Why It’s Futile to Debate Israel’s Enemies

There is only one nation on Earth that must continually argue for its right to exist, even when the very survival of its people is threatened by avowedly genocidal enemies.

Many readers and podcast listeners have been dismayed by my enduring support for Israel and now urge me to debate someone—really, anyone—drawn from a growing cast of scholars, grifters, and moral lunatics who have made that beleaguered country their professional or psychiatric obsession. I’ve explained my position on Israel across several podcasts and in my public talks, but it might help to summarize it here.

First, my general attitude: I’m not interested in exploring all the ways that Israel has missed the mark—from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corrupt alliance with the far right, to the many crimes committed by settlers in the West Bank, to the deaths of innocent noncombatants in several wars—because none of these failings, however grave, will alter my sense that (1) the ethical difference between Israel and her enemies remains vast, and (2) the global preoccupation with the Jewish state, as though it were the worst villain among nations, is contemptible, being the product of perennial lies and delusions.

Next, a simple heuristic: If my intransigence on these matters mystifies you, it might help to understand that, for whatever reason, I think militant Islam is 10 times worse than you think it is. When I talk about “jihadists” and their various groups—Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, etc.—I’m talking about people who I consider to be worse than Nazis (jihadists being, essentially, Nazis who are certain of Paradise). My views about the conflict in the Middle East will not fundamentally change unless my critics produce evidence that Israel has become as evil as her enemies.

However, you can rest assured that if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) morphs into a death cult that uses its own civilian population as human shields (and yet somehow remains widely popular); if ordinary Israelis begin to celebrate martyrdom above every earthly priority, producing generations of bright-eyed, suicidal fanatics; if the residents of Tel Aviv condone the taking of Palestinian infants, old women, and other noncombatants as hostages and then gather in crowds of thousands, baying for their blood—if, in other words, the Israelis begin to resemble the Palestinians, then I won’t care who wins this war. Short of this, there remains a world of difference between the two sides, and I believe that we should focus on how brutalizing it is for any free society to confront enemies that can sincerely claim to “love death” more than everyone else loves life—for this has been Israel’s predicament for the better part of a century.

My views about the conflict in the Middle East will not fundamentally change unless my critics produce evidence that Israel has become as evil as her enemies.

The problem in the Middle East is not, and has never been, the existence of the State of Israel. The problem is jihadism, Islamism, Islamic extremism, Islamofascism, militant Islam—or whatever words you want to use to describe the belligerence and triumphal lunacy of those who take the most pernicious doctrines of Islam too seriously.

I won’t debate the history of the Middle East because it is irrelevant to resolving the conflict there. Of course, many people insist that we must disentangle and reconsider every strand of this history, going back at least a century. The reason I’m convinced that this is a fool’s errand is simple: Palestinians and Israelis have discrepant accounts of the past, and no amount of study or debate will reconcile them.

What’s far more important to understand—and I think it really is the only thing worth considering—is what the current inhabitants of Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the surrounding Arab states want out of life now. (Not what they pretend to want or what a handful of royal families want, while their populations want something quite different.) What do the Jews and Muslims in the region really yearn to accomplish? What are they willing to sacrifice for? What are they willing to die for? And what are they willing to let their children die for?

When we focus on the present this way, if we’re being honest, we must concede that there are two very different realities on either side of this conflict: culturally, psychologically, ethically, spiritually—in every way that matters. Yes, Israel has its religious fanatics too. But they aren’t the same sort of fanatics we find in Hamas or Hezbollah, and they’re far less representative of the surrounding culture. Notwithstanding everything that can be said against Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Israeli far right, and the settlers in the West Bank—and there is much to condemn—I believe the following remains true:

If the Palestinians laid down their arms, there would be peace. There could be a two-state solution. There could even be a one-state solution; it wouldn’t matter. If the Palestinians simply stopped killing Jews and stopped building a culture that celebrates pointless murder and martyrdom as its highest values, there could be a diverse, tolerant, and prosperous society between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. There could have been one 80 years ago. But if the Israelis laid down their weapons, there would be a genocide. This was obviously true on October 7, 2023. And for anyone who has been paying attention, it has been true on every other day since the founding of the State of Israel.

The problem is jihadism, Islamism, Islamic extremism, Islamofascism, militant Islam.

The truth is, I have never known how Israel should have responded to the events of October 7. I only know that it, along with every other free society, must ultimately defeat militant Islam. How we should do this is genuinely debatable. But that’s not the point of contention among Israel’s critics, especially on the left. To them, worrying about militant Islam—even in Israel, even in the aftermath of the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust—is just more “Islamophobia.” It’s just more “colonialism” and “racism” (as though that last charge made any sense in the Middle East).

If you want to understand my view of this conflict, simply ask the one question that clarifies everything in the present:

Though many pretend otherwise, everyone knows the answer to this question to a moral certainty.

If Hamas had the power, it would perpetrate a real genocide in Israel. The group has affirmed its commitment to this project on countless occasions, both before and after October 7. And while it is true that Jew-hatred throughout the Muslim world has been made immensely worse by a century-long fascination with Nazi propaganda and conspiracy theories, this animus isn’t merely a modern phenomenon. For instance, there is a famous hadith which predicts that the end-time will not come until the very stones and trees cry out, “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him.” Unsurprisingly, Hamas cited this hadith in its founding charter.

Most Palestinians know this, and yet Hamas remains popular. For over a decade, Hamas diverted foreign aid that was meant to improve life in Gaza and used it to build the largest bomb shelter our species has ever constructed—hundreds of miles of tunnels—and yet no Palestinian civilians were allowed to shelter there during the war. Why not? Because Hamas was using these men, women, and children as human shields. And when Israel made phone calls and sent millions of text messages urging civilians to evacuate, the loudspeakers in the nearest mosques warned them to stay in place. And Hamas snipers murdered many who tried to move to safety. The Palestinians know all this, and yet Hamas remains popular. Even after all the devastation that Hamas has brought down on its own people, it remains the most popular Palestinian faction, well ahead of its rival, Fatah. This is why there is no peace in the Middle East.

The world simply does not care when Muslims kill other Muslims—amazingly, it doesn’t much care when they kill Christians either—but it does care, enormously, when Jews do it.

The suffering in Gaza is terrible, and I’ve never pretended otherwise. But the suffering elsewhere—suffering you aren’t thinking about—is just as real. You should ask yourself why you don’t care more about it. This difference, emotionally and politically, is what it looks like to lose an information war.

We haven’t seen all the dead children in Yemen, Syria, or Sudan, where the numbers are far worse than in Gaza, but everyone has witnessed the pornography of misery and death that has been steadily manufactured by supporters of Hamas. You might think that your special concern over Israel is due to the fact that we (Americans) supply many of the weapons the IDF uses to kill Palestinians. But we supplied arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for a war in Yemen that has killed an estimated 377,000 people. Where were those protests? Where was the celebrity sanctimony over Yemeni dead? Why didn’t Zohran Mamdani trumpet his opposition to this evil while campaigning to become mayor of New York? Yemen was the world’s worst humanitarian crisis for years, with American weaponry and logistical support fully implicated, and yet it never became the organizing moral obsession of universities, media institutions, activist networks, or left-wing politics the way Gaza has.

To point this out isn’t to commit the rhetorical sin of “whataboutism.” Rather, it exposes a glaring moral disparity: The world simply does not care when Muslims kill other Muslims—amazingly, it doesn’t much care when they kill Christians either—but it does care, enormously, when Jews do it. The General Assembly of the United Nations and its Human Rights Council have passed more resolutions against Israel than against all other nations combined, including North Korea, Iran, Russia, China, Syria, Sudan, and Yemen. A few of these countries have committed actual genocides. None of this makes sense. But this is the world we are living in.

Of the world’s nearly 200 nations, two-thirds were created by mapmakers who merely imagined their frontiers into being, without much regard for the tribal interests of the people living within them. In fact, more than half were created since 1948, the year that Israel was founded. And yet there is only one whose legitimacy is still debated everywhere. There is only one nation on Earth that must continually argue for its right to exist, even when the very survival of its people is threatened by avowedly genocidal enemies.

This obsession with Israel, and the double standards to which its people are held, now forms the center of mass of that shape-shifting moral affliction widely known as “antisemitism.”

I’ve lived most of my life believing that dangerous antisemitism was behind us, at least in the West. Unfortunately, the response to October 7 has put that assumption very much in doubt. The atrocities committed by Hamas revealed a level of Jew-hatred, globally, that shocked even those of us who have been students of antisemitism for much of our lives. Crucially, this hatred showed itself before Israel invaded Gaza. When the corpses of the young people mutilated and murdered at the Nova Music Festival were still being identified, we had students at Harvard and professors at Columbia—and demonstrators in New York, London, Sydney, and Toronto—celebrating their killers.

Why does antisemitism matter? Well, for the Jews, it’s obvious why it matters, but why should it matter to everyone else? It matters because when you look at what antisemites also hate, you find they hate everything that makes culturally rich, diverse, open societies possible. Real antisemites bring with them more than just their hatred of Jews: They bring censorship, political repression, conspiracy thinking, and the politics of dehumanization and scapegoating. So decrying antisemitism is not an act of special pleading. It is a defense of the moral and institutional architecture that free societies require.

Let me close with another general point: Many people have written to tell me that you’ve lost respect for me over this issue, or that you still value my work and are giving me “a pass” on Israel. I reject this framing, and you should too. If I’ve fallen off a pedestal because I said something you don’t agree with, the pedestal was the problem, not the disagreement. Of course, if you think I am lying to you, or that I otherwise lack integrity, you should leave and never look back. But if you just think I happen to be wrong, even about something important—especially about something important—I encourage you to keep showing up with better evidence and arguments. This, after all, is what a real intellectual and moral community is for.

You never answered when I asked you this on 6/9:

Country A is in debt >122% of GDP.

Each man, woman and child in Country A already owe over $113,000 in federal debt.

Country B is in debt <69% of GDP.

Each man, woman and child in Country B already owe <$39,000 in federal debt.

Which country do you think should be going deeper in debt to give money to the other country?

Jew haters will never back off — they are like any other low IQ TWOT, cannot connect action to consequences. Like commie trash CANNOT even try to understand supply/demand.

So, treat the Jew haters like you would a street bum arguing with a tree — walk away*. Don’t waste your time.

* I have SEEN this. In Frisco a decade or so ago when I worked there. This worthless bag of human flesh occupied a bench along Market street and when his drug haze wore off he would walk up the the tree and start objecting to its actions. Did this week after week.

Israel has to worry if it is an enemy to God..

That Golden Dome Islamic Shrine/Mosque right there in Jerusalem is a sign from God they ain’t exactly living right.

Or they’ve allowed the enemy to exist in their own territory.

This is legislatable.

Feel free to lobby Congress to change the playing field.

In the interim, the amounts of money in question are the results of representative democracy.

So far, you’re just losing and whining about it.

I prefer Israel accept no money from us for two reasons:

1) Political / Military independence. Biden like Presidents ought not dictate strategy.

2) Shut up people like you.

Can you answer the question that Miltie won’t?

Country A is in debt >122% of GDP.

Each man, woman and child in Country A already owe over $113,000 in federal debt.

Country B is in debt <69% of GDP.

Each man, woman and child in Country B already owe <$39,000 in federal debt.

Which country do you think should be going deeper in debt to give money to the other country?

If you think he people in Country B shouldn’t get any money from the people in country A, is that because you hate them?

If you think the people in country A should be put even deeper in debt to help out those who are better off, is it because you hate them?

So you can assert that Israel shouldn’t get money from American taxpayers without anyone having to hate Israel?

Thanks for confirming that.

Do you agree it would be immoral to put future American generations who have no vote even deeper in debt to help out a foreign country who is less in debt?

I guess the issue is Islam, there are many countries that have to repeatedly face challenges and wars to their existence but time and modernity reduce those challenges and a time is either reached or a future can be seen when the borders will work themselves out and become accepted, in the middle east a non-Muslim nation will never be seen as acceptable, especially when it is the home of the Jews.

Israel is a an open sore to Islam and as Islam spreads around the world and conquers or shares more and more regions, Israel located in its center will never see the end of its war with Islam.

Rhodesia and South Africa faced something similar but were short lived and more predictable and acceptable in human affairs, a small, powerful, super advanced (even superior) Western nation, of Jews no less, and as being the Jewish homeland, the Jewish ancestral land given them by God no less, in the very heart of Islam, is more than Islam will ever be able to accept.

There is only one nation on Earth that must continually argue for its right to exist

False premise to open the discussion.

Every nation has the conditional "right to exist", to the extent that it can establish borders, defend them, and protect its women from conquest by alien invaders.

Israel has the same "right to exist" as any other nation, but many nations have vanished AS NATIONS from the face of the earth, even in Europe and even recently - where are the Sorbs and the Wends, for example?

And to "argue" for the right to exist? This implies that OTHERS have to be CONVINCED to DO SOMETHING, not that the right in question is innate and its defense inherent in the nation, not in other people's benificence and benevolence.

Israel has the right to exist as long as it can defend its borders. It even has the right to expand by conquest and suppression of alien tribes, as my United States has done, repeatedly.

What it does not have a "right" to do is to start conflict with other peoples residing in the same territory, or in territory it wishes to conquer, and when unable to prevail to count on other nations to carry out their wars for them.

simply ask the one question that clarifies everything in the present: What would each side do if it had the power to do whatever it wanted?

What Netanyahu did to Gaza, is the already and solely known answer, is it not?

Notice I didn’t mention Israel, as they are not one and the same. Our own President has recently referred to him as “f’ing crazy.” I’ll stop far short of that and simply call him potentially zealous.

I’ve answered your question, now answer mine.

Can you demonstrate that you are at least three times as concerned about foreign aid to muslims using your posting history?

Answer it. Or is it just Jews that concern you?

Grok regarding American foreign aid:

Averages over ~20 years (rough estimates, current/nominal dollars; totals fluctuate with wars, crises, and policy):

• To Israel (“Jewish”): ~$3.5–4 billion/year on average (highly consistent military focus).

• To Muslim-majority countries (collective): Likely tens of billions per year on average when including major recipients like Afghanistan/Iraq (war peak), Egypt/Jordan/Pakistan, plus scattered humanitarian aid across 50+ countries.

...must ultimately defeat militant Islam. How we should do this is genuinely debatable...

President Trump may be doing that right now. The war started after he warned them not to murder protesters. Most Iranians have come to hate Islam and even burned down hundreds of Mosques if not more.

If their revolution against Islam succeeds it could spread, just like the American Revolution spread into Europe and toppled kings.

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