Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine - Page 503

On November 17 2025 17:58 Nebuchad wrote:


Yes, all of that is entirely possible. It's just much less likely than my alternative, because you're trying to explain something that is already in line with what you should expect. The most likely reason why something that makes complete sense happens is probably because it makes complete sense, as opposed to because of some underlying hidden agenda.

Let's compare this with something that doesn't make complete sense. Let's take some huge racist in the United States, some Trump guy. He wants to kick all the black and brown people from the US, including muslims. Denying them citizenship, putting them in camps, killing them, everything is fine with him. But suddenly he speaks out against the treatment of Palestinians by Israel? Well, that is inconsistent. We have a reason to wonder why he thinks that, and one of the likely candidates is antisemitism. Let's take the opposite, let's say that instead he applauds the treatment of Palestinians by Israel. Would you think that this individual is more likely to have this approving view of Israel because he loves Jewish people, or because he hates muslims? There's only one correct answer.

I want to point out again that all you're doing is creating an alternative theory, and none of this shows that my logic is faulty. If you can't show that my logic is faulty in the next post I will conclude that it wasn't.



What you describe here precludes RvB from being correct, because it would then be that anti-Jewish bias that he shows that demonstrates antisemitism, and not the mere act of comparing zionism and nazism. In your own argument in defense of RvB, the claim that RvB defends is wrong.

On November 17 2025 18:26 mindjames wrote:

Claim: "If Israel were acting like Nazi's and wanted to occupy all of the middle east, killed minorities on an industrial scale, etc. then the comparison would not be antisemetic. [...] The comparison is made because they're a Jewish state. If Israel were the Islamic state of Israel and Zionism the movement to create an Islamic state in Israel there'd not be the nazi comparisons."

Counter-argument: "Trump. He isn't Jewish, he doesn't act like a nazi under the set of defining actions that you've given here, and his administration, especially in the context of ICE but not exclusively, is regularly compared to nazis."

Your statement is either sufficient or insufficient to refute RvB's claim depending on how you interpret the sentence "The comparison is made because they're a Jewish state".

Do you think RvB is saying:
1. Calling Israel Nazi can only ever be done due to antisemitic views
Or
2. The reason the comparison is this prevalent is because of antisemitic views

So, I will amend my statement: You are either employing faulty logic, or interpreting RvB's statement differently than me. Perhaps he can clarify?

On November 17 2025 18:28 Nebuchad wrote:


I think it's 1), I think RvB is saying that calling Israel nazi can only ever be done due to antisemitic views.

On November 17 2025 18:29 mindjames wrote:

Okay well, let's see if he wants to amend his statement or clarify then.

On November 14 2025 12:59 RvB wrote:
Many of the current anti semetic tropes originated in the USSR. [...] equating Israeli policy with nazism

On November 14 2025 18:02 RvB wrote:
Even you should be able to figure out how comparing the only Jewish state, who were the main victims of the Nazi's, to the Nazi's is antisemetic.

On November 17 2025 09:27 RvB wrote:
If Israel were acting like Nazi's and wanted to occupy all of the middle east, killed minorities on an industrial scale, etc. then the comparison would not be antisemetic. They're clearly not Nazi's though. The comparison is made because they're a Jewish state.

On November 17 2025 18:47 mindjames wrote:
All of these can be interpreted as "this is the main culprit" / "this is engaging in antisemitic tropes" (whether knowingly or not). Do you think he would disagree that a person could call Israel a Nazi state if all they knew about it was that the current government was extremely right wing?

On November 17 2025 18:52 Nebuchad wrote:


I do not know what he would say. I told him that it was silly to say that making comparisons between zionism and nazism was one of the antisemitic tropes that the left introduced, he had the opportunity to say "Yeah of course you're right it is silly, I meant something else with some other specific conditions", but he didn't, he doubled down. I agree with you that it is a silly claim.

On November 17 2025 18:55 mindjames wrote:

Well do you agree that the comparison is as common as it is at least partly because it involves Jews?

On November 17 2025 18:56 Nebuchad wrote:


No

On November 17 2025 17:45 mindjames wrote:

Let's be clear that we are talking about perceptions here.

I will try to emphasize RvB's position.

Here's a controversial topic: Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

A strong proponent of Israel will say that its treatment of Palestinians is the most moral that can be, given the circumstances and available alternatives.

A strong opponent of Israel will say that its treatment of Palestinians is the least moral, given the same.

If I am antisemitic, I will need no evidence of Israel's conduct - I will simply conclude that it is immoral and make the assumption that it is genociding the Palestinians, and/or have been since the beginning (vice versa with a person who is fanatically Zionist, of course).

RvB thinks - if I understand him correctly - that this type of occurrence is extremely prevalent.

You could say having far-right tendencies is the reason for being called Nazi, let's go with that. The perception of an entity's actions can be affected by the biases of the observer, and that in turn will determine whether it sees them as "far right" in that manner.

Your assessment does not preclude RvB being correct. He need only show an anti-Jewish bias and a rejection of evidence that favors Israel, in a group or individual.

I will point out that people have called Israel a Nazi state through Rabin's prime ministership, through the 2005 withdrawal, etc.

You can argue it was less people (and I would agree there), but people on the far left, as well as much of the Muslim world, has been calling Israel Nazi forever. It is absolutely fair to assume that at least part of that has to do with antisemitism, even if not all.

(Fucking hell, how did I get dragged to the antisemitism discussion again? I don't even like making these arguments, it's an incredibly hard thing to assess and measure and I'm not really interested in it. I hope I clarified RvB's position at least.)

On November 17 2025 16:35 Acrofales wrote:

I can't help but read this in the voice of GLaDOS. I do hope there's cake, though. This thread needs cake.

On November 17 2025 21:51 WombaT wrote:

I think one needs to show a bias that is specifically anti-Jewish in motivation, which is somewhat trickier. Regular old blind spots and biases exist too after all.

I’d probably feel quite differently re the invocation of Nazism in this context if it wasn’t incredibly, incredibly common already and massively overused already.

This comes right around to what I was saying re tropes versus observations, it really does depend who’s using them and why they are used.

If the claim is that anti-Semites will draw the Nazi comparison to try to delegitimise Israel, then that is probably true, sure. But the former will influence almost anything they say on the topic.

One can’t peer into the souls of people, it’s quite the tricky task, but one can infer certain motivations to at least some degree of accuracy.

I mean person x can observe that the Jewish lobby is quite influential in the US. But I mean, it kind of is. Person y can say the same, but couch it in a worldview that Jews plot to shift the world in their favour.

Or, in a roundabout way, a lot of these tropes require the cooker to be turned on and the soup cooked by an anti-Semite to turn out as an anti-Semitic meal.

On November 17 2025 21:59 WombaT wrote:

I read every Kwark post in Harlan Ellison’s voice for AM from I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream