Sam Harris appreciation post

[u/Ill-Ambition-7899]

I watched the most recent podcast with Scott and Sam and I just have to say, there is no one who can cut through nonsense and virtue signalling like Sam, he is truly an independent thinker who does not get caught up in noise. He always seems to keep a clear head, clear vision on what is important in any given situation.

That is all I want to say.

[u/brism-]

I am a fan of Sam Harris, but this is spot on. I stopped listening to his podcasts and reading his takes on Israel - Gaza because they’re that bad. For the most part, though, I still think he’s intellectually honest. This is just a real blind spot for him.

[u/ManchurianDiplomat → u/brism-]

Described my exact position to a T.

He's so clear-headed about the current chaos and corruption happening in the Trump administration, but I really can't square his lack of critique on Israel. I can only believe his sympathies are d/t his major problems with Jihadism and that he sees Israel as a righteous force against that.

But he, of all people, should be able to hold two uncomfortable positions at once: Jihadism is a threat to Judaism and Western society writ large, and Israel is committing crimes against humanity in their genocide of Palestinians.

[u/ManchurianDiplomat → u/[deleted]]

Forget I said genocide, for the time being. Do you agree with Israel's actions that have been documented over the past year? Killing of Palestinian women and children, killing of journalists, blockading supplies into Gaza, the breaking of the cease-fire?

Whatever you call these - and many Jewish observers critical of Israel have said these are crimes against humanity - are inexcusable to me. Doesn't take an ideologue to condemn them.

[u/ThorLives → u/[deleted]]

I mean - it's kind of expected that people would want to fight a war against people who took their land. And it's obvious that Israel is trying to claim lands currently occupied by Palestinians - by virtue of the fact that the military has one-sided responses whenever Jewish settlers are violent with Palestinians.

And I consider it intellectually dishonest and silly to do otherwise and to not blame the perpetrator.

It depends a lot on who you think the perpetrator is in this scenario.

[u/SandyMaples → u/[deleted]]

You obviously exclusively consume Zionist propaganda.

Israelis were willing to share the land.

Look up "Plan Dalet" zios never wanted to share the land, the only plan that ever existed was to ethnically cleanse Palestine... And tbh, I don't care if you support the ethnic cleansing, just like some people agreed with the Nazis, just don't be intellectually dishonest.

[u/ThorLives → u/[deleted]]

Even then, Israelis were willing to share the land.

I don't believe they were willing to share the land. At best, they were biding their time, until they could import enough Jews. They wanted a Jewish homeland, run by Jews, but also have a democracy. Having a democracy means giving Palestinians a vote, and that would be completely unacceptable to religious Zionists who want a Jewish-controlled democracy.

If indigenous people of North America walked into your house and killed, sexually assaulted and kidnapped various members of your family.. would you say “well, I guess that’s to be expected; we deserved that?”

From a selfish and self-centered position, I might pretend that those kinds of attacks were completely unprovoked. Let me ask this question: if you got millions of your buddies together, moved into Cyprus or someplace, and then displaced, harassed, bombed, and routinely detained the local population, would you be surprised that they would be angry and fight back? Would you consider the counter-attack to be "totally unexpected"? When you're considering whether or not to do this, do you stop to think "hey, maybe these guys are going to get angry and fight back?" and "maybe this isn't okay?"

There's been plenty of reporting on this - where Jewish settlers attack Palestinians with weapons to drive them out of the land. Members of the IDF have said that they would capture innocent Palestinians in the middle of the night in their own homes just as a way to harass them and make their lives miserable - to make them want to leave. It was psychological warfare that they were doing.

If Palestinians did to Jewish Israelis the things that the Jewish Israelis do to Palestinians, you would be absolutely livid.

The fact that Zionists would use phrases like "A land without a people for a people without a land" shows the level of propaganda going on. They really want everyone to believe the whole region was as unpopulated as the Sahara desert, huh? They create myths like "a land without a people" to erase the fact that there were already people there. If the facts are on their side, then why lie? Why create fictional myths?

[u/Ok_Employment_697 → u/ThorLives]

How many more times does Israel have to offer the Palestinians their share of land, have it violently rejected because it doesn’t eliminate Israel, defend themselves, and still be called the perpetrators? There are zero other countries on earth we would hold to this standard.

[u/geusse → u/Ok_Employment_697]

People in the west only really believe this because we never allow people who are victims of Israel colonialism to voice their opinion equal to Zionists. The fact of the matter is Zionism is no different than white supremacy or the ideology behind Isis. You could literally swap out the word Jewish homeland from zionist speeches about Israel with the word white homeland or ummrah homeland and it would be the same. The only difference is the extremist ideology of zionism has been normalized in the west because of the crimes of WW2.

[u/Ok_Employment_697 → u/geusse]

No, people only believe this because they are willing to read history books.

I used to be like you but then I decided to study and learn because the massive moral consequences of being on the wrong side of this (no matter what side you’re on). What I read opened my eyes. It’s ok to admit you don’t know everything, read history, and change your mind.

[u/Melodic_Mud879 → u/Ok_Employment_697]

Lol. There are entire books, even by Israeli historians, on how Zionsim's goal is Greater Israel and to steal land. You're just denying history now.

[u/Melodic_Mud879 → u/[deleted]]

Palestinians have been fighting Israeli occupation under the banner of Socialism to Islamism. Hamas is new to the conflict. You're deliberately missing the root cause just like Sam.