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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • I think my point stands.

    Israel has clearly lost most of the Democratic voter base. They’re losing conservatives too, but it’s really hard to overstate the importance of losing Democratic support. American Jews are increasingly unwilling to support the Zionist project, and Israel has always depended greatly on international support for everything from financial assistance to providing the actual Jewish bodies who are needed to actually move into settlements and birth more Israeli Jews.

    We’re not far from a day when Israel loses access to their US weapons and tech infrastructure. But their economy was never designed to work without American Jews visiting and moving to Israel.

    Personally, I’d like to see the international community force the adoption of a democratic one state solution. And I think that’s no less far-fetched than something like a return to the previous status quo.






  • This is a weird take, because everyone within Israel – both critics and supporters – more or less acknowledges that this is a vindictive ethnic cleansing campaign.

    Most Israeli Jews support it because they would like Gaza’s people and infrastructure to be erased. Some oppose it, often because they recognize that the damage to Israel’s standing is a catastrophe. But this claim that it’s a legitimate war with legitimate aims is not something anyone in Israeli society says except to international audiences.



  • It’s particularly crazing that this article asserts a massive rise in antisemitism by citing the Anti-Defamation League.

    Recently, the Anti-Defamation League reported that antisemitic incidents in the U.S. were at record highs. …

    In Los Angeles County, data from 2022 showed that anti-Jewish hate crimes rose more than 90%, the largest number of such crimes ever recorded in the region.

    It then links to an article NBC published about the release of a report by the Anti-Defamation League. It’s kind of crazy, because the ADL has been going through an increasingly public conflict between members of the staff, donors, and former staff over the way that current President of the ADL has been nakedly cooking their numbers to justify crackdowns on Pro-Palestinian activism. Even a lot of mainstream liberal zionists in groups like J Street have been openly complaining that Jonathan Greenblatt is destroying the credibility of the ADL and the usefulness of their published research.

    I guess NBC hasn’t been paying attention.







  • I think you’re partially right. It was a visceral reaction, but it’s true that they have to keep the house style.

    I disagree that I’m reading “too much polemic instead of real journalism”. I think journalism is in crisis, and that the pursuit of “neutrality” in a post-truth era has severely weakened the fourth estate when it should be armed to defend its existence and fundamental values.

    First, it’s a myth that news is impartial. Conventional news absolutely has a system of values: it’s inherently pro-truth, pro-freedom of thought, and democratic. Assassinating journalists out in the open and decreeing that they’re legitimate targets is a direct attack on fundamental principles of journalism and free society. Journalism does not need to be neutral on whether assassinating journalists is wrong to retain their legitimacy.

    Sadly, these institutions are not experienced or practiced at navigating the challenge of addressing this kind of story. The real story here is that because the practice of journalism undermines what the ruling coalition considers to be in the national interest, Israel has decided as a matter of national policy that it will no longer abide by Article 79 of the Geneva convention. They have not admitted it explicitly, but there is an obvious pattern of fact that goes beyond hundreds of assassinations all the way to their law against publishing news that undermines “national morale”. That, imo, is the story. Really stop and think about what a monumental and newsworthy thing it is for a major world power to so publicly confirm a policy that has been until now a matter of dispute.

    But the BBC can’t within their current operating guidelines find a way to tell that very vital story. That’s a tragedy.


  • This article is so terribly tepid.

    How can journalists write about the persecution of their calling so bloodlessly?

    These people were more than innocent: they were so-gooders of the kind we all claim to support. They were not only supposed to be protected not only as noncombatants, but especially guarded by their attendance to a sacred mission. They, like aid workers and doctors and nurses and any care giver or person seeking to provide justice is a designated target when the goal of a military operation is extermination.

    Has the BBC written an editorial confirming this?