As the war in Gaza escalates and Israel’s ground campaign expands, I often find myself at a loss. Some days, it is difficult to think of anything else. And yet formulating a position adequate to the scale of the conflict can seem elusive. Some things I can say for sure: Hamas’s October 7 attacks were an atrocity. A military response from Israel is justified. And yet, though I’m not an expert on Israel-Palestine, I do not see how this stage in the conflict can proceed without inflicting death and destruction on a staggering number of civilians.
John asks if it's not a pogrom what is it? None of the guests seem to know. IT WAS A TERRORIST ATTACK plain and simple. Christ, the fact that people bring up the blockade or the west bank is asinine because it insinuates that a terrorist attack is the correct response. Yes there's a blockade. Why? Exhibit A: Oct 7. The Palestinian leadership has been terrorizing Israel with suicide bombers and rockets for decades. Of course there's an effing blockade. Why wouldn't there be? Where do you find these people, Glenn?
There is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, there is only a political solution. Hamas has no source of funds other than those given to them by other Arab Nations. Until those funds are cut-off they will have no incentive to accept any agreements regarding a two-state solution. The Arab nations can pressure Hamas and the US can pressure Israel to work towards a solution. Both the US and Arab nations have to work together to help solve this stalemate, otherwise, the bloodshed will continue indefinitely.
Seems to me it is ok to decide to not hire a law student that openly celebrates and supports the horrendous massacre and murder of babies and innocent civilians while at the same time not punishing those that might peacefully question the existence of Israel.
And with regard to the radical left, it sure seems to me that the radical ideas that the left embraces have been embraced by more and more on those on the left, making them closer to mainstream left.
I have gone over to some other voices on Palestine since you guys and Coleman have adopted the usual Israeli storyline. I will continue to look to you on Wokeism stuff, but to minds like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein when it comes to Palestine.
Finkelstein sees October 12th as a revisitation of the Nat Turner rebellion, and I convert this to seeing Hamas and Turner as symptoms of more profound evils: the inhumanity of slavery and the criminal colonial settler occupation of Palestine.
These two rebellions did not just manifest for the hell of it, but from hells that two different populations were damned to by oppressors who stoked the thermostats whenever they could.
Gazan occupants have been living like caged animals for decades: supplied polluted water, harassed with electrical blackouts, and denied freedom of movement and their own economy; thus, 90 percent of their livelihood is charity. As a black man, I had more humanity under Jim Crow!
And don't let me forget the constant raids in which innocent Gaza souls were murdered with complete US immunity, even though some of these slain civilians were American citizens.
Bombs cannot destroy such rebellious ideologies, but bombs can amend them to nastier and more difficult menaces that can be more intractable.
Israel and its American enablers must understand that this time, it is not business as usual, for I am seeing a worldwide backblast like no other. I know the pendulum arm is on the backswing, and something historic will come from this.
For your viewers who need help understanding the issues, Norman Finkelstein has a very informative YouTube on this, Brief History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.
Thank you for being willing to have these discussions and be vulnerable! “Thinking out loud” and sharing ideas and challenging each other is the only way we will ever get anywhere other than where we are.
I absolutely disagree with Dr. McWhorter. We are seeing different confluences of antisemitism everywhere. Campuses turn out to be a hotbed, but not the sole areas of capture. The chants are not about Israel, or Zionists, they are about Jews, and the hatred is palpable. I know that Dr. McWhorter is an intellectually honest enough thinker to have an open mind on this, despite being wrong now. I hope he will listen more to discussions such as this one (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/call-me-back-with-dan-senor/id1539292794?i=1000633340160) with Yossi Klein Halevi who carefully locates what is happening here in the history of antisemitism. There are other discussions and ways to see what is happening, but I found that discussion very eye opening.
To fight this evil, and the oppression narrative and the anti colonialism movement were the Petrie dishes for many hatred’s, but the one released on October 7, spontaneously and with fury around the country and around the world, while the bodies of the victims were still cooling, was clear and hideous antisemitism.
My goodness, is there ever any justification for slaughtering innocent Jews that would warrant the support of young, emotionally immature, elite college students among the nations Ivy League universities? My heart breaks over this tragedy and the useless, unnecessary, suffering of the Jewish and Palestinian people, and the false equvalency of citing oppressor vs oppressed causing Hamas to inflict the most barbaric act upon human beings I have ever known in my lifetime.
Loury, McWhorter and others condemned the celebration-ambiance of American university students/professors who praised Hamas after Israel attack. I have background information that is relevant. A 2018 APHA document that Equity Program used- defines (a) physical violence, (b) psychological violence and (c) other forms of violence. Actually only (a) is violence in the adult world. I saw this in 2022 and it disturbed me profoundly.
But, if students and employees were instructed to view “systemic oppression” as violence, then hypothetically - the Hamas attack could be framed as “responding to systemic oppression violence from the Israeli state” as a moral alibi. This rationale could place Hamas dishonestly at location of supposedly “not initiating violence.” Directors and officials who tolerate this pathology are not demonstrating necessary leadership.
I just have to wonder. A real genocide against the Uighur Muslims is actually occurring in China. Few leftists seem to care about that. Is this because the Chinese are brown so it is OK for them to kill other brown people? Is this like the BLM activist who believes on the necessity of burning down cities when a black man (who is likely to have a long criminal record) is killed by a cop but is unconcerned about the murders of black toddlers in gang shootings? I guess that is John's interpretation.
He may be right, but I feel that there is a lot of antisemitism embedded in the anti-colonial movement which started when the Soviet Union (who, ironically, gave the arms the Palestinian Jews needed to win the 1948 war) turned out anti-zionist propaganda which used memes from the anti-semitic czarist movements (like the black 100s and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) to slander the Zionists.
Also worth mentioning, in extreme progressive circles, Jews are seen as the whitest whites of all the whites, and worthy of extra sanction because they are a minority group that works with whites to oppress others. Really deep, complex thinking happening on campus these days.
My mother was Jewish and she and her family were anti-Zionist. They came to the US in the late 1800s. There were many Jews who felt at the Passover Seder that “Next year in Jerusalem” was metaphor. Many Jews in recent times, including Israeli Jews, myself included, sympathize with the Palestinians but it is not the Israelis who have rejected the two-state solution. Ithink now we have to be practical - history can’t be undone, and perhaps an enforced solution removes any Israeli authority over the West Bank and a government by a consortium of other countries is put in place. Nobody gets everything they want, but maybe it stops or slows the killing.
I agree with John that in the US it is less antisemitism than wholesale adoption of the oppressor-oppressed binary. How else do you explain LGBT support for Hamas unless that replaces other considerations, even survival? And I agree with Glenn that this extends beyond race to include capitalism, science, etc. - don’t know what we do about this except we could teach actual history beginning in grade school and stop with the identity politics. It IS unAmercan.
On Glenn’s mention of Isreal/Palestinian land dividing option, Israel has been down that road before. Israel was a bigger country but gave up land in exchange for a Palestinian promise of peace. I prefer that Israel not give up any more land
Israel from north to south (As crow flies) is 263 miles or about halfway between SF and LA or slightly less than Boston to New York. Width from east to west is 71 miles at widest and 6 at narrowest. I ask what would New Yorkers do if people from Connecticut were launching surprise attacks repeatedly and viciously. Ironically- Israel as a neighbor to any of the arab nations means a more peaceful existence than if Israel were an arab nation. That Hamas doesn’t see that is outright stupid. Israel has the right to root out the terrorist component within Gaza and in my opinion should re-occupy for a generation or two to ensure a peaceful future.
I'm writing this on Monday, October 30. By now, to me, it's clear that this is very much about Jew-hatred to which the charges of "settler-colonialism" and so on are the excuses and conduits to voice the Jew-hatred.
It's what the chant "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is about...abolish Israel and annihilate Jews everywhere and of course this:
John asks if it's not a pogrom what is it? None of the guests seem to know. IT WAS A TERRORIST ATTACK plain and simple. Christ, the fact that people bring up the blockade or the west bank is asinine because it insinuates that a terrorist attack is the correct response. Yes there's a blockade. Why? Exhibit A: Oct 7. The Palestinian leadership has been terrorizing Israel with suicide bombers and rockets for decades. Of course there's an effing blockade. Why wouldn't there be? Where do you find these people, Glenn?
Great, largely unemotional take on the current crisis. Thanks to both of you!
There is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, there is only a political solution. Hamas has no source of funds other than those given to them by other Arab Nations. Until those funds are cut-off they will have no incentive to accept any agreements regarding a two-state solution. The Arab nations can pressure Hamas and the US can pressure Israel to work towards a solution. Both the US and Arab nations have to work together to help solve this stalemate, otherwise, the bloodshed will continue indefinitely.
Two comments.
Seems to me it is ok to decide to not hire a law student that openly celebrates and supports the horrendous massacre and murder of babies and innocent civilians while at the same time not punishing those that might peacefully question the existence of Israel.
And with regard to the radical left, it sure seems to me that the radical ideas that the left embraces have been embraced by more and more on those on the left, making them closer to mainstream left.
I have gone over to some other voices on Palestine since you guys and Coleman have adopted the usual Israeli storyline. I will continue to look to you on Wokeism stuff, but to minds like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein when it comes to Palestine.
Finkelstein sees October 12th as a revisitation of the Nat Turner rebellion, and I convert this to seeing Hamas and Turner as symptoms of more profound evils: the inhumanity of slavery and the criminal colonial settler occupation of Palestine.
These two rebellions did not just manifest for the hell of it, but from hells that two different populations were damned to by oppressors who stoked the thermostats whenever they could.
Gazan occupants have been living like caged animals for decades: supplied polluted water, harassed with electrical blackouts, and denied freedom of movement and their own economy; thus, 90 percent of their livelihood is charity. As a black man, I had more humanity under Jim Crow!
And don't let me forget the constant raids in which innocent Gaza souls were murdered with complete US immunity, even though some of these slain civilians were American citizens.
Bombs cannot destroy such rebellious ideologies, but bombs can amend them to nastier and more difficult menaces that can be more intractable.
Israel and its American enablers must understand that this time, it is not business as usual, for I am seeing a worldwide backblast like no other. I know the pendulum arm is on the backswing, and something historic will come from this.
For your viewers who need help understanding the issues, Norman Finkelstein has a very informative YouTube on this, Brief History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUfWTHbCS78
Thank you for being willing to have these discussions and be vulnerable! “Thinking out loud” and sharing ideas and challenging each other is the only way we will ever get anywhere other than where we are.
I absolutely disagree with Dr. McWhorter. We are seeing different confluences of antisemitism everywhere. Campuses turn out to be a hotbed, but not the sole areas of capture. The chants are not about Israel, or Zionists, they are about Jews, and the hatred is palpable. I know that Dr. McWhorter is an intellectually honest enough thinker to have an open mind on this, despite being wrong now. I hope he will listen more to discussions such as this one (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/call-me-back-with-dan-senor/id1539292794?i=1000633340160) with Yossi Klein Halevi who carefully locates what is happening here in the history of antisemitism. There are other discussions and ways to see what is happening, but I found that discussion very eye opening.
To fight this evil, and the oppression narrative and the anti colonialism movement were the Petrie dishes for many hatred’s, but the one released on October 7, spontaneously and with fury around the country and around the world, while the bodies of the victims were still cooling, was clear and hideous antisemitism.
My goodness, is there ever any justification for slaughtering innocent Jews that would warrant the support of young, emotionally immature, elite college students among the nations Ivy League universities? My heart breaks over this tragedy and the useless, unnecessary, suffering of the Jewish and Palestinian people, and the false equvalency of citing oppressor vs oppressed causing Hamas to inflict the most barbaric act upon human beings I have ever known in my lifetime.
Loury, McWhorter and others condemned the celebration-ambiance of American university students/professors who praised Hamas after Israel attack. I have background information that is relevant. A 2018 APHA document that Equity Program used- defines (a) physical violence, (b) psychological violence and (c) other forms of violence. Actually only (a) is violence in the adult world. I saw this in 2022 and it disturbed me profoundly.
But, if students and employees were instructed to view “systemic oppression” as violence, then hypothetically - the Hamas attack could be framed as “responding to systemic oppression violence from the Israeli state” as a moral alibi. This rationale could place Hamas dishonestly at location of supposedly “not initiating violence.” Directors and officials who tolerate this pathology are not demonstrating necessary leadership.
I just have to wonder. A real genocide against the Uighur Muslims is actually occurring in China. Few leftists seem to care about that. Is this because the Chinese are brown so it is OK for them to kill other brown people? Is this like the BLM activist who believes on the necessity of burning down cities when a black man (who is likely to have a long criminal record) is killed by a cop but is unconcerned about the murders of black toddlers in gang shootings? I guess that is John's interpretation.
He may be right, but I feel that there is a lot of antisemitism embedded in the anti-colonial movement which started when the Soviet Union (who, ironically, gave the arms the Palestinian Jews needed to win the 1948 war) turned out anti-zionist propaganda which used memes from the anti-semitic czarist movements (like the black 100s and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) to slander the Zionists.
Despicable and inevitable until more constructive approaches are pursued. Like this
https://www.rand.org/multimedia/video/2008/08/26/the_arc.html
Also worth mentioning, in extreme progressive circles, Jews are seen as the whitest whites of all the whites, and worthy of extra sanction because they are a minority group that works with whites to oppress others. Really deep, complex thinking happening on campus these days.
https://sapirjournal.org/social-justice/2021/05/critical-race-theory-and-the-hyper-white-jew/
My mother was Jewish and she and her family were anti-Zionist. They came to the US in the late 1800s. There were many Jews who felt at the Passover Seder that “Next year in Jerusalem” was metaphor. Many Jews in recent times, including Israeli Jews, myself included, sympathize with the Palestinians but it is not the Israelis who have rejected the two-state solution. Ithink now we have to be practical - history can’t be undone, and perhaps an enforced solution removes any Israeli authority over the West Bank and a government by a consortium of other countries is put in place. Nobody gets everything they want, but maybe it stops or slows the killing.
I agree with John that in the US it is less antisemitism than wholesale adoption of the oppressor-oppressed binary. How else do you explain LGBT support for Hamas unless that replaces other considerations, even survival? And I agree with Glenn that this extends beyond race to include capitalism, science, etc. - don’t know what we do about this except we could teach actual history beginning in grade school and stop with the identity politics. It IS unAmercan.
Interesting debate between your friend Coleman Hughes and a Palestinian supporter at - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/conversations-with-coleman/id1489326460?i=1000632943622
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/conversations-with-coleman/id1489326460?i=1000632943622
Keep up the good work. I listen very week
On Glenn’s mention of Isreal/Palestinian land dividing option, Israel has been down that road before. Israel was a bigger country but gave up land in exchange for a Palestinian promise of peace. I prefer that Israel not give up any more land
Israel from north to south (As crow flies) is 263 miles or about halfway between SF and LA or slightly less than Boston to New York. Width from east to west is 71 miles at widest and 6 at narrowest. I ask what would New Yorkers do if people from Connecticut were launching surprise attacks repeatedly and viciously. Ironically- Israel as a neighbor to any of the arab nations means a more peaceful existence than if Israel were an arab nation. That Hamas doesn’t see that is outright stupid. Israel has the right to root out the terrorist component within Gaza and in my opinion should re-occupy for a generation or two to ensure a peaceful future.
I'm writing this on Monday, October 30. By now, to me, it's clear that this is very much about Jew-hatred to which the charges of "settler-colonialism" and so on are the excuses and conduits to voice the Jew-hatred.
It's what the chant "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is about...abolish Israel and annihilate Jews everywhere and of course this:
https://twitter.com/OkayBiology/status/1718959179879031246
and this:
https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1718596059826380907