TGIF: Defending Israeli Mass Murder Isn't Easy

Although much has already been said, I can't not comment on Sarah Hurwitz, the former Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama speechwriter, who faults young people (especially young Jews) for applying their power of abstraction in thinking about the Holocaust.

What do I mean by that? Hurwitz thinks (or says she does) that the TikTok generation makes a big mistake by drawing general lessons from the National Socialist regime's mass murder of European Jews last century. She is dismayed that young people have concluded that powerful bad people, no matter who they are, should not harm weak people, no matter who they are.

So what's the problem? According to Hurwitz, they were supposed to learn that killing weak people of a particular ethnicity or religion is horrible only when the victims are Jewish. Moreover, they should have learned that Jews by definition can never constitute the oppressor. Therefore, TikTok'ers are wrong to think of the Holocaust when they see videos of powerful Israeli soldiers harming weak Palestinians in Gaza. Or so Hurwitz believes. See for yourself. (By the way, Ms. Hurwitz, in both cases, the mass murderers did not only harm weak, emaciated victims; they made them weak and emaciated in the first place.)

All this perplexes Hurwitz and others in the American pro-Israel constituency. Young people have drawn broad rather than narrow lessons—and she equates that with antisemitism. Of course, this is buncumbe. Abstracting—drawing generalizations—from real events is a virtue, not a vice. It is quintessentially human. Ayn Rand disparaged persons who refuse to abstract as "concrete-bound." We think in concepts, and we wouldn't be able to do much thinking without them. Concepts are abstractions. We observe reality, note differences and similarities among entities, and integrate similar things into a conceptual hierarchy (for instance, chairs, furniture, manmade things). This facilitates efficient thinking by economizing on mental units. (Rand explained all this.)

Of course, we can make mistakes. We can misclassify things. We're not infallible, which is why logic and reason are indispensable guides. If Hurwitz thinks that certain generalizations drawn from the Holocaust are fallacious, let her argue for her opposing position. However, she can't get away with the libel of attributing those generalizations to  "people who don't really love Jews." For one thing, many Jews have drawn those generalizations. At demonstrations protesting Israel's destruction of life and property in Gaza, Jewish participants have held signs reading, "Never Again Is Now." Hurwitz thinks that "Never Again" means only that Jews should not be persecuted or exterminated. Apparently, she also believes that if officials and military forces of the Jewish state seem to be committing those crimes, it can't really be so, no matter how it looks. "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" said Chico Marx.

Only an idiot or a demagogue could draw those conclusions. (I've drawn an additional lesson.)

Hurwitz might have made a stronger—though not valid—argument. She might have said that young people don't know the full story of Gaza because their generation is post-literate and video-oriented. All they know is what they see on TikTok: nonstop images, day in and day out, of Israeli military violence against helpless Palestinians. She does not challenge the authenticity of the videos, but she is frustrated that her pro-Israel arguments stand no chance against those images. (Hillary Clinton—she still shows her face?—shares the same concern.) As Hurwitz put it, "I'm talking through a wall of dead children." Yes, she is.

However, Hurwitz overlooks the fact that many videos from Gaza have been posted by Israeli soldiers—on TikTok—with audio sadistically celebrating their violence. Young viewers may not read, but I'm sure they hear.

Let's concede that an image may not tell the whole story. If you saw a man taking a watch from another man, you would not know by that scene alone whether you were witnessing a robbery or the recovery of stolen property. But that's not what we have with Israel and Gaza. The images of Israeli violence have not only been graphic, but they have poured out in an unending stream since Oct. 7, 2023. Gaza looks like August 1945 Hiroshima. Many tens of thousands of children and old people, as well as other noncombatants, have been killed, maimed, starved, and traumatized. Medical facilities have been destroyed, making the treatment of survivors and other sick Gazans virtually impossible.

Viewers of this material will properly ask, "What could justify such total violence over such a long period?" Viewers may also have heard that many international authorities on genocide and Holocaust studies, including Israelis, believe that Israel is committing genocide as the law defines it. (See this from Omar Bartov and this from Raz Segal.) The burden falls on Hurwitz and her colleagues to do more than repeat official Israeli propaganda, but that's what they have done.

Yes, Hamas and other groups launched a brutal attack on Oct. 7, 2023, inexcusably committing atrocities against Israeli noncombatants and seizing hostages. But it is also true that Hamas, an abhorrent organization judging by its never-repudiated antisemitic charter and record of crimes, did not exist before the late 1980s, long after the wholesale dispossession, expulsion, and subjugation of the Palestinians began. Moreover, Israel encouraged the growth of Hamas, hoping it would weaken the Palestinian cause by becoming a religious rival to the leading faction, Fatah, which is secular. Later, Benjamin Netanyahu permitted Hamas to collect money, since he could use the group's presence as a reason for not allowing a Palestinian state

This history does not excuse the Oct. 7 crimes, but neither do those crimes excuse Israel's indiscriminate destruction of the people and places of Gaza.

The Europe-based Zionist movement has abused the Palestinians for more than one hundred years. Moreover, imperial Britain helped boost Zionism beginning in 1917. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to see Zionism as just another episode in a long-running story of Western imperialism, the solution to which is (presumably) worldwide de-Westernization, or "global intifada." The history of Zionism has too many distinguishing features, including the real persecution of Jews at the hands of Europeans and the real, partially carried out "Final Solution" at the hands of the National Socialists.

Moreover, Jewish supremacy (so identified by Israeli human-rights organization B'Tselem) is not held to be generally applicable. Rather, it is a political device intended to guarantee Israel's existence as a haven for Jews should virulent antisemitism arise elsewhere in the world. Thus goes the argument: in Israel (but not other places), Jews must be legally and politically privileged or else the Jewishness of the state will not be assured.

I don't mean that the Zionist program—punishing Palestinians for what Europeans did—was the correct response to the historical record, only that this episode is importantly distinguishable from other colonial episodes, despite the similarities. The critics of Zionism who target Western civilization per se are attacking a strawman. If anti-Zionism is portrayed as anti-Western, Zionism wins. On the other side, Zionists who reject universalism in favor of blood-and-soil tribalism unwittingly make common cause with antisemites, who also reject universalism in favor of blood-and-soil tribalism.

Bottom line: supporting the individual natural rights of Palestinians—who are individuals before they are members of "a people"—to live where they have lived continuously for millennia is not anti-Western. On the contrary, it is in line with the glorious and, yes, superior liberal Western Enlightenment ideal (still to be fully realized) of individual sovereignty.

(See my Coming to Palestine.)

What's Wrong with Young People?

A former Obama speechwriter faulted young people for having the faculty of abstraction when thinking about the Holocaust, genocide, Israel, and the Palestinians.

 

TGIF: Israel and Jabotinsky's Iron Wall

Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky (1880-1940) was a key figure in the development of the Zionist movement, which led to the founding of Israel in 1948. After breaking from mainline Zionism, Jabotinsky, born in Odessa (Ukraine), established Revisionist Zionism, a more openly militant version.

 What is Revisionist Zionism? Even fellow Zionists saw similarities with fascism. According to Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo, "Before the opportunistic alliance between Germany’s Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, and Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, in 1936,... a degree of affinity existed between Zionist and Fascist leaders in Rome." Baroud and Rubeo went on:

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, of which Israel’s current Likud party and other right and far-right groups are the offspring, saw in Italy “a spiritual homeland.”

“All my views on nationalism, the state, and society were developed during those years under Italian influence,” Jabotinsky wrote in his autobiography, referring to his ideological formation years in Italy.

In return, Mussolini had expressly spoken in support of Zionism and of Jabotinsky in particular: “For Zionism to succeed, you need to have a Jewish State with a Jewish flag, and Jewish language. The person who understands that is your fascist, Jabotinsky,” Mussolini said ... in November 1934.

The Abduction of Mahmoud Khalil

The Trump administration's abduction and threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old green-card holder and permanent legal resident of the United States, is horrifying not just for him and his pregnant wife, a U.S. citizen, but as a sign of things to come. Khalil, who is a Syrian-born Algerian of Palestinian descent, has been detained pending deportation without being charged with any crime against persons or property, but because he engaged in speech and other peaceful activities on behalf of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. He was a graduate student at Columbia University at the time.

The government says Khalil's "presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States." That's absurd. It also says Khalil supports Hamas but provides no evidence. That is all outrageously vague, which is how authoritarian governments always operate. Even speech supporting Hamas is protected under the Supreme Court's 1969 Brandenburg decision (not to mention natural law). If he's suspected of committing a specific crime, the government should charge him and give him his day in court. Instead, Khalil was handcuffed and seized at his New York City home and taken to Louisiana where he is to appear before an immigration judge.

However, the system of checks and balances is not dead yet. According to Reuters, "U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman had temporarily blocked Mahmoud Khalil's deportation [last] week, and extended the prohibition on Wednesday in a written order following a hearing in Manhattan federal court to allow himself more time to consider whether the arrest was unconstitutional."

It should be noted that the Trump action is a predictable result of the premises that free-immigration opponents subscribe to. Defenders of the action like Secretary of State Marco Rubio hold that Khalil never had a right to be in the United States but was merely permitted initial entry as a guest. Therefore, Rubio and others argue, the government can revoke that permission retroactively, notwithstanding his change in status from student-visa holder to green-card holder.

That's where bad premises take you.

It's a Crazy World

What's to be said about people who grieve over the deaths of Palestinian children in Gaza at the hands of the U.S.-backed Israeli military while simultaneously cheering the Mengele-style wrecking of children's lives in America and elsewhere at the hands of "transgender" fanatics? And vice versa.

Zionism versus Judaism

From the start, political Zionists identified their program with Judaism the religion (despite their secularism, even atheism).

Also from the start, Jews -- including the most tradition-bound Jews -- vigorously disavowed that identification. They were shamed as self-hating traitors to "their people." As a consequence, many went silent and eventually acquiesced in the creation of Israel, the self-identified "Jewish state." Some even converted to Zionism.

So don't blame non-Jews for being unclear about the relationship between Zionism and Judaism.

TGIF: Another Bogus Antisemitism Scare

I've been watching and thinking about the nationwide campus antiwar demonstrations in support of the suffering Palestinians of Gaza, and the appalling reaction to and "coverage" of those events. Something important needs to be addressed.

I won't be concerned here with the violence committed by anyone, including the police, or by lesser misconduct, such as occupying and damaging buildings and other violations of university rules. It's also irrelevant whether the demonstrations stand any chance of ending Israel's onslaught or ending U.S. and university complicity in it, or whether most of the pro-peace demonstrators share a libertarian orientation. (Not likely.) All that is for another time.

I want to examine the overwhelming depiction of the demonstrations as nothing more than rank antisemitism -- the blind hatred of all Jewish people because and only because they are -- by birth, blood, belief, or practice -- Jewish.

Are the demonstrations antisemitic and hence pro-Hamas, as Spiked magazine and many other observers claim? Are the protestors tapping into what CNN's Dana Bash called "a deep undercurrent of antisemitism"? (The smears know no bounds.)

To sort this out, I thought I might employ one of my areas of expertise. I spend a lot of time watching excellent British television police dramas. I consider myself a student of British detective techniques. (The Brits take their police dramas very seriously.)

Among other things, I've learned that if a crime is alleged to have been committed by a particular person, but you have no damning CCTV or credible witnesses, you begin your investigation by asking if the "person of interest" has a plausible motive for the offense. If not, the chances are good that the person is innocent. People act, which means they have motives.

That's what I want to do here regarding the campus demonstrations, which are on their face objections to Israel's bloody (not just in the British figurative sense) seven-month campaign against the Gaza Palestinians. That campaign has taken at least 34,000 lives, injured and starved countless other people, and destroyed so many homes, hospitals, universities, and other facilities vital to life.

So here's the detective's challenge: why would non-Jewish pro-peace demonstrators on college campuses across the country knowingly, intentionally alienate their clearly Jewish pro-peace co-demonstrators with whom they encamp all day every day, sharing meals, having teach-ins together, and participating in ecumenical outdoor religious events, like Passover seders? Why would antisemites want to do it?

Does that sound remotely plausible? Are the Jewish students idiots who don't recognize antisemitism when they're supposedly drowning in a sea of it? Are the antisemites able to threaten Jewish non-demonstrators and pro-Israel demonstrators while keeping it a secret from Jewish demonstrators standing next to them? That seems unlikely.

What do they take us for -- those pro-Israel alarmists, who see an existential threat to all Jewish people every day around every corner? They assume (or pretend to believe) that anti-Zionism -- that is, opposition to a Jewish supremacist state -- is the same as antisemitism. But a moment's reflection reveals that this is bunk -- no matter how many times Israel's partisans say so. On a variety of grounds, many Jewish people fundamentally oppose Israel as a Jewish state. They have since the time of Theodor Herzl, the reputed founder of Zionism.

As an aside, this is not the first time that America has been subjected to a false antisemitism scare. The boy has cried wolf falsely many times before. Whenever Israel lays waste to Gaza, a sudden spike in antisemitism is reported by the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC, and their congressional spokesmen. Isn't that interesting? Or is it? Could it be that the Israel lobby weaponizes antisemitism to shut up anyone who would object to Israel's crimes against humanity?  (For a close look at this weaponization, see Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.)

Israel's partisans tell us that America's campuses today are indistinguishable from 1930s Nazi Berlin. Jewish students, they say, are routinely harassed, threatened, and assaulted. They can't walk safely to class. The Hitler Youth rule. Really? I can't recall newsreels from the Nazi years showing Jews and non-Jews peacefully celebrating the sabbath and Passover with open-air religious services and meals. Have you ever seen films from Nazi Germany in which Jewish Germans enthusiastically sported tee-shirts emblazoned with sayings like: "Jewish Voice for Peace," "Not in Our Name," "Jews for a Ceasefire Now," and "Jews for Freedom in Palestine." Maybe the memory is suppressed, but I'm pretty sure I haven't.

My policy is to assume good faith in my opponents, but it's tough in this case. I am confident that the alarmists do not believe their own words when they say that terrorists and Nazis control the universities.

So why do they say it? Because it distracts attention from Israel's unending massacre. The apologists' agenda is to support Israel no matter what and to explain away the palpable atrocities. It's also an attempt to continue America's shameful complicity.

If Israel and its supporters were truly concerned about antisemitism (rather than needing it to prevent assimilation and abandonment of Israel), they'd do some soul-searching. Israel identifies itself as the Jewish state and claims to represent “the Jewish people” -- not only Jewish Israelis but Jews everywhere whether they want it or not. Thus Israel’s long mistreatment of the Palestinians encourages, at least tacitly, the relatively few antisemites, who are eager to point to anything they can use to describe “the Jewish people” as bad actors. "The Jewish state equals the Jewish people" — that’s what they’ve been told by the pro-Israel side. It’s not true, but they're happy to believe it.

In other words, Israel’s definition of itself and its abuse of the Palestinians ratify the antisemites’ crazy ideas about the international conspiratorial malevolence and collective guilt of "the Jewish people." Antisemites are encouraged to ignore the overrepresentation of Jewish Americans in the ranks of Israel's opponents.

Israel and its supporters then aggravate matters by strategically equating odious antisemitism with honorable anti-Zionism. That in turn gives cover to the antisemites, who can hide in plain sight among the anti-Zionists.

That amounts to Israel's protection of antisemitism!

You’d think that would be a bad thing. And it is. So why do Israel’s leaders and supporters do it? Because all that matters is the tribal sanctuary, Israel.

Israel's Amazing Feat

Israel has accomplished quite a feat: its crimes against the people of Gaza are of such a large scale that they make Hamas's Oct. 7 crimes look small.

Here's an Idea

If you can't tell the difference between 2024 America and 1930s Germany, let's not have a conversation, okay? 

Israel, Zionism, Jews, and Anti-Semitism

"In some quarters anger at Israel's brutal occupation has undoubtedly spilled over to an animus toward Jews generally. But however lamentable, it's hardly cause for wonder... Should it really surprise us if the cruel occupation by a self-declared Jewish state engenders a generalized antipathy to Jews?... [I]f many Jews themselves repudiate any distinction between Israel and world Jewry, indeed, if they denounce such a distinction as itself anti-Semitic; if mainstream Jewish organizations lend uncritical support to every Israeli policy, however, criminal, indeed, abetting the most virulent tendencies inside Israel and muzzling principled dissent outside Israel; if Israel defines itself juridically as the sovereign state of the Jewish people, and Jews abroad label any criticism of Israel anti-Jewish -- the real wonder is that the spillover from antipathy toward Israel to Jews generally hasn't been greater."

--Norman G. Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah: 

On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, 2008

Why I Pick on Israel

People close to me ask why I criticize Israel while ignoring the other bad governments in the world. (I guess they don't count the U.S. government as bad.) I have many reasons, but here's a big one: no other government (besides the U.S. government) claims to act in my name. I object to that. (For the record, years ago I declared my exit from the disparate worldwide collection of people that Israel presumptuously claims to speak for.)

The Logic of Eradicating Hamas

Is genocide logically required by Israel's stated objective of eradicating Hamas? It looks that way. Israel demonstrably believes that to wipe out Hamas, it must use overwhelming and indiscriminate force in the Gaza Strip, killing tens of thousands, wounding and starving so many others, and destroying homes, hospitals, and infrastructure. If that is not, in effect, a massive recruitment campaign for Hamas, what would be?

So what to do? Simple: wipe everyone out so the inevitably traumatized kids won't grow up radicalized and join Hamas to seek vengeance for their dead relatives and miserable childhoods. Is that so hard to understand, Israel and Israel partisans?

I know we're not supposed to mention Hitler, but it might be worth re-learning that the Hitler Youth recruited its members from young people who had suffered under Britain's starvation blockade of Germany during World War I -- a blockade that lasted several months after the armistice. Those kids didn't grow up resisting Nazism.

And Another Thing

One reason I object to Israel's behavior is that it brings anti-Semitic creeps out of the woodwork. Thanks a lot, Israel.

Is Israel Our Ally?

While I was sleeping, did "our representatives" in the U.S. Senate ratify an alliance treaty with Israel, complete with a NATO-style Article 5, obligating us to defend Israel if attacked?

TGIF: Israel Humiliated

To more fully understand the ferocity of Israel's massacre of the people of the Gaza Strip, it's perhaps worth considering that on October 7, 2023, the reputedly invincible Israeli Defence Forces and intelligence services were made to look like fools caught sleeping on guard duty. While Hamas's murder, assault, and kidnapping of noncombatants must be strongly condemned, we should be able to see how humiliating that was for the Israeli government, which brags as much about its awesome power as it does about its allegedly unequaled moral stature.

Israel has blockaded Gaza for 20 years, although the "Jewish state" has controlled it since 1967. Even before that, Israel had committed massacres there in 1956 when Egypt controlled it as a result of the 1948 war. The Oct. 7 terrorists were likely too young to have known anything but life without a future in what had become the Gaza open-air prison. Theoretically and officially, Israel regulates all ingress and egress from the strip: people, food, medical supplies, energy, consumer and producer goods, and building materials. The policy is draconian, intended to keep the 2.3 million Palestinians, half of them children, quiet.

Even though long before Oct. 7 Israeli intelligence had evidence that Hamas was up to something, including training videos and a multipage plan of operation (discounted by the experts), the organization managed to blow 10 holes in the fortified fence and send through terrorists who attacked nearby military installations, permissible targets under international law, and impermissibly, kibbutzim and other civilian areas, including a music festival. Some of these locations had likely been the home areas of the grandparents of the fighters. A large percentage of Gazans are descendants of refugees, if not refugees themselves, whom Zionist militias expelled during the 1948 Nakba, or Palestinian catastrophe, an essential part of the program to create a "Jewish state."

As if the attacks of Oct. 7 were not humiliating enough, late-arriving Israeli forces on land and in the air killed some Israelis in vehicles and buildings either by mistake (with autonomous pilots sometimes relying on targeting information from people using WhatsApp) or according to the supposedly abandoned Hannibal Directive, under which the military prefers to kill Israeli hostages along with their abductors rather than have them taken as bargaining chips. Israeli forces also killed many Hamas fighters, but in some cases the Israelis did not know whom they were firing at.

The Israeli media, unlike the American media, has reported extensively on this. For details, see the impressive and fair-minded Al Jazeera documentary October 7. It contains revealing videos from both sides and also covers the Israeli fabrications regarding mass rape and beheaded babies, as though the actual crimes weren't hideous enough.

Israel's mortification on Oct. 7 cannot be exaggerated. Israel has long prided itself not only on its offensive capabilities but on its power to deter attack, although that has been shown on occasion to have been overstated. But Oct. 7 pulverized that reputation. It also wrecked the hope that the Palestinians would acquiesce in being ignored as though they were invisible through the Abraham Accords, started by Trump and carried on by Biden. These are the actual and prospective corrupt deals involving the United States, Israel, and the dictatorial Gulf monarchies, the purpose of which is to buy "stability" in the region through Arab recognition of Israel via bribery, including U.S. weapons contracts and security guarantees. Who thought that would work? 

Israel and its supporters want the world to believe that Jewish people face an existential threat -- another Nazi genocide -- and that Israel is the only insurance against it. Biden believes it; he ridiculously implies that Jews are in danger in America. How wrong that is. Israel is the least safe place for Jewish people, but that's a consequence of how Zionists have treated the Palestinians from the start because they were not Jewish. There's a sick joke in the hollow claims that as tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are being killed, maimed, starved, and dispossessed, the real threat is to Jews, not only in Israel but in America! 

The presence of anti-Semitism is vastly exaggerated and thankfully confined to the fringes, The only thing that could change that is the premeditated conflation of anti-Zionism, entirely legitimate, with anti-Semitism, an effort that serves to innoculate Israel from proper criticism. By doing this, Israel and its supporters have diluted anti-Semitism and, inexcusably, made it seem less bad.

Finally, when Israel's defenders bring up Hamas's execrable anti-Semitic and genocidal charter, they should be reminded that for decades before the 1948 self-declared founding of Israel, Zionist leaders and settlers had talked about reclaiming and sanctifying the "Promised Land" for the "Chosen People"; supported the "transfer," by force if necessary, of the Palestinian Arabs (those non-Jewish people who for generations lived inexplicably in the "land without a people"); treated them with utter contempt to their faces (to the dismay of other Jews); expelled over 750,000 Palestinian Arabs in 1948; massacred hundreds of others and even poisoned their wells; destroyed some 500 villages to make way for Jewish towns, forests, and parks; attacked refugees in Gaza and Jordan, and militarily ruled the remaining Palestinian Arabs for the next two decades. Then came the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights through the 1967 war, with its attendant brutality and humiliation.

All of that preceded Hamas's emergence, which Israel encouraged, in the late 1980s. This does not justify Hamas's terrorism against noncombatants, but perspective advances comprehension -- if comprehension is deemed desirable.

But Hamas...

When Israel's defenders bring up Hamas's execrable anti-Semitic and genocidal charter, they should be reminded that for decades before the 1948 self-declared founding of Israel, Zionist leaders and settlers had talked about reclaiming and sanctifying the "Promised Land" for the "Chosen People"; supported the "transfer," by force if necessary, of the Palestinian Arabs (those non-Jewish people who for generations lived inexplicably in the "land without a people"); treated them with utter contempt to their faces (to the dismay other Jews); expelled over 750,000 Palestinian Arabs in 1948, the Nakba; massacred hundreds of others and even poisoned their wells; destroyed some 500 villages to make way for Jewish towns, forests, and parks; and militarily ruled the remaining Palestinian Arabs for the next two decades. Then came the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip through the 1967 war with its attendant brutality and humiliation.

All of that preceded Hamas's emergence in the late 1980s. This does not justify Hamas's horrendous violence against noncombatants, but perspective advances comprehension -- if comprehension is deemed desirable.

Netanyahu as Haman

The fable of Purim ends with the slaughter of over 75,000 non-Jewish Persians by the Jewish Persians after one official's (Haman's) plot to kill the Jews is exposed when the king is alerted by his Jewish wife. That's a mighty big conspiracy! God makes no appearance. An inspiring story for sure! The closest thing today to the villain, Haman, is Netanyahu and his team. Boo!

TGIF: Leave TikTok Alone

This is America, last I checked. Surely, the government would not force the sale of a social-media company or ban its app from the Google and Apple stores. Would it?

Well, yes, it would,  could (perhaps), and might. A bill in Congress, backed by the government's nominal chief executive, could become law. The House of Representatives passed it last week by an overwhelming bipartisan majority -- despite valiant efforts by Rep. Thomas Massie,  R-KY, plus a few others -- and it is now before the Senate.

That bill would establish fuzzy criteria defining a "foreign adversary's" alleged influence through a social media platform. It is aimed, for now, at requiring TikTok, used by 170 million mostly younger Americans, to be sold to a government-approved American buyer within a specified period. If not sold, Americans would be forbidden to get the app. I guess the app would have to be disabled for those who have it already.

In other words, TikTok would be banned from America -- you know, just as China's communist government bans or interferes with social media over there. Knowing how the government works, we must presume that the bill's criteria will be applied to other cases later. It certainly would exist as a standing threat to the uncooperative.

The complaint against TikTok is that it's a subsidiary of ByteDance, a widely owned company subject to Chinese government influence or control, although this is disputed by TikTok's CEO, Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean businessman with substantial roots in -- the United States. But let's assume the worst and see where that leads. After all, the Chinese government is no respecter of individual rights. If the U.S. government is eager to interfere with social media, why not the Chinese government?

TikTok worriers say that China could harvest data on Americans while feeding them self-serving democracy-subverting messages. It has reportedly been caught suppressing unflattering information. Not good, but of course, the U.S. government has done the same thing; a lawsuit about this, Murthy v. Missouri, is now before the Supreme Court. As many critics of the bill have pointed out, the Chinese don't need TikTok to acquire information that users readily give up to other platforms. It's already on the market. Moreover, nobody should expect the news from any one online source to be complete; as one grows, one should learn to consult a variety of sources for a fuller picture.

Matthew Petti of Reason is right: "Competition is the strongest force keeping the internet free. Whenever users find a topic banned on TikTok, they can escape to Twitter or Instagram to discuss the censored content. And when Twitter or Instagram enforce politically motivated censorship on a different topic, users can continue that discussion on TikTok."

Changing ownership or banishing TikTok would create a false sense of security. The problem of myopia would remain.

Moreover, as Matt Taibbi alerts us, the bill would give the executive branch "sweeping powers." He writes: "As written, any 'website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application' that is 'determined by the President to present a significant threat to the National Security of the United States' is covered.'"

Taibbi continues: "A 'foreign adversary controlled application,' in other words, can be any company founded or run by someone living at the wrong foreign address, or containing a small minority ownership stake. Or it can be any company run by someone 'subject to the direction' of either of those entities. Or, it’s anything the president says it is. Vague enough?"

By this time, shouldn't we expect the worst from letting legislators write the rules?

But those are not the only reasons for concern. According to Glenn Greenwald, the bill had been floating around for a few years but had not garnered enough support to get through Congress. That changed recently, according to Greenwald, citing articles in the Wall Street Journal, Economist, and Bari Weiss's Free Press. Why? As Greenwald documents, anxiety about TikTok took a quantum leap beginning on Oct. 7, 2023, the day Hamas killed and kidnapped hundreds of Israeli civilians and Israel began retaliating against the people of the Gaza Strip.

What has this got to do with TikTok? you ask. Good question. Israel's defenders in the United States, such as Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, are upset that TikTok's young users are being exposed to what he calls anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic disinformation. "It's Al Jazeera on steroids," Greenblatt said on MSNBC. During a leaked phone call, he complained, "We have a TikTok problem," by which he means a generational problem. Younger people -- including younger Jewish people -- are appalled at what Israel's military is doing in Gaza. (To complicate things, it looks like TikTok and Instagram have suppressed pro-Palestinian information.)

Would an American-owned TikTok be easier to control? Experience says yes. Have a look at the Twitter Files, which document how American officials, Chinese-style, pressured social media to censor or suppress dissenting views on important matters such as the COVID-19 response and the 2020 election. A federal judge likened the government's efforts to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Do we want to become more like China?

A final word. Defenders of free speech should not argue that ill-intentioned disinformation and well-intentioned misinformation from any source can cause no harm, broadly defined. Of course, it can. The proper answer to this legitimate concern is that government-produced "safetyism," placing safety above every other value including freedom, will do more harm than good.

Celebrating the Gaza Onslaught: Is There No Shame?

To Israel's supporters: are you not ashamed when you see the videos that IDF soldiers make to celebrate the death, destruction, and humiliation they're inflicting on the people of Gaza? Some would call those soldiers "my people." We're talking about Abu Ghraib stuff here.

Something to Agree on?

Can't we all at least agree that this was an extremely clumsy sentence from Academy Award-winning Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer that invited misinterpretation?

Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza.

I assume he meant that they repudiate (why would this British guy say "refute"?) Israel's hijacking both Judaism and the memory of Hitler's victims in a cause that has produced such horrible consequences for both the Israelis and Palestinians.