NN: Impossible Inference
Judging Israelis and Palestinians using only Tom's criticisms of Americans
This is part of the sprawling No Nichols complex of posts analyzing the rhetoric and reasoning behind certain sorts of support for Israel.
One of the two fatal flaws in Tom’s support for Israel is his attempt to support Israel and oppose Palestinians while hardly ever talking about Israelis or Palestinians. He sometimes invokes the October 7th attack, but that’s about it. Not a word about Israel’s response since the attack. And not a word about the history that preceded the attack. So Tom achieves the impressive feat of writing an Atlantic article about antisemitism in a particular protest movement—and never saying what that movement is protesting!1
Here’s how I sum things up in my main post in this series:
According to Tom, pro-Palestinian Americans are misusing the word “genocide.” They are chanting a slogan associated with killing Israelis. They are taking the same side Hamas terrorists take. They are opposing the side more Jewish people take. All this is ugly, shameful, poisonous, and deeply antisemitic. It must be rejected and Israel must be supported.
That sounds and feels fairly coherent. But there are two big problems. The first problem is that logically speaking Tom’s criticisms of supporters of the Palestinians do absolutely nothing to show us how to think of Palestinians themselves, or their Israeli opponents, or the conflict between them.2 The second problem is that the criticisms themselves have serious confusions.
To see the first problem very clearly let’s imagine that American supporters of Palestinians are actually even worse than Tom thinks. Imagine that all American supporters of Palestinians are completely awful. Every single one hates every single Jew.3 They chant genocidal slogans and sing genocidal songs all day everyday. They relish misusing every morally and politically relevant word at every opportunity. And they cheer every evil act of terrorism all across the world. These Americans are scum. They are utterly filled with hate. They are, second only to terrorists themselves, the worst people around.
What would follow from all this? What would it let us conclude about the evils of Hamas, or of Palestinians more broadly? How confident could it make us in the righteousness of the Israeli state, and of its actions in Gaza?
Well, weighed rationally, rather than aesthetically or emotionally or tribally, what this awful group of supporters would allow us to conclude about the Palestinians, and about their Israeli enemies, is... absolutely fucking nothing. These ugliest Americans, with their hatred for every Jew, and love of every terrorist, and maddening misuse of every political word they speak—they could still be supporting either the good guys or the bad guys over in the Levant.
And this evidential nullity doesn’t get any larger as its inputs shrink down from this absurd exaggeration toward the reality. Rationally speaking you just can't get there from here. The most awful Americans could be supporting either the awful side or the righteous side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So we’re going to have to look at the Israelis and Palestinians themselves.
If you’re still not convinced let’s do a thought experiment. What’s a good cause that you strongly support? Spreading your religion? Spreading literacy? Protecting American jobs? Ending childhood hunger? Reelecting Biden? Reelecting Trump? Pick one particular cause that moves you deeply, and hold it in your mind. Think and feel about its beauty and goodness and importance. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to achieve? It’s such a noble and necessary and good and glorious cause. Its achievement would do so much good for so many people.
Now imagine somebody blows himself up next to a school bus and kills 30 children. Right after posting a video praising your cause and explaining his hope of serving that cause by killing those kids.
He was an awful evil lunatic, clearly. He left 30 families in the deepest grief, and a whole city and state and country deeply shaken. Every person in America condemns him, even the craziest crazies on both the left and the right. Tears are shed, prayers are said, funerals are held, donations are made.
Then a month passes.
Now think back to your noble cause. Recall how wonderful and beautiful its realization looked earlier in this meditation.
But between then and now came the school bus bombing. Gruesome violent death for 30 children, and terror for an entire city and state and country.
Is that noble cause now an evil cause? Is it a cause you no longer support, and in fact are ready to oppose? Do you now denounce your candidate or your religion if that was the good cause? Do you now want fewer jobs and less literacy and more hunger? Has the cause that was good become bad because a bad person did a bad thing in its intended service?
Thank you for your interest friends and enemies and internet strangers.
Protests concern how, regardless of our widely varied views of its justification or lack thereof, the US-backed Israeli military powerhouse has killed many thousands of women and children in an impoverished internment camp they’ve had fully blockaded for 16 years. This is not named by Tom’s closest approaches of “Israeli policy” or “the outbreak of war after Hamas attacked Israel.”
By my lights Tom’s criticisms of Americans do not need to tell us anything about Palestinians or Israelis or their conflict. Tom does not need to talk about Palestinians or Israelis at all. If he chooses to talk about them, and to convey some sorts of judgements or conclusions, he can support those in any way he likes. Or he can decline to offer any support, either because he lacks such support or because he’s just choosing not to offer it for any range of stylistic or intellectual or political reasons. None of those paths would come in for my present criticism. What I’m criticizing is the big picture of A) choosing to convey judgments or conclusions about Palestinians and Israelis and their conflict, B) doing so in the midst of attacks on American political competitors that offer psychological support but not logical support to those judgments or conclusions, C) declining to offer other support aside from the occasional mention of Hamas and their October 7th attack, D) generally presenting himself as something like a reflective rigorous rational thinker bringing truth and insight, and E) denigrating so many of those who disagree with him as something like irrational, ignorant, sloppy, lazy. It is the interplay of these elements that I think creates a holistic message and posture that is in the final analysis some real bullshit.
The many American Jews who criticize the state of Israel and sympathize with Palestinians, including many of the most prominent participants and organizers of many protests against Israel’s actions, can for this exaggeration be taken to hate themselves, and their fellow Jewish critics of the state of Israel, in addition to hating Jewish supporters of the state of Israel in America and Israel and elsewhere.