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American Empire and Antisemitism
Until the aftermath of October 7th, 2023, I would have been sure that America, in the balance, was squarely in Israel’s corner and ready and willing to do the right thing to defend the Jewish state. I still feel that America is 70% there, but my confidence has frankly been shaken by the egregious antisemitism displayed on American universities, as well as the unabashed linking of further Abraham Accords progress with Israel’s willingness to negotiate a Palestinian state. (Imagine if, after 9/11, the EU had linked support for America’s war against Afghanistan with political support of the Taliban.) Netanyahu has been strongly against rewarding terrorism with political concessions, and I hope he and Israel continue to stand against it.
We need America to stop using “strategic ambiguity” to walk back her support for allies. When Putin invaded Ukraine, it was clear to me that President Biden’s so-called incompetence was intentional, to capitulate on Afghanistan and Ukraine, partly to reorient toward China, and partly to reconsolidate NATO and make more profitable deals going forward. There was never any intention to help Ukraine “win” against Russia, which is amazingly tragic. The U.S. has been losing on purpose. To a certain extent, Nixon to Carter served a similar purpose. America was on the decline, until mysteriously she resurged in the late 80s, up until the early 2000s.
Big picture, what does such a pursuit do to society? It separates the citizen from the state (contrary to the wishes of progressives) and the local from the global. This is mainly because politics are now almost indecipherable. Most people realize that secret deals now define American foreign policy (and much domestic policy), not public discussion or elections. What does such a policy mean for antisemitism? At home, it means people, unable to find straightforward reasons for political upheaval, will put forward increasingly virulent scapegoating conspiracy theories, and unfortunately Jews will bear much of that abuse. In the minds of antisemites, surely the Jews are manipulating world events and causing the world to go downhill.
Abroad, using allies such as Ukraine as bargaining chips does not bode well either for U.S. support for Israel in the future or for the use of U.S. soft power to counter global antisemitism. For part of Israel’s history, the loose tie that bound it to the U.S. was mutually agreed upon. Israel didn’t want to be the 51st state of the U.S., nor did the U.S. seek to annex Israel. Given the events of the last decades, and certainly since October 7th, 2023, it is clear that the U.S. is the only major ally that Israel has. If the U.S. were to utilize similarly ambiguous logic as has been used with Ukraine, it could lead to a capitulation on Israel’s sovereignty. America must not do this.
Finally, as it appears that President Biden’s White House has already accepted that Iran will get a nuclear weapon; if Iran and Saudi Arabia get nukes soon, will they largely use the weapons to threaten each other? Or will they, in concert, use the weapons to coerce Israel into conceding increasingly more of her sovereignty and security preferences? Both are likely and are not mutually exclusive. If the Abraham Accords move forward, America must provide for explicit provisions within the Accords to safeguard Israel’s security interests. Israel cannot abide ambiguity from America’s corner, and America must recognize this fact.
Published in Foreign Policy
Moderator Note:
To quote the Code of Conduct, "Arguing is fine. Name-calling and personal attacks are not."Ah, so we’ve got two, not just one, [insult redacted by moderator] hiding out on the site. Amusingly enough, Tom and Jerry.
Most Americans and all sane people with IQs higher than that of my houseplants.
Hahaha… and yes, just quote the UN as a moral authority. The scorn you get will be richly deserved. “IDF terrorist attack”…ROTFLMAO.
Ah, the moderator beat me to it ! I don’t think I’ve ever been called that by a guy called “von” something !
I didn’t say the UN was a “moral authority”, and the UN bureaucracy is probably worse than useless.
The votes aren’t made by UN employees though, they’re decided by the governments of each country voting. It shouldn’t be difficult to understand that distinction.
My point was that if you’re the only country on the planet supporting the Israeli ethnic cleansing, maybe you should start to wonder whether you’ve picked the right side.
And yes, I’d describe the IDF as terrorists. They might dress up as soldiers and have nifty new American equipment, but their origin is in terrorist groups like the Irgun and Stern gang ( who were fond of murdering British soldiers btw ), and if they deliberately target civilian aid workers, including 3 Brits, I call them terrorists.
There is no data supporting this. The data shows the opposite in the extreme.
One mistake. One.
On October 7th, Hamas killed and tortured 1400 Israelis. Because of the threat of precision missile attacks attacks from Hezbollah up North, 200,000 Israelis are living in hotels.
This thread is another good example of where an ignore feature would come in handy.
Since someone mentioned the “Samson Option”, why not take a look at “The Samson Option”, by Sy Hersh? The US didn’t help Israel get the bomb. France did. They provided the reactors and technology. The US had nothing to do with it.
Yes, I mentioned it, and you’re right…..thanks Frogs……
The US didn’t intentionally help, but the Israelis did steal material and some technology from the US.
See if you can find the correspondence between JFK and Ben Gurion in early 1963. JFK was vehemently opposed to Israel ( or anyone else ) getting the bomb and basically gave an ultimatum to Ben Gurion to allow inspections of their facility at Dimona….or else….
Ben Gurion resigned before taking delivery of the last letter from JFK, and by doing so bought some time for his successor. At around the time JFK was killed the Israeli reactor went into operation, and after that it was impossible to get close enough to do a full inspection to determine what it was being used for. Obviously, the intention all along was to produce material for a bomb.
And then the Germans got guilt-tripped into giving them the dolphin class submarines to carry nuclear armed missiles.
Words against Jews have consequences. Check the history of Nazism. The propaganda spouted by Goebbels had enormous impact on the German mindset and helped to prepare Germans for extermination of the Jews. You are probably familiar with ths line, attributed to Goebbels: “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.”
We have an entire political system of Goebbelses running the U.S.
According to the CoC racist slurs are allowed as long as they are not directed at a member. Per the letter of the CoC saying:
if a violation but saying
is allowed. @RandyWeivoda is this a correct interpretation of the CoC? It seems to be because there has been similar language in this post directed at another group and it has not been redacted.
Honestly, it would appear that my use of N—– would not be required (and I have thoughts that it shouldn’t be, but I usually defer to what is considered polite) because that isn’t specifically an explicative.
Yes, the line has to be drawn somewhere and that is where we draw it. Just like several Ricochet members can — and have — written derogatory and hostile things about feminists, homosexuals, atheists, and so on without being redacted. But if someone writes, “Fags like you will burn in hell, and you will deserve it!” that would require moderator action.
Based on some flags we get, some people assume that we moderators approve of comments that we don’t redact. That is not the case. But it is not our job or our privilege to remove from the site comments that we think are moronic or classless.
This is an interesting example. I would describe that sentence as threatening. Which is sometimes where anti-Semitic speech goes too.
I think that was the issue at the universities that Congress was investigating. I don’t think the three presidents knew what “the Intifada” was–as Elise Stefanik read the definition to them. I think they were surprised at how violent and threatening it was (as I was). It was their job to know, but my point is that speech can actually be threatening. I think that should be edited out. But defining “threatening speech” is hard to do.
I think the context of the October 7 attack is important at this time. We are human beings, not AI robots. Anti-Semitic speech has more power today than it did October 6.
I’m not trying to say that Ricochet is doing anything wrong. I think they are handling this issue well.
I’m just thinking about this interesting example.
Given the history of hatred toward Jews, hate speech against them today — especially in light of the resurgence of anti-Semitism since October 7th — is a big red flag. Let’s put it this way: If the comments against Jews that appear here were uttered in a public forum when news of the Holocaust first came out, when people understood that hate speech directed toward Jews could have dire consequences, the authors of such comments would have been quickly banned from any public platform. Today, however, the lies about Jews that led to the Holocaust are increasingly tolerated, including on this platform.
You can’t call a group of members, the “Pro-Mexican cartel faction.” lol I found that out. lol
How about calling our local cartoon cat and mouse “The Hamas Cheerleader Chorus” and noting that they seem to pine for another Oct. 7th? Would that get redacted? Let’s find out.
So you are concerned that someone will see that with three exceptions, every Ricochet member who has commented on the Israel-Hamas war has sided with Israel, and those three exceptions will persuade the readers to commit acts of violence against Jews? There have been far, far more comments insulting Democrats on Ricochet, and I’ve never heard of a gang of Ricochetti beating up random Democrats.
Mr Finch, have you got specific examples of lies about Jews ? I do tend to make some rather broad generalisations, along the lines of saying Jews have disproportionate influence on such-and-such, but you could refute those with empirical evidence if you had any. No-one on here ever does though.
I think you’ve got so used to hearing the pro-Israel side, and to hearing anything that contradicts that view dismissed out of hand as an anti-semitic conspiracy theory that you never bother to check whether any of your assumptions are wrong.
I’ve changed my mind on a lot of issues over the years, and probably wouldn’t have done without access to US based websites which benefit from first amendment protection. Be careful what you wish for – once you establish the principle that you can censor people you don’t agree with, then sooner or later you’ll find you’re being censored yourself.
This, of course, begs the question of what an insult is. For example, were I to say that [Member] is saying things that are not true to disparage a racial group, is that an insult? What about if I said [Large Group of Members] are saying things that are not true and disparaging a racial group, would that also be an insult? We have seen that, as an example, calling a rather large group of members cultists is not considered by the moderators an insult, so would saying, specifically, that members who spout anti-Semitic falsehoods are anti-Semites be an insult and thus redacted or banned? Part of the problem is that the idea that an insult is a line means that the Mods are placed in the position of deciding what is an insult. From past observations, calling Trump supporters cultists isn’t an insult, but calling a person a liar is…even if they are lying. This seems to be a problem because of the subjective nature of the decisions that the Mods have to make. It leads to potential inconsistency of application of the CoC at the very least.
As to the other point about your duties as a Mod, the decisions that you make as a group reflect the position of R> as an entity and community. Yes, it might be a small number of people who spout such things, but when no comment is made, then comments or posts appear to have the imprimatur of management. A long while ago (prior to Mr Cooke purchasing R>), he did a Zoom webinar about hosting and was asked if he would host a neo-Nazi website on his platform. If I remember his response correctly, he said that he would choose not to host them, even though he started the entire process talking about how important free speech is and allowing marginalized groups to have a platform (this was just after Parler got de-platformed). As the owner of R>, he gets to set the rules for behavior here, and the rules he has set reflect the community. Your actions as a Mod bring those principles into reality. Thus, it appears that it is fine to post anti-Semitic content (or other racist content), but there is a line for the other members refuting that content. That is what our community stands for.
I do not wish to further derail this post with a discussion on moderating. I would invite everyone who has any questions or complaints about moderating to bring them over to this post, titled Ask a Moderator.
Referring to two unpersuasive people as the “Pro-Mexican Cartel Faction Of Ricochet”.
That literally got edited out. lol
Sounds like fun. We could have a monthly meetup and beat up random Democrats. Move it from city to city so that they would never know where to expect us next. Ricochetti could become the terror of the left.
i could see us as the bane of public radio stations, holding impromptu sit-ins in the lobby, popping open carbonated beverages and streaming Jordan Petersen on phones until they ask us to leave.
Wild, radical stuff. Or prank calling libraries and asking “Do you have The Nat Turner Diaries?” and hear them freeze up in confusion, like overloaded Star Trek androids.
You see there is really no difference between antipathy toward Israel and antipathy toward Jews. Note that your response to my comment references disparagement of Israel even though I said nothing about hatred toward Israel in the comment. It’s a sign that there is a general understanding about the negative sentiment toward Jews held by Israel bashers.
We’re slacking folks! Get to work!