The propaganda war: no matter how strong the evidence the IDF offers, much of the world rejects it
You can see some of the new Israeli findings about Hamas terrorist activity in Shifa hostpital here. But no matter how strong the evidence, you can also see – especially if you follow the reaction on social media – denial is strong. So many people merely say it’s all fake; that Israel lies, and that’s that.
Actually, as far as lies go, they don’t get much bigger than this Big Lie issued by the Palestinian Authority:
The Palestinian Authority falsely claimed Sunday that a preliminary investigation by the Israel Police has revealed that the Israel Defense Forces was responsible for the death of all 364 partygoers near Kibbutz Re’im during Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, drawing fierce denunciation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid.
In a statement by its foreign ministry which has since been deleted from its social media accounts — but which Hebrew media said was sent as a document to diplomats and to the United Nations — Ramallah asserted that Israeli helicopters bombed Israeli civilians on October 7 during the Supernova music festival as part of the so-called “Hannibal Protocol, which allowed the occupation police and army to kill everyone.” …
However, the claim disseminated by the PA has no basis in reality, originating in a Haaretz story Saturday that quoted an unnamed police source saying one of the options being looked into is that a small number of partygoers had been harmed on October 7 by fire from a military chopper that had been directed at the Hamas terrorists. The police denied the Haaretz report.
A bit like the 9/11 Truthers: Bush did it!
Yesterday I read an article that described the scope of the Palestinian propaganda program and how it worked on youth and the left. Please take a look. I really suggest you read the whole thing, because it cannot possibly be summarized. But here’s an excerpt:
As the years went on, I began to see what Ameer Makhoul had laid out to me taking shape. The PR coverage was first …
Then the campuses: The creation of Apartheid Week worldwide. The growth of BDS. The student volunteers who began by the thousands to work in the Palestinian territories and its refugee camps. The shocking creation of anti-Zionist Jewish student groups.
As an award-winning copywriter and creative director in ad agencies and a professor of Communication at USC, I have developed an intuitive antenna to detect similarities between writing styles, idea styles and conceptual creation. In the early years of this pro-Palestinian campaign, I could see the commonalities of excellence, style and manipulation across all their platforms. Teaching on a university campus gave me a front-row seat at this theater of darkening skies.
People of color, particularly antisemitic Black groups like BLM, were organizing to identify with the Palestinians. Many organizations representing people seen as oppressed were moved to identify with the Palestinians. Students of every variety were swayed. I could see the commonalities of language creation and transfer — my field — being applied to the Jews. Many of them were old antisemitic tropes into which new life was being breathed:
Israel and Jews are colonialists just like other white oppressors around the world. Israel is an apartheid society, the same as South Africa was.
Jews have white privilege, even though more than 50% of Jews are dark-skinned people from the Arab world, Iran and Africa.
Jews hold power in media and banking, making them the enemy.
Jews center themselves as capitalists and donors.
Jews don’t hold space for anyone but themselves.
Jews need to be held accountable for the pain they are causing.
If you challenged any of this you were a racist, the worst thing you could possibly be accused of.
(Except if you are racist against Jews. Then you prove you are a true ally of the oppressed.)
Our enemies have had a real success. They have formed a winning international communication army with trained troops everywhere.
When Israeli writer, producer and former antisemitism envoy Noa Tishby recently said that students, particularly Jewish ones who are protesting against Israel, have been “played,” I don’t know if even she understands the background and extent of it. They haven’t just been played, they’ve been turned. Many of them are alumni of Jewish day schools and camps. Those students believe they have joined the other side because they were the victims of a propagandized Zionist education and have now seen the light. No, they are the victims of a propagandized, slow, well-crafted plan, laid out to me by Ameer Makhoul.
This has been going on for decades, and social media has become one of the main conduits for such propaganda. You can see for yourself how incredibly effective it’s been. Those enormous crowds – especially of young people passionately screaming not just Israel-hatred but Jew-hatred – are no accident, nor are they some organic natural development. They are the fruits of long labor by master propagandists on the Palestinian side.
Jenin Massacre repeat?
Some readers will know what tomorrow is.
I was a Senior in HS. We started hearing rumors in the hallway that Kennedy had been shot. The Principal set up a TV in the Gym so we could see what was happening. We got sent home. I watched on live TV as Jack Ruby shot Oswald.
Just reading comments last night on another blog that was full of conspiracy theories.
As far as I am concerned Oswald did it by himself.
Yes. Long labor. But the soil was fruitful. Why?
The obvious mendacity will drive you crazy. But to the left, it is all part of the plan. Mendacity and dissimulation are genuinely encouraged. It is all part of the attack on reason. In a world where reason prevails, they lose. They understand this better than we do.
actually wednesday, but the Soviets perhaps relying on their pre Marxist history, had a round of Dezinforma (ht bittman) ready on the dock, this is what oliver Stone glommed onto, from the Garrison witchhunt,
this is high end propaganda, from a reputable institution, socalled
https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1726689426196320470
likewise
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-genealogy-of-nuclear-fear/
In a horrific way it’s a truly impressive decades long propaganda effort that’s been perpetuated by the enemies of Western civilization. When you have huge numbers of young fools doubting even hard, essentially irrefutable evidence, seemingly doubting even reason itself… it makes you wonder what can realistically be done to undo such deep seated, sullen, belligerent ignorance. How does one reason with the unreasonable?
https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-inside-the-israeli-kibbutz-where-dozens-were-murdered-by-hamas
miguel cervantes something never admitted by the Palestinian enablers are the massive numbers of civilians killed in that forgotten war (WWII) where combatants took the trouble of wearing uniforms for the most part.
Tears are only shed for the Palis.
In “Confessions of a former antisemite” Amir Pars writes about growing up as Iranian in Sweden and finding comfort in the one thing that united all Middle East immigrants – a shared hatred of jews and how he came to defend Israel and idolize the jewish people.
The question of “What would the Jews do to the Palestinians if they could do anything they wanted? and What would the Palestinians do to the Jews in Israel if the power imbalance were reversed?” led him down the path of confronting his bigotry and hate. Perhaps he’ll inspire others to follow.
https://amirpars.substack.com/p/confessions-of-a-former-antisemite
I don’t see a way to combat this. It looks like the educational system, social platforms and the main-stream media have been corrupted. If your ideas run counter to the oppressed/oppressor theme you are either ignored or cancelled. Very few can stand up to this. It won’t be long before the entire Oct 7 massacre will be remembered as an Israeli psyop developed to cover for the destruction of “Palistine”.
https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/media-lies-and-videotape
Their backing is a mile wide and 1/2″ deep. They don’t realize how quickly they’ll be forgotten. See: Savanarola
The Cultural Marxist Propaganda will try and smother anything coming out against Hamas. Today say 2 Palestinian Flags in front of houses around here.
To Skip’s comment, then there’s the whole violence thing, yet another near monopoly of the post-modern left. Fly a Palestinian flag and your opponents roll their eyes. Fly an Israeli flag…
Well, these days count me in the “Don’t trust anyone under 30” camp.
even when I was 30, I wasn’t too keen on my cohorts, but the bin laden as harry styles really struck me dumb,
I’ve been struggling with how to back up the facts – and I know they’re facts! – that support my belief that Israel is the good guy here. When the other side, not just Hamas but most of the rest of the Palestinians and way too much of the world, believes that the facts are propaganda and does not believe any source or combination of sources that contradicts what they believe – how do I even try to chip away at that?
This one guy I’ve mentioned before – today he asserted that there are Jews and Christians living in Gaza. One Google search turned up – from Al Jazeera – the fact that there are indeed about 1,000 Christians in Gaza, down from three times that many when Hamas first took over (imagine that!). As for Jews – he cited a video, an hour-plus long, entitled something like, “This Jewish man used to live in Gaza” (I didn’t get far enough into the video to hear when he moved, but… I’m betting on one of two things: he also left when Hamas took over, or he works for an NGO and is a secular Jew who didn’t advertise his ethnicity). Just the title of the video ensures that he doesn’t live there now, or they would have found a sympathetic Jew who does live in Gaza to interview.
And the same Google search with one word changed – “Jews” instead of “Christians” – had as a top result…
… the stat that “215,000 Jews live in Gaza and the West Bank” – proportions unspecified. We all know there are Jewish settlements in the contested West Bank area. Go a few results down and you finally get to the current facts about Gaza itself: zero Jews since 2005, when Israel forced all remaining Jews to abandon their homes in Gaza, leaving the entire area to the Palestinians. (This effort is fine with me, though unfortunately a hardship for the dispossessed Jews and apparently fruitless as well. It was an attempt to make some kind of peace. We can see how well it worked.)
I’ve posted the links for this guy. It won’t matter.
Jamie
Got a relation who mentioned, wrt the evidence in the current issue, that it was likely all lies, like the yellow cake lie as a prop to get us to invade Iraq back in 2003.
Sent him a couple of links showing how we transferred 550 metric tons of the stuff from Iraq to Montreal for processing after the war..
Made no difference.
It is true if it’s useful and not true if it isn’t, actual factual stuff notwithstanding.
Per Richard Aubrey at 2:48 PM, “the soil was fruitful. Why?”
THAT is the key question.
Sowell, from 20 years ago, thought it was envy.
I think it’s more fundamental than this. The holocaust forced Jews to re-establish an independent homeland in their ancestral lands.
Dave Rubin commented that this newest onslaught of Jew hatred will end up uniting Jews. In time, will migration to Israel actually increase as a result of the events being played out now?
The world hates their success, but also many hate their position among nations, a nation chosen from among nations.
Watch Host’s Face as Thomas Sowell Exposes the Real Origin Jews Are Hated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLzo2Hol6ic
On the turned Jewish children. The same people are also turning Christian children. The only solution is to stop expecting others to raise your children to be truthful and obedient to the Source of Truth. You need all the help you can get, sure, but you have to invest time in having an appropriate and full relationship with your children throughout their life, especially after they start going to school. Good schools and camps can help; they cannot replace full time parents, a mother who is there, and a father who is dedicated to his wife and family more than his career.
Thanks Brian E – great Sowell clip. I hadn’t seen that one.
Eric Weinstein thinks what we are seeing on streets and colleges in the US and around the world is “normalizing the precursors of genocide.”
Weinstein suggests we may need to be “intolerant of intolerance to be tolerant,” as it relates to free speech.
“When you start to realize that someone has gamed your culture, there are times you have to un-invite a dinner guest…” Weinstein said.
What Weinstein fails to address is it’s his liberal rationalism, which liberals used to create their new world– along the way casting aside the traditions of Christianity, that has brought us to this point.
Unfortunately it’s a little late to rationalize their way out of this predicament, whether it be the virulent antisemitism or the woke authoritarian culture that destroys everything it creates.
I’m Afraid Liberal Values Can’t Defeat This Threat | Eric Weinstein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKolY2Zyvk8
Will Islam Destroy Us? Sam Harris, Bret Weinstein, Eric Weinstein, Maajid Nawaz, Douglas Murray
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTz77SdlUuE
Related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology_of_Hezbollah
Related:
“Hamas captives spill secrets about operating from hospitals…”—
https://nypost.com/2023/11/20/news/hamas-captives-spill-secrets-about-operating-from-hospitals-we-became-their-human-shields/
Related: Molly Hemingway, on why the media (in its current incarnation, at least) is NOT salvageable.
“The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi Shows Why ‘Professional’ Journalism Can’t Be Salvaged”—
https://thefederalist.com/2023/11/20/the-washington-posts-paul-farhi-shows-why-professional-journalism-cant-be-salvaged/
H/T Powerline blog.
Concluding grafs:
‘…The Washington Post and other media outlets aren’t “failing” to get the story right. They are doing exactly what they set out to do: frame news and information in a way that advantages their political allies.
‘They have massive corporate backing and establishment support in their efforts. Stop thinking that they’re salvageable. That was silly thinking decades ago. By now, it’s suicidal. Start shunning them for their propaganda and thinking instead about how to support and amplify journalism that cares about the truth.’
File under: Palestininan/Democratic Party Rules…once again(!)…means never having to say you’re sorry (or tell the truth).
Related:
“LIVE FROM TEL AVIV”—
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/11/live-from-tel-aviv-16.php
Key blurb:
“…This update only runs a little over 11 minutes but is rich in information. Indeed, the IDF has proved itself a more reliable source of news and information than such arms of the prestige press as the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal, let alone the BBC….”
The left had the patience…Islam had the patience… conservatives didn’t. Conservatives didn’t even try. And here we are. I don’t think conservatives had a vision at all. Same as now
Related (from Powerline blog)….
Spike’s Brendan O’Neill does not mince words (but then he never does…) and nails the absolute madness and rampaging hysteria of the media in its fight to help Hamas (and others) destroy Israel:
“Al-Shifa Hospital and the pathological distrust of Israel”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/20/al-shifa-hospital-and-the-pathological-distrust-of-israel/
in:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/11/thought-for-the-day-38.php
Key grafs:
“We need to talk about the pathological distrust of Israel. About the speed and relish with which our media elites dismiss every Israeli claim about the war in Gaza….
“…This is not healthy scepticism of ‘war propaganda’ – it’s a dogmatic refusal to accept a single thing the Jewish State says….
“The morbid disbelief of Israeli evidence has reached insane levels in recent days….
“…The proof of Hamas’s criminal misuse of al-Shifa as a base for torture, murder and warmongering is abundant. Palestinian dissidents have pointed to it. Amnesty has documented the Room 101-style horrors committed by Hamas’s ‘Internal Security officers’ there. Israel has shown us weapons, trucks, tunnels, hostages. Anyone still saying ‘Hmm’ following almost two decades’ worth of proof that Hamas exploits al-Shifa has clearly left the realm of reason and entered the hell of dogma. This is not scepticism, it’s denialism. It is not a noble hunt for ‘the truth’ of war – it’s the sickness of post-truth thinking, where nothing as trifling as evidence can ever be allowed to interfere with one’s ideological bias. Which in this case is that Israel is evil and always lies….
“…They experience Israel’s assault on Hamas’s base at al-Shifa as an assault on their own reputations – and they are right to.
“Scepticism? Please. In instantly disbelieving everything Israel says, these people implicitly buy everything Hamas says. Their Israelophobia translates into a tangible, objective acceptance of Hamas’s own lies about Hamas’s own horrors. The woke love to call themselves anti-fascists, but it’s a strange anti-fascist that gives moral succour to fascists.”
I think neo’s commentary on political changers is very relevant here. So many people who have had contact with contemporary academia “know” that Israelis are the bad guys and that the Palestinians are the “poor oppressed victims.” They also “know” that anyone outside of the academic cocoon is not an “expert” and, therefore, not trustworthy (and probably a “deplorable” and “bigot” to boot).
I have no doubt that a lot of this is motivated by anti-Semitism. I suspect, however, that many of the foot soldiers are being driven by a strong aversion to facts that contradict what they already “know.”
its largely the oppressor/oppressed narrative, among the week minded, its been 63 years since Exodus was released,
oh really
https://twitter.com/Sultanknish/status/1726827148500193758
Late commenting, but I just listened to one of Dr. Ted Noel’s podcast in which he makes a great point that people do not process facts and data, but instead process “stories” that resonate with their particular world view. He then goes off on the story of the American Dream which I found detracted from his original point.
Israel trying to counter Palestinian propo with facts is not going to persuade anyone. I now understand a major failing of the conservative view is that many of us tend to be rational thinkers. We certainly view that as a very positive trait. But a large majority of the human race are not rational at all and are locked into the “story as truth” mode of thinking. The Left understands this (look at Lenin and his view of taking over education…to be able to tell the right stories to impressionable kids).
I’m terrible at crafting such stories, so I have no good idea of how to pursue this idea further. I’m reminded of when I took on the climate change crowd at the college I worked. I presented all the data, all of it with impeccable pedigree. No moving the needle at all with those people. The story of them fighting to help save the world was more potent. A story that reaches them emotionally that the climate is actually quite healthy and the future bright is the only thing that might sway them.
Same with any story with respect to Jews and Israel.
Richard Cook:
I agree that most conservatives seem impatient with politics, and long-term strategies seem lacking. The usual explanation is that conservatives tend to be busy with their lives more than with politics. For the left, on the other hand, politics substitutes for religion.
sdferr:
Actually, the secular leaders way back then said, “You may not live among us – until we need you for some task, and then we’ll let you stay here a while. After that we’ll expel you again.”
https://twitter.com/JSchanzer/status/1726964002440503674
I’d wager, albeit guessing, that Prof. Hilberg wouldn’t disagree with your emendation a bit on historical grounds neo (since you are standing squarely on the truth of the matter), though his aim while swimming in an ocean of Nazi murder records and summing matters in his introduction to DoEJ was much more narrowly, aphoristically focused. I won’t begrudge him here.
Physics guy, I’d suggest it’s because facts and data lack meaning without interpretation. The post modern, anti-western groups are using the tools of information age against us. Since the so-called fall of communism we’ve withdrawn from that ideological war only to find ourselves infiltrated and surrounded. Reclaiming control of the meanings of words, facts and data is the only way to stop this.
“…infiltrated and surrounded….”
Actually, I think you mean “TRANSFORMED”….
“The Curious Case of Rob Malley”—
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20166/rob-malley
Opening grafs:
‘ Hamas’s war against Israel, coordinated with Iran, has exposed the fault lines in the American Left.
‘ While mainstream Democratic liberals have sided with the innocent Israelis massacred by Hamas terrorists, leftist “Squad” members in Congress compete with Ivy League campus radicals to outdo one another by championing the vicious murderers as a “resistance.”
‘ Anti-Israel sentiment has been oozing through those cracks on the Left for years, but the presidency of Barack Obama certainly primed the pump. Obama’s choice of advisors reflected his deep distrust of Israel and penchant for supporting Palestinians and appeasing Iran. One of those advisor choices, the now-disgraced Robert Malley, is a case-in-point….’ [Emphasis mine; Barry M.]
Caveat: The author refers to Malley as “now-disgraced”; however, I don’t believe that’s true at all. IOW, it’s pure optics—eye wash (once again)—masterfully performed by an administration that thrives on deception, betrayal and destruction.
Note: It’s not just the Left in America that has been exposed, but the whole global enterprise.
@sdferr
i’ve always had a mixed relationship with Hilberg and in particular I found his adherence to the “Functionalists” (aka the Holocaust was something of an accident or fallback) to be quite disappointing. I can admire his persistence and integrity in pursuing the truth as he sees it and particularly calling out the silence about the atrocities of the Nazis, but I feel he has been elevated far beyond his ken.
And this also fits. I have plenty to say about Medieval Christianity for both good and bad and it is true it had some (mostly indirect) bleedover in laying roots to the Holocaust, but it’s a lot less than people like to pretend.
In particular, as a former Roman Re-enactor and amateur classicist, it becomes painfully evident that “Missionaries of Christianity” not only were not uniform in saying that, but they were among the least violent and insistent on the matter compared to their predecessors. What I find much of the Holocaust “studies” and navel-gazing misses is not just the expressly non-Christian (if not anti-Christian) beliefs and mores of the Nazi leadership, but also pre-Christian Jew Hatred.
That’s all the more striking because of how loud and important it was in Jewish history (after all, the Babylonian Captivity was crucial to the evolution of Judaim as we know it, Hanulkah is one of THE Central elements of the Jewish calendar and it memorializes an attempt at forced assimilation or extermination by Seleucid God-King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and the Roman campaigns of extermination or borderline extermination are evident in both Roman sources and Jewish ones such as Josephus), and how such examples were cited by the Nazis, who typically admired the ancient empires and cultures of Greco-Roman antiquity.
Even the Romans were lukewarm about the campaign of extermination since they certainly wiped out entire communities (such as the Jewish Diaspora on Cyprus) but were not interested in a committed Final Solution in contrast to say Antiochus, and most Christians and Pagans (be they Greco-Roman or Mesopotamian/Egyptian) were more or less reconciled to living alongside Jews, they just had the question of how. And it’s worth noting that one of the early conflicts in the Christian church was about “Judaizers” and circumcision both because it was seen as unmanly and unnecessary, and because it singled one out for suspicion and special anti-Jewish laws due to how any magistrate could order you to strip down.
One of the brutal ironies I’ve noted is that while there’s a LOT that can be said that is bad about many Roman and Christian or Muslim rulers and how they used and abused the Jews for their own benefit (as Neo points out) but they tended too be far more tolerant or at least less committedly anti-Jewish than much of the commoners going back to antiquity, both due to cultural and economic issues (After all, what does the peasant or gentry benefit if the King can have Jewish moneylenders?), but also because of how radical and world changing the Jewish religious conception was, which we often forget in a Christianized or post-Christian world.
Moreover, the Ghettos didn’t start with the Medieval Era (though they certainly accelerated) and crude and ugly as they were they were indeed a way to “live among us”, albeit with the powers that be having the whip hand. It was the desire to exterminate on a continental or even global scale that was not just much more radical, but in some ways a reversion to form where genocide of entire religions of ethnic and national groups was something that’d be remarkable to most Medievalists but something the likes of Ashurbanipal and Hammurabi wouldn’t have blinked an eye at (though the scale is that).
There’s absolutely Christian Jew Hatred and it played an odious role through the years and helped bleed over into the Holocaust, but there are also plenty of other forms of Jew Hatred, and I feel the likes of Hilberg, Browning, and many others ignore or downplay that.
You were talking about polls…?
“Palestinians: ‘Extreme’ Support for Terrorist Group Hamas, Israel’s Destruction”—
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20155/palestinians-support-hamas
physicsguy @ 9:02am,
I reasoned into the same conclusion about 12 years ago. Every day we are all writing an individual narrative to understand our environment. I, like you, work to ensure my personal narrative coincides with reality as much as possible. Most people never concern themselves with that.
The less one’s narrative coincides with actual reality the less happy or “lucky” one will be. (I think this is why so many use terms like “not feeling safe” or “being anxious.”) Most of us are also trying to make ourselves the hero, or at least one of the heroes, in that daily narrative. When reality points to ourselves being wrong, or even harming others, many of us work very hard to spin a narrative that reasserts ourselves as the hero.
I don’t mean this next part as a joke. I mean it sincerely. The scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the medieval philosopher is leading the crowd of everyday people in how to determine if their captive is a witch is an excellent example of how this works with most people.
I’m not up on the latest, but do any here have any idea as to what proportion of secular a-theistic progressive “Jews” have become anti Zionist?
[ the ultra orthodox anti Zionists are irrelevant to my question]
And yes, the reason for the bracketing scare quotes is because, as we have been over at least three times before, the question of who is, who qualifies as, a Jew, has only ever received the answer, ” It’s complex”.
Do any here personally know any young anti Zionist Jews? And if so do you know their parents’ politics?
Turtler:
Indeed, Jew-hatred has been popular among many groups. Official Christianity has a mixed record on it; sometimes they were even trying to restrain the crowds bent on killing Jews. However, in medieval times, at least some of the drive for those crowds was the idea that Jews killed Christ, which was after all a Christian message of some antiquity, even if the Church (Catholic, for example) didn’t say it justified killing Jews of their own medieval time in return.
And then there was Luther, who talked a mean game; not sure how much action he inspired, though. Even the Nazis weren’t citing Luther as their source.
In addition, there is DNA evidence that the Jews of Europe were nearly wiped out in the 1100s (dates approximate). The gene pool of Ashkenazi Jews went down to about 250 or 350 breeding individuals. The idea is that this was most likely because of widespread pogroms.
On my point about the back-and-forth of expulsion, here’s one story that is fairly usual:
About a century later, Jews were forced out of Efurt again.
physicsguy: “I’m terrible at crafting such stories, so I have no good idea of how to pursue this idea further.”
I’m the same way and shout into screens all the time stuff like, “how can they not see the facts??” or some such. I have finally gotten on board with the whole story narrative thing, albiet kicking and screaming. Which is why I’m the proud owner of no fewer than 5 books on how to get good at storytelling.
I read something yesterday (perhaps linked in Neo’s comments somewhere) from an Iranian living in Sweden who said that Sam Harris’s challenge about what Jews would do to Palestinians if they could do anything they wanted and vice versa is what finally changed his mind from Jew hater to, in his own words, “defending Israel every way I can, and idolise[ing] the Jewish people.”
If you read the two paragraphs from Harris, is does more or less tell a story.
The gene pool of Ashkenazi Jews went down to about 250 or 350 breeding individuals. The idea is that this was most likely because of widespread pogroms.
— neo
Assuming the survivors survived in part because they were smarter than the average bear, could this be the reason the Ashkenazim are the ethnic group with the highest average IQ?
I believe a big piece of the current anti-Semitism puzzle is that Jews make the rest of humanity look like also-rans.
Muslims in particular can’t be happy at the success of Israel to make their desert bloom, as well as fight off non-stop Muslim attacks. Allah promised Muslims the world and ranted against Jews. Yet Jews keep making Muslims look inferior. The nerve!
Huxley, I think you are partly right in that Jews tend to be smarter than the average bear.
However, there’s also another reason; Islam does not tolerate dissent and open inquiry and this shows up in their educational systems as dominated by memorization rather than exploration and experimentation. To the contrary is the old saying, “Two Jews – three opinions.” 🙂 That’s also a recipe for success.
Bill K:
Strictly speaking Islam doesn’t even believe in cause-and-effect. It’s all Inshallah — if Allah wills it.
It’s hard to get much inquiry going with that as an assumption.
huxley.
Used to have a relation who did industrial sales, much in MENA. He said there were few tire/skid marks leading to accidents. People drove like maniacs because their fate wasn’t in their hands.
Makes you wonder about their military maintenance….
People drove like maniacs because their fate wasn’t in their hands.
Richard Aubrey:
I believe that!
gwynmir on November 21, 2023 at 4:53 pm
“… Sam Harris’s challenge about what Jews would do to Palestinians if they could do anything they wanted and vice versa…”
I gather part of the story telling “magic” of that question is that the listener provides their own answer even before Harris might hint at it. They complete the story on their own, with whatever “facts” or knowledge they have about history and human nature. So the facts are necessary, but there has to be a way to bring them to the fore. But they accept the final result because they provided it, not the narrator.
But enough counter indoctrination, such as the Gazan children experience, probably overcomes that rational “fill in” with other false “facts”.
Do we need a story that starts something like “You have been brainwashed and indoctrinated your whole lives with false information, and we are here to help provide you with the correct viewpoint.” That doesn’t strike me as a winning approach, although of course our group of changers did do that for themselves on their own.
Happened to read, long ago, that putting people in a state of fear lasting for some time and then relieving them of it in the person of the Good Guy had a substantial effect.
A kind of interrogation involves, should the circumstances permit, a large POW camp, with arrangements designed to look unorganized. Couple of shots from the other end of the camp…rumor somebody got shot trying to escape. Nothing seems to work consistently. Never know what, large or small, is going to happen next.
Then you’re hauled out to the interrogator. Sit across the table. Get a coke. Look in the eye. Ask to confirm name. Unit. Home town. Indicate some familiarity with the home town-“Isn’t that where dam broke last year?”. More questioning in the guise of getting the guy’s background and experience and unit and so forth. But they’re questions about HIM, who is finally a person.
I understand that can clear the ground for some cooperation and possibly change.
A brainwashed Gazan teen being allowed to wander around, say, Jerusalem among courteous Jews, Israeli Arabs, seeing things going well…not gonna get the warm fuzzies. It’ll be, “fat targets”.
R2L:
Deprogrammers who specialize in weaning people away from cults have made a study of the effective techniques.
”I now understand a major failing of the conservative view is that many of us tend to be rational thinkers. We certainly view that as a very positive trait. But a large majority of the human race are not rational at all and are locked into the “story as truth” mode of thinking.”
I’ve slowly come to the same conclusion over the past few years. I’m an engineer by both training and temperament. Facts and logic have to be the main tools in my tool chest, or people die. But I’ve found using those tools when discussing politics is an exercise in futility. They almost never work.
Unfortunately I haven’t found any other tools I can use to get my point across. I don’t have the temperament to be a fabulist. And I’m definitely not the touchy-feely type, so that’s out. Maybe I could learn to be a cult de-programmer? I probably don’t have the temperament for that either.
Point One is that the imperviousness to evidence is baked into the Leftist cake.
Some atheists are the same in re God – AesopSpouse listened to a video yesterday of a debate between a Christian and an Atheist in which the latter admitted that there was NO evidence, even if reliably produced and verified somehow, that would cause him to change his mind.
That is neither science nor reason.
Aesop.
Could be the answer. Or one answer.
People WANT something like leftism to be true. That comes from someplace other than a rational survey of circumstance. Facts are true, for them, or not, depending on the fit into what is already believed; the Big Fact.
Where the latter comes from is another issue.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12779393/Palestinian-terrorist-expected-swapped-hostages-demanded-Israel-pay-plastic-surgery-explosive-detonated-left-burns.html