Wanted to point to a great article, written by Ariel Feldman, for Jacobin Latino America. First, the translation:

Discussions surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are plagued with fallacies and sensitivities. It is necessary to dismantle the argumentative extortions and think about the substance of the conflict.

Right? It’s so succinct, but does not start any discussion I’ve been a part of. There is so much history packed into this tiny strip – and it’s current history, and ancient history, combined – but not so much ancient history. That’s probably either a fallacy, or sensitivity. The real, current history is mostly greed and hatred, racism and authorotarianism. Ain’t it?

“ad hominem fallacies” abound. The author deals with them clearly and succinctly. Let’s start with:

Fallacy 1:

it is argued that an anti-Zionist position is based on a lack of sensitivity and lack of empathy towards the suffering of the “Jewish people”, whether pointing out in the interlocutor a supposed anti-Semitism or “ideologized” position or arguing a lack of knowledge of the territory and its complexity. A set of statements that avoid answering arguments and that instead aim to cancel the discussion by canceling the interlocutor.

This is excellent writing, by the way; but it is dense – and we don’t want to lose the point, because it’s simple: it does no good to simply override an argument, by canceling the person presenting the idea. The question of whether anyone needs to be Jewish to even say anything is not invalid: I don’t like to listen to men talking about abortion. Nevertheless, a different perspective IS needed, in all cases. But for this author, the counter is cancelled:

I was born in Israel 44 years ago, I am Jewish…I visited the State of Israel several times, I walked through Arab cities and towns, I talked with the so-called Israeli Arabs (Palestinians who remained within the Israeli borders after the war that followed the self-proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948), I crossed the check points and toured the occupied territories. In particular, I walked through Hebron more than once—one of the Palestinian cities with a strong military presence and Israeli settlers—and talked with families and young Palestinians living there. I was not lucky enough to know Gaza. For someone with Israeli nationality it has been practically impossible to do so for 16 years.

So he establishes a degree of credibility out front, just to allow him to make a point. And the point has a lot to do with being Jewish, versus being Zionist. The next fallacies are based on a false syllogism:

being humanist, progressive or left-wing implies being against racism; Anti-Semitism is undoubtedly a form of racism; ergo, blaming the Israelis for their own murder is anti-Semitic. This argument or similar ones that appeal to sensitivity and empathy with the victims of the Hamas attack have been used without exception to demand empathy with the State of Israel and be sensitive to its position in the conflict. We must reveal this device and not allow what is nothing more than argumentative extortion.

Again, this has more to do with the ability to have discussions – at all. The current cancel climate is actually surprisingly successful, and no discussions are had. And this is all executed using tried and true methods from ancient rhetoric, which schools have tacitly banned, worldwide.

Fallacy 2

The false identification and consequent confusion of one (Judaism) and the other (Zionism) is an ideological ploy of Zionism so that the symbolic capital and the atrocities committed for millennia against the Jewish people are transferred as prerogatives to the State of Israel and, every time the Zionist policies of Israel, to be able to say that we are facing an anti-Semitic position.

You’ll need to read up on what Zionism is, if you don’t know (and know pretty well). Otherwise, your opinion simply does not matter. You have to come to the table with something, not nothing.

The final fallacy builds on the first two, thus

Fallacy 3

if we condemn the killing of Israeli civilian victims (of course we do) and believe that a person at a party near the Gaza Strip is an innocent victim, one should simply derive The State of Israel is being a victim in the conflict and, therefore, pointing out its primary responsibility in the Hamas attack would be analogous to trying to hold a victim responsible for what his perpetrator does to him.

This is “false victim-hood”, used as a rhetorical device. And the device prevents discussion:

It serves, through extortion, to neutralize a debate due to sensitivity, but it does not contribute to really trying to unravel what is happening in the conflict. The argument in question takes the part for the whole (citizens for the State). The dead and kidnapped civilians are innocent victims, without a doubt; but that does not make the State of Israel innocent.

What next? What should we (not) do, if we actually want to solve this:

To combat the seed of prejudice and hatred of the Jewish people—which exists—the way is not to protect criminal acts by claiming that criticizing them is anti-Semitic. On the contrary, we must repeat over and over again that the State of Israel does what it does as a Zionist, not as a Jew. And insist on humanist values, on one’s own experience of suffering, of resistance in the face of cruelty, of love for the word and reflection that sharply distinguishes Judaism from Zionism.

I have tried to present the fundamental value of this article, in the interest of fomenting debate, on an issue which affects the entire world. Because it affects the world, the world has a right to discuss it.