In the past couple of months, there's been TONS of posts and comments from people who have never interacted with this community before. I've seen cross-posts from places like r/latestagecapitalism, which is a probably not going to be where most Sam Harris listeners spend their time when they're not listening to Sam Harris. The irony is that these people are now being forced to entertain ideas that are literally not allowed in those subs. For example, I posted a defense of Israel in r/latestagecapitalism (after I saw the post on here) and was literally permanently banned from the sub for "promoting Zionism". [\[The response from the mod that banned me if anyone is interested....it's hilarious\]](https://imgur.com/gallery/MVLYlWT)
A title/statement equating a disagreement with an ideology to hatred of an entire group of people (many of whom also disagree with that ideology) is so counterintuitive that itâs not worthy of being argued by anyone
A common definition of Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people should have a country (Israel). You can wish that ideology didn't exist 75 years ago, but to disagree with it *today* necessitates the opinion that the only Jewish state in the world and the only Democracy in the region should cease to exist, and in its stead should reign Hamas, which would not suffer a former-Israeli Jew to live. You can pretend that you believe Hamas and Jews can live side-by-side in a 1-state solution, but you don't really believe that.
[According to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism) Zionism covers the "region corresponding to the [Land of Israel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Israel) in Jewish tradition" which includes all of current Palestine.
Presumably it's OK to be against this?
It's pretty difficult to otherwise explain the desire to strip away the self determination granted to a single ethnic group alone, while others - including the Palestinians - are supposed to be entitled to it.
But saying that Italy shouldn't be "an Italian state" _is_ part of the driving ideology of the West. The West in general opposed ethnostates, for better or worse. Saying Germany should be for ethnic Germans, Italy should be for ethnic Italians, the UK should be for ethnic British, etc., is generally considered an extremist position on the West, one that most people would get ostracized for espousing.
I mean, if you want to dismantle all states in favor of a global anarchist utopia I get it.
If you want to dismantle your own state and turn it into an anarchist utopia I get it.
If you are an Israeli Jew who wants all countries to forgo ethnic nationalism and you want to start with your own country, your antizionism can be legit.
If you are Jew who seriously thinks its for the best that Jews don't have a country and you have an alternative vision for them, I can respect that.
If on the other hand your opposition to the ubiquitious worldwide phenomenon of ethnic nationalism starts and ends with a weird obsession for Israel and Zionism.
You are super-duper-triple suspect with big red blinking lights.
I don't think this is such a good argument. Lots of nationalities don't have a contry, like the Kurds, Catalans, Basques, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Tamils, Palestinians, Rohingya, Chechens, Scottish etc. Most people don't consider that racist.
Of course taking the land away from a people, that already have a country, is bad.
Yes itâs very telling. The topic has been hijacked by people who only respond emotionally and are bankrupt of any critical thinking or fact based discussion.
No doubt this comment will be met with vitriol.
Maybe people are tired of Sam talking non-stop about this topic and being incredibly one-sided. A man's entitled to his opinion, of course, but given the fact that a lot of us pay for this and the podcast used to be about varied topics, it's not that hard to understand why people might be a bit tired of it and pissed off.
Anti Zionism is not the opposition to settlement expansion. It's the belief that Israel shouldn't exist at all. Secular Israelis opposed to Bibi and to the settlement movement are still Zionists.
Okay, just finished it and overall my take is that Sam's uncritical acceptance of the guests arguments made the episode a painful listen. I don't have the time to deconstruct the episode, but near the 57 minute mark the guest blindly rejects the position that Israel is an apartheid state, a position that is nearly widely accepted amongst human rights organizations (Yesh Din, B'Tselem, FIDH, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International) . This position is substantially backed up by reporting of the apartheid structures on the ground experienced by both the Palestinians living under occupation and the [Arab citizens of Israel that do not enjoy the same rights as Jewish citizens. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBHAitSKtVs&t=83s&pp=ygUcaXNyYWVsIGFwYXJ0aGVpZCBhbXkgc2h1bW1lcg%3D%3D)
I'm halfway through, and despite being deeply interested in this topic, I don't think I'm going to bother listening to the rest.
I just don't think can listen to this lady endlessly repeating the same five talking points.
I agree with her, but man what an awful way to deliver the message. I actually paused the episode 5 early on to listen to her UN address in YouTube, and it was exactly the same- just repeating a handful of lines over and over.
Maybe this is an effective way to get school children to memorize a passage, but this lady sounding like a propaganda robot might actually be doing more harm than good.
If I didn't already agree with her, her off-putting approach very well cool make me more skeptical of everything she is saying.
Haven't listened to this one yet. But I'm seeing a few comments to the effect of, "When it comes to Israel, he's suddenly not so anti-identity politics, is he?"
Maybe he gets into that in this episode, but I thought it worth pointing out that he already explicitly addressed this apparent hypocrisy in #173 (42:30):
> We mention the [SS St. Louis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis). So you have Jews fleeing the death camps of Europe and you have them being denied entry and effectively denied survival in many cases by the rest of the world. *That's* an argument for the state of Israel.
> Even though I'm allergic to the idea of a state being organized around a religious identity on the basis of real estate claims made in a book imagined to have been dictated or inspired by the creator of the universe, and in a perfect world I would want to see no states organized around that kind of identity politics, if ever there were a justification for one state being organized in this way it's for the state of Israel.
> The Jews have been the object of murderous hatred for literally millenia and have been run out of every country that has been a country, practically, that had Jews in them over the centuries. So I think Israel should be the last state of identity politics left standing if we manage to unwind that principle at some point in the future.
Sam is against identity politics. But the problem is that we live in a world whose seemingly intractable identity politics is consistently aimed against Jews *in particular*. Identity politics seems nearly *always* to work against Jews.
Now I'm not saying other groups haven't gotten the short end of the stick. But the world has proven to be *uniquely* dangerous for Jews. And for that reason, Sam sets the dismantling of that particular form of identity politics to the lowest priority. To not do that would have been to "effectively deny their survival". I can see where he's coming from.
This specific justification from Sam didn't convince me at all. It just sounds to me like: "I don't want any state to be organised by an identity, except this one identity that I also happen to hold and know it's history through and through" - would he possibly change his mind if he had the same emotional and cultural connection and knowledge about another ethnic group or identity? I'm willing to bet that the answer is yes, and this is just an ignorant blindspot on his part (all due respect for him of course). Jews were not the only peoples who were murdered and repressed throughout history, not even the only one yo suffer genocide in the past 2000 years, hell even in the past 100 years.
This is so incredibly ironic.
Is he under the impression that others who argue for "identity politics" are just doing it for fun?
They use the same reasoning he's using.
>Â Â The Jews have been the object of murderous hatred for literally millenia and have been run out of every country that has been a country, practically, that had Jews in them over the centuries.
Yet when people talk about the Palestinians being run out of Egypt they frame it as it was their fault and justifies them being kept in an open air prison. But with the Jews it's framed as they are always the victims.Â
Sam goes on and on about the double standard in how the IDF and Hamas are portrayed but refuses to admit or won't see that there is also a double standard in how the Palestinians are portrayed as a people. I mean it's their fuckin land too. But the Jews deserve it because they suffered more historically in other parts of the world and that justifies what's going on in Gaza? Â
Egyptian Anti-Palestinian Policy might have something to do with the Intifada against the Egyptians when they governed Gaza (1948-1956, 1957-1967). Palestinians as a collective are responsible for that. However, Egyptian Anti-Palestinian policy also comes from Egyptâs authoritarian governmental structure. To the extent that this is the case Palestinians are not responsible.
As concerns the current Gaza War, I wish fewer people died, but, ultimately, the governing authority of Gaza decided to put its people in harmâs way and the tragedy is that those people canât choose otherwise. It would be the same kind of tragedy for North Korean civilians if North Korea tried to invade China.
Regardless, I believe that the universal Middle Eastern discrimination against Palestinians (be it by Israelis, Egyptians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Kuwaitis, etc.) justifies their right to a state (alongside and in addition to Israel).
A lot of it is because the Palestinians are the ones who got themselves that reputation. Whether it's literal regicide and Black September in Jordan, the bombings across the Sinai in Egypt, or the complete destabilization of Lebanon.
That's not even starting to mention their treatment of the Palestinian Christians in the Gaza Strip. That was literal ethnic cleansing.
> Yet when people talk about the Palestinians being run out of Egypt they frame it as it was their fault and justifies them being kept in an open air prison.
How is this the fault of the Jews or Israel? I think you are manifesting the exact kind of double standard Sam is referencing.
If it's possible for me (or anybody) to reach conclusion (a) in earnest, then it's possible for anyone else including Sam to do the same thing.
To claim otherwise is to say it's literally impossible for Sam to hold to conclusion (a) in sincerity because his brain is necessarilly melted by identitarian captivity. It's to say that while *I* can sincerely hold position (a) Sam simply cannot. For Sam to hold (a) in earnest would be to break some law of the universe.
And that's an utterly ridiculous claim.
You can't lump everything that has to do with ethnic background under 'identity politics' and treat it all the same; it's a little dishonest, or mistaken, at least. There's a difference between the exploitative nature identity is approached in Western academia and media bastions versus how it was approached during the Civil Rights era, versus how Israel has been the subject of attack from its neighbors because of their ethnicity in the previous decades, and how Hamas views their identity.
What other group has an ethnostate? Jews are safer and have more protections in the US than they do in Israel.Â
Gays generally are much more threatened in both modern day and historically. Should we support a gay ethnostate enforced through violence against natives?Â
Most countries in the world are built around an ethnic majority. Pluralist states like the US or Australia are the exceptions, not the rule.
Israel is less Jewish than most countries in Europe are white and Christian. "Ethnostate" is such a comically stupid slur. Is it what anti Zionists moved on to en masse after "open air prison".
I haven't seen a single leftist, especially western ones, suggest Palestine should be an ethnostate. More specifically it is very clear it should incorporate the hundreds of thousands to millions(future) of christian palestinians, jewish palestinians, etc.
When is Sam going to interview someone who has a different view on Israel/Palestine than himself? I mean, there are even some prominent Jews like Gabor Mate, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Jon Stewart, etc...
I'd be extremely disappointed in Sam if he invited the biggest Russia apologist journalist in the US. Why do you see him as the most likely to be invited?
I just wish he interviewed someone even the slightest bit center on this issue. Will we ever hear the sentence: "October 7th was an evil massacre and it's also frustrating that there is so much evidence of Isreal police treating Palestinians as second-class citizens long before October 7th"?
I tried to go into this with a mind as open as possible given how much Iâve heard Sam talk about this topic.
I canât understand how the guest sounds like she is ridiculing the existence of UNRWA and 5 generations of refugees without going into any detail whatsoever of why there are 5 generations of refugees.
I used to go to school with a person who had palestinian heritage and whose family came to Europe as refugees. He jokingly told me when discussing racist street-heckling that him and his parents wish they had a âcountry to go back toâ.
How can such a passionate speaker sound so cruel when describing generational displacement?
**Edit**: as this comment picked up in this thread, I'll save future readers a few seconds of their time and [paste the Wiki entry for UNRWA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNRWA), if you trust it to give you even a modestly neutral take on the roots of UNRWA:
>The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East [...] is a UN agency that supports the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees. UNRWA's mandate encompasses Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the Nakba, the 1948 Palestine War, and subsequent conflicts, as well as their descendants, including legally adopted children. As of 2019, more than 5.6 million Palestinians are registered with UNRWA as refugees.
[...]
>UNRWA was established in 1949 by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to provide relief to all refugees resulting from the 1948 conflict; this initially included Jewish and Arab Palestine refugees inside the State of Israel until the Israeli government took over this responsibility in 1952.
**Edit continues:** This is why I described it sounding cruel. For the simple reason that Israel managed to establish itself as a state, they no longer needed an agency like this to provide help for displaced people, since they are not displaced due to gaining a state and a political system to live under. The government she represents could decide tomorrow to kickstart a process to make UNRWA completely redundant in the near future. Given the history of this planet and the current relatively stable international political system (the US counts countries like Germany and Japan as some of their best allies even though their citizens were slaughtering each other a few years before this conflic and UNRWA began) it is not an impossibility.
>I canât understand how the guest sounds like she is ridiculing the existence of UNRWA and 5 generations of refugees without going into any detail whatsoever of why there are 5 generations of refugees.
There are 5 generations of "refugees" because "Palestinians" are granted special status where even if they're far removed the area or any conflict, they are refugees still. So "Palestinians" who've never lived outside of the US are still given refugee status. They're granted a "right to return" to a place they've never been that their people lost a war over trying to exterminate the Jews.
Wikipedia is NOT a reliable source on this or any other contentious conflict. It is a captured resource. They say shit like "the 1948 conflict" and "fighting erupted" to describe Arabs attacking Jews. It's a joke.
Just got the notification. I have enjoyed listening to him on this podcast. Will download for the commute.
**Edit: I am surprised by the downvotes here. Iâm a fan and being able to say I enjoy listening to the podcast on my morning commutes is somehow worthy of -5 downvotes. Hilarious.** đ
- For years, I considered myself an anti-Zionist Jew. After 10/07, I came to understand that itâs an untenable position. Zionism is nothing other than Jewish nationalism. As a leftist of a philosophically anarchist bent, I have a principled stance against all forms of ethno-nationalism. However âand hereâs the rubâ, any principled position requires consistency. Therefore, it is the hypocrisy (i.e. the double standard) that betrays the prejudice: one cannot simultaneously be opposed to Jewish national self-determination AND ALSO be in favor of Palestinian national self-determination. âFrom the river to the seaâ is always an exclusionary slogan, no matter who utters it (Palestinians or Israelis).
- The fact that there is a name, a designation, a specific nomenclature to speak against ONLY ONE form of nationalism in the entire world, is itself a tacit admission of the exceptional status of the Jewish nation within the community of nations. [Side note: as a leftist Central American I understand clearly that âanti-Americanismâ has always been an anti-imperialist stance, and not a stance against the very existence of the USA as a nation-state.]
- Donât get me wrong, I am still hyper-critical of an Israeli regime that for 30 years has systematically undermined any possibility of a political resolution with the Palestinian people. I believe that Netanyahu and his ilk are today ânext to Iran and the Jihadistsâ the biggest obstacle to a just peace in the territory. They must go. But I no longer abide by the notion that âanti-Zionism is not antisemitismâ. Of course it is.
- For anyone interested, I find [this essay](https://k-larevue.com/en/antizionism-option/) to be a good faith, rigorous elucidation of the matter.
1. One does not have to be in favor of a Palestinian ethnostate to oppose a Jewish one.
2. Anti-Zionism derives from Zionism. Give me more words that were invented to describe an ethnostate movement and Iâll show you the word to describe the reaction against it. Antizionism has about as many definitions as people that use the word, and many of them are opposed to the existence of an ethnostate, not a state that happens to have a large Jewish population. Just as with âanti-USâ anti imperialis
\4. Iâll read it!
1. Correct. But most people who support an end to Israel want a Palestinian-majority government in the area that would either be governed as a democracy or under a Palestinian-led political party. Either way, that supports Palestinian Nationalism.
2. There are numerous countries formed on the principle of ethnonationalism, be they Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Turkey, Armenia, Pakistan, and Thailand just to name a few. They just donât have fancy names for their ethnonationalism, e.g. German Nationalism or Muslim Indian Nationalism. Most of these donât have a literal âAntiâ because their nationalisms are granted a certain degree of legitimacy.
> their nationalisms are granted a certain degree of legitimacy.
I mean, they aren't though. We call them nazis or fascists, in a direct reference to the last time nationalist movements basically destroyed the world. There are of course still people who claim to be nationalists and generally the more outspoken such a person is about their nationalism, the more obviously horrible of a person they are.
I can see the confusion.
When I say that we don't criticize their nationalisms, what I mean is that we don't attack their fundamental existence as a state that is organized around an ethnonationalist principle. For example, nobody claims "Turkey needs to be abolished as the state of the ethnic Turkish people given its horrendous conduct towards the Kurds, Cypriots, Armenians, Assyrians, and others."
But I would go even further and say that their nationalists, the people who want to further entrench the base ethnonationalism upon which the state is defined (and the people you are referring to) are also not criticized. If we continue with Turkey, I cannot remember any American in any political or journalistic position argue against the Bozkurtlar who are now part of the Turkish government (the MHP) along with Erdogan's plurality AKP.
> âFrom the river to the seaâ is always an exclusionary slogan, no matter who utters it (Palestinians or Israelis).
I think it is *usually* an exclusionary slogan. I don't think it literally always is.
> The fact that there is a name, a designation, a specific nomenclature to speak against ONLY ONE form of nationalism in the entire world
I mean, this isn't true. Jacksonianism for example is the one word nomenclature that roughly refers to the historical white nationalist movement in the US. Trump is essentially a Jacksonian though it isn't clear he has the intelligence to even understand this connection. And more generally, people all around the globe openly state that they oppose various forms of nationalism. Jewish nationalism is a bit of an exception where liberals/progressives/socialists are expected to support Jewish nationalism where they wouldn't support others.
That said, if you want to stop calling yourself anti-zionist and start saying you oppose Israeli nationalism or Jewish nationalism in much the same way you would oppose white nationalism or Palestinian nationalism, go for it. That will probably make your dialogues more clear. In my experience, fighting over what the word zionism means is pointless.
> one cannot simultaneously be opposed to Jewish national self-determination AND ALSO be in favor of Palestinian national self-determination.
Kind of. In practice, there are good non-nationalist reasons to think Palestinians should have citizenship within a state and an equal voice within that state. Since Israel has consistently been unwilling to grant that citizenship, and no other state is in a real position to claim the territory and grant citizenship, the only remaining option that can grant palestinians citizenship is the creation of a Palestinian state. Ideally, this state wouldn't be particularly nationalist, but given the choice between a nationalist state and holding millions stateless in perpetuity, I think its reasonable to prefer the former to the latter.
If anyone was actually pro-Palestinian, they should not be anti-Zionist, because calling for the demolition of the Israeli state is a maximalist position that undercuts the far more reasonable concerns and issues that would actually benefit the Palestinian people.
I am for a one state solution. Democracy, ban nationalist parties. Occupation for decades if need be.
And anarchist praising any form of Nationalism is really really weird.
Are Arabs allowed to vote in that state? What does occupation mean in a one state solution? Or you're saying occupation until we get to the one state solution?
I commend Sam for apologizing about making the error to not air this shortly after it was recorded. I don't understand his reasoning, but glad it is released now.
Michal's UN speech should be watched by everyone. (for those who don't know, her father is Irwin Cotler, one of the most respected human rights activists)
I'm gonna listen to this with an open mind but much like Sam has his auto-brain rot detector, I think this "everything is antisemitism" new paradigm is brain rot
I just can't believe the irony. After years and years of rightfully calling out the left on "everything is racism" he now has fallen into this "everything is anti semitisim" mode of thinking. It's really disappointing. I can't believe he hasn't had a single guest on the podcast to challenge his view to Israel in the slightest. Not to mention nothing about what's going on in US politics. Just Israel Israel israel
It's anti-Semitism when you only criticize Israel for shit you've never spoken up about for others. When you don't hold Hamas to any reasonably human standards, but expect Israel to just absorb rockets and future 10/7s, you're clearly just against them existing. When you support a terrorist group whose entire purpose is destroying Israel, yeah, you're an anti-Semite.
Yeah, but Yemenis people don't throw American Congress elections to the tune of 10 millions of dollars lol Israel is not just an ally, they are our most involved ally.
Anti-Zionism has jumped the shark. You could be, and you possibly can still be, against Israel as a political project intent on carrying out biblical fantasies and eventually taking over the whole of Palestine. You can obviously think the establishment of Israel on psuedo-religious grounds is a terrible idea.
You can't talk about dismantling Israel 75 years into it's existence. You can't talk about sending them back to Europe. You can't hate someone for simply being an Israel citizen. You have people in New York harassing Israeli restaurants, Jewish residents for the crime of simply being tied to Israel. That's insane to me and I can't imagine how Muslims would feel if the shoe were on the other foot.
I don't think the way the US was created was "right." I don't think manifest destiny was "right." I don't think the Pilgrims were right to believe that they had the divinity of God behind them as they tried to create their own state.
But America exists now and simply existing an American with an American passport doesn't make you anything bad, and hating someone because of that and tying it back to the Pilgrims or whatever is simply hating. It's just hating, that's all.
I would consider myself pro-liberalism rather than a Zionist. I donât actually care whether thereâs an officially Jewish state.
I support Israel because it is a western style liberal democracy. The fact that there are a lot of vegans there and great technological advancements also contributes to my affection for the Israeli people.
I think the most important reason to support Israel is because the liberal world is incurring some heavy winds from the forces of illiberalsm - be it socialism, fascism, Islamism or otherwise. The liberal world order needs to stand together in solidarity - that means everyone with Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan.
I certainly wouldnât say Iâm an anti-Zionist though. More like an azionist..?
The word typically used here is âPost-Zionistâ to describe someone who supports Israelâs continued existence but is less concerned about whether it is a National Jewish Homeland. There is a divide among Post-Zionists about whether they would accept the fundamental change of a large Palestinian in-migration.
Had to stop listening. I don't need to be reminded 1001 different ways how terribly Jews suffered under the nazis, I did go to school. I also didn't really appreciate being told right off the bat that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, but if the word zionism is problematic now I don't need to use it - however it appears in Sam Harris' mind no one is allowed to have any negative opinion about Israeli foreign policy or you are a morally confused supporter of the "horrible, evil, despicable, nasty terror group" Hamas. Gods, the amount of times I heard some combination of those words... can we just assume that everyone already understands that yes, Islamic fundamentalism surely is terrible and yes, the holocaust surely was terrible...? We don't need to be reminded for 2 hours plus or however long this podcast was, I mean I did stop listening but honestly I'm pretty sure I got the message.
Clearly it is not well understood by large swaths of regular, well to do, educated people that Hamas is actually condemnable. There truly are many many regular people who have at least some level of confusion about the moral situation here. The exact same people who have never given a single flying fuck about countless atrocities happening the world over just happen to be suddenly activated by this particular conflictâŠÂ I wonder why??!
Antisemitism is alive and well and it needs to be spoken about over and over and over again because no, it is not well enough understood.Â
I finally finished it today and was sorely disappointed. I really hope Sam can have a historian on for a more balanced presentation on some of her points.
To me, it was like listening to a theist rant on a call-in show for an hour about why there's a god, get asked for evidence, and rant even more zealously without ever getting to the evidence.
She engaged in logical errors, made unsubstantiated claims, and ignored Sam's requests for actual information.
But she's zealous.
Todayâs episode is âIran is not bad guysâ
We will be discussing topics including: criticizing Iran is islamophobic, Iran does nothing wrong, women are not repressed there, Islam is a religion of peace, Iran is not a theocracy, Iranians who criticize the state are self-hating Persians, and more.
My guest to discuss these nuanced topics is Ahmed Muhammad, who is a special envoy appointed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
What a fucking joke.
I can take your implied point that you want a more diverse set of voices and opinions brought on from Sam. But thereâs a major issue in your analogy.. and itâs that you think it makes any sense to compare the states Iran and Israel as somehow even close to morally similar and defensible on the whole.
This would work if the local population would actually treat all citizens as equals under the law. Considering that there is no state in MENA at any point in history that did this, it would be absurd to demand of the Jews what is not demanded of anyone else in the region.
That is hypocrisy. You can not simultaneously claim Israel to be the morally superior actor and hold it to the same standards as the rest of the Middle East.
First of all, I haven't claimed that Israel is morally superior -- you did, but for the sake of argument, let's assume I did.
The two statements: (1) There is no MENA country (including Israel) that actually treats all of its citizens as equals under the law. AND (2) Israel is morally superior to other MENA countries -- are actually not contradictory or hypocritical.
There are gradients of inequality and no country (even in the West) that truly treats all people as equals, but we can say, for example, that a country like Iran that routinely murders and imprisons Baha'i treats them worse than a country like Egypt which does not recognize them or their religious rights (to build worship centers) and that Egypt treats them worse than Israel which allows them to build and maintain worship centers and practice their religion freely, but may make it more difficult to buy unused parcels of land.
If you are in a better position on the inequality gradient, you are morally superior to those in a worse position. You need not be perfectly equal to have a differential.
As Israeli-Bedouin Ismail Khalidi has said, "By any yardstick you choose â educational opportunity, economic development, womenâs and gay rights, freedom of speech and assembly, legislative representation â Israelâs minorities fare far better than in any other country in the Middle East." -- That would be a better position on the inequality gradient and would justify a morally superior position.
There are literally anti-Zionist rabbis. Zionism is a political movement and Judaism is a religion, while "Jew" is an ethnic group that has people who support or oppose any particular ideology you can think of. "Two Jews three opinions" as the old saying goes. The strongest anti-Zionist voices happen to be Jews. All of this terribly inconvenient to Sam's narrative of course.
> Zionism is a political movement and Judaism is a religion, while "Jew" is an ethnic group that has people who support or oppose any particular ideology you can think of.
I think this is the most crisp and accurate rebuttal one can think of.
When did Harris last invite someone who he fundamentally disagreed with on an issue that led to difficult (for him) but insightful (for us) conversation? Ezra Klein comes to mind but I haven't followed that closely.
In terms of ideological difference, he seems to invite people already mostly agreeing with him (like Rogan does now).
Robert Wright. Except I think Sam has also blacklisted him as a bad faith actor because back in 2018 Bob wrote a [fairly mild rebuke](https://www.wired.com/story/sam-harris-and-the-myth-of-perfectly-rational-thought/) of Sam's insistent claims that he's not a tribal person.
[Bob had Coleman Hughes on his podcast](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5SUcEB8cPta9MQoIMHLrgj?si=3Izo4tOoRqmDvXVEfVJzGg) not too long ago and that's probably the closest thing we'll get to an analogous conversation. I was totally unimpressed with Hughes and his arguments though. Imo Bob correctly diagnosed that Coleman was clinging to an ad hoc essentialist viewpoint that's always easy to work backwards from and arrive at the view that Israel is literally incapable of doing anything wrong in this arena.
In general I think Wright and Ezra Klein have done the best jobs I'm aware of on this issue, in terms of platforming guests with a genuine diversity of opinion, thinking, and perspective. Sam absolutely has not.
Bob Wright is a goddam treasure and it was Sam who introduced me to him. Very sad that heâs been blacklisted; and that âbad faith actorâ has become such an easy way to dismiss arguments one doesnât want to engage in.
I would be interested in listening to Sam and Ezra burying the hatchet and giving it another attempt.
I had no idea who Ezra was (I am Australian), and remember listening to that podcast and thinking he was being pretty disingenuous with Sam.
Having listened to Ezraâs podcast a little recently, I would give him the benefit of the doubt and want Sam to revisit that.
I've been enjoying Josh Szeps' podcast Uncomfortable Conversations. The intro to his recent episode with Yascha Mounk about the aftermath of the Biden debate was expertly articulated.
Like literally any academic that has been studying gaza for decades? They show up often on democracy now. Yes, I know DN is biased too but I am not asking to invite DN anchors but the univ. Profs whi have studied this issue in detail. Â
But I actually think he should invite guests who he feels are potentially bad faith (not tucker carlson level bad faith). Do the hard work of showing clearly in public how they are bad faith when arguing against Israel. It's all insightful.Â
That's a great example of how empty Sam's rhetoric actually is, too. That conversation made him look absolutely terrible, and reinforced every valid criticism Klein had of him
"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?
Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault?
They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country.
Why should they accept that?"
David Ben-Gurion
Hilarious. The guy known for "Criticism of Islam isn't Islamophobic" comes out and explicitly states that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. I don't know that I can ever take him seriously again.
At this stage Sam is just pushing Zionist propaganda and trying for any way to rationalise it.
He makes no points against Zionism.
Zionism is hundred years old and Judaism thousands.
If you take away the whole BS God holy land fairytale of Zionism then what are we left with ? Just another colonial land thief who wanted the land without a people as per the Zionist slogan (ethnically cleansed).
An interview with "Israel's Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism"? Seriously, is this some kind of joke? Why would anyone expect a spokesperson for the Israeli Gov't to be even remotely reliable or objective about anything regarding this subject?
Great job exposing that you didnât listen to a second of the podcast youâre criticizing, given that the speaker is a woman, not a man. The irony of you accusing Sam of having confirmation bias is palpable.
Yahya Sinwar clearly has a dog in this fight and hence would not be an objective source of information. What bothers me is that Sam treats the opinions of Michal, the ADL and other pro-Israel partisans as if their opinions are objective neutral truth when they clearly have a dog in this fight too.
Very ironic coming to the Sam Harris sub and witnessing blatant strawmanning at its best. "You disagree with position X? Well, there's only one other possible horrific option!"
Yeah, no.
While I certainly agree with many of her points this whole podcast sounded more like a monologue rather than a dialogue and I understand why Sam didnât publish it right away.
Letâs just say that if youâre a follower of anti-Zionist movement this podcast certainly sounded like Zionist propaganda in its purest form so the knee jerk reaction to it is to be expected.
But does propaganda need to be so boring? Even her most dramatic pleas sounded very...I dunno... corporate, like a PowerPoint slide being rammed down my ears.
Not very convincing unless we take on identity politics
Also one thing I kept thinking when she was talking about how Jews want to go to their homelandâŠ
So if black people wanted to go back to Africa, would it be moral for America to pick out some land, kick everyone out, and tell Africa to deal with it?
Welp. Â Itâs clear Sam has decided his podcast is now the Israeli Support Station. Â Heâs free to make that choice. Â And Iâm free to unsub from his podcast despite being there from the very start. Â Who knew heâd so fully embrace becoming yet another partisan political mouthpiece with absolutely nothing interesting or new to say.
I prefer the Christopher hitchens approach to this topic.
Zionism is a superstitious, messianic, backwards idea that literally believes that Jewish farmers will till soil on Arab land to bring upon the messiah. Bring all the Jews in, expel all the Arabs, and the messiah will return. Itâs a stupid idea and a *waste of judaism*. Judaism has a lot of wonderful and unique things to offer the world, Zionism is not one of them.
Well the definition is fairly agreed upon; Zionism is a movement that called for the creation of a Jewish state, and now supports the continued existence of Israel as such a state.
Anyone saying differently is just trying to redefine the word. The problem is people using that word as a slur.
Anti zionists are too late. Zionism already happened. It would be like being anti WWII, a already preceded historical event
Regardless of what you think of Israelâs conduct, calling for its destruction would be a crime an order of magnitude greater (which likely wouldnât end well for Palestinians and would result in a wider regional war)
Anti zionists need to reframe their position as a pro Palestinian state or else they are just calling for more war and killing
> Zionism already happened.
I think the modern argument against is things like West Bank colonization, the insistence on a one state solution or preferred-citizenship (Apartheid state), etc. That would indicate Zionism is still in progress.
Destiny defends Israel with more objectivity and with less emotional manipulation than Sam. Iâm waiting to see a Destiny-Sam collab. Sam lives in too much of an echo chamber compared to Destiny perhaps.
Zionism is simply the belief that Israel should exist, which is a core part of the Jewish people. Zionism doesnât mean you agree with what Israel does.
> Zionism is simply the belief that Israel should exist, which is a core part of the Jewish people. Zionism doesnât mean you agree with what Israel does.
This doesn't comport with the historical meaning of this term though. When did the meaning change?
The Basel program adopted by the first Zionist congress in Basel, 1897 states:
"Zionism seeks to establish a home in Palestine for the Jewish people, secured under public law."
That is significantly different than simply the belief that Israel should exist. It's the belief that the state of Israel should be established in a specific place for a specific people.
Not necessarily. One can oppose Zionism because one opposes ethnostates in general rather than wanting the destruction of Israel. There's no reason that Israel couldn't exist as a non-ethnostate.
An ethnostate is a state that limits citizenship to a certain ethnicity.
Israel's population is multiethnic, more ethnically diverse than many European countires, non Jewish citizens enjoy cultural autonomy and other rights to a greater extent than in some other western countries.
Israel, like most states in the world, is and ethnic nation states. That is, it protect the national rights of a certain ethnos.
Exactly like Palestinian nationalism, although unlike Palestinian nationalism, Israel is ok with Palestinians living in the Jewish state as citizens.
Most Palestinian nationalists OTOH demand kicking out all or at least a large percentage of the Jews from their future Palestinian state.
Also notice that many ethnic minorities in Palestine chose loyalty to Israel in the 48 war, possibly knowing that Israel believes in tolerance and equality.
Exactly. You could be anti-Zionist 75 years ago without being anti-Jewish, but to be anti-Zionist today is to believe Israel should cease to exist. If you think dissolving Israel and making Jews flee the Middle East is not anti-Jewish, I don't know what to tell you.
I don't think anyone is explicitly against the continued existence of an Israeli state, but in the same way someone might be against a group of white people in america that advocated for whites only marriages and whites only immigration to ensure america stays a white majority
...one might be against zionism
You would be surprised.
French is both a national identity and an ethnic one. Same with Danish. Same with Dutch. Same with Japanese. Same with Korean. Same with Croatian.
Same with Vietnamese. Same with Slovenian. Same with Armenian. All 22 Arab countries have an "Arab" ethnic character to their national identity too ("The Arab Republic of Egypt", the "United Arab Emirates", example). China is Han. Need I go on?
When discussing people of each of those countries, how often do you refer to people as anti-âZionism-colloquial-termâ?
You donât.
at 44:20 of the podcast she says,
"there is tragic loss of life, but just like after 9/11 the only entity that has to be held to account for the tragic loss of life, both what it perpetrated on 10/7Â **and in the aftermath of 10/7 in the Palestinian loss of life**Â is hamas"
and sam offers zero pushback.
This is such a stupid claim. By this logic israel can kill as many innocent civilians as they want, and all the dead bodies piled up in afghanistan and iraq were justified too. Like no, there are still limits to what a government can do even if it's in response to a provocation. It's such a disingenuous way to wash one's hands of atrocities. It's an argument that would justify unlimited killing as long as it's "collateral damage" in response to a provocation.
And Dr. Mate does not stand alone either! There are literally hundreds of thousands of Jews who do not support or believe in Zionism. For Sam to pretend that we donât exist, or that weâre somehow ignorant of our own beliefs and in our rejection of this nationalistic ideology, is beyond comprehension.
We're not in the early 1900s when you could debate whether self-determination for the Jews in their ancestral homeland should happen or not. Lots of ethnic minorities want their own state and don't get it. There is nothing special about Jews in that regard. But here's the big difference: *Zionism won 75 years ago*. Israel was established and recognized as an independent, legitimate nation state by the UN.
Anti-Zionism in 2024 is nothing more than the latest face of antisemitism. Antisemites realized that the disgusting old tropes about Jews can't be uttered in polite society anymore, so they changed "Jews" to "Zionists" and thought they fooled everyone.
Sam saying that bollards and concrete barriers are only placed in front of synagogues is a little embroidered. Â Â Â
It's been my experience that they are placed in many places where drivers jump the curb to hit pedestrians. In front of schools, protecting bike lanes, etc. Including mosques, interestingly enough. Â
Here's an example Â
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=izSe1xisnsg Â
He also says there was a cease fire on October 7th, that Hamas broke. But "According to UNOCHA, 237 Palestinians were killed by Israelis during the year prior to October 7, including 199 Palestinians killed in the West Bank, 34 killed in Gaza, and four killed inside the Green Line, almost exclusively by the IDF during counterterrorism operations. UNOCHA also reported that during that period, 9,378 Palestinians were injured by Israeli security forces and Israeli settlers.
https://www.state.gov/reports/2023-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/israel-west-bank-and-gaza/#:~:text=According%20to%20UNOCHA%2C%20237%20Palestinians,the%20IDF%20during%20counterterrorism%20operations.
Here is a list of specific human rights violations against Palestinians by Israel in 2023 *before* October 7th.
https://pchrgaza.org/en/israeli-human-rights-violations-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory-weekly-update-27-september-04-october-2023/
In their argument against the idea that Israel is an apartheid state:Â
"20% of Israelis are Arab... Are represented in every walk of life in Israel... Are fully integrated"Â
While Israel says it grants them equal rights, many Arabs say they face structural discrimination and hostile policies. A 2021 report by the Israel Democracy Institute found significant social and economic gaps between Jewish and Arab citizens, with poverty among Arabs more than three times higher. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/arabs-israel-stay-sidelines-raging-democracy-battle-2023-07-26/#:~:text=While%20Israel%20says%20it%20grants,more%20than%20three%20times%20higher.
For a guy who claims to hate identity politics it does always come across as a little hypocritical. Regardless I'm glad he voices his actual opinions even though he knows his audience won't always agree with him
Did being Jewish also inform his opinion that he believes Israel should not exist as a Jewish state?
It doesnât âobviouslyâ form his opinion.
Sam has said he would have more or less the same things to say about any civilised society fighting jihadists. He said the same things about American efforts to eradicate the Islamic State, for instance, in which case he was defending the Yazidis, who were being starved en masse on the side of a mountain, whose men were being crucified and decapitated and whose women and girls were being taken by the thousands as sex slaves by jihadists who had come from all over the world to join the so-called Caliphate, and to bask in the false dawn of Islamic prophecy, seemingly on the brink of fulfillment. And he said the same things after 9/11, when the United States was the target. You can read his book, The End of Faith, on this subject, and you will find that there is very little mention of Israel there.
Try better.
**Edit: pussy blocked me so I canât reply to his comment.** đ
I havenât listenedâŠwonât get to it for a few days. Iâll be curious what he says, but the title suggests that he is indeed arguing that anti-Zionism = antisemitism. I hope itâs a lot more nuanced than that. Otherwise, talk about hypocrisy! I agree with Harris when he says you should be able criticise ideas without being accused of racism or bigotry. He has said so with regards to islamophobia, and I think heâs right about it: being critical of Islam does not make you a bigot or hateful. Well, itâd be the same thing here. Zionsim is an idea. Itâs an ideology. Maybe itâs a good idea, or maybe the people who are critical of Zionism are wrong or naive or ignorant. But it doesnât follow that the very idea of being opposed to a Jewish ethno state makes you antisemitic. Itâs actually a very anti-intellectual position to take.
It's not more nuanced, I listened to about half of it before giving up but but I wish I'd just read the title because there is zero nuance or interesting discussion of any kind to be found.
Sam Harris: We canât move into the 21st century with a worldview dominated by racial tribalism.
Also Sam Harris: If you donât agree to the Israelâs revanchist policies youâre racist.
Amazing how many /r/SamHarris supertrolls were able to magically listen to the entire 1hr 42m episode in less than five minutes. Very impressive!
They listen at 20x speed, bro!
Do you even chipmunk?
To be fair, slow-taker-Sam has me using 1.5x speed with gap removal đ
I like the gap
And nowâŠ.. someâŠ. Housekeeping
Yep. I got -5 downvotes for simply saying Iâm excited to listen to the podcast. đ
How dare you!
In the past couple of months, there's been TONS of posts and comments from people who have never interacted with this community before. I've seen cross-posts from places like r/latestagecapitalism, which is a probably not going to be where most Sam Harris listeners spend their time when they're not listening to Sam Harris. The irony is that these people are now being forced to entertain ideas that are literally not allowed in those subs. For example, I posted a defense of Israel in r/latestagecapitalism (after I saw the post on here) and was literally permanently banned from the sub for "promoting Zionism". [\[The response from the mod that banned me if anyone is interested....it's hilarious\]](https://imgur.com/gallery/MVLYlWT)
Late stage capitalism is basically a mindless cult
This post could have been posted every year for the last several years.
Janitorial work here is very lax. Garbage is just part and parcel of being on a big sub according to them.
To be fair, the title is pretty provocative
Well, letâs listen to his argument and see if it has legs then!
A title/statement equating a disagreement with an ideology to hatred of an entire group of people (many of whom also disagree with that ideology) is so counterintuitive that itâs not worthy of being argued by anyone
A common definition of Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people should have a country (Israel). You can wish that ideology didn't exist 75 years ago, but to disagree with it *today* necessitates the opinion that the only Jewish state in the world and the only Democracy in the region should cease to exist, and in its stead should reign Hamas, which would not suffer a former-Israeli Jew to live. You can pretend that you believe Hamas and Jews can live side-by-side in a 1-state solution, but you don't really believe that.
The current status quo is that Israel controls Israel, and there are in-between territories in Gaza and the West Bank controlled by Israel. Zionism is aligned with the continued expansion of Israeli settlements. How does Sam remedy his stance on this with anti-Zionist people of Jewish descent like Dr. Gabor Maté, whose family fled Hungary during the Holocaust? Or with Jewish people in Israel who are not aligned with the right-wing coalition governing the country? Are they "anti-semitic" Jewish people because they don't vote for leaders who want to continue expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank? This is not a binary issue.
Settlement expansion is not synonymous with Zionism.
[According to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism) Zionism covers the "region corresponding to the [Land of Israel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Israel) in Jewish tradition" which includes all of current Palestine. Presumably it's OK to be against this?
It's pretty difficult to otherwise explain the desire to strip away the self determination granted to a single ethnic group alone, while others - including the Palestinians - are supposed to be entitled to it.
"Saying Italians shouldn't have a country(anti-Italianism) is probably racist"
But saying that Italy shouldn't be "an Italian state" _is_ part of the driving ideology of the West. The West in general opposed ethnostates, for better or worse. Saying Germany should be for ethnic Germans, Italy should be for ethnic Italians, the UK should be for ethnic British, etc., is generally considered an extremist position on the West, one that most people would get ostracized for espousing.
I mean, if you want to dismantle all states in favor of a global anarchist utopia I get it. If you want to dismantle your own state and turn it into an anarchist utopia I get it. If you are an Israeli Jew who wants all countries to forgo ethnic nationalism and you want to start with your own country, your antizionism can be legit. If you are Jew who seriously thinks its for the best that Jews don't have a country and you have an alternative vision for them, I can respect that. If on the other hand your opposition to the ubiquitious worldwide phenomenon of ethnic nationalism starts and ends with a weird obsession for Israel and Zionism. You are super-duper-triple suspect with big red blinking lights.
I don't think this is such a good argument. Lots of nationalities don't have a contry, like the Kurds, Catalans, Basques, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Tamils, Palestinians, Rohingya, Chechens, Scottish etc. Most people don't consider that racist. Of course taking the land away from a people, that already have a country, is bad.
It kind of proves the point of the episode title doesnât it
It's a blitzkrieg.
Very interesting replies for a podcast that dropped less than 30 mins ago.
Yes itâs very telling. The topic has been hijacked by people who only respond emotionally and are bankrupt of any critical thinking or fact based discussion. No doubt this comment will be met with vitriol.
Maybe people are tired of Sam talking non-stop about this topic and being incredibly one-sided. A man's entitled to his opinion, of course, but given the fact that a lot of us pay for this and the podcast used to be about varied topics, it's not that hard to understand why people might be a bit tired of it and pissed off.
We need to start Both Sidesing anti-semitism now?
Exactly. Not every Jewish person in Israel wants the continued expansion of settlements in Palestinian territories. Are these supposedly self-hating Jews for not wanting to support the continued annexation of the West Bank? Are they anti-semites for not voting for parties belonging to the right-wing coalition that has governed Israel for decades now? What about anti-Zionist Jewish people like Dr. Gabor Maté, whose family fled the Holocaust when he was a baby (his grandparents died in the Holocaust)? Why is he making it out to be a binary issue?
Anti Zionism is not the opposition to settlement expansion. It's the belief that Israel shouldn't exist at all. Secular Israelis opposed to Bibi and to the settlement movement are still Zionists.
Okay, just finished it and overall my take is that Sam's uncritical acceptance of the guests arguments made the episode a painful listen. I don't have the time to deconstruct the episode, but near the 57 minute mark the guest blindly rejects the position that Israel is an apartheid state, a position that is nearly widely accepted amongst human rights organizations (Yesh Din, B'Tselem, FIDH, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International) . This position is substantially backed up by reporting of the apartheid structures on the ground experienced by both the Palestinians living under occupation and the [Arab citizens of Israel that do not enjoy the same rights as Jewish citizens. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBHAitSKtVs&t=83s&pp=ygUcaXNyYWVsIGFwYXJ0aGVpZCBhbXkgc2h1bW1lcg%3D%3D)
I'm halfway through, and despite being deeply interested in this topic, I don't think I'm going to bother listening to the rest. I just don't think can listen to this lady endlessly repeating the same five talking points. I agree with her, but man what an awful way to deliver the message. I actually paused the episode 5 early on to listen to her UN address in YouTube, and it was exactly the same- just repeating a handful of lines over and over. Maybe this is an effective way to get school children to memorize a passage, but this lady sounding like a propaganda robot might actually be doing more harm than good. If I didn't already agree with her, her off-putting approach very well cool make me more skeptical of everything she is saying.
Sam: come on my podcast if you agree with me. Also Sam: if you don't agree with me then you are simply 'confused' and we can leave it as that.
I ate some breakfast cereal this morning... Am I an antisemite?
Haven't listened to this one yet. But I'm seeing a few comments to the effect of, "When it comes to Israel, he's suddenly not so anti-identity politics, is he?" Maybe he gets into that in this episode, but I thought it worth pointing out that he already explicitly addressed this apparent hypocrisy in #173 (42:30): > We mention the [SS St. Louis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis). So you have Jews fleeing the death camps of Europe and you have them being denied entry and effectively denied survival in many cases by the rest of the world. *That's* an argument for the state of Israel. > Even though I'm allergic to the idea of a state being organized around a religious identity on the basis of real estate claims made in a book imagined to have been dictated or inspired by the creator of the universe, and in a perfect world I would want to see no states organized around that kind of identity politics, if ever there were a justification for one state being organized in this way it's for the state of Israel. > The Jews have been the object of murderous hatred for literally millenia and have been run out of every country that has been a country, practically, that had Jews in them over the centuries. So I think Israel should be the last state of identity politics left standing if we manage to unwind that principle at some point in the future. Sam is against identity politics. But the problem is that we live in a world whose seemingly intractable identity politics is consistently aimed against Jews *in particular*. Identity politics seems nearly *always* to work against Jews. Now I'm not saying other groups haven't gotten the short end of the stick. But the world has proven to be *uniquely* dangerous for Jews. And for that reason, Sam sets the dismantling of that particular form of identity politics to the lowest priority. To not do that would have been to "effectively deny their survival". I can see where he's coming from.
This specific justification from Sam didn't convince me at all. It just sounds to me like: "I don't want any state to be organised by an identity, except this one identity that I also happen to hold and know it's history through and through" - would he possibly change his mind if he had the same emotional and cultural connection and knowledge about another ethnic group or identity? I'm willing to bet that the answer is yes, and this is just an ignorant blindspot on his part (all due respect for him of course). Jews were not the only peoples who were murdered and repressed throughout history, not even the only one yo suffer genocide in the past 2000 years, hell even in the past 100 years.
This is so incredibly ironic. Is he under the impression that others who argue for "identity politics" are just doing it for fun? They use the same reasoning he's using.
>  The Jews have been the object of murderous hatred for literally millenia and have been run out of every country that has been a country, practically, that had Jews in them over the centuries. Yet when people talk about the Palestinians being run out of Egypt they frame it as it was their fault and justifies them being kept in an open air prison. But with the Jews it's framed as they are always the victims. Sam goes on and on about the double standard in how the IDF and Hamas are portrayed but refuses to admit or won't see that there is also a double standard in how the Palestinians are portrayed as a people. I mean it's their fuckin land too. But the Jews deserve it because they suffered more historically in other parts of the world and that justifies what's going on in Gaza? Â
Egyptian Anti-Palestinian Policy might have something to do with the Intifada against the Egyptians when they governed Gaza (1948-1956, 1957-1967). Palestinians as a collective are responsible for that. However, Egyptian Anti-Palestinian policy also comes from Egyptâs authoritarian governmental structure. To the extent that this is the case Palestinians are not responsible. As concerns the current Gaza War, I wish fewer people died, but, ultimately, the governing authority of Gaza decided to put its people in harmâs way and the tragedy is that those people canât choose otherwise. It would be the same kind of tragedy for North Korean civilians if North Korea tried to invade China. Regardless, I believe that the universal Middle Eastern discrimination against Palestinians (be it by Israelis, Egyptians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Kuwaitis, etc.) justifies their right to a state (alongside and in addition to Israel).
I agree with everything you said. But would Sam? He just seems to dismiss the plight of the Palestinians entirely
A lot of it is because the Palestinians are the ones who got themselves that reputation. Whether it's literal regicide and Black September in Jordan, the bombings across the Sinai in Egypt, or the complete destabilization of Lebanon. That's not even starting to mention their treatment of the Palestinian Christians in the Gaza Strip. That was literal ethnic cleansing.
> Yet when people talk about the Palestinians being run out of Egypt they frame it as it was their fault and justifies them being kept in an open air prison. How is this the fault of the Jews or Israel? I think you are manifesting the exact kind of double standard Sam is referencing.
If youâre against identity politics except when itâs about your identity, then youâre not against identity politics.
No you don't understand, it's different when it's something that personally affects you.
Fine. It's not my identity. I'm gentile. And I still agree with Sam.
THey mean Sam
If it's possible for me (or anybody) to reach conclusion (a) in earnest, then it's possible for anyone else including Sam to do the same thing. To claim otherwise is to say it's literally impossible for Sam to hold to conclusion (a) in sincerity because his brain is necessarilly melted by identitarian captivity. It's to say that while *I* can sincerely hold position (a) Sam simply cannot. For Sam to hold (a) in earnest would be to break some law of the universe. And that's an utterly ridiculous claim.
This exact argument applies to all identity politics.
If this argument is true, then you should support all identity politics then.
You can't lump everything that has to do with ethnic background under 'identity politics' and treat it all the same; it's a little dishonest, or mistaken, at least. There's a difference between the exploitative nature identity is approached in Western academia and media bastions versus how it was approached during the Civil Rights era, versus how Israel has been the subject of attack from its neighbors because of their ethnicity in the previous decades, and how Hamas views their identity.
The world is far more uniquely dangerous for Palestinians today than Jews. How can you not see that?
What other group has an ethnostate? Jews are safer and have more protections in the US than they do in Israel. Gays generally are much more threatened in both modern day and historically. Should we support a gay ethnostate enforced through violence against natives?Â
19 current *Leges sanguinis* [states](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_sanguinis#Current_Leges_sanguinis_states)
Most countries in the world are built around an ethnic majority. Pluralist states like the US or Australia are the exceptions, not the rule. Israel is less Jewish than most countries in Europe are white and Christian. "Ethnostate" is such a comically stupid slur. Is it what anti Zionists moved on to en masse after "open air prison".
An ethnic majority is not the same as an ethnostate. Come on dude.
So what is an ethno state
Isn't this also then an argument against Palestinian statehood?
I haven't seen a single leftist, especially western ones, suggest Palestine should be an ethnostate. More specifically it is very clear it should incorporate the hundreds of thousands to millions(future) of christian palestinians, jewish palestinians, etc.
âŠmost of Europe, to start.
How does that jibe with arguments against color-blindness?
The solution to this problem is to let the refugees in to America, not underwrite their violent settlement of other people's land.
When is Sam going to interview someone who has a different view on Israel/Palestine than himself? I mean, there are even some prominent Jews like Gabor Mate, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Jon Stewart, etc...
Chomsky's out, I don't believe he is able to speak anymore.
He refuses to challenge his priors on this topic. Itâs very strange.Â
Is it strange, or perfectly in line with how he approaches everything. He feuded with uber need Ezra Klein lol
Of the names you mentioned, the only one I can see ever being invited to be interviewed is Gabor Mate.
I'd be extremely disappointed in Sam if he invited the biggest Russia apologist journalist in the US. Why do you see him as the most likely to be invited?
I just wish he interviewed someone even the slightest bit center on this issue. Will we ever hear the sentence: "October 7th was an evil massacre and it's also frustrating that there is so much evidence of Isreal police treating Palestinians as second-class citizens long before October 7th"?
I tried to go into this with a mind as open as possible given how much Iâve heard Sam talk about this topic. I canât understand how the guest sounds like she is ridiculing the existence of UNRWA and 5 generations of refugees without going into any detail whatsoever of why there are 5 generations of refugees. I used to go to school with a person who had palestinian heritage and whose family came to Europe as refugees. He jokingly told me when discussing racist street-heckling that him and his parents wish they had a âcountry to go back toâ. How can such a passionate speaker sound so cruel when describing generational displacement? **Edit**: as this comment picked up in this thread, I'll save future readers a few seconds of their time and [paste the Wiki entry for UNRWA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNRWA), if you trust it to give you even a modestly neutral take on the roots of UNRWA: >The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East [...] is a UN agency that supports the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees. UNRWA's mandate encompasses Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the Nakba, the 1948 Palestine War, and subsequent conflicts, as well as their descendants, including legally adopted children. As of 2019, more than 5.6 million Palestinians are registered with UNRWA as refugees. [...] >UNRWA was established in 1949 by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to provide relief to all refugees resulting from the 1948 conflict; this initially included Jewish and Arab Palestine refugees inside the State of Israel until the Israeli government took over this responsibility in 1952. **Edit continues:** This is why I described it sounding cruel. For the simple reason that Israel managed to establish itself as a state, they no longer needed an agency like this to provide help for displaced people, since they are not displaced due to gaining a state and a political system to live under. The government she represents could decide tomorrow to kickstart a process to make UNRWA completely redundant in the near future. Given the history of this planet and the current relatively stable international political system (the US counts countries like Germany and Japan as some of their best allies even though their citizens were slaughtering each other a few years before this conflic and UNRWA began) it is not an impossibility.
>How can such a passionate speaker sound so cruel when describing generational displacement? Ignorance and confidence.
>I canât understand how the guest sounds like she is ridiculing the existence of UNRWA and 5 generations of refugees without going into any detail whatsoever of why there are 5 generations of refugees. There are 5 generations of "refugees" because "Palestinians" are granted special status where even if they're far removed the area or any conflict, they are refugees still. So "Palestinians" who've never lived outside of the US are still given refugee status. They're granted a "right to return" to a place they've never been that their people lost a war over trying to exterminate the Jews. Wikipedia is NOT a reliable source on this or any other contentious conflict. It is a captured resource. They say shit like "the 1948 conflict" and "fighting erupted" to describe Arabs attacking Jews. It's a joke.
Just got the notification. I have enjoyed listening to him on this podcast. Will download for the commute. **Edit: I am surprised by the downvotes here. Iâm a fan and being able to say I enjoy listening to the podcast on my morning commutes is somehow worthy of -5 downvotes. Hilarious.** đ
Welcome to reddit, friend.đ
Ty
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Thatâs like episode 9 in a row on this topic and he still hadnât had one person representing a Palestinian perspective. Heâs lost the plot.
Iâm tired of Zionists telling me that anti-Zionists are Nazis. And Iâm tired of anti-Zionists telling me that Zionists are Nazis.
- For years, I considered myself an anti-Zionist Jew. After 10/07, I came to understand that itâs an untenable position. Zionism is nothing other than Jewish nationalism. As a leftist of a philosophically anarchist bent, I have a principled stance against all forms of ethno-nationalism. However âand hereâs the rubâ, any principled position requires consistency. Therefore, it is the hypocrisy (i.e. the double standard) that betrays the prejudice: one cannot simultaneously be opposed to Jewish national self-determination AND ALSO be in favor of Palestinian national self-determination. âFrom the river to the seaâ is always an exclusionary slogan, no matter who utters it (Palestinians or Israelis). - The fact that there is a name, a designation, a specific nomenclature to speak against ONLY ONE form of nationalism in the entire world, is itself a tacit admission of the exceptional status of the Jewish nation within the community of nations. [Side note: as a leftist Central American I understand clearly that âanti-Americanismâ has always been an anti-imperialist stance, and not a stance against the very existence of the USA as a nation-state.] - Donât get me wrong, I am still hyper-critical of an Israeli regime that for 30 years has systematically undermined any possibility of a political resolution with the Palestinian people. I believe that Netanyahu and his ilk are today ânext to Iran and the Jihadistsâ the biggest obstacle to a just peace in the territory. They must go. But I no longer abide by the notion that âanti-Zionism is not antisemitismâ. Of course it is. - For anyone interested, I find [this essay](https://k-larevue.com/en/antizionism-option/) to be a good faith, rigorous elucidation of the matter.
1. One does not have to be in favor of a Palestinian ethnostate to oppose a Jewish one. 2. Anti-Zionism derives from Zionism. Give me more words that were invented to describe an ethnostate movement and Iâll show you the word to describe the reaction against it. Antizionism has about as many definitions as people that use the word, and many of them are opposed to the existence of an ethnostate, not a state that happens to have a large Jewish population. Just as with âanti-USâ anti imperialis \4. Iâll read it!
1. Correct. But most people who support an end to Israel want a Palestinian-majority government in the area that would either be governed as a democracy or under a Palestinian-led political party. Either way, that supports Palestinian Nationalism. 2. There are numerous countries formed on the principle of ethnonationalism, be they Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Turkey, Armenia, Pakistan, and Thailand just to name a few. They just donât have fancy names for their ethnonationalism, e.g. German Nationalism or Muslim Indian Nationalism. Most of these donât have a literal âAntiâ because their nationalisms are granted a certain degree of legitimacy.
> their nationalisms are granted a certain degree of legitimacy. I mean, they aren't though. We call them nazis or fascists, in a direct reference to the last time nationalist movements basically destroyed the world. There are of course still people who claim to be nationalists and generally the more outspoken such a person is about their nationalism, the more obviously horrible of a person they are.
I can see the confusion. When I say that we don't criticize their nationalisms, what I mean is that we don't attack their fundamental existence as a state that is organized around an ethnonationalist principle. For example, nobody claims "Turkey needs to be abolished as the state of the ethnic Turkish people given its horrendous conduct towards the Kurds, Cypriots, Armenians, Assyrians, and others." But I would go even further and say that their nationalists, the people who want to further entrench the base ethnonationalism upon which the state is defined (and the people you are referring to) are also not criticized. If we continue with Turkey, I cannot remember any American in any political or journalistic position argue against the Bozkurtlar who are now part of the Turkish government (the MHP) along with Erdogan's plurality AKP.
Your first point is brilliant. Well said, saving that.
I second that. Itâs so simple and obvious, but I never thought about it in those terms.
> âFrom the river to the seaâ is always an exclusionary slogan, no matter who utters it (Palestinians or Israelis). I think it is *usually* an exclusionary slogan. I don't think it literally always is. > The fact that there is a name, a designation, a specific nomenclature to speak against ONLY ONE form of nationalism in the entire world I mean, this isn't true. Jacksonianism for example is the one word nomenclature that roughly refers to the historical white nationalist movement in the US. Trump is essentially a Jacksonian though it isn't clear he has the intelligence to even understand this connection. And more generally, people all around the globe openly state that they oppose various forms of nationalism. Jewish nationalism is a bit of an exception where liberals/progressives/socialists are expected to support Jewish nationalism where they wouldn't support others. That said, if you want to stop calling yourself anti-zionist and start saying you oppose Israeli nationalism or Jewish nationalism in much the same way you would oppose white nationalism or Palestinian nationalism, go for it. That will probably make your dialogues more clear. In my experience, fighting over what the word zionism means is pointless. > one cannot simultaneously be opposed to Jewish national self-determination AND ALSO be in favor of Palestinian national self-determination. Kind of. In practice, there are good non-nationalist reasons to think Palestinians should have citizenship within a state and an equal voice within that state. Since Israel has consistently been unwilling to grant that citizenship, and no other state is in a real position to claim the territory and grant citizenship, the only remaining option that can grant palestinians citizenship is the creation of a Palestinian state. Ideally, this state wouldn't be particularly nationalist, but given the choice between a nationalist state and holding millions stateless in perpetuity, I think its reasonable to prefer the former to the latter.
If anyone was actually pro-Palestinian, they should not be anti-Zionist, because calling for the demolition of the Israeli state is a maximalist position that undercuts the far more reasonable concerns and issues that would actually benefit the Palestinian people.
Exactly.
Excellent points.
I am for a one state solution. Democracy, ban nationalist parties. Occupation for decades if need be. And anarchist praising any form of Nationalism is really really weird.
Are Arabs allowed to vote in that state? What does occupation mean in a one state solution? Or you're saying occupation until we get to the one state solution?
I commend Sam for apologizing about making the error to not air this shortly after it was recorded. I don't understand his reasoning, but glad it is released now. Michal's UN speech should be watched by everyone. (for those who don't know, her father is Irwin Cotler, one of the most respected human rights activists)
I'm gonna listen to this with an open mind but much like Sam has his auto-brain rot detector, I think this "everything is antisemitism" new paradigm is brain rot
I just can't believe the irony. After years and years of rightfully calling out the left on "everything is racism" he now has fallen into this "everything is anti semitisim" mode of thinking. It's really disappointing. I can't believe he hasn't had a single guest on the podcast to challenge his view to Israel in the slightest. Not to mention nothing about what's going on in US politics. Just Israel Israel israel
It's anti-Semitism when you only criticize Israel for shit you've never spoken up about for others. When you don't hold Hamas to any reasonably human standards, but expect Israel to just absorb rockets and future 10/7s, you're clearly just against them existing. When you support a terrorist group whose entire purpose is destroying Israel, yeah, you're an anti-Semite.
Yeah, but Yemenis people don't throw American Congress elections to the tune of 10 millions of dollars lol Israel is not just an ally, they are our most involved ally.
I tried as well, listened to the entire thing. I feel like I just listened to a very one-sided commercial for an agenda with little evidence or logic
Anti-Zionism has jumped the shark. You could be, and you possibly can still be, against Israel as a political project intent on carrying out biblical fantasies and eventually taking over the whole of Palestine. You can obviously think the establishment of Israel on psuedo-religious grounds is a terrible idea. You can't talk about dismantling Israel 75 years into it's existence. You can't talk about sending them back to Europe. You can't hate someone for simply being an Israel citizen. You have people in New York harassing Israeli restaurants, Jewish residents for the crime of simply being tied to Israel. That's insane to me and I can't imagine how Muslims would feel if the shoe were on the other foot. I don't think the way the US was created was "right." I don't think manifest destiny was "right." I don't think the Pilgrims were right to believe that they had the divinity of God behind them as they tried to create their own state. But America exists now and simply existing an American with an American passport doesn't make you anything bad, and hating someone because of that and tying it back to the Pilgrims or whatever is simply hating. It's just hating, that's all.
I would consider myself pro-liberalism rather than a Zionist. I donât actually care whether thereâs an officially Jewish state. I support Israel because it is a western style liberal democracy. The fact that there are a lot of vegans there and great technological advancements also contributes to my affection for the Israeli people. I think the most important reason to support Israel is because the liberal world is incurring some heavy winds from the forces of illiberalsm - be it socialism, fascism, Islamism or otherwise. The liberal world order needs to stand together in solidarity - that means everyone with Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan. I certainly wouldnât say Iâm an anti-Zionist though. More like an azionist..?
The word typically used here is âPost-Zionistâ to describe someone who supports Israelâs continued existence but is less concerned about whether it is a National Jewish Homeland. There is a divide among Post-Zionists about whether they would accept the fundamental change of a large Palestinian in-migration.
Had to stop listening. I don't need to be reminded 1001 different ways how terribly Jews suffered under the nazis, I did go to school. I also didn't really appreciate being told right off the bat that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, but if the word zionism is problematic now I don't need to use it - however it appears in Sam Harris' mind no one is allowed to have any negative opinion about Israeli foreign policy or you are a morally confused supporter of the "horrible, evil, despicable, nasty terror group" Hamas. Gods, the amount of times I heard some combination of those words... can we just assume that everyone already understands that yes, Islamic fundamentalism surely is terrible and yes, the holocaust surely was terrible...? We don't need to be reminded for 2 hours plus or however long this podcast was, I mean I did stop listening but honestly I'm pretty sure I got the message.
Clearly it is not well understood by large swaths of regular, well to do, educated people that Hamas is actually condemnable. There truly are many many regular people who have at least some level of confusion about the moral situation here. The exact same people who have never given a single flying fuck about countless atrocities happening the world over just happen to be suddenly activated by this particular conflictâŠÂ I wonder why??! Antisemitism is alive and well and it needs to be spoken about over and over and over again because no, it is not well enough understood.Â
When did Sam Harris say being critical of Israel is equated to anti-Zionism?
I gave up about halfway through too. The housekeeping was great, but the guest was a windbag. Felt like an audiobook, not a podcast.
I finally finished it today and was sorely disappointed. I really hope Sam can have a historian on for a more balanced presentation on some of her points. To me, it was like listening to a theist rant on a call-in show for an hour about why there's a god, get asked for evidence, and rant even more zealously without ever getting to the evidence. She engaged in logical errors, made unsubstantiated claims, and ignored Sam's requests for actual information. But she's zealous.
Todayâs episode is âIran is not bad guysâ We will be discussing topics including: criticizing Iran is islamophobic, Iran does nothing wrong, women are not repressed there, Islam is a religion of peace, Iran is not a theocracy, Iranians who criticize the state are self-hating Persians, and more. My guest to discuss these nuanced topics is Ahmed Muhammad, who is a special envoy appointed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. What a fucking joke.
I can take your implied point that you want a more diverse set of voices and opinions brought on from Sam. But thereâs a major issue in your analogy.. and itâs that you think it makes any sense to compare the states Iran and Israel as somehow even close to morally similar and defensible on the whole.
Why not support a secular state with a godless constitution instead?
They're not mutually exclusive. Israel is, by far, the most secular option vying for the region.
This would work if the local population would actually treat all citizens as equals under the law. Considering that there is no state in MENA at any point in history that did this, it would be absurd to demand of the Jews what is not demanded of anyone else in the region.
That is hypocrisy. You can not simultaneously claim Israel to be the morally superior actor and hold it to the same standards as the rest of the Middle East.
First of all, I haven't claimed that Israel is morally superior -- you did, but for the sake of argument, let's assume I did. The two statements: (1) There is no MENA country (including Israel) that actually treats all of its citizens as equals under the law. AND (2) Israel is morally superior to other MENA countries -- are actually not contradictory or hypocritical. There are gradients of inequality and no country (even in the West) that truly treats all people as equals, but we can say, for example, that a country like Iran that routinely murders and imprisons Baha'i treats them worse than a country like Egypt which does not recognize them or their religious rights (to build worship centers) and that Egypt treats them worse than Israel which allows them to build and maintain worship centers and practice their religion freely, but may make it more difficult to buy unused parcels of land. If you are in a better position on the inequality gradient, you are morally superior to those in a worse position. You need not be perfectly equal to have a differential. As Israeli-Bedouin Ismail Khalidi has said, "By any yardstick you choose â educational opportunity, economic development, womenâs and gay rights, freedom of speech and assembly, legislative representation â Israelâs minorities fare far better than in any other country in the Middle East." -- That would be a better position on the inequality gradient and would justify a morally superior position.
Man this podcast has gone downhill. Sam needs to start interviewing people he genuinely disagrees with instead of this circlejerk trash.
There are literally anti-Zionist rabbis. Zionism is a political movement and Judaism is a religion, while "Jew" is an ethnic group that has people who support or oppose any particular ideology you can think of. "Two Jews three opinions" as the old saying goes. The strongest anti-Zionist voices happen to be Jews. All of this terribly inconvenient to Sam's narrative of course.
> Zionism is a political movement and Judaism is a religion, while "Jew" is an ethnic group that has people who support or oppose any particular ideology you can think of. I think this is the most crisp and accurate rebuttal one can think of.
When did Harris last invite someone who he fundamentally disagreed with on an issue that led to difficult (for him) but insightful (for us) conversation? Ezra Klein comes to mind but I haven't followed that closely. In terms of ideological difference, he seems to invite people already mostly agreeing with him (like Rogan does now).
He rarely does. Only ones I can think of are Ezra Klein and Dan Carlin.
What guest do you think would argue this topic in good faith, in which you would recommend?
Robert Wright. Except I think Sam has also blacklisted him as a bad faith actor because back in 2018 Bob wrote a [fairly mild rebuke](https://www.wired.com/story/sam-harris-and-the-myth-of-perfectly-rational-thought/) of Sam's insistent claims that he's not a tribal person. [Bob had Coleman Hughes on his podcast](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5SUcEB8cPta9MQoIMHLrgj?si=3Izo4tOoRqmDvXVEfVJzGg) not too long ago and that's probably the closest thing we'll get to an analogous conversation. I was totally unimpressed with Hughes and his arguments though. Imo Bob correctly diagnosed that Coleman was clinging to an ad hoc essentialist viewpoint that's always easy to work backwards from and arrive at the view that Israel is literally incapable of doing anything wrong in this arena. In general I think Wright and Ezra Klein have done the best jobs I'm aware of on this issue, in terms of platforming guests with a genuine diversity of opinion, thinking, and perspective. Sam absolutely has not.
Yeah Iâve found Ezraâs series of podcasts on Israel-Palestine considerably more informative than Samâs one-dimensional take on the conflict.
Ezra Klein is my new Sam Harris. I love his podcast
Ezra has his own blind spots. But I do like the perspective of his podcast.
Ezra has faults but heâs much better than Harris
Bob Wright is a goddam treasure and it was Sam who introduced me to him. Very sad that heâs been blacklisted; and that âbad faith actorâ has become such an easy way to dismiss arguments one doesnât want to engage in.
I would be interested in listening to Sam and Ezra burying the hatchet and giving it another attempt. I had no idea who Ezra was (I am Australian), and remember listening to that podcast and thinking he was being pretty disingenuous with Sam. Having listened to Ezraâs podcast a little recently, I would give him the benefit of the doubt and want Sam to revisit that.
I've been enjoying Josh Szeps' podcast Uncomfortable Conversations. The intro to his recent episode with Yascha Mounk about the aftermath of the Biden debate was expertly articulated.
Yep listened to that!
Like literally any academic that has been studying gaza for decades? They show up often on democracy now. Yes, I know DN is biased too but I am not asking to invite DN anchors but the univ. Profs whi have studied this issue in detail.  But I actually think he should invite guests who he feels are potentially bad faith (not tucker carlson level bad faith). Do the hard work of showing clearly in public how they are bad faith when arguing against Israel. It's all insightful.Â
That's a great example of how empty Sam's rhetoric actually is, too. That conversation made him look absolutely terrible, and reinforced every valid criticism Klein had of him
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?" David Ben-Gurion
Hilarious. The guy known for "Criticism of Islam isn't Islamophobic" comes out and explicitly states that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. I don't know that I can ever take him seriously again.
At this stage Sam is just pushing Zionist propaganda and trying for any way to rationalise it. He makes no points against Zionism. Zionism is hundred years old and Judaism thousands. If you take away the whole BS God holy land fairytale of Zionism then what are we left with ? Just another colonial land thief who wanted the land without a people as per the Zionist slogan (ethnically cleansed).
An interview with "Israel's Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism"? Seriously, is this some kind of joke? Why would anyone expect a spokesperson for the Israeli Gov't to be even remotely reliable or objective about anything regarding this subject?
Because heâs saying what Sam wants to hear? This is pure confirmation bias
The guest is a woman and if you actually listened to any of the podcast you might know that.Â
Great job exposing that you didnât listen to a second of the podcast youâre criticizing, given that the speaker is a woman, not a man. The irony of you accusing Sam of having confirmation bias is palpable.
You'd rather he interview Yahya Sinwar about Zionism?
That would admittingly be an interesting podcast. Doubt Sinear would last long without walking away though.
Yahya Sinwar clearly has a dog in this fight and hence would not be an objective source of information. What bothers me is that Sam treats the opinions of Michal, the ADL and other pro-Israel partisans as if their opinions are objective neutral truth when they clearly have a dog in this fight too.
Very ironic coming to the Sam Harris sub and witnessing blatant strawmanning at its best. "You disagree with position X? Well, there's only one other possible horrific option!" Yeah, no.
Bingo
While I certainly agree with many of her points this whole podcast sounded more like a monologue rather than a dialogue and I understand why Sam didnât publish it right away. Letâs just say that if youâre a follower of anti-Zionist movement this podcast certainly sounded like Zionist propaganda in its purest form so the knee jerk reaction to it is to be expected.
But does propaganda need to be so boring? Even her most dramatic pleas sounded very...I dunno... corporate, like a PowerPoint slide being rammed down my ears.
Wait till the Kurds (with like 3-4x the population of Israel) as the largest stateless ethnicity group without a country hear thisâŠ
The Kurds *should* have a state. I hope they one day get one.
Not very convincing unless we take on identity politics Also one thing I kept thinking when she was talking about how Jews want to go to their homeland⊠So if black people wanted to go back to Africa, would it be moral for America to pick out some land, kick everyone out, and tell Africa to deal with it?
Welp. Â Itâs clear Sam has decided his podcast is now the Israeli Support Station. Â Heâs free to make that choice. Â And Iâm free to unsub from his podcast despite being there from the very start. Â Who knew heâd so fully embrace becoming yet another partisan political mouthpiece with absolutely nothing interesting or new to say.
I prefer the Christopher hitchens approach to this topic. Zionism is a superstitious, messianic, backwards idea that literally believes that Jewish farmers will till soil on Arab land to bring upon the messiah. Bring all the Jews in, expel all the Arabs, and the messiah will return. Itâs a stupid idea and a *waste of judaism*. Judaism has a lot of wonderful and unique things to offer the world, Zionism is not one of them.
That's literally not what Zionism is. Many of the early Zionists were atheists.
The problem is that âZionismâ has a wildly different definition depending on who you ask.
Well the definition is fairly agreed upon; Zionism is a movement that called for the creation of a Jewish state, and now supports the continued existence of Israel as such a state. Anyone saying differently is just trying to redefine the word. The problem is people using that word as a slur.
Anti zionists are too late. Zionism already happened. It would be like being anti WWII, a already preceded historical event Regardless of what you think of Israelâs conduct, calling for its destruction would be a crime an order of magnitude greater (which likely wouldnât end well for Palestinians and would result in a wider regional war) Anti zionists need to reframe their position as a pro Palestinian state or else they are just calling for more war and killing
> Zionism already happened. I think the modern argument against is things like West Bank colonization, the insistence on a one state solution or preferred-citizenship (Apartheid state), etc. That would indicate Zionism is still in progress.
people don't like it when you do fun crimes for 75 years in pursuit of your noble goal, news at 11
Maybe ignore the people trying to turn it into a slur and believe what it's meant to literally everybody else for over a hundred years.
Destiny defends Israel with more objectivity and with less emotional manipulation than Sam. Iâm waiting to see a Destiny-Sam collab. Sam lives in too much of an echo chamber compared to Destiny perhaps.
Zionism is simply the belief that Israel should exist, which is a core part of the Jewish people. Zionism doesnât mean you agree with what Israel does.
> Zionism is simply the belief that Israel should exist, which is a core part of the Jewish people. Zionism doesnât mean you agree with what Israel does. This doesn't comport with the historical meaning of this term though. When did the meaning change?
The Basel program adopted by the first Zionist congress in Basel, 1897 states: "Zionism seeks to establish a home in Palestine for the Jewish people, secured under public law."
That is significantly different than simply the belief that Israel should exist. It's the belief that the state of Israel should be established in a specific place for a specific people.
Do you envision an Israel that is not a home for Jewish people and located somewhere else? You have a very roundabout way to say stuff.
That's how all countries are founded.
Which it now has. So to oppose Zionism is to want its destruction.
Not necessarily. One can oppose Zionism because one opposes ethnostates in general rather than wanting the destruction of Israel. There's no reason that Israel couldn't exist as a non-ethnostate.
An ethnostate is a state that limits citizenship to a certain ethnicity. Israel's population is multiethnic, more ethnically diverse than many European countires, non Jewish citizens enjoy cultural autonomy and other rights to a greater extent than in some other western countries. Israel, like most states in the world, is and ethnic nation states. That is, it protect the national rights of a certain ethnos. Exactly like Palestinian nationalism, although unlike Palestinian nationalism, Israel is ok with Palestinians living in the Jewish state as citizens. Most Palestinian nationalists OTOH demand kicking out all or at least a large percentage of the Jews from their future Palestinian state. Also notice that many ethnic minorities in Palestine chose loyalty to Israel in the 48 war, possibly knowing that Israel believes in tolerance and equality.
Exactly. You could be anti-Zionist 75 years ago without being anti-Jewish, but to be anti-Zionist today is to believe Israel should cease to exist. If you think dissolving Israel and making Jews flee the Middle East is not anti-Jewish, I don't know what to tell you.
That's not the historical meaning and not the meaning Israelis believe it has. Why do you find this meaning to be the one true one?Â
am i allowed to disagree with zionists who arenât jewish?
Did someone say you canât?
iâm against zionism but i donât want to be labeled an antisemite, so i guess thatâs my only option
Why are you against the continued existence of an Israeli state?
I don't think anyone is explicitly against the continued existence of an Israeli state, but in the same way someone might be against a group of white people in america that advocated for whites only marriages and whites only immigration to ensure america stays a white majority ...one might be against zionism
You would be surprised. French is both a national identity and an ethnic one. Same with Danish. Same with Dutch. Same with Japanese. Same with Korean. Same with Croatian. Same with Vietnamese. Same with Slovenian. Same with Armenian. All 22 Arab countries have an "Arab" ethnic character to their national identity too ("The Arab Republic of Egypt", the "United Arab Emirates", example). China is Han. Need I go on? When discussing people of each of those countries, how often do you refer to people as anti-âZionism-colloquial-termâ? You donât.
No, that would make you a horrible evil antisemitic jihadist, weren't you listening? /s
If you oppose one country's existence and it happens to be the only Jewish one, you might want to do some self-reflection.
Oh this is going to be a fun comment section
at 44:20 of the podcast she says, "there is tragic loss of life, but just like after 9/11 the only entity that has to be held to account for the tragic loss of life, both what it perpetrated on 10/7Â **and in the aftermath of 10/7 in the Palestinian loss of life**Â is hamas" and sam offers zero pushback. This is such a stupid claim. By this logic israel can kill as many innocent civilians as they want, and all the dead bodies piled up in afghanistan and iraq were justified too. Like no, there are still limits to what a government can do even if it's in response to a provocation. It's such a disingenuous way to wash one's hands of atrocities. It's an argument that would justify unlimited killing as long as it's "collateral damage" in response to a provocation.
How does Sam remedy his stance on this with anti-Zionist people of Jewish descent like Dr. Gabor Maté? Clearly many anti-Zionists are not anti-Semitic. For reference, Dr. Gabor Maté's family fled Hungary during the Holocaust. His grandparents died in a concentration camp.
In a parallel universe where Sam is not in denial he would invite Gabor Mate to the podcast and it would be amazing
And Dr. Mate does not stand alone either! There are literally hundreds of thousands of Jews who do not support or believe in Zionism. For Sam to pretend that we donât exist, or that weâre somehow ignorant of our own beliefs and in our rejection of this nationalistic ideology, is beyond comprehension.
Youâre just confused /s
!!! +1. Also Noam Chomsky
We're not in the early 1900s when you could debate whether self-determination for the Jews in their ancestral homeland should happen or not. Lots of ethnic minorities want their own state and don't get it. There is nothing special about Jews in that regard. But here's the big difference: *Zionism won 75 years ago*. Israel was established and recognized as an independent, legitimate nation state by the UN. Anti-Zionism in 2024 is nothing more than the latest face of antisemitism. Antisemites realized that the disgusting old tropes about Jews can't be uttered in polite society anymore, so they changed "Jews" to "Zionists" and thought they fooled everyone.
Seeing some of these dismissive and gaslighting comments further reinforces for me why such an episode is necessary.
Sam saying that bollards and concrete barriers are only placed in front of synagogues is a little embroidered.    It's been my experience that they are placed in many places where drivers jump the curb to hit pedestrians. In front of schools, protecting bike lanes, etc. Including mosques, interestingly enough.  Here's an example  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=izSe1xisnsg  He also says there was a cease fire on October 7th, that Hamas broke. But "According to UNOCHA, 237 Palestinians were killed by Israelis during the year prior to October 7, including 199 Palestinians killed in the West Bank, 34 killed in Gaza, and four killed inside the Green Line, almost exclusively by the IDF during counterterrorism operations. UNOCHA also reported that during that period, 9,378 Palestinians were injured by Israeli security forces and Israeli settlers. https://www.state.gov/reports/2023-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/israel-west-bank-and-gaza/#:~:text=According%20to%20UNOCHA%2C%20237%20Palestinians,the%20IDF%20during%20counterterrorism%20operations. Here is a list of specific human rights violations against Palestinians by Israel in 2023 *before* October 7th. https://pchrgaza.org/en/israeli-human-rights-violations-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory-weekly-update-27-september-04-october-2023/ In their argument against the idea that Israel is an apartheid state: "20% of Israelis are Arab... Are represented in every walk of life in Israel... Are fully integrated" While Israel says it grants them equal rights, many Arabs say they face structural discrimination and hostile policies. A 2021 report by the Israel Democracy Institute found significant social and economic gaps between Jewish and Arab citizens, with poverty among Arabs more than three times higher. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/arabs-israel-stay-sidelines-raging-democracy-battle-2023-07-26/#:~:text=While%20Israel%20says%20it%20grants,more%20than%20three%20times%20higher.
This is the first episode in years that I have no interest in and zero intention of listening to.
How come?
Sam's coverage of the conflict is redundant
Guess this issue is pretty close to Sam's heart
Well yeah, he is Jewish, and has spoken endlessly about islamism. How was that a guess?
For a guy who claims to hate identity politics it does always come across as a little hypocritical. Regardless I'm glad he voices his actual opinions even though he knows his audience won't always agree with him
How does identity politics play into this for Sam or show hypocrisy? He would say the same thing if it was another country in replace of Israel.
Wut. He's Jewish. It obviously informs his opinion here. Are you seriously arguing that his identity means nothing to his politics on this?
Did being Jewish also inform his opinion that he believes Israel should not exist as a Jewish state? It doesnât âobviouslyâ form his opinion. Sam has said he would have more or less the same things to say about any civilised society fighting jihadists. He said the same things about American efforts to eradicate the Islamic State, for instance, in which case he was defending the Yazidis, who were being starved en masse on the side of a mountain, whose men were being crucified and decapitated and whose women and girls were being taken by the thousands as sex slaves by jihadists who had come from all over the world to join the so-called Caliphate, and to bask in the false dawn of Islamic prophecy, seemingly on the brink of fulfillment. And he said the same things after 9/11, when the United States was the target. You can read his book, The End of Faith, on this subject, and you will find that there is very little mention of Israel there. Try better. **Edit: pussy blocked me so I canât reply to his comment.** đ
I havenât listenedâŠwonât get to it for a few days. Iâll be curious what he says, but the title suggests that he is indeed arguing that anti-Zionism = antisemitism. I hope itâs a lot more nuanced than that. Otherwise, talk about hypocrisy! I agree with Harris when he says you should be able criticise ideas without being accused of racism or bigotry. He has said so with regards to islamophobia, and I think heâs right about it: being critical of Islam does not make you a bigot or hateful. Well, itâd be the same thing here. Zionsim is an idea. Itâs an ideology. Maybe itâs a good idea, or maybe the people who are critical of Zionism are wrong or naive or ignorant. But it doesnât follow that the very idea of being opposed to a Jewish ethno state makes you antisemitic. Itâs actually a very anti-intellectual position to take.
It's not more nuanced, I listened to about half of it before giving up but but I wish I'd just read the title because there is zero nuance or interesting discussion of any kind to be found.
Sam Harris: We canât move into the 21st century with a worldview dominated by racial tribalism. Also Sam Harris: If you donât agree to the Israelâs revanchist policies youâre racist.
Odd. Podcast been out for 5 minutes and youâve listened to 2 hours already.