Welcome to the new lonely. I feel stupid I didn’t see this coming. The most eloquent free speech advocates I admired are now the harsh censors they once despised. And blind to it, at that.
Finding folks like Tucker Carlson or Matt Taibbi who are consistent in their principles or are willing to change their opinions based on new info are rare.
The elite have successfully divided many but I find that most common people are waking up to the “divide and conquer tactics.” I have hope as many Americans call the Democrats and the Republicans the “Uniparty”, and Brits are calling their election “The Uniparty Election”.
I’d like to nominate Shellenberger, Brand, Rogan and Greenwald to join the Tucker and Taibbi consistency club. Oh, and let’s throw in a couple of pols from Kentucky not named McConnell (Massie and Paul). Thanks for your consideration.
How absurd. Happily cancelling my subscription. It's civilization vs. barbarism, as Sam Harris and Douglas Murray so aptly review. Stop teaching Palestinian children the glory of "killing a Jew". Until then, there will be no peace. How many peace proposals has the Palestinian leadership rejected? Why does Hamas use human shields? Why did they use $billions in foreign aid to build terror tunnels instead of infrastructure to help their citizens? Why do Israeli Arabs prefer to live in Israel rather than the other 22 Muslim majority nations? Where are individual civil rights respected outside of Israel in the Middle East? The vast majority of Israelis want peace and value life. As Golda Meir famously said, "we can forgive you for killing our children but we cannot forgive you for causing the deaths of your children" (or something to that effect).
I’m afraid this reads like satire, and I’m afraid you believe every word of it. Have you ever lived in Palestine, or Israel? Do you know any Palestinians? They are wonderful people. And I never met one who had any hatred for Jews in general, Jews, that is, who weren’t Zionists. You see, the hatred you refer to is hatred of oppression, of confinement, hatred of abuse and of injustice. But I’m afraid that anyone citing Murray, who calls Norman Finklestein a ‘psychopath’, isn’t going to be swayed by anything I say. Am I right? Palestine will be free. Netanyahu has assured that. You should only try to make the inevitable dissolution of Israel a peaceful one. I hope for this too, as my Grandparents are buried in Jerusalem, and I wouldn’t want their graves disturbed.
It's a kind of repetition of ideological talking points that are rehearsed as a replacement for genuine thinking. The fact that she's quoting Sam Harris says it all -- that guy is an ideological snake oil salesman.
Yes, I don't even like to name check Harris, who has to be the world's most boring public...ummm, intellectual. He has a voice that sounds like pickles snoring.
bravo, sera. one of my sons and i have full approbation for your rejoindre to ydna, and we agree w/ the profound veracity of your declaratives re. the kind-hearted, embracing, long-suffering, hospitable, and open-hearted palestinians... having returned last august from 3 months of volunteering as teachers in the 4 palestinian refugee camps circumscribing nablus in the west bank. our respective hearts ache that we cannot return to them. all we are manumitted to do on their behalf now is to bear witness through our written advocacy in the press. however, no western MSM outlet will accept our promulgations based on our in-situ experiences. only the alternative press like lee fang's standard-bearer publicist will allow us to do so.
Norman Finkelstein IS a psychopath. And over 90% of Jews are Zionists so the old, "I don't hate Jews just the Zionists" is a deeply antisemitic statement in itself.
I would love to see the science behind your 90% figure.
I don't hate the Jews, or anyone else, for that matter, but it is plain to see that Israel is repeatedly committing war crimes -- with no accountability, and no pause in the flow of US taxpayer dollars to fund the slaughter.
With each news report of the daily Palestinian death toll from unrelenting Israeli bombardment, I feel a slightly greater desensitization and resignation. I’ve noticed this disturbing effect with basically all major protracted conflicts internationally, including present Ukraine, ever since I began regularly consuming news products in 1988.
Clearly, human lives on this planet are not perceived as being of equal value/worth when, morally speaking, we all definitely should and even could be.
In fact, human beings can actually be perceived and treated as though they are disposable and, by extension, their suffering and death are somehow less worthy of external concern, sometimes even by otherwise democratic and relatively civilized nations. ... It's like an immoral consideration of 'quality of life'.
A somewhat similar inhumane devaluation is observable in external attitudes, albeit perhaps on a subconscious level, toward the daily civilian lives lost in protractedly devastating war zones and famine-stricken nations. The worth of such life will be measured by its overabundance and/or the protracted conditions under which it suffers; and those people can eventually receive meagre column inches on the back page of the First World’s daily news.
"do you know any Palestinians? They are wonderful people". I assume you do not know the ones who raped and killed on October 7. oh wait. those are the ones who love Jews but hate Zionists.. Are Palestinian women happy to wear the veils? would they prefer to be free from that torture? I am afraid while Palestine my be free the inhabitants that are female will never be. meanwhile they prefer Sharia law. and prefer that you live under the same. They do not tolerate gays and are in no way tolerant of any lifestyle other than their own . or are those not the Palestinians you know.
You sound like a goofball whining about how Palestinian women want to be free of the veil, while casually dismissing the slaughter in Gaza. I can assure you that right now Palestinian women would like for Israel to stop slaughtering & starving themselves & their children. Honest;y, how can you bang on about feminism & gay rights while the slaughter continues?
LOL. because the downtrodden are always the real victims. and those are the women and their female children forced to submit to men at every turn including wearing the burqua and female circumcision. the very symbol of slavery.. the 'slaughter" is of their own making .. they support Sharia law and they want you to support it too.. as for 'gay rights". what becomes of gays under Sharia law? if beheading and flogging in public is your idea of "whining". well.. what can I say.. off with your head... or at least a public flogging in the comments
how about stopping the Islamic stabbings, killings, suicide bombings and mass murder ..newsflash. womens rights are human rights. no difference. no ceasing the bombing. or starvation until all hostages ( or their bodies) are returned. including the women and babies .. even dead babies.. play stupid games. get stupid prizes.. gay rights also fall under "human rights" to us but not to Islamic zealots.. but hey. have a great day. you are free to defend islam because of people who gave their lives on this very day in 1944
I stopped reading after Israel was accused of starving Palestinians. Am I to believe that Israel is confiscating the billions in aid being pumped into the area or that Hamas is taking it from their own people for profit and control? I choose to believe the latter.
Watch "Kill Them All" & learn something. Israeli settlers gleefully block aid, when they aren't dumping it on the ground or setting it on fire. While I do not doubt that Hamas loots aid, the Israeli settlers stop the aid from even entering Gaza.
Could it be partly both? Netanyahu was facing multiple corruption charges. He’s very unpopular with Israeli’s also. Is it not true that Palestinian land/homes were stolen? The CIA has acknowledged it is an apartheid state. What about that?
Apartheid state means the peoples don't mix, this is not true, Israel allows others to live within its community, until they blow up delicatessens and busses.
Yet Israel exercises complete control over entrances to Gaza. Gaza is an open air prison, which the IDF is currently bombing into rubble. They bombed a refugee camp, aid workers, & a foreign embassy. But nothing will happen to Israel. US tax dollars will continue to flow.
Takes two to tango. Jewish people have influenced me in why I don’t support Zionism, or neoliberalism or neoconservativism, as much as any other have. These are Nationalistic ideologies of a tribal mindset. Everybody who’s spent time in both areas knows the cycle of violence is not one sided and that one attack provokes the next. The root issue is space. There’s not enough room in that region. When we did our settler colonial project to settle the US, we had a huge land mass to put survivors on reservations. To understand is not to condone 9/11, sad but not an unprovoked attack. Oct 7, also a horrific attack, war crimes committed, not unprovoked. Anyone who straps on a gun and goes strutting into another man’s territory better be reader for some action, Jack, people are very touchy about that sorta thing. After the civilian population of Gaza is destroyed, the cycle will continue. It will breed another generation bent on revenge. Until the collapse of the US dollar. Then Israel will be left without the hardware needed to keep killing enough people to remain the US military outpost in our oil region. Im just echoing the predictions of Military, journalists etc. hope it turns out a peaceful solution but so far that looks impossible.
IMHO, Hamas attacked Israel in the most vicious way they could in order to provoke Israel. And they knew Israel would retaliate and that lots of Palestinian civilians would die when Israel came after Hamas. And they didn't care.
And as I said in my other comment, I don't agree with things in this article.
However, I value Lee's publishing this different point of view and will continue my subscription.
Didn’t Hamas attack due to long cycle of violence perpetuated by both sides? Wasn’t stolen land the initial attack in 1948? I live on stolen land in the US, but we had more room and could put the remaining survivors on reservations.
Jews are also indigenous to the Middle East and have lived there continuously since before the founding of Islam. The nation of Palestine was to be created at the same time as the nation of Israel, from land formerly controlled by the fallen Ottoman Empire, but Arabs were unwilling to accept the idea of Jewish independence and sovereignty anywhere in the Middle East and attempted to wipe Israel off the map. Most Palestinians who were displaced fled during the war that resulted; they were not forced off their land intentionally for the most part. Arab countries then openly said that the return of the refugees would be a way to destroy Israel from within. Shockingly, that left Israel less than enthused. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were displaced from Arab countries at the same time, but have not remained a permanent refugee population. I think to say the land is “stolen” is at best a massive oversimplification
Jews are indigenous to the Middle East, and yes, they lived there for millennia before the Common Era and have lived there continuously since.
The Jewish diaspora was catalyzed by Jews being driven out by the Roman Empire.
The founding of Islam and the Muslim conquests of the area came centuries later.
The largest ethnic group of Jews in Israel currently are known as the Mizrahim and are Middle Eastern and North African.
Pretending that Jews have no history in or claim to the land and all showed up in the twentieth century to dispossess the Palestinians is incredibly disingenuous.
The Mizrahim have lived continuously in the Middle East, increasingly scattered and subjugated to Muslim rule in various Arab countries in recent centuries, until achieving independence and sovereignty with the creation of the modern nation of Israel.
Many immigrated to Israel after being displaced from Arab countries in the conflict that followed, as the Palestinians were displaced from Israel.
Many, many displacements and population swaps occurred following the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the end of World War II.
Every inch of the Middle East has changed hands through violence over the years, and the native and naturalized populations have been displaced if not outright annihilated, very much including the Jews.
True. There isn’t enough land for everyone to get along. When the US did its settler colonial project here, we had room to put survivors onto reservations because it’s a huge land mass. People in that area of mid East are so concentrated. There’s also the fierce religious aspect of the holy land. I guess it will continue this way. I just don’t see how Israel can shoot its way, or kill its way out of it. And all the infrastructure in civilian Gaza, children etc? This is what people are critical of. I don’t think the end game will result in what Israel wants. I don’t think the US war on terror resulted in anything good either for the price.
I agree. I have respected and read Leighton for years but 6 paragraphs in this part of a sentence made it clear this wasn't an editorial about free speech and debate. This is one sided propaganda. "But there is no contradiction in also opposing Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and intentional starvation of civilians"
The Palestinian revolutionary movement is deliberately designed to provoke overreaction. They emphasize their victimhood to the left, who will support them so long as they point out that Israel is more powerful. They emphasize their hatred, violence, and blatant disregard for their own people to the right, hoping that the West will burn down its own foundations in its efforts to extinguish Hamas.
I agree with enforcing existing laws to prevent protest groups from vandalizing and taking control of university campus grounds. I absolutely disagree with creating new hate crime laws to make anti-semetic speech illegal. The anti-speech movement is worldwide and will do its best to use any cause or crisis to trample our rights.
I have disagreed with Ben Shapiro's opinions on the matter many times. However, he has refined his position since October. I liked what he had to say on Triggernometry recently. I don't always need to agree with someone to admire them.
Don't fall for the pervasive paradigm where the ends justify the means if you're fighting against unjust power.
Lee, don't stop holding us conservatives to a higher standard. And please do not give up on us when we falter.
Israel vs. Palastine is a small, distant, religious war that few Americans care much about. Of course, the talking heads who have an opinion about everything get sucked in. The human and fiscal cost of COVID was 100 or 1000 times higher. Keep your eye on the ball.
“Happily canceling” …isn’t that our societal problem he writes of? Maybe you should stay and write your criticisms? That’s up to you I’m just saying people may want to read your opinions. Sam Harris’ most embarrassing moment was when he attempted to debate Chris Hedges, someone who actually covered the regions he speaks about. Harris was like a guy who took 3 trumpet lessons and then got on stage to jam with Dizzy Gillespie. But when your ego is so big, you don’t even know when you’re outta yer league.
I meant it ironically, but it is a fair criticism. I actually agree with much that is said, here, about Sam Harris. I have to listen to him in 1.5x to avoid falling asleep. I appreciate the discourse, but not the name-calling and strange word salad, of course.
you are a categoric, unalloyed, misguided, vindictive bigot ydna; lee fang has been more than an eleemosynary word-scriptor.... en effet, lee fang has been humane, subtle, broad-minded, sober, and charitable in his equiponderent article. his is a measured response to the violence, savagery, and genocidal horrors the zioisraeli IDF-ers and illegal settlers on the palestinians' homeland, one that stretches across the eastern mediterranean. fang reflects and endeavours to elucubrate precisely what the rectitudinous and humane students are protesting against. your ignis-fatuus, puerile reaction to fang's principled, justified, and fair-minded elenchus bears the tropes of kindergarten playground invectives. the protestors' witness to these zioisraeli depredations is the antithesis of what you erroneously asseverate; videlicet, it is the zioisraelis who have been disdainfully divulgating that palestinians are rats, cockroaches, and less-than-human life-forms to be exterminated like vermin. they have been doing so for decades. these disparaging divulgations originated following the illegal expropriation of palestinian lands in 1947/'48, inside the zionisraeli baby-minding kibbutzes when innocent european jewish children in nappies were inculcated and efficacioussly indoctrinated w/ anti-palestinian, derogatory hate-speech.
I don’t believe I’ve ever had the unfortunate experience of reading an article where the author expresses a more deeply personal need to convey that they are more highly educated in English verbiage than the topic they are droning on about 🤦🏻♂️. Just another fascinating facet of liberal elitism and a foundational ploy of propagandizing the sheep who follow them. ⚠️
you will be pleased to be informed that i'm a retired, ossified 83-yr-old marine, lacustrine, and estuarine invertebrate zoologist living on mindoro island in the philippines, and am on my way out; i have an ineluctable date w/ the grim reaper, just 'round the corner. having spent my entire working life since 1962, overseas in 3rd-/4th-world ambits, w/ no access to TV or any other electronic drug... only books, spouse, our bantlings, and locals. commensurately, my lexicon is atypical, if not selcouth. my apologies for unsettling you, bestuvall, margaret, jacqueline, jason, and ydna. the words accumulated over those 83 years have been trapped and enshackled inside a cortex that is more a simulacrum of a sewer filled w/ logorrhea than it is a brain.
If this is "civilization vs. barbarism," then Israel is looking more barbaric by the day.
Maybe Israelis should stop teaching their own children to hate. Watch "Kill Them All," a video showing how Israeli settlers bring their entire families along on a fun day trip to block aid to starving Gazans. The title comes from a quote by a 10 year old girl, expressing her attitudes toward the Gazans. Grayzone has additional articles revealing Israeli settlers destroying aid by dumping it on the ground or setting it on fire.
Matt Orfalea also has a great video out on the Laws of War, showing IDF forces repeatedly firing on civilians carrying white flags, some of whom are children.
Israel is losing the PR battle because we can all see how Israel disregards the rules of war just as Hamas does. Israel bombed a refugee camp last week, after bombing aid workers, bombing an embassy, & continuing to deprive Gazans of necessary food, water, fuel, etc. This IS barbarism.
Golda Meir also said there is no such thing as the Palestinian people. But well done for confirming that you are just one of the huge legion of stupid people hotties by your childish binary thinking.
This is the kind of thing that I hope allows this venue to switch places with “much larger” ones. I‘m struck by the generosity of your gesture and grateful for the chance to broaden the scope of my reading. I had been putting off becoming a paid subscriber, but I will no longer.
However painful this situation, and it is painful, however upsetting, and it is that, too, by the bucketful, there is no amount of nuance and sensitivity that makes the act of attempting to contextualize 10/7 either moral or justifiable. Nothing occurs in a vacuum, of course, but I am sorry, no amount of suffering, disappointment, or prohibition justifies or makes tolerable the shockingly immoral, nauseating, monstrous acts of 10/7, nor the celebration of them that followed, nor the cell phone recordings that documented them as acts of heroism. We are now meant to try to understand those monstrous acts and feel sorry for the perpetrators of them? That is patently absurd. I happen to stand against all wars, that in Ukraine, too, and my heart breaks for all the harm done, but the position articulated here is not one of conscience, nor does it give weight to the long-standing refusal of co-existence by the Palestinian leadership. Are we not all called to try to co-exist? It would appear to me that many, many people over time have been compelled to share land for all kinds of reasons and many have had land taken away and somehow many people have found a way to live, as people do. Suffering doesn't justify the monstrous. It never has and never will. It just doesn't, not according to any compass of intuitive moral knowing that I have ever encountered. Our nobility is that we can chose. We can reject the monstrous even from a place of total destitution. We know those stories & we hold them tight, or we used to, as a culture, because they served to remind us of our higher potentials and better angels.
Israel's military campaign in Gaza is not "indiscriminate." The ratio of dead in Gaza is nearly 1-2 Hamas fighters and civilians. Most wars have a nearly 50-1 casualty ratio of civilians to military It's also not a "one-sided" conflict inasmuch as it's not Israel's responsibility to ensure its enemies have military parity with the IDF. There was a ceasefire on Oct 6th, Hamas chose to end that ceasefire. Hamas is responsible for everything that came after.
And Israel is responsible for everything that came before. Israel expected - demanded - that the Palestinians do as they’re told, live in an open-air prison (their words), and not complain when they “mowed the grass”, a euphemism for a punishing bombing campaign every few years.
Gaza wasn't an "open-air prison" by any stretch of the imagination. All you people do is lie but when you support a cause as rancid as Palestinian terrorism - lying is all you've got to hold onto.
Sorry Shane but the facts are against you. Even the Israeli ministers admitted it was an apartheid state and Gaza was completely controlled by them , right down to the amount of food they allowed in. Prior to October 7th, they stated they were going to “put Gaza on a diet” and reduce the number of calories per person they allowed in. All of this is documented.
Now you're shifting the goalposts - abandoning your earlier claim that Israel was "indiscriminately killing" Gaza, after I proved you incorrect, to move into the other shopworn accusation of Apartheid existing in the West Bank - an area Israel has never annexed. Again, you people are so disingenuous it's not worth it to even argue with you.
I saw no proof that the IDF was not indiscriminately bombing (which kills anyone trapped in the building) as this is exactly what they said they were doing the first week of the assault on Gaza. Their words. The West Bank is an apartheid territory and that’s documented as well. There are numerous, verifiable cases of Zionists forcing Palestians from their homes and claiming them. There is no legal recourse for them — how is that not a two tier justice system?
Maybe it would be an open air prison if the tens of billions of dollars given to them hadn't been stolen by Hamas leadership, all living abroad, or used to build tunnels and by arms.
Oh yes, the ceasefire before October 7th talking point.
Prior to the Hamas terrorist attacks and the IDF indiscriminate bombings killing thousands there was no permanent ceasefire.
Rocket attacks from Gaza and elsewhere do not seem like a ceasefire. Suicide bombings do not seem like a ceasefire.
Israel invaded Gaza in 2008-2009, and 2014 and that is certainly not a ceasefire. Settlers continue to take Palestinian land by force with the help of the military in the West Bank. That also does not sound like a ceasefire.
Clearly, the conflict has been ongoing for decades. The intensity has increased and thus we have what is occurring now.
Hopefully we get a real ceasefire to end the conflict and have the remaining hostages returned home.
Most of the hostages are already dead. A "real ceasefire" will occur when Iran's proxies surrounding Israel - Hezbollah and Hamas - are completely destroyed and not before. No country in the world would live with the constant attacks Israel endures and Israel shouldn't have to and won't continue doing so either.
Isn’t Israel an occupying force over Gaza? Is the CIA wrong about this? I’ve heard contradictory reports of Israeli hostages being treated ok , as Hamas hopes to use them as leverage in getting some Palestinians out of Israeli prisons? Is that 100% false? If so, how do we know that binary narrative the Israeli lobby supports to be 100% accurate? Wasn’t Netanyahu facing multiple charges for corruption by Israel? If so, how is he trusted? He’s not very popular with most Israeli’s, polls show. Thanks.
Maybe Israel would sustain fewer attacks if it could just be more neighborly.
They could have easily repelled the Oct. 7 attacks if they had not stood down. Hamas committed atrocities on Oct 7 by targeting civilians -- which Israel does every day of the week. They are both loathsome.
Ceasefires involve multiple parties. Israeli government, Hamas and US government at the moment. In any conflict that is at a stalemate or has been going on for a period of time would you unilaterally just walk away gaining nothing?
Why doesn’t Israel just leave Gaza and stop bombing? Easy ceasefire according to the logic of one walks away. But I seriously doubt the IDF would leave without a negotiated ceasefire and hostages being returned as that would be seen as a big loss. Therefore, Hamas will never do it either.
Same with Russia-Ukraine and the Burmese civil war. Unless one side is completely destroyed no one is surrendering.
Hamas surrenders as a condition of the cease fire everything after that is negotiated. There is no way Hamas can remain. They are still firing rockets into Israel.
This such a great post. What’s refreshing is to finally read a nuanced answer of this exceedingly complicated conflict. It’s also great in calling the various spades, well, spades. The fact has always been that the hypocrisy seems to align most frequently with the party in power. We seem to have a glitch in the Matrix this time around since we’re now seeing that hypocrisy come from each side on the different issues. Ultimately, it’s the partisans calling for the cancellation of the First Amendment in the name of their cause celèbre. How unAmerican to be so willing to get rid of our free speech guarantees at every whim. At least it’s a trait both parties share, supporting my premise that they both suck badly. My sincere hope is the new centrist position that so many of us are being driven to becomes sufficiently strong politically that we tame the beast of the bipartisan First Amendment haters 😄…and we’ll do it while let them speak as they please 😀
Good points though if you study American history at any depth you will realize that abuse of rights protected by the Bill of Rights has been ongoing almost from the beginning. The difference, IMO, is the amplitude and frequency of government abuses of power now. That said, thanks to Lee Fang for posting this article and will put you in my queue…
"...there is no contradiction in also opposing Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and intentional starvation of civilians in a one-sided military operation that has killed tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. Nor should it be taboo to point out that October 7 did not occur in a vacuum." Thanks for that reminder, and for the other necessary historical context of Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians before and after October 7. It stuns me to hear the claim that it is "anti-semitic" to criticize Israel's actions. But yeah, yet another great opportunity to encourage jingoism. I'm sure it won't be the last.
Israeli leaders were seen on video discussing how they would deprive Gazans of food, water, fuel, etc.
There is plenty of evidence on the Inter Webs of Israeli settlers either blocking aid deliveries, or intentionally destroying the aid by dumping it out or setting it on fire. (Grayzone) Doctors who have worked in Gaza report that patients are dying after surgeries because their bodies are so malnourished they can't heal, and because there is a shortage of clean water for cleaning wounds & surgical sites.
Deny all ya want, but the truth really is out there.
I don't know who's stats to believe anymore. I trust this Substack and I trust people's honest opinions but I don't know who has the facts in this conflict. Genocide or not something is going terribly wrong and I just want my own "elected" representatives to stop lying about it.
I think the saddest thing is that no one side "has the facts," despite our society's tendency to immediately factionalize. These are groups who, in one form or another, have treated one another brutally for a century. Trying to figure out which side is more wrong is a lost cause. Israel is more brutal simply because it has more power to be brutal. Both sides lie in favor of their cause. And no one who reports on it firsthand seems to do so from a position where they haven't already picked a side.
This is the world we live in now. The days of debating a subject, disagreeing and then going to grab a drink are gone. Your either with us or them. Only group think is allowed.
I think you've hit on something important here -- "Israel is more brutal simply because it has the power to be brutal." I would qualify "the Israeli government/military" because these actions are not emerging from any meaningful consensus of the Israeli people. But yes, we are witnessing a galling tragedy that can't be reduced to a simple moral binary, and that feels intolerable to consider. To do so is to acknowledge the broad and even distribution of the human capacity for brutality. In my view, looking at the situation with this level of nuance also forces one to ask the question of how and why any entity -- with the the Israeli government and Hamas as examples -- is able to gain the power to be so brutal. The answer that, e.g., Israel has so much power in part because of U.S. support is just a data point within the larger question.
Well put; I feel this way about a lot of things, not just the conflict in Gaza. If you already "know what you think" about something and you just want to think that way even more hysterically, the media world around you is overflowing with information that will scratch that itch. If you are the curious, investigative type who wants to gather knowledge before deciding what you think -- well, these days, you're kinda fucked.
Authors make some good points and I’m glad they published this column, but it was naive of them not to see this coming. The pro Israel movement has always been obsessed with censorship and has been responsible for more canceled speakers, professors being fired etc than any other political movement; it’s also obvious that people like Ron desantis are opportunists with no principles at all- if you expected these people to have your back you deeply misread them in the first place. October 7th just gave the zealots an opportunity to go on the offensive, but they’ve been trying to undo the first amendment for decades (and in many cases have succeeded).
“The pro Israel movement has always been obsessed with censorship and has been responsible for more canceled speakers, professors being fired etc than any other political movement”
What???
You’ve been living on a desert island the last four years.
FBI and CIA censorship operations and personnel in Google, Facebook and Twitter home offices, passing judgment on all speech that doesn’t comport with the Biden regime’s narrative and policies is censorship.
It’s tyranny.
Why don’t you view the Hamas recorded videos of the October 7 attack?
If you can stomach it you might just wake up from your perilously woke condition.
No idea what your point could possibly be here. The Biden administration has only existed since 2020; pro Israel groups have been waging censorship campaigns for decades.
You don’t like ‘projection’? Neither do I. So here, unfettered by hypocrisy and euphemism, is how I feel about Israel. You may not like it or agree with it but everything here is verifiable and historical.
Israel was founded on lies, crimes and terrorism. Future PM Menachem Begin was an unabashed terrorist, responsible for the murder of many innocent, indigenous people.
“A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. On April 9 1947 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants (240 men, women, and children) and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.”
(My parents were there, before 1948, and witnessed some of this.) So did Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein, who wrote this in the New York Times: “Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.”
Israel was not founded to shelter victims of the Holocaust, it was conceived long before and was always an indefensible act of theft “defended” conveniently, as “the will of God”.
You are surely aware of this quote:
"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel….They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" Ben Gurion 1947
So, do I ‘hate’ Israel? No. I hate injustice, and lies. I hated living on a Kibbutz, while the IDF was murdering American seamen on the USS Liberty, and, as always, calling it a “tragic mistake”. I hated the racism, the arrogance, and the pathological victimhood which is their baseline polemic. And, so there’s no misunderstanding, I want to see the state of Israel to disappear, and to be replaced by a democracy which returns Palestinians to the land that Ben Gurion rightfully described as stolen. Also welcome are any Jews, Christians, and others who can find a way to live peacefully together. But Zionism is, by definition, a racist, exclusionary, ideology, and must be condemned.
I’ve lived among Palestinian people and I find them among the warmest, most educated and refined people I know. If they fight to regain their country, that’s not a crime, it’s just another fight for freedom in a world of thieves. Anyone saying otherwise is probably among the thieves, and no, I don’t hate you, I just want you to see the truth. My truth, Einstein’s truth, Ben Gurion’s truth, and the truth of freedom itself.
Cancel Culture has come roaring back on all sides in this debate. I would welcome a piece that attempted to analyze the different power dynamics in different spaces: White shoe law; artists; writers attempting to strongarm PEN America.
This was not that piece, focused as it was on the worst of Zionists’ behavior and whitewashing the copious amounts of calls to violence by anti-Zionists (yes, Virginia, “From The River To The Sea” is effectively a call to displace or kill 7 million Jews; a Nakba times ten)
Given all the keffiyahs I see on the streets in Chicago, and the absurdly bucolic scene at Alumni Weekend at the University of Chicago where families of keffiyah-wearing white people wrote in chalk demanding that Israel be treated like a pariah for defending themselves, it doesn’t seem like this attempt at cancelling pro-Palestinian sentiment has been very effective. I wouldn’t want any of these people to be cancelled, either, but from where I sit their message is getting out there unopposed, despite its heavy flaws and moral obscenity.
So rejoice! Your viewpoint that Jews can’t choose for themselves how to stop a terrorist movement that just killed 1,200 people for being Jews or helping Jews, and shouldn’t even be where they are in the first place, has gained far, far wider acceptance than before this massacre took place! You did it, guys! And the ham-fisted attempts at cancellation (or in some cases, reporting what people actually said or their organizations put their names to), give *just* enough sense of victimization to feel like, hey, you *deserve* a pass on this whole “is it anti-Semitism” thing, just this once.
I guess this an op ed piece because it’s incredibly one-sided and the writers make no effort to back up most of their claims. Writing that tired, endlessly repeated “Gaza is an open air prison” is such a tell. Some of these phrases begin to ring in your ears like a commercial jingle that just won’t go away. Could there possibly be a reason that Israel monitors this area so relentlessly? Is there any history of unprovoked attacks by terrorists on Israel? When Israeli left Gaza, there was an airport, a seaport, infrastructure, all in good working order built by Israelis. Hamas proceeded to use the airport and seaport to bring in arms with which to bomb Israel. They tore up the infrastructure and used the materials to make weapons. This “wall” between the two territories exists only in locations where terrorists fired bombs at Israel. In between those barriers is open land. So much of this article is deceptive repetition fed to an audience who doesn’t seem to want to research anything.
And for Gods sake, the campus protesters were camping on common grounds. I can’t go anywhere I want and set up camp indefinitely. Protesters used to walk, stand or march. Union strikers marched in freezing weather, in ungodly heat for 8 hour shifts and more. They didn’t lie around painting their nails and braiding each other’s hair or they’d have been arrested and jailed. As someone who did march in the 60’s and who was married to a union worker who spent time on picket lines, I’m disgusted by the coddling of these lazy children. And adults doing this coddling should be ashamed of themselves. Just grow up all of you. Act your age.
You bring up a lot of great points regarding WHY there is a wall around Gaza. I wish journalists would look into the history of why Israel had to implement the security measures they did. Both (and differently) in the West Bank and Gaza.
I remember hearing about the numerous suicide attacks and kidnappings by Hamas and the PLO over the last 30 years but few articles seem to mention these details. As well as the number of times Israel has been attacked by Hamas and other Islamic militants from surrounding countries. Israel wasn’t “oppressing” people from Lebanon or Syria, but they still attacked Israel.
Another huge issue I see in reading these and other articles is how the problems in the West Bank are being sighted as the reasons for the Hamas attacks on 10/7. Gaza and the West Bank are 2 entirely separate areas. There are no Israeli soldiers or civilians living in or policing Gaza. There are no settlers or settlements in Gaza.
Lastly, Hamas is a terrorist organization. It was formed in 1948. Its entire reason for being is to remove Israel from the map. They have been attacking Israel since 1948. There was no wall surrounding Gaza in 1948 and the West Bank was not occupied by the IDF, nor were there Israel settlers or settlements located there, yet they still attacked Israel and continued to attack Israel to this day! They just keep changing their story to try to convince people they are the good guys fighting the bad guys. It’s so exhausting.
Thank you. I also wish more facts were reported, with valid verification links provided. This might take some out some of the bias and emotion so common in journalism today. If I ever get less lazy in my retirement, I might write up a timeline of when attacks took place, by whom, and the respective death counts. Just for my own education!
The airport was bombed by Israel and they were not allowed to rebuild it (paid for by US taxpayer dollars to the tune of 3 billion/year for many years), the seaport was blockaded by Israel so no chance of free commerce there and human rights groups as well as Israeli officials have called it an open air prison. If you’d like to camp indefinitely, Austin or San Francisco make it legal to do so. After WW1 men who had served in the military camped out in DC to demand the bonus money promised by the government.
Of course, I read something different regarding the air and seaports. We read different accounts of the exact same events these days, which is sad and not helpful. And everyone is very protective of their own sources, equally unhelpful. So I rarely argue, but sometimes I’ll throw out some info that I believe I’ve researched well enough.
And I don’t want to camp in a park or on a campus! But if students do, maybe they should try to change the rules of their institutions. As you suggested.
NEWS BULLETIN: Hitler is dead. Please join us here in 2024 and take a look at the destruction in Gaza, the fact that the IDF commits war crimes and films them, the history that lead to the attack on October 7th and the relentless propaganda, AIPAC manipulation of Congress with carrot/stick contributions and members of the Jewish community who are against this assault.
Excellent article and, in today’s poisoned climate, a brave one as well.
"the fact that the IDF commits war crimes and films them" Well if that bothers you I've got something to show you that happened on Oct 7th and not only was it filmed butmuch of it was also streamed live too!!
Two things can be true at the same time: Hamas committed atrocities on Oct. 7th, & Israel has committed atrocities/acts of war, as well, by bombing a refugee camp, bombing aid workers, bombing a foreign embassy, & doing nothing to stop Israeli settlers & their families from blocking or destroying aid.
His body is dead but the influence he and his hate-filled followers and blind citizens lives on with sophisticated propaganda (just look at American television ads and the decades of Hollywood movies to see the pattern).
Propaganda is a refined art used for marketing and control and it is being perfected as we watch the slaughter of human beings with all manner of justification from our comfortable arm chairs!
I only need walk through my local supermarket buying food here in San Diego and the constant messaging of getting my 'updated vaccine' plays over and over on the audio system.
Only the most evil of human beings want to dominate and they know that controlling thoughts, words and deeds' makes it easier especially if people destroy one another 'voluntarily.
Predictable, both Corrin Strong and The Tide do not directly answer Peggy's straightforward question, because the truth stands on its own merits. With respect to The Tide's criticism of the NYT, you would think The Tide was writing a satire comment for the Onion. The NYT has been, and continues to be one of the most pro-Israel publications in America, so much so that several of their award winning reporters, including the Pulitzer Prize, resigned from the "Grey Lady" in protest over its overtly pro-Israel bias. In addition to being owned by the Sulzberger family, who are Jewish, the editorial writers and editors are overwhelmingly represented by Jewish journalists, including three NYT journalists whose children were serving in the IDF while they were employed by the NYT. And The Tide thinks the NYT is biased against Israel and Jews. Not only laughable, but clearly highlights the points made in this article.
Gee Tide, this article from the National Review seems pretty fair and balanced, especially when it's buttressed by that esteemed publication,, HonestReporting, a website that monitors the media for bias against Israel. Sorta like Canary. Pray tell, I'm all ears, exactly what did the NYT publish, that the Israel's Ambassador, Gilad Erdan, stated was spreading anti-Jewish propaganda? Specifically.
OK I got lazy and didn't actually count the paragraphs. It was actually the 5th paragraph when they started talking about how all their new right-wing friends tried to censor their views on Gaza. I am calling BS on that. I doubt that in the circles they inhabit they actually know any real Conservatives, and if they do, I doubt those people are trying to censor anybody. As far as I can tell, almost all the censorship in this country is coming from the left.
Excellent analysis. I've always been on the left, and it was so strange to be considered a right winger when I didn't get the jab. Now I firmly stand with the Palestinian people and the student protesters and I'm suddenly an anti-semite. What a weird world we live in.
There is almost zero evidence to support claims of "indiscriminate bombing." Most evidence is that Israel is trying to limit casualties, though not doing a great job of that. Your piece tries to give context to the attacks of October 7, but makes no effort to give any context as to why Israel limits Palestinian rights in the occupied territories. (For example, you fail to mention the over 1000 deaths caused by Palestinian suicide bombers during the Second Intifada; you fail to mention the desire by many Palestinians to destroy the State of Israel, etc. etc.) The entire situation in Gaza has an extremely long and complicated history. You are not military strategists. If you are are criticizing Israel and only Israel in this conflict, it is legitimate to have your motives questioned. Those of us questioning your motives don't support cancel culture. Some of the strategies you speak of definitely would fall under the cancel culture umbrella. But others are simply consequences for bad acts, bigotry, or stupidity.
Israel stated in the first weeks of war they were using indiscriminate bombing so this fact came directly from them. Part of the destruction was St. Porphyrios church, the third oldest Christian church in the world.
Welcome to the new lonely. I feel stupid I didn’t see this coming. The most eloquent free speech advocates I admired are now the harsh censors they once despised. And blind to it, at that.
Finding folks like Tucker Carlson or Matt Taibbi who are consistent in their principles or are willing to change their opinions based on new info are rare.
The elite have successfully divided many but I find that most common people are waking up to the “divide and conquer tactics.” I have hope as many Americans call the Democrats and the Republicans the “Uniparty”, and Brits are calling their election “The Uniparty Election”.
We shall overcome!
I’d like to nominate Shellenberger, Brand, Rogan and Greenwald to join the Tucker and Taibbi consistency club. Oh, and let’s throw in a couple of pols from Kentucky not named McConnell (Massie and Paul). Thanks for your consideration.
How absurd. Happily cancelling my subscription. It's civilization vs. barbarism, as Sam Harris and Douglas Murray so aptly review. Stop teaching Palestinian children the glory of "killing a Jew". Until then, there will be no peace. How many peace proposals has the Palestinian leadership rejected? Why does Hamas use human shields? Why did they use $billions in foreign aid to build terror tunnels instead of infrastructure to help their citizens? Why do Israeli Arabs prefer to live in Israel rather than the other 22 Muslim majority nations? Where are individual civil rights respected outside of Israel in the Middle East? The vast majority of Israelis want peace and value life. As Golda Meir famously said, "we can forgive you for killing our children but we cannot forgive you for causing the deaths of your children" (or something to that effect).
I’m afraid this reads like satire, and I’m afraid you believe every word of it. Have you ever lived in Palestine, or Israel? Do you know any Palestinians? They are wonderful people. And I never met one who had any hatred for Jews in general, Jews, that is, who weren’t Zionists. You see, the hatred you refer to is hatred of oppression, of confinement, hatred of abuse and of injustice. But I’m afraid that anyone citing Murray, who calls Norman Finklestein a ‘psychopath’, isn’t going to be swayed by anything I say. Am I right? Palestine will be free. Netanyahu has assured that. You should only try to make the inevitable dissolution of Israel a peaceful one. I hope for this too, as my Grandparents are buried in Jerusalem, and I wouldn’t want their graves disturbed.
It's a kind of repetition of ideological talking points that are rehearsed as a replacement for genuine thinking. The fact that she's quoting Sam Harris says it all -- that guy is an ideological snake oil salesman.
Yes, I don't even like to name check Harris, who has to be the world's most boring public...ummm, intellectual. He has a voice that sounds like pickles snoring.
Weak response.
bravo, sera. one of my sons and i have full approbation for your rejoindre to ydna, and we agree w/ the profound veracity of your declaratives re. the kind-hearted, embracing, long-suffering, hospitable, and open-hearted palestinians... having returned last august from 3 months of volunteering as teachers in the 4 palestinian refugee camps circumscribing nablus in the west bank. our respective hearts ache that we cannot return to them. all we are manumitted to do on their behalf now is to bear witness through our written advocacy in the press. however, no western MSM outlet will accept our promulgations based on our in-situ experiences. only the alternative press like lee fang's standard-bearer publicist will allow us to do so.
Norman Finkelstein IS a psychopath. And over 90% of Jews are Zionists so the old, "I don't hate Jews just the Zionists" is a deeply antisemitic statement in itself.
I would love to see the science behind your 90% figure.
I don't hate the Jews, or anyone else, for that matter, but it is plain to see that Israel is repeatedly committing war crimes -- with no accountability, and no pause in the flow of US taxpayer dollars to fund the slaughter.
Funny, you sound even more satirical.
With each news report of the daily Palestinian death toll from unrelenting Israeli bombardment, I feel a slightly greater desensitization and resignation. I’ve noticed this disturbing effect with basically all major protracted conflicts internationally, including present Ukraine, ever since I began regularly consuming news products in 1988.
Clearly, human lives on this planet are not perceived as being of equal value/worth when, morally speaking, we all definitely should and even could be.
In fact, human beings can actually be perceived and treated as though they are disposable and, by extension, their suffering and death are somehow less worthy of external concern, sometimes even by otherwise democratic and relatively civilized nations. ... It's like an immoral consideration of 'quality of life'.
A somewhat similar inhumane devaluation is observable in external attitudes, albeit perhaps on a subconscious level, toward the daily civilian lives lost in protractedly devastating war zones and famine-stricken nations. The worth of such life will be measured by its overabundance and/or the protracted conditions under which it suffers; and those people can eventually receive meagre column inches on the back page of the First World’s daily news.
"do you know any Palestinians? They are wonderful people". I assume you do not know the ones who raped and killed on October 7. oh wait. those are the ones who love Jews but hate Zionists.. Are Palestinian women happy to wear the veils? would they prefer to be free from that torture? I am afraid while Palestine my be free the inhabitants that are female will never be. meanwhile they prefer Sharia law. and prefer that you live under the same. They do not tolerate gays and are in no way tolerant of any lifestyle other than their own . or are those not the Palestinians you know.
You sound like a goofball whining about how Palestinian women want to be free of the veil, while casually dismissing the slaughter in Gaza. I can assure you that right now Palestinian women would like for Israel to stop slaughtering & starving themselves & their children. Honest;y, how can you bang on about feminism & gay rights while the slaughter continues?
Breathtakingly absurd.
LOL. because the downtrodden are always the real victims. and those are the women and their female children forced to submit to men at every turn including wearing the burqua and female circumcision. the very symbol of slavery.. the 'slaughter" is of their own making .. they support Sharia law and they want you to support it too.. as for 'gay rights". what becomes of gays under Sharia law? if beheading and flogging in public is your idea of "whining". well.. what can I say.. off with your head... or at least a public flogging in the comments
Yeah, I can tell you're really worked up about women's rights.
How about human rights, though?
How about ceasing the bombing & starvation, the blocking of water, meds, fuel?
Your commitment to feminism & gay rights is duly noted, though.
Well done!
how about stopping the Islamic stabbings, killings, suicide bombings and mass murder ..newsflash. womens rights are human rights. no difference. no ceasing the bombing. or starvation until all hostages ( or their bodies) are returned. including the women and babies .. even dead babies.. play stupid games. get stupid prizes.. gay rights also fall under "human rights" to us but not to Islamic zealots.. but hey. have a great day. you are free to defend islam because of people who gave their lives on this very day in 1944
I appreciate your points about Hamas and Palestinian leadership. I don't agree with everything in the article, but I did pause to think about it.
However, I really like that Lee published this guest essay because this is what free speech is all about.
I stopped reading after Israel was accused of starving Palestinians. Am I to believe that Israel is confiscating the billions in aid being pumped into the area or that Hamas is taking it from their own people for profit and control? I choose to believe the latter.
Oh, FFS.
Watch "Kill Them All" & learn something. Israeli settlers gleefully block aid, when they aren't dumping it on the ground or setting it on fire. While I do not doubt that Hamas loots aid, the Israeli settlers stop the aid from even entering Gaza.
https://youtu.be/LqRzfb2oMaM?si=nj1EPUya2YCA86EO
Could it be partly both? Netanyahu was facing multiple corruption charges. He’s very unpopular with Israeli’s also. Is it not true that Palestinian land/homes were stolen? The CIA has acknowledged it is an apartheid state. What about that?
Apartheid state means the peoples don't mix, this is not true, Israel allows others to live within its community, until they blow up delicatessens and busses.
Yet Israel exercises complete control over entrances to Gaza. Gaza is an open air prison, which the IDF is currently bombing into rubble. They bombed a refugee camp, aid workers, & a foreign embassy. But nothing will happen to Israel. US tax dollars will continue to flow.
Are you aware that Hamas killed around 1200 Israelis in October?
Yawn 🥱
Takes two to tango. Jewish people have influenced me in why I don’t support Zionism, or neoliberalism or neoconservativism, as much as any other have. These are Nationalistic ideologies of a tribal mindset. Everybody who’s spent time in both areas knows the cycle of violence is not one sided and that one attack provokes the next. The root issue is space. There’s not enough room in that region. When we did our settler colonial project to settle the US, we had a huge land mass to put survivors on reservations. To understand is not to condone 9/11, sad but not an unprovoked attack. Oct 7, also a horrific attack, war crimes committed, not unprovoked. Anyone who straps on a gun and goes strutting into another man’s territory better be reader for some action, Jack, people are very touchy about that sorta thing. After the civilian population of Gaza is destroyed, the cycle will continue. It will breed another generation bent on revenge. Until the collapse of the US dollar. Then Israel will be left without the hardware needed to keep killing enough people to remain the US military outpost in our oil region. Im just echoing the predictions of Military, journalists etc. hope it turns out a peaceful solution but so far that looks impossible.
Yes definitely!
Your choice. I don't want to live in a world that conform to your beliefs
IMHO, Hamas attacked Israel in the most vicious way they could in order to provoke Israel. And they knew Israel would retaliate and that lots of Palestinian civilians would die when Israel came after Hamas. And they didn't care.
And as I said in my other comment, I don't agree with things in this article.
However, I value Lee's publishing this different point of view and will continue my subscription.
Agree…and why can’t people disagree without the childish, bratty name calling?
Didn’t Hamas attack due to long cycle of violence perpetuated by both sides? Wasn’t stolen land the initial attack in 1948? I live on stolen land in the US, but we had more room and could put the remaining survivors on reservations.
The stolen land that was stolen from the previous occupants who stole it from the previous occupants and so on and on and on.
Jews are also indigenous to the Middle East and have lived there continuously since before the founding of Islam. The nation of Palestine was to be created at the same time as the nation of Israel, from land formerly controlled by the fallen Ottoman Empire, but Arabs were unwilling to accept the idea of Jewish independence and sovereignty anywhere in the Middle East and attempted to wipe Israel off the map. Most Palestinians who were displaced fled during the war that resulted; they were not forced off their land intentionally for the most part. Arab countries then openly said that the return of the refugees would be a way to destroy Israel from within. Shockingly, that left Israel less than enthused. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were displaced from Arab countries at the same time, but have not remained a permanent refugee population. I think to say the land is “stolen” is at best a massive oversimplification
No. The people who stole Palestinian land were from Europe and their families had been in Europe for 2000 years.
Jews are indigenous to the Middle East, and yes, they lived there for millennia before the Common Era and have lived there continuously since.
The Jewish diaspora was catalyzed by Jews being driven out by the Roman Empire.
The founding of Islam and the Muslim conquests of the area came centuries later.
The largest ethnic group of Jews in Israel currently are known as the Mizrahim and are Middle Eastern and North African.
Pretending that Jews have no history in or claim to the land and all showed up in the twentieth century to dispossess the Palestinians is incredibly disingenuous.
The Mizrahim have lived continuously in the Middle East, increasingly scattered and subjugated to Muslim rule in various Arab countries in recent centuries, until achieving independence and sovereignty with the creation of the modern nation of Israel.
Many immigrated to Israel after being displaced from Arab countries in the conflict that followed, as the Palestinians were displaced from Israel.
Many, many displacements and population swaps occurred following the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the end of World War II.
Every inch of the Middle East has changed hands through violence over the years, and the native and naturalized populations have been displaced if not outright annihilated, very much including the Jews.
True. There isn’t enough land for everyone to get along. When the US did its settler colonial project here, we had room to put survivors onto reservations because it’s a huge land mass. People in that area of mid East are so concentrated. There’s also the fierce religious aspect of the holy land. I guess it will continue this way. I just don’t see how Israel can shoot its way, or kill its way out of it. And all the infrastructure in civilian Gaza, children etc? This is what people are critical of. I don’t think the end game will result in what Israel wants. I don’t think the US war on terror resulted in anything good either for the price.
I agree. I have respected and read Leighton for years but 6 paragraphs in this part of a sentence made it clear this wasn't an editorial about free speech and debate. This is one sided propaganda. "But there is no contradiction in also opposing Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and intentional starvation of civilians"
Nah, it's a condemnation of hypocrites, who condemned Covid Cancel Culture, only to embrace the new cancel culture regarding Gaza.
The Palestinian revolutionary movement is deliberately designed to provoke overreaction. They emphasize their victimhood to the left, who will support them so long as they point out that Israel is more powerful. They emphasize their hatred, violence, and blatant disregard for their own people to the right, hoping that the West will burn down its own foundations in its efforts to extinguish Hamas.
I agree with enforcing existing laws to prevent protest groups from vandalizing and taking control of university campus grounds. I absolutely disagree with creating new hate crime laws to make anti-semetic speech illegal. The anti-speech movement is worldwide and will do its best to use any cause or crisis to trample our rights.
I have disagreed with Ben Shapiro's opinions on the matter many times. However, he has refined his position since October. I liked what he had to say on Triggernometry recently. I don't always need to agree with someone to admire them.
Don't fall for the pervasive paradigm where the ends justify the means if you're fighting against unjust power.
Lee, don't stop holding us conservatives to a higher standard. And please do not give up on us when we falter.
Israel vs. Palastine is a small, distant, religious war that few Americans care much about. Of course, the talking heads who have an opinion about everything get sucked in. The human and fiscal cost of COVID was 100 or 1000 times higher. Keep your eye on the ball.
“Happily canceling” …isn’t that our societal problem he writes of? Maybe you should stay and write your criticisms? That’s up to you I’m just saying people may want to read your opinions. Sam Harris’ most embarrassing moment was when he attempted to debate Chris Hedges, someone who actually covered the regions he speaks about. Harris was like a guy who took 3 trumpet lessons and then got on stage to jam with Dizzy Gillespie. But when your ego is so big, you don’t even know when you’re outta yer league.
I meant it ironically, but it is a fair criticism. I actually agree with much that is said, here, about Sam Harris. I have to listen to him in 1.5x to avoid falling asleep. I appreciate the discourse, but not the name-calling and strange word salad, of course.
you are a categoric, unalloyed, misguided, vindictive bigot ydna; lee fang has been more than an eleemosynary word-scriptor.... en effet, lee fang has been humane, subtle, broad-minded, sober, and charitable in his equiponderent article. his is a measured response to the violence, savagery, and genocidal horrors the zioisraeli IDF-ers and illegal settlers on the palestinians' homeland, one that stretches across the eastern mediterranean. fang reflects and endeavours to elucubrate precisely what the rectitudinous and humane students are protesting against. your ignis-fatuus, puerile reaction to fang's principled, justified, and fair-minded elenchus bears the tropes of kindergarten playground invectives. the protestors' witness to these zioisraeli depredations is the antithesis of what you erroneously asseverate; videlicet, it is the zioisraelis who have been disdainfully divulgating that palestinians are rats, cockroaches, and less-than-human life-forms to be exterminated like vermin. they have been doing so for decades. these disparaging divulgations originated following the illegal expropriation of palestinian lands in 1947/'48, inside the zionisraeli baby-minding kibbutzes when innocent european jewish children in nappies were inculcated and efficacioussly indoctrinated w/ anti-palestinian, derogatory hate-speech.
You write as though you’re under the influence of drugs. You come across as a drunk fanatic. Ydna is a bigot?? Absurd.
I know…and throwing around those SAT words like confetti.
I don’t believe I’ve ever had the unfortunate experience of reading an article where the author expresses a more deeply personal need to convey that they are more highly educated in English verbiage than the topic they are droning on about 🤦🏻♂️. Just another fascinating facet of liberal elitism and a foundational ploy of propagandizing the sheep who follow them. ⚠️
you will be pleased to be informed that i'm a retired, ossified 83-yr-old marine, lacustrine, and estuarine invertebrate zoologist living on mindoro island in the philippines, and am on my way out; i have an ineluctable date w/ the grim reaper, just 'round the corner. having spent my entire working life since 1962, overseas in 3rd-/4th-world ambits, w/ no access to TV or any other electronic drug... only books, spouse, our bantlings, and locals. commensurately, my lexicon is atypical, if not selcouth. my apologies for unsettling you, bestuvall, margaret, jacqueline, jason, and ydna. the words accumulated over those 83 years have been trapped and enshackled inside a cortex that is more a simulacrum of a sewer filled w/ logorrhea than it is a brain.
well where you live is beautiful.. so enjoy
well someone told you "use your words". all of them all at once
If this is "civilization vs. barbarism," then Israel is looking more barbaric by the day.
Maybe Israelis should stop teaching their own children to hate. Watch "Kill Them All," a video showing how Israeli settlers bring their entire families along on a fun day trip to block aid to starving Gazans. The title comes from a quote by a 10 year old girl, expressing her attitudes toward the Gazans. Grayzone has additional articles revealing Israeli settlers destroying aid by dumping it on the ground or setting it on fire.
Matt Orfalea also has a great video out on the Laws of War, showing IDF forces repeatedly firing on civilians carrying white flags, some of whom are children.
Israel is losing the PR battle because we can all see how Israel disregards the rules of war just as Hamas does. Israel bombed a refugee camp last week, after bombing aid workers, bombing an embassy, & continuing to deprive Gazans of necessary food, water, fuel, etc. This IS barbarism.
Golda Meir also said there is no such thing as the Palestinian people. But well done for confirming that you are just one of the huge legion of stupid people hotties by your childish binary thinking.
Oh the irony. Great display of what text was about.
If you are a human, then congratulations for passing the reverse Turing test. I can't tell if you are a bot or not.
Please read the stats analysis I linked to above. The statisticsl reality very much not what you're generally told it is.
Hard on the heart to read, but thanks to Leighton and Jenin for writing this and to Lee for providing the forum.
This is the kind of thing that I hope allows this venue to switch places with “much larger” ones. I‘m struck by the generosity of your gesture and grateful for the chance to broaden the scope of my reading. I had been putting off becoming a paid subscriber, but I will no longer.
However painful this situation, and it is painful, however upsetting, and it is that, too, by the bucketful, there is no amount of nuance and sensitivity that makes the act of attempting to contextualize 10/7 either moral or justifiable. Nothing occurs in a vacuum, of course, but I am sorry, no amount of suffering, disappointment, or prohibition justifies or makes tolerable the shockingly immoral, nauseating, monstrous acts of 10/7, nor the celebration of them that followed, nor the cell phone recordings that documented them as acts of heroism. We are now meant to try to understand those monstrous acts and feel sorry for the perpetrators of them? That is patently absurd. I happen to stand against all wars, that in Ukraine, too, and my heart breaks for all the harm done, but the position articulated here is not one of conscience, nor does it give weight to the long-standing refusal of co-existence by the Palestinian leadership. Are we not all called to try to co-exist? It would appear to me that many, many people over time have been compelled to share land for all kinds of reasons and many have had land taken away and somehow many people have found a way to live, as people do. Suffering doesn't justify the monstrous. It never has and never will. It just doesn't, not according to any compass of intuitive moral knowing that I have ever encountered. Our nobility is that we can chose. We can reject the monstrous even from a place of total destitution. We know those stories & we hold them tight, or we used to, as a culture, because they served to remind us of our higher potentials and better angels.
Israel's military campaign in Gaza is not "indiscriminate." The ratio of dead in Gaza is nearly 1-2 Hamas fighters and civilians. Most wars have a nearly 50-1 casualty ratio of civilians to military It's also not a "one-sided" conflict inasmuch as it's not Israel's responsibility to ensure its enemies have military parity with the IDF. There was a ceasefire on Oct 6th, Hamas chose to end that ceasefire. Hamas is responsible for everything that came after.
And Israel is responsible for everything that came before. Israel expected - demanded - that the Palestinians do as they’re told, live in an open-air prison (their words), and not complain when they “mowed the grass”, a euphemism for a punishing bombing campaign every few years.
Gaza wasn't an "open-air prison" by any stretch of the imagination. All you people do is lie but when you support a cause as rancid as Palestinian terrorism - lying is all you've got to hold onto.
Sorry Shane but the facts are against you. Even the Israeli ministers admitted it was an apartheid state and Gaza was completely controlled by them , right down to the amount of food they allowed in. Prior to October 7th, they stated they were going to “put Gaza on a diet” and reduce the number of calories per person they allowed in. All of this is documented.
Now you're shifting the goalposts - abandoning your earlier claim that Israel was "indiscriminately killing" Gaza, after I proved you incorrect, to move into the other shopworn accusation of Apartheid existing in the West Bank - an area Israel has never annexed. Again, you people are so disingenuous it's not worth it to even argue with you.
I saw no proof that the IDF was not indiscriminately bombing (which kills anyone trapped in the building) as this is exactly what they said they were doing the first week of the assault on Gaza. Their words. The West Bank is an apartheid territory and that’s documented as well. There are numerous, verifiable cases of Zionists forcing Palestians from their homes and claiming them. There is no legal recourse for them — how is that not a two tier justice system?
Maybe it would be an open air prison if the tens of billions of dollars given to them hadn't been stolen by Hamas leadership, all living abroad, or used to build tunnels and by arms.
Only if that money had been used to bribe IDF border guards, who effectively control all movement into Gaza.
Oh yes, the ceasefire before October 7th talking point.
Prior to the Hamas terrorist attacks and the IDF indiscriminate bombings killing thousands there was no permanent ceasefire.
Rocket attacks from Gaza and elsewhere do not seem like a ceasefire. Suicide bombings do not seem like a ceasefire.
Israel invaded Gaza in 2008-2009, and 2014 and that is certainly not a ceasefire. Settlers continue to take Palestinian land by force with the help of the military in the West Bank. That also does not sound like a ceasefire.
Clearly, the conflict has been ongoing for decades. The intensity has increased and thus we have what is occurring now.
Hopefully we get a real ceasefire to end the conflict and have the remaining hostages returned home.
Most of the hostages are already dead. A "real ceasefire" will occur when Iran's proxies surrounding Israel - Hezbollah and Hamas - are completely destroyed and not before. No country in the world would live with the constant attacks Israel endures and Israel shouldn't have to and won't continue doing so either.
Isn’t Israel an occupying force over Gaza? Is the CIA wrong about this? I’ve heard contradictory reports of Israeli hostages being treated ok , as Hamas hopes to use them as leverage in getting some Palestinians out of Israeli prisons? Is that 100% false? If so, how do we know that binary narrative the Israeli lobby supports to be 100% accurate? Wasn’t Netanyahu facing multiple charges for corruption by Israel? If so, how is he trusted? He’s not very popular with most Israeli’s, polls show. Thanks.
how in Gods name can a hostage be treated "OK". do you know what a hostage is? there is no treating them "ok"
Maybe Israel would sustain fewer attacks if it could just be more neighborly.
They could have easily repelled the Oct. 7 attacks if they had not stood down. Hamas committed atrocities on Oct 7 by targeting civilians -- which Israel does every day of the week. They are both loathsome.
Easy cease fire. Hamas surrender.
Ceasefires involve multiple parties. Israeli government, Hamas and US government at the moment. In any conflict that is at a stalemate or has been going on for a period of time would you unilaterally just walk away gaining nothing?
Why doesn’t Israel just leave Gaza and stop bombing? Easy ceasefire according to the logic of one walks away. But I seriously doubt the IDF would leave without a negotiated ceasefire and hostages being returned as that would be seen as a big loss. Therefore, Hamas will never do it either.
Same with Russia-Ukraine and the Burmese civil war. Unless one side is completely destroyed no one is surrendering.
Hamas surrenders as a condition of the cease fire everything after that is negotiated. There is no way Hamas can remain. They are still firing rockets into Israel.
Gee, why would they be doing that?
It's not like Israel is doing anything to them.
This such a great post. What’s refreshing is to finally read a nuanced answer of this exceedingly complicated conflict. It’s also great in calling the various spades, well, spades. The fact has always been that the hypocrisy seems to align most frequently with the party in power. We seem to have a glitch in the Matrix this time around since we’re now seeing that hypocrisy come from each side on the different issues. Ultimately, it’s the partisans calling for the cancellation of the First Amendment in the name of their cause celèbre. How unAmerican to be so willing to get rid of our free speech guarantees at every whim. At least it’s a trait both parties share, supporting my premise that they both suck badly. My sincere hope is the new centrist position that so many of us are being driven to becomes sufficiently strong politically that we tame the beast of the bipartisan First Amendment haters 😄…and we’ll do it while let them speak as they please 😀
Good points though if you study American history at any depth you will realize that abuse of rights protected by the Bill of Rights has been ongoing almost from the beginning. The difference, IMO, is the amplitude and frequency of government abuses of power now. That said, thanks to Lee Fang for posting this article and will put you in my queue…
"...there is no contradiction in also opposing Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and intentional starvation of civilians in a one-sided military operation that has killed tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. Nor should it be taboo to point out that October 7 did not occur in a vacuum." Thanks for that reminder, and for the other necessary historical context of Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians before and after October 7. It stuns me to hear the claim that it is "anti-semitic" to criticize Israel's actions. But yeah, yet another great opportunity to encourage jingoism. I'm sure it won't be the last.
There you go with the intentional starvation propaganda. It weakens your otherwise sage points.
Israeli leaders were seen on video discussing how they would deprive Gazans of food, water, fuel, etc.
There is plenty of evidence on the Inter Webs of Israeli settlers either blocking aid deliveries, or intentionally destroying the aid by dumping it out or setting it on fire. (Grayzone) Doctors who have worked in Gaza report that patients are dying after surgeries because their bodies are so malnourished they can't heal, and because there is a shortage of clean water for cleaning wounds & surgical sites.
Deny all ya want, but the truth really is out there.
Hook, line and sinker I see. I'm sure doctors working in Gaza always tell the truth and are unbiased.
Where is your "nuance" when you repeat the claim of "tens of thousands" of deaths from one side when we know war PR is synonymous with propaganda?
COVID numbers were BS but Palestinian health officials are believable? Please...
Yeah, I'm sure all those Gazans will emerge from the tunnels any day now, totally unscathed.
Hahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahaha!
I don't know who's stats to believe anymore. I trust this Substack and I trust people's honest opinions but I don't know who has the facts in this conflict. Genocide or not something is going terribly wrong and I just want my own "elected" representatives to stop lying about it.
This is a great article about Hamas's stats: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers
I think the saddest thing is that no one side "has the facts," despite our society's tendency to immediately factionalize. These are groups who, in one form or another, have treated one another brutally for a century. Trying to figure out which side is more wrong is a lost cause. Israel is more brutal simply because it has more power to be brutal. Both sides lie in favor of their cause. And no one who reports on it firsthand seems to do so from a position where they haven't already picked a side.
This is the world we live in now. The days of debating a subject, disagreeing and then going to grab a drink are gone. Your either with us or them. Only group think is allowed.
I think you've hit on something important here -- "Israel is more brutal simply because it has the power to be brutal." I would qualify "the Israeli government/military" because these actions are not emerging from any meaningful consensus of the Israeli people. But yes, we are witnessing a galling tragedy that can't be reduced to a simple moral binary, and that feels intolerable to consider. To do so is to acknowledge the broad and even distribution of the human capacity for brutality. In my view, looking at the situation with this level of nuance also forces one to ask the question of how and why any entity -- with the the Israeli government and Hamas as examples -- is able to gain the power to be so brutal. The answer that, e.g., Israel has so much power in part because of U.S. support is just a data point within the larger question.
Well put; I feel this way about a lot of things, not just the conflict in Gaza. If you already "know what you think" about something and you just want to think that way even more hysterically, the media world around you is overflowing with information that will scratch that itch. If you are the curious, investigative type who wants to gather knowledge before deciding what you think -- well, these days, you're kinda fucked.
Authors make some good points and I’m glad they published this column, but it was naive of them not to see this coming. The pro Israel movement has always been obsessed with censorship and has been responsible for more canceled speakers, professors being fired etc than any other political movement; it’s also obvious that people like Ron desantis are opportunists with no principles at all- if you expected these people to have your back you deeply misread them in the first place. October 7th just gave the zealots an opportunity to go on the offensive, but they’ve been trying to undo the first amendment for decades (and in many cases have succeeded).
Your statement:
“The pro Israel movement has always been obsessed with censorship and has been responsible for more canceled speakers, professors being fired etc than any other political movement”
What???
You’ve been living on a desert island the last four years.
FBI and CIA censorship operations and personnel in Google, Facebook and Twitter home offices, passing judgment on all speech that doesn’t comport with the Biden regime’s narrative and policies is censorship.
It’s tyranny.
Why don’t you view the Hamas recorded videos of the October 7 attack?
If you can stomach it you might just wake up from your perilously woke condition.
No idea what your point could possibly be here. The Biden administration has only existed since 2020; pro Israel groups have been waging censorship campaigns for decades.
what?/. "the Biden administration". since 2020. LOL it isnt just Biden. is it?
That’s right.
You have no idea.
You never will.
You hate Israel.
Your projection is so clear.
You’re really making the authors’ point for them here.
Twist away Alinsky
You don’t like ‘projection’? Neither do I. So here, unfettered by hypocrisy and euphemism, is how I feel about Israel. You may not like it or agree with it but everything here is verifiable and historical.
Israel was founded on lies, crimes and terrorism. Future PM Menachem Begin was an unabashed terrorist, responsible for the murder of many innocent, indigenous people.
“A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. On April 9 1947 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants (240 men, women, and children) and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.”
(My parents were there, before 1948, and witnessed some of this.) So did Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein, who wrote this in the New York Times: “Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.”
Israel was not founded to shelter victims of the Holocaust, it was conceived long before and was always an indefensible act of theft “defended” conveniently, as “the will of God”.
You are surely aware of this quote:
"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel….They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" Ben Gurion 1947
So, do I ‘hate’ Israel? No. I hate injustice, and lies. I hated living on a Kibbutz, while the IDF was murdering American seamen on the USS Liberty, and, as always, calling it a “tragic mistake”. I hated the racism, the arrogance, and the pathological victimhood which is their baseline polemic. And, so there’s no misunderstanding, I want to see the state of Israel to disappear, and to be replaced by a democracy which returns Palestinians to the land that Ben Gurion rightfully described as stolen. Also welcome are any Jews, Christians, and others who can find a way to live peacefully together. But Zionism is, by definition, a racist, exclusionary, ideology, and must be condemned.
I’ve lived among Palestinian people and I find them among the warmest, most educated and refined people I know. If they fight to regain their country, that’s not a crime, it’s just another fight for freedom in a world of thieves. Anyone saying otherwise is probably among the thieves, and no, I don’t hate you, I just want you to see the truth. My truth, Einstein’s truth, Ben Gurion’s truth, and the truth of freedom itself.
This is an insane comment!
DeSantis banned a formal student group that endorsed atrocities. They can still chant their slogans.
Israel was also a mega Covidian nation and Netanyahu offered up Israelis to be Guinea pigs for the newest medical fad.
Cancel Culture has come roaring back on all sides in this debate. I would welcome a piece that attempted to analyze the different power dynamics in different spaces: White shoe law; artists; writers attempting to strongarm PEN America.
This was not that piece, focused as it was on the worst of Zionists’ behavior and whitewashing the copious amounts of calls to violence by anti-Zionists (yes, Virginia, “From The River To The Sea” is effectively a call to displace or kill 7 million Jews; a Nakba times ten)
Given all the keffiyahs I see on the streets in Chicago, and the absurdly bucolic scene at Alumni Weekend at the University of Chicago where families of keffiyah-wearing white people wrote in chalk demanding that Israel be treated like a pariah for defending themselves, it doesn’t seem like this attempt at cancelling pro-Palestinian sentiment has been very effective. I wouldn’t want any of these people to be cancelled, either, but from where I sit their message is getting out there unopposed, despite its heavy flaws and moral obscenity.
So rejoice! Your viewpoint that Jews can’t choose for themselves how to stop a terrorist movement that just killed 1,200 people for being Jews or helping Jews, and shouldn’t even be where they are in the first place, has gained far, far wider acceptance than before this massacre took place! You did it, guys! And the ham-fisted attempts at cancellation (or in some cases, reporting what people actually said or their organizations put their names to), give *just* enough sense of victimization to feel like, hey, you *deserve* a pass on this whole “is it anti-Semitism” thing, just this once.
I guess this an op ed piece because it’s incredibly one-sided and the writers make no effort to back up most of their claims. Writing that tired, endlessly repeated “Gaza is an open air prison” is such a tell. Some of these phrases begin to ring in your ears like a commercial jingle that just won’t go away. Could there possibly be a reason that Israel monitors this area so relentlessly? Is there any history of unprovoked attacks by terrorists on Israel? When Israeli left Gaza, there was an airport, a seaport, infrastructure, all in good working order built by Israelis. Hamas proceeded to use the airport and seaport to bring in arms with which to bomb Israel. They tore up the infrastructure and used the materials to make weapons. This “wall” between the two territories exists only in locations where terrorists fired bombs at Israel. In between those barriers is open land. So much of this article is deceptive repetition fed to an audience who doesn’t seem to want to research anything.
And for Gods sake, the campus protesters were camping on common grounds. I can’t go anywhere I want and set up camp indefinitely. Protesters used to walk, stand or march. Union strikers marched in freezing weather, in ungodly heat for 8 hour shifts and more. They didn’t lie around painting their nails and braiding each other’s hair or they’d have been arrested and jailed. As someone who did march in the 60’s and who was married to a union worker who spent time on picket lines, I’m disgusted by the coddling of these lazy children. And adults doing this coddling should be ashamed of themselves. Just grow up all of you. Act your age.
You bring up a lot of great points regarding WHY there is a wall around Gaza. I wish journalists would look into the history of why Israel had to implement the security measures they did. Both (and differently) in the West Bank and Gaza.
I remember hearing about the numerous suicide attacks and kidnappings by Hamas and the PLO over the last 30 years but few articles seem to mention these details. As well as the number of times Israel has been attacked by Hamas and other Islamic militants from surrounding countries. Israel wasn’t “oppressing” people from Lebanon or Syria, but they still attacked Israel.
Another huge issue I see in reading these and other articles is how the problems in the West Bank are being sighted as the reasons for the Hamas attacks on 10/7. Gaza and the West Bank are 2 entirely separate areas. There are no Israeli soldiers or civilians living in or policing Gaza. There are no settlers or settlements in Gaza.
Lastly, Hamas is a terrorist organization. It was formed in 1948. Its entire reason for being is to remove Israel from the map. They have been attacking Israel since 1948. There was no wall surrounding Gaza in 1948 and the West Bank was not occupied by the IDF, nor were there Israel settlers or settlements located there, yet they still attacked Israel and continued to attack Israel to this day! They just keep changing their story to try to convince people they are the good guys fighting the bad guys. It’s so exhausting.
Thank you. I also wish more facts were reported, with valid verification links provided. This might take some out some of the bias and emotion so common in journalism today. If I ever get less lazy in my retirement, I might write up a timeline of when attacks took place, by whom, and the respective death counts. Just for my own education!
The airport was bombed by Israel and they were not allowed to rebuild it (paid for by US taxpayer dollars to the tune of 3 billion/year for many years), the seaport was blockaded by Israel so no chance of free commerce there and human rights groups as well as Israeli officials have called it an open air prison. If you’d like to camp indefinitely, Austin or San Francisco make it legal to do so. After WW1 men who had served in the military camped out in DC to demand the bonus money promised by the government.
Of course, I read something different regarding the air and seaports. We read different accounts of the exact same events these days, which is sad and not helpful. And everyone is very protective of their own sources, equally unhelpful. So I rarely argue, but sometimes I’ll throw out some info that I believe I’ve researched well enough.
And I don’t want to camp in a park or on a campus! But if students do, maybe they should try to change the rules of their institutions. As you suggested.
It’s a terrible situation and I don’t know how it can be resolved. A lot more homes will be destroyed and innocent civilians on all sides suffer.
No argument there.
Sorry my BS meter went off in the second paragraph. No surprise that no one else wanted to publish this!
Why? What did you think was BS? They were just giving their background. Was it false?
Total BS is correct.
Way too many things to list, but one would be basing anything on a NYT article, especially one that paints Israel and Jews in a bad light.
The “Grey Lady” started that bullshit back in the 1930s when they praised Hitler as a visionary.
NEWS BULLETIN: Hitler is dead. Please join us here in 2024 and take a look at the destruction in Gaza, the fact that the IDF commits war crimes and films them, the history that lead to the attack on October 7th and the relentless propaganda, AIPAC manipulation of Congress with carrot/stick contributions and members of the Jewish community who are against this assault.
Excellent article and, in today’s poisoned climate, a brave one as well.
"the fact that the IDF commits war crimes and films them" Well if that bothers you I've got something to show you that happened on Oct 7th and not only was it filmed butmuch of it was also streamed live too!!
Which proves what?
Two things can be true at the same time: Hamas committed atrocities on Oct. 7th, & Israel has committed atrocities/acts of war, as well, by bombing a refugee camp, bombing aid workers, bombing a foreign embassy, & doing nothing to stop Israeli settlers & their families from blocking or destroying aid.
His body is dead but the influence he and his hate-filled followers and blind citizens lives on with sophisticated propaganda (just look at American television ads and the decades of Hollywood movies to see the pattern).
Propaganda is a refined art used for marketing and control and it is being perfected as we watch the slaughter of human beings with all manner of justification from our comfortable arm chairs!
I only need walk through my local supermarket buying food here in San Diego and the constant messaging of getting my 'updated vaccine' plays over and over on the audio system.
Only the most evil of human beings want to dominate and they know that controlling thoughts, words and deeds' makes it easier especially if people destroy one another 'voluntarily.
The history is documented:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ministry-of-propaganda-and-public-enlightenment
Predictable, both Corrin Strong and The Tide do not directly answer Peggy's straightforward question, because the truth stands on its own merits. With respect to The Tide's criticism of the NYT, you would think The Tide was writing a satire comment for the Onion. The NYT has been, and continues to be one of the most pro-Israel publications in America, so much so that several of their award winning reporters, including the Pulitzer Prize, resigned from the "Grey Lady" in protest over its overtly pro-Israel bias. In addition to being owned by the Sulzberger family, who are Jewish, the editorial writers and editors are overwhelmingly represented by Jewish journalists, including three NYT journalists whose children were serving in the IDF while they were employed by the NYT. And The Tide thinks the NYT is biased against Israel and Jews. Not only laughable, but clearly highlights the points made in this article.
Sounds like you work there,
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/us/antisemitism-republicans-trump.html
⬆️what they say
⬇️what they do
New York Times Rehires Pro-Hitler Journalist Based in Gaza
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/new-york-times-rehires-pro-hitler-journalist-based-in-gaza-sparking-backlash/
Gee Tide, this article from the National Review seems pretty fair and balanced, especially when it's buttressed by that esteemed publication,, HonestReporting, a website that monitors the media for bias against Israel. Sorta like Canary. Pray tell, I'm all ears, exactly what did the NYT publish, that the Israel's Ambassador, Gilad Erdan, stated was spreading anti-Jewish propaganda? Specifically.
OK I got lazy and didn't actually count the paragraphs. It was actually the 5th paragraph when they started talking about how all their new right-wing friends tried to censor their views on Gaza. I am calling BS on that. I doubt that in the circles they inhabit they actually know any real Conservatives, and if they do, I doubt those people are trying to censor anybody. As far as I can tell, almost all the censorship in this country is coming from the left.
Excellent analysis. I've always been on the left, and it was so strange to be considered a right winger when I didn't get the jab. Now I firmly stand with the Palestinian people and the student protesters and I'm suddenly an anti-semite. What a weird world we live in.
Interesting that you write about a lack of nuance. There is a distinct lack of nuance in this piece. There is a great deal of dispute about whether Israel is actually trying to intentionally starve people in Gaza. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/04/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-starvation-icc.html
There is almost zero evidence to support claims of "indiscriminate bombing." Most evidence is that Israel is trying to limit casualties, though not doing a great job of that. Your piece tries to give context to the attacks of October 7, but makes no effort to give any context as to why Israel limits Palestinian rights in the occupied territories. (For example, you fail to mention the over 1000 deaths caused by Palestinian suicide bombers during the Second Intifada; you fail to mention the desire by many Palestinians to destroy the State of Israel, etc. etc.) The entire situation in Gaza has an extremely long and complicated history. You are not military strategists. If you are are criticizing Israel and only Israel in this conflict, it is legitimate to have your motives questioned. Those of us questioning your motives don't support cancel culture. Some of the strategies you speak of definitely would fall under the cancel culture umbrella. But others are simply consequences for bad acts, bigotry, or stupidity.
Israel stated in the first weeks of war they were using indiscriminate bombing so this fact came directly from them. Part of the destruction was St. Porphyrios church, the third oldest Christian church in the world.