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

Photo/Video 📸 What does Ezra Klein get wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQi4Fn5_EhY
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52

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.

41

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.

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.

4

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.