many generations the natives of the Belgian Congo, for example, endured the most unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the Belgians, at the hands of Europe. Their suffering occurred in silence. This suffering was not indignantly reported in the Western press, as the suffering of white men would have been. The suffering of this native was considered necessary, alas, for European, Christian dominance. And, since the world at large knew virtually nothing concerning the suffering of this native, when he rose he was not hailed as a hero fighting for his land, but condemned as a savage, hungry for white flesh. The Christian world considered Belgium to be a civilized country; but there was not only no reason for the Congolese to feel that way about Belgium; there was no possibility that they could.

What will the Christian world, which is so uneasily silent now, say on that day which is coming when the black native of South Africa begins to massacre the masters who have massacred him so long? It is true that two wrongs don't make a right, as we love to point out to the people we have wronged. But one wrong doesn't make a right, either. People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.

In the American context, the most ironical thing about Negro anti-Semitism is that the Negro is really condemning the Jew for having become an American white man--for having become, in effect, a Christian. The Jew profits from his status in America, and he must expect Negroes to distrust him for it. The Jew does not realize that the credential he offers, the fact that he has been despised and slaughtered, does not increase the Negro's understanding. It increases the Negro's rage.

The anger and dislike I see directed at Israel from American leftists does not seem to me to be specific to the Jewishness of Israelis, but to their white, European, settler colonial project. Understood through that lens, there is no mystery in why American leftists dislike Israel in general and Zionists in particular, for the Zionists are seen as no different than the white apartheid rulers of South Africa, or maybe even akin to the Belgians in the Congo. Does one imagine that leftists would condemn Congolese violence against their Belgian oppressors? Or that Nelson Mandela would even be seen as a complex figure rather than an unmitigated beacon of righteous hope? If not, then it isn't surprising to see a hope for a free Palestine, regardless of the cost to their Israeli oppressors.

For many generations the natives of the Belgian Congo, for example, endured the most unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the Belgians, at the hands of Europe.

Those "many generations" were around two - between 1865 and 1908 when Congo was run as personal domain by king Leopold II with all the horrible atrocities, probably one of the worst if not the worst in whole colonial Africa. The whole situation ashamed Belgians and after they annexed the country from the king the invested heavily into Congo making it one of the most developed countries in Africa be it infrastructure and industrialization, literacy or population health and growth.

violently

In the year of our lord 2024, we should not believe political activists when they claim an event was violent without videographic evidence. Given that the event was hosting an IDF soldier and director of the Kohelet Policy Forum (the think tank responsible for Netanyahu’s judicial changes), it’s reasonable to assume many of the students in attendance were Jewish/Israeli ethnonationalists — so, political activists in the purest sense of the term. The group hosting the speaker, Tikvah, explicitly “espouses the repatriation of Jews to their homeland, Eretz Israel,” so these students don’t even believe that America is their home, showing their extreme political stance.

The Kohelet Policy Forum collaborates with the Misgav Institute, which writes stuff like:

We arrive at the clear conclusion that claims of ideological and political distinction between Hamas and the people of Gaza are baseless.

Israel must transfer as many Gazans as possible to other countries; Any other alternative, including PA rule, is a strategic failure. Therefore, Gaza's population should be transferred to the Sinai Desert and the displaced absorbed in other countries.

I looked at all the videos on Twitter and see no evidence of any violence.

Imagine if whites took back power in South Africa, pushed the people in Lesotho into an area 1% the size of current Lesotho. Then they put up a fence around it and economically blockaded Lesotho. Imagine, 30 000 people in Lesotho were killed in a military campaign with relentless airstrikes against Lesotho. Imagine that an event was being held in which a South African soldier was going to visit an American university and talk about how South Africa must ethnically cleanse itself of black people as there was no black state before the Boer.

Would anyone be the slightest bit surprised if the event got cancelled?

The difference here is that the Israeli mass expulsion of Palestinians is close to the EU. From Sinai to the EU is the same distance as Miami to Daytona Beach.

Israelis are allowed to get away with things nobody else can get away with and are surprised that they can't get away with more.

You sort of need to do an extreme version of “1% of land” to make your point. And then say that they killed 30k of them without saying why.

Yes your experiment sounds bad. But it’s not what is happening.

Alternatively what if White S Africans took power back. Due to HBD factors they grew the economy significantly. To the point that a laborer is S Africa could make 5X his wage in S Africa versus the country next door. For all intents and purposes he’s a lower class S African with low status but his standard of living is fairly high.

This is closer to the truth of what Israel is offering Palestinians.

If White South Africans took power back, they'd have received enough sanctions to make Russia whistle in awe. Kind of hard to grow the economy in these conditions.

20% of Israelis are Arabs and have full equality. Some ethnic cleansing.

Lesotho is a bad comparison in that it is completely surrounded by South Africa. Since Israeli abandonment of Philadelphi Corridor in 2005 Gaza has a border with an Arab and Muslim majority state of Egypt. That Egypt shows no compassion to its co-ethnics (97% of Palestinians identify as Arab) and co-religionists (99% of Palestinians identify as Muslim) isn't Israel's fault.

Egypt receives tons of foreign aid from USG and according to the experts is the 8th least democratic country in Africa.

When South Africa was under apartheid, it was surrounded by anti-apartheid governments aiding or sheltering the ANC while receiving aid from South Africa.

Egypt has no reason whatsoever in aiding Israels ethnic cleansing of Palestine by helping Israel move millions of Palestinians into Egypt.

The Russian view of Ukranians being ethnic brothers would seem to refute this. It’s a valid reason. It is one rejected by Egypt mainly due to fears Palestinians would destabilize Egypt.

The Russian view of Ukranians being ethnic brothers would seem to refute this.

Doesn't stop us from engaging in fratricide, though.

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are standing on a stage. Behind them is a banner which says (in Modern Hebrew and English) "Welcome Jewish Refugees from the Democratic Party". The camera pans back to show a large auditorium. Empty, except for Bill Ackman hanging out near the exit.

Or in other words, the progressive left can safely support the Palestinians and be anti-semitic all they want, because Jews aren't going to go to the alternative.

Indeed:

Biden Secured 77 Percent of the Jewish Vote Compared to Donald Trump's 21 Percent

With a 56 point lead the Democrats can safely ignore Jews and Jewish concerns since they've already got their enormous support. What are they going to do, vote Republican?

The Democrats will instead make efforts to flip swing states.

Jared and Ivanka shouldn't hold their breath, but the progressive left is far from safe. There aren't just two choices here, and the most likely outcome IMO is 'Zionist American Jews use their (non-unique but considerable) political influence to get the loudly antizionist faction expelled from the Dem coalition'.

Now, this is a harder proposition today than it was 20 years ago. It risks splitting the party along age lines, while Republicans laugh from the sidelines - but it doesn't guarantee electoral irrelevance like some worry. Plenty of democratic states have a split left and the far left is almost always the smaller group, has nowhere to go politically, and ends up as the mostly irrelevant junior partner. (here in Canada we have had a united right and split left for decades, the Libs just treat the NDP like their annoying kid brother and it mostly works) An increasingly large and motivated far left makes the proposition more dicey, but the far left's critical weakness has and continues to be lack of strategy - they depend a lot on 'being on the right side of history' carrying them across the finish line - so I expect them to continue to punch below their weight in internecine disputes.

I think this is far too strong and we do not know how this plays out. Ackman is definitely not alone. Jamie Dimon also gave a speech where he said “I’m barely a Democrat anymore”.

People are not the biggest fan of being called Nazis and having their brothers lives threatened. It wouldn’t shock me if in a generation Jews and southern redneck culture begins sharing memes.

I am a white man. The chance I ever vote for the Dems regardless of any “policy is actually better for me” is zero. I know how they view me.

Ackman is still a nominal Democrat (he is backing Dean Philips in the primary) and Jamie Dimon is not Jewish.

If education-based polarisation is the driving force behind the Trump-era party divide, then the fundamentals are going to push Jews (as the most educated and formal-education-valuing demographic) further into the Dem camp. For example, looking at the names in Hanania's Tech Right, the Silicon Valley elites moving right look less Jewish than the Silicon Valley elites staying on the left. Hanania wants a big Jewish move to the right over Israel because the existence of a smart right gives him a chance at influence. But the reason why it won't happen is that the MAGA right has adopted (what Hanania and most Jewish elites, for the same reason, would consider) stupid as a tribal value.

It wouldn’t shock me if in a generation Jews and southern redneck culture begins sharing memes.

The defining feature of non-Hasidic Jewish culture is the embrace of book learning taken to a sometimes-ridiculous extreme. One of the main defining feature of southern redneck culture is suspicion of book learning. This is a big gap to bridge.

But the reason why it won't happen is that the MAGA right has adopted (what Hanania and most Jewish elites, for the same reason, would consider) stupid as a tribal value.

Whatever your opinion of MAGA is, I dispute that Hanania represents "smart" as a value in any way.

Ackman recently gave a democrat 1 million dollar donation.

You are skipping key information.

Ackman also made him denounce DEI to get the money. He’s trying to do reform within the party first.

I don't think the events we are seeing now change the basic structure of US (or Anglosphere more generally) opinion on Israel-Palestine:

  • The anti-establishment left has always been pro-Palestinian to an extent which skirts the boundaries of cancellable anti-Semitism.
  • The pro-establishment left are basically pro-Israel, but need to hold their noses to support an Israel led by the current Likud/religious right coalition, which they hate for essentially the same reasons that secular Jews in Israel hate it.
  • The pro-establishment right are basically pro-Israel - previously they were willing to throw Israel under the bus in limited ways in to make nice to the Gulf Arabs, but they no longer need to because the Gulf Arabs are allied with Israel against Iran.
  • The anti-establishment right are split between Islamophobes (who support Israel on enemy-of-my-enemy grounds) and Christian Zionists (who support Israel in order to immanentize the escheaton) on the one hand and America Firsters (who think that US military aid to Israel is a waste of money) and anti-Semites on the other side.

With a Democrat in the White House, the pro-establishment left controls the government. If support for Israel on the pro-establishment left was weakening, we would see a change in government policy. What we actually see is the bog standard pro-establishment line on Israel since before Oslo - give them everything they ask for (modulo aid being blocked in Congress) while gently pointing out that American Jewry would prefer a more secular Israel, and that Israel could provide its allies with political cover by pretending to support a two-state solution at some unspecified future date.

While it is true that the core groups making these interruptions are small and heavily concentrated among muslim and "POC" demographics, along with a few white leftists, what's remarkable to me is the wider silence among the broader progressive coalition. Many Jews have remarked upon this, that sympathy seems to be muted or even absent. There is an unwillingness to police these radicals among the wider liberal public, which seems to suggest a hidden reserve of silent sympathy which is not being publicly expressed.

Or it suggests that the pro-establishment left isn't willing to engage in a public intra-left slap-fight in an election year when they can just support Israel quietly.

The UK Labour party's Keir Starmer may try to resurrect matters after the Corbyn years, but one gets the sense he is fighting against his own base which is usually not ending well for leaders in the long run.

Conventional wisdom in British politics is that the median voter hates the anti-establishment left sufficiently that a Labour leader can only win an election if he is visibly fighting against his own base. (This is most obvious viz-a-viz Blair, but the conventional wisdom dates back to the Foot era). Every Labour Prime Minister except Atlee is a hate figure on the activist left.

It's just a few crazy kids on college campuses. In a few years, when they're out on the real world, you'll see, then they'll have to stop with all these shenanigans. Nothing to worry about.

Do you think that every cause (left-wing or otherwise) ever espoused among kids on college campus as later inevitably taken over the entire society?

I'd say pretty much all the ones in the past 10 or 15 years has.

In the US we have a saying "As California Goes, So Goes the Nation". So if the college campus is UC Berkeley, yes.

Please speak plainly, rather than leaning on mockery.

It's just a few crazy kids on college campuses. In a few years, when they're out on the real world, you'll see, then they'll have to stop with all these shenanigans. Nothing to worry about.

The flops and attempted changes in Disney course seems to point in the direction that reality do have a say. Woke or not woke - in capitalist society you have to make money. And that part seems to be somewhat elusive. Now - they will put a big wave of destruction in their way. Much bigger then if they were stopped in time. I think that we are witnessing first cracks in their stranglehold of the means of cultural production.

Disney is as woke as ever and still making money hand-over-fist. Being woke may be costing them something, but being part of the woke entertainment complex which allows them to prevent non-woke competition from getting a foothold not only makes that acceptable, it may be revenue-positive for them.

Is Israel responsible young vs old

Is Israel going to far Young vs old

The big rift is young vs old, with boomer republicans being much more pro Israel than young conservatives. The conservative zionist partnership is strained by AIPAC/ADL being highly anti right on social media. Israel has in no way delivered for the right. Israel with the lobby has pushed migrants into Europe, promoted censorship and cost hundreds of billions. With Israel ethnically cleansing christian Palestinians and mistreating Christians in Jerusalem, it is hard to see what the right gets out of the support. Putting MAGA and ADL in the same tent is as hard as getting the leftist coalition together. Right-wingers are supposed to like Israel, while Israel's lobby wants right-wingers banned off twitter.

The big split is most likely between those who get their information from oligarch owned media and those who get their information from more distributed sources.

A big problem for Israel is the diaspora demographics. Europe's jewish population is in a state of collapse, with especially Eastern European jews moving to Israel. Russia only has 10% as many jews as they had 50 years ago.

American jews are older than the average American and non orthodox american jews have low birth rates.

In the 2020 survey, Jewish adults ages 40 to 59 report having had an average of 1.9 children, the same as in the 2013 survey and slightly below the comparable figure for the general U.S. public, which is 2.3 children per adult in the same age cohort

Source The jewish number is propped up by orthodox jews. Non Israeli jews are trending toward either Haredi jews or secularized liberals with few children and lower levels of ethnocentrism.

In other words the US has a population that is rapidly rising while the number of jews is in decline. There are enough jews to staff high positions but this means that there simply aren't enough jews to keep a presence in broad sectors of society.

Pew Polls and some other pollsters mail a questionnaire to a home address, which I really think slants their findings against the most technologically-addicted young people who also happen to be the most liberal.

Haredi […] broad society

There was a recent case of brilliant demogaphic wizardry which showed that at home Yiddish speakers have a birth rate of 7. The Haredi will be pushing well above their weight in staffing high positions. For example the head of our cybersecurity directorate is a devout Haredi Jew, Anne Neuberger; she is the one who will be deciding whether a hack comes from Iran, so quite the important position. She got her position shortly after her family fund donated to AIPAC; Anne’s husband works at AIPAC. Her parents were once hostages that were saved by Israel (actually Netanyahu’s brother) during the Entebbe raid. Her father George Karfunkel is one of the richest Americans — somehow he was able to invest in Kodak at the same time the Trump admin gave them a government contract during COVID. (Kushner’s family is a big haredi donor, perhaps he learned through that channel?). He then transferred his 180 million kodak stock into an inactive, newly created haredi school just for tax deductions. This comes as Haredi schools in NYC were found to be stealing billions in school funds, ignoring requirements like teaching English…

No, the Haredi will not adapt to broader society. But they actually don’t need to! They can better maintain a strong influence on society while retaining maximal tribalism.

technologically-addicted young people who also happen to be the most liberal

Aren't they also the most conservative? I'd expect to see the very online youth that are getting news and memes from non-traditional sources represented on both sides.

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