Also, does anyone else ever pick up on his tendency to not fully oppose doling out punishments for thoughtcrime? In the most recent preemie episode he said that the career backlash against one woman who criticized Israel was too extreme, but a suspension of a few weeks would be acceptable to him. He said something similar in a few episodes about school incidents, too. Sometimes it's not the nature of the reaction that bothers him, but its scale, which basically means that he's down with beating and whipping the witch, but not burning her alive.
Well, virtually nobody is 100% against punishment for expressing unsavory views. They cry about "cancel culture" when the views expressed are acceptable to them and insist that the consequences are proportionate when they strongly, viscerally disagree. Some self styled "anti cancel culture" influencers are better at dodging hypocrisy than others: these are the ones who can temper and think around their disagreement to a point. But even in the coolest minds, there's always one thing or another that brings out the will to punish. I don't think, for instance, that many Kiwi Farmers would be comfortable with an elementary school teacher expressing sympathy for pedophiles and continuing to teach — even if they had a record clean of any actual child molestation.
Jesse is a liberal Zionist Jew who's disagreed with the actions of the Israeli government in the past. But it's not a strong and visceral disagreement, a felt disagreement, a pure disgust at their rapacity and encouragement of ethnic supremacism. He
thinks the West Bank settlements are wrong. He
feels that his people are under attack. His weakening of principle on this issue is unfortunate but understandable.
Maybe I don't judge Jesse too badly because so many "anti woke" American Jews are doing worse. Screaming for blood, calling antisemitism on every shred of sympathy for Palestinians, denying any and all hypocrisy, just banging the morality drums for their side and being extremely fucking weird. They're calling the enemy savages while embodying Old World tribalism themselves. I wonder if they see that in the mirror.
Of course, the "Islam Is Peace Free Palestine" leftists are also weird with their own kind of blindness. Idk, man. Bitter intractable conflicts corrode the rational humanism in everyone emotionally involved, and there are a lot of people emotionally involved in I/P.
He and Katie asking the audience if they want more Israel talk made me think seriously about canceling me subscription, at least for a month.
I'm with you there. It's bad content.
None of these people would be in any trouble if they just moderated their language a little like grown adults are supposed to - no one would care if they made a nicely worded post about concern for/mourning Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire, or reposting Haaretz articles about how this is Bibi's fault.
But being so internet poisoned that you think posting super inflamitory shit in public with zero opsec to go viral is a good idea? That's why you get punished.
Gigi Hadid and her family had their phone numbers leaked and received death threats over a gentle, compassionate, carefully worded statement mourning civilians while disavowing terrorism. The official State of Israel Instagram account went off and called her evil. Michael Eisen, who's Jewish himself, was fired as editor-in-chief of eLife for simply criticizing indifference toward loss of Palestinian life (and yes, he had a pattern of posting too much and too politically, but it's striking that this — far from his most annoying post — would break the camel's back). Maha Dakhil of CAA is by all accounts an excellent, competent agent, and she was forced to resign from leadership over quickly deleted reposts mourning "genocide" of Palestinians for which she apologized profusely. (I don't personally agree with that characterization of the killings, but people use strong words when they have strong feelings, and that should be allowed equally on all sides.)
These are not people justifying Hamas or hating Jews. They're just expressing general vibes more sympathetic to Palestinians than #StandWithIsrael types can tolerate. Maybe that's dumb of them, as hot issues like this are dangerous, but we can't live in a world where everyone is forced to do the "smart" thing and shut up and conform. That's some South Korea shit. I happen to like America. Freedom for people to be a bit reckless and dumb and true to themselves sometimes is good.
ETA: I'm realizing that this is maybe tangential to your post, which is more about the campus activists etc. featured in the episodes I didn't listen to because their Israel/Hamas content doesn't interest me. What I'm saying is that 1) the rah rah pro Israel faction has overused the cancel stick in many cases and 2) the podcast would be more interesting if it grappled with these difficult cases rather than spotlighting unsympathetic characters for easy dunks.
