Gerald Posner: Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza
Good luck with that. The vast vast majority of people who say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza are immune to any facts to the contrary. It’s partly a case of not being able to reason people out of something they weren’t reasoned into in the first place. It’s also that what drives the genocide claims about Israel is the desire to claim an Orwellian reversal in which the Jews have become the Nazis.
And what drives that? Leftist hatred of Israel and decades of Soviet-generated and Arab-spread Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred. In Europe, the desire to be let off the hook for the Holocaust. In the US on the right – which is hardly immune – it’s good old-fashioned Holocaust denial and Jews-run-the-world-and-are-responsible-for-everything-bad-in-it sentiment. There’s also religious hatred among both Muslims and “Christian” nationalists of the Tucker variety. China also drives it internationally with TikTok algorithms favoring the promotion of anti-Israel anti-Jewish myths.
As noted by many philosophers over the centuries, guilt makes a person angry at the victim. Given the thousands of years of brutal persecution showered on Jews by European Christians, their guilt is truly immense, which has driven their consequent anger into the realm of psychotic rage. You can’t reason this away.
“Genocide” has become another term emptied of any actual meaning, like “racism.”
No, of course it isn’t. One thing we face in our time is constant lying and gaslighting. It seems to get more brazen every year. (The career of Jason Arday and the reaction to his death provide sterling examples).
As noted by many philosophers over the centuries, guilt makes a person angry at the victim.
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I don’t think the characters propagating this meme are the source that experience guilt.
As noted by many philosophers over the centuries, guilt makes a person angry at the victim.
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I don’t think the characters propagating this meme are the sort that experience guilt.
Far as I can tell, most denominations of the NCCNGTA (National Council of Churches Nobody Goes To Anymore) hold that view. I suspect, having talked to some at the hither reaches, that the bigs know they’re lying. But the pew-dwellers, looking for another hit of righteousness, slurp it up.
Art Deco:
It would be more accurate to say that sometimes the desire to avoid feeling guilty makes a person angry at the victim. Much of Europe cooperated in the Holocaust, and now teaches its younger generations about Europe’s guilt in the atrocities, and many people are not interested in feeling guilty about that. What better way to not feel guilty than to make the Jews the real Nazis?
Nobody should ever be expected to feel guilty for anything that happened before they were born. There are people who assert that they should, and people who at least say that they do, but I’m skeptical that anyone really feels guilt for something done before they were born. Guilt implies agency.
Being told that you are indeed guilty, or ought to feel so, for something done before you were born, can provoke resentment in those told that. Almost any white American of the Right feels this way when the topic is race or slavery or the way America was settled.
The number of people still alive in the United States who were responsible for slavery, or were directly victimized by it, is almost certainly zero. This is not quite true yet of the Holocaust in Europe but will be so in twenty or thirty years. Future generations have much they should learn from the Holocaust but guilt ought not to be one of them. Nobody can be guilty of anything that happened before they were born.
I’m skeptical that personal feelings of guilt about the Holocaust are in any way driving the perception of Israel in Europe, because there simply aren’t enough people remaining alive who could be personally guilty. The infant born in 1946 is 80 this year. There might be those who resent an implication that they are guilty and blame Israel or Jews for that, however unreasonably, since they are getting that from their own governments and institutions. But I’d be surprised if it’s even that.
I’m pretty sure among Leftists it’s the same kind of Goldsteinization that the Left always does, Israel happens to be “Goldstein” right now, that may switch to some other country at any time, perhaps the United States-they have always been at war with Eastasia. European institutions were captured by the Left long ago. Aside from whatever goes on with Leftists, it’s not as though antisemitism ever went away. A great number of those who are most loud in condemning Israel are the types who minimize or disbelieve in the Holocaust and so wouldn’t think there would be anything to feel guilty about.
NIketas:
Hatred of Israel and false accusations towards it have been popular in Europe for many many decades, when many of the people living had been very much alive during the actual Holocaust. It’s not something new. It has become even more popular, however, because of course younger people bear no guilt for something they had nothing to do with and yet think that by being taught the history they are being told somehow to feel guilty. So – as I stated – in order to avoid any feelings of guilt (not that they should feel guilty) they are quite happy to believe lies about Israel and Jews.