Philosophy Discussion Forums

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 8th, 2024, 4:56 pm They are all being brainwashed. The only question is how many take to the brainwashing.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑May 9th, 2024, 7:34 am So you have no evidence, no facts, to back up your opinion?

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 9th, 2024, 4:40 pm Universities being overtaken by students calling for intafada and "from the river to the sea" is not evidence enough?

Not without some figures to clarify it, no. You are, or were, an analyst, and you tell us that you observe. It seems clear that *some* students hold the pro-Palestinian views you describe. Some also protest and demonstrate in support of Israel. Have you got figures to estimate how many are on one side, how many on the other, and how many in the (majority) middle? I don't.

But it is fair, I think, also to offer the observation that the young tend toward the political left, just as older people like us tend, statistically, toward the right.

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 9th, 2024, 4:40 pm And how about the kid gloves treatment of these protesters as compared with the harsh treatment of climate change and COVID protesters.

The first part is a good and fair question, to which I have no answer, I'm afraid. But I'm not aware of "COVID protesters."

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 9th, 2024, 4:40 pm Jewish students being abused and intimidated, afraid to leave their dorms ... do you think that not due to anti-Semitism too?

If students are being abused for their faith, that is appalling, and I utterly reject and oppose it. But some of those students also express their political opinions, and can expect a normal, not abusive, response from their fellows who hold different views. I regret that some feel too scared to leave their rooms.

The malevolent equivalence of "Jew" and "Israeli", championed for so long by the state of Israel, is showing its most unpleasant downside here. Some Jewish people are suffering a reaction/response that should, justly, be aimed at Israel and Israelis. This is also dreadful, and we should do whatever we can to minimise or stop it altogether.

However, the students are not being targeted for their faith, they are being targeted for their cultural ethnicity.

Universities have long been a hotbed of anti-Semitism, and now it is coming to fruition.

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 10th, 2024, 4:19 pm However, the students are not being targeted for their faith, they are being targeted for their cultural ethnicity.

I'm not quite sure what you mean, here, by "cultural ethnicity". I can guess, of course, but I feel it's quite important, here, in this conversation, to understand clearly what you're getting at.

Growing up with, and being raised by, Roman Catholics was a weird experience. Their attitudes to the people around them, their neighbours, were ... insular. Non-Catholics — for that is what they call those who do not share their religious beliefs, whether they be Moslems, Hindus or atheists; all are concentrated into that one term, "non-Catholic" — were considered lesser people, with whom we shared little. We tended to keep company only with other Roman Catholics. The rest of the world were almost beneath our notice, in some respects.

Forty-odd years ago, I lived in an area where quite a few Jewish people lived. They lived there like Roman Catholics do, but more so. They actively chose to live as apart from their neighbours as was possible. We made a few Jewish friends, and they were nice, decent people. A man called Brian lived down the road. He always had a kind word for everyone, and always had toffees for the kids, including our kids. Brian was what we called a "reform Jew", a devoted Jewish person as regards his faith, but interacting with his neighbours freely and happily.

Sadly Brian, and the other Jewish friends we made, were in the minority. Most of the Jews in the area would have nothing to do with us. They insulted us if we went to 'their' shops — local food shops, newsagents, etc. They subjected us to verbal abuse, and tried to persuade us to move from 'their' neighbourhood. Their community even applied to the local council to have a fence built around our area, with a gate closed during Shabbas (sp?), that would allow them certain freedoms. The rest of their neighbours, the majority, were not impressed by the idea of being locked into their homes one day a week, and the application was refused.

But I am very aware that I met very few of the world's Jews, just those few that lived where I did. They were not *bad* neighbours, but they were very far from what we might call *good* neighbours. They didn't take part, or interact with, the local community they lived in, if they could help it. Living there was an unusual experience.

So what do you mean, here, by "cultural ethnicity"?

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 10th, 2024, 4:19 pm Universities have long been a hotbed of anti-Semitism, and now it is coming to fruition.

You write "fruition" as though there is some sort of climax approaching, a final end of some kind, a destination that is intentionally being followed... There are even sinister overtones of a 'final solution', but perhaps I read too much into your words? What are you getting at here?

yesterday on the news we were shown starving Palestinian children, which reminded me of images from the concentration camps - but now its the Jews being like that! my Jewish side of the socialist faction, is appauled by this.

By "cultural ethnicity" I mean they are identifiable as Jews, and thus targets.

P-C, I would say blockading on universities by hordes of people shouting for intafada is pretty climactic.

Amophos, why be appalled? Are you appalled by what's happening in Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Congo, Burkina Faso etc?

IMO there's too much in life that is appalling. If we were to be appalled at all that was appalling in this world, we would go insane. So we apply filters and decide to be appalled at x while turning a blind eye to v, w, y and z. That way we have a manageable level of appallingness to be appalled at, and we feel like we are good people for being appalled at (selected) appalling things.

The media tells us to be awfully appalled at what's happening in Palestine, so millions dutifully follow in lockstep, riding the wave. They don't tell us to be appalled about Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Congo and Burkina Faso, so most people ignore them, while remaining terribly appalled at Israel.

It's bonkers, but most seem to accept these distortions and double-standards as normal. Humans are a very silly species, and seemingly will become ever sillier until peak silliness is achieved, which is another way of saying that faeces will hit the fan before things get better.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑May 8th, 2024, 6:56 am

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 7th, 2024, 5:34 pm ...almost all graduates of major universities are brainwashed into anti-Semitism.

I think that is difficult to demonstrate? Where are the facts, and where is the fact-checking? Where is the evidence, and of what standard is that evidence? I.e. can this astonishing claim be justified, in any believable manner?

Here's some facts PC.

 These are the students who actually get to run the country, and decide whether to support Israel's genocide with our money and national influence.

 Since the article below was written in 2017 when Tory  Cameron Oxford PPE graduate was PM, we've had:
 
May - Grammar school, then  Oxford  (Geography)
 
Johnson-  Eton Private school, then Oxford (Classics).  Mates in Oxford's Bullingdon Club with Cameron and his 'austerity' Chancellor Osborne.
 
Truss -  Comprehensive, then Oxford PPE
 
Sunak - Winchester Private School, then Oxford PPE

PPE stands for Oxford's Politics, Philosophy and Economics course
 
From Guardian 2017 article  -

 

PPE: the Oxford degree that runs Britain

Monday, 13 April 2015 was a typical day in modern British politics. An Oxford University graduate in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE), Ed Miliband, launched the Labour party’s general election manifesto. It was examined by the BBC’s political editor, Oxford PPE graduate Nick Robinson, by the BBC’s economics editor, Oxford PPE graduate Robert Peston, and by the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Oxford PPE graduate Paul Johnson. It was criticised by the prime minister, Oxford PPE graduate David Cameron. It was defended by the Labour shadow chancellor, Oxford PPE graduate Ed Balls.

Elsewhere in the country, with the election three weeks away, the Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury, Oxford PPE graduate Danny Alexander, was preparing to visit Kingston and Surbiton, a vulnerable London seat held by a fellow Lib Dem minister, Oxford PPE graduate Ed Davey. In Kent, one of Ukip’s two MPs, Oxford PPE graduate Mark Reckless, was campaigning in his constituency, Rochester and Strood. Comments on the day’s developments were being posted online by Michael Crick, Oxford PPE graduate and political correspondent of Channel 4 News.

On the BBC Radio 4 website, the Financial Times statistics expert and Oxford PPE graduate Tim Harford presented his first election podcast. On BBC1, Oxford PPE graduate and Newsnight presenter Evan Davies conducted the first of a series of interviews with party leaders. In the print media, there was an election special in the Economist magazine, edited by Oxford PPE graduate Zanny Minton-Beddoes; a clutch of election articles in the political magazine Prospect, edited by Oxford PPE graduate Bronwen Maddox; an election column in the Guardian by Oxford PPE graduate Simon Jenkins; and more election coverage in the Times and the Sun, whose proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, studied PPE at Oxford.
 
More than any other course at any other university, more than any revered or resented private school, and in a manner probably unmatched in any other democracy, Oxford PPE pervades British political life. From the right to the left, from the centre ground to the fringes, from analysts to protagonists, consensus-seekers to revolutionary activists, environmentalists to ultra-capitalists, statists to libertarians, elitists to populists, bureaucrats to spin doctors, bullies to charmers, successive networks of PPEists have been at work at all levels of British politics – sometimes prominently, sometimes more quietly – since the degree was established 97 years ago.


“It is overwhelmingly from Oxford that the governing elite has reproduced itself, generation after generation,” writes the pre-eminent British political biographer, John Campbell, in his 2014 study of the postwar Labour reformer and SDP co‑founder Roy Jenkins, who studied PPE at the university in the 1930s. The three-year undergraduate course was then less than two decades old, but it was “already the course of choice for aspiring politicians”: the future Labour leaders Michael Foot and Hugh Gaitskell, the future prime ministers Edward Heath and Harold Wilson

(From the archive: PPE: the Oxford degree that runs Britain – podcast)

But Oxford PPE is more than a factory for politicians and the people who judge them for a living. It also gives many of these public figures a shared outlook: confident, internationalist, intellectually flexible, and above all sure that small groups of supposedly well-educated, rational people, such as themselves, can and should improve Britain and the wider world. The course has also been taken by many foreign leaders-in-the-making, among them Bill Clinton, Benazir Bhutto, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the Australian prime ministers Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke. An Oxford PPE degree has become a global status symbol of academic achievement and worldly potential.
 

Gertie wrote: ↑May 11th, 2024, 12:37 pm
Here's some facts PC.

 These are the students who actually get to run the country, and decide whether to support Israel's genocide with our money and national influence.

Thanks Gertie. Seems the facts indicate that the leaders of the US and England come from universities and since they all are "all-in" with Israel's extermination attempts, then it doesn't look like the universities are turning out antisemitic graduates.

Another fact, the crowds at the Universities are not 100% students. As there are probably some antisemitic people involved, there is no proof that they are the students. The pro-Israel crowd tried to use antisemitism as a distraction from the horrors of Israel's attempts at exterminating Palestinians in Gaza.

Once again, just because one is against extermination of Palestinians, doesn't mean they are antisemitic. In fact those that make such claims are doing a great disservice to those Jewish people that don't support Israel's actions.

Hilarious. By all means satisfy yourselves that the intimidation of jews on campuses is not anti-Semitic. Amazing to watch such obvious cognitive dissonance in action.



Oh, and look - it seems I am not a crazy old bigot like you guys are trying to make out. Even the Guardian is starting to notice:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ter-darfur

The Observer view on Sudan’s civil war: a humanitarian disaster we choose to ignore

Ethnic cleansing and war crimes in Darfur have left 25 million people in urgent need, yet the west’s attention is elsewhere

Parents are killed in front of their children. As they cry for help, the children die too. Panicked people fleeing attacks become moving targets. Entire communities are set ablaze and destroyed. Dislocation, hunger and thirst follow, a prelude to famine and death. Abandoned, terrified, unprotected, unseen, the people despair.

This is not a description of Gaza today. It’s Sudan, war-torn, desperate – and largely ignored. Upper estimates of the number of people killed there since a senseless civil war erupted just over one year ago reach 150,000. About 9 million residents, principally in the western Darfur region, have been displaced. Aid agencies say 25 million people are in need of urgent assistance. The future cohesion of a country already cleaved by the 2011 secession of South Sudan and conscious of next-door Libya’s disintegration is at stake.

On the Richter scale of modern horrors, such dire statistics make Sudan the world’s worst humanitarian emergency. There are many others of similar magnitude, of course – the conflict threatening to tear Myanmar apart, the anarchy besetting Yemen, the famine looming over Ethiopia, the endless, pitiless misery of Somalia and Haiti. Yet no matter how these vast human tragedies are measured and counted, they, unlike the hugely publicised, minutely scrutinised Israel-Hamas war, have a basic common denominator: neglect.

Alas, my mentioning of Sudan makes all of you anti-Israel crowd angry. Irrelevant! You cry (again) - we only want to hears about Palestine!

No, I reply, it is not irrelevant, it is the crux and, yes, you are indeed anti-Semitic if you have strong opinions about Palestine and couldn't give a damn about any other conflict. "Oh, I used to have a Jewish friend" is not convincing.

Once again, whatever antisemitism there is on campuses and however horrible events are elsewhere, there is no justification for extermination of a million people.
As Israel starve and shoot Palestinians defense minister says, "There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting animal people and we are acting accordingly." They are seeking to exterminate "animal people". How can you not see the irony?

This is important to me because my government, my tax money is aiding and abetting this extermination process.

You've provide no justification for supporting these horrible actions. Like the secret torture prison camps Israel has set up.

Mo, your anti-Semitism is so strong and instinctive that you believe that anyone who does not support Hamas condones Israel's extreme response to their massacre of 1,200 Israeli civilians and and, at times unbelievable extreme, torture of hundreds more.

No, I think Hamas are playing a strategic game and things are going according to plan. Israel reacted, which scuppered the prospective peace deal with the Saudis, and now Hamas are being rewarded with UN approval. Hamas care much less about Palestinians than westerners do. To Hamas, they are expendable assets. To westerners, they are innocent little angels being killed by the Big Bad Oppressor. In truth, Palestinians are caught between a rock and a hard place.

However, the Sudanese are in more peril, but no one cares about that because "my government" is not involved. So, which is it? Being appalled at slaughter - in which case, why focus on Palestine when far worse has happened in recent times? Almost half a million Syrians killed - how hum. A far smaller number of dead Palestinians, however, is apparently the biggest disaster the universe has seen since the Big Bang.

Most governments fund many nefarious activities via their secret services. No complaints about taxpayer money, there. It's all very selective, with both the the outrage and the claims overblown.There's officially 30,000 dead Palestinians, but now that's conflated to "a million".

The disproportionate response is due to anti-Semitism.

If Hamas had not sent missiles into Israel, the death count would be zero. Nepal and Bhutan are being "salami-sliced" like Israel has been doing to Palestine. Their death counts are zero too, because their governments have not sent missiles in China. No, they accept their losses to a more powerful neighbour because they are not using their people as expendable political pawns. It's sub-optimal but better than the hell that Hamas has rained down on Palestinians.

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 11th, 2024, 10:41 am By "cultural ethnicity" I mean they are identifiable as Jews, and thus targets.

P-C, I would say blockading on universities by hordes of people shouting for intifada is pretty climactic.

Ah, OK. It is undeniable that there are attacks on Jewish people, because they are Jewish. This is perhaps the only place where "anti-Semitic" (i.e. "𝕳𝖔𝖑𝖔𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖘𝖙!"!) is appropriate. And it is *always* wrong. If you march against it, I will happily march beside you. If I march for peace in Palestine — not war on Israel — will you join me?

Sadly, wrong though anti-Jewish attacks always are, Israel must bear *some* of the responsibility. Their malevolent and mistaken conflation of "Jew" and "Israeli" means that someone who disapproves of Israel can take out their ire on Israelis ... or Jews. Because, according to Israel, the two are synonymous. They are not.

And, while political action against Israel is praiseworthy, religious discrimination against Jews is *wrong*. There is no equivalence between "Jew" and "Israeli", just as there is no equivalence between "Christian" and "Italian".

I suggest that the "shouting for intifada" is not in the mainstream of the protests, which are aimed at peace. The reason there *are* protests is not so much the Middle Eastern conflict, but the attitudes of our Western governments. The people of these countries have taken to the streets to tell their governments, in no uncertain terms, that the people (voters; the electorate) do not approve of their solidly pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian attitudes and policies. Our governments are badly out of step with their people, and the marchers are on the streets to tell them so.

And yet the marches and the marchers are not so much anti-Israel as they are pro-Palestine and, most of all, pro-Peace.

A fair response. The percentages will never be precise but the protesters have displayed no objection to intafada chants.

Imagine if people in a protest were calling for the extermination of black people. Do you think that would be as tolerated as calls for the extermination of Jews? No way. People would feel so strongly that there would be physical brawls within the demonstration. Yet there's no evidence of anything but total agreement in these protests.

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 12th, 2024, 5:15 pm Imagine if people in a protest were calling for the extermination of black people. Do you think that would be as tolerated as calls for the extermination of Jews?

Yes, I do. Both are absolutely unacceptable, and so I see them as being pretty much identical. Genocide is not acceptable to anyone. Isn't that why the marchers are marching, after all? Calls for extermination are calls for genocide.

But, talking of genocide, I would be remiss not to mention that the only party to this conflict that is actually in the process of a genocide, a real-world attempt to exterminate an entire people, is Israel...




The usual reminder: the current conflict in the Middle East does not concern Jews, except by coincidence. It is a territorial dispute, being fought between nations, not religions.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑May 13th, 2024, 9:17 am

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 12th, 2024, 5:15 pm Imagine if people in a protest were calling for the extermination of black people. Do you think that would be as tolerated as calls for the extermination of Jews?

Yes, I do. Both are absolutely unacceptable, and so I see them as being pretty much identical. Genocide is not acceptable to anyone. Isn't that why the marchers are marching, after all? Calls for extermination are calls for genocide.

But, talking of genocide, I would be remiss not to mention that the only party to this conflict that is actually in the process of a genocide, a real-world attempt to exterminate an entire people, is Israel...




The usual reminder: the current conflict in the Middle East does not concern Jews, except by coincidence. It is a territorial dispute, being fought between nations, not religions.

Now I know you are just joking and stringing me along.

There is no way on this Earth that calls for genocide of blacks would be tolerated in universities the way that calls for genocide of Jews has been. Unbelievable. The mere mention of the -n-word would be treated more seriously than calls to kill Jews. It would be instant dismissal from the university. Calling for intafada? No punishment - at all.

And the Palestine situation isn't the only genocide, ad far from the worst, happening today but Palestine lovers don't care about that because it's usually Arabs doing to genocide, so that makes it okay. Jews are not allowed to commit genocide, though, only Arabs and Chinese can do it without criticism from hypocritical western bleeding hearts engaging in virtue signalling.

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 11th, 2024, 8:36 pm Mo, your anti-Semitism is so strong and instinctive that you believe that anyone who does not support Hamas condones Israel's extreme response to their massacre of 1,200 Israeli civilians and and, at times unbelievable extreme, torture of hundreds more.

It's my opinion that those that intentionally shoot children are monsters as are those that support and enable them. Telling people that it's also happening elsewhere is a poor attempt at distraction.
Calling people antisemitic is a sad attempt at trying to bullying them into changing their minds or shutting up.
I do not condone attacks on civilians by either Hamas or Israel while those that support Israel condone attacks on civilians that they deem sub-human. Again, how ironic.

Israel has over a million people, herded into a confined area and shelling them and starving them. Bibi has make it clear he wants to exterminate them and we are watching as the Western governments try to bully their peoples into supporting the genocide.

There is no justification. And by the way, I am not anti-Semitic.