Israel maintaining control deeper inside Gaza than expected, new boundary markers suggest
Israel has placed boundary markers up to 520m deeper inside Gaza than expected under the ceasefire deal with Hamas.
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Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
- Thread starter Teufel
- Start date
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Anyone else seen the Obama speechwriter straight-up griping that Holocaust education is "backfiring" because kids are walking away with the radical notion that genocide is universally a bad idea?
She's worried the "lesson" these whippersnappers are getting is that we must "protect helpless people from powerful people killing them."
She's worried the "lesson" these whippersnappers are getting is that we must "protect helpless people from powerful people killing them."
That sounds so crazy I had to look up a news article: https://www.middleeasteye.net/trend...echwriter-claims-youth-misinterpret-holocaust
Incredible.
Incredible.
Everything she is saying is very mainstream Jewish thought. I think you ought to give her position a more serious hearing, and try listening to it without mediation from an angry Xitter hive.
Here's a very long interview transcript with her, covering basically the same ground. What exactly is wrong?
www.ajc.org
In particular, she is by no means the first scholar to point out that Holocaust education has failed, precisely because it has been universalized and de-Judaized.
www.theatlantic.com
This is how you get so-called progressives claiming to be "anti-Nazi" or "anti-fascist" while justifying or celebrating the mass murder of Jews (and don't anyone here pretend that didn't happen around the Oct. 7th massacre and ever since). Because they really have turned Nazi into just "bad person," divorced utterly from its philosophical focus.
I suspect there was a longer point in her contrast with anti-black racism than I have time to watch tonight, but I can point out that antisemitism is and always has been presented as "punching up." Is and always has been presented as a threatened underclass having no choice but to defend themselves against an all-powerful conspiring oppressor.
Here's a very long interview transcript with her, covering basically the same ground. What exactly is wrong?
Amid Blame and Shame, Reclaiming Jewish Identity with Sarah Hurwitz
Sarah Hurwitz—former White House speechwriter and New York Times bestselling author of "Here All Along"—returns to discuss her new book, "As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us."
www.ajc.org
In particular, she is by no means the first scholar to point out that Holocaust education has failed, precisely because it has been universalized and de-Judaized.
Is Holocaust Education Making Anti-Semitism Worse?
Using dead Jews as symbols isn’t helping living ones.
www.theatlantic.com
This is how you get so-called progressives claiming to be "anti-Nazi" or "anti-fascist" while justifying or celebrating the mass murder of Jews (and don't anyone here pretend that didn't happen around the Oct. 7th massacre and ever since). Because they really have turned Nazi into just "bad person," divorced utterly from its philosophical focus.
I suspect there was a longer point in her contrast with anti-black racism than I have time to watch tonight, but I can point out that antisemitism is and always has been presented as "punching up." Is and always has been presented as a threatened underclass having no choice but to defend themselves against an all-powerful conspiring oppressor.
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If you honestly think what she said on that panel is mainstream Jewish thought, that just makes it even more troubling, not less. The part people reacted to wasn't some misquote or something blown up online. It was her saying that young people are basically getting the wrong lesson from genocide, and that seeing real world carnage on social media is why they disagree with her view of Israel. If you agree with that, just say so. But calling it mainstream doesn't soften it. It actually makes it sound a lot worse.
Nothing in that interview backs up or fixes the part that people found disturbing. It's mostly her personal story, stuff about her identity, and some general points about antisemitism. Nothing in it claims that kids are misreading the Holocaust because they're seeing too many upsetting videos online. That's something she said on that panel, not in the interview.
Sure, there are people who critique how Holocaust education is taught. But that has nothing to do with her claim about social media and kids apparently learning the wrong lesson about power and victims. The Atlantic article never goes there. It doesn't defend her framing and it doesn't even touch the Gaza angle she used to explain why younger people disagree with her.
This jump doesn't track. You went from her comments to a totally different argument about left-wing hypocrisy, as if that somehow explains or excuses what she actually said. It doesn't. It's just a pivot away from the part you didn't want to address.
Again, this is drifting away from the issue. No one was debating the history of antisemitic framing. The problem is what she herself said in that room: that kids are basically learning empathy for the wrong victims because of social media, and that this is some kind of failure of Holocaust education. None of your links support that, explain it, or make it sound any better.
People being less cool with state sponsored violence against a marginalized group isn’t really something I’d term “a failure”
Now, I will admit you have A LOT more people vocally against “Israel on Palestinian” violence over say “China on Uighur” and antisemitism does likely play a role in *that*.
Shouldn't this be in the anti-Semitism thread?Everything she is saying is very mainstream Jewish thought. I think you ought to give her position a more serious hearing, and try listening to it without mediation from an angry Xitter hive.
Here's a very long interview transcript with her, covering basically the same ground. What exactly is wrong?
Amid Blame and Shame, Reclaiming Jewish Identity with Sarah Hurwitz
Sarah Hurwitz—former White House speechwriter and New York Times bestselling author of "Here All Along"—returns to discuss her new book, "As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us."
In particular, she is by no means the first scholar to point out that Holocaust education has failed, precisely because it has been universalized and de-Judaized.
Is Holocaust Education Making Anti-Semitism Worse?
Using dead Jews as symbols isn’t helping living ones.
This is how you get so-called progressives claiming to be "anti-Nazi" or "anti-fascist" while justifying or celebrating the mass murder of Jews (and don't anyone here pretend that didn't happen around the Oct. 7th massacre and ever since). Because they really have turned Nazi into just "bad person," divorced utterly from its philosophical focus.
I suspect there was a longer point in her contrast with anti-black racism than I have time to watch tonight, but I can point out that antisemitism is and always has been presented as "punching up." Is and always has been presented as a threatened underclass having no choice but to defend themselves against an all-powerful conspiring oppressor.
It is EXACTLY something blown up online, a total nothingburger. It reminds me - appropriate since she's an Obama speechwriter - of the time Obama said poorly-educated Southern conservatives cling to guns and religious tradition because they see no reason to trust the government, and half the media freaked out over something that basic with a "how dare you!". Now it is Lefty Twitter's turn to play.
That is a disappointingly dishonest framing. She never once said anything about empathy, or that nobody should care about Palestinians, or that they should not be seen as victims, or that they should not be mourned. She never said anything bad about them at all.
She said social media has made people so reliant on video that they are not receptive to dialogue or explanations, and that again is basic and unquestionably true. Anyone who is aware of the discourse about issues from illegal immigrant crime statistics to transgender school shooter statistics to shark attacks to stranger danger should be able to absorb that. Palestine is no different from any of those things. Where did all those people bothered by immigrant caravans and LibsOfTikTok transgender teachers come from? What shaped their beliefs and how well does it work to just talk to them about how wrong they are after they've seen the first batch of inflammatory curated videos? Please don't tell me you think basic human nature - and the way humans interact with technology - changes based on whether someone supports single-payer healthcare.
So when she says "TikTok isn't telling you the whole story, is exaggerating something, is being manipulated," yes, it is perfectly in-character for there to come 68 bajillion responses of YOU JUST DON'T CARE ABOUT PALESTINIANS YOU WANT THEM TO DIE!!!!!!!!11one.
No, again, this is exactly her point. It is impossible to discuss this topic without the frame of the Oct. 8th betrayal, that is why she brought it up, that is the precise complaint about Holocaust education obviously failing and every single person in that auditorium understood her perfectly. You didn't, that's fine, but stop judging them for how they respond to a threat you've never faced.
For the final time - pervasive absorption of conspiracy theories about Jewish institutions (diaspora Jews being responsible for Israel, or Israel / Jewish institutions controlling American politics and oppression of American marginalized groups) and pervasive incitement to violence ("settlers" "deserving it") show that Holocaust education has failed. That educated, purportedly civilized people will lapse into the exact same habits of mind, the same racialized conspiracy theories and outgroup harassment, and as long as they aren't literally specifically white men born in the 1910s wearing swastika armbands they will consider themselves on the right side of history.
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You're still focusing on how people reacted instead of what she actually said. The backlash didn't come out of nowhere. It happened because her comment made it sound like kids are learning the wrong lesson from genocide. That's not even close to the same thing as a politician insulting rural voters. One is snobbery and the other questions a basic moral response to mass killing.
She didn't need to say the words "empathy" or "victims" for the meaning to be clear. When she says kids are taking the wrong lesson from what they're seeing, and the only lesson available in that moment is basic sympathy for people being killed, it's obvious why people took issue. Saying she didn't literally use a specific word doesn't change the message.
Yes, social media can warp people's perceptions. But none of that turns kids' instinctive reaction to brutal violence into a problem. When they see people suffering and feel sympathy, that's normal. It's not evidence of failed education or TikTok manipulation.
You're still talking about the reaction instead of the statement. The criticism wasn't driven by random internet noise. It was driven by her own words.
Kids reacting emotionally to mass suffering isn't them being misled by TikTok. It's them being human.
Bringing up 10/8 doesn't change what she said. People don't need that framing to understand her claim that children watching atrocities are learning the wrong lesson. Adding another layer of context doesn't make her wording better. It just shifts the conversation away from the problem.
This is an entirely different argument than the one she made. If you want to talk about conspiracy thinking or historical prejudice, that's its own discussion.
But her actual statement wasn't about any of this. It was about kids supposedly learning the wrong lesson from mass killing. That's why people objected, and that's the part that still hasn't been addressed.
Another day, another stain on the reputations of both the US and Israel?
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Palestinian-US teen held by Israel for nine months without charge due in court
Mohammed Ibrahim, 16, from Florida, was detained by Israeli soldiers while on holiday in the occupied West Bank.
www.bbc.com
I'm going to leave some commentary here.
Hopefully it will be read, and not dismissed out of hand as more of "the inveterate anti-Semitism of the world", but who knows?
Quoting from same:
I hope that I'm not myself profaning the discussion by inserting my own pop-cultural perspective (one that got me accused of every -ism under the sun when crypto-Maoists took over a college student newspaper to which I contributed here and there) into the mix:
But when a fictional super-anti-villain (and Six Day War veteran) gets it, and the smartest in our fandom falter on the last point above....
Hopefully it will be read, and not dismissed out of hand as more of "the inveterate anti-Semitism of the world", but who knows?
Quoting from same:
(Emphasis mine.)
I hope that I'm not myself profaning the discussion by inserting my own pop-cultural perspective (one that got me accused of every -ism under the sun when crypto-Maoists took over a college student newspaper to which I contributed here and there) into the mix:
But when a fictional super-anti-villain (and Six Day War veteran) gets it, and the smartest in our fandom falter on the last point above....
'Too close to Netanyahu gov't': U.S. Senate candidate returns AIPAC's campaign donations
Rep. Moulton of Massachusetts announced he would return $35,000 in AIPAC donations, saying, 'I support Israel's right to exist, but I've also never been afraid to disagree openly with AIPAC' due to the lobby's close alignment with Netanyahu's government
You've lost me. Magneto is canonically a Zionist Jew, who lived in Israel and whose persona was based on Menahem Begin. What is it he supposedly "gets"? And is this based on canon or fanfic?
If we've all learned the right counter arguments to auto-deploy after an "All Lives Matter" or a "What About The Men," let's not act like "Never Again For Anyone" is more morally sensible.
As for Ta-Nehisi Coates, his analysis of this issue is proudly shallow, so one-sided as to be basically zero-sided. He purposely chose not to mention Arab terrorism in any time period and not analyzing any of the pre-20th century history at all. Like a Dittohead creationist, he holds that claims of "complexity" just mean someone is lying to you.
Ta-Nehisi Coates and his ignorant demonization of Israel
A year before last September, I spent three weeks in Israel, visiting Tel Aviv for a week and Jerusalem for two weeks. I also got two one-day tours, one to Masada and the Dead Sea for sightseeing, …
whyevolutionistrue.com
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"All Lives Matter" is meant to silence someone talking about real harm. "Never Again For Anyone" is meant to apply the warning of genocide to all people. One is used to deny suffering, the other is used to prevent it.
They are not the same.
It is "meant" to usurp and colonize the seriousness of Jewish historical tragedies while giving the Jews themselves some comeuppance.
Wild idea: other peoples' lives can be worth preserving just because they are worth preserving. Every sad thing in the world doesn't have to be warped by Holocaust envy.
Wild idea: other peoples' lives can be worth preserving just because they are worth preserving. Every sad thing in the world doesn't have to be warped by Holocaust envy.
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Empathy isn't envy. Saying others should not suffer what Jews suffered is not "colonizing tragedy." It's applying the lesson.
Also, when people were saying "all lives matter" and "what about the men", there was not an active terrorist group targeting white people or men, respectively, nor has either group historically been threatened on a global scale. Even when hatred against those groups of people is at its height, it never manifests as anything more than empty words, so anyone trying to make them look like victims or even potential victims can only ever look like a fool to everybody. Including the vast majority of white people and men, respectively. That's why those phrases were immediately called out as obvious dogwhistles.
A Journalist Reported From Palestine. YouTube Deleted His Account Claiming He’s an Iranian Agent.
(Source: - https://archive.is/20251207154100/h...leted-journalist-israel-palestine-censorship/)
(Source: - https://archive.is/20251207154100/h...leted-journalist-israel-palestine-censorship/)
Israel being Israel again...
www.bbc.com
Israel to bar 37 aid groups as UK and EU warn of impact in Gaza
Israel's move is criticised by 10 countries, which say the new registration rules for international NGOs are "restrictive" and "unacceptable".
www.bbc.com
