Yes, I'm bemused and often angered by the mainstreaming of opinions against the right of Israel to avoid annihilation. The inversion of reality is standard practice in this area. I watched some interviews recently about the Munich olympics massacre by Black September. Two Palestinian journalists said that violence wasn't the objective and that they only wanted to raise the plight of Palestinians into public consciousness. They blamed the authorities for turning it into a bloodbath. These journalists made no mention of the fact that before the police moved in the terrorists had castrated the Israeli team coach and left him bleeding to death while negotiations were going on. I have lost intellectual and moral respect for many people on this issue.
We always seem drawn more to misery and negativity than to the positive......strange, really, for a species like ours. LLMs are hear to stay and people need to start accepting their benefits. Still, thanks for sharing this, Mike.
Being attuned to threat is a good survival skill and a big part of why we've done so well as a species. But there's a time and a place to rise above evolutionary biology.
It is perplexing how to challenge the blockade. On the one hand is real, nasty malice, as exemplified by those Palestinian journalists (dating back to Amin al-Husseini and Hitler, and beyond). On the other, the whole, unquestioning hatred of Jews, whether in Israel or the Diaspora, goes hand in hand with non-binary bilge. One must stay fashionable after all. There is a potent mix of Islamism, fetishism of the Nakba, right-wing mania and general sloppy thinking – taught at university no less. I believe we are living in the age of headlines, where the headline matters far more than the content. There is almost a pride in not questioning anymore. Thus, people can announce, “I’m not antisemitic” and then say and do anything against and about Jews. Indeed, many are astonished if you try to point out their antisemitism. They retort that their raison d'etre is based – obviously - on Lurve.
Thank you so much for staying on the side of sense!
You are so right.
However, remembering not all things are doom and gloom is more difficult in the truly (not truthy) hateful world of antisemitism - I am Jewish.
Yes, I'm bemused and often angered by the mainstreaming of opinions against the right of Israel to avoid annihilation. The inversion of reality is standard practice in this area. I watched some interviews recently about the Munich olympics massacre by Black September. Two Palestinian journalists said that violence wasn't the objective and that they only wanted to raise the plight of Palestinians into public consciousness. They blamed the authorities for turning it into a bloodbath. These journalists made no mention of the fact that before the police moved in the terrorists had castrated the Israeli team coach and left him bleeding to death while negotiations were going on. I have lost intellectual and moral respect for many people on this issue.
We always seem drawn more to misery and negativity than to the positive......strange, really, for a species like ours. LLMs are hear to stay and people need to start accepting their benefits. Still, thanks for sharing this, Mike.
Being attuned to threat is a good survival skill and a big part of why we've done so well as a species. But there's a time and a place to rise above evolutionary biology.
Thanks for providing an anecdote to the chronic misery of social media. That, and working "hitherto" into your latest piece ;-)
A hitherto neglected word haha!
It is perplexing how to challenge the blockade. On the one hand is real, nasty malice, as exemplified by those Palestinian journalists (dating back to Amin al-Husseini and Hitler, and beyond). On the other, the whole, unquestioning hatred of Jews, whether in Israel or the Diaspora, goes hand in hand with non-binary bilge. One must stay fashionable after all. There is a potent mix of Islamism, fetishism of the Nakba, right-wing mania and general sloppy thinking – taught at university no less. I believe we are living in the age of headlines, where the headline matters far more than the content. There is almost a pride in not questioning anymore. Thus, people can announce, “I’m not antisemitic” and then say and do anything against and about Jews. Indeed, many are astonished if you try to point out their antisemitism. They retort that their raison d'etre is based – obviously - on Lurve.
Thank you so much for staying on the side of sense!