|
Trending Topics
|
Why I Won't Debate Critics of Israel
(Substack) Sam Harris - Many readers and podcast listeners, dismayed by my enduring support for Israel, have urged me to debate someone drawn from a growing cast of scholars, grifters, and moral lunatics who have made that beleaguered country their professional or psychiatric obsession. I'm not interested in exploring all the ways that Israel has missed the mark because none of these failings 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. Militant Islam is ten times worse than you think it is. I consider "jihadists" - Hamas, Hizbullah, al-Qaeda, Islamic State, IRGC - worse than Nazis. There remains a world of difference between the two sides. It is brutalizing 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 - describing the belligerence and triumphal lunacy of those who take the most pernicious doctrines of Islam too seriously. If the Palestinians simply stopped killing Jews and stopped building a culture that celebrates pointless murder and martyrdom as its highest values, there would be peace. But if the Israelis laid down their weapons, there would be a genocide. This was obviously true on Oct. 7, 2023, and it has been true on every other day since the founding of the state of Israel. One question clarifies everything in the present: What would each side do if it had the power to do whatever it wanted? Everyone knows the answer to this question. If Hamas had the power, it would perpetrate a real genocide in Israel. Even after all the devastation that Hamas has brought down on its own people, it remains the most popular Palestinian faction. This is why there is no peace in the Middle East. Antisemites hate everything that makes culturally rich, diverse, open societies possible. They bring censorship, political repression, conspiracy thinking, and the politics of dehumanization and scapegoating. So decrying antisemitism is a defense of the moral and institutional architecture that free societies require. The writer is a neuroscientist, philosopher, author and podcast host.