"The civil rights movement was about expanding freedom for those who have been deprived of it. It had an expansive view of equality. It argued that because our rights were God-given and because we were all created equal, that equality under the law must follow." -- These days, that defines "Christian nationalism".
Yes! So tired of being told we are Nazis or fascist because we love our country and we love and trust God and we fully understand that all our rights and freedoms are given only by God.
The people of Germany were among the most "educated" of their day in the years before WWII, especially in the natural sciences. Non-Jews in the best German universities went along with the Nazis in expelling Jewish professors and students whom they knew personally. Now the most "educated" in American universities, including the presidents and deans, stand by and let students, staff and faculty forcibly prevent speakers who support the State of Israel or who even just want there to be a discussion of what is happening in Gaza.
My father was an engineer who worked on the Manhattan project with a number of Germans who fled the nazis He told me years later he was stunned by how far advanced the Germans were in physics and science. Education , morality, and empathy have no common ties.
If Hitler has listened to his Generals on the Eastern Front the Germans would undoubtedly have won that war. Churchill quipped at one point that the best General the British had was Adolph Hitler.
And given that they DID develop jets at the end of the war, had already developed ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, and would have developed atomic weapons in relatively short order, we are very lucky we are not speaking German.
But to reverse an old saw, I would rather be smart than lucky. But Americans are not smart. Not, at least, the graduates of most of our universities.
I struggle to find a credible source to support that claim. Can you cite your evidence source(s)? Apologies in advance if you feel that I'm 'over-exercising' my freedom.
Don't be a drama queen. I would never criticize you for expressing your opinion. I'm not a Democrat and I am not Woke.
Forty years ago I was listening to AFRTS, Armed Force Radio and Television. Its AM radio was mainly news and commentary. I believe it was Cokie Roberts had a weekly one hour commentary and she mention the 90% figure. I can't remember to pick up bread at the store but I do remember trivia like what Roberts said. The statistic she gave stunned me and I have remembered it ever sinse.
I'm not, actually. It's only today's sad reminder that anybody who believes education alone leads necessarily to enlightenment really hasn't spent much time around universities. I say this as a university faculty member.
I just listened to Tucker Carlson's excellent interview of Xi Van Fleet, who lived through the Cultural Revolution, and one point she made was that the murder began at the Chinese equivalents of Harvard and Yale.
It's also a matter of historical fact that the German National Socialist Worker's Party had many of its most important and enthusiastic followers at the best German universities. All the kids who are Antifa now would UNQUESTIONABLY have been Hitler Youth and early volunteers for the SS back then.
To the extent a high degree of IQ intelligence makes it unnecessary to do practical, directly useful work, it also prevents all the feedback and learning and practical humility that come easily and naturally to people who do real jobs, like electrical work, drywall, plumbing and farming.
Pondering this a tad more--and I tend to use these sorts of things as prompts for my own ruminations--I am going to suggest a key problem MAY be that college students in non-scientific fields PAY NO PRICE FOR BEING WRONG. As Thomas Sowell wrote long ago, those are the precise people you don't want in charge of anything that matters.
The stupidest polices don't affect them, the stupidest ideas have no real world consequences they can't deny and lie about; and if you add to this ARROGANCE of the sort that being a member of an elite school makes likely, then you have a perfect storm of ignorance and presumption that has no natural feedback loop. You can be wrong across a career and a lifetime. You can damage the people you claim to value, and if you lack integrity you simply blame everyone else. And since you run the system--since you are an aristocrat in a world of serfs--your finances and your life are both quite good.
So it would sense that the blindness is most pronounced at the most selective schools.
Well, as you would know if you read, well, any credible news source, Navalny was not murdered, was he?
And am I personally condoning your decision to be arrogant and ignorant by interacting with you? I don't think so. I think you should stop.
Tucker did not endorse Putin. What he did is provide a needed corrective to the relentless war mongering and anti-Putin/anti-Russian propaganda we can assume is funded by, because it most directly benefits, the War Industry.
Do you support the stupid murder of hundreds of thousands of people? Obviously you must, because that is the first little thought that came into my little head, and feeling is truth. Right?
Respectfully, he appears to have taught you something with his recent interview. Of course, it might not have been what he intended to teach you - if he intended anything. Hopefully, you agree that he was free to conduct the interview. And that the rest of us are free to review, interpret, assess, debate and draw our own conclusions about its lessons.
I have not concluded that Carlson or Putin should be our moral teacher now. I also value multiple teachers over a lone one. And I do not consider the lessons taught by any of them to be the final word on any subject.
Yes, this question was asked after 1945 as well. All of the anecdotal evidence was that the most educated were the least courageous in resisting the Nazis or escaping in time.
Yes, this was the Jewish community’s opportunity to support freedom by being the modern equivalent of “virtuous gentiles” commemorated at yad vashem. Instead, per Bari’s talk, we are reminded of those Jews who didn’t even follow Moses into the desert– – they stayed in slavery with the pharaoh, or at best worshiped Baal. At least there were many Jewish scientists and journalists, such as Alex Berenson, who spoke out for freedom and informed consent. (More in Europe) . But NYC should not have accepted those mandates.
It is a valid question. I guess I'd respond with who is more like the Nazi's? We know the Mufti, during WW2, sided with the Nazi's in the initiation of the conflict with the Jews and today this conflict would not be taking place if Hamas had not attacked. Did Hamas just wake up one day and decided to murder all those people. No, it seems clear by the continual rocket fire over the years and the tunnels and war rooms built under hospitals and schools that their mindset is on warfare. They could have focused on making homes and a life for their people since 2005 when Israel left Gaza, but their choice was to prepare for continuing war and violence. Choices have consequences.
Bonhoeffer took part in an assassination attempt on Hitler and for that he was arrested and killed. That there may shed light on what side he would be on as he was willing to take up arms in what might be called a just war.
You know as well as I that Bibi has been backing Hamas for years in order to tell the world Israel "has no partner for peace," in order to make an end-run around the possibility of a "two-state solution," because Bibi and his friends on the Israeli right plan to keep the Palestinians subjugated and miserable for the rest of time. A decade ago, the excellent Israeli documentary called The Gatekeepers brought together six former heads of Shin Bet itself. They were all bitterly experienced and old enough to recall 1967 and 1973 and all the rest. They were not "self-hating Jews." They were simply as tough-minded a group of bitterly experienced Israeli wise men as you could find anywhere. And their unanimous position was the same as Ehud Olmert's as he left office for jail: Israel either finds a way to create a just state for the Palestinians, or Israel is doomed. Full stop. The idea that Israel is "destroying" Hamas is preposterous. It is simply lighting fires of hatred it will have to contend with for as long as the Palestinians do not have a state of their own. As everyone knows, most Gazans are young. Many will be willing to literally do anything--anything--to avenge the tens of thousands Israel has killed in this war. Among the wildest cheers on earth for Hamas' actions on Oct. 7 were those in Pakistan, a nation with as many nukes right now as Israel and the nation which taught Iran how to make its own. The real nuclear "existential threat" to Israel comes from Pakistan, not Iran, though it may well come through Iran, and Hezbollah or Hamas. How can Israel forever protect Tel Aviv from a dirty bomb at a minimum when far more than a billion Muslims are on Hamas' side? Hamas sprang a terrible, viciously brilliant trap on Israel on Oct. 7. Hamas designed its atrocities to be so bad that Israel could not resist the trap. Now kids at all America's best colleges will be pouring over Rashid Kahlidi's account of The Hundred Years War on Palestine [by Zionists]. All the rich Jewish donors in the country cannot stop this, or stop the kids from signing up for courses on "Palestine and Israel" taught by PC professors. The kids will have seen the footage of Oct. 7, and footage of the IDF killing desperate Gazans trying to get food for their children, as well as footage of the famine--and plagues--about to descend on Gaza. How can anyone think this will be good for American-Israeli relations? Soon Gen Zers and the largest, most progressive generation in American history, before the Gen Zers, the millennials, will be running America with their tech and AI money and their votes, just as the Boomers have for the past thirty years. When the Boomers thought of "Israel," their next thought was "the Holocaust." When younger Americans think of it, the next thought for many will be Gaza. Just as Hamas planned.
"Hamas designed its atrocities to be so bad that Israel could not resist the trap. " Nonsense.
Hamas is merely following the example of their esteemed prophet, and their religious teachers to urge them to "kill the Jews wherever you find them" in ways calculated provoke paralyzing terror. Right now, Muslims are doing the same to Christians in Africa.
What Hamas didn't expect was that (1) Israel would dump the Konceptzia and go for a deep cleaning of Gaza, and (2) their Arab allies would stand aside and secretly cheer for the Jews.
Or, as Kurtz so memorably puts it in Heart of Darkness, "Exterminate all the brutes," right? Those women, kids, and old people are all just animals anyway.
Hamas has made this a battle to the death - by their own words. If it is not the death of Hamas, it will be a second Holocaust of us Jews.
Hamas must be wiped out at all costs. The Gazans elected them, just as the Germans elected the Nazis into office. They pay the price. Leftists and Jihadists must pay the price for their foolish voting, just as we conservatives are told we have to.
Wasn't it Obama who said that elections have consequences?
"When Asian Americans were discriminated against, did you see their cause as being essential to our own? When American doctors were censored for questioning the efficacy of lockdowns, were you as outraged about this as you were about people who refused to wear masks in March 2020? When, just across town, a statue of Teddy Roosevelt was removed from outside the American Museum of Natural History, did you protest?"
80%+ of the New Yorkers you addressed would answer NO. They were also fine with forcing the unclean to show papers in order to keep their jobs or enter restaurants. Will they ever change their minds or vote and act differently? We are running out of time before the red guards tear down what’s left of western civilization. Teddy's statue is one of many torn down over the past decade: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/founding-fathers-statues-monuments-removed
Because dictators increase the rules like joe is doing. Trump cut the rules 3 for every one new one. Hard to become a dictator when you are freeing citizens from the bureaucratic state. Just one example.
Unless you've got something really good to lay on us, that's about as stupid a comment as I can imagine. This sounds like an example of someone having been assigned an opinion and then being so emotionally controlled that they cannot be rational. Give us some hints of things Trump did in his first term that even look a bit like what you are worrying about. From what I've seen, the current gang are the true enemies of freedom.
PS Google Timothy Snyder, a Yale professor and one of the greatest experts on fascism in the world--which may disqualify him from being "intelligent" in your book, since he sounds kind of "elite." When Trump arrived on the scene in 2016,, the parallels between him and his cult and past fascist leaders and their cults were so obvious that Snyder wrote a warning for America called On Fascism. He has continued to cover Trump's moves further and further in the direction of fascism ever since, with nothing but evidence and reasoned argument. His new book is On Freedom. But of course he'll seem pretty "stupid" to you, I'm sure.
And Democrat leaders like Jerry Nadler and Chuck Schumer, both of whom are Jewish and support the censorship and totalitarian moves of the Biden Administration. Both of them support damaging “our democracy.” Can’t they see what they are doing?
Can't you see what you are doing by supporting Bibi's Israel's "Messiah," Trump? If everyone, according to you, should be against Biden, implicitly they should all be for Trump, since he's the only other option now.
I was hoping she would address more fully the tyranny of mask mandates, vaccine passports, our soldiers and Seals being kicked out of service to their country, and I could go on and on - which it seems like so much of American Jewry supported. Where were they when we needed them to fight back with us against this insidious madness? I completely support Jews in their fight against Hamas - who needs to be eliminated from this earth - I just wish they had our back in 2020 and 2021
The (D)ifference is that Bari feels antisemitism is more dangerous (bodily harm/violence) vs. loss of civil liberties (mask mandate, vaccine passports). I’m not saying it’s right, but that is likely the magnet beneath her moral compass.
A beautiful, thoughtful, highly informed and inspirational speech, Bari, and I’m glad that you recognized censorship of doctors during Covid as a “turn against freedom”. But as Yuri suggests, there was a lot more than that. How could so many Jewish communities go along with NYC vaccine passes? This was the most blatant recent example where so many quietly decided that “disagreeing with neighbors wasn’t necessary” to maintain their own freedom. (And where were the Jewish communities in Australia when covid vax dissenters were thrown in “camps”?)
Like northeastern Jews after the Holocaust, who realized that Hitler’s techniques for demonizing Jews were modeled after our own Jim Crow laws,, the current Jewish Inteligentsia needs to recognize that all assaults on freedom are bad for America (and for the Jews, as you say, by implication.) How about speaking out against future Covid lockdowns, mask mandates and vax “passes“? This would go a long way to disassociating those good people who “answer to a higher authority” such as yourself, from the Rachel Maddows in this country.
I shudder to consider whether the entire Covid framework (including the strange compliance by Israel) wasn’t a troubling but convenient way to show the world that, once placed in the same position to “get along” (ie worship Baal as you note), so many Jews would do the same as central and eastern Europeans did in the 1930s, to “separate” themselves from the state-targeted “vermin” of that day (laying the groundwork for the rest.) . But it’s not too late, Bari. Please speak out against these infringements of our freedom and humanity, like you have so bravely fought censorship.
"How about speaking out against future Covid lockdowns, mask mandates and vax “passes“?"
I think it really depends on fatality rates. With a 1% fatality rate COVID turned out not to be that big of a deal. But what if it was 10% like SARS, or God forbid 30% like MERS?
I think we've taken a lot of the wrong lessons from COVID.
They knew by the fall of 2020 that the fatality rate was very low, and even that was contrived because of the killer Remdesevir and over use of ventilators in the hospitals (to “protect” the doctors and nurses, not to help the patients!). They only did the vax mandates in the summer of 2021, once the public realized that the shot didn’t prevent spread (per the outcome of the party in Martha’s Vineyard). These mandates were not intended to prevent disease. They even urged pregnant women and children to get these shots, when both had been excluded from the trials, and there were no tests that had been done concerning either benefits or harms. Dare to know! Watch this week’s 4 hour senate hearing convened by Ron Johnson.
Actually, no. Masks protect you from spit and blood, but even then, there were experiments done, way before Covid, showing that doctors wearing masks even in the operating room spread more germs than when they didn’t wear the masks.
Masks were a virtue signaling exercise, like posters of chairman Mao, BLM, or “thank God for Dr. Fauci“ signs. Shameful to force people to wear them.
Well, no, estimates of cumulative excess USA deaths 2020-2023 are about 1.3 million. It doesn’t really matter whether they died of covid or with covid or without covid, they’re still dead. It’s probably not coincidence they died amid a pandemic. We can be righteously mad about the egregious assault on liberty without having to downplay the facts.
Agreed. People downplay the seriousness of Covid. And as far as I can tell, masks had some efficacy in preventing the wearers from spreading it to other people. A common sense strategy and not terribly inconvenient.
And when people carry on about how the death rates were lower than predicted they seem to be ignoring the fact we took so many countermeasures just to keep that rate low, and they worked.
First you downplay the facts and then say we shouldn't do so. If the facts say heart attacks are killing the people treating them with a vaccine for covid does no one any good. As we have now found out about Vietnam, civilians and military lied to then public during the whole debacle. During covid, the CDC and government lied to the people. No one was saved by the lies but more died becasue of them. the facts have been established by research after the pandemic. And the findings are not good for the lock them down, wear a mask and get vaccinated group.
This is a brilliant speech by Bari Weiss... much like her speech at the Federalist Society.
Both remind me of a great joke I heard once. It started like this:
"A group of leftists walked into the ruins of the bar that they just burned down to order a drink..."
Leftists have caused this. It is just that simple. Leftists are the problem. And nearly all leftists vote Democrat. The Democratic Party of the United States must be destroyed. Why is it, that the party of the Confederacy and the KKK can still survive in America? Why does anyone think this group can be "reformed"? Would those same people think it credible if someone said, "well, I know the Nazis were bad in the past but we're the NEW Nazi party... we don;t want to kill Jews anymore..." ? Nope. But with Democrats... no sense of history matters. None.
So all the vast majority of American Jews who've been "leftists" have been morally wrong? Really? MLK was one of our greatest leftists, wasn't he? So were Rabbi Herschel and the Jews who died on Freedom Rides wrong to support him? He was not just fighting for racial justice for blacks, but for economic justice for all poor Americans, like any good leftist.
And I forgot your original point: YES, American Jews who have been leftist have been morally wrong. This is a true statement. Leftist Jews who support (or supported) communism and socialism in other countries were morally wrong. ALL of them were morally wrong. YES.
All leftism of this sort is morally wrong. All of it. They build nothing. They make nothing. They add nothing to the world.
Claiming MLK as a "leftist" is such a tired trope. MLK would be cancelled by today's leftists. Leftists don't fight for racial justice or anything of the sort. Leftists fight for destruction. They build NOTHING. And every nation that attempts to install leftist beliefs into their system eventually reverts to extreme poverty and repression.
It's clear you know little about my fellow Atlantan King whatsoever. Read the superb new Jewish bio of King by Jonathan Big, who does an excellent job of re-emphasizing King's fight for the poor of all races. You seem to know little about Northern Europe as well, where "leftism" has made nations like Denmark perennially the happiest and most just on earth. "Leftism" is synonymous with the most successful, happiest, most just societies on earth in Northern Europe, even though conservatives naturally prefer to equate "leftism" with Venezuela. Don't confuse "leftism" with PC either. PC has been the Boomers' forty-year academic distraction from the age-old central focus of "leftism," which has always been economic fairness--NOT gender, race, and freedom to love whom you please, fine as those causes are too. King was every bit as much for LBJ's "War on Poverty" as for his civil rights laws. King would be in the streets with the "Cease fire now!" crowd now, just as he was with the antiwar marchers of his day. Israel is in a tragic situation. It fell into Hamas' fiendish trap and will never be able to reclaim the respect of the world unless it does a 180, like Germany after the Nazis, or the Boers after apartheid, and creates a just two-state solution. Since Israelis are now more determined than ever never to do this 180, Israel's international reputation is absolutely fated to sink like a stone. How are rich donors going to prevent the studying of the Gaza War and the history of the Palestinians since the rise of Zionism in all our best colleges? How are these donors going to prevent professors from assigning the great Columbia historian--one of the school's most internationally famous professors--Rashid Khalidi's magisterial history called The Hundred Years War Against the Palestinians? How are donors going to prevent their own children from reading such texts and becoming critical of Israel? Israel and rich donors don't care what the world thinks. But that doesn't stop the world from thinking. Tom Friedman, one of the wisest friends Israel has ever had, and a proud Jew, has done his best to save Israel from itself from Oct. 7 to now. To no avail. We can all see now that America's response to 9/11 was incredibly stupid and wasteful. One day, Israelis, sadly, will feel the same about their response to Oct. 7. My heart weeps for the rightful sadness, rage, and stark terror Jews evertywhere have felt since Oct. 7. The impulse to quell the fear with slaughter has been understandably, tragically irresistible--as it was here before. But the whole world is watching as totally predictable mass famine threatens the helpless Palestinians, and as hysterical, starving Palestinians are shot down by the IDF trying to feed their children. American politics is on the verge of a generational change as great as the takeover of the country by the overwhelmingly conservative and economically neollberal Boomers in 1992. Unless Trump establishes a dictatorship this year, the much, much more progressive millennials and Gen Zers are going to replace the Boomer supporters of Bibi at the polls. Soon thereafter, America will have leaders who no longer give knee-jerk support to an Israel radicalized to the right by Oct. 7. Israel at that point will literally not have a national "friend" in the world. An interesting Israeli history of Israel has the frightening title The Land of Blood and Honey. The tragedy seems always to only grow deeper. I feel profound sadness for all Jews everywhere, and for the Jews and Palestinians trapped in this endless death struggle in what the great American Jew, Aaron David Miller, one of my favorite public figures in America, has sadly dubbed, with wry Jewish humor, "the much too promised land."
Agree that Israel has made a strategic error by responding as they did to the intolerable provocation by Hamas, though to ask them to do otherwise may be too much of a stretch for human nature. Am curious what you think they ought to have done. Visit the same tortures on some random Palestinians? Probably your prediction that the more anti-Israel sentiment will be the outcome us a good one.
Read some reviews of the "Hundred Years War Against the Palestinians". No doubt a one-sided history, as are most books on either side of any controversy. The NYT reviewed it in 2020 and I am going to try and post a link. The associated comments to the review are at least as informative as the review itself.
I do feel as many do that the Palestinians have refused each offer of peace including the original partition plan. And have had the misfortune of Gaza being ruled by Hamas psychos who care zero about them and so were willing to provoke this war. Having Bibi and the hardline faction in Israeli government has been bad for that country as well.
"Agree that Israel has made a strategic error by responding as they did to the intolerable provocation by Hamas, though to ask them to do otherwise may be too much of a stretch for human nature. Am curious what you think they ought to have done."
They should have gone in hard, fast, and without mercy. This would all be over by now.
Bari, I love you. I’ve had so many truly awful arguments with people I love and have known for decades since October 2023. Bring up the go-pro videos of Hamas and I get shouted down by “30,000 dead Palestinian children”. Ask what a proportionate Israeli response is and I get “Netanyahu is a criminal”. Ask about the hostages and I get 30,000 dead Palestinian children. It never stops and it never will. Anti semitism has hijacked the western progressive thought makers and media. The NYT are complicit in this and my heart breaks for us. However considering the NYT denied the Ukrainian Holodomyr nearly 100 years ago should tell us about their reporting
People with no sense or understanding of the history of the area have no logical or intellectual responses. Rather than intelligent discussion and learning they can only shout slogans and insults.
Are you suggesting that the members of Likud don't know the location of the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea? Because your reading comprehension sucks. My point was that the morons advocating "river to the sea" bullshit here in America couldn't find either place on a map, even if they knew the names of the bodies of water. But that went over your head, because, well...
If you had bothered to look up the ***uncut*** version of the Likud's "river to the sea", you would have known that it refers to SECURITY CONTROL, not ethnic cleansing.
Are you really unaware that in Israel there are 1.2 MILLION former Palestinian Arab citizens, while in the Palestinian territories there are ZERO Jews allowed?
"People with no sense or understanding of the history of the area have no logical or intellectual responses. Rather than intelligent discussion and learning they can only shout slogans and insult"
Something I have been saying (well shouting actually) for 20(?) years
History, History, History! You have to know at least Something Of history, or you are going to be 1. confused 2. make the wrong choices. You think (the topic at hand) Just Happened? You can connect the dots of (the topic at hand) going back 1000 years.
How many American Jews have read the eminent Palestinian and honored Columbia historian , Rashid Khalidi's account of the history of the last century on the land now called "Israel"? The book is The Hundred Years War Against the Palestinians. There is more than one historical memory in what Aaron David Miller has rightly called "the much too promised land."
Yes I have. lets just say he is not exactly what i would call A Good Guy. His basic position is Israel has no right to exist..Kill The Jews. But what do you expect from a member of MESA.
Just one tiny problem: The land "now called Israel" is called ISRAEL because that was its name 3000 years ago. Another tiny problem: 100 years ago the only people called "Palestinians" were Jews.
The NYT has been anti-Semitic for more than 100 years.
Read "Print to Fit: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel 1986-2016" by Jerold S Auerbach
Leftists have always been remarkably bigoted, and suffer from a serious lack of self-awareness. They lump people into groups and judge them as such (see DEI). They have good intentions ... as pave the road to hell.
I don't believe anyone should be shouted down, especially by friends or loved ones.
But when you bring up the killing of about 1,400 people and the kidnapping of another couple hundred, do you really think people will automatically agree that it's much worse than the wanton killing of 30,000 people?
Hamas knew what would happen when they attacked. The Hamas officials have said as much. Hamas even said “we love martyrs. Jews love life.” Google this in case you think I made this up. When a missile from their side missed its mark and landed in a hospital parking lot within an hour The Gaza Health Ministry had a precise number of dead and the missile was Israeli. Neither claim was true. The countries surrounding Gaza have had months to act so that innocent citizens could get out of the Hamas-Israeli armed conflict. And yet…. Where is the outrage toward Egypt? Syria? Jordan? The very same people who argue for open borders on the US for those escaping violence in Central America seem unable to grasp that several Arab nations have no interest in getting innocent Palestinians out of harms way.
There is no point arguing with Buttoil. He is an unrepentant Jew-hater, just using slick words to justify why his beloved Palestinians (and Hezbollah and Iran) should finish Hitler's work, and the Jews should just go quietly to their deaths again.
That's a lot of what-aboutism. It's Hamas's fault, it's Egypt's fault, it's Syria's fault, it's Jordan's fault.
Does any of the fault for 30,000 dead Gazans lie with Israel? Or are you stating that all 30,000 deaths are lies from the Gaza Health Ministry? How many dead will be enough for Bibi?
The real question you should be asking is 'How many dead will be enough for Hamas?" They could end the war today by surrendering and returning the hostages. Instead, they hide beneath and behind those very Gazan civilians you are so concerned with, because they WANT those Gazans to die.
Actually, no. The score is 30,000 - 1,400. It's like if the Chiefs played Middle Tennessee State. And the score continues to run up on dead Gazans. The Israelis are the ones currently killing many Palestinians. So it's a reasonable question to ask how many you want to kill.
So you believe the "Gazan Health Ministry." Got it. Unlike GHM/Hamas, the Israelis don't want to kill anyone. You want a ceasefire? There was one in place for years before Hamas broke it and deliberately started this cycle of carnage. These 7th century barbarians counted on the useful idiots of the world to buy their BS, and they weren't disappointed. Congratulations! Just remember when you contribute to the "Gazan Relief Fund", where that money is really going.
Sorry, but the moment you compared this to a football game is the moment you lost me. A football game happens on a field with rules and this war is not about racking up a higher "score". Unfortunately Hamas isn't playing by the rules of war. In fact, by firing rockets from civilian locations (and hiding their operations in civilian protected buildings like hospitals and schools) they are literally committing war crimes. Israel absolutely has the right to destroy Hamas (who has explicitly stated that their goal is to eliminate all Jews and the nation of Israel, making this a self-defense operation). But Hamas continues to hide behind civilians. That "30,000" number you keep throwing around (which I don't believe is accurate, by the way) is directly the result of Hamas' actions. Out of the two of them, it's clear that Israel cares more about the Gazans than Hamas does.
Bibi didn't start the war, Hamas and Gazans did. Whatever Gaza Health Ministry is saying is lies because the Ministry is Hamas. I hope no one needs to explain why as it is obvious.
So if they're lying about 30,000, approximately how many people do you think Bibi has killed? That's not a rhetorical question. You call bullshit on 30K, what's your number?
There is no if. Hamas is lying. There is a war in Gaza, in which Hamas uses the death of civilians to its advantage. Buildings easily collapse because the foundation beneath them is hollow due to tunnels' structure. There is no verifiable way to estimate how many civilians got killed as Hamas militants often don't wear uniforms, but all who died are on Hamas and Hamas only.
The number is a red herring. There was a ceasefire on Oct 6. Hamas broke it. If Hamas were actually concerned for the suffering of their citizens, they could have released the hostages months ago. Hamas seeks glory through martyrdom because Hamas is a barbaric death cult. They also won't be content until every single person is a convert or dead, so I hope you don't have plans.
I searched the archives but I was unable to any record of relief convoys sailing to the aid of the poor, starving German and Japanese civilians during WWII. General Sherman said it well: "War is Hell". As other commenters have noted, this is exactly what Hamas intended to create, images of dead, injured or otherwise suffering civilians including children. Where are the protests demanding that Hamas immediately accept an unconditional surrender. That would end the death and destruction inGaza.
The fact that you accept all the Palestinian numbers and narrative without question but doubt anything the IDF says speaks volumes to where your head is. If they don't stop Hamas now, how many more Oct 7 attacks must they endure? Hamas has said they have no intention of changing their charter, which is the destruction of Israel, so there is no reason to believe they won't reconstititue and continue attacking again in the future.
What exactly am I doubting from the IDF? I looked back through these comments, and don't see my questioning of the IDF. So your main point is therefore deliberately misleading.
I guess I'm keying into your statement "wanton killing of 30,000 people" that implies they are randomly killing Palestinians with no discrimination and that is not true. Unintended casualties are an unfortunate reality in military activity, so to wanton tells me you don't believe the IDF has any methodolty or strategy beyond simple killing anyone they see.
If it wasn't the fault of the Allies, who exactly killed all those Japanese and Germans? If you're talking about the fault for the war, I place it with Germany, Italy, and Japan primarily.
The Allies' air attacks killed the civilians. Fault, however, is a different thing. If you start a fight, the consequences you get in return are your own fault, not that of the one you attacked who is retaliating.
If “wanton killing” refers to Gazans who , like the German people, facilitated and supported a Nazi regime their deaths were the direct result of their own choices and richly deserved. There was nothing “wanton” about it.
The Allies certainly killed a lot of German civilians, and plenty of Japanese civilians. Perhaps it's a matter of degree. If the Soviets tried to treat Germany the way Israel is treating Gaza, every single German civilian would have to have been killed. Probably all the Austrians, too. Probably the Swiss as well, at least the ones who spoke Swiss-German. And they still wouldn't be at the death count ratio Israel currently enjoys.
Oh my........where to start? We killed Germans (many civilians) until they surrendered. Same with the Japanese. In Germany we used incendiary bombs on civilian and military targets. In Japan, incendiary bombs and then 2 nuclear. Hamas can surrender and stop the killing of Gazans. They can give up their arms, step down from the government, allow others to govern. Nothing is stopping them. So, it is they who are continuing to allow civilians to die.
Are you sure that you know what you are talking about? Soviets robbed and raped through Germany in all possible ways without too much regard to a human life. It was justified, but definitely an example quite opposite of how Israel treats Palestinians.
Even Hamas does not claim 30,000 children have been killed, but it does claim that the majority of dead were women and children, and does not separate out the thousands of Hamas fighters that have been killed from the total deaths of Gazans.
I don't know. You should probably ask the person who wrote '30,000 children.'
The terms I used were 30,000 deaths, 30,000 people, and I've also used the terms 'civilians' and 'Gazans.' I've never said 30,000 children have been killed. A shitload of Palestinian children have been killed, that's for damn sure, but I don't think it's 30,000.
They also sat outside Warsaw and watched as the Nazi's destroyed the city, killed Jews, raped women, and marched thousands to work camps in Germany, when they could have easily gone into the city and stopped it all.
In 1939, there were fewer than 500 million people (other than the Soviets who lived in the European part of the USSR). The Soviets lost 9 million soldiers and 20 million civilians in the war.
Israel's body count ratio is currently 30,000 : 1,400, (20 : 1)
If the Soviets had killed everyone in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, their kill ratio would still only be 3:1.
For the Soviet Union to have a similar kill ratio as the Israelis currently do, they would have had to kill every single person in Europe.
Thank about that for a minute.
To be as bloodthirsty as the Israelis are currently being toward the Palestinians, the Soviets would have had to slaughter every living person on the continent.
So, yes, on this I'm quite sure I know what I'm talking about.
" If the Soviets tried to treat Germany the way Israel is treating Gaza"
Just shows your ignorance of how the Soviets treated Germans at the end of WW II, including ethnic cleansing of German communities in the east (some of which dated back to Peter the Great), the rape of perhaps a million German women, plus the ethnic cleansing of the Germans of Silesia and the Sudetenland. I'm not disagreeing with you, you don't merit that kind of respect, and there's nothing to disagree about. Those are facts and you're just ignorant, as I stated above.
"every single German civilian would have to have been killed. Probably all the Austrians, too."
There are over 2 million people living in Gaza. Even if you believe Hamas' numbers, that's 1.5% of the population, not the entire population. Go check the numbers on U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You'll find that the ratio of civilians killed relative to combatants is much lower for Israel's war against Hamas. Either way, you're woefully bad at math. In WW II the number of German and Japanese civilians killed was irrelevant. What was important was getting them to unconditionally surrender. This isn't a video game; the objective is the destruction of Hamas, not killing x Palestinians for every Israeli killed.
Whatever the number, the fault lies with Hamas, not the Israelis. Hamas started this war. Hamas uses Gazan civilians as human shields. It is their strategy to cause as many Palestinian deaths as possible to generate propaganda that is consumed by fools like you.
There is no “wanton killing” by Israel, and that’s well known because their efforts to move Gazans to safety is all over the news. Unlike Hamas, Israel doesn’t target civilians. If that 30,000 number is even correct (which is doubtful, since Hamas lies), it is mostly the result of Hamas putting their own people in harm’s way. After 10/7, Israel moved its own population out of harm’s way, displacing them- with all the discomfort that entails- so as to save their lives. Why? Because Israel cares about the lives of its own people. Has Hamas done the same for its people? Absolutely not. In fact, they do the opposite. They deliberately put their own people directly in harm’s way. They even murder them for such simple things as trying to get food off of an aid truck(because Hamas is stealing it or charging for it to fund their war). No. Hamas is the bad guy. Israel is the good guy. Hamas is the perpetrator. Israel is the victim.
What do you mean by "wanton" killing? What makes the deaths that have taken place in Gaza "wanton"? The idea of proportionality is incredibly simplistic. Should the IDF have gone into Gaza and raped the exact number of Gazan women as Hamas raped on Oct. 7? Should the IDF have burned the exact number of Gazan babies to death as Hamas did to Israeli babies on Oct. 7? Should the IDF have forced the same number of family members watch as they tortured, raped and killed other family members as Hamas forced Israeli family members to watch while Hamas tortured, raped and killed other family members? Should the IDF have take the exact number of Gazan civilians hostage and be now holding them in airless damp tunnels for four months and counting, to match the hostages Hamas has? Seriously. This is a war which Hamas started on Oct. 7, when it broke the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that had been in place since 2021. Hamas has been the party which has broken every ceasefire since it took over Gaza in 2007. And even Hamas has never stopped lobbing rockets into Israel and never prevented other terrorist groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad from attacking Israel. As for 30,000 people, according to the IDF about 40% of those were Hamas fighters, not civilians. And they died because Hamas has intentionally sited its military infrastructure inside of and underneath hospitals, apt. bldgs, schools and even the UNRWA bldgs, making it impossible for the IDF to root out Hamas without also injuring and killing civilians. Also, the IDF estimates that thousands of the civilians who have been killed and injured were victims of rockets misfired by Hamas itself and by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and American intelligence agrees. The photographic evidence including from satellites shows that many "hits" attributed to Israeli fire were actually immediately after launches from Gaza itself that landed in Gaza rather than in Israel. You really need to do more than compare tallies of how many have been wounded, killed and kidnapped by each side.
Holly Hart, this is an excellent and well stated point. Builttoill appears to believe that the whole decision for wars to continue or end should be based upon proportionality. America practiced that in Vietnam, and I am certainly not supporting that war, but LBJ's proportionality only worked to make the war continue. I think the same could be said for Afghanistan. Almost seems someone wants these wars to go on and on!
WW2 was the last war in which the victors fought to end the war by destroying the capability of the enemy to continue to fight. This has not happened since. No one wants war, but like they say about guns, if you are going to pull it out, you better plan on using it.
Just a small comment on Vietnam. I remember “Hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Chants on college campuses. Yet those chanters never acknowledged Ho Chih Minh’s determination to fight until he had no soldiers left. And having no soldiers left wasn’t because they got too old. Ho had no limit of acceptable deaths and any opposition to him was swiftly punished. Hamas sees any Palestinian as theirs to give their life in fighting the Zionist.
When the chicken shit cowards who did the killing did so without putting a uniform on and burned civilians and kids and tucked their cowardly tails and hid under hospitals, hell yes. 100% on them. FOFO.
They could have saved EVERY SINGLE DEAD Gazan by giving back the hostages on October 8th. There’s not real one man in Gaza. Not the gutless Hamas, nor the Gazans who’ve watched while it happened.
The male Gazans should form an all out assault on their Hamas warlords to the death and be proud to be part of the force that finally rid the world of that vile scourge on humanity. That’s the kind of martyr worth celebrating.
Imagine if Gazans agreed to join with the IDF to exterminate HAMAS. They could have gotten rid of their supposed hated masters. They could have saved thousands of lives.
No, the Gazans love martyrdom and hate Jews more than they love their own lives. They are happy to sacrifice their children, their wives and themselves for the glory of Allah.
You should work on those anger issues. Also, it turns out the sensationalized stories about dozens of babies burned alive and beheaded are turning out to be not true.
When 3,000 Americans were murdered on 9-11, America attacked Afghanistan, which housed Bin Laden and al Qaeda, and tens of thousands of others died with them.
Yes, I think the 9-11 attack was much worse. I'd explain why to you, but it's obvious I'd be wasting my breath.
Do you seriously want to compare terrorist attacks to determine which was worse? They're all bad.
Approximately 120,000 Afghan soldiers, police, and civilians were killed in the Afghanistan War. Of a population of 20 million. And it took more than 20 years.
In less than 5 months, Israel has killed 30,000 Gazans, of a population of a bit over 2 million.
Very simple arithmetic demonstrates just how bad the Israeli response has been.
Why would I tell it to Hamas? Your statement makes no sense. I made my comment to people who think that anyone they talk to will equate 1,400 deaths (and now reports are that it is more like 700) with 30,000 deaths. And before you start with the "Hamas is lying about 30,000!", Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin testified in Congress last week that more than 25,000 women and children have been killed in Gaza. Twenty-five thousand. Just women and children.
But wait a minute, you wouldn't care if anyone says 30,000 have been killed, because you are hopeful that all Gazans will be killed. Probably all Palestinians.
You missed your calling in life. Auschwitz was liberated 79 years ago. Given that you think Jews should not resist Nazis, you would have made a good camp guard.
You’re someone who, upon learning someone disagrees with you, starts calling names and throwing insults. I don’t hate anyone, not even dipshits who can’t have a discussion without calling people Jew-hater, antisemite, Nazi. I’m really hard to offend, but calling me those horrible things offends me.
You know, it really is childish to call someone criticizing the current government a Nazi. Like, 5th grade childish. And as argument stuffers go, it’s even less effective than “I know you are, but what am I?”
I'll wait 'til Tzahal has re-occupied Gaza in its entirety and we can find out what the actual casualties are: Arab fuckheads, be they religious or secular, make things up for shits and giggles. A large part of the Israeli political community would like to make up stuff for shits and giggles themselves; but you try keeping the other ~80% on such a message; you'd have far better luck herding cats.
Look up the writings of the NYTimes Pulitzer prize winning Walter Duranty or that of Nikole Hannah Jones, another NYTimes Pulitzer winner and you may realize that the NYTimes' claim to be an epitome of objective reporting is as accurate as its reporting on the Gaza war.
My main takeaway from this is that the Jews who protest for Hamas today are the ones who would have chosen to stay in Egypt. Brilliant. I have family who I will never share another Passover seder with.
The world is a better place with moderate and courageous voices like yours. You could have kept your head down at the NYT, spouting meaningless aphorisms to get the lunatics off your back, but at great personal and professional risk you struck out on your own.
It's insane that we've reached a point where moderate voices are controversial, but we need leaders like you to re-right the ship. You're continuing to take huge risks and I am proud of you. Chutzpah. Thank you.
Could not agree more. Bari, somewhere Rabbi Sacks is smiling. Also, please know, your powerful and inspiring words speak not just to the Jewish people, but to anyone who loves individual freedoms and responsibilities, including non-Jews like me. You speak for the dream that is, or increasingly was, America. You have more allies than you know.
We really need to stop immigration for a period of assimilation. This is not without precedent. The fact that there are enough supporters of terrorist in the USA to have political clout says that immigration is broken to a point it puts our nation at risk. Even some of our elected leaders in congress are not supporters of our constitution and are allowed to violate their oath. Bari, I appreciate your honest and loud voice fro truth in America. We can save this nation with voices like yours. I am pro immigration but we need people that believe in our constitution , judo-christian values and the dream of America and freedom.
David, the USA was founded on the separation of church and state. Buddhism, Islam, and many other religions have values followed by many Americans. I'm sure you're not supporting religious favoritism immigration, but it could be taken that way. How about we look for immigrants who believe in our Constitution and the dream of America and freedom. Seems like it would be enough.
1st amendment is to keep government out of the business of church, not the other way around. All those faiths mentioned have every right to speak their minds. I agree though that we need people that believe in the Constitution. I find that much of what is going on today on our universities, in our court rooms and especially in the media is tearing down the rule of law and destroying the protections of both the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Fully agree that our rights are being undermined. Especially in the media, where censorship is growing.
You know what the funny thing about religion is? People sure do kill each other over it an awful lot. "Nothing to kill or die for / and no religion too." I believe John Lennon had it about right.
I grew up thinking that and yet when I started reading about the Crusades, the witch trials and compared them with what the communists did in Russia and China and elsewhere it pales in comparison. That is not to advocate for the crusades or other crimes by "Christians", but Matthew 7:21-23 says many claim to know Jesus who really do not. As a believer though I think this short life we live is the prequel to the real thing.
But HOW can immigrants be effectively screened to see if their values align with our Constitution and our core values of freedom? HOW? Anyone can learn how to game the system and give the "correct" answers.
You're so right. If you have seen interviews of illegal immigrants at the border, when asked why they are here, the ones who aren't coached, say, "Work."
Says Wikipedia, “Organized crime groups generate large amounts of money by activities such as drug trafficking, arms smuggling, extortion, theft, and financial crime.” Sounds like a pretty accurate description of the State. King Solomon would be hard pressed to separate them.
Wonderfully done Bari. Although you state "[o]ur American idols are prestige, power, social acceptance, popularity, elite opinion, and the Ivy League—but I repeat myself. Our idols are the coveted board seat. The best tables. Relationships with the pretty people." Isn't it long past time to recognize that the true "golden calf" of too many of modern American Jewry is the Democrat Party. Which has now devolved into a power mad, divisive bunch of totalitarians who are perverting the rule of law and allowing the very madness you deplore.
Oh and btw had the 92nd St Y event been better publicized, we would have been there to support you and stand up to the barbarians at the gates.
Everything that the left is doing to stop Trump is also effectively destroying the rule of law. Do we believe the bill of rights is for everyone? Innocent until proven guilty or I don't like you, you're mean and have mean tweets so you don't get due process.
I oppose most of the things the left does as well. I refuse to vote for Biden. But while Biden has many many many faults. He didn't try to steal an election
Neither did Trump. That was Biden’s thing. Do you actually believe he legitimately won that election when he didn’t even campaign? When the country was doing so well under Trump? That it wasn’t from election interference in the form of censoring people on social media, hiding the Hunter Biden laptop, and ballot harvesting and stuffing? Now that you see what these DA’s are doing to Trump, can there be any doubt that the system is rigged against him? And finally…are you okay with it when Dems declare elections stolen (a la Hillary Clinton, Stacy Abrams, et al)?
I said he tried to steal the election. He lied about it for months, then he tried to get fake slates of electors, and pressure Pence to do something unconstitutional.
Oh, and then say back and watched the riots instead of sending in the national guard (so dereliction of duty)
It was Pelosi's job to secure the Capital and she didn't do it. Tarrick Johnson, a Metropolitan cop who was in the Capital at the time has spoken extensively how he was calling for help and it was not there.
As for stealing the election, this is not the first time that elections have been called into question. We've even had states send different slates of electors in the past. Do we now arrest everyone who questions the results, questions the process, especially the millions of mail in ballots without any chain of evidence?
I will agree that the riot disrupted the process that was taking place inside. I would have liked to have seen if our leaders would have handled the election like Congresses in the past according to the Constitution, but now we will never know.
I think they were happy with the "Reichstag" moment and how it gave them cover to avoid their Constitutional duty.
To your detriment as well as to the detriment of all Jews. Trump got the Abraham Accords and he moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. No modern American President has done more for Jews.
Bari Weiss - one of the best journalists of our modern era. Always thankful for your perspective, Bari, and in this case, exceptionally grateful I am ably “free” to say so.
Bari- You need to deliver this speech to Congress / Senate as they have forgotten what it means to choose freedom over oppression and conformity. Unchecked and uneducated colonization by untold nationalities that only want but don’t want to become American are destroying us. They want to turn America into the same shit holes they left.
Israel I admire for their courage and determination and should never have to sacrifice security to any made up population that was expelled by their neighbors or chose hostility over peace.
Our so called leaders have become cowards and life long political grifters. They truly need to be reminded that freedom and democracy can disappear quickly. Long live Israel!
I live part-time in the East Bay, 30 miles from UC Berkeley.. It is done. Gone. Over. The law school Boalt School of Law has been renamed. The law school is churning out radicals faster than rabbits and crazier and dumber than wild turkeys. The school and community are liberal cesspools. I would never reference UC Berkeley again. It stinks. It has always been this way but now, with the current national political climate, it is emboldened. Berkeley Police are an oxymoron.
I graduate from Boalt in 1975 when UC Berkeley was still in tune with the free speech movement. Truly a lifetime ago and moving in the wrong direction.
Invite a conservative or Republican, Jew or Non Jew once in awhile. How about taking Dershowitz off your BDS list ? Most progressives despise the Jews with a sick passion...time to wise up on who your allies are.
You speak of American exceptionalism and how we lost that idea. You are exactly right, and the loss of the exceptional idea of America and the type of freedom it embodied is the cause of so much that is wrong with our country, and the world, today. I think it is important to call out when, exactly, we lost it. I recall a President who criticized and mocked the idea of American exceptionalism and was widely praised by all the newspapers and widely loved by many people. When he took office he noted that now America would be transformed. That was President Obama and we are living the fruits of his policies and ideology.
The Jewish people that I know voted for Obama . There is a picture of him and Farrakhan that the MSM hid from the public until after he got elected.These people still sing Obama’s praises. BLM is antisemetuc!
Jews are so insecure that they are big into ‘accommodation’ - this did not help them in Nazi Germany and it will not help them now with the Progressive Democrat Left. Hopefully, they will realize this in time.
Who knew that when Tucker Carlson went to Russia to interview Putin he’d be described as a “rightist who glorifies tyrants” and a “demagogue” for pointing out that Moscow has nice supermarkets and impressive subways? This is a distortion of context, and a false moral equivalence in spades.
Other than that, another sublime effort by Bari Weiss! Let me be the first to nominate her as our ambassador to Israel in the next Trump administration; provided, of course, that she has the courage to vote her brilliantly expounded convictions and support the man responsible for the Abraham Accords.
Tucker also praised the Russian 'McDonalds'. What he failed to say is that all of these modern conveniences were mere copies of Western progress. He never left central Moscow so he experienced nothing of ordinary Russians who live lives of desperation and true oppression.
Tucker was not praising the Russians and Putin. The point was a rebuke of American leaders for allowing our own cities to fall to such a state that even Moscow looks better. It was a well-deserved indictment of American leadership, far too subtle for those who can only shout “Putin lover!” in response. A little disappointed that Bari is apparently among that group.
It won’t happen. The Jewish people I know, I no longer call them friends, will continue to vote Democrat. Even if Biden is running against Trump, they will still vote for Biden. They really don’t care that this administration has ruined America.
They all need to watch this speech. But they won’t.
As a Jew and a Trump supporter, I am alone and alienated in my own family. No one will even listen to me when I try to point out the truth about the Democrats. My own nephew called me a fascist (for saying Israel had to win this war), and my brother in law called me a racist (because I pointed out BLM’s anti-Semitic Marxist agenda).
I just hope that Bari’s audience at the Y, which apparently was made up of movers and shakers, will start to change the trajectory we’re on. America needs major life support, and the Jewish community along with it.
Stay strong! Their name-calling speaks volumes! They know they have nothing to debate against you so they call you names. Maybe someday they will see the light. I admire your courage.
I liked that speech. We disagree on some things—which I have certainly not been hesitant to point out—but if these words were sincere, I am glad to call you fellow American.
And it was never difficult for me supporting Israel, or for that matter being censored everywhere continually for bucking the idiotic and indefensible lies told during COVID, because to me truth and courage and wisdom are all that matter, and I have structured my life for maximal freedom of the sort you describe.
I have been hurt many times, in many ways, but I have a clear conscience and can honestly say I work daily to soeak the truth, do what is right as I see it, and grow as a person. I really believe this is all God asks of us.
Vote for the candidates who promote freedom of thought , freedom of expression , equality of opportunity but recognize certain marginalized populations need some additional help . Vote for the candidates that will enforce the law , support the police , secure the border and increase legal immigration . Support those who are anti , anti-racist . Those who will tax college endowments , limit deductibility on donations to university to 5k max .
Most important - we need leaders who are not afraid of the far left or far right. And it means Jews need to be free agents in this election. Can’t vote for party - sadly, if you are a traditional liberal voting for a dem who will not stand up to the mob is the worse outcome
And to liberal Jewish leadership - ADL , URJ etc , you might be surprised that you will have better success /impact with open minded conservatives (not far right ) than you will EVER have convincing far left dems and the DSA that Israel is not a colonial apartheid state .
Which politicians would fit this? I think many would agree with you. However, many also either think they already voted for someone like that (and are likely wrong) or they don't have anyone running that fits this mold.
I broadly agree. Not many of them around. Even less that are actually in a position to win an election. I have been rooting for a more Libertarian candidate since the early 90's.
This was a truly spectacular speech. I'm I guess what's called a secular Jew I recently realized I have been letting ppl know I'm Jewish when I meet them bc I want to prevent them from making any anti-Semitic remarks. It's not that I hang out with ppl who I think may be anti-Semitic it's just now I don't know. It's a lot more prevalent than I realized. I mention it as some sort of defense mechanism I use to preclude any awkwardness. I think ppl are conflating the defense of Palestinians with a prejudice toward all Jews. This is not an excuse in any way. A lot of it is propaganda. Social media bears a lot of responsibility. Do you hear that Mark Zuckerberg? I do believe in free speech unless it calls for violence. Calling for the genocide of Jews certainly falls into that category. We are only 7 million out of 350m ppl in this country. We must stand strong not just for Jews, but for any group that feels bullied or threatened. Thank you Bari for all that you do and keep doing it! Sabrinalabow.substack.com
You should never have to mention your religion to avoid someone using hate speech. No different for any ethnic or religious person. People need civility and courtesy to treat people as individuals and that should be the standard.
Growing up in the South, I mentioned being Jewish within two minutes of visiting white, gentile friends' homes. Just a few casual antisemitic statements set up this practice for life. When my teenage kids report new friendships, my third question is, "Do they know you're Jewish?" The difference now is, I ask regardless of the friend's color.
Any conservative feels your pain - everyone m own you are not allowed your own opinion on voting when you are in public. Everyone must talk and act like they believe Biden to be wise, fair and competent. When you have to stop people from speaking badly about you - we all get it
I am Protestant but married to a Jew and raised my daughters to be Jewish. People don’t know this as they see a tall, blonde Scandinavian-looking woman. I have been married 40 years and I have heard anti-Semitic comments the entire time. I worry for my children’s future.
Really? Wow! That's horrible. My husband isn't Jewish and our daughter has blond hair and blue eyes but so do I. I have been very fortunate and only experienced anti-semitism directly a handful of times. I'm certain it's bc of the way I look. Ppl can be cruel but most are not imo. It does seem to be coming up more and more which is something we all need to be aware of. I never thought I would experience anti-semitism like this in my lifetime. The more ppl like Bari Weiss and even ppl like us with a smaller following, the more we discuss it the better. Thanks for sharing! Sabrinalabow.substack.com
This was brilliant and unsettling. I heard the mob as I came east on my street from the UWS and a chamber music salon. I just knew the mob was screaming against something good going on at the Y. The Y and the NYPD protected the speakers. At U Cal Berkeley, they cancelled the event. No more money for Cornell, Columbia, the Met Museum, MOMA. Yes and thank you, University of Chicago. Like Bari, I have quit the Times -- no subscription. I followed her here.
Surprised to see hate originating from educated people??
The mistake is confusing educated and enlightened with the manipulation and indoctrination that passes for higher education today.
You could almost say that a 'higher education' (at least in the humanities and social sciences) has now become a case of:
1) learning how to articulate currently fashionable beliefs whilst
2) 'learning' how to de-activate whatever native intelligence you came with from the ability to notice their inherent absurdities and
3) how to increase your cognitive dissonance 'skills'.
As someone who teaches humanities at a large university, I have to say: individual results - instructors, and classrooms, and universities - may vary.
"The civil rights movement was about expanding freedom for those who have been deprived of it. It had an expansive view of equality. It argued that because our rights were God-given and because we were all created equal, that equality under the law must follow." -- These days, that defines "Christian nationalism".
Yes! So tired of being told we are Nazis or fascist because we love our country and we love and trust God and we fully understand that all our rights and freedoms are given only by God.
Very true
The people of Germany were among the most "educated" of their day in the years before WWII, especially in the natural sciences. Non-Jews in the best German universities went along with the Nazis in expelling Jewish professors and students whom they knew personally. Now the most "educated" in American universities, including the presidents and deans, stand by and let students, staff and faculty forcibly prevent speakers who support the State of Israel or who even just want there to be a discussion of what is happening in Gaza.
My father was an engineer who worked on the Manhattan project with a number of Germans who fled the nazis He told me years later he was stunned by how far advanced the Germans were in physics and science. Education , morality, and empathy have no common ties.
If Hitler has listened to his Generals on the Eastern Front the Germans would undoubtedly have won that war. Churchill quipped at one point that the best General the British had was Adolph Hitler.
And given that they DID develop jets at the end of the war, had already developed ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, and would have developed atomic weapons in relatively short order, we are very lucky we are not speaking German.
But to reverse an old saw, I would rather be smart than lucky. But Americans are not smart. Not, at least, the graduates of most of our universities.
Ninety percent of German SS officers had their PHDs.
I struggle to find a credible source to support that claim. Can you cite your evidence source(s)? Apologies in advance if you feel that I'm 'over-exercising' my freedom.
Don't be a drama queen. I would never criticize you for expressing your opinion. I'm not a Democrat and I am not Woke.
Forty years ago I was listening to AFRTS, Armed Force Radio and Television. Its AM radio was mainly news and commentary. I believe it was Cokie Roberts had a weekly one hour commentary and she mention the 90% figure. I can't remember to pick up bread at the store but I do remember trivia like what Roberts said. The statistic she gave stunned me and I have remembered it ever sinse.
Of course I could be wrong.
Personally, I distinguish “educated” from “learned.” The former is chiefly just credentialing these days.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
I would also add wise.
I'm not, actually. It's only today's sad reminder that anybody who believes education alone leads necessarily to enlightenment really hasn't spent much time around universities. I say this as a university faculty member.
Educated is quite different from intelligent. It’s no surprise that so many have been “educated” yet so few are intelligent.
And neither have ties to morality or empathy
I just listened to Tucker Carlson's excellent interview of Xi Van Fleet, who lived through the Cultural Revolution, and one point she made was that the murder began at the Chinese equivalents of Harvard and Yale.
It's also a matter of historical fact that the German National Socialist Worker's Party had many of its most important and enthusiastic followers at the best German universities. All the kids who are Antifa now would UNQUESTIONABLY have been Hitler Youth and early volunteers for the SS back then.
To the extent a high degree of IQ intelligence makes it unnecessary to do practical, directly useful work, it also prevents all the feedback and learning and practical humility that come easily and naturally to people who do real jobs, like electrical work, drywall, plumbing and farming.
Pondering this a tad more--and I tend to use these sorts of things as prompts for my own ruminations--I am going to suggest a key problem MAY be that college students in non-scientific fields PAY NO PRICE FOR BEING WRONG. As Thomas Sowell wrote long ago, those are the precise people you don't want in charge of anything that matters.
The stupidest polices don't affect them, the stupidest ideas have no real world consequences they can't deny and lie about; and if you add to this ARROGANCE of the sort that being a member of an elite school makes likely, then you have a perfect storm of ignorance and presumption that has no natural feedback loop. You can be wrong across a career and a lifetime. You can damage the people you claim to value, and if you lack integrity you simply blame everyone else. And since you run the system--since you are an aristocrat in a world of serfs--your finances and your life are both quite good.
So it would sense that the blindness is most pronounced at the most selective schools.
Sounds like Biden and Obama.
Unfortunately I think you are right. No penalty for incompetence as well
I’m reading this as I’m watching our weather man on TV… 😂
Is Tucker Carlson, the new best friend of Navalny's murderer, to be our moral teacher now?
Well, as you would know if you read, well, any credible news source, Navalny was not murdered, was he?
And am I personally condoning your decision to be arrogant and ignorant by interacting with you? I don't think so. I think you should stop.
Tucker did not endorse Putin. What he did is provide a needed corrective to the relentless war mongering and anti-Putin/anti-Russian propaganda we can assume is funded by, because it most directly benefits, the War Industry.
Do you support the stupid murder of hundreds of thousands of people? Obviously you must, because that is the first little thought that came into my little head, and feeling is truth. Right?
Respectfully, he appears to have taught you something with his recent interview. Of course, it might not have been what he intended to teach you - if he intended anything. Hopefully, you agree that he was free to conduct the interview. And that the rest of us are free to review, interpret, assess, debate and draw our own conclusions about its lessons.
I have not concluded that Carlson or Putin should be our moral teacher now. I also value multiple teachers over a lone one. And I do not consider the lessons taught by any of them to be the final word on any subject.
Would you have valued Hitler's perspective as just one of many "moral views" which we were lucky to have?
Who else is going to interview people who've been cancelled?
Hitler was once "canceled" here, too. Would you have applauded an American journalist for giving him such a toadying interview during WWII?
"Hitler." Right.
Yes, this question was asked after 1945 as well. All of the anecdotal evidence was that the most educated were the least courageous in resisting the Nazis or escaping in time.
Where are the Bonhoeffers?
Yes, this was the Jewish community’s opportunity to support freedom by being the modern equivalent of “virtuous gentiles” commemorated at yad vashem. Instead, per Bari’s talk, we are reminded of those Jews who didn’t even follow Moses into the desert– – they stayed in slavery with the pharaoh, or at best worshiped Baal. At least there were many Jewish scientists and journalists, such as Alex Berenson, who spoke out for freedom and informed consent. (More in Europe) . But NYC should not have accepted those mandates.
Would Bonhoeffer be on the side of the IDF in Gaza today shooting at desperate, starving Gazans trying to get food other than grass?
It is a valid question. I guess I'd respond with who is more like the Nazi's? We know the Mufti, during WW2, sided with the Nazi's in the initiation of the conflict with the Jews and today this conflict would not be taking place if Hamas had not attacked. Did Hamas just wake up one day and decided to murder all those people. No, it seems clear by the continual rocket fire over the years and the tunnels and war rooms built under hospitals and schools that their mindset is on warfare. They could have focused on making homes and a life for their people since 2005 when Israel left Gaza, but their choice was to prepare for continuing war and violence. Choices have consequences.
Bonhoeffer took part in an assassination attempt on Hitler and for that he was arrested and killed. That there may shed light on what side he would be on as he was willing to take up arms in what might be called a just war.
You know as well as I that Bibi has been backing Hamas for years in order to tell the world Israel "has no partner for peace," in order to make an end-run around the possibility of a "two-state solution," because Bibi and his friends on the Israeli right plan to keep the Palestinians subjugated and miserable for the rest of time. A decade ago, the excellent Israeli documentary called The Gatekeepers brought together six former heads of Shin Bet itself. They were all bitterly experienced and old enough to recall 1967 and 1973 and all the rest. They were not "self-hating Jews." They were simply as tough-minded a group of bitterly experienced Israeli wise men as you could find anywhere. And their unanimous position was the same as Ehud Olmert's as he left office for jail: Israel either finds a way to create a just state for the Palestinians, or Israel is doomed. Full stop. The idea that Israel is "destroying" Hamas is preposterous. It is simply lighting fires of hatred it will have to contend with for as long as the Palestinians do not have a state of their own. As everyone knows, most Gazans are young. Many will be willing to literally do anything--anything--to avenge the tens of thousands Israel has killed in this war. Among the wildest cheers on earth for Hamas' actions on Oct. 7 were those in Pakistan, a nation with as many nukes right now as Israel and the nation which taught Iran how to make its own. The real nuclear "existential threat" to Israel comes from Pakistan, not Iran, though it may well come through Iran, and Hezbollah or Hamas. How can Israel forever protect Tel Aviv from a dirty bomb at a minimum when far more than a billion Muslims are on Hamas' side? Hamas sprang a terrible, viciously brilliant trap on Israel on Oct. 7. Hamas designed its atrocities to be so bad that Israel could not resist the trap. Now kids at all America's best colleges will be pouring over Rashid Kahlidi's account of The Hundred Years War on Palestine [by Zionists]. All the rich Jewish donors in the country cannot stop this, or stop the kids from signing up for courses on "Palestine and Israel" taught by PC professors. The kids will have seen the footage of Oct. 7, and footage of the IDF killing desperate Gazans trying to get food for their children, as well as footage of the famine--and plagues--about to descend on Gaza. How can anyone think this will be good for American-Israeli relations? Soon Gen Zers and the largest, most progressive generation in American history, before the Gen Zers, the millennials, will be running America with their tech and AI money and their votes, just as the Boomers have for the past thirty years. When the Boomers thought of "Israel," their next thought was "the Holocaust." When younger Americans think of it, the next thought for many will be Gaza. Just as Hamas planned.
"Hamas designed its atrocities to be so bad that Israel could not resist the trap. " Nonsense.
Hamas is merely following the example of their esteemed prophet, and their religious teachers to urge them to "kill the Jews wherever you find them" in ways calculated provoke paralyzing terror. Right now, Muslims are doing the same to Christians in Africa.
What Hamas didn't expect was that (1) Israel would dump the Konceptzia and go for a deep cleaning of Gaza, and (2) their Arab allies would stand aside and secretly cheer for the Jews.
Wishful thinking. The inevitability you imagine is unsupported by surveys of the American public. "You know as well as I" that Bibi is on his way out.
Those same Gazans that supported Hamas and celebrated the 10/7 massacre?
Those Nazis (and they are not ashamed of it) deserve no more support than the German Nazis we bombed in Dresden, Hamburg and Schweinfurt.
Or, as Kurtz so memorably puts it in Heart of Darkness, "Exterminate all the brutes," right? Those women, kids, and old people are all just animals anyway.
Hamas has made this a battle to the death - by their own words. If it is not the death of Hamas, it will be a second Holocaust of us Jews.
Hamas must be wiped out at all costs. The Gazans elected them, just as the Germans elected the Nazis into office. They pay the price. Leftists and Jihadists must pay the price for their foolish voting, just as we conservatives are told we have to.
Wasn't it Obama who said that elections have consequences?
The Roman historian Sallust said, "Most seek not freedom, only a fair master.". Those in the Wilderness seek a fair master, the sooner the better.
Bari, great talk. It is not only the Jewish People who are in the Wilderness. It is all of us.
"When Asian Americans were discriminated against, did you see their cause as being essential to our own? When American doctors were censored for questioning the efficacy of lockdowns, were you as outraged about this as you were about people who refused to wear masks in March 2020? When, just across town, a statue of Teddy Roosevelt was removed from outside the American Museum of Natural History, did you protest?"
80%+ of the New Yorkers you addressed would answer NO. They were also fine with forcing the unclean to show papers in order to keep their jobs or enter restaurants. Will they ever change their minds or vote and act differently? We are running out of time before the red guards tear down what’s left of western civilization. Teddy's statue is one of many torn down over the past decade: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/founding-fathers-statues-monuments-removed
The Jews never quite get around to admitting that the Democrats they, predominantly, vote for have brought us to this disgraceful set of affairs.
As Dennis Prager puts it, They are liberals 1st Jews 2nd
Yes!
They will never admit that they made a mistake by voting for Biden.
or FDR
All the Jews in the U.S. Senate are Democrats.
Who else are the Jews to vote for? The greatest enemy of freedom, law, and decency American politics has ever seen, Trump? How Orwellian can you get?
Because dictators increase the rules like joe is doing. Trump cut the rules 3 for every one new one. Hard to become a dictator when you are freeing citizens from the bureaucratic state. Just one example.
Ummm…I despise Trump, but really? I mean have you read any history?just go back 100 years…
Bro. You’re your own worst enemy. You have some valid points you bring to the table now and again.
Then you jump the f'n shark calling Trump a dictator and your valid points disappear like a Snapchat message.
You’re a grown up. Communicate like one.
Unless you've got something really good to lay on us, that's about as stupid a comment as I can imagine. This sounds like an example of someone having been assigned an opinion and then being so emotionally controlled that they cannot be rational. Give us some hints of things Trump did in his first term that even look a bit like what you are worrying about. From what I've seen, the current gang are the true enemies of freedom.
And up is down, and black is white, from your highly intelligent perspective.
PS Google Timothy Snyder, a Yale professor and one of the greatest experts on fascism in the world--which may disqualify him from being "intelligent" in your book, since he sounds kind of "elite." When Trump arrived on the scene in 2016,, the parallels between him and his cult and past fascist leaders and their cults were so obvious that Snyder wrote a warning for America called On Fascism. He has continued to cover Trump's moves further and further in the direction of fascism ever since, with nothing but evidence and reasoned argument. His new book is On Freedom. But of course he'll seem pretty "stupid" to you, I'm sure.
And Democrat leaders like Jerry Nadler and Chuck Schumer, both of whom are Jewish and support the censorship and totalitarian moves of the Biden Administration. Both of them support damaging “our democracy.” Can’t they see what they are doing?
Can't you see what you are doing by supporting Bibi's Israel's "Messiah," Trump? If everyone, according to you, should be against Biden, implicitly they should all be for Trump, since he's the only other option now.
I was hoping she would address more fully the tyranny of mask mandates, vaccine passports, our soldiers and Seals being kicked out of service to their country, and I could go on and on - which it seems like so much of American Jewry supported. Where were they when we needed them to fight back with us against this insidious madness? I completely support Jews in their fight against Hamas - who needs to be eliminated from this earth - I just wish they had our back in 2020 and 2021
The (D)ifference is that Bari feels antisemitism is more dangerous (bodily harm/violence) vs. loss of civil liberties (mask mandate, vaccine passports). I’m not saying it’s right, but that is likely the magnet beneath her moral compass.
A beautiful, thoughtful, highly informed and inspirational speech, Bari, and I’m glad that you recognized censorship of doctors during Covid as a “turn against freedom”. But as Yuri suggests, there was a lot more than that. How could so many Jewish communities go along with NYC vaccine passes? This was the most blatant recent example where so many quietly decided that “disagreeing with neighbors wasn’t necessary” to maintain their own freedom. (And where were the Jewish communities in Australia when covid vax dissenters were thrown in “camps”?)
Like northeastern Jews after the Holocaust, who realized that Hitler’s techniques for demonizing Jews were modeled after our own Jim Crow laws,, the current Jewish Inteligentsia needs to recognize that all assaults on freedom are bad for America (and for the Jews, as you say, by implication.) How about speaking out against future Covid lockdowns, mask mandates and vax “passes“? This would go a long way to disassociating those good people who “answer to a higher authority” such as yourself, from the Rachel Maddows in this country.
I shudder to consider whether the entire Covid framework (including the strange compliance by Israel) wasn’t a troubling but convenient way to show the world that, once placed in the same position to “get along” (ie worship Baal as you note), so many Jews would do the same as central and eastern Europeans did in the 1930s, to “separate” themselves from the state-targeted “vermin” of that day (laying the groundwork for the rest.) . But it’s not too late, Bari. Please speak out against these infringements of our freedom and humanity, like you have so bravely fought censorship.
"How about speaking out against future Covid lockdowns, mask mandates and vax “passes“?"
I think it really depends on fatality rates. With a 1% fatality rate COVID turned out not to be that big of a deal. But what if it was 10% like SARS, or God forbid 30% like MERS?
I think we've taken a lot of the wrong lessons from COVID.
They knew by the fall of 2020 that the fatality rate was very low, and even that was contrived because of the killer Remdesevir and over use of ventilators in the hospitals (to “protect” the doctors and nurses, not to help the patients!). They only did the vax mandates in the summer of 2021, once the public realized that the shot didn’t prevent spread (per the outcome of the party in Martha’s Vineyard). These mandates were not intended to prevent disease. They even urged pregnant women and children to get these shots, when both had been excluded from the trials, and there were no tests that had been done concerning either benefits or harms. Dare to know! Watch this week’s 4 hour senate hearing convened by Ron Johnson.
Masks still wouldn't work and the false sense of security you derive from them would increase your chances of death and disease.
Depends on the mask. Cloth masks definitely not.
N95 probably provides some protection.
Actually, no. Masks protect you from spit and blood, but even then, there were experiments done, way before Covid, showing that doctors wearing masks even in the operating room spread more germs than when they didn’t wear the masks.
Masks were a virtue signaling exercise, like posters of chairman Mao, BLM, or “thank God for Dr. Fauci“ signs. Shameful to force people to wear them.
Losing far more than 1 million Americans was still rather bad.
Except the count never was verified and in fact was proven over blown. Yes, like government fraud
Well, no, estimates of cumulative excess USA deaths 2020-2023 are about 1.3 million. It doesn’t really matter whether they died of covid or with covid or without covid, they’re still dead. It’s probably not coincidence they died amid a pandemic. We can be righteously mad about the egregious assault on liberty without having to downplay the facts.
Agreed. People downplay the seriousness of Covid. And as far as I can tell, masks had some efficacy in preventing the wearers from spreading it to other people. A common sense strategy and not terribly inconvenient.
And when people carry on about how the death rates were lower than predicted they seem to be ignoring the fact we took so many countermeasures just to keep that rate low, and they worked.
First you downplay the facts and then say we shouldn't do so. If the facts say heart attacks are killing the people treating them with a vaccine for covid does no one any good. As we have now found out about Vietnam, civilians and military lied to then public during the whole debacle. During covid, the CDC and government lied to the people. No one was saved by the lies but more died becasue of them. the facts have been established by research after the pandemic. And the findings are not good for the lock them down, wear a mask and get vaccinated group.
This is a brilliant speech by Bari Weiss... much like her speech at the Federalist Society.
Both remind me of a great joke I heard once. It started like this:
"A group of leftists walked into the ruins of the bar that they just burned down to order a drink..."
Leftists have caused this. It is just that simple. Leftists are the problem. And nearly all leftists vote Democrat. The Democratic Party of the United States must be destroyed. Why is it, that the party of the Confederacy and the KKK can still survive in America? Why does anyone think this group can be "reformed"? Would those same people think it credible if someone said, "well, I know the Nazis were bad in the past but we're the NEW Nazi party... we don;t want to kill Jews anymore..." ? Nope. But with Democrats... no sense of history matters. None.
So all the vast majority of American Jews who've been "leftists" have been morally wrong? Really? MLK was one of our greatest leftists, wasn't he? So were Rabbi Herschel and the Jews who died on Freedom Rides wrong to support him? He was not just fighting for racial justice for blacks, but for economic justice for all poor Americans, like any good leftist.
And I forgot your original point: YES, American Jews who have been leftist have been morally wrong. This is a true statement. Leftist Jews who support (or supported) communism and socialism in other countries were morally wrong. ALL of them were morally wrong. YES.
All leftism of this sort is morally wrong. All of it. They build nothing. They make nothing. They add nothing to the world.
Claiming MLK as a "leftist" is such a tired trope. MLK would be cancelled by today's leftists. Leftists don't fight for racial justice or anything of the sort. Leftists fight for destruction. They build NOTHING. And every nation that attempts to install leftist beliefs into their system eventually reverts to extreme poverty and repression.
It's clear you know little about my fellow Atlantan King whatsoever. Read the superb new Jewish bio of King by Jonathan Big, who does an excellent job of re-emphasizing King's fight for the poor of all races. You seem to know little about Northern Europe as well, where "leftism" has made nations like Denmark perennially the happiest and most just on earth. "Leftism" is synonymous with the most successful, happiest, most just societies on earth in Northern Europe, even though conservatives naturally prefer to equate "leftism" with Venezuela. Don't confuse "leftism" with PC either. PC has been the Boomers' forty-year academic distraction from the age-old central focus of "leftism," which has always been economic fairness--NOT gender, race, and freedom to love whom you please, fine as those causes are too. King was every bit as much for LBJ's "War on Poverty" as for his civil rights laws. King would be in the streets with the "Cease fire now!" crowd now, just as he was with the antiwar marchers of his day. Israel is in a tragic situation. It fell into Hamas' fiendish trap and will never be able to reclaim the respect of the world unless it does a 180, like Germany after the Nazis, or the Boers after apartheid, and creates a just two-state solution. Since Israelis are now more determined than ever never to do this 180, Israel's international reputation is absolutely fated to sink like a stone. How are rich donors going to prevent the studying of the Gaza War and the history of the Palestinians since the rise of Zionism in all our best colleges? How are these donors going to prevent professors from assigning the great Columbia historian--one of the school's most internationally famous professors--Rashid Khalidi's magisterial history called The Hundred Years War Against the Palestinians? How are donors going to prevent their own children from reading such texts and becoming critical of Israel? Israel and rich donors don't care what the world thinks. But that doesn't stop the world from thinking. Tom Friedman, one of the wisest friends Israel has ever had, and a proud Jew, has done his best to save Israel from itself from Oct. 7 to now. To no avail. We can all see now that America's response to 9/11 was incredibly stupid and wasteful. One day, Israelis, sadly, will feel the same about their response to Oct. 7. My heart weeps for the rightful sadness, rage, and stark terror Jews evertywhere have felt since Oct. 7. The impulse to quell the fear with slaughter has been understandably, tragically irresistible--as it was here before. But the whole world is watching as totally predictable mass famine threatens the helpless Palestinians, and as hysterical, starving Palestinians are shot down by the IDF trying to feed their children. American politics is on the verge of a generational change as great as the takeover of the country by the overwhelmingly conservative and economically neollberal Boomers in 1992. Unless Trump establishes a dictatorship this year, the much, much more progressive millennials and Gen Zers are going to replace the Boomer supporters of Bibi at the polls. Soon thereafter, America will have leaders who no longer give knee-jerk support to an Israel radicalized to the right by Oct. 7. Israel at that point will literally not have a national "friend" in the world. An interesting Israeli history of Israel has the frightening title The Land of Blood and Honey. The tragedy seems always to only grow deeper. I feel profound sadness for all Jews everywhere, and for the Jews and Palestinians trapped in this endless death struggle in what the great American Jew, Aaron David Miller, one of my favorite public figures in America, has sadly dubbed, with wry Jewish humor, "the much too promised land."
What a yawn...
Like all leftists, you presume that if it is something you believe then it must be true, must be moral, and must be "left"...
Your reply is so incredibly lazy, predictable and uninteresting.
Agree that Israel has made a strategic error by responding as they did to the intolerable provocation by Hamas, though to ask them to do otherwise may be too much of a stretch for human nature. Am curious what you think they ought to have done. Visit the same tortures on some random Palestinians? Probably your prediction that the more anti-Israel sentiment will be the outcome us a good one.
Read some reviews of the "Hundred Years War Against the Palestinians". No doubt a one-sided history, as are most books on either side of any controversy. The NYT reviewed it in 2020 and I am going to try and post a link. The associated comments to the review are at least as informative as the review itself.
I do feel as many do that the Palestinians have refused each offer of peace including the original partition plan. And have had the misfortune of Gaza being ruled by Hamas psychos who care zero about them and so were willing to provoke this war. Having Bibi and the hardline faction in Israeli government has been bad for that country as well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/books/review/the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine-rashid-khalidi.html
"Agree that Israel has made a strategic error by responding as they did to the intolerable provocation by Hamas, though to ask them to do otherwise may be too much of a stretch for human nature. Am curious what you think they ought to have done."
They should have gone in hard, fast, and without mercy. This would all be over by now.
Funny that leftists like you would celebrate the success of nations like Denmark, which historically was among the least diverse countries.
I though you leftists believed in Diversity Uber Alles.
Read this Bari!!
Bari, I love you. I’ve had so many truly awful arguments with people I love and have known for decades since October 2023. Bring up the go-pro videos of Hamas and I get shouted down by “30,000 dead Palestinian children”. Ask what a proportionate Israeli response is and I get “Netanyahu is a criminal”. Ask about the hostages and I get 30,000 dead Palestinian children. It never stops and it never will. Anti semitism has hijacked the western progressive thought makers and media. The NYT are complicit in this and my heart breaks for us. However considering the NYT denied the Ukrainian Holodomyr nearly 100 years ago should tell us about their reporting
People with no sense or understanding of the history of the area have no logical or intellectual responses. Rather than intelligent discussion and learning they can only shout slogans and insults.
They don't know which river or sea. They are dumber than a box of rocks.
They do not understand that "Palestine will be free" means free of Jews living there. Judenrein.
Strange. That exact same premise is in the Likud party's charter.
Are you suggesting that the members of Likud don't know the location of the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea? Because your reading comprehension sucks. My point was that the morons advocating "river to the sea" bullshit here in America couldn't find either place on a map, even if they knew the names of the bodies of water. But that went over your head, because, well...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thenation.com/article/world/its-time-to-confront-israels-version-of-from-the-river-to-the-sea/tnamp/
This is too easy. Lol!!
What is too easy? You don't get the reference. All you do is post your propaganda.
Yes or no, do American activists know where Nablus is on a map?
If you had bothered to look up the ***uncut*** version of the Likud's "river to the sea", you would have known that it refers to SECURITY CONTROL, not ethnic cleansing.
Are you really unaware that in Israel there are 1.2 MILLION former Palestinian Arab citizens, while in the Palestinian territories there are ZERO Jews allowed?
"People with no sense or understanding of the history of the area have no logical or intellectual responses. Rather than intelligent discussion and learning they can only shout slogans and insult"
Something I have been saying (well shouting actually) for 20(?) years
History, History, History! You have to know at least Something Of history, or you are going to be 1. confused 2. make the wrong choices. You think (the topic at hand) Just Happened? You can connect the dots of (the topic at hand) going back 1000 years.
How many American Jews have read the eminent Palestinian and honored Columbia historian , Rashid Khalidi's account of the history of the last century on the land now called "Israel"? The book is The Hundred Years War Against the Palestinians. There is more than one historical memory in what Aaron David Miller has rightly called "the much too promised land."
Yes I have. lets just say he is not exactly what i would call A Good Guy. His basic position is Israel has no right to exist..Kill The Jews. But what do you expect from a member of MESA.
Just one tiny problem: The land "now called Israel" is called ISRAEL because that was its name 3000 years ago. Another tiny problem: 100 years ago the only people called "Palestinians" were Jews.
But don't let historical facts confuse you.
I disagree. It all started on Oct. 7th.
No, it's been going on for years. Oct 7th made it louder but this has been going on for a long time.
I was being sarcastic.
Israel has never done anything to anyone. Most moral army in the world.
At least you know yourself, Comp. Sarcasm and smugness personified.
And so, so tiring.
Factual and correct personified, actually.
Yes....I can understand how so, so tiring it is for the "Idiot," "Retard, " Moron," etc. to always end up being correct.
Now, if you'll excuse me I have to go check on a bunch of people who apparently got trampled to death at an aid truck. ;)
The NYT has been anti-Semitic for more than 100 years.
Read "Print to Fit: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel 1986-2016" by Jerold S Auerbach
Leftists have always been remarkably bigoted, and suffer from a serious lack of self-awareness. They lump people into groups and judge them as such (see DEI). They have good intentions ... as pave the road to hell.
I don't believe anyone should be shouted down, especially by friends or loved ones.
But when you bring up the killing of about 1,400 people and the kidnapping of another couple hundred, do you really think people will automatically agree that it's much worse than the wanton killing of 30,000 people?
Hamas knew what would happen when they attacked. The Hamas officials have said as much. Hamas even said “we love martyrs. Jews love life.” Google this in case you think I made this up. When a missile from their side missed its mark and landed in a hospital parking lot within an hour The Gaza Health Ministry had a precise number of dead and the missile was Israeli. Neither claim was true. The countries surrounding Gaza have had months to act so that innocent citizens could get out of the Hamas-Israeli armed conflict. And yet…. Where is the outrage toward Egypt? Syria? Jordan? The very same people who argue for open borders on the US for those escaping violence in Central America seem unable to grasp that several Arab nations have no interest in getting innocent Palestinians out of harms way.
There is no point arguing with Buttoil. He is an unrepentant Jew-hater, just using slick words to justify why his beloved Palestinians (and Hezbollah and Iran) should finish Hitler's work, and the Jews should just go quietly to their deaths again.
That's a lot of what-aboutism. It's Hamas's fault, it's Egypt's fault, it's Syria's fault, it's Jordan's fault.
Does any of the fault for 30,000 dead Gazans lie with Israel? Or are you stating that all 30,000 deaths are lies from the Gaza Health Ministry? How many dead will be enough for Bibi?
Until the hostages are released 100% of the responsibilty lies with Hamas.
Does anyone think the killing would stop if the hostages were released?
Uh, yes.
The real question you should be asking is 'How many dead will be enough for Hamas?" They could end the war today by surrendering and returning the hostages. Instead, they hide beneath and behind those very Gazan civilians you are so concerned with, because they WANT those Gazans to die.
Actually, no. The score is 30,000 - 1,400. It's like if the Chiefs played Middle Tennessee State. And the score continues to run up on dead Gazans. The Israelis are the ones currently killing many Palestinians. So it's a reasonable question to ask how many you want to kill.
So you believe the "Gazan Health Ministry." Got it. Unlike GHM/Hamas, the Israelis don't want to kill anyone. You want a ceasefire? There was one in place for years before Hamas broke it and deliberately started this cycle of carnage. These 7th century barbarians counted on the useful idiots of the world to buy their BS, and they weren't disappointed. Congratulations! Just remember when you contribute to the "Gazan Relief Fund", where that money is really going.
Sorry, but the moment you compared this to a football game is the moment you lost me. A football game happens on a field with rules and this war is not about racking up a higher "score". Unfortunately Hamas isn't playing by the rules of war. In fact, by firing rockets from civilian locations (and hiding their operations in civilian protected buildings like hospitals and schools) they are literally committing war crimes. Israel absolutely has the right to destroy Hamas (who has explicitly stated that their goal is to eliminate all Jews and the nation of Israel, making this a self-defense operation). But Hamas continues to hide behind civilians. That "30,000" number you keep throwing around (which I don't believe is accurate, by the way) is directly the result of Hamas' actions. Out of the two of them, it's clear that Israel cares more about the Gazans than Hamas does.
There is no score here, Builtoill, cut out the bs. No one is interested.
Bibi didn't start the war, Hamas and Gazans did. Whatever Gaza Health Ministry is saying is lies because the Ministry is Hamas. I hope no one needs to explain why as it is obvious.
So if they're lying about 30,000, approximately how many people do you think Bibi has killed? That's not a rhetorical question. You call bullshit on 30K, what's your number?
There is no if. Hamas is lying. There is a war in Gaza, in which Hamas uses the death of civilians to its advantage. Buildings easily collapse because the foundation beneath them is hollow due to tunnels' structure. There is no verifiable way to estimate how many civilians got killed as Hamas militants often don't wear uniforms, but all who died are on Hamas and Hamas only.
The number is a red herring. There was a ceasefire on Oct 6. Hamas broke it. If Hamas were actually concerned for the suffering of their citizens, they could have released the hostages months ago. Hamas seeks glory through martyrdom because Hamas is a barbaric death cult. They also won't be content until every single person is a convert or dead, so I hope you don't have plans.
I searched the archives but I was unable to any record of relief convoys sailing to the aid of the poor, starving German and Japanese civilians during WWII. General Sherman said it well: "War is Hell". As other commenters have noted, this is exactly what Hamas intended to create, images of dead, injured or otherwise suffering civilians including children. Where are the protests demanding that Hamas immediately accept an unconditional surrender. That would end the death and destruction inGaza.
Every time I open The Free Press there's a call for unconditional surrender by Hamas.
An unconditional surrender by Hamas is the fastest way to end the war that Hamas started. What is your preferred outcome?
I thought you wanted to save lives?
The fact that you accept all the Palestinian numbers and narrative without question but doubt anything the IDF says speaks volumes to where your head is. If they don't stop Hamas now, how many more Oct 7 attacks must they endure? Hamas has said they have no intention of changing their charter, which is the destruction of Israel, so there is no reason to believe they won't reconstititue and continue attacking again in the future.
What exactly am I doubting from the IDF? I looked back through these comments, and don't see my questioning of the IDF. So your main point is therefore deliberately misleading.
I guess I'm keying into your statement "wanton killing of 30,000 people" that implies they are randomly killing Palestinians with no discrimination and that is not true. Unintended casualties are an unfortunate reality in military activity, so to wanton tells me you don't believe the IDF has any methodolty or strategy beyond simple killing anyone they see.
"Does any of the fault for 30,000 dead Gazans lie with Israel?"
Nope. No more than the US was responsible for the dead Germans or Japanese.
Israel does it's best to minimize civilian casualties. But Israel's main job is to protect Israel citizens and make sure this never happens again.
Hamas most go
Nearly a million Japanese and German civilians were killed by the Allies during WW2. So, by your logic, it was the fault of the Allies.
If it wasn't the fault of the Allies, who exactly killed all those Japanese and Germans? If you're talking about the fault for the war, I place it with Germany, Italy, and Japan primarily.
I'm not sure I understand your point.
The Allies' air attacks killed the civilians. Fault, however, is a different thing. If you start a fight, the consequences you get in return are your own fault, not that of the one you attacked who is retaliating.
To steal from Andy Dufresne, “How can you be so obtuse?”
Release the hostages and then they can talk! Very simple!!
If “wanton killing” refers to Gazans who , like the German people, facilitated and supported a Nazi regime their deaths were the direct result of their own choices and richly deserved. There was nothing “wanton” about it.
Wanton means deliberate and unprovoked. Certainly Hamas was wanton in its butchery of Israelis on Oct 7.
The Allies certainly killed a lot of German civilians, and plenty of Japanese civilians. Perhaps it's a matter of degree. If the Soviets tried to treat Germany the way Israel is treating Gaza, every single German civilian would have to have been killed. Probably all the Austrians, too. Probably the Swiss as well, at least the ones who spoke Swiss-German. And they still wouldn't be at the death count ratio Israel currently enjoys.
Oh my........where to start? We killed Germans (many civilians) until they surrendered. Same with the Japanese. In Germany we used incendiary bombs on civilian and military targets. In Japan, incendiary bombs and then 2 nuclear. Hamas can surrender and stop the killing of Gazans. They can give up their arms, step down from the government, allow others to govern. Nothing is stopping them. So, it is they who are continuing to allow civilians to die.
Are you sure that you know what you are talking about? Soviets robbed and raped through Germany in all possible ways without too much regard to a human life. It was justified, but definitely an example quite opposite of how Israel treats Palestinians.
And where does the figure of '30, 000 children', allegedly killed by Israel, come from?
Even Hamas does not claim 30,000 children have been killed, but it does claim that the majority of dead were women and children, and does not separate out the thousands of Hamas fighters that have been killed from the total deaths of Gazans.
I don't know. You should probably ask the person who wrote '30,000 children.'
The terms I used were 30,000 deaths, 30,000 people, and I've also used the terms 'civilians' and 'Gazans.' I've never said 30,000 children have been killed. A shitload of Palestinian children have been killed, that's for damn sure, but I don't think it's 30,000.
They also sat outside Warsaw and watched as the Nazi's destroyed the city, killed Jews, raped women, and marched thousands to work camps in Germany, when they could have easily gone into the city and stopped it all.
In 1939, there were fewer than 500 million people (other than the Soviets who lived in the European part of the USSR). The Soviets lost 9 million soldiers and 20 million civilians in the war.
Israel's body count ratio is currently 30,000 : 1,400, (20 : 1)
If the Soviets had killed everyone in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, their kill ratio would still only be 3:1.
For the Soviet Union to have a similar kill ratio as the Israelis currently do, they would have had to kill every single person in Europe.
Thank about that for a minute.
To be as bloodthirsty as the Israelis are currently being toward the Palestinians, the Soviets would have had to slaughter every living person on the continent.
So, yes, on this I'm quite sure I know what I'm talking about.
The Israelis are "bloodthirsty", but Hamas is not. Gotcha.
Congrats on showing off your ignorance of history. And your math is way off, too. Ignorant and innumerate is no way to go through life.
Feel free to show your work on the bad math.
Being an asshole who calls those who disagree with him ignorant is definitely no way to go through life. Yet you appear to be doing it. Good for you.
" If the Soviets tried to treat Germany the way Israel is treating Gaza"
Just shows your ignorance of how the Soviets treated Germans at the end of WW II, including ethnic cleansing of German communities in the east (some of which dated back to Peter the Great), the rape of perhaps a million German women, plus the ethnic cleansing of the Germans of Silesia and the Sudetenland. I'm not disagreeing with you, you don't merit that kind of respect, and there's nothing to disagree about. Those are facts and you're just ignorant, as I stated above.
"every single German civilian would have to have been killed. Probably all the Austrians, too."
There are over 2 million people living in Gaza. Even if you believe Hamas' numbers, that's 1.5% of the population, not the entire population. Go check the numbers on U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You'll find that the ratio of civilians killed relative to combatants is much lower for Israel's war against Hamas. Either way, you're woefully bad at math. In WW II the number of German and Japanese civilians killed was irrelevant. What was important was getting them to unconditionally surrender. This isn't a video game; the objective is the destruction of Hamas, not killing x Palestinians for every Israeli killed.
Whatever the number, the fault lies with Hamas, not the Israelis. Hamas started this war. Hamas uses Gazan civilians as human shields. It is their strategy to cause as many Palestinian deaths as possible to generate propaganda that is consumed by fools like you.
Let’s just go ahead and add up all the hezbolah, hamas, Iranian et al groups and see if it’s now “fair.”
There is no “wanton killing” by Israel, and that’s well known because their efforts to move Gazans to safety is all over the news. Unlike Hamas, Israel doesn’t target civilians. If that 30,000 number is even correct (which is doubtful, since Hamas lies), it is mostly the result of Hamas putting their own people in harm’s way. After 10/7, Israel moved its own population out of harm’s way, displacing them- with all the discomfort that entails- so as to save their lives. Why? Because Israel cares about the lives of its own people. Has Hamas done the same for its people? Absolutely not. In fact, they do the opposite. They deliberately put their own people directly in harm’s way. They even murder them for such simple things as trying to get food off of an aid truck(because Hamas is stealing it or charging for it to fund their war). No. Hamas is the bad guy. Israel is the good guy. Hamas is the perpetrator. Israel is the victim.
What do you mean by "wanton" killing? What makes the deaths that have taken place in Gaza "wanton"? The idea of proportionality is incredibly simplistic. Should the IDF have gone into Gaza and raped the exact number of Gazan women as Hamas raped on Oct. 7? Should the IDF have burned the exact number of Gazan babies to death as Hamas did to Israeli babies on Oct. 7? Should the IDF have forced the same number of family members watch as they tortured, raped and killed other family members as Hamas forced Israeli family members to watch while Hamas tortured, raped and killed other family members? Should the IDF have take the exact number of Gazan civilians hostage and be now holding them in airless damp tunnels for four months and counting, to match the hostages Hamas has? Seriously. This is a war which Hamas started on Oct. 7, when it broke the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that had been in place since 2021. Hamas has been the party which has broken every ceasefire since it took over Gaza in 2007. And even Hamas has never stopped lobbing rockets into Israel and never prevented other terrorist groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad from attacking Israel. As for 30,000 people, according to the IDF about 40% of those were Hamas fighters, not civilians. And they died because Hamas has intentionally sited its military infrastructure inside of and underneath hospitals, apt. bldgs, schools and even the UNRWA bldgs, making it impossible for the IDF to root out Hamas without also injuring and killing civilians. Also, the IDF estimates that thousands of the civilians who have been killed and injured were victims of rockets misfired by Hamas itself and by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and American intelligence agrees. The photographic evidence including from satellites shows that many "hits" attributed to Israeli fire were actually immediately after launches from Gaza itself that landed in Gaza rather than in Israel. You really need to do more than compare tallies of how many have been wounded, killed and kidnapped by each side.
Holly Hart, this is an excellent and well stated point. Builttoill appears to believe that the whole decision for wars to continue or end should be based upon proportionality. America practiced that in Vietnam, and I am certainly not supporting that war, but LBJ's proportionality only worked to make the war continue. I think the same could be said for Afghanistan. Almost seems someone wants these wars to go on and on!
WW2 was the last war in which the victors fought to end the war by destroying the capability of the enemy to continue to fight. This has not happened since. No one wants war, but like they say about guns, if you are going to pull it out, you better plan on using it.
Just a small comment on Vietnam. I remember “Hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Chants on college campuses. Yet those chanters never acknowledged Ho Chih Minh’s determination to fight until he had no soldiers left. And having no soldiers left wasn’t because they got too old. Ho had no limit of acceptable deaths and any opposition to him was swiftly punished. Hamas sees any Palestinian as theirs to give their life in fighting the Zionist.
Do you think this is about one event? This is about 75 years of Palestinian/Arab attacks and ideology about killing Jews and destroying Israel.
No. However, it is also an equivalent number of years of Israeli killing of Palestinians and Arabs.
Clueless
When the chicken shit cowards who did the killing did so without putting a uniform on and burned civilians and kids and tucked their cowardly tails and hid under hospitals, hell yes. 100% on them. FOFO.
They could have saved EVERY SINGLE DEAD Gazan by giving back the hostages on October 8th. There’s not real one man in Gaza. Not the gutless Hamas, nor the Gazans who’ve watched while it happened.
The male Gazans should form an all out assault on their Hamas warlords to the death and be proud to be part of the force that finally rid the world of that vile scourge on humanity. That’s the kind of martyr worth celebrating.
You’re a joke.
Imagine if Gazans agreed to join with the IDF to exterminate HAMAS. They could have gotten rid of their supposed hated masters. They could have saved thousands of lives.
No, the Gazans love martyrdom and hate Jews more than they love their own lives. They are happy to sacrifice their children, their wives and themselves for the glory of Allah.
You should work on those anger issues. Also, it turns out the sensationalized stories about dozens of babies burned alive and beheaded are turning out to be not true.
1) You score with your first point - cowards make me angry;
2) Not so much with your second - where did I say “dozens”, “babies” or “beheaded”?
You wrote "burned civilians and kids." And you know exactly what I'm talking about.
When 3,000 Americans were murdered on 9-11, America attacked Afghanistan, which housed Bin Laden and al Qaeda, and tens of thousands of others died with them.
Yes, I think the 9-11 attack was much worse. I'd explain why to you, but it's obvious I'd be wasting my breath.
Do you seriously want to compare terrorist attacks to determine which was worse? They're all bad.
Approximately 120,000 Afghan soldiers, police, and civilians were killed in the Afghanistan War. Of a population of 20 million. And it took more than 20 years.
In less than 5 months, Israel has killed 30,000 Gazans, of a population of a bit over 2 million.
Very simple arithmetic demonstrates just how bad the Israeli response has been.
You'll figure it all out only when you are personally shoved in a boxcar yourself.
Another hateful, really not thought-out comment devoid of substance.
A Jew-hater calling me hateful? I take pride in that.
Tell that to Hamas. Which the Gazans supported and in fact voted into office.
They got what they deserved, just like the Germans of Hamburg, Dresden and Schweinfurt got what they deserved when those cities were bombed.
Why would I tell it to Hamas? Your statement makes no sense. I made my comment to people who think that anyone they talk to will equate 1,400 deaths (and now reports are that it is more like 700) with 30,000 deaths. And before you start with the "Hamas is lying about 30,000!", Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin testified in Congress last week that more than 25,000 women and children have been killed in Gaza. Twenty-five thousand. Just women and children.
But wait a minute, you wouldn't care if anyone says 30,000 have been killed, because you are hopeful that all Gazans will be killed. Probably all Palestinians.
You missed your calling in life. Auschwitz was liberated 79 years ago. Given that you think Jews should not resist Nazis, you would have made a good camp guard.
You’re someone who, upon learning someone disagrees with you, starts calling names and throwing insults. I don’t hate anyone, not even dipshits who can’t have a discussion without calling people Jew-hater, antisemite, Nazi. I’m really hard to offend, but calling me those horrible things offends me.
You know, it really is childish to call someone criticizing the current government a Nazi. Like, 5th grade childish. And as argument stuffers go, it’s even less effective than “I know you are, but what am I?”
I'll wait 'til Tzahal has re-occupied Gaza in its entirety and we can find out what the actual casualties are: Arab fuckheads, be they religious or secular, make things up for shits and giggles. A large part of the Israeli political community would like to make up stuff for shits and giggles themselves; but you try keeping the other ~80% on such a message; you'd have far better luck herding cats.
Look up the writings of the NYTimes Pulitzer prize winning Walter Duranty or that of Nikole Hannah Jones, another NYTimes Pulitzer winner and you may realize that the NYTimes' claim to be an epitome of objective reporting is as accurate as its reporting on the Gaza war.
My main takeaway from this is that the Jews who protest for Hamas today are the ones who would have chosen to stay in Egypt. Brilliant. I have family who I will never share another Passover seder with.
You've hit it on the head. Exactly correct
True count remains to be ascertained. Though even one innocent death is too many, who is truly innocent??
Bari,
The world is a better place with moderate and courageous voices like yours. You could have kept your head down at the NYT, spouting meaningless aphorisms to get the lunatics off your back, but at great personal and professional risk you struck out on your own.
It's insane that we've reached a point where moderate voices are controversial, but we need leaders like you to re-right the ship. You're continuing to take huge risks and I am proud of you. Chutzpah. Thank you.
Could not agree more. Bari, somewhere Rabbi Sacks is smiling. Also, please know, your powerful and inspiring words speak not just to the Jewish people, but to anyone who loves individual freedoms and responsibilities, including non-Jews like me. You speak for the dream that is, or increasingly was, America. You have more allies than you know.
Bari is not a "moderate". Bari is a fact-based truth-teller. In 2024, that's quite radical.
We really need to stop immigration for a period of assimilation. This is not without precedent. The fact that there are enough supporters of terrorist in the USA to have political clout says that immigration is broken to a point it puts our nation at risk. Even some of our elected leaders in congress are not supporters of our constitution and are allowed to violate their oath. Bari, I appreciate your honest and loud voice fro truth in America. We can save this nation with voices like yours. I am pro immigration but we need people that believe in our constitution , judo-christian values and the dream of America and freedom.
David, the USA was founded on the separation of church and state. Buddhism, Islam, and many other religions have values followed by many Americans. I'm sure you're not supporting religious favoritism immigration, but it could be taken that way. How about we look for immigrants who believe in our Constitution and the dream of America and freedom. Seems like it would be enough.
Separation of church and state is in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence? Please quote chapter and verse
First Amendment, Establishment Clause.
Also Article VI, No Religious Test Clause.
The Constitution has Articles and Sections, and the Declaration of Independence is just narrative.
No chapters and verses. Maybe you're thinking about the Bible.
1st amendment is to keep government out of the business of church, not the other way around. All those faiths mentioned have every right to speak their minds. I agree though that we need people that believe in the Constitution. I find that much of what is going on today on our universities, in our court rooms and especially in the media is tearing down the rule of law and destroying the protections of both the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Fully agree that our rights are being undermined. Especially in the media, where censorship is growing.
You know what the funny thing about religion is? People sure do kill each other over it an awful lot. "Nothing to kill or die for / and no religion too." I believe John Lennon had it about right.
I grew up thinking that and yet when I started reading about the Crusades, the witch trials and compared them with what the communists did in Russia and China and elsewhere it pales in comparison. That is not to advocate for the crusades or other crimes by "Christians", but Matthew 7:21-23 says many claim to know Jesus who really do not. As a believer though I think this short life we live is the prequel to the real thing.
But HOW can immigrants be effectively screened to see if their values align with our Constitution and our core values of freedom? HOW? Anyone can learn how to game the system and give the "correct" answers.
You're so right. If you have seen interviews of illegal immigrants at the border, when asked why they are here, the ones who aren't coached, say, "Work."
Says Wikipedia, “Organized crime groups generate large amounts of money by activities such as drug trafficking, arms smuggling, extortion, theft, and financial crime.” Sounds like a pretty accurate description of the State. King Solomon would be hard pressed to separate them.
"The fact that there are enough supporters of terrorist in the USA to have political clout "
most of that rot isn't from immigration, it's from our "elite" institutions, who've bought into the anti-Western rot
Wonderfully done Bari. Although you state "[o]ur American idols are prestige, power, social acceptance, popularity, elite opinion, and the Ivy League—but I repeat myself. Our idols are the coveted board seat. The best tables. Relationships with the pretty people." Isn't it long past time to recognize that the true "golden calf" of too many of modern American Jewry is the Democrat Party. Which has now devolved into a power mad, divisive bunch of totalitarians who are perverting the rule of law and allowing the very madness you deplore.
Oh and btw had the 92nd St Y event been better publicized, we would have been there to support you and stand up to the barbarians at the gates.
Agreed to all this. But until the Republicans ditch Trump I doubt many Jews will vote Republican.
I will be writing in Haley this November
Everything that the left is doing to stop Trump is also effectively destroying the rule of law. Do we believe the bill of rights is for everyone? Innocent until proven guilty or I don't like you, you're mean and have mean tweets so you don't get due process.
I oppose most of the things the left does as well. I refuse to vote for Biden. But while Biden has many many many faults. He didn't try to steal an election
Neither did Trump. That was Biden’s thing. Do you actually believe he legitimately won that election when he didn’t even campaign? When the country was doing so well under Trump? That it wasn’t from election interference in the form of censoring people on social media, hiding the Hunter Biden laptop, and ballot harvesting and stuffing? Now that you see what these DA’s are doing to Trump, can there be any doubt that the system is rigged against him? And finally…are you okay with it when Dems declare elections stolen (a la Hillary Clinton, Stacy Abrams, et al)?
" Do you actually believe he legitimately won that election when he didn’t even campaign? "
1000%
I was there. It was a riot, not an insurrection.
Did I say it was an insurrection?
I said he tried to steal the election. He lied about it for months, then he tried to get fake slates of electors, and pressure Pence to do something unconstitutional.
Oh, and then say back and watched the riots instead of sending in the national guard (so dereliction of duty)
It was Pelosi's job to secure the Capital and she didn't do it. Tarrick Johnson, a Metropolitan cop who was in the Capital at the time has spoken extensively how he was calling for help and it was not there.
As for stealing the election, this is not the first time that elections have been called into question. We've even had states send different slates of electors in the past. Do we now arrest everyone who questions the results, questions the process, especially the millions of mail in ballots without any chain of evidence?
I will agree that the riot disrupted the process that was taking place inside. I would have liked to have seen if our leaders would have handled the election like Congresses in the past according to the Constitution, but now we will never know.
I think they were happy with the "Reichstag" moment and how it gave them cover to avoid their Constitutional duty.
To your detriment as well as to the detriment of all Jews. Trump got the Abraham Accords and he moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. No modern American President has done more for Jews.
And don’t forget he formally recognized the Golan Heights as part of Israel
And that was good.
But he tarnished everything by trying to steal the election.
That outweighs everything else
Where does it say in the law that elections can’t be challenged, especially if there a questionable deeds perceived or otherwise?
Why Haley? That makes not sense.
Seems to be the most reasonable as a protest vote. She would crush Biden, and is getting 30-40% of the vote in the Republican primaries.
You’ll be doubly happy when she switches to democrat. Haley loves her some swamp.
Bari Weiss - one of the best journalists of our modern era. Always thankful for your perspective, Bari, and in this case, exceptionally grateful I am ably “free” to say so.
Bari- You need to deliver this speech to Congress / Senate as they have forgotten what it means to choose freedom over oppression and conformity. Unchecked and uneducated colonization by untold nationalities that only want but don’t want to become American are destroying us. They want to turn America into the same shit holes they left.
Israel I admire for their courage and determination and should never have to sacrifice security to any made up population that was expelled by their neighbors or chose hostility over peace.
Our so called leaders have become cowards and life long political grifters. They truly need to be reminded that freedom and democracy can disappear quickly. Long live Israel!
Thank you, Bari, for your courageous words.
I live part-time in the East Bay, 30 miles from UC Berkeley.. It is done. Gone. Over. The law school Boalt School of Law has been renamed. The law school is churning out radicals faster than rabbits and crazier and dumber than wild turkeys. The school and community are liberal cesspools. I would never reference UC Berkeley again. It stinks. It has always been this way but now, with the current national political climate, it is emboldened. Berkeley Police are an oxymoron.
I graduate from Boalt in 1975 when UC Berkeley was still in tune with the free speech movement. Truly a lifetime ago and moving in the wrong direction.
Bari-
It was an honor to invite you to speak and preach at 92NY. Can't wait to have you with us again soon.
Invite a conservative or Republican, Jew or Non Jew once in awhile. How about taking Dershowitz off your BDS list ? Most progressives despise the Jews with a sick passion...time to wise up on who your allies are.
Hmmm. We do have conservatives at the Y. Please do your fact checking. Also, no BDS list.
If you listen to the talk, I’m pretty sure we covered the issue of allies.
Good Shabbos.
Preach? Is this what we ask journalists to do?
You speak of American exceptionalism and how we lost that idea. You are exactly right, and the loss of the exceptional idea of America and the type of freedom it embodied is the cause of so much that is wrong with our country, and the world, today. I think it is important to call out when, exactly, we lost it. I recall a President who criticized and mocked the idea of American exceptionalism and was widely praised by all the newspapers and widely loved by many people. When he took office he noted that now America would be transformed. That was President Obama and we are living the fruits of his policies and ideology.
The Jewish people that I know voted for Obama . There is a picture of him and Farrakhan that the MSM hid from the public until after he got elected.These people still sing Obama’s praises. BLM is antisemetuc!
To this day that picture is under wraps and when shown they cut out farakhan
The picture can be found on the internet.
Jews are so insecure that they are big into ‘accommodation’ - this did not help them in Nazi Germany and it will not help them now with the Progressive Democrat Left. Hopefully, they will realize this in time.
Who knew that when Tucker Carlson went to Russia to interview Putin he’d be described as a “rightist who glorifies tyrants” and a “demagogue” for pointing out that Moscow has nice supermarkets and impressive subways? This is a distortion of context, and a false moral equivalence in spades.
Other than that, another sublime effort by Bari Weiss! Let me be the first to nominate her as our ambassador to Israel in the next Trump administration; provided, of course, that she has the courage to vote her brilliantly expounded convictions and support the man responsible for the Abraham Accords.
Tucker also praised the Russian 'McDonalds'. What he failed to say is that all of these modern conveniences were mere copies of Western progress. He never left central Moscow so he experienced nothing of ordinary Russians who live lives of desperation and true oppression.
Tucker was not praising the Russians and Putin. The point was a rebuke of American leaders for allowing our own cities to fall to such a state that even Moscow looks better. It was a well-deserved indictment of American leadership, far too subtle for those who can only shout “Putin lover!” in response. A little disappointed that Bari is apparently among that group.
Totally agree!
Yes, but your comment doesn’t invalidate mine. Two things can be true at once.
It won’t happen. The Jewish people I know, I no longer call them friends, will continue to vote Democrat. Even if Biden is running against Trump, they will still vote for Biden. They really don’t care that this administration has ruined America.
They all need to watch this speech. But they won’t.
As a Jew and a Trump supporter, I am alone and alienated in my own family. No one will even listen to me when I try to point out the truth about the Democrats. My own nephew called me a fascist (for saying Israel had to win this war), and my brother in law called me a racist (because I pointed out BLM’s anti-Semitic Marxist agenda).
I just hope that Bari’s audience at the Y, which apparently was made up of movers and shakers, will start to change the trajectory we’re on. America needs major life support, and the Jewish community along with it.
Stay strong! Their name-calling speaks volumes! They know they have nothing to debate against you so they call you names. Maybe someday they will see the light. I admire your courage.
Good luck - you have a lot of us out here in the same boat - you aren’t alone
Read Mark Levin’s book The Democrat Party Hates America. Listen to him on the radio and watch him on TV. ( Fox) Sat. and Sun. 8 pm.
Mk 3:31-35. We have your back.
Actually the poll numbers in New York have really changed… Starting to resemble the split votes in the south.
I pray this continues! You have given me a glimmer of hope.
I liked that speech. We disagree on some things—which I have certainly not been hesitant to point out—but if these words were sincere, I am glad to call you fellow American.
And it was never difficult for me supporting Israel, or for that matter being censored everywhere continually for bucking the idiotic and indefensible lies told during COVID, because to me truth and courage and wisdom are all that matter, and I have structured my life for maximal freedom of the sort you describe.
I have been hurt many times, in many ways, but I have a clear conscience and can honestly say I work daily to soeak the truth, do what is right as I see it, and grow as a person. I really believe this is all God asks of us.
Vote for the candidates who promote freedom of thought , freedom of expression , equality of opportunity but recognize certain marginalized populations need some additional help . Vote for the candidates that will enforce the law , support the police , secure the border and increase legal immigration . Support those who are anti , anti-racist . Those who will tax college endowments , limit deductibility on donations to university to 5k max .
Most important - we need leaders who are not afraid of the far left or far right. And it means Jews need to be free agents in this election. Can’t vote for party - sadly, if you are a traditional liberal voting for a dem who will not stand up to the mob is the worse outcome
And to liberal Jewish leadership - ADL , URJ etc , you might be surprised that you will have better success /impact with open minded conservatives (not far right ) than you will EVER have convincing far left dems and the DSA that Israel is not a colonial apartheid state .
Who do you consider to be far right?
I suspect you consider President Trump to be far right and I couldn’t disagree more.
President Trump is closer to middle America than Biden is by a very wide margin. Biden and his puppet handlers are very “far left.”
No . I do not think Trump is far right . I do worry that the future of the Dem party looks more like the British Labor Party.
Which politicians would fit this? I think many would agree with you. However, many also either think they already voted for someone like that (and are likely wrong) or they don't have anyone running that fits this mold.
Great point . But I do believe that those who lean towards the libertarian philosophy are much better for our democracy, Israel and Jewish Americans
I broadly agree. Not many of them around. Even less that are actually in a position to win an election. I have been rooting for a more Libertarian candidate since the early 90's.
Robert F Kennedy Jr. RFKJ all the way! #kennedy24 sabrinalabow.substack.com
Where do you find those candidates?
Gotta show up at primaries - esp if you are a dem so that far left does get represented .
This was a truly spectacular speech. I'm I guess what's called a secular Jew I recently realized I have been letting ppl know I'm Jewish when I meet them bc I want to prevent them from making any anti-Semitic remarks. It's not that I hang out with ppl who I think may be anti-Semitic it's just now I don't know. It's a lot more prevalent than I realized. I mention it as some sort of defense mechanism I use to preclude any awkwardness. I think ppl are conflating the defense of Palestinians with a prejudice toward all Jews. This is not an excuse in any way. A lot of it is propaganda. Social media bears a lot of responsibility. Do you hear that Mark Zuckerberg? I do believe in free speech unless it calls for violence. Calling for the genocide of Jews certainly falls into that category. We are only 7 million out of 350m ppl in this country. We must stand strong not just for Jews, but for any group that feels bullied or threatened. Thank you Bari for all that you do and keep doing it! Sabrinalabow.substack.com
You should never have to mention your religion to avoid someone using hate speech. No different for any ethnic or religious person. People need civility and courtesy to treat people as individuals and that should be the standard.
I never do but all my Southern Christian friends know. Their support of Israel and Judeo-Christian is strong and honest.
But being Jewish isn’t just a religion which is why she said she was a “secular” Jew. It is an ethnoreligion.
Growing up in the South, I mentioned being Jewish within two minutes of visiting white, gentile friends' homes. Just a few casual antisemitic statements set up this practice for life. When my teenage kids report new friendships, my third question is, "Do they know you're Jewish?" The difference now is, I ask regardless of the friend's color.
Any conservative feels your pain - everyone m own you are not allowed your own opinion on voting when you are in public. Everyone must talk and act like they believe Biden to be wise, fair and competent. When you have to stop people from speaking badly about you - we all get it
I am Protestant but married to a Jew and raised my daughters to be Jewish. People don’t know this as they see a tall, blonde Scandinavian-looking woman. I have been married 40 years and I have heard anti-Semitic comments the entire time. I worry for my children’s future.
Really? Wow! That's horrible. My husband isn't Jewish and our daughter has blond hair and blue eyes but so do I. I have been very fortunate and only experienced anti-semitism directly a handful of times. I'm certain it's bc of the way I look. Ppl can be cruel but most are not imo. It does seem to be coming up more and more which is something we all need to be aware of. I never thought I would experience anti-semitism like this in my lifetime. The more ppl like Bari Weiss and even ppl like us with a smaller following, the more we discuss it the better. Thanks for sharing! Sabrinalabow.substack.com
This was brilliant and unsettling. I heard the mob as I came east on my street from the UWS and a chamber music salon. I just knew the mob was screaming against something good going on at the Y. The Y and the NYPD protected the speakers. At U Cal Berkeley, they cancelled the event. No more money for Cornell, Columbia, the Met Museum, MOMA. Yes and thank you, University of Chicago. Like Bari, I have quit the Times -- no subscription. I followed her here.