Hamas attack exposes bankruptcy of the far left and right

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Honey69
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18 Oct 2023, 8:10 am

Dox47 wrote:

I don't think the majority of the left wing foot dragging or Hamas praising is driven by antisemitism,

"Foot-dragging?" "Hamas praising?"

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Dox47
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18 Oct 2023, 12:29 pm

Honey69 wrote:

"Foot-dragging?" "Hamas praising?"

Lol, if you want me to provide examples, you're probably not going to like how it goes; I'd suggest doing a bit of googling before I get home, this stuff is not hard to find.

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18 Oct 2023, 1:47 pm

Even the most extreme leftist fantasies about the supposes oppression suffered by Blacks in modern day America is nothing compared to the reality of the actual oppression suffered by the Palestinians at the hands of Israel.

So as far as I can see, leftists who talk about opposing oppression, and who support the Palestinian cause, are just sticking to their own stated principles.

It’s the leftists who complain about “racism” and “fascism” in the West while supporting Israel who are the most dishonest or confused. Just as confused, I would say, are patriotic flag-waving conservative American types who go along with their government’s blind support of Israel because their heads are permanently stuffed with Hollywood memes about the US forever saving the world from “Nazis”.

Since this thread was started, Israel has bombed a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians, while having the gall to deny it. They’ve been doing stuff like this for years.

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18 Oct 2023, 1:50 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:

I have seen progressives especially progressive Jews waking up about “wokeness”. Having felt that mindset is bad for the Jews for several years I don’t know how to feel about their shock.

Thanks for spelling out the real motivation for your centrism. I mean, it was obvious enough to me already.
It would be nice if Cathy Young were that honest.

ASPartOfMe
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18 Oct 2023, 9:00 pm

slam_thunderhide wrote:

ASPartOfMe wrote:

I have seen progressives especially progressive Jews waking up about “wokeness”. Having felt that mindset is bad for the Jews for several years I don’t know how to feel about their shock.

Thanks for spelling out the real motivation for your centrism. I mean, it was obvious enough to me already.
It would be nice if Cathy Young were that honest.

You are welcome.

I have discussed this motivation on occasion before. It is by far my only motivation. I think woke illiberalism and MAGA illiberalism is bad for America.

Off Topic

My reasoning which I have discussed on occasion and have been called out for before goes like this. Throughout history, Jews have been thought of as a separate race and that to put it has not gone well(whether Jews are a race, ethnic group, religion, or some combination is controversial and beyond this thread). In the '60s and '70s when I grew up we were thought of correctly or not as a white ethnic group and that went a lot better. Along comes "woke ideology" which as Young described centers on groups, dividing them into oppressors and oppressed. Based on history Jews being once again defined as a separate race I felt was going to be bad and that is how it has worked out(not the only reason). Due to success and most American Jews' skin color, we were put into the "white" or "white adjacent" category which describes people who are not white but get all the advantages of "white privilege". The thing is that the tiki-torching Neo-Nazi types are obvious and often discussed. When "wokeness" came in, especially during 2020 during what was called the "Great Awokeining" most people just saw George Floyd being murdered and the "woke" explanation was the obvious one. Jewish Americans being one of the more left-voting groups were primed to agree with at least some of the "woke" explanations and miss the dangers. For whatever reason I did not miss them, and was quite frustrated with that and like Ms. Young spent more time on left-wing antisemitism than the white nationalist version.

Putting the Jewish angle aside making negative assumptions about a person based on their race is bad, it is racism.

Where do you see Ms. Young lying? I see a Jewish refugee from Russia whose background primes her to see signs of illiberalism that most Americans who have not lived under an authoritarian regime can not.

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ASPartOfMe
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19 Oct 2023, 11:46 pm

Cathy Young a person with experience with both authoritarianism and antisemitism is often dismissed as a source. Is Natan Sharansky good enough?

Ideological Antisemitism on the Left

Quote:

To a former inmate of a Communist country, watching the American cultural landscape succumb to groupthink ideology brings back old nightmares. Reruns of a ludicrous script: the double-speak and double-think; the sycophancy; ostracizing and demonizing anyone who dares to dissent; preaching love while practicing hate. Only this time, the setting is America—still the land of the free, but here the brave no longer feel quite at home.

It is deeply disturbing to Natan Sharansky, a survivor of unimaginable torture in the Gulag: “I am concerned about the ideological environment in the U.S., a global superpower, a beacon of hope for all humanity,” he writes in a foreword to David L. Bernstein’s new book, Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews . Sharansky is alarmed by “the emergence of a dogma—some call it ‘woke’ ideology—not unlike the totalizing ideology I grew up with in the Soviet Union, which has taken the American left by storm and with it many American cultural institutions.”

Antisemitism is but one aspect of this totalizing ideology, the same dangerous narrative that has brought misery to millions. As always, it threatens not only Jews but liberalism itself. “In woke ideology,” Sharansky explains, “if you substitute the word race for class, you will get almost the exact same Marxist-Leninist dogma in which we were indoctrinated in schools that became the basis of the hatred against dissidents and anyone who dared question the party line.”

Dox47
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20 Oct 2023, 11:25 pm

slam_thunderhide wrote:

Since this thread was started, Israel has bombed a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians, while having the gall to deny it. They’ve been doing stuff like this for years.

Since this propaganda fell apart under even mild scrutiny, care to retract your lie?

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slam_thunderhide
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21 Oct 2023, 3:51 pm

Dox47 wrote:

slam_thunderhide wrote:

Since this thread was started, Israel has bombed a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians, while having the gall to deny it. They’ve been doing stuff like this for years.

Since this propaganda fell apart under even mild scrutiny, care to retract your lie?

You must be joking. How has the claim fallen apart? Just because ‘US intelligence’ and senile Joe Biden say so? Because of some ridiculous audio clip that the Israelis managed to 'intercept' where alleged ‘Hamas operatives’ conveniently point the finger at Islamic Jihad?

On 14 October, three days before the explosion at Al Ahli hospital, the World Health Organization reported the following:

Quote:

As the United Nation’s agency responsible for public health, the World Health Organization (WHO) strongly condemns Israel's repeated orders for the evacuation of 22 hospitals treating more than 2000 inpatients in northern Gaza. The forced evacuation of patients and health workers will further worsen the current humanitarian and public health catastrophe.

On 17 October, shortly after the explosion at Al Ahli hospital, the United Nations reported the following:

Quote:

There have been over 115 attacks on healthcare across the Occupied Palestinian Territory since the start of the conflict on 7 October, sparked by Hamas’s bloody incursion into southern Israel.

Of this number, 51 occurred in the Gaza Strip, with 15 healthcare workers killed and 27 injured

So given that prior to 17 October Israel warned hospitals in Gaza to evacuate, and that they’d had already carried out multiple attacks against healthcare in Palestinian Territory, why should we believe they’re innocent of the Al Ahli hospital bombing?

The obvious conclusion is Israel did it, they probably didn’t realize beforehand how many people were in the hospital, and when they found out they went into damage control mode.

You know, a few years ago I used to be sympathetic towards Israel, largely due to my distaste for the Left, but over time the amount of nonsense propaganda and denials Israel put out every time they killed more civilians, aid workers and journalists just became too much.

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22 Oct 2023, 5:04 pm

Dox47 wrote:

Can you denounce the disgusting Hamas attacks on civilians without prodding or a million caveats about how the Israelis brought it on themselves?

While I would NOT say that the "Israelis brought it on themselves" (the Hamas attack was a war crime and there is no excuse for that), the subsequent harm to Gaza Palestinians, by the Israeli counter-attack, has been far greater, as far as I can tell.

As far as I can tell, the main reason why many leftists have been slow to condemn the Hamas attack is worries over how to word such condemnations without feeding the anti-Palestinian war machine. That's also the reason why many leftists hesitate to condemn the Hamas attacks without also condemning what the Israeli government has been doing to the Palestinians for lo these many years.

Note: Above, I am describing what I think are the motives of those who, like myself, genuinely do regard the Hamas attack as a bad thing. To whatever extent some (hopefully not most) leftists have outright cheered the Hamas attack, that's very bad news. Not only was the Hamas attack an atrocity in itself, but it has certainly not helped the cause of justice for the Palestinians. It has been a major setback to that cause, if anything.

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ASPartOfMe
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22 Oct 2023, 6:13 pm

Mona Pereth wrote:

Note: Above, I am describing what I think are the motives of those who, like myself, genuinely do regard the Hamas attack as a bad thing. To whatever extent some (hopefully not most) leftists have outright cheered the Hamas attack, that's very bad news. Not only was the Hamas attack an atrocity in itself, but it has certainly not helped the cause of justice for the Palestinians. It has been a major setback to that cause, if anything.

I am not a mind reader either but how am I supposed to interpret people chanting “From River to Sea” in the wake of the Hamas attack?

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22 Oct 2023, 6:55 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:

I am not a mind reader either but how am I supposed to interpret people chanting “From River to Sea” in the wake of the Hamas attack?

I don't know. To judge exactly what was meant by that, I would have to see it in the context of the rallies at which it was chanted.

But I will point out that a hypothetical expulsion of Jews from Israel/Palestine is far from the only way that Palestinians could gain the freedom to live and travel "from river to sea." A single unified Israel-Palestine -- with adequate, well-thought-out protections for everyone's rights -- could accomplish this also. (See this thread for some of my evolving thoughts on how this could conceivably be done.)

Dox47
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23 Oct 2023, 8:09 pm

Mona Pereth wrote:

As far as I can tell, the main reason why many leftists have been slow to condemn the Hamas attack is worries over how to word such condemnations without feeding the anti-Palestinian war machine.

You must not know many leftists.

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Mona Pereth
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23 Oct 2023, 10:05 pm

Dox47 wrote:

You must not know many leftists.

Or maybe leftists in your neck of the woods are different from leftists here?

New Yorkers generally tend to be less extreme than people in some other parts of the country, I've noticed.

Dox47
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23 Oct 2023, 10:39 pm

Mona Pereth wrote:

Or maybe leftists in your neck of the woods are different from leftists here?

Nah, I know leftists from all over the country, I even subscribe to some of their newsletters, the only thing that gets them more bloodthirsty than Israel is landlords, and I'm not even exaggerating a little. They're like werewolves when the full moon rises with these two subjects, perfectly reasonable one moment and foaming at the mouth wishing death on people the next. Go on some of the big leftists subs or message boards, or just follow some X accounts, it's not even hidden.

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Mona Pereth
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24 Oct 2023, 1:22 am

Dox47 wrote:

Nah, I know leftists from all over the country, I even subscribe to some of their newsletters,

Which ones?

Dox47 wrote:

the only thing that gets them more bloodthirsty than Israel is landlords, and I'm not even exaggerating a little. They're like werewolves when the full moon rises with these two subjects, perfectly reasonable one moment and foaming at the mouth wishing death on people the next. Go on some of the big leftists subs or message boards, or just follow some X accounts, it's not even hidden.

I would expect "big" political "subs or message boards," on either the left or the right, to be dominated by extremist trolls, unless the moderators weed them out. Ditto for political comment threads on social media. I wouldn't expect them to be representative of most people on either the left or the right.

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24 Oct 2023, 9:25 am

"The left" is a complex thing (but then all things are). I'm assuming Dox is using it to refer to far-left people who are outside or on the fringes of mainstream politics. I think it's fair to say that there are lots of apologiae for Hamas from these groups.

I think a lot of big leftist subreddits actually have the exact opposite problem to inactive mod teams - they have mod teams who will actively ban people who aren't bought into their ideology. Places like /r/GenZedong or /r/GreenAndPleasant for example actively ban anyone they suspect of being a "lib".

As for the hospital - Hamas fairly regularly fire low-quality rockets into Israel. A sizeable portion of these rockets (about 20%) land in Gaza. The alleged Israeli strike on a Gaza hospital seems to be one of them - the damage is not consistent with an Israeli airstrike, but is consistent with a Hamas rocket.

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