Bessner also manages to answer a series of self-posed questions, instead of directly addressing Loury's questions about Jewish students' safety.
Bessner discusses:
*What is a pogrom?
*How strong is Israel today?
*How poorly are Palestinians treated?
*What's the real power balance in the Middle East?
*How are American Jews socialized?
All of this manages to dance around real questions about Israelis' safety as well as about the safety of American Jews.
Jews don't feel unsafe just because people disagree with us about Israel. We first began to feel unsafe because we saw how quickly people, including Bessner, were able to dismiss the security concerns of Israelis.
Indeed, when Loury says while ("channeling"):
"You expect us to live with this on our border? . . . . No nation would accept it. Why are you asking us to accept it?”
... Bessner proceeds to discuss multiple aspects of the conflict while avoiding the specific questions. However strong Israel is, Bessner will not look straight at the question of how untenable any nation wound find it to have Hamas at its doorstep, threatening to repeat its actions.
This is the Common Blind Spot we see and this is why we feel unsafe. Whether a Jew identifies with Israel or not, considers herself a Zionist or not, Jews who have studied history understand that our religious and political affiliations have not ultimately been dispositive in how the world has treated us.
Bessner 's (clumsy) tapdancing avoidance of the real security threats Israelis face only validates those concerns. I don't hold out much hope that he will see this, but perhaps others will.
It's cringe when Bessner is asked about whether Hamas committed terrorism and he responds with these non sequiturs:
"Is the answer, then, you respond by basically annihilating a population?"
Not a response to the question.
"Also, it's a little bit of an absurd claim, because Benjamin Netanyahu has been funding Hamas for years. This is part of a particular political strategy by the Israeli political government to basically pacify Gaza and focus on settlement in the West Bank as the Israeli government has become more far-right, et cetera.
So, if you're so concerned with Hamas, maybe you shouldn't fund it, but whatever."
Misdirection and gaslighting re the question of whether Hamas committed terrorism. Those who can't see this are missing some empathy.
The US funded the Mujahedeen in the Afghan War. Does this have any bearing on whether 9/11 was an act of terror?
This is where I accuse Bessner of that Strange Blind Spot.
Inevitable is the word I'd use. Mathematical models, game theory, etc. predict this.
Create extreme circumstances get extreme results. While it's debatable if an individual has free will (in physics language particle behaviour) populations exhibit wave behaviour.
The Israeli government created the circumstances for this result and continue to do so.
It's a lie to claim Hamas is an "existential threat". They did their worst, and, quite frankly, it was pathetic. The lost more than they killed.
Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir are genocidal filth.
I mourn for the innocents killed, but the Israeli government has killed far more civilians, and supports the ongoing murder and apartheid in the West Bank. I mourn for that too.
The current, elected government of Israel, is bigoted, murdering, and committing ongoing war crimes.
Roughly 55% of Israeli Jews support genocide and murder as they keep electing people supporting those policies.
I oppose Hamas and Likud, and all similar hate groups.
I would like to hear Glenn comment on this behavior by the President of Brown University. I find it unconscionable, and am glad we already cut this school from my daughter’s application list.
I take issue with the comment that slammed the "freedom of speech" crowd being hypocritical. Take a listen to Coleman Hughes on The Joe Rogan Experience on October 20th at 1:57:50. I am sure that this is not the only case of such balance.
A friend visited last week and said that YouTube froze his account because he commented angrily at a pro-Hamas comment. On Jews and safety: (1) An entire religion seems to be very hateful against Jews in 2023, (it goes up and down in Islam). (2) An entire nation - Iran is anti-Israel and anti-Jew. (3): Israel is not the “Apartheid” state that activists claim. Such a claim makes those on the left hate Israel. (4): Nation of Islam has a very deep hatred against Jews. (5): None of my woke friends have expressed a word of concern or empathy for Israel after Oct 7th. To me this doesn’t signal “safety”. We have to turn this craziness around.
This discussion with Besner and Harper was the least enlightening podcast in Glenn's long admirable history of bringing great, even classic ideas to his listeners. I could not believe what I was hearing. The false moral equivalencies, the disgracefully tepid acknowledgements of Hamas's brutality followed by "but explicable', ... words fail me.
Here is reality, and it has *nothing* to do with 50 years of impossibly complex intervals of warfare and peace attempts between Israel and the Arab world. What Hamas did on October 7 stands alone - it was a deliberate, obscenely criminal attack by a military organization on innocent unarmed civilians, not just killing them but perpetrating grotesque acts of torture, sexual rapaciousness, , humiliation, mutilation of children while forcing helpless parents to watch, degradation of living bodies while parading them through streets lined with Palestinians, forcible capture of hundreds of hostages,... and all of it done with no expectations or manifestations of, nor attempt to achieve , any rational goals toward either peace or military success that would benefit the Palestinians or advance their interests. "Terrorism" fits but it went far far beyond, to one of the worst sustained acts of pure evil this world has ever witnessed.
And some people were immediately demanding a "ceasefire"?? How is it possible to demand a proportional or a measured response to hours upon hours of sustained evil perpetrated by Hamas on a people that Hamas has openly admitted it wants to eradicate utterly - and on a people who have seen literally centuries if not millennia of similar attempts to wipe them off the earth?
No "ceasefire" is going to accomplish anything. The Palestinian people are suffering horribly from the effects of Israel's response, but ALL of this is on Hamas and only Hamas, which deliberately chose to use them as shields knowing that Israel could not retaliate without taking innocent lives. The suffering of the Palestinians is not a crime by Israel, it is part of the plan that Hamas has been carrying out from its beginning, a plan that *counts on* the basic decency toward innocent lives that Hamas itself does not possess. Hamas is pure evil, and the only solution is its eradication.
I've listened to hundreds of hours of the Glenn Show. It is one my favorite podcasts and Glenn is my favorite public intellectual. But WOW....This was the absolute most painful discussion. I was literally screaming to myself. Where did you find these guys? To use Glenn's words, Bessner is an "empty suit" "lightweight" embarrassment. He is EXACTLY the person I would never want teaching my kids anything. Limited understanding and faux intellectual - nearly everything he said is dead wrong. But good thing you brought on Tyler to agree with whatever Daniel said. Just a complete disaster of a conversation.
To me Hamas, the elected government of Gaza conducted an act of war on Israel on October 7. Israel then declared war on Gaza. This then is not really a discussion of terrorism but war and what or how war is conducted To me the best framework for that is the just war theory but I would also consider other frameworks as long as they took in historical context of war and the situation Hamas has created in how they are conducting their side or what some may say as “facts on the ground”. In Gaza. Considering all of this I find it both remarkable only 10000 or so Gazans have been killed so far yet also heartbreaking. I suspect a lot more will be killed but I put the blame on this for this on Hamas. They are the ones who implemented an act of war in a horrific manner and they are the ones conducting it in such a way to maximize the suffering of the logical and historically justified Israeli response. The one criticism I have of Israel is of Netanyahu. He should be removed from power as quickly as reasonable. He is a serious liability for Israel for a number of reasons. He came to power with the promise of keeping Israelis safe and both his actions and inactions have done the opposite
Listening to this discussion, as well intentioned as it is, is like (forgive the analogy) discussing how it was "explicable" that Manson attracted followers to butcher a very pregnant Sharon Tate on her living room rug. With all the high powered intellect here (or perhaps because of it) this discussion comes off as a sophomoric intellectual exercise with a resonance that doesn't permeate the ivory tower of academia. Exhibit A is Bessner's suggestion that describing Hamas' butchery as "terrorism" merely delegitimizes that form of political violence. Let me make it plain: Israel is not " basically annihilating a population" any more than the Allies were doing the same to the Germans in Dresden. Hitler's actions were "explicable" too. How else to explain his sway over millions. But there is good and there is evil. Raping women to the point of breaking their pelvis, cutting off their breasts, dragging their limp bodies through the Gaza streets to be spit on, burning babies alive in their cribs, looking a disabled wheelchair-bound teenaged girl in the eye and riddling her with bullets.....this is evil. It also signals (as if anyone had doubt) that Israel is not facing a Manson cult bent on wreaking a little havoc. It is facing an existential crisis no less than the West in 1939. Had Bessner been alive then, would he have attempted to understand Hitler's need for Lebensraum by saying "I think you have to look at the root causes of the actual issue" and then explored how the victors treated Germany following the Great War? And further, should that analysis have mitigated the Allies' mission of complete victory and German surrender? That is where we are. Let's not complicate it. Hamas does not desire a two state solution. It wants Israel wiped off the map. Israel is fighting for its survival.
Equating those who are being punished for supporting terrorist organizations who rape and murder children to those who were canceled for questioning the 2020 racial reckoning is false comparison. No one would defend someone who got cancelled for wearing a KKK hood on campus and celebrating the killing of George Floyd yet that’s the equivalent of what these Hamas supporters are doing. Clearly your guest Bessner has a bone to pick with Barri Weiss and he’s using whatever weapon he now has available.
Bessner also manages to answer a series of self-posed questions, instead of directly addressing Loury's questions about Jewish students' safety.
Bessner discusses:
*What is a pogrom?
*How strong is Israel today?
*How poorly are Palestinians treated?
*What's the real power balance in the Middle East?
*How are American Jews socialized?
All of this manages to dance around real questions about Israelis' safety as well as about the safety of American Jews.
Jews don't feel unsafe just because people disagree with us about Israel. We first began to feel unsafe because we saw how quickly people, including Bessner, were able to dismiss the security concerns of Israelis.
Indeed, when Loury says while ("channeling"):
"You expect us to live with this on our border? . . . . No nation would accept it. Why are you asking us to accept it?”
... Bessner proceeds to discuss multiple aspects of the conflict while avoiding the specific questions. However strong Israel is, Bessner will not look straight at the question of how untenable any nation wound find it to have Hamas at its doorstep, threatening to repeat its actions.
This is the Common Blind Spot we see and this is why we feel unsafe. Whether a Jew identifies with Israel or not, considers herself a Zionist or not, Jews who have studied history understand that our religious and political affiliations have not ultimately been dispositive in how the world has treated us.
Bessner 's (clumsy) tapdancing avoidance of the real security threats Israelis face only validates those concerns. I don't hold out much hope that he will see this, but perhaps others will.
Sigh.
It's cringe when Bessner is asked about whether Hamas committed terrorism and he responds with these non sequiturs:
"Is the answer, then, you respond by basically annihilating a population?"
Not a response to the question.
"Also, it's a little bit of an absurd claim, because Benjamin Netanyahu has been funding Hamas for years. This is part of a particular political strategy by the Israeli political government to basically pacify Gaza and focus on settlement in the West Bank as the Israeli government has become more far-right, et cetera.
So, if you're so concerned with Hamas, maybe you shouldn't fund it, but whatever."
Misdirection and gaslighting re the question of whether Hamas committed terrorism. Those who can't see this are missing some empathy.
The US funded the Mujahedeen in the Afghan War. Does this have any bearing on whether 9/11 was an act of terror?
This is where I accuse Bessner of that Strange Blind Spot.
Explicable...
Inevitable is the word I'd use. Mathematical models, game theory, etc. predict this.
Create extreme circumstances get extreme results. While it's debatable if an individual has free will (in physics language particle behaviour) populations exhibit wave behaviour.
The Israeli government created the circumstances for this result and continue to do so.
It's a lie to claim Hamas is an "existential threat". They did their worst, and, quite frankly, it was pathetic. The lost more than they killed.
Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir are genocidal filth.
I mourn for the innocents killed, but the Israeli government has killed far more civilians, and supports the ongoing murder and apartheid in the West Bank. I mourn for that too.
The current, elected government of Israel, is bigoted, murdering, and committing ongoing war crimes.
Roughly 55% of Israeli Jews support genocide and murder as they keep electing people supporting those policies.
I oppose Hamas and Likud, and all similar hate groups.
I would like to hear Glenn comment on this behavior by the President of Brown University. I find it unconscionable, and am glad we already cut this school from my daughter’s application list.
https://x.com/davidzweig/status/1730074192542871652
I take issue with the comment that slammed the "freedom of speech" crowd being hypocritical. Take a listen to Coleman Hughes on The Joe Rogan Experience on October 20th at 1:57:50. I am sure that this is not the only case of such balance.
A friend visited last week and said that YouTube froze his account because he commented angrily at a pro-Hamas comment. On Jews and safety: (1) An entire religion seems to be very hateful against Jews in 2023, (it goes up and down in Islam). (2) An entire nation - Iran is anti-Israel and anti-Jew. (3): Israel is not the “Apartheid” state that activists claim. Such a claim makes those on the left hate Israel. (4): Nation of Islam has a very deep hatred against Jews. (5): None of my woke friends have expressed a word of concern or empathy for Israel after Oct 7th. To me this doesn’t signal “safety”. We have to turn this craziness around.
Provide an example of a person getting fired for saying “feee Palestine.”…. I’m waiting
Lake is sycophantic to whom? Did you just learn that word?
This discussion with Besner and Harper was the least enlightening podcast in Glenn's long admirable history of bringing great, even classic ideas to his listeners. I could not believe what I was hearing. The false moral equivalencies, the disgracefully tepid acknowledgements of Hamas's brutality followed by "but explicable', ... words fail me.
Here is reality, and it has *nothing* to do with 50 years of impossibly complex intervals of warfare and peace attempts between Israel and the Arab world. What Hamas did on October 7 stands alone - it was a deliberate, obscenely criminal attack by a military organization on innocent unarmed civilians, not just killing them but perpetrating grotesque acts of torture, sexual rapaciousness, , humiliation, mutilation of children while forcing helpless parents to watch, degradation of living bodies while parading them through streets lined with Palestinians, forcible capture of hundreds of hostages,... and all of it done with no expectations or manifestations of, nor attempt to achieve , any rational goals toward either peace or military success that would benefit the Palestinians or advance their interests. "Terrorism" fits but it went far far beyond, to one of the worst sustained acts of pure evil this world has ever witnessed.
And some people were immediately demanding a "ceasefire"?? How is it possible to demand a proportional or a measured response to hours upon hours of sustained evil perpetrated by Hamas on a people that Hamas has openly admitted it wants to eradicate utterly - and on a people who have seen literally centuries if not millennia of similar attempts to wipe them off the earth?
No "ceasefire" is going to accomplish anything. The Palestinian people are suffering horribly from the effects of Israel's response, but ALL of this is on Hamas and only Hamas, which deliberately chose to use them as shields knowing that Israel could not retaliate without taking innocent lives. The suffering of the Palestinians is not a crime by Israel, it is part of the plan that Hamas has been carrying out from its beginning, a plan that *counts on* the basic decency toward innocent lives that Hamas itself does not possess. Hamas is pure evil, and the only solution is its eradication.
A well timed, more accurate reflection on what’s happening to Jewish students on campus - https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/antisemitism-college-campuses-1234891263/
I've listened to hundreds of hours of the Glenn Show. It is one my favorite podcasts and Glenn is my favorite public intellectual. But WOW....This was the absolute most painful discussion. I was literally screaming to myself. Where did you find these guys? To use Glenn's words, Bessner is an "empty suit" "lightweight" embarrassment. He is EXACTLY the person I would never want teaching my kids anything. Limited understanding and faux intellectual - nearly everything he said is dead wrong. But good thing you brought on Tyler to agree with whatever Daniel said. Just a complete disaster of a conversation.
Bessner isn’t complaining about this.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/usc-professor-banished-from-campus-after-anti-hamas-comments-go-viral/
To me Hamas, the elected government of Gaza conducted an act of war on Israel on October 7. Israel then declared war on Gaza. This then is not really a discussion of terrorism but war and what or how war is conducted To me the best framework for that is the just war theory but I would also consider other frameworks as long as they took in historical context of war and the situation Hamas has created in how they are conducting their side or what some may say as “facts on the ground”. In Gaza. Considering all of this I find it both remarkable only 10000 or so Gazans have been killed so far yet also heartbreaking. I suspect a lot more will be killed but I put the blame on this for this on Hamas. They are the ones who implemented an act of war in a horrific manner and they are the ones conducting it in such a way to maximize the suffering of the logical and historically justified Israeli response. The one criticism I have of Israel is of Netanyahu. He should be removed from power as quickly as reasonable. He is a serious liability for Israel for a number of reasons. He came to power with the promise of keeping Israelis safe and both his actions and inactions have done the opposite
You need to have Eli Lake and Bessner on at the same time to counter Bessner’s cliched paint by numbers anti Zionist claims.
Listening to this discussion, as well intentioned as it is, is like (forgive the analogy) discussing how it was "explicable" that Manson attracted followers to butcher a very pregnant Sharon Tate on her living room rug. With all the high powered intellect here (or perhaps because of it) this discussion comes off as a sophomoric intellectual exercise with a resonance that doesn't permeate the ivory tower of academia. Exhibit A is Bessner's suggestion that describing Hamas' butchery as "terrorism" merely delegitimizes that form of political violence. Let me make it plain: Israel is not " basically annihilating a population" any more than the Allies were doing the same to the Germans in Dresden. Hitler's actions were "explicable" too. How else to explain his sway over millions. But there is good and there is evil. Raping women to the point of breaking their pelvis, cutting off their breasts, dragging their limp bodies through the Gaza streets to be spit on, burning babies alive in their cribs, looking a disabled wheelchair-bound teenaged girl in the eye and riddling her with bullets.....this is evil. It also signals (as if anyone had doubt) that Israel is not facing a Manson cult bent on wreaking a little havoc. It is facing an existential crisis no less than the West in 1939. Had Bessner been alive then, would he have attempted to understand Hitler's need for Lebensraum by saying "I think you have to look at the root causes of the actual issue" and then explored how the victors treated Germany following the Great War? And further, should that analysis have mitigated the Allies' mission of complete victory and German surrender? That is where we are. Let's not complicate it. Hamas does not desire a two state solution. It wants Israel wiped off the map. Israel is fighting for its survival.
Equating those who are being punished for supporting terrorist organizations who rape and murder children to those who were canceled for questioning the 2020 racial reckoning is false comparison. No one would defend someone who got cancelled for wearing a KKK hood on campus and celebrating the killing of George Floyd yet that’s the equivalent of what these Hamas supporters are doing. Clearly your guest Bessner has a bone to pick with Barri Weiss and he’s using whatever weapon he now has available.