Here’s my personal stance - I’m a secular Israeli Jew, naturalized American citizen after randomly bumping into, then dating an American woman in the era when Hamas decided that blowing up multiple commuter buses in Tel Aviv would drive a wedge into the Oslo peace process (unfortunately, they were right), then followed her to California when she decided to return and apply for grad school. I grew up in a mixed city (Haifa) with a father who was fluent in Arabic. By mixed I mean Catholics, Muslims, Bahai, Druze, and Jews from all over the world. These different people had lived peacefully in the same neighborhoods and buildings since the very start. Unless someone is religious (and therefore have distinct clothing) you really can’t tell whether they’re Jewish or Arab at the beach, gym, bus, restaurant, soccer match. That’s Israel. “Apartheid” claims are a fantasy projection of those who HATE diversity and coexistence. Shocking, I know - how could kind progressives and the humanitarian far-left hate anyone, let alone Jews?! LOL. The ones I’ve met in the US are mostly frothing at the mouth racists and warmongers who get a boner for the terrorism and massacres of Hamas, then deny those ever happened or excuse them in the most disingenuous ways possible. For example, Sam Kriss lying that “pro Palestinian” protests in the UK aren’t rife with calls for genocide of Israelis, and full of vandalism against Jewish institutions, homes and business and physical violence against UK Jews.
BTW, pretty much all Israelis have a friend or family who are part Moroccan. My brother in law’s mom talks about The King (of Morocco) like old British ladies talk about The Queen.
I want to linger on your last point "I don't like Jews (By which I mean, I don’t automatically like anyone just because they happen to be Jewish)" point. I am gay, and I have met MANY gays around the world. Gays, for obvious reasons, tend to enjoy hanging with other gays, and that's fine. But I sympathize with your above point because while just being gay gives me a 'common' thing to fraternize over: I am not going to like or dislike you because of identity. That's dumb. I care far more about how annoying you are when it comes to whining about things (like how "this cruise line has WAY TOO FEW saunas on it") than about your personal preferences on sex.
Judge people by their character, not their characteristics.
Thank you for writing this—I do happen to be a quasi-libertarian, so I sorta agree with almost all you’ve said. But I have enough normie Zionist Jew tendencies to put some daylight between us, and it’s good to hear from a thoughtful ally (I hate using that word but can’t find a better one) the conditions of his alliance.
In any case, I definitely think this is a valuable intellectual exercise, and am impressed you’ve done it.
> There is no corporeal manifestation of society at large, no singular entity with blossoming appendages wriggling out. Society is a fiction, a construct — a simple story we tell to summarize a complex and alienating world. When we say an orchestra performed beautifully, we’re simplifying a hundred distinct musicians — violinists, cellists, flautists, percussionists, even that one enthusiastic cowbell player — each making precise, individual contributions into one cohesive sound. We talk about the ensemble as a tangible unit because it’s easier, but in reality only individuals act. So groups are fictions, albeit very useful fictions! Unavoidably, whenever we discuss any group’s actions, we are always glossing over the discrete actions of individual men and women. And that makes sense, because only individuals can make decisions, and only individuals can hold culpability for those decisions.
Eh, individuals are also fictions. You can be broken down fully into the movements of your individual cells and fluids, each with their own complex environments and behaviors quite different from the others. Talking about the actions of a cohesive group of people seems no more fictional to me than the actions of a cohesive group of cells.
Sure, but when you go on to say "I think all religions are delusions — but we already established that some delusions are more useful than others" you seem to be making a much stronger claim than that. I think "treating a society as a coherent unit" is vastly closer to "treating a human as a coherent unit" than it is to believing the bible is true.
My thanks are for your point of view expressed clearly, intelligently and in an entertaining manner. I may not agree with everything, but I am learning a new opinion of view that is informing my thinking. It takes a lot of work to not think tribally, but I will give it a try.
I am glad you brought up Ayn Rand. As a teenager in the US I loved her books. Later on, in university, I was told she was evil. I am going to read her again after the progressive bubble around me has been broken.
I have been living in Israel since I was 23 (1984). Upon graduation, I went to visit my family, who had moved to Israel and realized I had no money, no job and nowhere to live so I stayed. I was never interested in nationality, religion or tradition; until October 7th, especially after the reaction of the world. I have swung in the opposite direction, which is comfortable here. You have become a little inner voice warning me to stop and think.
Thanks! I hope I made it clear I don't necessarily fault those who seek comfort or protection within tribalism. It's good to be aware of it as a potentially noxious influence, but whether it's appropriate depends on the context.
Rand's fiction is very verbose and can be quite ponderous, even for those who enjoyed it (such as me!). Her essays are a much better vignette into her philosophy, but even then it might be better to read more contemporary explainers that can synthesize her context better.
Individuals have values. When those values are aggregated at the group/societal level, we call it culture.
Not all cultures are equal: just choose your desired metric (GDP per capita, women's rights, etc.) and witness the huge variation across countries.
The difference in culture between successful, liberal Israel and its autocratic, jihadi neighbors could not be more stark, despite the close physical proximity. I think that breaks a lot of people's brains.
Championing successful cultures that produce good outcomes (human flourishing) over repressive/destructive cultures is a winning argument, without getting into loaded terms like "ethnostate" or "Zionism".
This was a really interesting read, and it's always nice to see someone principled and articulate laying out why they support Israel despite not having tribal reasons to do so (unless lovers of freedom and human flourishing can be considered a tribe). Thanks for writing.
I mean, I find all your contra points to be valid and also not matter much in practice (if each and every Israeli had the exact same value system as you would the conflict be demonstrably different? I don’t think so.)
So… I’m sorry man. You’re captured. The Jews have captured you 😝 send help!!
As a non-Zionist Israeli patriot, I very much appreciate this perspective. My love for the country results from my connection to family and friends there and my connection to its culture, not from some silly idea that it's the asylum for world jewry. Honestly, I'd rather not share a country with American Jews, neither in the middle east nor in America
as you might recall I reeeeeeeeeeallly hate Zionism but your pro-zionist arguments are at least weird enough (the strangest I've heard) to be mildly interesting.
most zionists are just zionists, by which I mean they are zionists REGARDLESS of whether zionism is actually compatible with their other beliefs. The zionism exists regardless of what else they believe because there's no attempt at systemic thought.
for you, your zionism follows logically and rationally from a bunch of other ideas (that I mostly deeply disagree with) to the point where it doesn't even upset me because it's so obviously a logical outgrowth of other ideas that you have.
In my official capacity as a random commenter, i'm going to bestow you with the official title of "least annoying Zionist" congrats on your award.
You are what I would call a pro-Zionist non-Zionist. I also identify as a pro-Zionist non-Zionist. I also identify as a first-worldist. Any first world liberal democracy that is being attacked by ISIS-style terrorists is worthy of support.
I would love for Israel to be to Jews what Singapore is to Chinese people. Ideally Israel would be English speaking, would allow open immigration of Jews but also high skill non Jews, and would of course still have the TFR it has and not the TFR that Singapore has.
Israel already has high skilled non Jews living in it and working in its tech industry. I know that because I work in that exact industry and visit Israel 3-4 times a year for work. Plenty of times I have discussions in English as a common language at a tech company I’m visiting (customer or prospect). Almost every person in the major cities will switch to English at the moment it’s needed. My kids have communicated with my friends kids in English since they were little in all of our many visits. My son plans to bum around Israel playing beach soccer when he graduates college.
Israel grew from a developing nation to a GDP per-capita eclipsing the UK and France and equal to Canada. If it wasn’t for Islamist sociopaths forcing Israel to dump a huge portion of GDP into defense and survival do you know how much farther the country would be economically? The only thing holding Israel back from being Singapore is sociopathic Islamists and the Palestinians not being able to grasp that Israelis aren’t “going back to Europe” (or Iraq, Morocco, Egypt, etc). The Palestinians have lowered Israel’s standard of living but not its average lifespan (among the highest) or happiness (usually 4th or 5th in the world) or GDP (among the highest of OECD nations) despite all the terrorism and wars. But they mainly fucked over their economy and lives. That’s religious fanaticism for you.
Well, weakening the Histadrut, cutting the Haredi subsidies, cutting taxes (income tax cut per kid like Hungary), and not having corrupt politicians like Miri Regev would help too!
But yes it’s true that there are non Jews working in tech, Israel introduced a special visa for high skilled non-Jewish US citizens recently. Based.
> The only wording I might revise is that I now struggle to identify Palestinian concerns I’d unhesitatingly label valid
Surely you agree that Israel has committed horrific many war crimes? Of course there's often a double-standard there; Hamas is much worse; but that doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize Israel for the bad things they did do.
Israel absolutely has committed war crimes and I have no problem condemning any of them. The issue here is that the "Palestinian grievance" on this topic isn't that Israel commits too many war crimes, but rather that Israel uses its military at all. I'm not trying to play linguistic evasion here, if the grievance is about war crimes, then it's a totally valid grievance.
There's a broader, related topic in that I've tried to look for comparable fighting forces and how they operate, but there's nothing that quite compares to what the IDF faces. Armies are killing machines, they're not an entity you'd expect good customer service from. So if we can't point to any other armed force that does a "better" job than the IDF, then perhaps we should accept that the IDF is doing the best it possibly can given real world constraints.
This seems like a bit of a motte-and-bailey. "None of their concerns are valid" > "well of course the war crime concerns are valid, I just meant, like, the other ones aren't".
It's certainly worth noticing that no army seems to be capable of not committing atrocities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes), so we must reluctantly throw our support behind those that do the least. But under no model of human behavior that I'm aware of is raping prisoners and killing journalists "the best an army could possibly can do under real world constraints". It would be perfectly possible to... not do that.
When mainstream political parties in Israel are supporting the rape of prisoners and trying to criminalize reporting on such rapes (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/9/everything-is-legitimate-israeli-leaders-defend-soldiers-accused-of-rape), when Israel's soldiers are killing other Israelis just for fun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam_Haim,_and_Samer_Talalka), it is clear that there is a deep bloodlust and depravity running through this country and many of those persecuting the war. No sane person can look at this and conclude that Israel is just doing what is necessary to eliminate an enemy that uses human shields; these are people who actively enjoy killing and torturing others and are using a just war as an excuse for their evil, under a government who has shown litle interest in reigning them in.
Israel has almost certainly committed some war crimes, such as the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas, but it perpetrates many fewer than it's commonly accused of doing.
When one side in a war uses hospitals as military bases for instance, and the other side bombs those hospitals, then the side that used the hospitals as military bases has committed a war crime, and the side that bombed them has not, for all that in popular understanding this is commonly reversed. This is because the people who negotiated the Geneva Convention understood that a system of rules which punishes militants for retaliating against the tactics of bad actors creates perverse incentives. Most of the tactics Israel is criticized for are not war crimes, in the sense that our code that lays out what is and not allowed in war says that they're not war crimes, however the average person might feel about their morality.
I think we should be prepared to criticize Israel for the war crimes it commits; committing war crimes definitely isn't okay! But we should also be prepared to systematically push back against claims that it's committing war crimes where it's not, because these are mostly cases where a faction that actually *is* committing war crimes is doing so in order to force Israel into responses that they can frame as war crimes in a dedicated PR campaign.
I agree it's absolutely worth condemning these. But although not everyone has to voice or take responsibility for every issue, practically speaking I think this is best done while also acknowledging that Hamas is also systematically trying to accuse Israel of committing war crimes in cases where they're not, while committing war crimes themselves, because I think Israel has ended up in something of an "if you're going to do the time, you might as well do the crime" position, and it's important to impose a coherent set of incentives where they will face consequences for war crimes they actually perpetrate, and not ones that they don't.
Fucking Nostradamus over there indeed.
Here’s my personal stance - I’m a secular Israeli Jew, naturalized American citizen after randomly bumping into, then dating an American woman in the era when Hamas decided that blowing up multiple commuter buses in Tel Aviv would drive a wedge into the Oslo peace process (unfortunately, they were right), then followed her to California when she decided to return and apply for grad school. I grew up in a mixed city (Haifa) with a father who was fluent in Arabic. By mixed I mean Catholics, Muslims, Bahai, Druze, and Jews from all over the world. These different people had lived peacefully in the same neighborhoods and buildings since the very start. Unless someone is religious (and therefore have distinct clothing) you really can’t tell whether they’re Jewish or Arab at the beach, gym, bus, restaurant, soccer match. That’s Israel. “Apartheid” claims are a fantasy projection of those who HATE diversity and coexistence. Shocking, I know - how could kind progressives and the humanitarian far-left hate anyone, let alone Jews?! LOL. The ones I’ve met in the US are mostly frothing at the mouth racists and warmongers who get a boner for the terrorism and massacres of Hamas, then deny those ever happened or excuse them in the most disingenuous ways possible. For example, Sam Kriss lying that “pro Palestinian” protests in the UK aren’t rife with calls for genocide of Israelis, and full of vandalism against Jewish institutions, homes and business and physical violence against UK Jews.
BTW, pretty much all Israelis have a friend or family who are part Moroccan. My brother in law’s mom talks about The King (of Morocco) like old British ladies talk about The Queen.
I want to linger on your last point "I don't like Jews (By which I mean, I don’t automatically like anyone just because they happen to be Jewish)" point. I am gay, and I have met MANY gays around the world. Gays, for obvious reasons, tend to enjoy hanging with other gays, and that's fine. But I sympathize with your above point because while just being gay gives me a 'common' thing to fraternize over: I am not going to like or dislike you because of identity. That's dumb. I care far more about how annoying you are when it comes to whining about things (like how "this cruise line has WAY TOO FEW saunas on it") than about your personal preferences on sex.
Judge people by their character, not their characteristics.
I had a podcast episode a while back where we discussed the oddity of "gay solidarity":
https://thebaileypodcast.substack.com/p/e031-we-say-gay
Thank you for writing this—I do happen to be a quasi-libertarian, so I sorta agree with almost all you’ve said. But I have enough normie Zionist Jew tendencies to put some daylight between us, and it’s good to hear from a thoughtful ally (I hate using that word but can’t find a better one) the conditions of his alliance.
In any case, I definitely think this is a valuable intellectual exercise, and am impressed you’ve done it.
> There is no corporeal manifestation of society at large, no singular entity with blossoming appendages wriggling out. Society is a fiction, a construct — a simple story we tell to summarize a complex and alienating world. When we say an orchestra performed beautifully, we’re simplifying a hundred distinct musicians — violinists, cellists, flautists, percussionists, even that one enthusiastic cowbell player — each making precise, individual contributions into one cohesive sound. We talk about the ensemble as a tangible unit because it’s easier, but in reality only individuals act. So groups are fictions, albeit very useful fictions! Unavoidably, whenever we discuss any group’s actions, we are always glossing over the discrete actions of individual men and women. And that makes sense, because only individuals can make decisions, and only individuals can hold culpability for those decisions.
Eh, individuals are also fictions. You can be broken down fully into the movements of your individual cells and fluids, each with their own complex environments and behaviors quite different from the others. Talking about the actions of a cohesive group of people seems no more fictional to me than the actions of a cohesive group of cells.
Some fictions are more fictitious than others.
Sure, but when you go on to say "I think all religions are delusions — but we already established that some delusions are more useful than others" you seem to be making a much stronger claim than that. I think "treating a society as a coherent unit" is vastly closer to "treating a human as a coherent unit" than it is to believing the bible is true.
My thanks are for your point of view expressed clearly, intelligently and in an entertaining manner. I may not agree with everything, but I am learning a new opinion of view that is informing my thinking. It takes a lot of work to not think tribally, but I will give it a try.
I am glad you brought up Ayn Rand. As a teenager in the US I loved her books. Later on, in university, I was told she was evil. I am going to read her again after the progressive bubble around me has been broken.
I have been living in Israel since I was 23 (1984). Upon graduation, I went to visit my family, who had moved to Israel and realized I had no money, no job and nowhere to live so I stayed. I was never interested in nationality, religion or tradition; until October 7th, especially after the reaction of the world. I have swung in the opposite direction, which is comfortable here. You have become a little inner voice warning me to stop and think.
Thanks! I hope I made it clear I don't necessarily fault those who seek comfort or protection within tribalism. It's good to be aware of it as a potentially noxious influence, but whether it's appropriate depends on the context.
Rand's fiction is very verbose and can be quite ponderous, even for those who enjoyed it (such as me!). Her essays are a much better vignette into her philosophy, but even then it might be better to read more contemporary explainers that can synthesize her context better.
Individuals have values. When those values are aggregated at the group/societal level, we call it culture.
Not all cultures are equal: just choose your desired metric (GDP per capita, women's rights, etc.) and witness the huge variation across countries.
The difference in culture between successful, liberal Israel and its autocratic, jihadi neighbors could not be more stark, despite the close physical proximity. I think that breaks a lot of people's brains.
Championing successful cultures that produce good outcomes (human flourishing) over repressive/destructive cultures is a winning argument, without getting into loaded terms like "ethnostate" or "Zionism".
This was a really interesting read, and it's always nice to see someone principled and articulate laying out why they support Israel despite not having tribal reasons to do so (unless lovers of freedom and human flourishing can be considered a tribe). Thanks for writing.
Oh no! I think I might like you, Yassine. OMG.
join the club 😎
I mean, I find all your contra points to be valid and also not matter much in practice (if each and every Israeli had the exact same value system as you would the conflict be demonstrably different? I don’t think so.)
So… I’m sorry man. You’re captured. The Jews have captured you 😝 send help!!
Noooooo I tried so hard!
This is why I, an old married white guy, keep coming back. I had forgotten MT’s statement, but absolutely agree. Keep up the good work.
As a non-Zionist Israeli patriot, I very much appreciate this perspective. My love for the country results from my connection to family and friends there and my connection to its culture, not from some silly idea that it's the asylum for world jewry. Honestly, I'd rather not share a country with American Jews, neither in the middle east nor in America
as you might recall I reeeeeeeeeeallly hate Zionism but your pro-zionist arguments are at least weird enough (the strangest I've heard) to be mildly interesting.
most zionists are just zionists, by which I mean they are zionists REGARDLESS of whether zionism is actually compatible with their other beliefs. The zionism exists regardless of what else they believe because there's no attempt at systemic thought.
for you, your zionism follows logically and rationally from a bunch of other ideas (that I mostly deeply disagree with) to the point where it doesn't even upset me because it's so obviously a logical outgrowth of other ideas that you have.
In my official capacity as a random commenter, i'm going to bestow you with the official title of "least annoying Zionist" congrats on your award.
I am honored by your praise! I have genuinely appreciate the comments and pushback you've left.
I appreciate your eloquence and thoughtfulness
Zionist Transgender Nebraskan Jew here.
Love your work.
I'm glad you're here :)
You are what I would call a pro-Zionist non-Zionist. I also identify as a pro-Zionist non-Zionist. I also identify as a first-worldist. Any first world liberal democracy that is being attacked by ISIS-style terrorists is worthy of support.
I would love for Israel to be to Jews what Singapore is to Chinese people. Ideally Israel would be English speaking, would allow open immigration of Jews but also high skill non Jews, and would of course still have the TFR it has and not the TFR that Singapore has.
Israel already has high skilled non Jews living in it and working in its tech industry. I know that because I work in that exact industry and visit Israel 3-4 times a year for work. Plenty of times I have discussions in English as a common language at a tech company I’m visiting (customer or prospect). Almost every person in the major cities will switch to English at the moment it’s needed. My kids have communicated with my friends kids in English since they were little in all of our many visits. My son plans to bum around Israel playing beach soccer when he graduates college.
Israel grew from a developing nation to a GDP per-capita eclipsing the UK and France and equal to Canada. If it wasn’t for Islamist sociopaths forcing Israel to dump a huge portion of GDP into defense and survival do you know how much farther the country would be economically? The only thing holding Israel back from being Singapore is sociopathic Islamists and the Palestinians not being able to grasp that Israelis aren’t “going back to Europe” (or Iraq, Morocco, Egypt, etc). The Palestinians have lowered Israel’s standard of living but not its average lifespan (among the highest) or happiness (usually 4th or 5th in the world) or GDP (among the highest of OECD nations) despite all the terrorism and wars. But they mainly fucked over their economy and lives. That’s religious fanaticism for you.
Well, weakening the Histadrut, cutting the Haredi subsidies, cutting taxes (income tax cut per kid like Hungary), and not having corrupt politicians like Miri Regev would help too!
But yes it’s true that there are non Jews working in tech, Israel introduced a special visa for high skilled non-Jewish US citizens recently. Based.
> The only wording I might revise is that I now struggle to identify Palestinian concerns I’d unhesitatingly label valid
Surely you agree that Israel has committed horrific many war crimes? Of course there's often a double-standard there; Hamas is much worse; but that doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize Israel for the bad things they did do.
Israel absolutely has committed war crimes and I have no problem condemning any of them. The issue here is that the "Palestinian grievance" on this topic isn't that Israel commits too many war crimes, but rather that Israel uses its military at all. I'm not trying to play linguistic evasion here, if the grievance is about war crimes, then it's a totally valid grievance.
There's a broader, related topic in that I've tried to look for comparable fighting forces and how they operate, but there's nothing that quite compares to what the IDF faces. Armies are killing machines, they're not an entity you'd expect good customer service from. So if we can't point to any other armed force that does a "better" job than the IDF, then perhaps we should accept that the IDF is doing the best it possibly can given real world constraints.
This seems like a bit of a motte-and-bailey. "None of their concerns are valid" > "well of course the war crime concerns are valid, I just meant, like, the other ones aren't".
It's certainly worth noticing that no army seems to be capable of not committing atrocities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes), so we must reluctantly throw our support behind those that do the least. But under no model of human behavior that I'm aware of is raping prisoners and killing journalists "the best an army could possibly can do under real world constraints". It would be perfectly possible to... not do that.
When mainstream political parties in Israel are supporting the rape of prisoners and trying to criminalize reporting on such rapes (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/9/everything-is-legitimate-israeli-leaders-defend-soldiers-accused-of-rape), when Israel's soldiers are killing other Israelis just for fun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam_Haim,_and_Samer_Talalka), it is clear that there is a deep bloodlust and depravity running through this country and many of those persecuting the war. No sane person can look at this and conclude that Israel is just doing what is necessary to eliminate an enemy that uses human shields; these are people who actively enjoy killing and torturing others and are using a just war as an excuse for their evil, under a government who has shown litle interest in reigning them in.
Israel has almost certainly committed some war crimes, such as the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas, but it perpetrates many fewer than it's commonly accused of doing.
When one side in a war uses hospitals as military bases for instance, and the other side bombs those hospitals, then the side that used the hospitals as military bases has committed a war crime, and the side that bombed them has not, for all that in popular understanding this is commonly reversed. This is because the people who negotiated the Geneva Convention understood that a system of rules which punishes militants for retaliating against the tactics of bad actors creates perverse incentives. Most of the tactics Israel is criticized for are not war crimes, in the sense that our code that lays out what is and not allowed in war says that they're not war crimes, however the average person might feel about their morality.
I think we should be prepared to criticize Israel for the war crimes it commits; committing war crimes definitely isn't okay! But we should also be prepared to systematically push back against claims that it's committing war crimes where it's not, because these are mostly cases where a faction that actually *is* committing war crimes is doing so in order to force Israel into responses that they can frame as war crimes in a dedicated PR campaign.
Yes I'm referring to the things that are bad, not the things that are not bad.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/08/israels-escalating-use-torture-against-palestinians-custody-preventable
I agree it's absolutely worth condemning these. But although not everyone has to voice or take responsibility for every issue, practically speaking I think this is best done while also acknowledging that Hamas is also systematically trying to accuse Israel of committing war crimes in cases where they're not, while committing war crimes themselves, because I think Israel has ended up in something of an "if you're going to do the time, you might as well do the crime" position, and it's important to impose a coherent set of incentives where they will face consequences for war crimes they actually perpetrate, and not ones that they don't.