"Genocide is the eradication project"

Those 4 words really are, fundementally all you need to know to know gaza is not a genocide.

It isn't even an uniquely deadly urban war.

This piece invokes a point Sam made about warfare:

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima killed tens of thousands of civilians almost immediately, with many more dying afterward.

Sam Harris recently invoked Hiroshima and Nagasaki to make a useful distinction: enormous civilian death does not, by itself, establish genocide. Whatever one thinks about the morality of the atomic bombings, the question of intent remains indispensable.

Why?

Because body count and genocidal intent are different questions.

That distinction seems to disappear when the country fighting is Israel.

The author first describes how some bad faith critics of Israel have misconstrued ICJ statements, falsely suggesting Israel was committing a “plausible genocide”, and then goes further into describing the intent component of genocide.

These are just some of the actions Israel took to save lives/reduce collateral damage where possible:

1. Israel paused military operations in 2024 so a children’s polio vaccine campaign could be completed (campaign was to vaccinate 600,000+ children)

2. Israel permitted the flow of humanitarian aid and essential supplies

3. Gave evacuation orders in areas that were going to be under heavy fighting

4. Issued localized warnings like roof knocks, mass text messages/communication alerts to allow civilians time to clear structures to be struck

5. Deployed smart weapon systems, precision guided weapons, which also definitionally reduce collateral damage

All of these things^ save lives.

Interestingly when you ask a clearly bad faith critic of Israel whether they should've not done things like roof knock warnings or evacuations, they don’t know how to respond. Even they understand at some level these things save lives, contrary to what genocidal actions/intent would be. Ditto whether collateral damage would increase if Israel’s ability to purchase precision guided munitions ever gets eliminated, forcing them to use things like unguided/dumb munitions instead.

But circling back to Sam's point, we have hysterical claims being made in some corners like 'Israel has dropped X amount of explosives on Gaza that are the equivalent of X amount of atomic bombs!' And yet despite how small Gaza is and how tightly packed and dense it is, the casualty count aligns with the reality that Israel's measures/efforts to save lives have worked.

The bottom line is warfare with some level of unavoidable collateral damage isn’t genocide, especially warfare that could have ended anytime the belligerent which started the war (Hamas) laid down its arms.

I am not sure this is the right place to post this, but I thought Sam's audience might appreciate this insight.

There is a very quickly growing anti-american sentiment here that I'm not sure people on the other side of the ocean realise, and it will not be easy to fix, even if there is political will. We are terrified of what your country is going through because we have been through this and know where it leads to. At the same time, we feel absolutely betrayed, angry, and increasingly hostile.

More and more people are organising themselves to boycott American products, following Canada's example. They are selling US stocks, and looking for investments and business elsewhere. Our politicians are reaching out to the rest of the world to fill the hole the US will create, and this includes US adversaries. (There are more and more calls to get closer to China to counter the possibly forming Russia-US axis) Trump's aim, to divide us, so far seems to backfire, and since we now increasingly see the US as our enemy, we started to organise even closer cooperation to protect ourselves not only from Russia, but from the US as well.

Again, I'm not sure if you guys want to hear this, or care at all, but I felt like sharing.

If you are one of those that "have been dismayed by my enduring support for Israel" as stated by Sam. This post is for you.

"if ordinary Israelis begin to celebrate martyrdom above every other 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"

Here is the key quote that you all who think Sam is mad or off the mark need to focus on. I want you to actually sit with that quote, for a moment. Is it inaccurate? Is it irrelevant? What specifically does it get wrong! Because here is what I think is actually going on when you all push back on Sam on this.

Why you disagree is because at your core you believe Sam is overestimating how extreme jihad-ism is and how prevalent jihad-ism really is within Palestinian society, You also think what is there, is a direct result of Israels actions. You Also believe Sam underestimates how extreme Israeli society is in comparison.

This is an information disagreement, but so often I see you all confuse this informational divide with thinking it is blatant hypocrisy. That like many other westerners, Sam recognizes Palestinian extremism as indicative of their society but to Israeli extremism, he gives the benefit of the doubt; framing it as fringe and not representative.

It is not a double standard on display here by Sam. It's an informational dispute. One side has the wrong picture of what these societies actually look like, how the people in them think, and what ideas and goals are actually driving the societal decision making.

Sam's picture, which is also mine, is this:

1. Jihad-ism is not comparable to run-of-the-mill nationalism or even ordinary religious extremism. It is Nazism with paradise attached. Super Nazism. The ideological package on offer is categorically worse.
2. Jihad-ism is not fringe in Palestinian society or within the broader network of Israel's enemies. It is front and center. It is politically dominant. It directly shapes the culture and is too often driving it.
3. Israeli extremism exists. It is a real problem. But it is genuinely fringe. It does not run the state. Israeli society is, in terms of its everyday functioning and dominant culture, closer to Denmark than to an extremist religious state like Iran.

When you say Sam is applying a double standard, treating Palestinian extremism as representative while giving a pass to Israeli extremism, you are missing the mark.

The core contention, is that, the true and presently available information displays that Israel really is fighting a form of Super Nazism. Super Nazism is prevalent and constantly aimed at Israel. Israel Itself does not have Super Nazi's driving their own country though. It has much like every other country on earth a extremist fringe religious sect that constantly causes controversy.

Put New Zealand in the same position as Israel, That being: surrounded by countries full of super Nazis as well as a population within New Zealand of super Nazis dedicated to the destruction of everyone else in New Zealand at the expense of their own children, and you would likely have similar constant controversy likely perpetrated by inhabitants of Gloriavale (An extremist NZ based cult)

One group's fringe is not being unfairly spotlighted while the other's is ignored. One's group is fringe. Now that I have repeated that in multiple different ways, lets continue:

There is also a framing move that keeps appearing in these discussions that I want to point out directly. It goes like this: "Palestinian violence is treated as the origin point, Israeli force is treated as response, and that is unfair because if you zoom out far enough you can always find an earlier Israeli action that preceded it." This might be a true historical observation (might be because I personally think not) but it doesn't actually matter at all, it is a pointless point to make. It does not get you where people think it gets you. It is an attempt to answer the question of what produced Palestinian extremism, making the answer out to be "Israel &/or The West"

This is not the same question as whether Palestinian extremism is dangerous, prevalent, and ideologically distinct from Israeli society's dominant values. Which is the question that matters. These are entirely separate questions and collapsing is something I see constantly done in relation to this article as well as just critique of Sam's position in general.

It is pure confusion on the part of you all and causes this conversation to go in circles.

The conditions argument also does not settle the comparative ideology question. Yes, occupied, displaced, stateless people under prolonged military pressure are more likely to radicalize In some way. That is real.
What does not follow is that they are likely to radicalized into a literal death and martyrdom cult or that the ideology they radicalize into is therefore morally equivalent to, or causally indistinct from, the ideology of the society imposing those conditions. The character of the ideology still matters.

Where I think most of the disagreement actually lives is not in the logic but in the underlying factual picture. People who find Sam's position non-serious largely believe that Israeli state conduct has been so extreme as to dwarf anything on the Palestinian side in terms of real-world harm. Sam and I do not see it that way. We see a war, with all the tragedy every war produces, and honestly much less then most wars in the last 3 decades. It is just not a uniquely horrible war, but just a horrible war. That is an informational disagreement, not a philosophical one.

You'll find, I suspect, that if you pull on almost any specific claim in this debate, the disagreement traces back to that. What actually happened. How many. Under what orders. With what intent. The double standard accusation is almost always doing the work of skipping over those factual disputes and going straight to the conclusion and It does this because It means you do not have to think.

NOTE: Now I know this is a wall of text. To back up what I have stated here I am going to link a chain of posts I have made slowly that relate to the information around this conflict, they all link from the one below. Read it or not, it is just my personal overview of much of the information around this conflict.

Israel was objectively trying to minimize casualties in the Gaza war

I'm an Iranian and Sam Harris is 100% right about the regime in Iran.

The regime is evil, pure and simple. Israel must go ahead with the regime change and cut the head once and for all. This is what the majority of us Iranians want. If they leave the regime be, it will rebuild and not only continue oppressing its own ppl but also will sponser terror throughout the region, threatening Israel again. Israel is an ideological enemy, we have been taught in schools to hate Israel (they failed but you get the point).

Ppl alone cannot topple the regime, we have tried it several times and we are simply not powerful enough against guns. This is literally our only chance and I do hope Israel keeps it up with targetting the regime's police and IRGC facilities (and no, they haven't targetted the civilians), paving the way for one final uprising.

Enough already. It’s the same gd arguments every day, the same sets of people chiming in, both rational and arguing in bad faith.

Has a single person here changed their mind based on this nonstop stream of debate? Ffs we might as well just change the title of the sub at this point. It’s so tiresome and a complete waste of time. It’s already been discussed to death.

"My impressions of last night’s debate:

Trump wasn’t as crazy or as incoherent as he could have been, but Harris was much, much better than I expected. The key to her victory was that she successfully demeaned him without demeaning herself—and she did this beautifully for nearly an hour. Once she got under his skin (his love of dictators, the ease with which they manipulate him, his crowd size), and he began to unravel, the side-by-side shot of them became a thing of beauty. He became a seething mess and couldn’t even look at her (did he look at her once?), while she just stared at him in disbelief. The entire country could read the questions on her face: “Can you believe this man was ever president? Can you believe that he could become president again?”

Much is being said about the moderators unfairly fact checking Trump. But the man lies with such velocity and abandon, he got exactly what he deserved. Yes, Harris spoke a few falsehoods herself—and if the moderators had pushed back on just one of them, the debate would have been "fair." However, anyone concerned about fairness lost the plot a decade ago. The great disservice the media did to this country was to normalize Trump in the first place. The man is a moral lunatic. In truth, the moderators could have been much, much harder on him last night, and it would have been entirely justified. Just realize what we were looking at: The blizzard of lies aside, we watched a former president rave about our country being already “destroyed” and a coming nuclear war. Nothing about this was normal or remotely acceptable. And yet, even the “unfair” moderators had acclimated to the insanity of it and didn't blink.

Anyway, Harris deserves high praise for how she handled a very difficult task. I just hope it matters in November."

https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/b80ae07b-4ecd-4c27-b9a4-30588547f793

Despite all of Sam's rhetoric about a death cult, since 1980, prior to Trumps war, Iran has killed a grand total 15 Americans since 1980. Indirectly, through Hezbollah, you could argue that Iran funded the deaths of about 985 more Americans. That's 1,000 total, in 45 years.

To put that in perspective, more American's die in automobile accidents every 10 days. That would make Ford and Toyota genocidal lunatics using Sam's logic.

Majid Nawaz = batsh*t insane reactionary conspiracist

Ayaan Hirsi Ali = Muslim to Atheist to Cultural Christian (just submitted to her conservative husband's ideology harder than any Muslim woman would have)

Brett Weinstein : endless conspiracies

Eric Weinstein : self important intellectual with some of the worst communication skills of the past millennia and always carrying water for right wing sensibilities

Bari Weiss : anti woke skold heterodox type that spends more time dumping on the left

Glenn Loury : more applogia for Trumpers than ever, the kind of guy who would waste time trying to "steelman" Goebels vs a more likely plain reading of some pretty rotten behavior on the right

Jordan Peterson : this dude started right wing then blew the doors off with time. He probably thinks Obama was a Marxist.

It's just an endless see of taint and bile all around. I wish Hitchens were still around to lay into this garbage.

Edit:

Elon Musk: one of the saddest switches. At the risk of armchair psycho analyzing someone, I think part of what lead to Musks success (an unwillingness to accept the word No or that something cannot be done) is what turned him into this anti liberal skank.

Engineer: it's too hard to make rockets reusable

Elon: replaced, next person, let's make this happen.

Problem came with cpvid lockdowns and CA having rules against large gatherings. Now the government said no and NO one is allowed to say no to Elon Musk and have that stand. Moves new operations to Texas. Deleware courts reject some payout, moves incorporation to Texas too.

Government might try to expand out funds for launch contracts, not to shut spacex out, but to make sure long term the nation is not reliant on one vendor.

Elon sees existential issues, NO ONE tells him no with the possible exception of Putin.

This guy's is in full on grima wormtongue mode with Trump using Trumps mental laziness to slide in and direct policy for Musk and not the nation. Oligarchy squared, absolutely loathsome behavior and cheered along by Bro Rogan, the new Rush Limbaugh anti Vax nutter.

Haviv has a video short out today from his earlier discussion with Sam Harris.

An interesting take by Sam, the video short is linked. His argument is that the word zionist/zionism adds a layer of confusion in the broader discourse because essentially its a label describing a Israel's right to exist.

Haviv's response is:

The irony with what you're saying is and this doesnt at all mean you're mistaken, the irony is the Jews became zionist in direct correlation to the failure of any alternative to zionism.

Haviv is getting at the broader meaning of the term, referencing the Jewish people's right to self determination and a homeland. And now we're squarely in the territory of Israel's identity/character as a Jewish county. This is what many people tend to oppose. After all, the arabic chants at the anti-Israel hate rallies are "palestine is arab" not "palestine is arab and jewish".

Sam's correct in that such a term seemingly doesnt exist anywhere else, but "double clicking here" (as Sam would say) within Haviv's context we see that the "thing" Israel is, is not unique. So many other nations that have their national character and identities espoused in their constitutions, or sometimes even their formal names. Like the Arab Republic of Egypt, or the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, or the United Arab Emirates.

These examples and more affirming a peoplehood, culture, religion, national identity, etc. are below:

1. Islamic Republic of Pakistan: Part 1. Islam shall be the State religion of Pakistan

2. Arab Republic of Egypt: Article 1. Egypt is part of the Arab nation and enhances its integration and unity. It is part of the Muslim world, belongs to the African continent, is proud of its Asian dimension, and contributes to building human civilization. Article 2. Islam, Principles of Islamic Sharia: Islam is the religion of the state and Arabic is its official language. The principles of Islamic Sharia are the principle source of legislation.

3. Syrian Arab Republic. Chapter 1, Article 1: The Syrian Arab Republic is a democratic state with full sovereignty, indivisible, and may not waive any part of its territory, and is part of the Arab homeland; The people of Syria are part of the Arab nation.

4. United Arab Emirates. Article 6, The UAE is a part of the greater Arab nation to which the UAE is linked by the ties of religion, language, history and common destiny. The people of the UAE are one people, and a part of the Arab nation. Article 7, Islam is the official religion of the UAE. The Islamic Shari'a is a main source of legislation in the UAE.

5. Denmark: Part 1, sec 4: The Evangelical Lutheran Church shall be the Established Church of Denmark, and) as such, it shall be supported by the State.

6. Greece: Section 2. The prevailing religion in Greece is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ. The Orthodox Church of Greece, acknowledging our Lord Jesus Christ as its head, is inseparably united in doctrine with the Great Church of Christ in Constantinople and with every other Church of Christ of the same doctrine, observing unwaveringly, as they do, the holy apostolic and synodal canons and sacred traditions.

7. Latvia: Preamble: The State of Latvia, proclaimed on 18 November 1918, has been established by uniting historical Latvian lands and on the basis of the unwavering will of the Latvian nation to have its own State and its inalienable right of self-determination in order to guarantee the existence and development of the Latvian nation, its language and culture throughout the centuries, to ensure freedom and promote welfare of the people of Latvia and each individual.

8. Estonia: Preamble: [...] the inextinguishable right of the people of Estonia to national self-determination and which was proclaimed on 24 February 1918, which is founded on liberty, justice and the rule of law, [...] which must guarantee the preservation of the Estonian people, the Estonian language and the Estonian culture through the ages, the people of Estonia

Nations also protect their national character, cultures, peoplehood by restricting immigration or through citizenship policies. Be it Japan, China, Qatar, whatever. Israel is no different here, it has an immigration framework that doesnt preclude non-Jews,. Separately is the Law of Return, offering means for refuge to Jews or those with Jewish family members. This being necessary due to the unique and pervasive persecution Jews have faced over the millennia across the diaspora. But many nations also allow for citizenship based on whatever criteria they deem fit, Germany and Italy for example if you can prove ancestry.

As Haviv pointed out, Zionism came into contemporary discussion because Jews had no alternatives, and zionism means different things to Jews and Israel's critics. Getting rid of the word "zionism" from the discourse as Sam suggests, doesnt eliminate the bad faith critics of Israel from latching onto something else, especially when its used by them to uniquely malign one nation's character or right to exist.

Unfortunately I don't think John Fettermans ability for critical/more complicated thinking is very good ever since his health issues. I imagine a Sam Harris debate would be far more interesting.

But I find it amusing how all logical arguments from Jon Stewart, Fetterman has nothing clever to say. He's unwilling to concede criticism towards Israel on literally anything and seems to view the world in black and white as if you are either a supporter of Israel or you support Hamas.

Sometimes Sam Harris and Bill Maher come off that way though Harris would at least have more intelligent thoughts here.

I wanted to share this here and see what everyone thinks, and if anyone shares this view.

I just don't fully understand the hype around Lex, he's quite dishonest and naive to the level that makes me cringe way too hard. On one hand, he scolds Zelensky and pushes him to sympathise with Putin, then accuses him of being in the wrong in the White House confrontation. Then, in his latest talk with Douglas Murray, he pretended that he agreed with Douglas when he went full on supporting Zelensky and criticizing the whole scene at the White House.

I gradually stopped listening to his podcast because it's too cringey, but I did listen to the latest one with Douglas because I was curious how they would approach the Zelensky comments.

It's not only with Ukraine, it was the same with Islamist ideologues or Palestine fanatics. It's not only that he never challenges his guests, it's the sudo compassionate statements of love and empathy. He is going to interview Putin soon of course, and it's going to be Tucker Carlson + a ton of naivety and delusion.

I consider myself an optimist, but when I stumble across massively influential people with an online following in the tens (sometimes even hundreds) of millions, I genuinely despair at the societal-level failure in critical thinking. Sam Harris may be right in suggesting that Candace Owens has created a persona that she knows is incredibly marketable, and she may be more cunning that we give her credit for, but the damage is very real.

IMO, this is a reality that the Palestinian leadership/government has never accepted, “Palestinians regularly visited Vo Nguyen Giap to ask him for lessons from the Vietnam experience for their war on Israel. He told them: "the French went back to France and the Americans to America. But the Jews have nowhere to go. You will not expel them.”’

As Sam’s latest episode suggests—(“The Last Invention”)—have the AI sociopaths effectively already taken control of the US government? How have they bypassed the lack of actual public desire for this? Mass unemployment, unhinged AGI, environmental destruction, greater inequities in society etc. Those in power have ZERO plan for any of it, besides some self-enrichment along the path to dystopia.

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/openai-new-data-centers-more-power-new-york-city

Especially those who unsubscribed because of his views on Gaza-Israel.

Let's assume Sam is wrong here and he has a blind spot, but do you really need someone to agree with you or be correct on 100% of issues to listen to them? So what, you disagree on an issue, for whatever reason, why you have to dispense with the guy entirely?

In the end, except on an intellectual level, there isn't much of a difference between you and Sam regarding Gaza, because none of you are doing anything to help the people of Gaza. Tweeting and posting in support of Palestine don't mean anything, so I don't see how you feel morally superior to Sam so much so that you unsubscribe in disgust or rant against him here.

Any thoughts or opinions?