Anti-Semitism thrives on lies filling in the gaps created by ignorance
“Maybe if we come up with a perfect argument,” he said. “Maybe if we inform people about the history, and broadly speaking, you’re talking about trying to educate or inform people who are not educated or informed.”
Most anti-Israel people aren’t informed about the Peel Commission or the Balfour Declaration, according to Murray. “You’re talking about people who have never heard of any of these things,” he said.
The Peel Commission and Balfour Declaration are esoteric knowledge compared to what most people are ignorant about. I’ve previously told the story of a well-educated person I talked to around 2005, a woman a few years older than I am, who did not know that immediately after the state of Israel was created, the Arab world declared war on it and Israel won that war. She knew literally nothing about how Israel was created, and yet she bought every bit of Palestinian propaganda. In her case, she was a follower and admirer of Edward Said. In the case of many other people I know, ignorance is also usually involved, although they’re not all quite as ignorant as she was.
It’s also significant that when I discovered how little that acquaintance of mine knew, I offered to send her a link or two on the subject. She readily acquiesced. But I never heard back from her and I doubt she read what I sent, even though it wasn’t long. People are usually quite dug in in their beliefs.
Murray also says:
Asked why there is so much antisemitism in Europe, Murray replied that many are “working out to have some kind of guilt complex, which ends up attacking the victim.”
“It is a desire so deep down, they probably could never identify it even after years of therapy—to blame the Jews and accuse them of the same thing done to the Jews,” Murray said.
Much more at the link.
This idea of lies and propaganda filling in the gaps created by ignorance is something I’ve pondered many, many times. In the twenty years since I had that conversation with that acquaintance of mine, the education system and the left have made sure that the young people coming up are even more ignorant than before, and the MSM helps to fill their heads with leftist-approved lies. Anti-semitism is only one aspect of this, because the ignorance affects an enormous number of topics and creates an enormous amount of opportunity for the left.
[ADDENDUM: Well, this group of Jew-haters seems to be aware of Balfour, at least – they slashed his portrait at the University of Cambridge.]
In parallel to Neo’s musing above, consider immigration. I’ve been heavily involved for ~25 years in the battle to throttle it in the broad national interest. I’m a walking encyclopedia on the subject, have written about 450 items at VDARE.com, have attended many national meetings, and know most of the bigshots among us restrictionists.
And the single most important fact I’ve learned about immigration in all that time is how little the typical American citizen knows about the subject.
Most people haven’t advanced beyond what I call The Big Three Brainfarts:
1. “We’re a nation of immigrants.”
We’re not. The nation was made by settlers, not immigrants. (Settlers establish a polity. Immigrants join an existing polity.)
2. “The Statue of Liberty invites people to move here.”
Nope. The statue’s actual title is “Liberty Enlightening the World,” and it has nothing to do with immigration. It’s about the young American republic being a model for other societies, not an invitation.
3. “Everyone here is an immigrant except for the ‘Native Americans’.”
The American Indians didn’t sprout from the ground here in the Western Hemisphere. They’re imports, too. And they also weren’t “the first Americans,” because this continent wasn’t what anyone means by “America” until Europeans came and developed it.
Willful ignorance is a difficult problem. In order to correct ignorance, a person has to be willing to accept new information in the first place. Most people are less than willing to accept information that might contradict a strongly held belief. Then of course there’s always the problem of pride. Most people don’t like being told that they’re wrong about an issue they’re passionate about. I know I don’t like it when I’m proven wrong.
Add to all that the requirement of time and energy to read or listen or watch the content that might correct the ignorance, and it’s not hard to see how most people find it easier to persist in their ignorance rather than going through the psycological expense of correcting it.
it really is striking the level of ignorance, of course if you have had tom friedman as your sherpa, for 40 years you would be better off with mr magoo, that quilliette piece shows some of the category error, misrepresenting the nebi musa riots on,whitewashing haj amin’s malign influence for a generation, 1920-1948,
Daniel Silva who has been the fictional source for many, relies too much on benny morris’s first wave revisionism, I noticed this reviewing his first of the Allon series
there was nothing wrong with Balfour, the problem was the promise that Lawrence had suggested to the Bedu, and then the Sykes Picot Partition, you can’t promise the same pie to two different sets of people,
Neo, You speak of ignorance.
If it’s OK to contribute this, it’s a copy of a post I made on FB yesterday.
Word comes that the President is going to announce the building of a port in Gaza in order to send tons more supplies to the legitimate government of that area. It is well known throughout history that the defenders of a city or country, or even a “strip of land” will always be well provisioned with food and weapons. Look at pictures of the fat terrorists capture a few weeks ago.
And now, the United States Navy is going to ship in tons of supplies which will be delivered, as under international agreements, to the government of Gaza. Which is Hamas. Gaza/Hamas (there is no difference) is being besieged by the nation of Israel in a legal and just war after being invaded, murdered, and raped by the Gazan terrorists. I’m sure someone can explain all this in a manner which makes sense, but I wonder just what is Obama and Biden (and again, there is no difference) are planning other than the destruction of Israel. That must be their only goal. This must be stopped and maybe, just maybe the Congress will step in and refuse to fund this apocalyptic disaster. But I fear the worst.
A person who I have known for 40 years, served with in the US Army, but haven’t seen in awhile responded with this:
Maybe the goal is to stop the genocide of innocent Gazans.
Pure ignorance or hatred I can’t reconcile it any other way.
no it’s not, supplying gaza will not relieve the circumstance of the civilians, because Hamas hordes it, it will put US troops in the line of fire of both Israeli and unafilliated Islamists, like Islamic State to the West, ‘Lions of Fury’ or some such,
we have seen this story in Beirut and Somalia, time and again, it never ends well but we’ve never been directly on the side of the Terrorists,
miguel, We agree completely.
I’ve oftentimes said that the British were responsible for many of the problems in the Middle East. When asked to explain why I describe how the British carved up the Ottoman Empire and promised a homeland to many of the people there who still don’t have a homeland. Anyone remember the Kurds?
And, of course, the Israelis and the Palestinians were given the same land.
I believe the final assault on Rafah will begin this weekend, or by Monday, since Hamas is refusing to deliver the hostages. My hope is that by the time the US Navy is involved in building this port, Hamas will have been smashed, which would make this operation a whole lot safer for our forces.
yes the Brits preferred the Sunnis like Ghailani, the son of a local naqab, imam, (spoiler alert, he was the one that rallied with Mussolini in 1941, as part of the local fascist gang, Golden Square) over the Shias like the Badrs or the kurds like
Bardani, (sic) yes they really knew how to pick them, Haj Amin was self inflicted wound, Jerusalem had some autonomy from the Ottomans going back to 1843,the families there didn’t really rebel in any particular way, also the Kurds territory encompasses four states, turkey Iran Iraq, and Syria, in addition they were residing along the oil concession in Mosul, when Anglo American struck gold,
Saddam’s uncle was with the Golden Square, that would tell you what side he was in, the Baath was a continuation of said forces,
JFM:
The Israelis and the Palestinians were not given the same land. The various partition plans gave the Arabs almost all the land (including the entire country now known as Jordan). The Jews got a very very small portion, with a great deal of the non-Jordan remainder going to the Arabs as well. The Arabs refused every offer, both back then and up to the present time.
I’m really glad my high school geography teacher had us study what was happening when Israel was created. I don’t know how many old geezers like me got that info back then. Maybe not many.
Part of it was studying the Holocaust. We saw the pictures and read stories about the camps in Germany. It made sense that the UN would try to provide a homeland for the Jews.
As the years went by and people said we needed to remember the Holocaust, I wondered why anyone would forget it. It’s very obvious now. Scoundrels, Communists, and Muslims have made it a point to try to erase the Holocaust – to claim it never happened. It did. I was alive when the first pictures from the death camps were shown on Pathe’ News in the theaters. No way they could have found enough under-nourished actors to fake the pictures. Eisenhower knew the record must be preserved and made sure that the pictures were taken and shown to audiences.
But that was 79 years ago – a normal lifespan. However, with all the info we now have on the internet, how could anyone not know the truth? I guess the answer is that the world is awash in misinformation and lies. 🙁
I saw a video today of one of those “person stopping a passerby and asking a question.” It looked like it might be on a college campus. The question was if the passerby agreed with “From the River to the Sea, Palestine shall be free.”
It was very interesting.
The girl said she agreed with it: “The Palestinians deserve to be free.” The interviewer asked if she knew which river and which sea. She admitted that she did not. She also admitted that it was ignorant to not know which river and which sea. The interviewer pointed out that the phrase implies wiping out all of Israel. The river is Jordan the sea is the Mediterranean. Where do the people who say this expect the Israelis to go?
What was interesting was that she seemed to have changed her mind as a result of the interaction. Mostly, I see in these types of videos thar the passerby gets angry with the interviewer for trying to disabuse them of their ignorant views.
yes that invocation is like the shadadah, the declaration of faith, you aren’t supposed to question it,
take this bushnell fellow, he was so called antifa, but he was also part of the hamas campus wing, and he was in the it section of air force intelligence, somewhat like nurges witte, the defector to the iranians, more then a decade ago,
how many like him in the various services, the DHS nor any other agency doesn’t seem interested in finding out,
Ghailani was like this figure who is at the edge of the Raj Quartet, Subanda Bhose, a former Indian Congress official, who defected to the Germans during the war, Bhose might be more familiar in recent years because he had the admiration of the Squad, the Justice Democrats,
raising an army similar to Haj Amin’s Scimitar SS battalion, the INA, they fight the British Army in certain set piece battles, causing a serious calamity to one of the families the Laytons, another family the Kasims are also affected,
“Asked why there is so much antisemitism in Europe, Murray replied that many are “working out to have some kind of guilt complex, which ends up attacking the victim”
I doubt if that explanation applies to Britain, where there appears to be a *lot* of anti-Semitism.
well there is a large South Asian and North African population in the UK
There is also a long history of non-lethal antisemitism in Britain.
For a fresh take, you might like “Facing Zionward.” https://shorturl.at/DFUVZ
Some decades ago I read “The Claim of Dispossession,” encountering for the first time information about how Jews bought land in the region that became the modern state of Israel. The principal argument I remember is that Jews paid good money for the land they bought, often twice: once from the absentee landlords with formal title, and again from the aggrieved resident tenants.
Once Israel was formed, it also acquired territory by winning defensive wars, which doesn’t offend my sense of justice. More recently it gave a lot of land back, to the chagrin of its displaced Israeli residents, which does offend my sense of justice, but I can understand why people thought it was necessary, and why they mistakenly believed they could buy peace and justice that way.
I regret the loss of Palestinian life, in the same way that I regret the loss of life in Dresden and Hiroshima. Starting and then losing a war is serious business. People sometimes bear the burdens of whatever government they tolerate over themselves, though it can be awfully hard luck on them.
Wendy Laubach:
Agreed.
I thought Paul Nachman’s lead-off comment was very useful. And I think Nonapod’s follow-up encapsulates some of the underlying mental problems nicely.
I’m disgusted by this false equivalency. The USG is now participating with terrorists who would kill Americans.
They said they would.
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BOTTOM LINE — Read the Qur’an and you will learn that Islam requires the DEATH of non-believers. If the non-believer is female, RAPE after RAPE after RAPE will be their REWARD
Judeo-Christianity contrasts dramatically – Genesis 1:26-27 tells us that we’re ALL children of God, HENCE we’re ALL brothers and sisters and should treat each other likewise!!!
So i reading the haj written in 1984 and they do incorporate deir yassin and plan d which morris makes too much of
Uris points out many of the problematic passages in the koran
I seriously doubt refuting the lies will do anything except making the Jooo haters (my term for what more polite people call anti-Semitites) more pissed off. We’re dealing with a form of insanity. Rational arguments won’t make a dent.
I think the good news is the Hamas-loving Jooo-haters are still in the minority. Unfortunately they’re in the majority in the anti-American Biden administration. I can’t believe my country is going to undermine Israel and resupply Hamas but that’s where we are.
Jew hatred and ignorance of the history, nature and goal of Islam are parallel tracks.
I would ask people ” Where are all the Jews living in Muslim countries? “
@ Someone Else > “The interviewer pointed out that the phrase implies wiping out all of Israel. The river is Jordan the sea is the Mediterranean. Where do the people who say this expect the Israelis to go?”
AI doesn’t see any problem.
Maybe a touch of bipolar partisanship, though.
https://freebeacon.com/israel/microsoft-ai-image-generator-erases-israel-from-map-of-palestine/
Over to huxley —
That’s a lot of words just to say f**k you
i’m reminded of a technothriller by edwin black, this was before the revelation about Ibm and hollerith, execute c, about a tech mogul called bin hinnom* who is obviously gates, and the reason he was named that way is made clear in the novel (the proverbial valley of the shadow of death’)
I guess they’re getting better at it. Or worse depending on your perspective
London is run by daleks
https://twitter.com/AGHamilton29/status/1766503301674131567
I’ve seen multiple videos of “man in the street” interviews at these Palestinian demonstrations where the attendees (strangely mostly white women) are asked about the chanting of the phrase “from the river to the sea”, what river & what sea are they referring to?
They never know or will guess “the Nile River” or “the Black Sea”.
All the other factual history is way beyond their curiosity.
Riffing on Israeli psychoanalyst Zvi Rex’s quote, the world will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.
It’s quite interesting that when pro-Palestinian Hamassholes chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free,” they are celebrated. If Jews take a similarly maximalist position based on Genesis 15:18 “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates,’” they are accused of advocating for “Greater Israel”.