Thread

🛡️
Let’s not conflate. I am against the current policies of the crazy Netanyahu government, not against “Israel” or the Israeli people or “Jews” (I am partly Jewish myself and have relatives who survived the Holocaust) Judaism is a multi-thousand year old anti-fragile religion, and Netanyahu’s crazy war is only two years old. Judaism will outlive this madness. And neither Netanyahu nor the ultra religious crazies that are part of his government have a claim to Judaism. I am also pro Palestine, but anti Hamas and anti Islamic extremism. Maybe these don’t square for you but they square for me and plenty of others.

Replies (5)

You can’t seriously compare elected religious politicians in Israel to Islamic extremists. If secularism has a blind spot, it’s the tendency toward false symmetry and oversimplification. This kind of thinking is what gives rise to ideologies like socialism (where unequal pay is automatically seen as a result of unequal rights) and nihilism. Islamic extremists pose a far greater threat to Western pluralism, liberal values, and to non-Muslim minorities living in Muslim-majority countries, than any religious leader in Israel ever has. The Israeli democracy has the power to withdraw from territories - as we did in 2005, naively believing the Palestinians would change - and the right-wing religious leadership in Israel ultimately respects that decision. They place the will of the people above their own beliefs. You don’t see that kind of submission to religious pluralism and to the people's will in the radical Islamic world - from Iran to Pakistan.