That would imply that al Jazeera knew October 7 was going to happen in advance. Is that what you’re saying? Or is October 7 such an inconvenience to the narrative you want to believe you’ve got a complete mental block on it?
You don’t seem to understand a lot about history with regards to Jews. Someone can consider themself to be a Jew if they are in the Judaism religion, and they can consider themself a Jew If one or both of their parents are Jews. Sometimes people that don’t consider themself to be a Jew can be considered a Jew by others even if just one of their Grandparents were a Jew.
All of these have been oppressed in the past. Oppression of Jews generally goes in cycles. Tolerance for a few generations, but then animosity builds up over time. Since Jews are a minority group they’re an easy target, and if a minority group achieves any measure of success people become jealous and a minority group having success runs counter to white supremacist ideology. Paranoia builds up, lots of conspiracy theories around Jews being successful because they used manipulation and took things that rightfully belonged to someone else.
Then a massacre happens and most people are horrified by it. So the majority of people go back to tolerating Jews again. But after a few generations people go back to the paranoia and jealous hatred against a minority group for achieving any kind of success.
The last cycle when antisemitism reached it’s maximum, there were no countries that offered sanctuary to Jews. I don’t think that will be the case on this cycle because while there’s few people left who personally witnessed the holocaust, most people in positions of power at least knew someone who was affected by it. But on the next cycle? What happens if the people that say October 7 was justified are the majority and are in positions of power in the west? The tankie pro-Palestinian protest kids of todady will likely be the MAGAs of tomorrow. It’s easy to see the potential of repeat of every country in the world refusing to offer sanctuary to Jews that are the victims of oppression.
And that’s why Israel exists. It’s not a religious state. It’s also not an ethno-state. It’s a state that exists to provide sanctuary for victims of antisemitism. A lot of people are uncomfortable with the existence of Israel because it’s a reminder of our failure to have any level of humanity towards Jews in the past.
I hope there’s a day where it isn’t necessary for there to be a country that has a Jewish majority to ensure there’s at least one country that offers sanctuary to Jews during times of peak antisemitism. But seeing attacks on synagogues and attacks on Jewish businesses in the west, we’re unfortunately not there yet.
You’re assuming unscrupulous companies wouldn’t find another loophole or just pay a fine for going over the limit.
Don’t get me wrong, Tesla is shit for helping with the loophole, but it’s a degrees of bad kind of thing. Getting fossil fuel vehicles off the road does reduce carbon emissions, but Tesla was exaggerating their numbers. They should be punished for doing this, but doubling up their numbers only works if the number isn’t zero.
But this is all getting away from the fact that damaging these vehicles has the net effect of people driving fossil fuel vehicles longer. It’s a net harm to everyone.
I can prove objectively that religion is bad for humanity. Can you do the same about atheism?
Sure… there’s a very large number of people that were killed by atheists like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. There’s a large enough sample size to objectively prove that when atheists are in power they are as bad (if not worse) than religious people in power.
That’s more of a problem with how carbon credits are being regulated. Sure Tesla are being assholes for doing this, but it’s a corporation, I don’t expect them to be good guys.
But none of that changes the fact that some meathead buying a Cybertruck instead of the equivalent fossil fuel monstrosity is reducing CO2 emissions in a direct way. Spray paint the sign a Tesla corporate HQ, don’t damage a vehicle which will only have the result of someone driving a fossil fuel vehicle a little longer while the damage is being fixed.
I tend to say Jew when when someone trends towards hating all Israelis, because hatred towards Israel is a common dog whistle for antisemites. After the “It’s ok to criticize Israel” meme went viral, many antisemites did a find and replace on “Jew” and changed it to “Israeli”. Those same antisemitic conspiracy theories most people would immediately denounced by most people before are now commonly spread simply because one word was changed. When I see those conspiracy theories espoused with one word different from the original, I bring it back to the original version. Why would I pretend that I don’t know the intent for these conspiracy theories?
Sometimes it’s important to take what you’re saying and put the word Jew in there. If what you’re saying about Israel suddenly becomes uncomfortable when “Israeli” is replaced with “Jew”, then you should consider more carefully what you’re saying. Someone says “wipe them off the map” they are talking about the ethnic cleansing of Jews after all. Or do you honestly believe that those that want Israel wiped off the map would displace Arab Israelis along with the Jewish Israelis? Come on…
The trick to avoid being a racist is introspection. Some consideration about whether your thinking is being guided by racism every now and then. If it’s uncomfortable to hear your rhetoric being applied to Jews rather than Israelis or “Zionists”, then maybe you should be checking how you’re thinking about things a little more.
If me considering your rhetoric as being against Jews makes you uncomfortable, then good. Your discomfort might lead to introspection.
It is indeed. But atheists have a tendency to think it’s fine for them to be hateful towards religious people because “they hate all religion”. Logically hating more people makes someone even worse, but there’s not all that much logic going on in the minds of some atheists. For some people, Atheism is just a cover for being hateful, in exactly the same way some people use Christianity (or any other religion) to provide cover for their hatred.
If the guy didn’t say something about “deists,” the comment would be identical to something an Islamophobic Christian might say. Religious bigotry from atheists is identical to bigotry coming from religious people.
Right now it’s just some tough talk from both sides. It’s possible for this to amount to something more than the normal levels of exchanging fire that’s been going on since October 7, but it’s doubtful.
Seems more likely Nasrallah just has to make some token effort to support Hamas to appease the rank and file. So he threatened Israel three days ago. Israel makes threats back now. Just another day in the Middle East.