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NefeshBarYochai wrote:
> Let's cut to the chase. If you're fretting about antisemitism and the
> fears and insecurities of Jewish students in the middle of a genocide,
> you're an awful human being.
> 
> https://mondoweiss.net/2024/07/if-you-support-israel-in-the-middle-of-a-genocide-youre-an-awful-person/
> 
> During the worst attack on Gaza before this one, in 2014, Steven
> Salaita, a Palestinian professor of American Indian Studies, had a
> tenured offer withdrawn by the University of Illinois over some
> strongly worded tweets he posted concerning that attack. Soon after, I
> published a piece in the New York Times blog The Stone (also see
> here), concerning one of those tweets – it said “Let’s cut to the
> chase: If you’re defending #Israel right now you’re an awful human
> being”(11:46 PM – 8 Jul 2014).
> 
> I wasn’t addressing the obvious violation of academic freedom
> represented by his case, nor the appropriateness of his moral outrage
> at Israel’s actions – regarding those issues I was totally with him.
> Instead, I considered whether I thought the claim in the tweet was, in
> fact, true. Were defenders of Israel during this attack indeed “awful
> human beings”?
> 
> Let’s set aside the obvious hyperbole of the statement and the fact
> that, of course, most people, no matter their deplorable views, cannot
> be simply summed up as “awful”; human character is a complicated
> affair. What I take to be the point of the claim, however, is that if
> someone, after the horrific punishment meted out by Israel on Gaza,
> could still defend Israel, then this manifested a serious moral
> character flaw.
> 
> Without completely rehearsing my answer to the question ten years ago,
> briefly, it went like this. It’s important to distinguish between the
> moral status of an action and the moral character of a person. As
> applied to the 2014 Israeli attack, I argued that though Israel’s
> actions were indeed morally atrocious, people of decent character
> could still defend it given the surrounding social and informational
> environment in which they lived. Given the nature of Western
> (especially American) media, the standard assumptions of people’s
> families and friends, etc., it’s quite understandable how good, decent
> people might be misled into defending what are, in fact, morally
> abominable actions. I then interpreted Salaita’s tweet as both
> aspirational and interventionist. I saw it as aspirational in the
> sense that it pointed to a world where people were sufficiently
> well-informed by the media and their surrounding social environment so
> that, in fact, only “an awful human being” would support Israel’s
> actions. (The way I put it then was that the tweet wasn’t true, “but
> it ought to be”). It was interventionist in the sense that he was
> helping us to get to that world by modeling the reaction one ought to
> have.
> 
> As I’ve watched Israel’s genocide unfold these past nine months and
> seen so many political and media figures either outright defend Israel
> or produce so-called “nuanced” criticisms laced with excuses, I’ve had
> many occasions to think about Salaita’s tweet. Given the scale of the
> current genocidal attack on Gaza, and the abundance of information
> available from social media (and even the mainstream media, though
> usually one has to ignore the framing), is it now true that only “an
> awful human being” would defend Israel? This time, I think the case
> for answering in the affirmative is quite strong.
> 
> One might ask at this point whether the question really matters. As I
> am not a fan of “clean hands” politics, I don’t think one’s judgments
> of moral character normally have clear consequences about how one
> should behave politically. If the political calculation warrants it, I
> will “hold my nose”, or get my “hands dirty” when required. For
> example, though I indeed judge Joe Biden to be “an awful human being”,
> I will vote for him to keep a much more awful and much more dangerous
> human being from winning the election.
> 
> However, I do think this question of moral character matters a lot in
> two arenas: what I’ll call “deliberation in the public sphere” and
> local interpersonal relations. By the first, I have in mind the many
> controversies we’re now seeing in a large variety of settings over how
> to speak about Israel and Gaza. Organizations of every sort — whether
> it be government bodies like city councils and school boards, or
> non-governmental organizations like schools, universities, sports
> associations, online communities, private businesses, etc. — are
> dealing with questions about making public statements in the name of
> the organization on Gaza and disciplining the kind of speech
> concerning Gaza that takes place within the organizational spaces
> (e.g. see this story). I mention this arena mainly to set it aside
> here (but see this excellent discussion of the issue — and in the
> spirit of full disclosure, the author is my daughter). The only point
> I want to make here regarding the controversies taking place in these
> public spaces over how to address Gaza is that this question of moral
> character is playing an important role, if only implicitly. One might
> think of it this way: where is the line between the demands of minimal
> decency (not being an “awful human being”) and demands that are
> clearly political? The case of Gaza 2023-24 is bringing this question
> to the fore in unprecedented ways.
> 
> But it’s in the second arena, the realm of local interpersonal
> relations, where I have experienced the effects of the Salaita claim
> most deeply. Until recently I have been able to separate my political
> commitment to Palestinian liberation from my personal relations. There
> are many people, a number of them friends, who I knew felt quite
> differently from me about Israel/Palestine, and yet toward whom I had
> warm and friendly feelings. But now that’s changed — not completely,
> but in important, and quite discernible ways. There are now many
> people whose company I can no longer unequivocally enjoy, or, in some
> cases, even tolerate.
> 
> In particular, I feel very differently about certain Jewish friends,
> colleagues, and acquaintances. I’m thinking of people who actively
> affirm their Jewish identity as an important part of their lives,
> especially those who see Zionism, or some special connection to
> Israel, as an important component in their sense of their Jewishness.
> As I said above, in the past, I could look past this difference in our
> views, but now, after Gaza 2023-24, I can’t any longer. I find that
> all of my interactions with these folks are emotionally colored in a
> way that prevents me from experiencing the kind of warm fellow-feeling
> I used to feel in their company. I include here not only people
> “defending Israel” straightforwardly (actually, I pretty much don’t
> associate with people who do that), but primarily those who, with much
> liberal hand-wringing and consternation, express their sorrow over the
> loss of Palestinian life but then pivot to discussing the horrors of
> October 7, the difficulty of dealing with terrorism, Israeli-Jewish
> feelings of insecurity, and then, what really gets me going, the
> worrisome increase in antisemitism.
> 
> I have recently spoken and written about the groundless charge that
> the protest movement is infected with antisemitism, charges that are
> taken for granted in many spaces (the political and media
> establishment, for starters, but also most prominent Jewish
> organizations — Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now being the
> notable exceptions). My writing and speaking about this has been
> mostly defensive, in the sense that I rebut the arguments that claim
> to show how antisemitic the movement is, especially those that
> conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. While I think publicly
> rebutting these arguments is necessary — and I’m sure, unfortunately,
> there will still be a need to do this often in the future — the
> politically expedient, perhaps necessary, adoption of this defensive
> mode has left me feeling frustrated and inadequate.
> 
> Here, then, is what I want to say to these Jewish friends and
> acquaintances who fret about antisemitism, especially those who
> perceive attacks on Israel as attacks on their identity. One way of
> thinking about Jewish identity is to think of one’s relation to the
> rest of the Jewish people as a kind of family relation. A people is
> sort of like a very, very large family. Israel, the Jewish state, can
> then be thought of as the family project. I think this is how many
> Jews do feel about Israel, and it helps to explain their taking
> criticism of Israel personally. However, while solidarity with, and
> concern for, one’s family members is certainly a crucial part of
> identifying with the family, so is taking responsibility for what
> one’s family members do. If my children, say, were to engage in
> morally atrocious behavior, my greatest concern wouldn’t be how people
> reacted to me and my family. My primary concern would be to rectify
> the wrong done, to the extent possible. So, in that vein, I ask, is
> the very moment the Jewish “family project” is engaging in genocide
> the morally appropriate time to worry about negative feelings
> expressed about Jews? Wouldn’t a “mensch” devote all of their energy
> to putting a stop to the family’s criminal behavior first, allying
> with everyone fighting for that goal (as we see JVP and If Not Now
> doing), and put aside one’s concerns about how some chants are phrased
> and some tropes are expressed? (See this for a particularly good
> example of what I’m talking about.)
> 
> In the spirit of the Salaita tweet, then, I will end with this. Anyone
> who is fretting about antisemitism, about the fears and insecurities
> of Jewish students on campuses, and all the other complaints about
> antisemitic tropes that are sometimes carelessly expressed by those
> reacting to the horror of Gaza — to them I say, “let’s cut to the
> chase; if this is what’s occupying your concerns right now, in the
> midst of a genocide being perpetrated by your own people, you’re an
> awful human being!”
> 
> 
> 
 >
i told you not to be stupid you moron