You guys wasted your time talking to this Matthew guy. Let me simplify it for everyone here…Matthew did not want Hamas to lose. It’s that simple. Why did he not want them to lose? I’ll let you fill in the blank.
My name is Carlos Acta. I'm Afro-Dominican from the Bronx and I'm a huge fan of yours. I've been reading you since the ‘90s, when I went to college at Columbia in my late twenties. I always found your story - rising from Chicago's Southside to the heights of academia - incredibly inspiring. It always reminded me of the story of another Bronx native son - Colin Powell.
My parents came to NY in the early 1960s. I grew up as the proud son of a Superintendent. I graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in in the Bronx. As a teenager I sold frozen ices called (frio-frio) on the streets of the Bronx. My first real job was as a doorman on the Upper West Side. I later found a job at Butler Library before getting accepted at Columbia's School of General Studies, which proved to be an incredible journey of intellectual discovery. I majored in political science. I studied French and Hebrew. Columbia is also where I discovered Glenn Loury’s work on inequality, imprisonment and social capital. I briefly worked at President Bollinger's office, and every time I'd shake hands with donors, I would think, "Yep, this is what Prof Loury meant by social capital!"
I've been listening to you and John McWhorter on blogging heads for over a decade. I love your takedowns of the Woke and the infantile, honestly psycho-Left. I had been a Democrat my whole life. But in 2016, and now in 2024, I proudly voted for Trump going to his rallies in the Bronx last summer and most recently at Madison Square Garden – both of which were awesome and inspiring. I'm a kid from the “hood” – and these Wokesters and poseurs can't out-ghetto me!
I'm so inspired by your trajectory as a young black kid from Chicago, a fellow Christian who rose to international renown. You really embody the possibilities of America. (I know you say you dropped out of the faith, but I still consider you a Christian brother :)
So sorry for the lengthy intro: I just want you to know I'm a huge admirer of Prof Loury. I see you as an eloquent, fearless truth teller - and that is why I'm writing.
Over the past year or so, it has been gut-wrenching, horrifying for me and so many others to watch the Gaza genocide unfold on our phones. And I must say - it has pained me to see how you have tiptoed around the mass killing in Gaza.
To begin with, since the genocide started, the podcast has been a platform for Jewish voices - hardline Zionists versus soft Zionists. You haven't had a single Palestinian or Muslim voice. I know you said on the show recently that you once had a Cameroonian Muslim friend. But, honestly prof, that doesn't count! You really should try to give voice to the other side, to the victims of this genocide. I think Bloggingheads reached a new low with the recent episode where you set up a well-known journalist Ellie Lake - and Israel lobbyist - against a student from LSE.
I graduated from Columbia in 2000, but have been involved with campus groups and academic activities, attending events regularly over the past 25 years. I am in touch with my former professors and admnistrators, and the situation on Columbia campus right now is downright frightening. It is truly unreal to see three layers of security around campus: NYPD, campus security, private security firms at every building, and multiple checkpoints around campus. NYPD helicopters hovering over a college walk. It really feels like a settlement.
The Israel lobby has launched a full-scale assault on the American university – and my alma mater in particular. From above, the donors are bullying the administration to shut down pro-Palestinian voices and any speech critical of Israel. (John Kraft craft withdrew millions of dollars just because a student center hosted a pro-Palestinian voice labeled extreme.) And of course, from below, Congress has launched lawsuits against the Middle East Studies Department, threatening to cut Title VI money. Congress has actually subpoenaed the emails of professors who just happened to be academic advisors of students who were at the encampment.
And then, on the ground on campus, you have a wide range of Zionist organizations, AIPAC, ADL, and even IDF soldiers on campus - disrupting class, intimidating students, harassing professors. Israeli soldiers even attacked undergraduates. A number of committees have been formed at Columbia and Barnard to set up to monitor anti-Semitism. The word Zionist now is a protected category at Barnard (and NYU.) And of course, there are no organizations or advocacy groups to monitor campus for anti-Palestinian or anti-Muslim racism.
The atmosphere on campus is tense and fearful, and Muslim and Middle Eastern students are the prime target. As a Christian, I find this appalling. The Muslim students are quite defenseless - especially the international students. The Zionist students, on the other hand, are backed not only by billionaires but by the state power - NYPD, FBI, IDF, all kinds of intelligence services harassing, monitoring, intimidating Muslim & Middle Eastern students.
And yet you and John - who is at Columbia - don't mention any of this. You were so eloquent in your denunciation of "cancel culture" when it was coming from the woke Left. But you're so apprehensive in face of this unprecedented assault on campus and academic freedom coming from the Right. I'm 57 years old and have never seen anything like this.
As scholars of race, I'm sure you can see how flagrantly racist this is - an explicit targeting of Muslim & Middle Eastern students and faculty. And of course, the larger geopolitical situation is layered with virulent anti-Arab, anti-Muslim racism. One of the things I learned as a political science student, and I still find morally egregious, is how the US has supported and continues backing dictatorships and authoritarianism across the Middle East and North Africa, for fear that democracy in the region could pose some sort of economic or political menace to Israel. How is this justifiable? Hundreds of millions of people have to live in unfreedom so that seven million Jews can live in peace and security – this is a morally outrageous and racist policy.
And yet none of this came up in the discussion with Lake. Your colleague McWhorter makes no mention of the Israel lobby's assault on campus freedom - though students tell me he did take the time to write a NYT column AGAINST pro-Palestinian protests.
I mean, I know you guys are Judeophile. Guess what? So am I. As a child I often walked around Yeshiva and was always in awe of the beautiful Moorish buildings decorated in Hebrew script. That inspired me to learn Hebrew. I love reading Jewish literature and political thought. But one can be a Judeophile, accept Israel and still denounce mass murder and discrimination - it's not a left-right issue. This is about human decency.
I recall you some weeks after October 7, asking: "What do we owe our Jewish students and colleagues after this tragedy?" Good question. But what do you owe your Muslim students, prof? Who is being surveilled, silenced and intimidated right now? I recall John McWhorter's outrage about Hamas after Oct 7: "they can't do it again!" Yet in face of the industrial-scale killing of 50,000 people, he's been mealy-mouthed.
To be honest Prof, I'm more disappointed by your silence than by McWhorter's. John has a reputation as someone who punches down. On campus, he's known as a (Zionist) bully - who intimidates and grimaces at young Muslim students. Not sure if John has been taking a Zionist line, because he doesn't want to be associated in any way with black nationalism or black radicalism (i.e., Ta-Nehisi Coates), or he just knows where his bread is buttered, or maybe it's just anti-Arab animus? I can't figure it out.
But I expect more from Prof Loury, a truth-teller whom I have long admired. I mean if Glenn Loury – prof emeritus at Brown, and a major public figure can’t say the obvious, who can? Maybe next time you can invite Columbia prof Rashid Khalidi or Nora Erekat of Rutgers, or Max Blumenthal - but Bloggingheads is in dire need of a diversity of voices on this issue. The ground is shifting, prof, the younger generation thinks differently on Israel-Palestine - you don't want to be remembered as someone who only platforms one (favored/ privileged) minority group over another (disfavored) group; or who spoke out against the excesses of Wokism, but was strategically silent when another ethno-nationalism threatened our democracy.
With great respect for you Prof Loury - I thank you for your time. I have a copy of your book Anatomy of Racial Inequality, I'm hoping one day you can sign it for me.
Wait, you come and kill us? You rape us take our children hostage and we’re supposed to feel sorry that there’s civilians dying? Are you kidding me?Glenn I actually turned to you for words of wisdom, and
In NO world other than the one that hates Jews and Israel would armchair experts seriously debate whether a country that has been fighting murderous barbarian terrorists for decades has "murderous intent" or is "intentionally inflicting harm." In what war has the nation fighting a vicious attacker been expected to spend billions to supply the enemy with zillion$ worth of food and supplies, to make sure the enemy has water and electricity. Name it.
We've heard via Glenn endlessly here about the profound insights of Ta Nehisi Coates, now supplemented by this PhD student Matthew Cockerill, equally ripping all out of context. In this case bogus numbers from the Gaza "Health" Ministry (already discarded even by the UN) to tell us how uniquely horrid the Jews of Israel are in all of human history. (For instance, when will Glenn do a show on how many civilians his own government killed in urban fighting in Mosul, even though the enemy there was far less effective at turning the residents into cannon fodder?)
I do have to note by way of half-hearted compliment that Glenn has FINALLY brought in someone who actually knows something about Israel, Eli Lake, though I am sad to see him paired up with someone so dishonest and ill-informed. Why not him alone, Glenn? Would it be too much for you to listen to him and address his views directly?
As to Coates, by the way, who had all of Israel's history and reality revealed to him in ten days during a visit there, I note Richard Torres, today on his visits to Israel. It offers a nice contrast. For instance, in Sderot, Torres “came to realize that Israel faces a level of insecurity that has no analog to the American experience. I come from the Bronx, where families live in fear of bullets and guns. But no one anywhere in the United States lives in fear of rockets.” He says, “I’m a controversial figure in Democratic politics. . . There’s no issue on which I face more hate, harassment, and even death threats.” Torres explains this is due to “a deep strain of antisemitism on the far left.”
Yes, a deep strain. When will Glenn focus a show on that deep strain? It has been in the news of late, you know. And such a show would be FAR more consistent with the overall focus of the Glenn show over time than this disturbing fixation on proving Israel's unique perfidy in the world.
Well done again Jonathan. I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect Glenn to explain (if not defend) his "disturbing fixation on proving Israel's unique perfidy in the world". The discussion between Eli, a bona fide expert on Israel and what's been going on for the past year and a half, and Cockerill (I have no idea how to appropriately characterize him) is a poor substitute. Glenn keeps reminding us that he's not an expert in this subject and unlike Coleman he doesn't seem to be willing to spend some time and energy to improve his level of understanding. I would be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt if he just made an effort.
I really don't understand how Glenn gets all worked up about how, in light of repeated questioning and expressions of disappointment, he has to self censor his views for some reason. Apparently he is now going to be writing a book or an essay on self censorship. If he does, I hope he addresses what makes him feel it is necessary to self censor his views on this subject.
As I was finishing this comment I received Glenn's email Don't Worry, I'm "One of You".
Even if one were to argue against so-called and so-ignorantly-framed Jewish colonialism (apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing, whatever libelous dogshit you can get to stick to the wall), one would have to be consistent and argue against colonialism in Canada, the US, S. America, Australia, New Zealand AND especially the middle east. If native Americans, Canadians, and S. Americans started beheading and blowing up our children in the name of 'justice' and resistance, would that be legitimate? I would hope there were other ways to express what might otherwise be a legitimate, or partially legitimate, claim.
And on that note, some of you, including Glenn and the state of Ireland, apparently, need to go back and read the UN Charter. It takes more than wanting or whining about independence to establish a state, and more than dogmatic entitlement. Among other things, it takes a commitment to peace and good neighborliness, the specific language of which you will find in the Israeli declaration of independence but NOT in the Palestinian or Hamas Charters. To wit:
Israeli Declaration of Independence:
WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
Hamas Charter:
'Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.' The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf... (Meaning, what? They acknowledge what they accuse the Jews of: Imperialism, Colonialism, Ethnic cleansing, genocide, and stealing land--in the name of Islamic Supremacy!)
And leaving scripture aside, none have historical roots going back to their ancestral homeland more than 3,000 years. Palestinianism is either 100 years old or 61 years old, depending on how you count. Israel's roots, by comparison, are 2,700+ years older than ANY of the countries in the west where people ironically question its legitimacy, not to mention 2,000 years older than Islam (exclamation point).
And keep in mind that Israel, the big bad bully everyone loses sleep over, comprises a measly .001% of the Middle east (1/1,000th) vs our Islamic Supremacist neighbors who occupy literally 99.99%. And in that imperfect .001% of the greater middle east we call Israel -- which is not dominated by Sharia Law, authoritarianism, and Islamic Supremacy -- we produce technology, art, literature, mathematics, chemistry, physics, medicine, and human flourishing, while our neighbors produce what? Not the perfect marker, but go look at the "happiness index." For all the strife and wars and genocidal intent of our neighbors, Israel is almost always in the top 5.
In the year 2025, it's time to return to the roots of our "liberalism," grow a spine and start asking our accusers tougher questions about the future and flourishing of human kind, which extend well beyond the borders of Israel.
Do we believe in freedom of expression, rationalism, ethics or do we not?
Do we believe rape, torture, and murder should be celebrated with our children?
Do we believe rape, torture, and murder of innocents is a form of 'resistance?'
Do we believe in weaponizing children as martyrs or shahids and erasing future generations?
Do we believe in the visceral hatred and intolerance of non-Muslims, not just Jews?
Do we believe in apostasy laws that murder Muslims for leaving their religion?
Do we believe in blasphemy laws that murder Muslims for uttering heterodox ideas?
Do we believe in and defend sexism, homophobia, and honor killing?
Do we believe in racism, intolerance, theocracy, and authoritarianism?
Do we believe in civilization or 7th century oppression and immiseration in perpetuity?
As noted in my previous comment, these days the greatest victims of Islamic supremacy are neither Christians, Jews, nor Hindus. They're Muslims. 3M dead, 30M displaced in recent years alone, not to mention tens if not hundreds of millions living in misery. That will continue so long as we keep pointing to the Jews and not the other 99.99% of the Middle east.
Applying moral relativism or pretending it doesn't exist is not only cowardly, it ensures that the people in those societies, especially the most vulnerable, will continue to live in oppression and immiseration for another 1400+ years. Do we want to be the ones who contributed to that misery in perpetuity; or those who at the very least spoke up and stood on the side of liberation and human freedom and flourishing?
All I know is that, under no circumstances, are we to apply the same standards to Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Yemen, Syria, or Sudan and beyond—where 3M were killed and 30M (!) displaced in internecine Muslim-on-Muslim conflicts.
Literally 100X the violence and catastrophe getting 100x less attention. Why? Because no Jews, no news + duh power differentials (snore). Wait, what happened to proportionality?
Is it because Islamists and conservative Muslims hate Jews more than they care about their own people? (The data aren’t pretty). Is it maybe possibly related to their literalist views of their antisemitic, anti-Christian, anti-non-Muslim scripture?
Let the genocide accusers ask some tough questions for a change. After all, their children, much less the woke captured schmucks in Europe, aren’t crawling through boobytrapped tunnels in Gaza getting killed and maimed when they’d rather be finishing their accounting and computer science degrees or creating startups. See: we create and build. They malign and destroy.
And when they claim to love death more than Jews love life, is it our fault when that imperative becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy?
have you seen a single demonstration for the 3M dead and 30M displaced? A single podcast? A single sleek graphic designer logo for the 150,000 dead and x thousand raped or displaced in Sudan? Genocide anyone?
And the best explanation you can get from the pseudo-socialist Islamoleft and the suburban cosplay revolutionaries is: well, it’s taxpayer money! Really? Now, you’re materialists? Ah the double and triple irony that it’s all about the Benjamin’s and has nothing to do with ethics.
It’s impossible to keep up with all the slander and blood libels on social media spread by all the usual suspects and woke priests, including Coates’ who’s book on Israel was about as intellectually rigorous as Kendi’s book on antiracism.
Okay, Glenn, i leave you with this question: what happens when we Israelis and Jews actually accept the standards of the IslamoLeft and the red green alliance?
When we agree that genocide or ethnic cleansing “From the River to the sea” is acceptable? Or homophobia, sexism, honor killings, wife beating, blasphemy laws, theocracy and authoritarianism? Or mass rape, mass murder, kidnapping, stabbing, martyring our children? Or celebrating atrocities and passing out sweets to our children as we spit on the dead, raped, mangled corpses of Palestinian teenage girls?
Yeah, it’s absurd to even pose the question.
And thus, a question you must ask yourself, about your own ethics and standards, along with those who support, enable, and fund the genocidal 7th century ghouls who carried out Oct 7th.
To even ask the question: did Israel intentionally inflict harm (or 'too much harm') on civilians... is to reveal how utterly the soft, safe, and well-insulated 'elite' has forgotten the reality of war, especially the bloody reality of a war with an enemy sworn to one's obliteration.
21st century conflict...filled with bombs, drones, satellite imagery, tanks, automatic weapons, mortars, mines, ied's, you name it....harvests bodies like wheat. When the enemy places his command structures beneath schools and hospitals...when his forces strike from housing complexes and retreat to same....when the 'uniform' of the soldier is the 'uniform' of the civilian....the shattering and destruction of one equal shatters and destroys the other.
Add to all that the incredible reality that the population density of Gaza is approximately 15K per square mile... and the only thing truly surprising in the existential conflict with Hamas is the fact that 'only' 40-50K have been killed in 14 months of bloody street to street / house to house battle. It could easily have been far, far worse if it weren't for continued Israeli restraint.
"Breaking: Hamas executes six Palestinians in Rafah for allegedly "collaborating" with Israel.
Hamas also shot 17 others in the foot for attempting to wrestle control of aid trucks back from the terror group" [Note: it's known that Hamas hijacks food truck to resell at highly inflated prices...somebody's got to pay for the tunnels, you know.
You guys wasted your time talking to this Matthew guy. Let me simplify it for everyone here…Matthew did not want Hamas to lose. It’s that simple. Why did he not want them to lose? I’ll let you fill in the blank.
Dear Professor Loury,
My name is Carlos Acta. I'm Afro-Dominican from the Bronx and I'm a huge fan of yours. I've been reading you since the ‘90s, when I went to college at Columbia in my late twenties. I always found your story - rising from Chicago's Southside to the heights of academia - incredibly inspiring. It always reminded me of the story of another Bronx native son - Colin Powell.
My parents came to NY in the early 1960s. I grew up as the proud son of a Superintendent. I graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in in the Bronx. As a teenager I sold frozen ices called (frio-frio) on the streets of the Bronx. My first real job was as a doorman on the Upper West Side. I later found a job at Butler Library before getting accepted at Columbia's School of General Studies, which proved to be an incredible journey of intellectual discovery. I majored in political science. I studied French and Hebrew. Columbia is also where I discovered Glenn Loury’s work on inequality, imprisonment and social capital. I briefly worked at President Bollinger's office, and every time I'd shake hands with donors, I would think, "Yep, this is what Prof Loury meant by social capital!"
I've been listening to you and John McWhorter on blogging heads for over a decade. I love your takedowns of the Woke and the infantile, honestly psycho-Left. I had been a Democrat my whole life. But in 2016, and now in 2024, I proudly voted for Trump going to his rallies in the Bronx last summer and most recently at Madison Square Garden – both of which were awesome and inspiring. I'm a kid from the “hood” – and these Wokesters and poseurs can't out-ghetto me!
I'm so inspired by your trajectory as a young black kid from Chicago, a fellow Christian who rose to international renown. You really embody the possibilities of America. (I know you say you dropped out of the faith, but I still consider you a Christian brother :)
So sorry for the lengthy intro: I just want you to know I'm a huge admirer of Prof Loury. I see you as an eloquent, fearless truth teller - and that is why I'm writing.
Over the past year or so, it has been gut-wrenching, horrifying for me and so many others to watch the Gaza genocide unfold on our phones. And I must say - it has pained me to see how you have tiptoed around the mass killing in Gaza.
To begin with, since the genocide started, the podcast has been a platform for Jewish voices - hardline Zionists versus soft Zionists. You haven't had a single Palestinian or Muslim voice. I know you said on the show recently that you once had a Cameroonian Muslim friend. But, honestly prof, that doesn't count! You really should try to give voice to the other side, to the victims of this genocide. I think Bloggingheads reached a new low with the recent episode where you set up a well-known journalist Ellie Lake - and Israel lobbyist - against a student from LSE.
I graduated from Columbia in 2000, but have been involved with campus groups and academic activities, attending events regularly over the past 25 years. I am in touch with my former professors and admnistrators, and the situation on Columbia campus right now is downright frightening. It is truly unreal to see three layers of security around campus: NYPD, campus security, private security firms at every building, and multiple checkpoints around campus. NYPD helicopters hovering over a college walk. It really feels like a settlement.
The Israel lobby has launched a full-scale assault on the American university – and my alma mater in particular. From above, the donors are bullying the administration to shut down pro-Palestinian voices and any speech critical of Israel. (John Kraft craft withdrew millions of dollars just because a student center hosted a pro-Palestinian voice labeled extreme.) And of course, from below, Congress has launched lawsuits against the Middle East Studies Department, threatening to cut Title VI money. Congress has actually subpoenaed the emails of professors who just happened to be academic advisors of students who were at the encampment.
And then, on the ground on campus, you have a wide range of Zionist organizations, AIPAC, ADL, and even IDF soldiers on campus - disrupting class, intimidating students, harassing professors. Israeli soldiers even attacked undergraduates. A number of committees have been formed at Columbia and Barnard to set up to monitor anti-Semitism. The word Zionist now is a protected category at Barnard (and NYU.) And of course, there are no organizations or advocacy groups to monitor campus for anti-Palestinian or anti-Muslim racism.
The atmosphere on campus is tense and fearful, and Muslim and Middle Eastern students are the prime target. As a Christian, I find this appalling. The Muslim students are quite defenseless - especially the international students. The Zionist students, on the other hand, are backed not only by billionaires but by the state power - NYPD, FBI, IDF, all kinds of intelligence services harassing, monitoring, intimidating Muslim & Middle Eastern students.
And yet you and John - who is at Columbia - don't mention any of this. You were so eloquent in your denunciation of "cancel culture" when it was coming from the woke Left. But you're so apprehensive in face of this unprecedented assault on campus and academic freedom coming from the Right. I'm 57 years old and have never seen anything like this.
As scholars of race, I'm sure you can see how flagrantly racist this is - an explicit targeting of Muslim & Middle Eastern students and faculty. And of course, the larger geopolitical situation is layered with virulent anti-Arab, anti-Muslim racism. One of the things I learned as a political science student, and I still find morally egregious, is how the US has supported and continues backing dictatorships and authoritarianism across the Middle East and North Africa, for fear that democracy in the region could pose some sort of economic or political menace to Israel. How is this justifiable? Hundreds of millions of people have to live in unfreedom so that seven million Jews can live in peace and security – this is a morally outrageous and racist policy.
And yet none of this came up in the discussion with Lake. Your colleague McWhorter makes no mention of the Israel lobby's assault on campus freedom - though students tell me he did take the time to write a NYT column AGAINST pro-Palestinian protests.
I mean, I know you guys are Judeophile. Guess what? So am I. As a child I often walked around Yeshiva and was always in awe of the beautiful Moorish buildings decorated in Hebrew script. That inspired me to learn Hebrew. I love reading Jewish literature and political thought. But one can be a Judeophile, accept Israel and still denounce mass murder and discrimination - it's not a left-right issue. This is about human decency.
I recall you some weeks after October 7, asking: "What do we owe our Jewish students and colleagues after this tragedy?" Good question. But what do you owe your Muslim students, prof? Who is being surveilled, silenced and intimidated right now? I recall John McWhorter's outrage about Hamas after Oct 7: "they can't do it again!" Yet in face of the industrial-scale killing of 50,000 people, he's been mealy-mouthed.
To be honest Prof, I'm more disappointed by your silence than by McWhorter's. John has a reputation as someone who punches down. On campus, he's known as a (Zionist) bully - who intimidates and grimaces at young Muslim students. Not sure if John has been taking a Zionist line, because he doesn't want to be associated in any way with black nationalism or black radicalism (i.e., Ta-Nehisi Coates), or he just knows where his bread is buttered, or maybe it's just anti-Arab animus? I can't figure it out.
But I expect more from Prof Loury, a truth-teller whom I have long admired. I mean if Glenn Loury – prof emeritus at Brown, and a major public figure can’t say the obvious, who can? Maybe next time you can invite Columbia prof Rashid Khalidi or Nora Erekat of Rutgers, or Max Blumenthal - but Bloggingheads is in dire need of a diversity of voices on this issue. The ground is shifting, prof, the younger generation thinks differently on Israel-Palestine - you don't want to be remembered as someone who only platforms one (favored/ privileged) minority group over another (disfavored) group; or who spoke out against the excesses of Wokism, but was strategically silent when another ethno-nationalism threatened our democracy.
With great respect for you Prof Loury - I thank you for your time. I have a copy of your book Anatomy of Racial Inequality, I'm hoping one day you can sign it for me.
un abrazo,
Carlos Suarez
Wait, you come and kill us? You rape us take our children hostage and we’re supposed to feel sorry that there’s civilians dying? Are you kidding me?Glenn I actually turned to you for words of wisdom, and
Now I’m so disappointed.
In NO world other than the one that hates Jews and Israel would armchair experts seriously debate whether a country that has been fighting murderous barbarian terrorists for decades has "murderous intent" or is "intentionally inflicting harm." In what war has the nation fighting a vicious attacker been expected to spend billions to supply the enemy with zillion$ worth of food and supplies, to make sure the enemy has water and electricity. Name it.
We've heard via Glenn endlessly here about the profound insights of Ta Nehisi Coates, now supplemented by this PhD student Matthew Cockerill, equally ripping all out of context. In this case bogus numbers from the Gaza "Health" Ministry (already discarded even by the UN) to tell us how uniquely horrid the Jews of Israel are in all of human history. (For instance, when will Glenn do a show on how many civilians his own government killed in urban fighting in Mosul, even though the enemy there was far less effective at turning the residents into cannon fodder?)
I do have to note by way of half-hearted compliment that Glenn has FINALLY brought in someone who actually knows something about Israel, Eli Lake, though I am sad to see him paired up with someone so dishonest and ill-informed. Why not him alone, Glenn? Would it be too much for you to listen to him and address his views directly?
As to Coates, by the way, who had all of Israel's history and reality revealed to him in ten days during a visit there, I note Richard Torres, today on his visits to Israel. It offers a nice contrast. For instance, in Sderot, Torres “came to realize that Israel faces a level of insecurity that has no analog to the American experience. I come from the Bronx, where families live in fear of bullets and guns. But no one anywhere in the United States lives in fear of rockets.” He says, “I’m a controversial figure in Democratic politics. . . There’s no issue on which I face more hate, harassment, and even death threats.” Torres explains this is due to “a deep strain of antisemitism on the far left.”
Yes, a deep strain. When will Glenn focus a show on that deep strain? It has been in the news of late, you know. And such a show would be FAR more consistent with the overall focus of the Glenn show over time than this disturbing fixation on proving Israel's unique perfidy in the world.
Well done again Jonathan. I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect Glenn to explain (if not defend) his "disturbing fixation on proving Israel's unique perfidy in the world". The discussion between Eli, a bona fide expert on Israel and what's been going on for the past year and a half, and Cockerill (I have no idea how to appropriately characterize him) is a poor substitute. Glenn keeps reminding us that he's not an expert in this subject and unlike Coleman he doesn't seem to be willing to spend some time and energy to improve his level of understanding. I would be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt if he just made an effort.
I really don't understand how Glenn gets all worked up about how, in light of repeated questioning and expressions of disappointment, he has to self censor his views for some reason. Apparently he is now going to be writing a book or an essay on self censorship. If he does, I hope he addresses what makes him feel it is necessary to self censor his views on this subject.
As I was finishing this comment I received Glenn's email Don't Worry, I'm "One of You".
Who is Matthew Cockerill?
Even if one were to argue against so-called and so-ignorantly-framed Jewish colonialism (apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing, whatever libelous dogshit you can get to stick to the wall), one would have to be consistent and argue against colonialism in Canada, the US, S. America, Australia, New Zealand AND especially the middle east. If native Americans, Canadians, and S. Americans started beheading and blowing up our children in the name of 'justice' and resistance, would that be legitimate? I would hope there were other ways to express what might otherwise be a legitimate, or partially legitimate, claim.
And on that note, some of you, including Glenn and the state of Ireland, apparently, need to go back and read the UN Charter. It takes more than wanting or whining about independence to establish a state, and more than dogmatic entitlement. Among other things, it takes a commitment to peace and good neighborliness, the specific language of which you will find in the Israeli declaration of independence but NOT in the Palestinian or Hamas Charters. To wit:
Israeli Declaration of Independence:
WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
Hamas Charter:
'Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.' The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf... (Meaning, what? They acknowledge what they accuse the Jews of: Imperialism, Colonialism, Ethnic cleansing, genocide, and stealing land--in the name of Islamic Supremacy!)
And leaving scripture aside, none have historical roots going back to their ancestral homeland more than 3,000 years. Palestinianism is either 100 years old or 61 years old, depending on how you count. Israel's roots, by comparison, are 2,700+ years older than ANY of the countries in the west where people ironically question its legitimacy, not to mention 2,000 years older than Islam (exclamation point).
And keep in mind that Israel, the big bad bully everyone loses sleep over, comprises a measly .001% of the Middle east (1/1,000th) vs our Islamic Supremacist neighbors who occupy literally 99.99%. And in that imperfect .001% of the greater middle east we call Israel -- which is not dominated by Sharia Law, authoritarianism, and Islamic Supremacy -- we produce technology, art, literature, mathematics, chemistry, physics, medicine, and human flourishing, while our neighbors produce what? Not the perfect marker, but go look at the "happiness index." For all the strife and wars and genocidal intent of our neighbors, Israel is almost always in the top 5.
In the year 2025, it's time to return to the roots of our "liberalism," grow a spine and start asking our accusers tougher questions about the future and flourishing of human kind, which extend well beyond the borders of Israel.
Do we believe in freedom of expression, rationalism, ethics or do we not?
Do we believe rape, torture, and murder should be celebrated with our children?
Do we believe rape, torture, and murder of innocents is a form of 'resistance?'
Do we believe in weaponizing children as martyrs or shahids and erasing future generations?
Do we believe in the visceral hatred and intolerance of non-Muslims, not just Jews?
Do we believe in apostasy laws that murder Muslims for leaving their religion?
Do we believe in blasphemy laws that murder Muslims for uttering heterodox ideas?
Do we believe in and defend sexism, homophobia, and honor killing?
Do we believe in racism, intolerance, theocracy, and authoritarianism?
Do we believe in civilization or 7th century oppression and immiseration in perpetuity?
As noted in my previous comment, these days the greatest victims of Islamic supremacy are neither Christians, Jews, nor Hindus. They're Muslims. 3M dead, 30M displaced in recent years alone, not to mention tens if not hundreds of millions living in misery. That will continue so long as we keep pointing to the Jews and not the other 99.99% of the Middle east.
Applying moral relativism or pretending it doesn't exist is not only cowardly, it ensures that the people in those societies, especially the most vulnerable, will continue to live in oppression and immiseration for another 1400+ years. Do we want to be the ones who contributed to that misery in perpetuity; or those who at the very least spoke up and stood on the side of liberation and human freedom and flourishing?
All I know is that, under no circumstances, are we to apply the same standards to Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Yemen, Syria, or Sudan and beyond—where 3M were killed and 30M (!) displaced in internecine Muslim-on-Muslim conflicts.
Literally 100X the violence and catastrophe getting 100x less attention. Why? Because no Jews, no news + duh power differentials (snore). Wait, what happened to proportionality?
Is it because Islamists and conservative Muslims hate Jews more than they care about their own people? (The data aren’t pretty). Is it maybe possibly related to their literalist views of their antisemitic, anti-Christian, anti-non-Muslim scripture?
Let the genocide accusers ask some tough questions for a change. After all, their children, much less the woke captured schmucks in Europe, aren’t crawling through boobytrapped tunnels in Gaza getting killed and maimed when they’d rather be finishing their accounting and computer science degrees or creating startups. See: we create and build. They malign and destroy.
And when they claim to love death more than Jews love life, is it our fault when that imperative becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy?
have you seen a single demonstration for the 3M dead and 30M displaced? A single podcast? A single sleek graphic designer logo for the 150,000 dead and x thousand raped or displaced in Sudan? Genocide anyone?
And the best explanation you can get from the pseudo-socialist Islamoleft and the suburban cosplay revolutionaries is: well, it’s taxpayer money! Really? Now, you’re materialists? Ah the double and triple irony that it’s all about the Benjamin’s and has nothing to do with ethics.
It’s impossible to keep up with all the slander and blood libels on social media spread by all the usual suspects and woke priests, including Coates’ who’s book on Israel was about as intellectually rigorous as Kendi’s book on antiracism.
Okay, Glenn, i leave you with this question: what happens when we Israelis and Jews actually accept the standards of the IslamoLeft and the red green alliance?
When we agree that genocide or ethnic cleansing “From the River to the sea” is acceptable? Or homophobia, sexism, honor killings, wife beating, blasphemy laws, theocracy and authoritarianism? Or mass rape, mass murder, kidnapping, stabbing, martyring our children? Or celebrating atrocities and passing out sweets to our children as we spit on the dead, raped, mangled corpses of Palestinian teenage girls?
Yeah, it’s absurd to even pose the question.
And thus, a question you must ask yourself, about your own ethics and standards, along with those who support, enable, and fund the genocidal 7th century ghouls who carried out Oct 7th.
Exactly!
To even ask the question: did Israel intentionally inflict harm (or 'too much harm') on civilians... is to reveal how utterly the soft, safe, and well-insulated 'elite' has forgotten the reality of war, especially the bloody reality of a war with an enemy sworn to one's obliteration.
21st century conflict...filled with bombs, drones, satellite imagery, tanks, automatic weapons, mortars, mines, ied's, you name it....harvests bodies like wheat. When the enemy places his command structures beneath schools and hospitals...when his forces strike from housing complexes and retreat to same....when the 'uniform' of the soldier is the 'uniform' of the civilian....the shattering and destruction of one equal shatters and destroys the other.
Add to all that the incredible reality that the population density of Gaza is approximately 15K per square mile... and the only thing truly surprising in the existential conflict with Hamas is the fact that 'only' 40-50K have been killed in 14 months of bloody street to street / house to house battle. It could easily have been far, far worse if it weren't for continued Israeli restraint.
I just saw this:
"Breaking: Hamas executes six Palestinians in Rafah for allegedly "collaborating" with Israel.
Hamas also shot 17 others in the foot for attempting to wrestle control of aid trucks back from the terror group" [Note: it's known that Hamas hijacks food truck to resell at highly inflated prices...somebody's got to pay for the tunnels, you know.
https://x.com/EFischberger/status/1882481317801300007
Are there any conditions in which Hamas and its leaders are to be held responsible for the wreckage they cause to ordinary Palestinians?
You kidnap and rape my kids and I'll show you what murderous intent looks like.
Think, what would the Comanches do?