Benjamin Netanyahu

Motte-and-bailey Fallacy and a Better Defense of Jewish People

Standard

The US House passed a resolution which decried a rise in anti-semitism and declared in the text that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.”  Which is to say any criticism of this form of blood and soil nationalism can be misconstrued as a hatred of Jewish people.  If you think that the displacement of the indigenous people living in the West Bank by settlers coming from New Jersey is immoral and wrong?  Well, congratulations, because you are now an anti-Semite!

It’s an absolute absurdity. 

But it is also part of a general strategy of using Jewish people, as a whole, as a human shield for a supremacist ideology that many Jews entirely reject.  And, furthermore, this conflating Jewish identity with the Zionist state is contributing to a rise in actual anti-Jewish sentiment around the world.  It is very disturbing to see a vile ideology trying to avoid the rebuke that it most certainly deserves by wearing Jewish identity as a mask for what it truly is. 

Zionism is just blood and soil nationalism using ancient history as a cover story no different than those who called themselves the third Rome.

Zionism is not the same thing as Judiasm and thus taking an anti-Zionist position is not hatred of Jews.  Just like we can both be opposed to a political party and still not be unAmerican, we can oppose a Zionist state of Israel in favor of a country where all people of all faiths have the same rights—where indigenous people are not harassed or killed so settlers can steal their land.  It is okay to hate a regime of rape, theft, murder and collective punishment.  It is also okay to hold those accountable who perpetrate war crimes calling it defense.

What this conflating is is the Motte-and-bailey fallacy (also a strategy) where you pair a position that is defensible with one that is not.  In other words, you say something like “Israel has a right to defend itself,” which everyone will generally agree with, and then use this statement to defend the IDF knowingly bombing children in Gaza.  The two things are not the same.  Defense and killing babies are two vastly different things.  If a neighbor, from an apartment complex near me, assaulted me, and then I go burn down his whole building in response, nobody will accept that this is a defensive action—it is just murder.

This strategy of hiding Zionism behind the Jewish ethnicity and faith comes 100% at the expense of innocent Jews who have no connection to the modern state of Israel.  Merging Jewish identity with Zionism and Zionist atrocities only serves to feed anti-Jewish sentiment.  Decoupling the two words is separating a hostage from a hijacker and focuses our critique on the bad actors who falsely claim to speak for all Jews.  The best way to protect from riding anti-Jewish sentiment is to hold Zionists to account rather than allow them to hide behind Jewish suffering.

Four Ways To Fight Anti-Semitism:

1) Apply opposition to anti-semitism to all Semitic people.  The word Semite is derived from the language people use.  Specifically Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic.  The rights of all people, indigenous Muslim or Christian, as well as Jews, should be protected.  It is anti-semitic to argue Palestinian lives and the lives of Arab neighbors, are worth less than that of European settlers.  The Zionists have not only hijacked Judiasm and the land, but the word Semitic as well—we need the term to be returned to original use.

2) Make the Holy Lands a safe refuge for all good people again.  All Abrahamic religions have significant ties to the territory where a modern state of Israel is formed.  Christian and Muslim communities which existed for centuries are under threat by the invading settlers.  The first Christians were Semites—Jewish coverts—so why are we privileging only one religious group on a land home to Christians and other Semitic people?

3) Stop protecting the bad people simply on the basis of religious identity.  This applies just as much to any religion, but especially to a country that regularly shields evil people on the basis of their Jewish-ness and loyalty to the apartheid regime.

Jonathan Pollard, a US Citizen, who stole nuclear secrets and gave them to Israel (who, in turn, sold them to the Soviet Union), was a traitor to the degree that would be hanged for treason in times past.  But he got life in prison and was released after thirty years due to the lobbying pressure of the Israeli government.  He arrived in Israel, on the private jet of Sheldon Adelson (the late husband of the Trump mega-donor Miriam Adelson) to a hero’s welcome under “right to return.”  In fact, Pollard was greeted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after kissing tarmac in Tel Aviv.

There are also similar stories of corrupt men fleeing to Israel from Ukraine.  Pedophiles and rapists, of Jewish identity, are granted this same escape from justice by “right to return” and an Israeli policy of protecting all Jews regardless of if they are good or evil.  This undermines the trust in Jewish people worldwide.  It contributes to the othering of Jews and breeds resentment and contempt.  Sure, two separate standards may be okay for a racial supremacist, but it is totally unacceptable for those who reject all identity politics and tribalism.

I would stand shoulder to shoulder with a good person who happens to be a Jew, Muslim or any other religion over a person who claims to be a Christian and yet does not love their neighbors.  To me, those who confuse genetics with goodness or their own tribal identity with innocence are the problem.  A truly good person cares about genuinely good character—and not skin color or religious costume.  

Jews are safer when Zionists abusers are made accountable.  The world is a better place when nobody puts tribe over a commitment to justice for all people.  We don’t need the Holy Lands to be a haven for the world’s traitors, pedophiles and identity thieves.

4) Treat AIPAC as a foreign lobby and trim back the Zionist control over our political institutions.  If Congress were taking the same amount of money from supporters of any other country in the world that they did from AIPAC they would be in jail.  How is it not collusion?  However, you’re not going to hear about this scandal on CBS News, after it was bought by Zionist billionaires, with a new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.  Nor will the truth be told on TikTok after it was scooped up by the same people—now moderated by a former IDF soldier searching for ‘antisemitic’ content which could be anything that tells the truth about Israel.  

Frankly, the US desperately needs a policy of de-Zionization after years of our Middle-East mayhem.  When we have US ambassadors to Israel, like Mike Huckabee, meeting with a man convicted of treason, and Presidents unable to act independently from a foreign regime—even when that foreign regime kills more children than it foes true combatants—drastic measures need to be taken.  We can’t simply vote this out.  When then the candidates for mayor of NYC show fealty to a foreign nation this goes beyond normal corruption.  There truly needs to be more prosecutions for actual treason.

A Better Jewish Defense Strategy 

The current Zionist strategy—the fusing Jewish identity with an apartheid regime, shielding war criminals and traitors behind the label “Jew,” and branding every critic an anti-Semite—has sadly produced the most dangerous environment for Jews in decades: surging street-level hatred, synagogue shootings, and a global resurgence of real anti-Jewish bigotry fueled by rage at Israel’s actions. The four steps above break that fuse.

When Judaism is decisively decoupled from Zionism, when “Semitic” again and protects Palestinians and Lebanese as fiercely as Israelis, when the Holy Land is a shared home rather than an ethnic fortress, and when Jewish criminals no longer enjoy impunity under “right of return” or AIPAC protection, the primary pretext for hating Jews evaporates. Jews become what most already are: Just ordinary citizens judged by their character, and not scapegoats for a supremacist project most never voted for.

Paradoxically, the safest future for Jewish people is not more tanks, walls, or lobbying billions—it is the dismantling of an ideological human shield that places them directly in the line of fire.

State of Hasbara: Unveiling Opportunism in the Crises of 9/11, Iraq, and October 7th

Standard

I’m not a big conspiracy theory guy. 

What I mean by that is that I don’t see everything as orchestrated or part of a secret global plot.  I believe accidents can happen and that people can do terrible things unaided or completely of their own volition.  But, all that said, I also believe that the rule “never let a crisis go to waste” is not an invention of Rahm Emanuel. 

Political opportunism is rampant on all sides.  And then there’s the just plain letting something bad happen to use for advancing agenda.

What I’m about to detail is all verifiable facts and not conjecture.  I’m just going to lay it out then let you reach your own reasonable conclusions.  I’ll also prime this topic with a response to 9/11 that has made less sense in retrospect and that is the invasion of Iraq that followed.  Saddam Hussain was not at all involved in the attacks.  The war cost the US trillions of dollars, 4,419 Americans lost their lives, 31,993 wounded, and that is not to mention the Iraqi losses.  We traded that much blood and treasure for claims of there being WMDs—which our government knew were mostly or completely destroyed.

So what was the actual reason for regime change in Iraq?

But, before we answer, let’s get to some of the facts on 9/11.  And, again, I’ll stick only to what is verified and not speculate beyond what is very easily corroborated with videos and news articles from the time.  This is all things known according to official records, eyewitness accounts, and confessions on foreign television.

While the rest of the country watched 9/11 unfold in horror, five men were seen filming the burning World Trade Center towers from a white van, they were seen high-fiving, and appearing jovially celebratory from the New Jersey side.  Their behavior was so totally alarming, and in contrast to what one may expect seeing the US under attack and with people literally being forced to jump to their deaths, that a concerned citizen reported it to authorities.

Trump said Muslims were celebrating in Jersey City.  Not true.  What he should have said is Mossad.

Later in the day the van was stopped by the police and these five men, Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner, and Omer Marmari—dubbed the “Dancing Israelis”—were arrested.

These Israeli men were employed by Urban Moving Systems, a company that was also owned by Israeli national, Dominik Suter, and the men possessed items like $4,700 in cash stuffed in a sock, they carried multiple foreign passports, maps highlighting New York City, and a box cutter like those used in the 9/11 hijackings, further FBI searches of this firm’s Weehawken offices uncovered a fraudulent operation with minimal evidence that it was a legitimate business.  Add to it, 16 seized computers, and reports of anti-American sentiment among staff, including boasts about subverting U.S. media. Suter’s abrupt flight to Israel just before a second FBI interview, abandoning the premises with client property and phones left behind, only amplified suspicions.

Perhaps most damningly, in a 2001 Israeli TV interview on LaHadashot, one of the five men, Oded Ellner, chillingly stated they were placed in the U.S. specifically “to document the event,” a strange phrasing implying their prior awareness of the impending attacks.  Which the FBI could not conclusively prove or disprove despite the months of detention and polygraphs, such led to the speculation—backed by a 2002 Forward report citing U.S. officials—that at least two of the five Israelis were Mossad operatives using the firm as a front.  And officially to keep tabs on Arab extremists.  I’ll let you judge if that is just a cover story or the truth.

Why we would ever believe him again, after the Iraq WMD lie…

Enter Benjamin Netanyahu.  The day after the attacks, he was quoted in the NY Times as saying “it was very good” before he corrected himself and explained what he meant is that it would “generate immediate sympathy” that would benefit Israel.  And it was a year to the day after this that he was pitching a war with Iraq to Congress, calling himself an “expert witness” and warning the legislative body of something that sounds so awfully familiar:

“There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, is working, is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons—no question whatsoever.”

Netanyahu continued his case:

“If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.”

There was zero evidence found to support Netanyahu’s dire warnings about WMDs.  I will let you decide if regime change in Iraq was an amazing success that has only led to peace and prosperity for the region.  But 9/11 was used as an excuse to invade Iraq and Netanyahu was cheering this on—much like the Dancing Israelis.  None of this says for certain that Mossad had foreknowledge or withheld vital intelligence so the attacks could continue and draw the US into Israel’s conflicts.  But we did spend trillions for a war that did absolutely nothing to advance our national security interests.  

Many of these men may do it all over again, but would they if they knew what they were actually fighting for?

And then there’s October 7th.  Netanyahu has called this Israel’s 9/11 and maybe this an admission.  Recently, before his untimely death, Charlie Kirk made an observation in a discussion with Patrick Bet-David about the incredible security perimeter around Gaza and surveillance, expressing disbelief that it could be breeched and openly pondering if an order given to stand down.  This, wasn’t just speculation.  Israeli intelligence had the Hamas incursion plan a full year before and didn’t act, according to the New York Times, and on the night of the attacks former IDF guards have said they were told not to do their routine patrols.

So was the terrorist attack on 9/11 allowed to happen to generate sympathy to later be exploited to further Netanyahu’s agenda as far as Iraq?  And as an order given to stand down on October 7th, likewise, benefits the ultimate aim of Likud which is written in the original 1977 party platform, “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”  Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the first Israeli Prime Minister born in what had been called Mandatory Palestine, was assassinated by a radical Zionist settler for seeking a peaceful resolution.

Maybe some see terrorists.  I see a mother and a child, their lives as important as any other.

Israel brazenly attacked the USS Liberty for reasons never appropriately explained.  The Lavon Affair exposes a level of deception and indifference to civilian casualties that shocked the international community—only surpassed in Gaza now the child amputee capital of the world with bombs paid for by the US taxpayers.  Do we really need to speculate—with all of the facts above—if the Netanyahu regime is willing to sacrifice a few American lives in pursuit of their regional or political ambitions?  With calculus as cold is there any limiting factor?

The recurring exploitation of crises like 9/11 and October 7th, paired with a history of deceptive hasbara, casts doubt on the credibility of official explanations, urging us to further scrutinize the manipulative tactics of those who may prioritize self-serving agendas over truth.