A lot of y'all said you found me by Monster Falls and Wendywolf! I realized I haven’t posted anything from that in a while so have a Wendywolf watching over Dippin Dot while he does whatever Dippin Dots do.
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. The Making Sense Community seems to have inherited this infatuation, leading to some heated exchanges in recent days. 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 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: As I suggested in at least one Community thread already, if my intransigence on these matters mystifies you, it might help to understand that, for whatever reason, I think militant Islam is ten times worse than you think it is. When I talk about “jihadists” and their various groups—Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the IRGC, 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 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.
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 eighty years ago. But if the Israelis laid down their weapons, there would be a genocide. This was obviously true on October 7th, 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 truth is, I have never known how Israel should have responded to the events of October 7th. I only know that they, 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:
What would each side do if it had the power to do whatever it wanted?
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 7th. 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 Times will not come until the very stones and trees cry out “Oh Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come 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 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 UAE 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 leftwing 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 UN 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 193 nations, two-thirds were created by map makers 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 shapeshifting 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 7th 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 to members of the Making Sense Community: Many of you 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. No one should be a part of Community just because they agree with me. I’m not running a political party, and there is no line for me, or for anyone else, to toe. 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.
I have many things to say to that, but honestly, kids aren't even kosher, and I personally don't really like them anyway. They're not that good (tasting) (obviously I'm joking.)
Do you think this is an appropriate behavior from a fully developed adult? Because to me it sounds like miserable kindergarten insults over actual assault. I don't even want to talk about the woman, because she isn't worth my attention. She was arrested, and according to CBS news:
Police said they arrested 23-year-old Diana Smith in connection to the attack and that she is facing several charges, including hate crime and aggravated harassment.
but I do want to talk about the fact that barely anyone on the subway reacted. According to the 23yo victim who chose to stay anonymous out of fear, only two people briefly stepped in to help her.
"It was shocking that bystanders ... just no one doing anything, and to the point where I was beaten to the ground," the victim said. "People are much stronger as a community."
Not even a year had passed since the horrible attack and murder of Iryna Zarutska, also 23, a Ukrainian refugee, on the light rail train in North Carolina, and she wasn't even Jewish. A quick aside, I wanted to link an article about Iryna Zarutska, but the way the BBC and CNN worded their articles, they almost feel more sorry for the man who stabbed her (a POC) for "ending" HIS life (facing the consequences of first degree murder) but again what can one expect from these sorry excuses of journalism establishments. How can you promise us "never again" and let this behavior slide in public spaces AGAIN? The blood had not dried! Inexcusable and unacceptable. Do better.
But wait, here comes the most concerning part of the article:
"Antisemitism has now moved from just words to actual violence," said Lisa Katz, chief government affairs officer at Combat Antisemitism Movement, an organization combating Jewish hate. "We have tracked 193 incidents of antisemitism in New York City this year through May 31 and that equates to more than one per day."
Boulder SJP really said "chickens coming home to roost" about a firebombing that murdered an 82-year-old woman.
These terrorist dick riders are out here deepthroating Molotovs. A guy burns Jews at a hostage rally, kills Karen Diamond, and they call it "the only sane response," demand his release, and don’t even mention the dead grandma. This is some batshit insane death cult simping.
And the cherry on top: Boulder city council member Taishya Adams refused to sign a condemnation of the attack because it called it “antisemitic” instead of “anti-Zionist”. She literally wouldn’t condemn the firebombing murder without shoehorning in her Jew-hate framing.
The whole operation is rotten. SJP and their political enablers aren’t pro-Palestine. They’re just proudly pro-killing Jews. Fucking disgusting.
At a time where jewish groups are being banned from pride events, you do not get to use Anne Franke, a dead jew murdered for being jewish before she could ever come out, as a puppet for whatever queer rights message you want to share.
You do not get to profit, financially or attention wise or another way, off of a *potentially* queer jew whilst we are banned from pride events.
We do not know if she was questioning her sexuality but ultimately straight or if she was actually queer because she was killed for the crime of existing as a jew before she could come out. Queer rights obviously matter. Anne Franke is not the person you should be using.
You need to protect alive queer jews. You need to love all jews, not just the dead ones.
If you would ask me why I live in Israel and what I think about it...
I would answer that it is the only place in the entire world where a Jew can feel loved, safe, protected, feel at home.
No matter how many wars our country has been through and is going through, how many terror attacks happening every day, running to shelters…
Israel is the only Jewish country in the world that allows Jews to live safely and with Jewish pride on Earth without being ashamed of their Jewish identity and without hiding it.
Jews must have at least one place in the world that accepts them as they are.
This is exactly the reason why Israel must continue to exist.
"everyone should get more aromantic" can appeal to tumblr's sensibilities but I genuinely think everyone should also get more asexual. I don't mean everyone stop having sex, what I mean is
Sex is not essential. You can live without it. Full stop.
Not having sex isn't shameful or a sign of failure. It also doesn't make anyone boring.
You are not entitled to having sex with anybody and nobody is entitled to having sex with you.
Sex is not what makes someone an adult.
Nobody's worth is defined by how much sex they have or don't have.
Sex is not equally important to everyone.
You can have fulfilling and happy relationships without sex.
You should only have sex on your own terms, not because you feel like you owe it to someone, or because you feel like you'd be incomplete without it.
Know your boundaries around sex and be firm about them. Know how to respect other people's boundaries.
The previous point also applies when it comes to discussing sex. If someone doesn't wanna talk about it or hear about it you have to back down.
Anything can be sexual but not everything has to be sexual.
every time something like this happens, SJPers inevitably try to hide behind chapters being “independent & autonomous”, as if this is just a problem with that one local chapter.
but practically every chapter has their own separate laundry list of posts like this, either celebrating terror attacks & massacres, or sharing Nazi memes, or hosting rallies that feature convicted terrorists as speakers, & where open support for Hamas et al goes unchallenged, etc. etc.
it’s just that finding and actually presenting all that information takes time & effort, and doing that for every single one is like the world’s most exhausting game of whack-a-mole, while deflecting criticism to the satisfaction of people who’ve already bought in can be done with a single line talking point.
who ever made it (cause was awhile back, do not remember where) Thank you
That AU where Wendy is a Slayer
such a bad ass idea
I was trying to remember who was her watcher (was it Ford or Stan???)
then I started thinking, if Ford was her Watcher, but disappeared, similar to the way as in the show (supernatural or same portal) and Stan pretends to be him (and same as show, trying to get him back) but later finds out Ford also has the job as a Watcher and then Wendy’a Slayer powers awaken and now Stan gotta train this teenager with superhuman abilities to kill vampires.
all the Stan and Wendy bonding I could ever hope for :D
lets go punch some pale freaks
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