Answering Accusations That "Anti-Israel" Voices Have Blinders On And Don't See Reality, Give Hamas a Free Pass, Over Analyze Only Ops From One Side
Is Is Merely Anti-Israel Bias To Scrutinize Shootings Of Embassy Staffers? I Argue That All Media Is Mind Control And Scrutiny Is Scrutiny Of Mind Control. What Makes A Fact A Fact?
“I am not here concerned with intent, but with scientific standards, especially the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground.”
“Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”
—Timothy Snyder
“Turfseer,” yesterday, wrote this in comments:
”Your problem isn’t doubt—it’s disproportion. Gaza deaths are real and horrific, yes. But do you apply the same scrutiny to Hamas videos, which they themselves post, grinning as they parade Israeli corpses? Or do you only question the tears of Israeli families, the timelines of police reports, the “ghost” Facebook pages?
Your refusal to address any of this—even now—while asserting that “Zionists collaborated with Hitler” and that Israel is a “ghastly idea,” reveals the deeper truth: your skepticism is not a method. It’s a filter. One that lets through all the horrors that confirm your narrative, and blots out the rest.”
(Full comment in comments here.)
Are We All Equally Blind? Does Objective Truth Exist?
People who are aggravated over “anti-Israel” reportage continue to raise an accusation of hypocrisy, and self deception. Within that, some on the pro-Israel side seem to be saying that if scrutiny were applied to the same degree to atrocity reports from Gaza, they would also turn up in many cases false. Where is our scrutiny then, they ask?
I reflected on the accusation last night, and continue to do so today.
Journalism is emphasis; The moment you emphasize a fact, you stand accused of de-emphasizing all other facts. Only God knows all facts at once.
But hiding behind the impossibility of knowing anything is a cop out.
Did I take a magnifying glass to the Israeli embassy staffers deaths because of my internal bias against Israel? Do I scrutinize claimed Gaza deaths the same way?
I actually welcome this challenge. I think day and night about how anybody can ever know if a thing “really happened,” and/or is “true.” But I reject the notion that there is no objective truth, only that we all see what we look for.
How can one know if something really happened that one sees reported as having happened, on social media? That’s the question at hand and it is an important one. It was Serge Lang’s life long question: “Can you tell the difference between a fact from a hole in the ground?”
[Lang’s “Huntington test” was given to all freshman Yale students. Samuel P. Huntington had counted South Africa as a “satisfied society” because protests were rare. Lang argued that protests were rare because of Apartheid rule. I knew Serge well, and received his “files” in the mail regularly, excoriating HIV propagandists in both science and journalism. Once he left me a message on my answering machine scolding me thus: “This is not Celia Farber. This is Celia Farber’s answering machine.” Lang took his life, in 2006, leaving the HIV dissident community, and especially Peter Duesberg, devastated.]
One thing at a time:
The post yesterday was about the reported deaths of two Israeli embassy staffers, reported (now as both being Messianic Jews, ie not Jewish, or not originally Jewish.)
It was about whether it was possibly a false flag, and it was about whether it’s wrong to ask these questions, and it was about whether the “doubts” are significant or just rooted on pathological skepticism. All that was refracted in the piece.
Today pro-Israel accounts/sources/lobbies are baying for the blood of any and all who supported an end to the destruction of Gaza and the killings, such as Candace Owens, all the way down to every last fish, big or small.
They have always said there is no such thing as even supporting “humanitarian aid” without being a full blown “Hamas supporter” and terrorist. I resent and reject that.
But I took Turfseer’s point about the importance of trying to be discerning about whether a person on social media asserting loved ones were killed can be verified as “real” or might be manipulated. I sometimes feel it is a little disorienting arguing facts and truth with people whose name I don’t even know, because they have withheld it. Why do people not use their names? Career concern? Who knows.
Still, the person whose name I don’t know raises an important matter, about filters. We believe death A happened but not death B.
Between deaths (countless) in Gaza and the deaths of the couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum on May 21, we all know are backed into a corner, accused of hypocrisy, propaganda and hatred of Jews. They, by contrast, are not accused of harboring hatred of Palestinians, because that’s “not a thing.” You’re allowed to hate Palestinians—including babies— if it means having your priorities straight as a putative freedom lover.
Hussein Odeh
Did this man lose four children? (A daughter, and then, three young sons.)
I “ask” because I want to compel “skeptics” of Gaza atrocities to clarify their case.
Clips here.
Forget, for now, the whole picture. I’m just asking this, right now:
How can we know if Hussein Odeh, a known person, a known Palestinian body builder, lost four childen?
Let’s say you, Turfseer, decide it can’t be proven.
Does that suggest to you, does that mean, that many, or most reported dead children in Gaza are falsified?
That the photos of decimated Gaza are false? That people magically all got away, and Israel has been insanely villified?
Establish standards of proof, then, because that’s a big claim, especially since so many Zionists openly call for wiping out all Palestinians., including children and babies. So which is it?
—Moshe Faiglin, Zehut
As for Arab loathing of Jews—where do we begin, where does the story begin?
Do people like me deny the blood thirst of militant Islamists, of the Hamas that is so heavily invoked yet so opaque to us?
The question needs context to be answered. The context that is critical is: How did Oct 7 happen? Did Hamas’ leaders decide to go for broke that day, have a killing orgy, and sit back in their mansions while every last Palestinian is sacrificed to pay for it?
Could the attack have neither been prevented (in your view) or mitigated by a swift response?
Are there fundamental errors in this report? Does the reporter hate Jews?
Did Ronald Reagan hate Jews?
Do Israel’s defenders deny that the CIA and Mossad/IDF/Netanyahu funded and fomented Hamas, of the long history of Israel planting attacks on itself and then expecting people trust them?
Link to clip here.
I suggest we establish one question at a time and try to answer it.
Right now I am asking: How can we know if Hussein Odeh lost four children?
I review the clips and see no reason to doubt any of it, but of course, I wasn’t there.
What’s the difference between his grief and the grief of the Israelis who have lost children?
This the Israel defenders cannot deny: American media does not encourage the notion that Palestinian lives are worth a fraction of Israeli lives. That means eugenics, racism, and racial supremacy on the part of US media. De facto.
When you look for US media reports on Hussein Odeh, they don’t exist. When you ask Grok, it says we know there have been social media posts about Hussein’s killed children, but beyond that it can’t verify.
They Tell You What You Saw; They Showed You What You Saw
Why were there so few people filming the moment JFK was shot, despite all the networks being in Dallas that day? We have only the Zapruder film, which has cuts in it. There is a documentary, just about that film, and those cuts, with experts who work with film. Who was he—Zapruder?
I’m not changing the subject; It’s the same subject. Who is running the projector that tells us what “happened?”
If you think I’m trying to paint Hamas as angels you are very wrong.
It’s on you to explain, as I reported here, Netanyahu’s statement about how you can’t support Israel without “strengthening” Hamas.
Chicken and egg. Which came first?
I think people who actually do love and support Israel, including former Knesset members and IDF generals (!) and most definitely want it to continue to exist are now opposing Netanyahu fervently, precisely because he is suiciding it. He’s made the world “hate” Israel because of the staggering cruelties and mass deaths in Gaza following in the wake of Oct 7.
He did that. None of us wake up to hate Israel for no reason other than that we are grimy little haters. That’s the number one gaslight, myth and guilt trip.
Outtake from this post, here:
“Anyone who wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas.”
—Benjamin Netanyahu
CLIP HERE.
I’m still open to being shown what I may not be seeing, or hearing.
I don’t care about Israel if my choices are:
A. Care about Israel.
B. Care about a world so de-sensitized we are asked to defend and support our government’s weapons blowing up children, real children.
No geo-political project is worth that.
I can’t even believe we are having this conversation.
Indeed, I can't believe you are having this conversation: well, some of us actually KNOW people who have been killed, egregiously, & who have dear friends who have lost 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, 12, up to 400 family members. We have friends who have been abducted & tortured. etc. etc. we have friends who are now losing MANY kilos, who are starving. Was the tape of 6 year old Hind Rajab faked? The bullet holes in the car she was in? The medics killed who tried to rescue her? Please, get real. Israel has been killing and displacing Palestinians for a very long time but, for many reasons, have been largely given a free pass. Until now. Their objectives are quite clear. The majority population & the government in power quite clearly pronounce & support, in word & deed, a "final solution" for Palestinians. They are not hiding anything. It's only the cowardly Western & Arab regimes who are hiding, as the slow simmer of their populations start boiling with rage & disbelief. Not to mention the utterly insane absurdity of the basis of the conversation: 25,000 to 30,000 guerilla fighters without an air force, navy, mechanized units (i.e. tanks), air defense systems, are going to "destroy" a country, Israel, combining the most powerful military technologies in the world (Israel, US, UK etc.)???? Well, they may make it implode from within, but that has nothing to do with military power, & is another conversation altogether.
“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.” -George Orwell