1/ I'd claim that Biden-Harris is far more substantively 'Pro-Israel' than the GOP (long story, but you can believe I can prove it). This JPost story shows Biden is definitely pro-Israel enough, esp. for the current Democratic party:
jpost.com/israel-news/bi…
jpost.com/israel-news/bi…
2/ One thing I discovered in 2016 from my frum neighbors, they used "Pro-Israel" to refer to any partisan person they supported for completely unrelated reasons. They said the GOP was Pro-I because they were conservatives, and that's the *only* reason.
3/ It used to exasperate me, b/c I'd bring up Steve Bannon, a clear enemy of American Jews (adl.org/resources/back…) & my frum chums would reject the evidence out of hand
Mind you, they weren't lying to me. They were lying to themselves.
Mind you, they weren't lying to me. They were lying to themselves.
4/ This is key: people lie to themselves way more than we presume. It comes across as just plain "lying" & looks like antagonistic deception, but I really think we need to remember how badly ideology messes w/reason, rationality, factuality
5/ I used fancy terms for the phenomenon of how my frum friends slavishly endorsed actual antisemites: they were laboring under mystical thinking, a blinding ideology, a neurotic paradigm, etc
(Note, acc. to Kuhn, paradigm shift is hard to initiate, cf.
academia.edu/15401772/Jewis…
(Note, acc. to Kuhn, paradigm shift is hard to initiate, cf.
academia.edu/15401772/Jewis…
6/ Their intransigence in openly believing in a self-destructive paradoxical ideology - considering open enemies as friends - led me to joke that my pro-Trump frum friends would call anything they liked "pro-Israel" as in "this pizza is so good, it's Pro-Israel"
7/ They use the term "pro-Israel" devoid of any literal meaning for supporting Medinat Yisrael, Zionism, or larger support for Jewish sovereignty & dignity.
Ultimately, my frum chums were just American conservatives & re-coded their GOP support as an act of tribal partisanship
Ultimately, my frum chums were just American conservatives & re-coded their GOP support as an act of tribal partisanship
8/ They weren't lying to me, they were deep into self-delusion and self-deception.
They identified every partisan position they held as if it were equivalent to "Pro-Israel" and thus all politicians they liked in the same way
They identified every partisan position they held as if it were equivalent to "Pro-Israel" and thus all politicians they liked in the same way
9/ I'll end for now. @threadreaderapp please unroll.
