To not base conclusions on a single data point (maybe the Fed Chair is an outlier), US Jews also contributed 50% of all donations to the Democratic party, and 25% to the Republican party: https://www.jpost.com/US-Elections/US-Jews-contribute-half-o...
To support this, see my other comment showing the Federal Reserve chair and political donors exhibit the same over-representation (the donor data is recent, but the Fed chair is since 1970, so it's unlikely this is a new thing that suddenly came out of nowhere): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37465220
It's not limited to the staff either - of the 26 cabinet positions (including president and vice president) in the Biden White House, 7 are held by Jews (2.4% of US population), and just 6 by gentile Whites (55% of US). One of those 6 is Joe Biden himself, and all 3 of his children married Jews. Sources:
https://www.thejc.com/news/world/joe-biden-s-very-jewish-fam...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Joe_Biden#Cabine...
So this prevalence is an aberration compared to the base rate in the population, and therefore this aberration should be presumed to be the norm? Interesting approach.
When did 34% of the current White House staffers become responsible for decades of US foreign policy?
I can sympathize, heaven seems at least better than the other place. What I don't understand is how eschatological (which are essentially fatalistic) beliefs translate into support for Israel. In a world governed by fate it doesn't matter what you do, it's all predetermined anyway. Which seems to align more with the core Christian teachings: we should not judge (because no-one is essentially free from their fatefully determined destiny).
I could be wrong.
79% of US Christians believe Jesus will have a second coming. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/04/09/christians-v...
The second coming of Jesus is not for fun times. It's for war that kills ~everyone except the true believers, who then get infinite utopia.
4 in 10 Americans and about half of US Christians overall believe we are living "in the end times," and two thirds of "highly religious" adults. I.e. we are approaching that second coming/holy war.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/11/17/how-religion...
Combine that with the fact that US Congress is 90% Christian –– dramatically more so than the US public –– and a pretty alarming decision-making environment emerges.
https://www.axios.com/2023/04/23/lawmakers-more-religious-ge...
Fundamentalists should at least stick to the literal scripture, but I'm not sure they will listen.
The whole thing is immune to logic, in part due to the obviously self-contradictory passages such as we've just found :)
Nice try. But I'm assuming you are just unfamiliar with the history of the Christian church. Or if you just want to weigh in on the side of orthodoxy. But there is obviously a logical conflict between the notions of free will vs the deterministic aspect of religious teaching, sometimes called divine foreknowledge.
It has been the topic of more or less heated discussion up through the ages, where some people claim they have cracked the code (St. Augustine primarily). See these Wikipedia articles for a brief overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_in_theology, and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_in_antiquity#Christi....
Or, maybe it's mainly the link between determinism and nonjudgement that you refer to as "mental gymnastics" etc (even though that's not what you are saying)? Well, granted that's not lifted from any theology that I'm aware of. It just seems a reasonable conclusion, given the premise of a predetermined world. And maybe also a way to sneak in a reminder that religion (and Christianity in particular) is mostly about keeping track of the beam in one's own eye, rather then the mote in someone else's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_and_the_Beam
This makes sense when you remember why they care so much: their interpretation of the Bible holds that the end times they’re looking forward to will begin with a war involving Israel. They are not looking for peace or long-term happiness, and support any policy which increases the odds of a war. I remember them being very excited by the Gulf War and various points in the Iraq war where it seemed like someone might attack Israel because they’re basically thinking that’s their ticket to heaven showing up.
The only reason there isn’t mandatory school prayer is because they’d have to agree on whose version to enshrine.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law_in_the_United_Sta...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/us-armed-fo...
[3] https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/06/heres-how-us-milita...
In your own words: We don’t really need to look for a single cause. All of these things are happening and interacting with each other. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37446682
It's a simple concept - you understood it perfectly well when the topic was different. Why do you suddenly find it hard to grasp?
Now, if you came out saying, "AIPAC is an extremely powerful lobbying group that lobbies for pro-Israel bills and foreign aid," you'd definitely get credit for that. Or "ADL is extremely proactive in 'managing speech' around Israel throughout American culture," you'd get credit for that too.
But no, "Jews are relatively overrepresented yet still clear minorities in positions which are not obviously relevant to US policy or cultural attitudes toward Israel" doesn't hold much explanatory power.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37473807 - Despite your "clear minorities" phrasing, at 7/26 cabinet positions, Jews are the largest group, followed by gentile Whites at 6, Blacks at 5, and Latinos at 3.
[2] https://www.jpost.com/US-Elections/US-Jews-contribute-half-o...
FWIW it’s not quite 50%/25% of donations, but a napkin math estimate of donated money. I.e. there are a few mega-donors (about 50) who are more likely than the general population to be Jewish.
I live in a post religious society and it's easy to forget that these things still matter for the rest of the planet.
https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/log...
They don't though and there are way more sensible reasons which would explain US support for Israel.
The mainstream Christian theology is that Jesus will return in order to wage war on non-believers and secure earth as the heavenly dominion of the believers (https://www.bibleref.com/Revelation/19/Revelation-19-11.html)
This grand battle and ultimate plundering of the spoils takes place in/near Jerusalem (https://www.bibleref.com/Zechariah/14/Zechariah-14-1.html)
One apparent prerequisite to this battle happening is the construction of The Third Temple which would, of course, require control over the region in which The Third Temple must be rebuilt -- Jerusalem. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_in_Jerusalem)
Also they need to find a red cow. Then Jesus can come with his flaming sword and slaughter ~billions of people.
I'm agnostic but I was raised Christian in different communities and on different continents and I have never been taught that Jesus's return is anything but a peaceful end-time where the just go to heaven (and yes, the wicked to hell). Zero mentions of Jesus waging war, if anything it's taught as the end of war and strife.
Not a single person I know associates Jesus with doing violence. I'm sure someone must believe this, but calling it "mainstream" is bad faith. What sort of "mainstream" theology is it if neither me nor anyone I know has been taught this?
This is why it seems like an obscure theory, because people don’t actually think about the words they’re saying.
Here’s Joel Olsteen, whose weekly sermon has 10,000,000 viewers, saying we should be happy about the bad things happening in the world because they’re a sign of the end times (after which he and his followers get to divide the spoils of the earth): https://www.charismanews.com/us/32276-joel-osteen-discusses-...
When I read Wikipedia's page on the Second Coming, at no point does it mention Jesus waging war. So much for being "mainstream theology"...
That's really not the case, not in the literal sense anyway. Also pretty much all mainstream Christians do not spend any significant amount of time thinking about when will Jesus return and and what will happen then.
> Then Jesus can come with his flaming sword and slaughter ~billions of people.
I bet if you asked the pope what he thinks he'd say that's not what the Catholic faith teaches and he's literally infallible (well technically only in very specific cases but let's just ignore that since we're just saying stupid edgy stuff for no reason).
They've weaponized anti-semitism against their detractors. And, who wants to be accused of racism? Even false accusations stain your reputation.
The irony is that it's probably one of the most racist countries I've ever seen in my entire life. They made a shrine to a terrorist (Baruch Goldstein). The president proudly called miscegenation "a tragedy". If you can imagine a white US president openly calling for whites and blacks to stop having babies - that's the level of racism this state's supporters endorse when weaponizing anti semitism.
Not sure what you're talking about here. Baruch Goldstein has no "shrine"* and besides fringe groups in Israel he is generally not accepted. Compare that with the monthly salaries Palestinian terrorists receive from the PLO and their rockstar status in Palestinian society.
* he has a grave, Israeli law can't really prevent that. The Israeli government has ruined most of the site of his grave despite his family's appeals.
10% of Israelis consider him a national hero, according to Israeli polls: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-733523
The Minister for National Security Ben Gvir had a portrait of Baruch in his living room: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_Ben-Gvir
I'd encourage anybody who visits Israel to go and see Kiryat Arba in the west bank settlement where Goldstein lived and where he committed his shooting spree, because it puts his act into context. It's a heavily militarized ethnically cleansed enclave of about 7,500 Israelis in the center of the second largest Palestinian west bank city - Hebron.
Unlike other settlements they often live in the same buildings - in the floors above Palestinians that was confiscated from them. There is netting to trap the trash that they throw down on the citizens "beneath" them as guard in guard towers look on, pointing guns: https://twitter.com/Mondoweiss/status/1668711490025603072
It's the most visible symbol of the kind of racism American supporters of Israel endorse, some of whom are, sadly, all too evident even in this thread.
a) they're in the minority
b) they're not giving any publicity to their private thoughts
Palestinian terrorists however get a rockstar status in Palestinian society including streets named after them and a monthly salary given by the PLO if they're imprisoned.
Though just for context, there is a huge political fight within Israel, partially because of people like Ben Gvir. It's not the whole country supporting this nonsense.
And while 10% of Israelis saying he's a hero is 10% too many, I imagine it's comparable to similar numbers in other countries for similar-ish situations. Still terrible, but not exactly proof that the country is especially racist.
(Though to be fair, it's not like there's zero racism in Israel, though I think it's less about race and more about the national situation/issues around the Palestinians. I don't think it makes sense to think about the Israeli situation in the same way one would think about the racism in the States, for example.)
10% is definitely enough to presume that anybody who throws out an accusation of anti-semitism in defense of Israel is racist by default.
10% is enough to presume that the illegalization of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions in America is an explicitly pro-racist law.
It is possible to make an accusation of anti-semitism that isn't motivated by racism. It's just much rarer than it should be.
I'm really trying to parse your logic, and failing.
If I understand it, your chain of reasoning is:
1. Someone "defends Israel".
2. The way they do it in this specific case is by saying the other person is anti-semitic.
3. Because some people in Israel think fairly attrocious things and are racist, this implies that any defense of Israel is implicitly a defense of racism, therefore making the defender racist.
Is that the chain here? Basically, you can't defend a country in which 10% of people are racist, without yourself being racist?
If so, that chain of reasoning is pretty ridiculous. That's like someone saying they like the US, and you deciding they are racist, because in a 2013 poll, 17% of Americans were against interracial marriage. It's a huge and nonsensical logical leap to go from "some action that country X has done is OK" to "I therefore support what any subset, even as small as 10% of the country, thinks".
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/30/world/israel-destroys-shr... / https://archive.ph/RNPRh
> The irony is that it's probably one of the most racist countries I've ever seen in my entire life. They made a shrine to a terrorist (Baruch Goldstein).
"They" here refers, I believe, to the country being racist.
But saying that "they" made a shrine to Goldstein, in the context of an article describing that the Israeli government destroyed it, is like saying that US society is racist because the US government demloished a statue to Hitler put up by the KKK. It's taking the actions of a tiny group, specifically in the context of the government acting against that group, and somehow saying that reflects the whole country.
Oh, and Joe Biden really wants blacks and whites to stop marrying.
That's the level of racism you support if you weaponize anti-semitism in Israel's defense.
It's not quite the same thing as considering a terrorist who shot up a mosque a hero.
Hence why accusations of anti-semitism in relation to criticism of Israel usually imply that the accuser is an Islamophobic racist. This is what they're defending.
Your statement implies Americans no longer support these wars, I'm sure many still think they were necessary and good. As was Vietnam and a bunch of other atrocities.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-neo-naz....
So, getting very close to 10% by this poll. And at least Israel has an existential struggle with the Palestinians/Arab world, which explains (but doesn't excuse) racism and terrorism - but what's the excuse for American racism?
On the flip side, human nature being what it is, giving any person or set of people unconditional approval is creating conditions where evil can thrive.
One interpretation of "Zionism" could mean the idea that Israel should be an ethnically and religiously Jewish state that comprises the Biblical land of Israel, and that everyone else should be second-class citizens; and so simply saying that Israel should be a democracy that gives equal rights to all the people living within its borders, or that Israel should respect the Palestinian territories, would be "Anti-Zionist". Under this interpretation, "Anti-Zionism questions Israel's existence" really means "Anti-Zionism questions the existence of one particular vision for what Israel should be". That's not really a bad thing.
If, on the other hand, "Anti-Zionist" means the abolishing the Israeli government and re-partitioning the territory back into its pre-1948 states -- I mean, yeah, that's pretty bad; but I've never heard any of my left-leaning friends advocate anything like that, and such a desire would be really incompatible with everything else they're in favor of.
But these are just guesses, since you didn't provide much context.
Zionism at its core is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. This is precisely what "anti-Zionism" opposes. Middle Eastern/Arab "anti-Zionists" advocate for exactly what you mentioned in your second paragraph. Additionally, depending on their political affiliation, some may seek the subjugation, expulsion, or harm of the Jewish population in Israel/Palestine. The percentage of Palestinians advocating for a one-state solution with equal rights for all is at most 33%, according to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR).
Your "left-leaning" friends may not have expressed anything like that and might simply want to express solidarity with the perceived "weaker" side. However, by proclaiming to be "anti-Zionist," they are undoubtedly associating themselves with some aspects of hardcore Palestinian nationalism. It's puzzling to me how this is compatible with traditional left-leaning stances and why any self-described left-leaning person would want to be associated with that, except due to extreme ignorance about the meaning of the words and the actual situation on the ground.
The issue that some people characterize as colonization is, in reality, a matter of migration. In fact, one of the early demands of the Palestinian nationalist movement in the 1930s was to halt Jewish immigration, and they sought to enforce this demand through violence. And this violence snowballed to the current ethnic conflict between arabs and jews. If we compare this to the present day, imagine a bunch of trump supporters marching through the streets attacking/murdering Mexican immigrants. It's a no-brainer that these people would be considered racist criminals. But this is exactly what happened in Palestine in the 1930s. And the situation changed only for the worse. Yet, people (especially the left) still sides with those criminals instead of supporting a lasting peace between the Jews and Palestinians.
Having said that, in my experience, a lot of people have some vague sense of "Israel should not be a purely Jewish state, should allow equal status to everyone else, should give the right of return to all Palestinians [implicitly meaning that it would no longer be a Jewish majority state]" etc.
And most people don't have a good answer to the question: Poland is a state for ethnic Polish people, Spain is a place for Spanish people, Japan is a place for Japanese people; why can't there be a country that's for Jewish place? Why is a country for Jewish people somehow illegitimate?
(There are good answers given the history why this particular instantiation of Israel is a problem. So good that nobody has been able to solve these problems for so many years. But many people talking about this don't know those reasons - they just vaguely think "Israel bad, not allowing anyone equal rights is 'apartheid'" etc.)
Give us a few, I'm interested.
In addition, a lot of the occupied territories are effectively lands in which Palestinians are to some extent "imprisoned", neither having their own country, nor being granted any kind of citizenship. These lands were won in a war, true, but the standard course of action is either to return them, or to annex them, neither of which Israel has chosen to do (for obvious demographic reasons). But the end result is a situation in which millions of Palestinians were driven out of their home in 1948, and are now refugees living in territories with no self-determinance.
Israel isn't without a complicated history and a complicated existing situation. The same can be said of many countries, btw.
I think the point is that those countries you say are "nation states" are in fact turning away from being nation states, or already have. Most of Europe learned from the 19th and 20th centuries that nationalism (despite being very romantic in many ways) ends in disaster. I am from the UK and it cannot be said to be a nation state, if it ever was. My country is full of people with immigrant backgrounds from all over the world with full citizenship rights who are a million miles from being "ethnically English" or "ethnically Scottish". As it should be.
So yeah in my opinion, an "English nation state" is undesirable. I don't want it. I'm glad we're not one.
Firstly, I think it's only some segments of the population that are turning away from being nation states, and I think that idea is far less common than us liberals think. Many countries are facing "crises" because of immigration. I mean, the UK itself did Brexit partially because of fears of being too beholden to other countries, which isn't exactly the same thing as going back to a nation state, but I think comes from a similar place.
Secondly, as a Jew, I am extremely aware of the history of my people. While I really wish that I didn't live in a world which might one day decide to kill me just for being Jewish, I unfortunately don't live in that world now. I unfortunately have to want there to be at least one country in the whole world which will for sure always take in and defend Jews, because the world has proved the need for that many times throughout history, obviously with the Holocaust being the worst example.
How do I square my progressive sensibilities with my thinking that there needs to be a Jewish country? I don't know. Most people don't have that problem - not many Swedes have to contend with the idea that the country will no longer be Swedish, and that no other country will want to take them in. That's just not a relevant concern for Swedish people.
It is an acutely relevant concern for me.
Put it this way—you wouldn't found a state the way Israel was founded today. You wouldn't found a Roma state in Northern India. Israel is here and it's here to stay and that's it, and there's lots to admire about what Israel is and has become since 1948. Having said that, let's not do it again elsewhere in the world with some other ethnic group lacking a nation state, of which there are so many.
For one thing, I think in practice, it's not true that states are no longer founded this way - well, I guess the question is what "this way" means to you, but if you mean "founded in order to be a country for a particular ethnic group", then I think you're wrong - some ethnic minorities really are splitting off from countries in order to form countries for themselves.
In addition, I think there are certainly some people who think ethnic minorities are entitled to founding a country.
As for Israel's founding, there were certainly some problematic aspects, but let's also remember that in some ways it was a much better way to found a country than many others have done. It was land that belonged to the UN, and the UN proposed to make a country there for Jews, as well as for Palestinians. The Jews living in Israel (for the most part, in land that they legally purchased and developed) accepted this proposal. The reason this wasn't accepted was that the Palestinians rejected it, and Israel was attacked by Arab countries. The land that is now Israel is where it is because of a war of defense waged by Israel.
A lot of bad things happened in that time, for sure, but this was actually far better than the way most countries were founded, in many ways. Not perfect, and it did have the effect of a lot of people being displaced, because they rejected a proposal that would give them that land, for various reasons. But better than a country just deciding to conquer another country and just murdering/cleansing all the locals without any thought to it, as is the founding story of most countries.
Maybe go look up Jonathan Pollard. If Israel is our close friend, why would they need to spy on us?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard
https://www.military.com/history/jonathan-pollard-was-one-of...
The same reason why the US spies on the Bundeskanzler.
An actual reason I have heard is that it is as important to have independent information on your allies than it is on your enemies. Even if it is only for better coordination.
Basically, boosting Israel makes politicians popular with big swaths of their electorate. Pissing those electorates off makes things tough on a corporation, so they generally try not to.
As a secular Jew in Western Europe, I've distanced myself from my religious community due to its insistence on tying my identity to Israel. Where I live, it's less taboo to critique Israel than in the U.S., but still tricky.
Advocates of Israel's right-wing politics have blurred the line between criticizing Israel and anti-Semitism, an endeavor helped by actual anti-Semites. I've grown up with these supporters, but can't quite call them a "lobby" due to their loose organization and lesser influence here compared to the U.S.
Speaking out brings risks: being labeled a leftist extremist, clashing with fellow Jews, or unwittingly aiding anti-Semites. And that's if you are Jew.
This creates a pervasive, cautious silence that I imagine is even more stifling in countries with highly organized pro-Israel lobbying.
My horrid crime that made me literally Hitler?
Disagreement if a tag should be named "jews" or "judaism" on the Politics Stack Exchange site. I made an off-hand comment that I renamed the tag from "jews" to "judaism" and the very first response was that I had been "reported to the ADL" (whether they actually did: who knows? Probably not).
That such an incredibly boring, banal, and benign disagreement exploded in accusations of anti-Semitism so quickly has made me rather distrustful of these accusations in general unless I can verify things. Anti-Semitism is real, but so are narcissistic people abusing it to "win the argument". If you need to defend yourself with "but I'm not anti-Semitic!" then you've already kind of lost the argument, right?
“If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
-Justice Louis Brandeis
Is it really so hard to "critique" Israel? I see daily calls for Israel to be abolished one way or the other (either violently with the help of Iran or with a Palestinian return). You can hear these opinions from politicians, on the news and social media, campuses and schools.
You might be labeled as a leftist as you said because this is generally a leftist stance, that's fair no? If I held a rightwing view I will probably be labeled as a right winger. Most Israelis I know think twice before they identify as Israelis in certain parts of Europe, they don't want a random cab driver to start lecturing them about apartheid (or do something worse). So I'm really intrigued why you think its such a taboo thing to criticize Israel or even openly call for its destruction.
- Strong lobby in both political parties.
- Boomers with their Judeo-Christians “values”.
- Israel intelligence agencies controlling/influencing ADL, ADL pressuring three letter agencies in US to further influence big tech.
- The usual tactics of infiltration into big corps especially ones that can influence public opinions, you can read a little about Roy Bollock case
>The ADL operates as a private intelligence agency, sending spies, infiltrators, disruptors, and agents provocateurs into the camps — both Jewish and non-Jewish — of those who disagree with its view of Jewish interests. Also like an intelligence agency, it maintains a huge database containing personal information on politicians, writers, dissidents, activists, publishers, bloggers, and even unaffiliated private citizens so that — should any of these people “get out of line,” in the opinion of the ADL — they can be threatened, “exposed,” blackmailed, and thus silenced with maximum effectiveness. [1]
- And especially for Facebook with their shady business, they live on selling the users data to advertisers, the company won’t do anything to cut that money flow, take a look at twitter in the same case how ADL managed to cut around 60% of ads companies, it’s mostly about money and influence.
[1] redice.tv/news/the-adl-and-domestic-spying-roy-bullock-case-revisited