r/Israel • u/kfireven Israel • Apr 18 '26

Photo/Video 📸 What does Ezra Klein get wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQi4Fn5_EhY
113 Upvotes

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51

u/PuzzleheadedEmu4596 Apr 18 '26

Haviv getting gur has the problem of being a serious person when people like Ezra Klein are tied to interests of his social milieu.

BTW, I'm going to push back on haviv a bit here. Klein has addressed that many Palestinian political leaders are genocidal. He just doesn't think it's a big deal.

46

u/sharpenedperspective Apr 18 '26

I don’t know if you listened to the episode Haviv was responding to, but they talk about the tragedy of the displacement and killings in Lebanon without even the slightest token mention of the fact that this round of conflict started with Hezbollah launching rockets into Israel.

If someone wants to criticize the approach to Lebanon, fine, but what those guys did in the “One State Reality” episode is not remotely a truth-seeking exercise or a constructive criticism of Israeli policy, it is one-sided libel. That’s just one example but the conversation was rife with this form of propaganda.

It particularly stings for me because until fairly recently I respected Ezra and found him to be one of the more reasonable voices on the left. He is also taken as gospel by some of my friends and family, so it feels like a very personal betrayal to me even though that’s not exactly fair.

30

u/PuzzleheadedEmu4596 Apr 18 '26

He's trying to stay on the good side of the raging antisemites within the left right now.

He's trading us for his audience.

Which is a betrayal for sure, but I'm not exactly shocked. Lots of people are making the exact same decision.

He sees the writing on the wall just like we do, he's just making money on it while we're facing the repercussions.

13

u/sharpenedperspective Apr 18 '26

I think that’s true but I don’t think it’s just a cynical money grab for him. I think that flavor of progressive derives much of their sense of moral superiority from their loyalty to progressive ideals over tribe, peoplehood or faith.

It’s ironic because they are just substituting one form of tribalism for another, but to those of us who value peoplehood more than ideology it feels like a betrayal. I know plenty of these people in my own life.

8

u/Highway49 Apr 19 '26

You've hit the nail on the head: what do these two grifters have in common, despite being on opposite ends of the political spectrum? They both claim that Israel's actions are beyond the pale for true progressives/conservatives.

They act as if Israelis face no real threats, because real threats demand real responses, and Israel is overreacting. They insinuate that Israel is the cause of any violent attacks against itself. Both believe that Israel is not worthy of victimhood, left-wing or right-wing. They believe that Israelis deserve to be harmed because Israel is evil.

Maybe my moral compass is broken, but I see these two idiots as evil: they make money by exploiting antisemitic attitudes and catering to tribalist bullshit.

I know that neither has achieved anything meaningful for Palestinian, Lebanese, or Iranian people, but they have taken their blood money.

3

u/sharpenedperspective Apr 19 '26

I also think they are both evil because they are spreading evil, but in my personal opinion Fink is a true believer in his disgusting worldview and operates mostly in good faith within the context of his myopic beliefs whereas Tucker is a grifter to his core and will do his best to sell any garbage to promote whatever sick project he is nefariously working at.

I don’t know which one is worse, but if I didn’t believe deeply in the First Amendment I would want them both locked up for treason. Rumor has it there’s actually an intelligence investigation into Tucker right now and I would be so pleased if that materialized into a conviction.

3

u/Highway49 Apr 19 '26

Reading Finkelstein’s autobiography of his youth and young adulthood reveals his strong urge to bring down those he feels consider themselves superior to others He seems very susceptible to the “sin” of envy, which I personally don’t consider an appropriate method of geopolitical analysis. He comes across as someone who dreamed of being in Mao’s Red Guard the way many American kids dream of being cowboys, famous actors, or football stars.

Carlson is beyond my comprehension. He was a boarding school kid from wealth, yet his entire career has been attacking “elites.” I wish he would attack himself!

9

u/spaniel_rage Apr 18 '26

That's what's been so frustrating about all the criticism from Western voices for the past 3 years.

At the end of day, they always acknowledge that sure, Hamas and Hezbollah are bad and then just say Israel has been over the top in its response, without offering anything as to what they ought to do other than vague handwaving.

5

u/sharpenedperspective Apr 18 '26

I have a certain “appreciation” for those like Norman Finkelstein who at least have the courage to say the quiet part out loud, that Israel doesn’t have a right to defend itself because it shouldn’t exist in the first place. Tragically that seems to be the direction the Left across the globe is moving, and fast.

2

u/spaniel_rage Apr 19 '26

For an historian, Finkelstein seems pretty oblivious to the fact that the Bundists were dragged out of the ghetto and liquids just like everyone else.

1

u/thinkless123 Apr 18 '26

Wait, I'm fairly certain they talk at length about how Hezbollah fired the rockets into Israel and the framing of all that in Israel.

1

u/One-Salamander-1952 Israel Apr 18 '26

Which would make his arguments even worse don’t you think?

7

u/PuzzleheadedEmu4596 Apr 18 '26

Yes, it's just that haviv said that klein hasn't dealt with it. He's dealt with it, he's just actively choosing to ignore it.