Once upon a time they warned us about "the uneducated." Now we should be warning them about the overly educated — and how they are indoctrinating millions of clueless, overly impressionistic students.
I hesitate to categorically attribute ulterior motives to all of them. While this may hold true for the authors of "Philosophy for Palestine" and letters of this cateory, the tragedy I wanted to underscore is that even morally upright and intellectually rigorous thinkers—veritable giants in their field—can succumb to ignorance and oversimplification. I would vouch that the latter group does not inherently harbor ill intentions. Their ignorance is perilous nontheless.
I believe you are correct in saying that with some of these "thinkers" (and I use the word loosely) there are no ill intentions at play here. At least none they are aware of. Just the horror of ignoring the obvious. Do philosophers not study history? Well documented history (and archeological evidence) of the Jewish people in Israel from biblical times until now? Did they not watch the videos of the atrocities committed by Hamas? Did they not study the Palestinians, themselves, for the last several decades? Or listen to their leaders' words which affirm that statehood was NEVER their goal? Just the destruction of Israel? How can anyone discuss "morality" without studying the facts surrounding the situation? Perhaps it's because these individuals are so detached from the real world they believe they can define morality any way that suits them. Or, is it because the threat is against Jews, a people they believe subconsciously is expendable? If all of the hate and violence directed towards Israel and world Jewry was directed to them or the communities they identify with, would their notions of morality be the same?
Yes, I believe that among the questions you've posed, there are several compelling reasons to explore, many of which may be encapsulated as the pitfalls of mere armchair theorizing.
"It is truly baffling how moral philosophers can so conveniently overlook such a glaring, almost textbook-like moral asymmetry in the conflict at hand. It is almost as if a surgeon were unable to distinguish between an appendix and an earlobe." This hits the bullseye!
I used to be very impressed with academic credentials and titles until it became glaringly real to me that they didn't account for as much as I thought. Today, it's even more obvious that these so called academics who may have had an extensive education have resorted to teaching political narratives, whereby students don't ask questions or seek answers. What I do know that gives me hope is that there are universities that are serious about education, and academics who have no time for making vacuous statements that do not align with reality. For them, prestige takes a back seat to what they value and that is learning.
Everything is kind of bizarro world. The Arabs say that the Israelis are European colonizers, when this is the farthest thing from true. The Jews are the indigenous people of Israel who were ethnically cleansed by the imperial powers of Christian Rome (70AD) and Islamic Arabia (600AD)---both imperial powers who would continue to colonize all of Europe and North Africa, which they still hold today.
I would approach with caution before asserting that "the same academic elites" fall into this category. While there were indeed numerous academics, including some misguided philosophers, advocating for "defund the police" and the like, I sincerely doubt this characterization extends to the thinkers I scrutinized in my analysis. The true tragedy, as I contend, lies in the fact that these morally upright thinkers, with their hearts in the right place, have veered terribly astray here, all without harboring ill intentions.
I didn't mean to imply that these were the same individuals. What we saw in 2020 were calls to defund the police because "racism". In 2024 we need to wipe Israel off the map because "colonialism". The same fuzzy logic, but exponentially more dangerous.
The complexity of the French that fascinated the American academy in the 1960s: Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze, Derrida and more, with the Theory of Deconstruction, the end of grand narratives and the idea that everything is pure narrative: history is fiction; it was taken to the extreme of denying the possibility that facts exist: everything is narrative. This complexity perished in the face of academics' need to publish and produce increasingly disruptive yet simple material that could also have an impact on social networks.
You are only half right. The Islamo/Leftist alliance is what's at play here because the Muslims would never have gotten as far as they have in the West WITHOUT leftist help. Wealthy Muslim states and players have been funding the Marxists since before the fall of the Soviet Union but especially since its fall. The Muslims needed cultural Marxist dogma to get the West sympathetic to the phony Palestinian cause, especially after 9/11. Can you explain why academia would embrace Muslim causes (as they are doing)? It's because academia is dominated by Marxists. I've been studying this unholy alliance for 20 years and watched it gain traction, especially after Obama (a known Marxist himself) became president and opened US coffers to Islam. Marxism and Islam have a common goal: the destruction of Western civilization. If, G-d forbid, that happens only then will they turn on each other because each is an ideology that seeks world domination for itself alone.
Academic decadence. A superb description.
It terrifies me how many ways the so-called intellectuals among us can justify anti-Semitism.
I hesitate to categorically attribute ulterior motives to all of them. While this may hold true for the authors of "Philosophy for Palestine" and letters of this cateory, the tragedy I wanted to underscore is that even morally upright and intellectually rigorous thinkers—veritable giants in their field—can succumb to ignorance and oversimplification. I would vouch that the latter group does not inherently harbor ill intentions. Their ignorance is perilous nontheless.
I believe you are correct in saying that with some of these "thinkers" (and I use the word loosely) there are no ill intentions at play here. At least none they are aware of. Just the horror of ignoring the obvious. Do philosophers not study history? Well documented history (and archeological evidence) of the Jewish people in Israel from biblical times until now? Did they not watch the videos of the atrocities committed by Hamas? Did they not study the Palestinians, themselves, for the last several decades? Or listen to their leaders' words which affirm that statehood was NEVER their goal? Just the destruction of Israel? How can anyone discuss "morality" without studying the facts surrounding the situation? Perhaps it's because these individuals are so detached from the real world they believe they can define morality any way that suits them. Or, is it because the threat is against Jews, a people they believe subconsciously is expendable? If all of the hate and violence directed towards Israel and world Jewry was directed to them or the communities they identify with, would their notions of morality be the same?
Yes, I believe that among the questions you've posed, there are several compelling reasons to explore, many of which may be encapsulated as the pitfalls of mere armchair theorizing.
"It is truly baffling how moral philosophers can so conveniently overlook such a glaring, almost textbook-like moral asymmetry in the conflict at hand. It is almost as if a surgeon were unable to distinguish between an appendix and an earlobe." This hits the bullseye!
I used to be very impressed with academic credentials and titles until it became glaringly real to me that they didn't account for as much as I thought. Today, it's even more obvious that these so called academics who may have had an extensive education have resorted to teaching political narratives, whereby students don't ask questions or seek answers. What I do know that gives me hope is that there are universities that are serious about education, and academics who have no time for making vacuous statements that do not align with reality. For them, prestige takes a back seat to what they value and that is learning.
Everything is kind of bizarro world. The Arabs say that the Israelis are European colonizers, when this is the farthest thing from true. The Jews are the indigenous people of Israel who were ethnically cleansed by the imperial powers of Christian Rome (70AD) and Islamic Arabia (600AD)---both imperial powers who would continue to colonize all of Europe and North Africa, which they still hold today.
In 2020 the same academic elites were justifying the BLM riots and the neo-Marxist demands to "defund the police" with similar intellectual cowardice.
I would approach with caution before asserting that "the same academic elites" fall into this category. While there were indeed numerous academics, including some misguided philosophers, advocating for "defund the police" and the like, I sincerely doubt this characterization extends to the thinkers I scrutinized in my analysis. The true tragedy, as I contend, lies in the fact that these morally upright thinkers, with their hearts in the right place, have veered terribly astray here, all without harboring ill intentions.
I didn't mean to imply that these were the same individuals. What we saw in 2020 were calls to defund the police because "racism". In 2024 we need to wipe Israel off the map because "colonialism". The same fuzzy logic, but exponentially more dangerous.
So, beheading babies, raping women and burning people alive amount to an "armed resistance". These academics are absolute PSYCHOPATHS.
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"underscored by influential academics unabashedly asserting that “the uprising of October 7th was an act of armed resistance.”2"
You say gravitas I would say gravid with intellectual excrement. Just saying
The complexity of the French that fascinated the American academy in the 1960s: Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze, Derrida and more, with the Theory of Deconstruction, the end of grand narratives and the idea that everything is pure narrative: history is fiction; it was taken to the extreme of denying the possibility that facts exist: everything is narrative. This complexity perished in the face of academics' need to publish and produce increasingly disruptive yet simple material that could also have an impact on social networks.
You are only half right. The Islamo/Leftist alliance is what's at play here because the Muslims would never have gotten as far as they have in the West WITHOUT leftist help. Wealthy Muslim states and players have been funding the Marxists since before the fall of the Soviet Union but especially since its fall. The Muslims needed cultural Marxist dogma to get the West sympathetic to the phony Palestinian cause, especially after 9/11. Can you explain why academia would embrace Muslim causes (as they are doing)? It's because academia is dominated by Marxists. I've been studying this unholy alliance for 20 years and watched it gain traction, especially after Obama (a known Marxist himself) became president and opened US coffers to Islam. Marxism and Islam have a common goal: the destruction of Western civilization. If, G-d forbid, that happens only then will they turn on each other because each is an ideology that seeks world domination for itself alone.