‘Pro-Palestine’ beliefs are a status symbol.
It is easy to target Israel because that is the fashionable cause among those who enjoy adding to their ever-expanding collection of luxury beliefs.
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To an increasing extent, luxury beliefs are replacing luxury goods.
Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confirm status on the upper class while often inflicting costs on the lower classes, according to bestselling author Rob Henderson. A core feature of luxury beliefs is that the believer is comfortably insulated from the consequences of their beliefs.1
In 2014, a study found that a strong support from high-income Americans (in the top income decile) doubles the probability that a policy will be adopted2 — but they are often sheltered from the consequences of their preferences.
For instance, the “defund the police” movement gained serious momentum in 2020. One year later a survey found that the highest-income Americans were by far the most supportive of defunding the police. Despite the fact that most people did not support this movement, major U.S. cities subsequently reduced spending for police departments, which contributed to violent crime waves.
The results have been extraordinarily awful: Compared with those who earn more than $75,000 per year, the poorest individuals are seven times more likely to be victims of robbery, seven times more likely to be victims of aggravated assault, and 20 times more likely to be victims of sexual assault.3
A similar representation of so-called “pro-Palestine” advocates exists. Certainly, many “pro-Palestinians” are Muslims (25 percent of the world’s population) who are not necessarily socioeconomically privileged, but have been brainwashed by their Islamist dogma.
More specifically, a successful, welcomed Jewish state (even if in the Jews’ indigenous homeland) indicates that the Islamic world is regressing — because Muslims have withdrawn from land they once colonized — which is not how the Islamic story is supposed to go. Islam is expected expand, not contract. A sovereign Jewish state on land that once belonged to the Islamic caliphate is an admission of defeat, a terrible debacle.
As such, Islamist “anti-Zionism” does not include anti-colonialism, Palestinian nationalism, claims of Israeli “apartheid,” or classifying Jews as part of the “White oppressor class.” It is rooted in a 1,300-year-old Islamic narrative that is delegitimized if Israel is not. The Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas and Hezbollah are offshoots and Iran and Qatar are patrons, regularly preaches about how “Palestine” belongs to the entire Islamic world.
But this is not the same narrative as “pro-Palestinian” Westerners. For these folks, “pro-Palestine” beliefs are a status symbol — because the believer is comfortably insulated from the consequences of their beliefs.
It is easy to act as if you are the IDF Chief of Staff while living in Europe or North and South America or South Africa or Australia, since you will never feel the burden of residing mere kilometers from jihadist terrorism hotbeds in Gaza, the West Bank, and southern Lebanon.
It is easy to advocate for a “two-state solution” since you will never cohabitate in either of these two states. Similarly, it is easy to pontificate about “land for peace” while never giving up any of your own land (and conveniently ignoring all the multiple times that Israel has offered and given land to the Palestinians while receiving no long-term, genuine peace in return).
It is easy to pretend like Palestinians are “just like us” since you will never raise your children in Israel under the constant threat of jihadist terrorism — or send your children to Palestinian schools, where they explicitly teach students to hate and kill Jews, promote martyrdom, and detest peaceful coexistence.
All in all, “pro-Palestinians” will never have to deal with the side-effects of their so-called advocacy. Plus, it comes with an added bonus: “cultural capital” that virtue-signals to peers and greater society how much of a “humanitarian” and “social justice warrior” they are.
For example, “pro-Palestinian” protesters on Western college campuses have something strange in common: Many of the most high-profile protests have occurred at so-called “elite” universities where few students come from lower-income families.4 In the vast majority of cases, campuses that educate students mostly from working-class backgrounds have not had any protest activity.
Why is it that “pro-Palestinian” demonstrators are so concentrated at more elite colleges, and rare at those with larger percentages of working-class students? One possible explanation is that the more selective and wealthier colleges attract and encourage students who are bored with their immense privilege and no longer aroused by luxury goods, so they venture to collect luxury beliefs.
On the flip side, it is entirely unsurprising that lower- and middle-class Westerners are less concerned about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and greater Middle East. While they may have a surface-level opinion on these subjects, they are largely focused on other concerns like jobs; taking care of family members; and domestic issues such as healthcare, education, crime, infrastructure, and the economy.
People who have with multiple responsibilities — like working a job while studying at college — are unlikely to devote their limited free time to protesting about an issue that they do not perceive as high-priority. Indeed, as renowned French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu wrote: “The best measure of cultural capital is undoubtedly the amount of time devoted to acquiring it.”5
And it is not just students participating in this circus. Professors at these universities are also a profound part of the mix. As New York University Professor Scott Galloway put it: “The strongest brand in the world is not Apple or Mercedes-Benz or Coca-Cola. The strongest brands are MIT, Oxford, and Stanford. Academics and administrators at the top universities have decided over the last 30 years that we’re no longer public servants; we’re luxury goods.”6
“… the ultimate vehicle for a luxury item is to massively and almost artificially constrain supply,” added Galloway. “[Academics] get a lot of ego gratification every time our deans stand up in front of the faculty and say, ‘This year, we didn’t reject 85 percent of applicants; we rejected 87 percent!’ — and there’s a huge round of applause. That is tantamount to the head of a homeless shelter bragging about turning away nine of 10 people who showed up last night.”
Many Westerners claim they care so much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because some of their hard-earned taxpayer money is funneled to Israel — as they give the Jewish state disproportionate attention, fury, and criticism while conveniently ignoring the other thousands of line items in their country’s national budget. There is a term for this: It is called “selective outrage.”
Let’s break this down: Countries allocate a fraction of their budget to foreign aid, and a portion of that goes to Israel, one of the West’s most loyal allies in a strategically crucial region.
Most countries’ foreign aid budget is a tiny sliver of the overall national budget, and the aid to Israel is even smaller. For those losing sleep over this minuscule expenditure, they clearly have no concept of how national spending works.
Maybe they should focus on the billions wasted on nonstop bureaucratic inefficiencies or on the endless government programs which are created to rally populist support — and then forever remain in the national budget despite producing minimal results.
But no, it is easier to target Israel because that is the fashionable cause among those who enjoy adding to their ever-expanding collection of luxury beliefs.
Next, let’s consider what this aid actually does. Foreign aid to Israel is not just a handout; it is an investment in stability and mutual security. Israel is a democratic ally in a region plagued by authoritarian regimes and extremist terror groups. This aid helps ensure that Israel remains a bastion of democracy and a bulwark against the spread of radicalism.
Moreover, if we are playing the “I don’t want my money going to…” game, let’s be consistent. Taxpayer money funds countless initiatives and countries worldwide, many of which have dubious returns. How about the money that goes to regimes with questionable human rights records? Or the funds that disappear into corrupt administrations?
At the same time, many Western countries send billions of dollars to the Palestinians despite knowing that terrorist organizations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad siphon part of the cash to fund terrorism.
If you accept part of your taxpayer money being used for terrorism that includes deliberately gang-raping women, kidnapping children and the elderly, and burning whole families to death — while protesting against your taxpayer money being sent to another democratic country that helps keep yours safe — there is also a term for this. It is called: pure hypocrisy.
There is a reason why 80 to 90 percent of Israeli Jews are politically in the center and to the right — because we are the dog in the fight, or what Theodore Roosevelt, former President of the United States, termed: “the man in the arena.”
At a timeless speech in 1910, Roosevelt said:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Yet the world wants to tell Israelis how to think, act, and defend themselves for reasons that are unbeknownst to me.
A healthy majority of Israelis are smart, peaceful, tolerant, and considerate. We are not inherently against a Palestinian state, but we would prefer to see significant reforms within Palestinian society and government, as well as a serious sample size of time to demonstrate that the Palestinians are willing and able to police themselves and live in peaceful coexistence, before agreeing to yet another “land for peace” deal that historically does not yield peace.
For the time being, a Palestinian state would simply be a UN-sanctioned cesspool of terrorism that bolsters the Islamic Republic of Iran’s masterplan to achieve regional hegemony in the Middle East.
Many of us Israeli Jews have leftist views on social issues like minority rights, healthcare, gender equality, poverty, affordable housing, and disability rights. The difference is that we Israeli Jews prioritize national security above many of these issues because genocidal Arabs have continued to wage wars against the Jewish state since its inception in 1948.
Frankly, we are more concerned about staying alive than we are with collecting luxury beliefs so we can brag about how much of a “humanitarian” and “social justice warrior” we are.
Plus, there were plenty of these “peace at all costs” Israelis living on the border with Gaza prior to October 7th; Palestinian terrorists murdered many of them on that fateful Saturday, confirming what most Israelis have long believed: There has never been and still does not exist a true partner for peaceful coexistence among Palestinian leadership.
In the same breath, there is a time and place to genuinely advocate for peace. The Israelis have demonstrated a willingness to directly negotiate with the Palestinians multiple times over several decades.
But this time and place is not during an existential war on six fronts orchestrated by the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose regime has explicitly celebrated the complete destruction of Israel as a key pillar of its geopolitical agenda since 1979. For those who actually understand the reality of the present-day Middle East, there are two countries working to destabilize the region, and one of them is not Israel. I will give you a hint: They rhyme with Shiran and Shatar.
The West, to which Israel is loyally allied, no doubt has skeletons in its closet that must be acknowledged, such as colonialism, racism, imperialism, and so forth. To the extent that reparations make sense, commensurate with history and other relevant precedents, I have no problem with them.
We must also reckon with the U.S.-led West’s desire for continued world domination. Obviously many of us in the West support the Western world despite its imperfections; at the same time, it is easy to understand how governments like those in China, Russia, Iran, and other countries are unfond of Western hegemony, especially when it is on their doorsteps (since it weakens their domestic control and hampers their own hegemonic aims).
But we must also reckon with the self-declared enemies of the West — the enemies who, if they were in control of our societies, would promptly eliminate freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to peacefully protest, freedom of the press, universal access to education, and so forth.
The death of luxury beliefs would immediately follow.
“All-In Summit: ‘Luxury Beliefs are Status Symbols’ with Rob Henderson.” All-In Podcast.
“Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” American Political Science Association.
“Statistical Abstract of the United States.” U.S. Census Bureau.
“Are Gaza Protests Happening Mostly at Elite Colleges?” Washington Monthly.
Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Forms of Capital.” New York, Greenwood, 1986.
“The Coming Disruption: Scott Galloway predicts a handful of elite cyborg universities will soon monopolize higher education.” New York Magazine.
Agreed. And I’ll propose some detail.
It used to be that our old “incumbent” elites looked askance at Israel (the old distrust of Jews by WASPS), and the “insurgent” elites they struggled with somewhat favored Israel (1940s, 1950s & 1960s).
Right around 1970 the two classes of elites flipped on this issue (or one of the insurgent groups replaced the incumbent group - not sure which). The new incumbent elites have latched onto the larger idea that being anti-colonialist is the “correct” (incumbent) position, which makes them anti-Israel, among other things.
I am not high status and therefore have no ability to play the elite “Game of Distinction”. My support of Israel is much more practical. The people trying to disappear Israel would also like to disappear Christians in America (and Europe). And I don’t want to be disappeared so Israelis become my natural allies.
The more I read the happier future I see - not because of all the terrible things happening but due to seeing so many people waking up to what is happening. The fightback is starting to coalesce. I see this everywhere I read - this article confirms so much of what my own thoughts have been with the accurate descriptions of others like "luxury beliefs".
"Benefits for me, costs for thee" is a universal phenomenon in the current Western world. And not merely in matters relating to luxury opinions but even economic matters. Look at mass immigration at a time of housing crises for example.
As to academia's sell-out to elitist value-signalling there is an excellent article from Yuri Bezmenov here:
https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/harvard-crimson-education-jamie-beaton-ponzi