An interesting thing people often don't know is that the peak "pro-Israel consensus" was really only a 21st century thing -- in Gallup, sympathy for Israel was above 50% from 2003-2024 and above 60% from 2010-2018. Before that it mostly stayed in the 30s-40s, which brief spikes during the Six Day, Yom Kippur, and First Gulf Wars that didn't last.
Jewish advocacy groups seem to have assumed that real antisemitism wasn't a problem anymore and the word could just be repurposed to assault criticism of Israel, meanwhile actual antisemitism is on the rise and it's mostly on the right.
If the rights of Jews are ever genuinely threatened, the people protesting to protect them will be the same ones who protested for Palestine or against ICE because that's who cares about universal human rights. And we'd still do it no matter what the ADL or AIPAC says about us! But the degree to which they've ignored the antisemitism on the right because the right would give Israel a blank cheque is baffling.
Why would you do an argument episode about a movie especially one you've already written about? Do you think your unique contribution to the discourse is covering popular movies?
Based on what I've seen on-line, the Holmes documentary is to journalists as "Star Wars" was to nerds when it was originally released in 1977, so I don't think it's surprising that Matt's still covering it.
To add to all these points, the endless accusations that you are antisemitic if you disagree with Israel's and/or AIPAC's agenda got extremely toxic and exhausting after a while.
Just like what happened with many woke people in 2020-2021, AIPAC got carried away with the fundamentally false claim that if you have a historically discriminated/marginalized racial/ethnic group X, which (like all such groups) deserves equality and protection from clear-cut cases of discrimination, and many/most (but by no means all) members of group X support controversial policy Y that is not directly related to their basic civil rights as a minority group in this country, then being against policy Y means that you hate group X.
This is a fundamentally misleading claim, regardless of whether such accusations come from the left or the right. Just like you can oppose, e.g., affirmative action without hating black people, you can oppose the notion that the US government should "support Israel" without hating Jewish people.
To Matt’s point on the rise of right wing antisemitism and rise of antisemitism on the online right, that’s not being given as much attention by the advocacy groups, this tweet from the Steelers is the perfect example.
They mark the tree of life synagogue massacre, and basically every single antisemitic reply is coming from right wing and far right accounts.
The US used to just be thoroughly propagandized by Israel. In high school, I took a class on world history at a public school in a liberal urban school district. They had a guest teacher come in and teach about Israel who just taught us demonstrably false things, like that the Palestinians left voluntarily in 1947-48. People can look things up for themselves now and don’t buy this any more.
Now this persecution complex that Israeli supporters have is just insane to normal people who can see things for themselves. There is this saying that if you think everyone is an asshole, then you are the asshole. Israel is not some kind of plucky underdog, if it ever was (they were evenly matched in manpower and superior in technology against disorganized third-world foes even in 1947-48). But now everyone sees Israel making millions of people across multiple countries homeless, taking territory, and bombing other countries, while suffering no real harm itself. And to justify these attacks on poor third-world countries, they cite atrocities committed by an industrialized great power on a different continent almost 100 years ago, which most people see as insane.
Attacks similar to 10/7 took place in Mumbai and Moscow and yet India and Russia did not do all of those things. 9/11 was worse than 10/7 but we didn’t act like Israel after either. We didn’t conquer an inch of land and actually improved living standards in Afghanistan at least (though not Iraq). “Everyone else would act like us” is another obvious lie.
I give US right-wingers a lot of crap, but historically they have not really been genocidal and even they have been shocked by what other countries have done, like there was very little sympathy for Nazis even in the Jim Crow South. JD Vance is just continuing in that tradition. I still believe he’s a fundamentally humane person from reading Hillbilly Elegy who just kind of sold his soul for power, and his election postmortem was humble and showed that side coming out again (whereas he could’ve just thumped his chest and claim fraud as Trump did in 2020).
The Vance tweet was very much the starters gun for the 2028 Republican nomination. It looks like he learned from Kamala that a VP needs to establish some independent credentials on the the administration f*ck ups. It will be interesting to see how far the old Orange Man let's him go.
Hopefully the US will go (back?) to a get-"settlers"-out-of-the-Occupied-Territories position, (while keeping the stuff-the-“Right of Return”nonsense position) but put some real aid-conditionality for _both_ sides muscle in it.
This feels like such a nothing-burger. AIPAC just needs to recalibrate the ask from "support the war in Iran plus x, y, and z" to something more reasonable. then they can working from there. Sure, it's a huge step back but that's politics. Israel is a soverign country that can defend itself, we should be willing to sell arms, and protect against the rise of antisemitism is a fine position. It feels like a step down, sure. but again, that's life. AIPAC needs to take the advice that MY has been giving dems for the last 2 years--moderate your position to align to where voters are--and move on. Nothing special here imo.
But the reductio in aid to Ukraine, basicaly keping Russia in the War leading to the deisel price spike and the tariffs and the deficit forking the Fed to let inflation stay high and long-term interest rates = mortgage/car payments high should not go unapprecated as gifts to Democrates.
"Twitter basically blaming the U.S.-Israel relationship for the G.O.P. wipeout."
Vance is right except it is the US-_Netanyahu_ relationship. It was not in the interests of the Israeli median voter for the US to tear up the JCPOA, (a clear pre-Trump Republican position) lobbied for by Netenyahu. Trump’s cherry on the top was starting a war giving Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz => gasoline prices.
I think that Israel's dumbest foreign policy move, ever, was to take partisan sides with US Republicans. Ditto for AIPAC, which I guess took its lead from Netanyahu.
Hate these meta comments about the comment section. If you don't like comments then mix it up with them. The discourse about the discourse in the comments section is tiresome
Same thing with the implosion of Leading the Future and other AI PACs (not to be confused with AIPAC, although the similar naming is suspicious). Turns out if you're banking on a low-salience issue that people aren't thinking too hard about, and they just fall back to simple heuristics and vibes, loads of cash gets you pretty far...but lose that thin Mandate of Heaven veneer, and you activate all the classic Dark Money From Special Interests immune responses. It's also interesting to consider Elon's yuge cash injections in the midterms, given the tremendous blue wave, and crypto's Fairshake didn't have a great time on Tuesday either. So the question becomes: is it So Over for just AIPAC in particular, or does the entire playbook in that mold no longer hold water? Can we put some paid to the "political outcomes are just determined by money" myth?
(And what's the inverse, you can't have something be So Over without something else being So Back? Finish the meme!)
An interesting thing people often don't know is that the peak "pro-Israel consensus" was really only a 21st century thing -- in Gallup, sympathy for Israel was above 50% from 2003-2024 and above 60% from 2010-2018. Before that it mostly stayed in the 30s-40s, which brief spikes during the Six Day, Yom Kippur, and First Gulf Wars that didn't last.
Jewish advocacy groups seem to have assumed that real antisemitism wasn't a problem anymore and the word could just be repurposed to assault criticism of Israel, meanwhile actual antisemitism is on the rise and it's mostly on the right.
If the rights of Jews are ever genuinely threatened, the people protesting to protect them will be the same ones who protested for Palestine or against ICE because that's who cares about universal human rights. And we'd still do it no matter what the ADL or AIPAC says about us! But the degree to which they've ignored the antisemitism on the right because the right would give Israel a blank cheque is baffling.
Why would you do an argument episode about a movie especially one you've already written about? Do you think your unique contribution to the discourse is covering popular movies?
As you might expect, it's more about using the movie to talk about how people behave in public life and how liars get away with lies.
Based on what I've seen on-line, the Holmes documentary is to journalists as "Star Wars" was to nerds when it was originally released in 1977, so I don't think it's surprising that Matt's still covering it.
But why? His article wasn't remotely interesting. The movie isn't even that interesting. This whole thing can miss me.
To add to all these points, the endless accusations that you are antisemitic if you disagree with Israel's and/or AIPAC's agenda got extremely toxic and exhausting after a while.
Just like what happened with many woke people in 2020-2021, AIPAC got carried away with the fundamentally false claim that if you have a historically discriminated/marginalized racial/ethnic group X, which (like all such groups) deserves equality and protection from clear-cut cases of discrimination, and many/most (but by no means all) members of group X support controversial policy Y that is not directly related to their basic civil rights as a minority group in this country, then being against policy Y means that you hate group X.
This is a fundamentally misleading claim, regardless of whether such accusations come from the left or the right. Just like you can oppose, e.g., affirmative action without hating black people, you can oppose the notion that the US government should "support Israel" without hating Jewish people.
To Matt’s point on the rise of right wing antisemitism and rise of antisemitism on the online right, that’s not being given as much attention by the advocacy groups, this tweet from the Steelers is the perfect example.
They mark the tree of life synagogue massacre, and basically every single antisemitic reply is coming from right wing and far right accounts.
https://x.com/steelers/status/2115058681700327464?a=HTknxVKnfhqv37ce9rs&s=46
The US used to just be thoroughly propagandized by Israel. In high school, I took a class on world history at a public school in a liberal urban school district. They had a guest teacher come in and teach about Israel who just taught us demonstrably false things, like that the Palestinians left voluntarily in 1947-48. People can look things up for themselves now and don’t buy this any more.
Now this persecution complex that Israeli supporters have is just insane to normal people who can see things for themselves. There is this saying that if you think everyone is an asshole, then you are the asshole. Israel is not some kind of plucky underdog, if it ever was (they were evenly matched in manpower and superior in technology against disorganized third-world foes even in 1947-48). But now everyone sees Israel making millions of people across multiple countries homeless, taking territory, and bombing other countries, while suffering no real harm itself. And to justify these attacks on poor third-world countries, they cite atrocities committed by an industrialized great power on a different continent almost 100 years ago, which most people see as insane.
Attacks similar to 10/7 took place in Mumbai and Moscow and yet India and Russia did not do all of those things. 9/11 was worse than 10/7 but we didn’t act like Israel after either. We didn’t conquer an inch of land and actually improved living standards in Afghanistan at least (though not Iraq). “Everyone else would act like us” is another obvious lie.
I give US right-wingers a lot of crap, but historically they have not really been genocidal and even they have been shocked by what other countries have done, like there was very little sympathy for Nazis even in the Jim Crow South. JD Vance is just continuing in that tradition. I still believe he’s a fundamentally humane person from reading Hillbilly Elegy who just kind of sold his soul for power, and his election postmortem was humble and showed that side coming out again (whereas he could’ve just thumped his chest and claim fraud as Trump did in 2020).
India did though. Hindutva is a thing.
There are now dozens of Muslims who have been killed in India for the crime of eating a cow.
Or having been thought to have eaten a cow.
Or for standing near a cow
Lol.
Rubio could run with a back-to-nuance postiton on Israel and, if he is lucky, get himself fired, de Trumpifying himself as Vance cannot.
The Vance tweet was very much the starters gun for the 2028 Republican nomination. It looks like he learned from Kamala that a VP needs to establish some independent credentials on the the administration f*ck ups. It will be interesting to see how far the old Orange Man let's him go.
Now the ball is in Rubio's court.
Hopefully the US will go (back?) to a get-"settlers"-out-of-the-Occupied-Territories position, (while keeping the stuff-the-“Right of Return”nonsense position) but put some real aid-conditionality for _both_ sides muscle in it.
The amount of good will Israel burned internationally for the sake of settlements cannot be overstated.
This feels like such a nothing-burger. AIPAC just needs to recalibrate the ask from "support the war in Iran plus x, y, and z" to something more reasonable. then they can working from there. Sure, it's a huge step back but that's politics. Israel is a soverign country that can defend itself, we should be willing to sell arms, and protect against the rise of antisemitism is a fine position. It feels like a step down, sure. but again, that's life. AIPAC needs to take the advice that MY has been giving dems for the last 2 years--moderate your position to align to where voters are--and move on. Nothing special here imo.
It would require some dramatic changes from AIPAC (and maybe a name change) and groups don’t like to moderate.
But the reductio in aid to Ukraine, basicaly keping Russia in the War leading to the deisel price spike and the tariffs and the deficit forking the Fed to let inflation stay high and long-term interest rates = mortgage/car payments high should not go unapprecated as gifts to Democrates.
"Twitter basically blaming the U.S.-Israel relationship for the G.O.P. wipeout."
Vance is right except it is the US-_Netanyahu_ relationship. It was not in the interests of the Israeli median voter for the US to tear up the JCPOA, (a clear pre-Trump Republican position) lobbied for by Netenyahu. Trump’s cherry on the top was starting a war giving Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz => gasoline prices.
Dear Larder can never fail, only be failed
I think that Israel's dumbest foreign policy move, ever, was to take partisan sides with US Republicans. Ditto for AIPAC, which I guess took its lead from Netanyahu.
AIPAC turns to its last bastion of support: The SB comment section
Hate these meta comments about the comment section. If you don't like comments then mix it up with them. The discourse about the discourse in the comments section is tiresome
Hey, they've still got Bari. Bet she's got a big mad now. Learning from woke missteps might have been expected.
I agree with every word of this. So come on everyone and dogpile on Matt and call him a vile antisemite.
Same thing with the implosion of Leading the Future and other AI PACs (not to be confused with AIPAC, although the similar naming is suspicious). Turns out if you're banking on a low-salience issue that people aren't thinking too hard about, and they just fall back to simple heuristics and vibes, loads of cash gets you pretty far...but lose that thin Mandate of Heaven veneer, and you activate all the classic Dark Money From Special Interests immune responses. It's also interesting to consider Elon's yuge cash injections in the midterms, given the tremendous blue wave, and crypto's Fairshake didn't have a great time on Tuesday either. So the question becomes: is it So Over for just AIPAC in particular, or does the entire playbook in that mold no longer hold water? Can we put some paid to the "political outcomes are just determined by money" myth?
(And what's the inverse, you can't have something be So Over without something else being So Back? Finish the meme!)