As my mother said about Rawls: "He's not interested in people. He's interested in ideas!"

updated

You could call all of this a repeat. The only difference between Iraq and Israel is that liberals in the Anglo-American sense of the term are Zionists or have friends who are. The anger against Israel is growing, but the professional class of academic technocrats who divide the world of ideas between serious and and not and people between expert and folk, lags behind.

Global Post, These are the images from Gaza that are too graphic for many US news outlets to publish  Updating, AFP/Getty etc.

This time from the horse's mouth: Israel prefers Al Qaeda to Hezbollah. Oren's defense of Israel amazingly uses all the standard colonialist arguments. Only the most historically illiterate audience would fail to see that. Anyone who refuses now to admit that Zionism is founded on colonial logic, apartheid or no, is lying.





Allan Sørensen, Middle East Correspondent, Kristeligt Dagblad on Twitter: "Sderot cinema. Israelis bringing chairs 2 hilltop in sderot 2 watch latest from Gaza. Clapping when blasts are heard."

When Bombs Receive Applause "On a hilltop a few kilometers from Gaza Israelis sit with popcorn to follow the bombing of the area."

Blumenthal: Netanyahu government knew teens were dead as it whipped up racist frenzy

J.J. Goldberg, of all people, in The Forward:
Unruly Hebron Clan Pushes Hamas — and Israel — to Brink
Ex-Shin Bet Chief: Israeli Illusions Fueled Blowup
How Politics and Lies Triggered an Unintended War in Gaza

More of the sort of repeat linked above. Henry Farrell retweets Jim Henley

It goes downhill from there. Farrell always likes claims for disinterested reason against emotionalism, even when those claims are based on manner more than data. Again, see the link at the top of the post. The tweet Henley is responding to reads: "I am anti-killing, anti-death, antiwar. I don't support Hamas, but I don't support idiotic policies of Israeli government either."


I tried to explain to Henley that Israeli behavior was both idiotic and illogical, but reason left had no room for evidence.  Henley is so emotionally invested in the success of amoral practical reason that he can't tell the Machiavellian from the pathological: the Israelis must be right technically, to allow him, while as rational as they are, to attack them for their errors in morality. He's playing word games "in the garden on the mind." His beautiful mind.

Michael: A rebel was being arrested by the military police, and rather than be taken alive, he exploded a grenade he had hidden in his jacket. He killed himself and he took a captain of the command with him...it occurred to me the soldiers are paid to fight, the rebels aren't
Roth: What does that tell you?
Michael: They can win.

"You know, you never beat us on the battlefield."
'That may be so, but it is also irrelevant." *

Bertram links to Goldberg, a right wing Zionist who—pace Henley—sees his dreams at risk. Bertram would never link to an anti-Zionist Jew let alone an Arab, even a participant in non-violent resistance. But call it progress. The comments range from decent to absurd and worse. I'd comment but I've been banned for years.

Zionism is the climate denialism of liberal politics. Given the amount of space on the page dedicated to dissecting the irrationalism of American conservatives, "agnotology" and the "Overton Window", you'd hope such people would have a richer sense of irony. I lost that hope decades ago.

I have been a lawyer for many years, and then got a chance to teach at a non-lawyerly academic institution. I loved it; I loved playing in the garden of the mind. Eventually, however, it became clear to me that academics and non-academics have very different approaches to ideas. Academics, though it sounds odd to say it, don’t take ideas seriously. For academics, ideas are games.

Henley: "I disapprove of Israel's conduct. I am simply seeing it clearly." He recommends this as an example of his clarity.[archive.org]

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* The first exchange above is from the Godfather Part II; the second is from a meeting between American and North Vietnamese officers in Hanoi in 1974.  I wish I could assume readers recognized both.