Good evening, fellow Demsasheads! I hope that everyone smashed that pre-order button because if you don't have that cover on your coffee table come September 4th your whole entourage will denounce you as a PHILISTINE!!
I wonder to what extent declining effectiveness of protest movements is also an issue of oversaturation with social media fueling an increasing number of protest movement. In addition to the points that J mentioned.
Looking forward to hearing Jerusalem speak at INTERGALACTIC SPEEDS. This is one person you don't want to turn up the podcast speed for.
Super excited to get to hear you regularly on a podcast again! You are one of my favorite former Weeds hosts, and a great guest on the Ezra Klein show. Also thrilled to have some of your housing articles in book form.
I am very excited about the new book, I've already preordered from my local bookstore! Your writing on the housing crisis and local democracy is very clarifying and I am looking forward to it having a place on my shelf.
Really excited to hear about the podcast; papers was my favorite thing from The Weeds, so Good On Paper (such a good name) was an instant subscribe. Interested to see where you go with it!
Also: there's an annual town meeting here next week, and one item up for a vote is creation of several subdistricts with multi-family housing by-right. The organizers are concerned about its chances for passage. So, my wife and I are arranging childcare and going there to fight some NIMBYs. 🫡
I think the point about protests not being able to impose message discipline is a good one. Extremism at these protests, though, is a complicated thing: openly anti-semitic protesters are certainly the fringe which needs to be suppressed, but I don't think they're the core of the movement.
On the other hand, the rhetoric of protest leadership (SJP, JVP etc) is quite extreme in the context of the I/P conflict. The protests at my university often involve chants (initiated by leadership) which are actively calling for more bloodshed, not less. Chants like "We don't want no 2 state; we want all of '48" , calls "globalize the intifada", and "we don't want no zionists here" are pretty unambiguous in terms of what they'd require. I heard these a lot around my university when protests were ongoing.
In the case of those chants, I actually think the lack of message discipline works in the opposite direction. The leadership has well-formed yet extreme views, while there's much more ideological diversity amongst protests attendees. Most likely just want the violence to stop and would be fairly happy with a 2SS, but they aren't in charge of the chants.
I often find that in the case of I/P, the ambiguity is strategic. It is not crazy to me that a Jewish student hears "from the river to the sea" as a call for ethnic cleansing, while those chanting it hear it as a call for liberation. The problem is that the leadership of the protests is leaning into the dual meaning because they have more extreme goals, even if a less ambiguous slogan could build a bigger coalition and may help build more pressure for immediate, albeit less extreme, goals.
“I worry that the core message that killing tens of thousands of civilians is bad is being lost“
Civilians dying is always bad. But killing thousands of civilians while killing thousands of terrorists can be the morally correct thing to do. It seems like you want Israel not to kill tens of thousands of Hamas fighters, who are hiding in tunnels under civilians and still have over 100 Israeli hostages, if tens of thousands of civilians will also die. So what should Israel do? Just allow their hostages to stay in Gaza? That would encourage a whole new form of warfare: you can commit terrorist acts and take hostages so long as you then hide among civilians, ensuring their deaths if there’s any response.
I’ve read, loved, and admired your writing for years. This is hopelessly, and surprisingly, naive.
Maybe you can chat with Coleman Hughes about this for your new podcast.
Thanks for reading & writing. I think you're a bit over your skis about what I actually said in this post. In fact you even write you agree with what you've quoted from me! I think it's probably a bad habit to stray far from what someone has actually said to impute that they believe something else. But, I'll bite!
In general my view of war is this: it's very bad. Perhaps you think this position is hopelessly naive. I think it's one of the hardest moral lines to draw in a society and the people that have attempted to commit themselves to a principled stance of nonviolence have been some of the great moral giants of all time. As a Christian, my faith compels me to hold true to this stance as much as I can, even though I fail.
I do not think anyone has articulated a short or even medium term solution for the security and well-being of Israelis and Palestinians. If you have unlocked the answer, I'm all ears. But in the midst of that confusion what do we turn to? Every life extinguished is a tremendous loss. Every heart that hardens against Israel is a greater military and strategic threat to the people who live there. **It is not the burden on those calling for the end of war to prove that the cost benefit analysis of continuing to kill people bears out. It's the burden of those doing the killing to prove that the path they're taking will actually lead to a better world. Getting the burden-of-proof backwards here is, in my opinion, intellectually and morally indefensible.**
I appreciate you raising your points here, I think it's hard to have conversations about this topic. I feel very sad that defending nonviolence as both a principled and strategic imperative is no longer in vogue. I think repeated attempts to discredit it as weak or naive are themselves leading us to a worse and worse world.
Thanks for engaging. I agreed with your original statements that civilians dying is bad, but I disagreed with the implication that Israel should just lay down arms if continuing to fight results in civilian deaths. I think the implication was clear, and not over my skis, based on the context of you supporting the original message of the pro-Palestine protestors and lamenting that this message was being drowned out.
Of course war is bad. No one will argue war is good. I don’t think this view is naive. But sometimes, a defensive war is the lesser of two evils. Turning the other cheek is sometimes the greater evil.
I do think Israel should have done a better job of protecting civilian life at the beginning of the war, but I just don’t think non-violence was an option in the face of the October 7th attack. You can’t just let 250 people be violently kidnapped and expect non-violence to get them back. Thinking that Israel has the option of laying down arms is naive.
You argue that the burden lies on those doing the killing to prove that this will lead to a better world. I assume you’re referring to Israel in context. Ok, what does Israel need to show you that would meet your burden of proof? How do they prove this?
(Personally, I think the burden of proof has been met. If a group of people kidnaps my daughter, and many other daughters, and vows to continue kidnapping, and I kill them, they won’t kidnap anymore and the world will be better.)
I shouldn’t have to say this but my heart breaks too for all the innocent civilians who died and are dying. And I don’t want to be the cause of anyone being sad. But I believe that misplaced compassion is unnecessarily causing the Palestinians suffering. That said, I share your heartbreak that there’s no short or medium term solution for Israeli and Palestinian wellbeing.
Defending non-violence is very much in vogue, which is why so many people are advocating for a ceasefire, despite it being the morally wrong thing to do as long as the hostages aren’t returned and Hamas is in power.
Good evening, fellow Demsasheads! I hope that everyone smashed that pre-order button because if you don't have that cover on your coffee table come September 4th your whole entourage will denounce you as a PHILISTINE!!
I wonder to what extent declining effectiveness of protest movements is also an issue of oversaturation with social media fueling an increasing number of protest movement. In addition to the points that J mentioned.
Looking forward to hearing Jerusalem speak at INTERGALACTIC SPEEDS. This is one person you don't want to turn up the podcast speed for.
Super excited to get to hear you regularly on a podcast again! You are one of my favorite former Weeds hosts, and a great guest on the Ezra Klein show. Also thrilled to have some of your housing articles in book form.
Thank you!
I am very excited about the new book, I've already preordered from my local bookstore! Your writing on the housing crisis and local democracy is very clarifying and I am looking forward to it having a place on my shelf.
Thank you!
Really excited to hear about the podcast; papers was my favorite thing from The Weeds, so Good On Paper (such a good name) was an instant subscribe. Interested to see where you go with it!
Also: there's an annual town meeting here next week, and one item up for a vote is creation of several subdistricts with multi-family housing by-right. The organizers are concerned about its chances for passage. So, my wife and I are arranging childcare and going there to fight some NIMBYs. 🫡
Thanks so much! Glad you like the name -- and ooh what town?
Don't want to put my hometown on blast here, but I'll email the details!
This is so so brilliant I shared it to my Instagram- thank you for always sharing your voice and reason 🩵💙
I think the point about protests not being able to impose message discipline is a good one. Extremism at these protests, though, is a complicated thing: openly anti-semitic protesters are certainly the fringe which needs to be suppressed, but I don't think they're the core of the movement.
On the other hand, the rhetoric of protest leadership (SJP, JVP etc) is quite extreme in the context of the I/P conflict. The protests at my university often involve chants (initiated by leadership) which are actively calling for more bloodshed, not less. Chants like "We don't want no 2 state; we want all of '48" , calls "globalize the intifada", and "we don't want no zionists here" are pretty unambiguous in terms of what they'd require. I heard these a lot around my university when protests were ongoing.
In the case of those chants, I actually think the lack of message discipline works in the opposite direction. The leadership has well-formed yet extreme views, while there's much more ideological diversity amongst protests attendees. Most likely just want the violence to stop and would be fairly happy with a 2SS, but they aren't in charge of the chants.
I often find that in the case of I/P, the ambiguity is strategic. It is not crazy to me that a Jewish student hears "from the river to the sea" as a call for ethnic cleansing, while those chanting it hear it as a call for liberation. The problem is that the leadership of the protests is leaning into the dual meaning because they have more extreme goals, even if a less ambiguous slogan could build a bigger coalition and may help build more pressure for immediate, albeit less extreme, goals.
“I worry that the core message that killing tens of thousands of civilians is bad is being lost“
Civilians dying is always bad. But killing thousands of civilians while killing thousands of terrorists can be the morally correct thing to do. It seems like you want Israel not to kill tens of thousands of Hamas fighters, who are hiding in tunnels under civilians and still have over 100 Israeli hostages, if tens of thousands of civilians will also die. So what should Israel do? Just allow their hostages to stay in Gaza? That would encourage a whole new form of warfare: you can commit terrorist acts and take hostages so long as you then hide among civilians, ensuring their deaths if there’s any response.
I’ve read, loved, and admired your writing for years. This is hopelessly, and surprisingly, naive.
Maybe you can chat with Coleman Hughes about this for your new podcast.
https://youtu.be/ZloHekt7WLo?feature=shared
Hey there -
Thanks for reading & writing. I think you're a bit over your skis about what I actually said in this post. In fact you even write you agree with what you've quoted from me! I think it's probably a bad habit to stray far from what someone has actually said to impute that they believe something else. But, I'll bite!
In general my view of war is this: it's very bad. Perhaps you think this position is hopelessly naive. I think it's one of the hardest moral lines to draw in a society and the people that have attempted to commit themselves to a principled stance of nonviolence have been some of the great moral giants of all time. As a Christian, my faith compels me to hold true to this stance as much as I can, even though I fail.
I do not think anyone has articulated a short or even medium term solution for the security and well-being of Israelis and Palestinians. If you have unlocked the answer, I'm all ears. But in the midst of that confusion what do we turn to? Every life extinguished is a tremendous loss. Every heart that hardens against Israel is a greater military and strategic threat to the people who live there. **It is not the burden on those calling for the end of war to prove that the cost benefit analysis of continuing to kill people bears out. It's the burden of those doing the killing to prove that the path they're taking will actually lead to a better world. Getting the burden-of-proof backwards here is, in my opinion, intellectually and morally indefensible.**
I appreciate you raising your points here, I think it's hard to have conversations about this topic. I feel very sad that defending nonviolence as both a principled and strategic imperative is no longer in vogue. I think repeated attempts to discredit it as weak or naive are themselves leading us to a worse and worse world.
All the best,
Jerusalem
Thanks for engaging. I agreed with your original statements that civilians dying is bad, but I disagreed with the implication that Israel should just lay down arms if continuing to fight results in civilian deaths. I think the implication was clear, and not over my skis, based on the context of you supporting the original message of the pro-Palestine protestors and lamenting that this message was being drowned out.
Of course war is bad. No one will argue war is good. I don’t think this view is naive. But sometimes, a defensive war is the lesser of two evils. Turning the other cheek is sometimes the greater evil.
I do think Israel should have done a better job of protecting civilian life at the beginning of the war, but I just don’t think non-violence was an option in the face of the October 7th attack. You can’t just let 250 people be violently kidnapped and expect non-violence to get them back. Thinking that Israel has the option of laying down arms is naive.
You argue that the burden lies on those doing the killing to prove that this will lead to a better world. I assume you’re referring to Israel in context. Ok, what does Israel need to show you that would meet your burden of proof? How do they prove this?
(Personally, I think the burden of proof has been met. If a group of people kidnaps my daughter, and many other daughters, and vows to continue kidnapping, and I kill them, they won’t kidnap anymore and the world will be better.)
I shouldn’t have to say this but my heart breaks too for all the innocent civilians who died and are dying. And I don’t want to be the cause of anyone being sad. But I believe that misplaced compassion is unnecessarily causing the Palestinians suffering. That said, I share your heartbreak that there’s no short or medium term solution for Israeli and Palestinian wellbeing.
Defending non-violence is very much in vogue, which is why so many people are advocating for a ceasefire, despite it being the morally wrong thing to do as long as the hostages aren’t returned and Hamas is in power.
Thanks for articulating that so well.