How can Douglas Murray lecture on antisemitism in Amsterdam, the very city that deplatformed several of us simply for having sympathy for Israel, which wasn’t a topic of our scheduled discussion? Maarten Boudry tells me that for the video below “he was invited by a right-wing party, so the rabid anti-Israel activists have no clout there.”
Yes, Murray is a conservative, but on the topic of Israel he’s on both the money and on the morality. That’s why many dislike him, though he’s been demonized for other reasons, like his distaste for immigrants coming to the West. I won’t discuss that here, as the video below doesn’t deal with that. If you’ve heard Murray on this topic before, there’s not much new, but I listened anyway.
If you click on “notes” at the youTube site after expanding the details, you’ll get a link to a transcript that goes along with the video. I actually listened to this rather than read it, as I like Murray’s eloquence. The lecture itself ends at 36:15, and then there are 24 minutes of audience questions, which Murray writes down and then answers. Here’s a near-comprehensive list:
Is it possible to defeat Hamas?
How do we get the ball rolling to get rid of antisemitism?
What are the psychological sources of antisemitism?
Should we stop using the word “Palestine” or “Palestinian” or “pro-Palestinian” given that there is not really a Palestinian people or country?
Given that the people of Iran are pro-Israel but its regime is the biggest source of anti-Israel weapons and support, what do we do?”
Why are the countries of Spain and Ireland vehemently anti-Israel while other European countries are more sympathetic to the country?
What can we do to make the silent majority about Israel “rise up”?
What do you think about Europe defending Western values?
What about Russia and China and other countries attacking Western values?
I can’t resist calling attention to his barb about Greta Thunberg, and why she’s the Nordic equivalent of a rōnin, a samurai without a master. The analogy starts at 47:14.
h/t: Bat
I watched this excellent speech, and it was great that he took so many questions, answering them with the same eloquence as in his prepared remarks.
Of course Hamas can be defeated! And, yes, I’m sick of Greta, too. Her behavior reminds me that many of the protestors are simply looking for a place to belong. When causes to protest about run low, antisemitism is always available.
Definitely worth watching.
Douglas Murray is to the right of me and some of his opinions are not my cup of tea. But in some (very important) issues there is no daylight between us. He is eloquent, very smart and principled, someone to follow, whether you nod in agreement or recoil in disagreement. If Hitchens had a (somewhat rightwing) heir…
He’s brilliant. And right. His commentary on the way Arabs regard Palestinians is superb: “They don’t care about them; Egypt loathes them, Jordan loathes them, Lebanon loathes them. All they care about is hating the Jews” (paraphrased).
So here in a modern, economically successful democracy surrounded by dictatorships that, if one is charitable, inhabit maybe the 16th century with some stuck in the 9th.
I’m so proud of our Israeli friends. ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One’ (Deuteronomy 6:4). Perhaps it is my fate in old age to see the transition from a ‘post’ to a ‘pre-war’ era. Murray reminds us of the things that really matter.
Yojimbo 🇯🇵🎬👘
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojimbo
https://youtube.com/watch?v=y_1iT_GmHTE
This is a “ronin” movie directed by Akira Kurosawa. 🇯🇵🎬👘🐱
Excellent. Thanks.
Thanks for posting this. He’s always well worth the time. I also love listening to him.
Very much worth watching. “societies in decline”… spot on.
About Iran, what is certain that a majority of Israelis were against retaliating against Iran, and are totally against a military confrontation with Iran.
That’s true for the other side, too, as far as can be ascertained (polling in Iran is fraught with difficulties, different from polling in Israel). Most Iranians seem not to want war with Israel, nor with America, and do not want the Iranian regime to squander money on military support of Palestinian “freedom fighters”, but I think mainly for pragmatic reasons of self interest. Also, Palis are Sunnis, and Iranians aren’t. Whether Iranians love Israel or support Israel in the current conflict against Hamas is another matter altogether. The highly educated secular upper crust doesn’t represent the population. I would guess many detest both sides equally, and/or just couldn’t care less about the whole conflict, and others support the Hamas cause in theory but don’t want to be caught up in the conflict.
If Murray is demonised for being hesitant about unrestricted immigration, I think that says more about the demonisers rather than it does about him. After all, I do not expect to be able to go and live in any country I please, so why do others feel they have the right to barge in?
I think it’s just the epidemic of generalized social anxiety seeking a viable target to blame for their failures. I’m deep in debt, have a uselessly specific humanities studies PhD and spend so much time socially active on the cell I cannot deal with actual human beings, so it’s them! The old shadowy adversary of unrecognized subconscious guilt protecting the ego by inventing a face saving conspiracy explanation. Same easy explanation politicians used on the Germans to assuage their economic pain from the overly punitive and destabilizing French treaty that Woodrow Wilson was too wimpy or ill to oppose.
On the topic of Douglas saying he never saw a single American flag in those pro-Hamas protests, I’d say he’s partly right.
I attended a training course in downtown Minneapolis for at least a week for my new post office job in North Dakota. One of those late evenings as I was walking towards the Trader Joe’s for groceries, I went across this massive protest that blocked part of the main roads, mostly young people drabbed in Palestinian flag garb and shouting the usual braindead “Free Palestine” slogans.
I noticed a few of the flags are American so Douglas was partly wrong.
On the right end, the entire flag design was a bastardization of the American flag by fusing it with Palestinian flag colors as much as a bastardization of those far right-wing protestors who fuse the American flag with Confederate colors.
How ironic they choose the same methods as the opposite political aisle they proclaim to hate and I shudder about how the veterans of today’s wars and the American Civil War if the latter were alive would react to how both flags spit on the values of this country were founded on.