Yes you claimed that it is a domestic issue. But what is that supposed that to mean? First of all, that doesn’t exclude strategic concerns: indeed, all costly strategic foreign policies can have domestic impact in a democracy. Second, your explanation seemed to rely on the role of the Evangelical Christians supporting Zionism (which is not bipartisan as the support for Israel is). Now if your point is that Biden supports Israel because he will have greater chance to win the elections by pleasing Evangelical Christians, I countered: “Evangelicals support Trump not Biden, even if Biden decides to support Israel. If Biden wanted to compact his democratic front, assuming the anti-Israel front was significantly stronger among democrats, then it would be more convenient for Biden to not support Israel. ” (and BTW Biden is also catholic, nor the ideal candidate for Evangelicals). — neomac

Good point there. I was going to make that one but had some bigger issues to bring up. I thought that one was too obvious.

For the US it's a domestic issue. That's the key to this "strategic alliance". And that's why Biden or anybody cannot push Netanyahu around. Heck, he'll just voice his concerns to the both parties and it's hell for the US president. — ssu

You don't think there are sides in the Islamic realm that also wants to see an apocalypse of sorts in Israel/Palestine? There is a sort of "liberation theology" in Islamist strains of politics that would like nothing more than pushing Jews to the sea... To them, Islam is Political Islam (starting with Mohammed himself) conquering lands from Arabia and then under various descendent regimes pushing into Central Asia and India (and then influencing East African and Asian routes all the way to Indonesia).

You want to see real ethnic cleansing? Talk to the Yazidis, Assyrians, Manichaeans, and especially the Zoroastrians. Don't know of many? I wonder why. They don't want territory. Sweet, precious land and resources. They don't want their OLIVE GROVES to be called "blank country here named after ethnicity". So no one cares. They get to be a minority group that's brought up every once in a while as a curiosity of cultural differences amongst a hegemony.

Just curious, what do you make of how the Middle East turned out with the Sykes-Picot agreement? Seems pretty dismal. What were the goals of Britain and France? Were there any goals of the inhabitants? But you see, the inhabitants, anything it took up that wasn't naturally developed from the Middle East itself (the last being the Ottoman Empire itself), would be just European political philosophy. Rather, anarchic sheik-run fiefdoms and kingdoms and tribal units was not an option for Europe, was it now.

Why do I picture a bunch of men in mustaches sipping their tea, thinking they are civilizing the world drawing arbitrary lines on maps? Why is this connection to colonialism downplayed in Britain nowadays and shoved onto Israel and the US?

Oil has always been the big game in that region. Take down the Ottomans and install various oil kingdoms. That didn’t quite work. Luckily for Britain and France they had the US take the reins in foreign policy after WW2, thus allowing the messy military aftermath to them. Europes last hurrah in the region was the 1956 Suez War.

Perhaps it's a result of a reasonably free society where the bar to entry into political debate has been lowered by technology. Anybody can get on one social media platform or another and babble away about anything. The Elite are still the elite and still run things, but the proles now have big megaphones to express themselves. — BC

I couldn't help but think of Debord's idea of The Spectacle (sorry @Merkwurdichliebe, I brought in an architect of critical theory, but not Frankfurt, so perhaps allowed? :D). That is to say, I notice that most disruptions, even what would have seen as ridiculous and absurdly crazy disruptions (let's say in the US, invading the Capitol to stop the confirmation of an election), don't actually change much as people are so disconnected from the actual "doings" of politics, that it really doesn't matter. In fact, if Trump took over the US as dictator (in practice if not in name), would it affect anyone's daily life really? I mean most people never thought a presidential candidate in their lifetime would have said things like "the election was a lie", and cast that kind of doubt in their lifetime, but here we are, and many people go along with it, condone it. But really, has it disrupted much other than parlor talk?

In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.
2.
The images detached from every aspect of life fuse in a common stream in which the unity of this life can no longer be reestablished. Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general unity, as a pseudo-world apart, an object of mere contemplation. The specialization of images of the world is completed in the world of the autonomous image, where the liar has lied to himself. The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living.

3.
The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as all of society, as part of society, and as instrument of unification. As a part of society it is specifically the sector which concentrates all gazing and all consciousness. Due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is the common ground of the deceived gaze and of false consciousness, and the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of generalized separation.

4.
The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

5.
The spectacle cannot be understood as an abuse of the world of vision, as a product of the techniques of mass dissemination of images. It is, rather, a Weltanschauung which has become actual, materially translated. It is a world vision which has become objectified.

6.
The spectacle grasped in its totality is both the result and the project of the existing mode of production. It is not a supplement to the real world, an additional decoration. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society. In all its specific forms, as information or propaganda, as advertisement or direct entertainment consumption, the spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choice already made in production and its corollary consumption. The spectacle’s form and content are identically the total justification of the existing system’s conditions and goals. The spectacle is also the permanent presence of this justification, since it occupies the main part of the time lived outside of modern production. — Society of the Spectacle - Debord

That is to say, if you turn off your cable news (an ancient thing nowadays), put down your newspaper (an even more ancient thing), don't look at online media, and don't talk politics, are you really affected much as to what happens on "Capitol Hill"? Every so often it comes to you in taxes and ballots, but really, many are detached. I think of an office worker or mechanic or construction worker blissfully just doing their thing.

"Post modernism" seems to have mentally unhinged many on the the left. Up until... what? the 1950s? 60s? the now old left seemed firmly anchored in reality. They may have been dull, but they were accounting for real material forces.

The "public attention span" is only so long, and there is stiff competition to get one's views heard, to dominate the stage. This alone leads to exaggerated claims -- attention bait in the crowded market place.

A lot of what we see on the news seems to be "public performance". This isn't new, of course. Over the decades, maybe a century, people have learned how to effectively demonstrate anger, rage, grief, resentment, outrage, and so on. — BC

More of the spectacle!

They felt plenty of guilt, but it wasn't for being colonizers. — BC

:lol:

I don't look at "empire" -- colonialism -- as it was practiced in the 17th - 20th century as a moral evil. Certainly not very nice, certainly wouldn't want to be on the receiving end, certainly took away more than was given, certainly relied on sticks (guns) much, much more than on carrots. The Romans required a steady flow of goods from its colonies to feed everyone, England, Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Russia -- everybody who COULD -- wanted to tap into (for them) new resources. Finding, acquiring, holding on to, and exploiting resources is a well-established practice, everywhere on every continent, wherever it could be managed, by any group who could pull it off. — BC

Yes, but what do you think of my idea earlier on the fact that anti-Western sentiment is still Western sentiment. There is no getting out of the framework set up by the West.

But, really, is that all a government is supposed to do? Keep its own people down and other peoples out?

What would be realistic criteria for a state to be considered successful? — Vera Mont

No it’s more, can it protect its own people from itself and others. Rights Theory sees government as always a possibility of tyranny. US government uses balance of power which causes friction and thus hard to change, hard to make laws (and thus inherently conservative and lurching unlike perhaps parliamentary systems). The Bill of Rights circumscribes where the individual is paramount and the government is not allowed (in theory).

Rorty warns that this latter group could fragment and atomise the left and to some extent become preoccupied with culture at the expense of economic and class based concerns. I tend to agree that the left has split into these two camps. — Tom Storm

Yes, :up:. I think he’s right on there and that threat becomes imperative. I’ll have more to say later but wanted to acknowledge that comment.

Leftist morality reduces all good and evil to oppressed and oppressor (as you aptly tied to marxism). It runs into the contradiction because it is collectivist, and it applies its relativistic morality only to groups, so that we inevitably find many of these groups to be both oppressor and oppressed. And here we see the classical moral dilemma.

Of course they try to weasel out of this with the idea of intersectionality so that they will not have to admit the evil of one type of oppressor over another, after all, an oppressor of any kind is equally evil in all cases and it is never ok to sympathize with the oppressor. The only thing more evil than the oppressor is the one that oppresses along multiple dimensions, and the more dimensions the more evil. They have unanimously distinguished the west as indisputably having more structures of oppression than any other entity in existence. But this still does not address the moral dilemma.

Because of the leftist emphasis on the group, the morality can never be localized to single cases. In other words, for example, moralizing about the oppression of women does not stop when defending an oppressed nation that actively oppresses women. No, the rights of women are supposed to be universally respected in all places, at all times - wherever oppression of women is possibile, it is relevant... no exceptions. But, alas, this is not the case.

If leftists weren't so full of shit, they would respect their intersectional logic and raise hell over the oppression of women within particular nations that are colonized. But then, this would make them, ipso facto, on the side of the western colonial oppressor, which is a big no-no. This is why so many leftists are capable of siding with a group like Hamas while entirely dismissing the plight of Palestinian women that are directly oppressed by Hamas. But then this places them on the side of the western patriarchy, which is equally evil to the western colonizer. It is perplexing. — Merkwurdichliebe

I don't have more to add to that. Nuanced. The "dilemma" and contradictions you discuss are well-stated and laid out here.

Thanks! :smile:

There is also the contradiction in which they speak about marginalization of groups as the worst form of oppression, yet they are themselves consistently guilty of marginalizing groups they pretend to defend. There are more. — Merkwurdichliebe

:up:
Indeed, now it's called "woke mob". That is to say, their "tolerance" has turned into "intolerance" of other opinions. It is an inability to understand the freedom of speech space. It does happen on both sides, but the Right never claimed to be completely for "tolerance". So, the contradiction happens more on the left.

I should mention, and I guess for @mcdoodle too, that the "Left" as opposed to "old-school liberal" tends to emphasize identity politics and political correctness over more universal agendas (usually more economics-focused, or perhaps celebrating various Western/Enlightenment-based notions developed in the 17th-19th centuries, or even being vaguely patriotic or pro (pick your Western country). If it at all focuses on the West, it is critical of the West (critical theory, and vaguely Marxist in origin).

Is it because I'm not north American that I find it hard to understand this thread? Bill Maher is one of those comedians who doesn't travel well, I think it's one of those things about being divided by a common language.

So I'm a leftist; I'm a strong supporter of universal human rights; and philosophically I am a sort of moral relativist. David Vellemann outlines the kind of view I go with: that different social groups can, indeed will, have incompatible moralities, but their moral concerns are thematically linked. Rational-based negotiation then remains the best way of trying to resolve moral differences.

The argument here seems much more political than philosophical. Who are the 'leftists' who under attack here? Why hasn't anyone quoted any of them? What is the corrective moral view: Maher is a comedian so he has every right not to have an answer, but are people in general arguing for moral objectivism, or what? — mcdoodle

Perhaps, I can see that. So by "Leftist" it is a fluid and over-used term so is confusing. First off, you can be a "left" political leaning person and not be Leftist as I (and Maher) is using the term. More recently people like Maher have been using Leftist or "people on the left" in contrast to "old-school liberal". Now this is even more confusing because there is such thing as Classical Liberal from the 18th century (which is like Adam Smith libertarian economics yet moderate/liberal socially). No, what Maher means by "old-school liberal" is the general "moderate liberals" that are referred to in politics in the 20th century. That is people who are economically liberal but usually, moderately so (they agree we need some social safety nets and that government has some role in helping the economy), but also as a matter of domestic and foreign policy are very pro-individual rights. That is to say, freedom of speech is of utmost importance. That means, for example, the culture on college campuses that run-out conservative speakers or people that have differing views than the often very left-leaning administration/professors/student-body is a very bad thing as it curbs that very important element of freedom of speech and exchange in ideas. They also tend to see universal rights as binding, and not one-way. That is to say, regimes that repress minorities (religions, views, ethnicities), and represses freedom of speech, are to be condemned outright. That is to say, a political entity like the Iranian government or Hezbollah are bad, and should be condemned. It is also pro-Western in terms of it rather former colonies of the world (aka "third-world countries") should adopt Western notions of universal rights, freedom of speech, etc. Policies that promote and protect this, even at the behest of repressing the anti-Western notions, are favored in foreign policy.

On the other hand, in this newer terminology, we have the "Leftists". That is to say, they are also "liberal" certainly in their economic outlook, and socially, but they are more severely critical of points of view that differ. These are the people on college campuses that run out the guest speakers, for example. As far as former colonies (aka the "third world"), they think in terms of cultural relativism. They care less that for example, Iran or Middle Eastern cultures are repressive towards minorities, women, free speech, etc. and are more in favor of the fact that they are "non-Western" and thus this should be respected (even if they don't necessarily agree).

Leftists also tend to take on Marxist views. Usually this is not consciously. Many don't know this is the origins of their thought. Here is a good example of the origins:

In the mid-19th century, Karl Marx mentioned imperialism to be part of the prehistory of the capitalist mode of production in Das Kapital (1867–1894). Much more important was Vladimir Lenin, who defined imperialism as "the highest stage of capitalism", the economic stage in which monopoly finance capital becomes the dominant application of capital.[35] As such, said financial and economic circumstances impelled national governments and private business corporations to worldwide competition for control of natural resources and human labour by means of colonialism.[36]

The Leninist views of imperialism and related theories, such as dependency theory, address the economic dominance and exploitation of a country, rather than the military and the political dominance of a people, their country and its natural resources. Hence, the primary purpose of imperialism is economic exploitation, rather than mere control of either a country or of a region. The Marxist and the Leninist denotation thus differs from the usual political science denotation of imperialism as the direct control (intervention, occupation and rule) characteristic of colonial and neo-colonial empires as used in the realm of international relations.[37][36]

In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Lenin outlined the five features of capitalist development that lead to imperialism:

Concentration of production and capital leading to the dominance of national and multinational monopolies and cartels.
Industrial capital as the dominant form of capital has been replaced by finance capital, with the industrial capitalists increasingly reliant on capital provided by monopolistic financial institutions. "Again and again, the final word in the development of banking is monopoly".
The export of the aforementioned finance capital is emphasized over the export of goods.
The economic division of the world by multinational cartels.
The political division of the world into colonies by the great powers, in which the great powers monopolise investment.[38]
Generally, the relationship among Marxist-Leninists and radical, left-wing organisations who are anti-war, often involves persuading such political activists to progress from pacifism to anti-imperialism—that is, to progress from the opposition of war, in general, to the condemnation of the capitalist economic system, in particular.[39]

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union represented themselves as the foremost enemy of imperialism and thus politically and financially supported Third World revolutionary organisations who fought for national independence. This was accomplished through the export of both financial capital and Soviet military apparatuses, with the Soviet Union sending military advisors to Ethiopia, Angola, Egypt and Afghanistan.

However, anarchists as well as many other Marxist organizations, have characterized Soviet foreign policy as imperialism and cited it as evidence that the philosophy of Marxism would not resolve and eliminate imperialism. Mao Zedong developed the theory that the Soviet Union was a social imperialist nation, a socialist people with tendencies to imperialism, an important aspect of Maoist analysis of the history of the Soviet Union.[40] Contemporarily, the term "anti-imperialism" is most commonly applied by Marxist-Leninists, and political organisations of like ideological persuasion who oppose capitalism, present a class analysis of society and the like.[41]

About the nature of imperialism and how to oppose and defeat it, Che Guevara said:
imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism—and it must be defeated in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world, is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capitals, raw materials, technicians, and cheap labor, and to which they export new capitals—instruments of domination—arms and all kinds of articles; thus submerging us in an absolute dependence.
— Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental, 1967 — Anti-imperialism

So that is its origins, but what of it now? No one is really speaking in terms of Marxism, right? Well, not really. What happened was, this got translated into viewing the world in terms of only the "big bad West" and the "underdog". The victimizers (the West), and the victims (the Rest). But this directly conflicts with the "old-school" liberal notions that the West actually is morally "right" in its views (of universal rights being more important than things like religious matters, that freedom of speech is important and above and beyond cultural traditions, etc.). But "Leftists" are willing to support repressive cultural traits and regimes that want to put this in place, because they are viewed as the "underdog". Thus, anything "anti-West" or at least, "the underdog" is good or right in some way. And thus, they are supported simply because they are seen as the underdog. But you see, it's obviously not that black-and-white. Sometimes, the underdog, the little guy, is wrong, and should be condemned. It's not just a matter that they are right because they are the little guy.

And so this brings me to the contradictions of the left. They would never want to live under regimes of these "underdogs" but they support them none-the-less. They will even support terrorist acts and asymmetrical forms of warfare that leads to large losses of life and harm, because it is disrupting the Western regime.

But one of my points was that this is a fantasy to think that nation-states are "liberating" themselves from anything. Because even the notion of a nation-state, is a WESTERN notion. It is ALL the WEST. Even the ways of fighting the WEST are the WEST. You can't get out of it. It's all contradiction and genetic fallacy. Even the fact that there are nation-states, is a Western thing.

In a previous post, I gave a whirlwind summary of world history of European (West) domination of the rest of the world, basically writing the very rules which they will exist. The Middle East and Africa is purely now a European fiction. So any attempts at any individual country "liberating" itself, is also buying into that fiction. It is not fully understanding the history of how all of this was created. Nationalism in the Middle East (the big conflict now) is just a continuation of Nationalism from Europe. The very territories of the "nations" of the Middle East, is just the lines drawn by Europe.

When I form my views on Jesus as a thinker I am based my analysis of him based on what he says in the gospels, particularly Mark and Matthew. Pirkei Avot is a Talmudic tractate on Jewish ethics at that time and I find considerable contrasts (although with some common ideas) with the teachings of Jesus. It's fascinating for me: Pirkei Avot has timeless wisdom with a practical utility; with Jesus his teachings tends to focus more attaining the ideal even if it puts one at great danger. Jesus never really expresses concern for his followers physical well-being or living a long life; OTOH he says it is of no great matter whether one dies at e.g. age 6, 30, 60, or 90 because it is all in God's hands. Jesus differs from Judaism both on the nature of salvation and on the nature of God. — BitconnectCarlos

I think now you are getting bogged down in making a fluid understanding of Torah-law interpretation into something Ideal and archetypical. Don't read Rabbinic post-Temple views of the world as 1st century Pharisee notions of the world. The Pharisees may have been more fluid. They were pioneering these interpretations in a time of turmoil in regards to the Roman Empire. Could there have been Pharisees that also had leanings towards Essenic style apocalypticism? Certainly. After all, in Josephus and the Talmud there is a mention of "Menahem the Essene" who mysteriously left the Sanhedrin as Av Bet and Shammai took his place. Could the idea even of a "Son of Man" who would help the righteous Jews defeat their enemies even been more potent during the time of Jesus and other Pharisees even, certainly. We even see this notion of an angelic Enoch (in his angelic form as Metatron), in Enoch 3, a Rabbinic Jewish esoteric text (though not canonical in anyway, it reveals possible attitudes towards that idea).

Jesus is unquestionably life-denying if we regard his teachings in the gospels as accurate representations of his thought. — BitconnectCarlos

Right, and that is my whole point countering the general way you are interpreting Jesus. You are taking traditional (Christian) Gospel portrayals as gospel. In scholarship of texts in the ancient world, you have to understand the intent of the authors, the surrounding context, the surrounding differences in cultures, the conflicts going on when they were writing, their audience, their influences, and then weigh what was trying to be conveyed to what was probably the case.

The authors of the New Testament have a point of view. They need Jesus to look sui generis. You can see this "othering" of Jesus (both as in othering from his Jewish origins to othering as even a human being) by the way he is portrayed in Mark (it starts at what people actually knew about him.. his preaching years in the Galilee and being baptized and being associated with the more well-known Jewish charismatic leader at the time, John the Baptist). It then moves to Matthew which focuses on more of his mashalim (parables) and revealing more of his understanding approach to halacha (Jewish law interpretation). However, I am willing to admit, as I said, that the this is also pure propaganda by the author who knew a thing or two about Pharisee-law and placed it in the character of Jesus. But that would be dangerous, as it now re-focuses Jesus in a more Jewish context of debating the minutia of Jewish law. But then, this actually endorses the "embarrassment theory", as it would be embarrassing to have Jesus embroiled in common 1st century debates on the minutia of Jewish law. He should be busy being Othered as a Son of God who is the Logos and beyond all that stuff. Well, Matthew cuts it both ways, see, in this mythological account, he is given a Roman-style birth story, where he is the "son of a virgin" a concept foreign to Jewish Second Temple Period theological notions of messiah (or God for that matter), but very common in the pagan Greco-Roman-Near Eastern world. Luke gives us an elaborated version of this with angels and such, further putting Jesus as certainly divine, at the least something of angelic origin, leading a way for a Son of God. By John, we start getting full blown Platonic notions of the "Logos", and clearly influence from Diasporan Platonic notions (pace Philo of Alexandria). This Logos in John is still its own thing because it isn't just the Logos, an organizing principle and telos, but the "Logos made flesh", which combines Platonic AND mystery-cult aspects of a god that "dies for the (sins of?) humanity" (pace Mithra).

So this is to all to say, you have to peal back those mythological layers, to get to the "historical" figure. If you buy into Jesus "condemning the Jews", you have now bought into the Othering of Jesus from his Jewishness so that he can now become safe for non-Jews to have him as their own, so they can worship him without having to worry about that more "national/ethnic" aspect of him. Since this is a thread on antisemitism, you can see how this Othering of Jesus contributes to this, by removing the Jewishness from Jesus, as well as the humanness from being someone embroiled in the Jewish religio-political debates of his time, to being some otherworldly Christ who died for the sins of humanity. He is not Jewish, but universal and then the Othering is complete.

“What have the Romans ever done for us?” — I like sushi

Exactly

The key here is that "real" is a technical term Russell uses without defining it very clearly. Or so it seems to me. — J

This to me seems a big glaring missing part of any comprehensive metaphysics, eh? But as long as you can shrug it off with no qualms you can move on from there to less speculative things like that chair means chair.

I think you’re right about that. I would go further and say the nation-state is just a repurposing of the Ancien Régime, not a repudiation, and the ideas you mention are built around seeking that power. — NOS4A2

And also, do you not think this guy:


was trying to import the idea of "nationalism" an "nation-state" to Arab tribal societies to break up the Ottoman's 400+ year reign over the Middle East?

And did not the Sykes-Picot agreement that created more-or-less, the modern Middle Eastern borders (and thus basically the territory for this new "nation-state" import)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement

The Sykes–Picot Agreement (/ˈsaɪks ˈpiːkoʊ, - pɪˈkoʊ, - piːˈkoʊ/[1]) was a 1916 secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire.

And did not the Scramble for Africa in the 1800s not create the arbitrary states (and notions of a nation-state) in Africa?

Is it not the toppling of the Spanish of the Incan/Aztec empires (who were brutally oppressive in some ways themselves) that created the Latin American countries. The Spanish aristocrats, coming over and intermarrying with former Aztec, Taino, and other native peoples to form a stratified and often more forcefully brutal kind of hierarchy than the US slave system?

Is it not the Portuguese and then Brazilians, who followed the same Spanish model, but with the added step of importing more slaves than the US, Spanish and French colonies by a longshot? And then the last to stop the slave trade and slavery in 1888?

Was it not the British who basically helped to wipe out the Natives in the 13 colonies, to then to be extended with Manifest Destiny, the Louisiana Purchase and settler movement, and the Mexican War, that allowed the United States to become as large as it became? And don't forget Canada!

And I am not forgetting the colonizing of British colonies in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the like... Let's not forget those more recent colonization efforts....

That's another thing that irks me about the left: out of one side of their mouth come claims that everything is merely a power game, and out of the other side come claims regarding justice. Granted, they may not use the word "justice," but that is what they are talking about: what is right or wrong (permissible or impermissible) in a manner that is not affected by will or power. — Leontiskos

No, many do use "justice", "self-determination", "rights". But it imports the Marxist ideas of the "oppressed". So now, if you are the "oppressed", the "victims" (non-Western former colonized nations, ethnic groups, or people), your reaction will be, well, reactionary and this is promoted and praised. That is to say, often violent, terroristic, and all of it. At the same time, the Westerners who tacitly or loudly support these groups/states, are the loudest in their own societies against the illiberalism that they support in the "oppressed states" societies. Again, contradiction upon contradiction.

If the jews were corrupters, they just happened to be the first and most effective. Since the inclination to turn the will against itself was present in all of humanity, there was no need to fetishize the jews, and no reason to assume they were any less capable than any other group of overcoming nihilistic tendencies. — Joshs

:up:

I think this is an interesting quote:

The mature Nietzsche once described himself as “Wagner’s antipode.”In his own view, he was as opposed to Wagner as the North Pole is tothe South. Moreover, it was his break with Wagner in the mid 1870sthat finally allowed Nietzsche to find his own identity, to develop hisown intellectual personality and mission. In the 1880s Nietzsche contin-ued to take Wagner seriously even as a fierce opponent. He looked uponWagner as a temptation he had to overcome, as a servitude and even asan “infection” or “disease” he had to experience before liberating him-self and coming into his own. Under the heading of “Wagner,” Nietz-sche did not only mean the music dramas, but a whole complex ofattitudes and a worldview, which included romanticism, Schopenhauer’snegation of the will, German nationalism, and anti-Semitism, amongothers. Similarly, in calling Wagner his “antipode” Nietzsche intendedto dissipate all these intertwined shadows—including anti-Semitism—which Wagner’s domineering figure had cast in his way. For Nietz-sche, his overcoming of Wagner was at the same time a powerful self-overcoming for Nietzsche—so deep had Wagner penetrated his ownself, albeit as an alien and self-alienating force. — Article

I can't seem to get the rest without paying, but I can see where it's going on.

Another quote is also revealing but in a different way regarding what I mentioned earlier, of slave philosophy versus aristocratic will-to-power:

“This is precisely why the Jews are the most disastrous people in world history: they have left such a falsified humanity in their wake that even today Christians can think of themselves as anti-Jewish without understanding that they are the ultimate conclusion of Judaism.”

And here:

instinct of a people [the Germans] whose type is still weak and indeterminate enough…to be easily obliterated by a stronger race. But the Jews are without a doubt the strongest, purest, most tenacious race living in Europe today. They know how to thrive in even the worst conditions….

The fact that the Jews, if they wanted (or if they were forced, as the anti-Semites seem to want), could already be dominant, or indeed could literally have control over present-day Europe—this is established. The fact that they are not working and making plans to this end is likewise established….[W]hat they wish and want instead…is to be absorbed and assimilated into Europe…in which case it might be practical and appropriate to throw the anti-Semitic hooligans out of the country….

This to me, indicates, he is against the values (of embracing the principles of humility/charity/being quiet and prayerful, etc.) not the people. And really, it is anti-Christian principle (akin to criticizing Schopenhauer's notion of asceticism in Catholicism), rather than actually being "anti-Jewish". It's kind of a schizophrenic hodge-podge, but consistently he does not like Wagner-style antisemitism.

The growing anti-Semitism in Germany during the 1870s and 1880s disgusted him. He derided the hatred of Jews by the composer Richard Wagner, a friend with whom he eventually broke, and he tried to block his sister’s marriage to an anti-Semitic agitator. Nietzsche had several Jewish friends, including one of his greatest admirers, the famous Danish literary critic Georg Brandes. After a stimulating conversation with another Jewish friend, Helen Zimmern, Nietzsche noted, “It is fantastic to what extent this race now has the ‘intellectuality’ of Europe in its hands.” His biographer, Curtis Cate (Friedrich Nietzsche, Overlook Press), accurately calls Nietzsche an “anti-anti-Semite.”

Moreover, though he is mainly remembered for his concept of the “Ubermensch” and “the splendid blond beast”—as he called the aristocratic predators who write society’s laws—Nietzsche was an antimilitarist. He hated the German monarchy and loved France (at that time, Germany’s main enemy), Switzerland and Italy, where he spent most of his adult life. Far from believing in the superiority of the Aryans, he liked to imagine he himself had Polish ancestry.

To give a sense of Nietzsche’s worldview—though these extreme sentiments came after 1888 as he began to descend into madness—Nietzsche urged the rest of Europe to unite against Germany, called on Jews to help him in his campaign against Christianity and said he would like to kill all the German anti-Semites.

There is no doubt that if he had lived to see Nazism he would have been appalled and outspoken in his enmity, though his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, became an enthusiastic Nazi; when she died in 1935, Hitler himself attended her funeral.

How then did this pro-Jewish philosopher become an inspiration for the murderers of 86 percent of Europe’s Jews? So much so that his works became official Nazi doctrine and the dictator ordered that a monument be built to honor him?

The immediate answer is Nietzsche’s hatred of Christianity and belief that a post-Christian, secular morality must be developed. In this regard, he was part of the post-Darwin reaction to the cracking of religious certainty. As a believer in what Brandes called “aristocratic radicalism” and having a horror of democracy, Nietzsche, in the words of Cate, contrasted “the positive ‘breeding’ of aristocracies to the negative ‘taming,’ ‘castration’ and emasculation of the strong by insidious ‘underdogs.’” Or in Nietzsche’s own words:
Christianity, growing from Jewish roots and comprehensible only as a product of this soil, represents a reaction against the morality of breeding, of race, of privilege—it is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence.

In his book Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche penned what became the core of Nazi philosophy and the death knell for European Jewry:
All that has been done on earth against ‘the nobles,’ the ‘mighty,’ the ‘overlords’…is as nothing compared to what the Jews did against them: the Jews, that priestly people who were only able to obtain satisfaction against their enemies and conquerors through a radical revaluation of the latter’s values, that is, by an act of the most spiritual revenge…. It was the Jews who…dared to invert the aristocratic value-equation…saying ‘the wretched alone are the good ones, the poor, the helpless, the lowly…. You who are powerful and noble are to all eternity the evil ones….’

This was, however, in contrast to what the Nazis made out of it later and the Islamists do today. Nietzsche didn’t accuse the Jews of doing anything on their own—no conspiracy of the Elders of Zion—but merely the “invention” of Christianity. What should be stressed here is that his diatribe against Jews was a small, isolated part of his writing that did not otherwise carry over into his life or thinking. It was his sister who helped pervert her brother’s thinking when she grafted her anti-Semitic, nationalist ideas onto his philosophy in the book The Will to Power.

Nietzsche dissociated the existing Jews from the harm he perceived arising from those Jews—especially Paul—who had created Christianity two millennia earlier. Nietzsche used these terms interchangeably when he said the “Western world was now suffering from ‘blood poisoning’” through being Jewified, Christianized or “mobified.”

But earlier, he had written admiringly in explaining his opposition to anti-Semitism: “The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest and purest race now living in Europe.”

Indeed, they fit his aristocratic prescription since they survived “thanks above all to a resolute faith that does not need to feel ashamed in the presence of ‘modern ideas.’”

Germany, he continued, would do better to deport the anti-Semites than the Jews who would provide many good qualities.
— Nietzsche article Hadassah

To give an example, if someone is against cultural exports then they are not rationally permitted to export their favorite issues to other cultures (e.g. exporting women's rights to the Middle East). If they are going to try to export their favorite issues to other cultures, then they cannot oppose cultural exports tout court and still be consistent. — Leontiskos

Actually, I tend to think it is the opposite. They look the other way, or downplay the "liberal values" that are not being followed, as long as that nation-state has a grievance with the West, and emphasize that grievance as the matter that counts, not the internal liberal society of that nation-state.

Indeed, and I think this reveals a bigger issue, actually. First off, accepting being in the confines of a "nation-state", is Western, is it not? Okay, now to fight the Westerners, you have rockets, grenades, mortars, tanks, and guns. Is this not made in Western factories, using Western-based technology? Much of the infrastructure, and medicine, and engineering is Western, no? Okay, so let's say these notions and material resources are legitimate to import, with this importation, why would universal rights, freedom of speech and press, due process, etc. the "liberal" parts of the West be unacceptable to import? Even a bigger question, why would the cultural relativists be okay with cultural export of Western material items and notions of nation-state, but not internal notions of "liberal civil society and polity"? Also, why would one support Western notions of "self-determination", but then not Western forms of non-violence or civil discourse versus tacitly being okay with terrorism as long as it is for some form of nation-state which again, is a Western notion. There is a knot of contradictory beliefs for those who hold "cultural relativism" leftist beliefs. And even modern terrorism, arguably is just a Western import from anarcho-communist tactics and ideologies of anti-Western imperialist groups of the 20th century.

What I’m centrally interested in is how you would
characterize ressentiment, particularly its manifestation as the ascetic ideal, from a critical philosophical stance. Put differently, what, according to Nietzsche, is the crucial philosophical self-understanding lacking in those (including the jews) who believe that a nirvana of pure will to nothingness is a solution to the pain and suffering of living, or that science progresses toward absolute objective truth, or that there are moral universals? How are these all examples of the ascetic ideal (which the jews bought into lock, stock and barrel), and what kind of ethics should replace them? — Joshs

From what I understand, Nietzsche's opinion as Jews as "anti-life-affirmation" is actually just the inverse of Schopenhauer's opinion of Judaism as life-affirming. He liked to do that with Schopenhauer. Broadly-speaking, Schopenhauer characterized Judaism, Islam, and Protestant Christianity as "life affirming" because of their emphasis on embracing the here and now, and this life. He characterized Buddhism, Hinduism, and Catholic Christianity as life-denying, as they emphasized an asceticism beyond the confines of this life. Since he thought the only way to deny the "will-to-live" was to embrace asceticism, he praised these ideas and maligned the former. I do want to emphasize that Schop's anti-Judaism, Islam, and Protestantism is very much a caricatured archetype so that he can have a foil for his life-denying views. It is also important to note that he wasn't fond of Catholic, or even Eastern religious trappings of asceticism either. He just thought they were more on to something with ascetic ideals. He wanted asceticism pure and simple, no mythology.

Anyways, Nietzsche actually seemed to reverse this notion. Instead, Judaism, mainly in its step-child Christianity, became a philosophy of the "weak" because it emphasized humility, charity. It was a sort of philosophy of the slave, and not of the aristocrat which he championed. It is bizarre 19th century playing with idealized and caricatured religious archetypes to try to promote a philosophical viewpoint.

Either way, it seems like Judaism can't win with either. It's either too life affirming or life denying, depending on how you want to spin them. And this goes into a broader idea of anti-Judaism and antisemitism. That is to say, people turn it into whatever the boogeyman is that they want to malign. You associate it with that group and proceed to make them your proverbial bad guys. You want lefty-communist bad guys-type antisemitism, you blame Jews. You want world bank owning super-capitalists, you blame the Jews. You want X bad thing. It is the immutable nature of its mutability of how you can use the Jews as a foil, that makes it pervasive.

I will say, the kind of anti-Judaism of Schopenhauer, was probably a bit too early for the modern style antisemitism. As far as I know, he didn't hate Jews more than any other ethnic group. He had something mean to say about everyone, including fellow Germans. Nietzsche's era was getting closer to actual antisemitism in the modern sense, but he seemed to disavow such views.

I think you’re right about that. I would go further and say the nation-state is just a repurposing of the Ancien Régime, not a repudiation, and the ideas you mention are built around seeking that power.

Anyways, there is a good little book by Pascal Brukner called The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism that goes deep into your topic from the French perspective. It’s basically a form of narcissism arising from a wing of well-fed socialists upset that, in the end, the proletariat sided with their bogeyman. — NOS4A2

Interesting. How much do you think anti-Western imperialism was fed by socialists (I would say more Communists and Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist theories). Surely those are Western too (and can be considered broadly "socialist" but in a sort of very definitive school of thought that can be characterized as Hegelian-Marxist, rather than a broad notion of social welfare). Can there be a direct lineage of modern Islamist ideology that has connections to Marxist anti-imperialist thinking during the Cold War? Is it the "West" teaching the former colonies how to fight "the West", but retrofitting it?

Attempts by Europeans to impose "universal rights and liberal principles" by colonizing and coopting non-Europeans for the last half-millennium was and is, in fact, trying to "have it both ways" – subverting that "universalist" end with illiberal (i.e. imperialist/hegemonic) means. — 180 Proof

But surely the "illiberal" part is Western too. You doubt the idea of "self-criticism" as Western, but I believe this demonstrates it. It is Western intellectuals, or at least, the torch-bearing of such ideas by the former colonists, that talk in such terms. You need an idea of "liberal" to have "illiberal". So which is it? It's either "law of the jungle and conquer", or universal rights exist.

In theory, maybe; but not in practice. Empires (via conquistadors, gunships, missionaries & systematic colonization), for example, are not "self-critical" emancipatory projects (pace Hegel, vide Aristotle). — 180 Proof

Absolutely. I won't debate that there. Europe, mainly Britain, France, Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal, conquered the rest of the world with their technology and then those that did not get decimated remained in the system under their particular style of government, enlightened or otherwise. Italy and Germany were late to the game in forming a nation-state out of smaller states and kingdoms. Italy tried and failed in Ethiopia. Germany also had some forays into Africa, but mainly used their industrialized economy to start wars with their neighbors. They kept it more internal, Napoleon-style. They had to show their British and French neighbors that they are players too. Austria-Hungary was by that point a quaint idea of old- multi-ethnic empires, as dead as the Holy Roman Empire. My point was that after this initial conquest though, even the idea of "fighting the colonizers" with terms like "rights" and "self-determination" through "democratic rule" is Western itself. You can't get out of it.

Do you mean the west should be antagonistic toward countries that don't value rights and liberal principles? — frank

I didn't mean that. Where did you get that from? Rather, Maher's critique was of the "Left" critiquing Western civilization, downplaying the very values that are usually seen as "good" (like universal rights). I think it brings up a larger point of "Liberalism" versus "Leftism" in general. Liberalism generally tends to see the universal aspects, and that more-or-less, everyone has inherent "rights". However, this butts up against the left-tendency to value cultural relativism (each culture should be respected). So it brings up a whole hose of contradictions:

1) What if a unique cultural trait is something that is contrary to universal human rights?

2) What of the fact that "rights" and "balanced forms of government" and "legal rights" were really an idea that came about in a time and context (arguably from previous Greco-Roman and even Medieval thought in Europe, but can certainly be demarcated around the Enlightenment emerging in the 17th century and going full force by the 18th century).

2a) Well, if this came out of the "West" should the "West" expect other peoples not of the Western tradition to follow the Western position? You will get a plethora of views. Traditional Liberals will say it applies everywhere, a more leftist ideology would say its the oppressor culture demanding more than is its right from various other traditions. However, this same group cannot cry "foul" then about violation of rights on one side but not on the other, as if only one side can be held to Western standards, but another should not. I guess in this case, there is a belief that if it "started in the West" then "universal rights matter", but if it started from the non-West they don't? Then are they really universal?

3) If universal rights are seen as good by both liberals and leftists, and these are a cultural feature that came out of a place and time, is it wise to downplay the role of this cultural feature simply because its the dominant one?

The West has also given us fascism, socialism, communism, and whatever the current brand of nanny-statism is. — NOS4A2

Of course. They also gave us the "nation-state". Indeed, I would argue it is how the ideas of "nation-state" collide with ideas of "liberalism" "conservatism" and "socialism" that cause many issues of the 19th-21st centuries.

Let's say then "educated in the Jewish tradition" - such a statement seems self-evident to me as Jesus is able to cite Scripture 78 times and draws from a wide variety of the books. Luke 4 describes Jesus reading from a scroll. I don't particularly doubt Jesus's literacy. Amos, a shepherd, was literate and wrote in the 8th century BC. I believe there's a tradition of literacy in Jewish culture. I would also question whether Jesus was a peasant and if he was not that would have raised his prospects of being literate. In any case, I don't find it that far fetched that he was literate.

EDIT: After further research I am less certain in my position. Jesus may have been illiterate. Chris Keith's "Jesus's literacy" concludes that Jesus was unlikely to have been literate. In the gospels, however, Jesus is not omniscient. Scholarship seems divided on this. — BitconnectCarlos

You can find literature for any and every position on Jesus. As I said, I'm willing to accept that all of it is myth. But if Jesus not only referenced biblical literature (not vague stories or oral tales), and if he understood also various hermeneutics used by the Pharisees which seems evident, I would say that it is not only possible, but probable that he was heavily influenced, or was even a student at some point in that group. If that is the case, t makes sense the mythological component needs to divorce him from this embarrassing fact so as to "other" Jesus from a particular Jewish group and his Jewish background in general. If he looks like a "one of a kind" he can then be a universal figure, a Christ, a Logos, a Son of God, and not particularly nationalistic or internal to "his people". He is sui generis and thus not quite "Jewish" but only "within the Jews". But it takes knowing a bit about the goings on of Greco-Roman Judean/Galilean geography, politics, religion, history, and society. You also have to figure in players like Herod Antipas, the tetrarchy, the Decapolis Romanized cities in the Transjordan, Judean direct rule under prefects (and then procurators), versus being ruled by puppet kings, and various views on the powers that controlled the region. This helps understand the religious groups positions towards that foreign power. Essenes were highly metaphysical (End of Times, Good/Evil, Messiah is immanent, angels will help the cause, repent now, return to a purer understanding of Torah). Pharisees were "wait and see", but not all. The Shammaites seemed more aligned with the Zealots and eventually there were internal rivalries (perhaps violent ones) between the Hillelites and Shammaites in Jerusalem and on the Sanhedrin. The Sadducees did not seem to care about moralism, or widening the purity laws democratically, as why would they? They also seemed more influenced from an Epicurean standpoint of the "here and now" is what matters, not a World to Come. Anyways.. a lot going on at that time.

It's internal in the sense that Jesus is a Jew criticizing other Jews. I do believe Jesus & followers were originally a break-away sect of Judaism. Yet IMHO his teachings as presented in the gospels are a different animal than what one would find with Hillel or Shammai, although I'm not well read on either of these two.

I do think that it was more like a "Hillel with urgency" approach to law, combining the more lenient views of Halacha of the School of Hillel
— schopenhauer1

Jesus is stricter on some things (e.g. monitoring one's thoughts and eye contact) and looser on others (shabbat restrictions, hand washing.) — BitconnectCarlos

So, no group in its early phase is "monolithic". Name a major political party now that doesn't have "factions" and disagreements. That is to say, we really don't know if the Hillelites held "official" positions and that there could not be ones that could vascilate between various points of view, but generally align with the core ideas of their main "party" or "school of thought". So I don't think that really provides solid evidence against this. Rather, Jesus' call for intention over ritual seems more in line with Hillelite ideals.

Also, and you really overlooked my point here, the idea of "condemning various types of Pharisees" is clearly seen within the Pharisee tradition itself, so if anything, it would more solidly put Jesus in that tradition of self-examination.

I've learned on these forums that sometimes there is a previous post that makes the best, and it's just best to refer back to that one, as it still answers the question. I am going to do that in this case.

Evidence? You mean like Israeli politicians admitting intent, and decades of Israeli policy we can fall back on?

It's an open and shut case. — Tzeentch

First off, I can go either way as to whether terms matter here or just a tool for making red herrings. But let's say "genocide" is a useful word as it demarcates a specific immoral phenomenon regarding groups of people against other groups of people. Ok, if that is the case, then both sides can be considered "genocidal" in their intentions. Both sides want the land, and both side have made violent overtures, often with rhetoric like "from the river to the sea". Hamas has kidnapped 250 people raped, pillaged the countryside, chopped off heads, killed 1,400 people and showed it on media, sending rockets daily, and before that periodically. Hamas had scores of suicide bombers in the 1st and second intafadas, not participating in two-state solution talks. At various points in 1948, 1967, and 1973, the Egypt/Jordan/Syria/Lebanon/Iraq/Saudi Arabia with the Palestinian forces, have called for the utter destruction of Israel. Currently, Iran and Hezbollah have had that as part of their policy. So, sure, we can indeed talk about Likud's abysmal policies in the West Bank. But if we start throwing around terms that matter because of their intent, and even on the "harm" they actually do to a population, then genocide starts widening to everything that the extreme actors in that region do.

Reasonable guy that makes good points from someone who was up close with the group. He represents a badly needed moderate position. Some of the members of this forum can learn from him and heed what he is saying.

Exactly. Where there are multiple cultures in competition, there are two primary survival tactics: military prowess and intolerance of foreign ways. It's shouldn't surprise us that the world is now full of both. It could be seen as a kind of natural selection. — frank

You might be interested in this just posted:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14754/western-civilization/p1

Either way, that transformation was accompanied by a new emphasis on truth and an association of falseness with evil. — frank

You can measure anything as a standard for what makes an enemy- ideology, religion, power. For much of history it was power. In the West, religion and ideology gradually replaced power alone, but certainly, power was never dead as a reason.

Yet they have (large) increase in population, so it’s a highly unnsuccessful one?

killing members of the group
causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
forcibly transferring children of the group to another group — Benkei

Indeed if this is the “objective” version because you quoted the UN, Hamas seems to be doing all of this and seems to as of recently vow to continue doing so. Oh and can you include genociding your own people as well?

I think @flannel jesus had a point in pointing out the differences with things like the holocaust and Native Americans. I can tell you I highly disagree with Netanyahu and his regime, but I wouldn’t call it a genocide likened to what I mentioned. I think my previous post stands on its own. You can argue having a Jewish state called “Israel” in the midst of Arab Muslim population is “genocide” because it will exclude by definition a majority run Arab Muslim polity in that territory. But then genocide is stretched to anything. Uighers are out in communist reeducation camps and are sterilized, there are attempts at low key reduction in the population. It’s hard to argue land acquisition in disputed territory is genocide. It’s turning very nature of the land dispute as “genocide” rather than historic systemic destruction of a people. Yet here there is an increase in population- more than the supposed aggressor even. That’s problematic if the term is to have historical significance beyond “this is unfair policy regarding land claims”. You can have bad policy, unfair state actions, and not a genocide. As much as you’d like to circle the square official policy is not to “wipe out the Palestinians”. However, I’d 100% agree that Netanyahu has never really done his part to keep the chance for peace going and by ignoring the existence the issue and only focusing on other states and not the internal problem, he has tried to bide time and stall. However, Hamas has always been for fucking up any chance peace. They did it in the 90s, they’ll do it again if they maintained power. Their goal again, is not a committed peace plan. It’s chaos. It’s death. It’s strife. It’s Lord of the Flies.

Is "genocide" really the right description? — flannel jesus

Great question. Terms apparently can be changed to whatever helps your cause. I’m sure you’ll get a BS answer where it has something to do with the “embargo” (because of Hamas occupation) and the “open air prison” (where money was funneled from Palestinians to Hamas weapon infrastructure).

It’s probably going to shift in the overwhelming force that Israel responds though. My guess is that one. So it will be mutable to various “bad” things. Settlements will also fall under this mutable category of “bad” equals genocide. Just call it all genocide I guess.

Or the fact that at various times Pal leadership rejected a state fir various uncompromising reasons. That failure also makes it a genocide apparently.

Or perhaps just Zionism being a thing from 1881 or 1947 or whatnot which Arab Muslims never agreed to. That’s genocide. Pick your start date.

Ummm.... hasn't that the Palestine Authority already done that? :roll: — ssu

Curious, why is Abbas’ four year term 16 years? Don’t get me wrong, consequentially, this is infinitely better, but your answer will reveal the contrary situation to what you imply in that response.

The best thing Palestinians could do, as a group, is stand up against Hamas - make it clear that the people aren't looking for the destruction of Israel ("from the river to the sea"), and want to negotiate for a 2 state solution, one where Israel can feel confident Palestinians won't allow another Hamas to come to power.

This would never happen, but if it could happen it would fast track Palestinians into having their own sovereign territory. — flannel jesus

:clap: :up:

Jesus was educated in the Jewish educational system. — BitconnectCarlos

:lol: This is very much an anachronism. Like the rest of the ancient world a large percentage of Judean/Galilean Jews were illiterate. And I am willing to say Jesus was also illiterate and that almost every portrayal of him is basically propaganda, but I do think there is a historical person in the trappings that the New Testament writers wanted to portray him as. That being said, I think that is onto something. I have heard of the Flavian theory, and though I don't necessarily buy it completely, I think there is definitely moves (post-Pauline/Gentile church formation) to portray Jesus in a certain newly-created theological light. That being said, in my own hermeneutics, I like to use the "embarrassment criteria", that is to say, "What looks embarrassing to a Pauline community". These kind of glaring discrepancies with Pauline theology that could not be written off so early, and were still included, reveal perhaps the "real" historical character rather than the caricature of him. That is to say, there are a decent amount of quotes attributed to Jesus on Jewish Law that an uneducated am ha-aretz (person of the land/peasant/uneducated Jew) would likely not understand. There was no universal "Yeshiva" system or the kind of educational emphasis on minutia of Mosaic law, as in the post-Temple Rabbinic Judaism. Rather, one would most likely have deep familiarity with Pharisee-style commentary. There are several books on this, as well as tons of scholarly articles regarding how his interpretation of Law can be construed as a kind of Pharisee.

I do think that it was more like a "Hillel with urgency" approach to law, combining the more lenient views of Halacha of the School of Hillel (he was still around when Jesus was born, but his sect became the major force in Pharisee thought), with Essenic ideas of the End Times, which clearly he seemed to move towards with his encounter with John the Baptist's group. Even his "condemning of the Pharisees" can be found in the Talmud (which has strands of earlier Pharisee thought), such as this:

This excerpt from rabbinic literature (Babylonian Talmud, Sota 22b - Soncino translation) describes seven types of Pharisees (Aram. פרושין ; parushin - abstentious people). Some are under the impression that the rabbis who wrote the Talmud were Pharisees. That is not exactly the case, as this passage clearly illustrates that they have no problem criticizing the Pharisees, in some ways with even harsher words than Jesus in Matthew 23. The rabbis quoted here lived in the late 3rd century CE. Explanatory notes in square brackets are mine.

"Our Rabbis have taught: There are seven types of Pharisees: the shikmi Pharisee, the nikpi Pharisee, the kizai Pharisee, the 'pestle' Pharisee, the Pharisee [who constantly exclaims] 'What is my duty that I may perform it?', the Pharisee from love [of God] and the Pharisee from fear. 1. The shikmi Pharisee — he is one who performs the action of Shechem [shechem = shoulder, i.e., the one who carried his deeds on his shoulder for everyone to see]. 2. The nikpi Pharisee — he is one who knocks his feet together [i.e., finds excuses to delay and not to do good deeds]. 3. The kizai Pharisee — R. Nahman b. Isaac said: He is one who makes his blood to flow against walls [walks into the wall to avoid looking atcontact with a woman].

4. The 'pestle' Pharisee — Rabbah b. Shila said: His head is bowed like a pestle in a mortar. [displays humility constantly] 5. The Pharisee who constantly exclaims 'What is my duty that I may perform it?' — but that is a virtue! — Nay, what he says is, 'What further duty is for me that I may perform it?' [constantly reckoning good deeds vs. bad ones]. 6 & 7 The Pharisee from love [serves God out of love] and the Pharisee from fear [serves God out of fear of punishment].

Abaye and Raba said to the tanna [who was reciting this passage], Do not mention 'the Pharisee from love and the Pharisee from fear'; for Rab Judah has said in the name of Rab: A man should always engage himself in Torah and the commandments even though it be not for their own sake, because from [engaging in them] not for their own sake, he will come [to engage in them] for their own sake. R. Nahman b. Isaac said: What is hidden is hidden, and what is revealed is revealed; the Great Tribunal will exact punishment from those who rub themselves against the walls. King Jannai said to his wife', 'Fear not the Pharisees and the non-Pharisees but the hypocrites (הצבועין) who are the Pharisees [present themselves as such]; because their deeds are the deeds of Zimri (Num. 25:11ff) but they expect a reward like Phineas'" (Babylonian Talmud, Sota 22b) — Talmud

This seems to be an internal debate, not external.

Where is Hamas supposed to put its weapons, in specially demarcated areas? — FreeEmotion

Both sides will cry foul here, but there are "human shield laws" if one cares about international law, which people seem to use pretty heavily against Israel, but not Hamas. These Laws state that it's illegal to use civilians as shields or cover:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_shield_(law)

Hamas originally used this tactic thinking that it would prevent overwhelming force against them. Then when this failed, they kept doing it, and not that I can tell what their leadership says, it's pretty clear that it's then used to stoke the media news cycle about how Israel is disproportionate. Either way, whatever Israel's actions are (which is clear by now that it will be overwhelming force to get the baddies), Hamas knowing this still hides amongst civilians, thus knowingly putting their own people in danger.

Sometimes the reasoning is difficult to folllow. — FreeEmotion

If you are referring to my reasoning, then what I was basically saying was that Palestinians need to bolster their moderate voices. Though Netanyahu and his regime/Likud Party have been in power for a while (more to do with their complicated parliamentary system of forming coalition governments than overwhelming majority support), they have a plethora of "doves", "liberals", and "moderate" positions. That has not historically been, and continues not to be the case on the Palestinian side. Until BOTH sides have a sufficient amount of "moderates", it doesn't end. I gave some possible reasons for this, and also explained how Palestinian solidarity on the hardline anti-Israel sentiments make it seem that that side is right, as if have a less diversity of views regarding peace and compromise means one is somehow more "right". But that is certainly not the case. Rather, there has to develop a sentiment of compromise and willingness to move forward without violence. That starts with Palestinians condemning Hamas vociferously, rejecting their style and rhetoric. That also means recognizing when your so-called "leaders" are not even protecting your people by provoking a neighboring force that they know will strike back with overwhelming force. So until they start holding their own leader accountable, and not keep reforming various Jihadist groups, it doesn't end. Until the Palestinian leadership puts their own people's lives and welfare above their agendas, it doesn't end.

I'm sure the fantasy that a tribal society invented the nation-state well before it ever existed makes you feel smart because if it gives you an excuse to disagree with me. — Benkei

No, read the idea and put the connections and implications together. It contradicts your idea full stop.

Even a century after nations arose nobody spoke about Jews in that way. — Benkei

:lol: now you’re smoking your own shrooms. Arguably, for good or bad, the idea of “the people of Israel” and connection of a particular people with a particular land was practically invented by the Bible years before “nation-state” in the 1600s. You can argue a strain of philo-semitism in Europe from Protestantism and from the 1600s onward promoted this idea of Jews possibly “returning”, even stemming from a sort of secular millennialism. But for you politically, no such nuance can be had because…it can’t be. Otherwise you’d have to have a wider worldview, and can’t have that.

Posting a video of three center-right / conservative Black Americans to 'counter' Mr Coates' interview, schop1, lacks substance and seems to me racially problematic. :brow: — 180 Proof

Not so, but I can see where you think that. I just saw that post about comparing it to Jim Crow, which indeed does make a racial overtone to the subject, trying to connect two distinct convergent (as in convergent evolutionary) phenomena. And I do believe Coates (and Democracy Now which produced the video) has a major bias. I’m familiar with Coates through his own videos and articles but also with commentary criticizing his point of view from McWhorter. I wanted to present counter theories that dispute such overreaches, and who generally have dismantled and showcased his (and similar extreme left wing academics) already biased viewpoint. That video was not so much on Coates (there are plenty of those in their past videos) but being that the topic is on Israel and how the issue is framed by this, and that their stance is opposed to and critical of that type of framing typical of a certain far left-leaning academic contingency, I think it is legitimate to showcase.

I also want to reiterate that anyone can post outrage videos on their side that makes various points that will make their case. It's the kind of thing I was observing on another post. It is like a drive by Buzzfeed.. "Let me give you this video to instill the outrage. DON'T YOU SEE THE OUTRAGE!". But that can be done on BOTH sides. That isn't useful in argumentation. It is just red meat for one's side, and not a nuanced debate. At least the videos below hosted by Coleman Hughes go deep, are nuanced, and provoke further understanding about the topic. He has a view, sure, but if he doesn't know he asks, and if he has a point of contention he will develop the thought and then hear out the guest/interlocutor.

Also, they are not all "center-right / conservative". Glenn is generally center right / conservative. McWhorter is more “old school” liberal (not leftist), generally voting Democratic. I'm sure Coleman tends to have moderate views (I think he does vote Democrat) and has a very informative video on Israel/Palestine (actually several now):