r/JewsOfConscience • u/Sweaty_Perspective_5 • Apr 08 '24
History Devil in disguise
These are old videos of Netanyahu speaking in interview and speaking to US Congress. Notice how US did regime change in all of these nation which were a potential threat to Israel. in Iraq they never found WMD's, in Libya they killed a good leader Gaddafi(Libya abandoned their nuclear program decades ago innexchange for peace)and they can't touch iran because iran actually has WMD's program unlike Iraq & Libya.
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u/unnatural_rights Jewish Apr 08 '24
potentially hot take: I would personally appreciate that we not, in a Jewish subreddit, indulge in language comparing any Jews to "the Devil", "Shaytan", "Satan" (again), "the spawn of Satan", "Moloch", and so forth, as is frequently present in this post and its comments, including from folks identified as non-Jewish allies.
Non-Jewish allies should, as allies, recognize the dangerous and ugly history of making such comparisons. However, even leaving that history aside, it's simply unnecessary. Netanyahu isn't a uniquely horrifying, inhuman, supernaturally evil creature; he's just a dude, a bad fucking dude, who believes and does bad fucking things, offends Jewish ethics and morals, and is actively harming Jews and non-Jews alike. Not only does exaggerating Netanyahu's beliefs and identity in this fashion indulge in over-the-top rhetoric - it suggests that the problem is Bibi specifically, rather than what Bibi's doing and how he's doing it.
Part of what we ought to be doing here on the Jewish left is orienting our work in a recognition of the fundamental humanity of everyone involved. That means recognizing that Palestinians are ordinary people being massacred in our name, and that our fellow Jews are ordinary people committing those massacres. Netanyahu doesn't need to be the villain in a fucking slasher movie to be viewed as reprehensible, and - if I'm being honest - the "Satan" and "Moloch" language smacks of a goyishe lens that is not appropriate in this space. If anything, I think it's worse that he's just some fucking putz who dragged his leftover room-temp ethnonationalism from the ash heap of history it was dumped in decades ago.