5 MYTHS ABOUT ISRAEL AND THE WAR IN GAZA

This is a transcript of a recorded podcast.

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There are five myths about Israel and the war in Gaza that I would like to address. However, there are two things I should say at the outset that are important and easy to lose sight of with the various pseudo-moral hallucinations being spread everywhere, in particular on social media.

The first point is that the problem that Israel faces with Hamas, and eventually Hezbollah, and ultimately Iran, while it is existential for Israel, and dangerous and difficult in many specific ways, is a variant of a larger problem that has nothing, in principle, to do with Israel or Jews or American foreign policy. This is a larger clash of cultures—I hesitate to follow Samuel Huntington in calling it a clash of civilizations, because I think real civilization—what we mean by “civilization” at this point in the 21st century—exists on only one side of this divide…