My interpretation is that Iran/Hamas leadership deliberately instructed their fighters to kill children, women, the old, etc. in the most horrific manner possible in order to provoke Israel into a lengthy military operation.
My conclusion is that any country is within its rights to decide that the existence of a hostile power on its borders willing to engage in such actions is unacceptable.
I think as a general principle "Cui bono?" is always a good starting point. Who's come out ahead in this giant mess? It sure isn't the Gazans, or the Hamas fighters who are actually on the ground in Gaza. And it certainly isn't Israel or the US.
Iran on the other hand has successfully delayed the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, perhaps indefinitely. If that's the goal then obviously the longer the conflict goes on the better which may explain why Hamas fighters were apparently instructed to make the incursion as bloody as possible.
If mass butchery of unarmed Jewish civilians is populism in Gaza, then even the dismantling of Hamas as an organization wouldn’t lead to anywhere useful.
I believe that your interpretation is shared by many. However, it is not mine. Among other things, Gaza does not exist as a hostile power on Israel’s borders. But that’s a point of international law. The larger idea, I would suggest, is that genocidal practices are inherently unjustifiable.
The problem isn't Gaza, it's Hamas. Look at the relative peace in the West Bank.
Was Hiroshima or Nagasaki "genocidal"? Doolittle supposedly told another officer that if the US lost the war they'd all be tried for war crimes. Yet history has apparently forgiven them, as it tends to do for all winners.
Supporting their liberation doesn't mean supporting their intention to slaughter the jews. I don't know why you think that. Anyone can say:
"Palestinians should have their own state" - AGREE
"The jews deserve to die" - DISAGREE
If Israel were to say, with genuine intention, "At the end of this war we will begin the process of granting Palestine a state, but only if they are not run by a genocidal regime" this would be a possible future that satisfies the first and not the second.
It may not be realistic at this point in the game, but it's a perfectly coherent position, while yes, agreeing intellectually with Palestinian religious conservatives on the issue of liberation.
Sometimes in a conflict the stronger power gets to set the terms. The allies set the terms for Germany and Japan after WW2 to prevent more conflict, and it worked. I don't think that was wrong.
Them not having a genocidal government is the only way to even attempt to prevent future conflict.
Does Israel get the veto? Not clear. Probably the veto happens before there is even an election, banning any party that promotes violence. But the actual mechanisms and who is in charge would need to be negotiated after anyone was even interested in this idea. There's not much point in me doing an individual intellectual exercise for something that's not even slightly realistic right now.
Sure, my entire post is premised on the idea of both sides agreeing to the idea, and acknowledged that it is right now not realistic. Not sure what we're saying here anymore.
Congratulations - I want to to know that you specially are the reason this newsletter is going comments free from now on. You're everything I critiqued here. Just an absolute vacuum of self-knowledge.
"“A plate made me feel vulnerable, harassed and victimized” is everything these people say they’re against. For the smarter and more principled ones, this is exactly the culture of performative vulnerability you’re always complaining about, a result of the death of resilience as a communal value that (I agree) has hurt a lot of young people. "
TL:DR 2024 Western culture prizes victim status and valorizes victim status, and as such, various groups demand victim status on any pretext and even compete for big prizes to be The Biggest Victim Of Them All.
And of course, being able to demand something so petty as the removal of crockery that offends and to have that demand met is an expression of power.
Well, I recommend reading the Guardian article. I think it's pretty obvious that anybody, kids included, can make a political statement and some of those plates are doing precisely that. What else is one to conclude from plates that depict Israeli territory with a Palestinian flag flying over it?
"You may think that there doesn’t appear to be anything remotely confrontational about those places, but you can’t tell why they’re so wicked by looking at them; they become offensive only when you know that they were painted by Palestinian children, children from Gaza."
I thought it was pretty funny when Jonathan Chait argued that Bari Weiss is recreating neoconservatism.
The biggest issue for Republicans right now in my small city is that the school board voted to have Columbus Day and Veteran's Day as school days. State law dictates that their must be programming to acknowledge these holidays in-school in this case. Scores of old Republican men are speaking out about how "offended" they are and how this decision was "divisive" and not "inclusive". I don't know if they think this is a clever way to turn progressive language around on their political enemies, or if they actually are offended and hurt by kids being in school on Columbus Day.
Except it's not surprising when insanity is a reaction to insanity. Or rather, when rationality disappears, or is relegated to insignificance, then we are left with only irrationality. IE, this piece.
I'm surprised this isn't a more widely shared belief - people don't get that neoconservatives were not originally about aggressive foreign policy, they were Trotskyists who liked socialism and wanted a global revolution for democracy rather than a global revolution for communism after seeing the horrors of Stalin and Lenin.
I’ve often been guided by the idea that you can tell a society’s fault lines by the subjects that are impossible to rationally examine or discuss. For the US, for example, it’s always been gun control. For Canada, it’s Indigenous rights. For the western world, apparently it’s Palestine.
I call them religious-level topics; ones in which everyone's views are based in personal experience and beliefs, very deeply held due to identitarian or cultural factors, and any logical discussion would require a MASSIVE harmonization of priors. Politics is increasingly becoming this way, and so is culture, especially sexuality/gender.
"One plate showed the Dome of the Rock, a site in Jerusalem of religious significance to Muslims and Jews, with a Palestinian flag. Another, featuring the Palestinian fishing industry, was accompanied by a text referring to the shoreline of Palestine running from Gaza’s border with Egypt to Israel’s border with Lebanon. Since 1948, most of the shoreline has been in the state of Israel."
"Even if every last Palestinian was actively homophobic, it would not in any sense suggest that gay people cannot or should not support the Palestinian liberation effort, as one thing has nothing to do with the other. "
Unless they actually have to live there after the liberation is complete.
In terms of the chess issue the theory that I've heard bandied about is that aggression is essential for playing chess at the higher levels. It's why younger men are ranked higher than older masters and why the best women players aren't ranked anywhere near the best men.
I was just reading The Blank Slate and Pinker mentioned that supplemental testosterone makes women better at quantitative tests about abstract spatial reasoning, and taking estrogen makes men worse at them.
Now I'm wondering if any chess players are juicing 😮
Or who does anyone else think is honest, lol! By which I mean “people who have clear principles from which they argue, and are willing to let those principles lead them to argue against their “tribe” where and when this comes up.”
I think Freddie belongs to this camp, and on the right I think David French does. Um, Nate Silver, I think.
On the moderate side, I'd put Matt Yglesias in this category, but FDB clearly doesn't. Wonder how he feels about Ezra Klein, who I think has been a tremendous voice of reason on Israel/Palestine. Scott Alexander.
Center right: I think I'd put Ross Douthat there, but again, don't think many would agree with me. Megan McCardel. Jane Coustan.
Right: Kevin Williamson. I'm not sure I could possibly name any MAGA-types - I don't think it's possible to be a good faith Trumpist, but maybe this is my blind spot. Agree w/ David French.
Left: Matt Bruenig (and Elizabeth Bruenig, but I don't see her write much anymore.) Jamelle Bouie (but again, I don't expect agreement there.) FdB.
Nate Silver, Andrew Sullivan, Matt Taibbi, Jesse Singal, J K Rowling, Joe Rogan in terms of individuals who have a genuine commitment to being open minded.
I think David French is there to whip up controversy and I'm not impressed with the rigor of his thinking.
Blairism was the greatest victory of Thatcherism, in that Thatcher's embrace of the market was so total her opposition party assumed it. If the new GOP that emerges post-Trump supports gay marriage, legal weed, and abortion that would mark a victory for the cultural left (if it does in fact happen this way. Abortion is popular but still illegal in many states and the current GOP still has much leadership pushing a national ban).
However, for many on the right the victory of free markets proved hollow, as it came with a decline in the religion, family, patriotism that they valued. Similarly, many of the left may see a victory of individual liberties as hollow, and realize these individual liberties are good, but don't mean as much without economic security.
Best piece you've written in a while. This is where Marxist scholars and thinkers have become important for me, on racism, the Reeds, the Field sisters, Cedric Johnson etc, on Israel/Palestine folks like Daniel Randall, Ben Burgis and Ralph Leonard-they are able to criticize the excesses of liberalism, academia, and social justice culture while maintaining and developing democratic, universalist progressive Left positions to struggle for.
Freddie, I think you should just be you. Your long paragraph citing your lefty bonafides means jack shit to me. It isn't like you have a strong desire to belong to some sort of in-group, is it? Trying to fit in with another group is just not your thing. I think it is lonely being as smart as you are sometimes.
We agree on only a few things, but I found you to be someone who can express lefty ideas intelligently, so I keep my subscription going so I can better understand our national dialogue.
Our recent public discourse is founded upon dismissing an argument if it isn't made by the Right Kind of Person. This goes both ways.
He'll still get it because the people making that criticism aren't acting in good faith. Freddie is a clear leftist with a well articulated world view. People pretending he's somehow on the right and using that as a basis for criticism are simply being intentionally obtuse.
I find him to be one of the best representatives of the original class based Marxism on the Internet, right up there with David Harvey, whose RSA piece on the 2008 financial crisis is still a classic:
Thanks, Freddie. You've given me a lot to think about. I've consumed less and less anti-woke content over the past two years because, well, it's gotten kinda boring. I haven't read Quillette or listened to Joe Rogan in several years. The vibe has shifted.
As cringe as I still find elite liberal culture, and as unpleasant as woke mobbing and shaming is, I'm probably even more disturbed by how people have reacted to it by falling down the Dave Rubin/Tim Pool rabbit hole.
Social Justice culture does bear some of the blame for alienating so many people, but at the same time, people are responsible for the decisions they make.
Turns out any movement described as "anti-" is bound to the same fate as the cause they claim to oppose. And both wind up equally pathetic, with the anti side coming off worse, as they had no actual substance to their argument.
I hadn't heard of the "Gaza plates" controversy until now. But when I clicked onto the Guardian article, I saw that you weren't representing the objection fairly. The objection definitely was not the mere fact that the plates were made by children from Gaza, as you misleadingly imply. According to the Guardian, the objection was that some of the plates, and the accompanying commentary (which was presumably not by the children themselves) apparently made contentious political statements. I quote:
"One plate showed the Dome of the Rock, a site in Jerusalem of religious significance to Muslims and Jews, with a Palestinian flag. Another, featuring the Palestinian fishing industry, was accompanied by a text referring to the shoreline of Palestine running from Gaza’s border with Egypt to Israel’s border with Lebanon. Since 1948, most of the shoreline has been in the state of Israel."
And the pro-Zionist organization which campaigned for its removal said explicitly (according to the Guardian): "We asked for the artwork to be removed because of the propaganda, not because it was by children from Gaza".
You can still say - and I would agree with you! - that even so the exhibition should not have been taken down; you can also say - and I would agree with you here too - that some (not all) of the "anti-woke" are very unpleasantly selective in their anti-wokeness, and if they were consistent they would have mocked the taking down of this exhibition in the way that they mock conceding to sensitivities in other directions. Even if some of the exhibition was one-sidedly political, people really should be able to cope with seeing political art which they don't happen to agree with, and in other contexts the "anti-woke" would see that clearly.
But telling the real story makes it clearer that the hypocrisy goes in both directions: because it is fairly clear (I think) that if (to use your analogy) a Black student group objected to a set of plates made by white children, NOT because the makers were white, but because some of the plates and the accompanying commentary included (e.g.) support for a contentious political program like Blue Lives Matter, then most "social justice" liberals would support the Black objectors, and be very happy to see the exhibition removed. The problem is that "social justice" liberals typically do not see Jews as a minority whose sensitivities deserve to same consideration as is given to Blacks or Hispanics or Asians. If they did, then probably the "Gaza plates" exhibition would not have taken the form it did in the first place, just like we can't realistically imagine a hospital putting up a set of plates with commentary supporting Blue Lives Matter.
The only consistent people are those (like you, I think!!) who would argue that the exhibition should be maintained in both cases. Sadly, they are rarer than they should be.
How about some consideration as to whether a site is appropriate? Politics should just be kept out of hospitals. I have no idea why anyone would want to inject current affairs into such a setting.
A museum on the other hand? A college campus? Absolutely appropriate.
They probably didn't see them as political when they put them up - just some nice plates and a welcome gesture to Muslim patients. (I certainly wouldn't have second-guessed any of the designs.)
I agree that a hospital isn't an appropriate place for political art, but it's a dilemma once quasi-political art is already in place. Both leaving it up and taking it down is considered a political statement. Same challenge with statues and art of now-problematic figures.
Yeah, but let's say they put up a bunch of art featuring a certain cartoon frog.
I would say that taking it down is far less problematic than putting it up for the specific case where the people in charge were ignorant of the meaning of certain symbols, memes, etc. At least then you can claim ignorance.
I read the article; the plates should be left, to show us that Gazan children are taught from a young age to create propaganda serving a religious forever war.
I would argue that the exhibition should be maintained both in the actual case Freddie refers to and the hypothetical case you cite.
I have some knowledge of the deplatforming and silencing of voices on the Israel/Palestine issue by protagonists on both sides, and I consider it deplorable regardless of who is doing it and who it is being done to. However it cannot be denied that in some very important jurisdictions, such as countries in the English-speaking world, and in Germany, those on the pro-Israel side seeking to do the silencing generally have much greater power at their disposal to do so, although with some non-trivial exceptions.
Agreed. Seems to be a trend. I enjoy some of FDBs writing. Screeds such as this, not so much.
Except in this case it’s not Hannibal Lecter in prison; it’s Lecter guarding the prison walls.
I read the events of October 7th and beyond differently.
My interpretation is that Iran/Hamas leadership deliberately instructed their fighters to kill children, women, the old, etc. in the most horrific manner possible in order to provoke Israel into a lengthy military operation.
My conclusion is that any country is within its rights to decide that the existence of a hostile power on its borders willing to engage in such actions is unacceptable.
I think as a general principle "Cui bono?" is always a good starting point. Who's come out ahead in this giant mess? It sure isn't the Gazans, or the Hamas fighters who are actually on the ground in Gaza. And it certainly isn't Israel or the US.
Iran on the other hand has successfully delayed the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, perhaps indefinitely. If that's the goal then obviously the longer the conflict goes on the better which may explain why Hamas fighters were apparently instructed to make the incursion as bloody as possible.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/top-secret-hamas-documents-show-terrorists-intentionally-targeted-elem-rcna120310
If anything, that’s an even worse omen
If mass butchery of unarmed Jewish civilians is populism in Gaza, then even the dismantling of Hamas as an organization wouldn’t lead to anywhere useful.
I believe that your interpretation is shared by many. However, it is not mine. Among other things, Gaza does not exist as a hostile power on Israel’s borders. But that’s a point of international law. The larger idea, I would suggest, is that genocidal practices are inherently unjustifiable.
The problem isn't Gaza, it's Hamas. Look at the relative peace in the West Bank.
Was Hiroshima or Nagasaki "genocidal"? Doolittle supposedly told another officer that if the US lost the war they'd all be tried for war crimes. Yet history has apparently forgiven them, as it tends to do for all winners.
Supporting their liberation doesn't mean supporting their intention to slaughter the jews. I don't know why you think that. Anyone can say:
"Palestinians should have their own state" - AGREE
"The jews deserve to die" - DISAGREE
If Israel were to say, with genuine intention, "At the end of this war we will begin the process of granting Palestine a state, but only if they are not run by a genocidal regime" this would be a possible future that satisfies the first and not the second.
It may not be realistic at this point in the game, but it's a perfectly coherent position, while yes, agreeing intellectually with Palestinian religious conservatives on the issue of liberation.
Sometimes in a conflict the stronger power gets to set the terms. The allies set the terms for Germany and Japan after WW2 to prevent more conflict, and it worked. I don't think that was wrong.
Them not having a genocidal government is the only way to even attempt to prevent future conflict.
Does Israel get the veto? Not clear. Probably the veto happens before there is even an election, banning any party that promotes violence. But the actual mechanisms and who is in charge would need to be negotiated after anyone was even interested in this idea. There's not much point in me doing an individual intellectual exercise for something that's not even slightly realistic right now.
Sure, my entire post is premised on the idea of both sides agreeing to the idea, and acknowledged that it is right now not realistic. Not sure what we're saying here anymore.
He thinks that because he's the person being critiqued in this essay
Congratulations - I want to to know that you specially are the reason this newsletter is going comments free from now on. You're everything I critiqued here. Just an absolute vacuum of self-knowledge.
"“A plate made me feel vulnerable, harassed and victimized” is everything these people say they’re against. For the smarter and more principled ones, this is exactly the culture of performative vulnerability you’re always complaining about, a result of the death of resilience as a communal value that (I agree) has hurt a lot of young people. "
TL:DR 2024 Western culture prizes victim status and valorizes victim status, and as such, various groups demand victim status on any pretext and even compete for big prizes to be The Biggest Victim Of Them All.
And of course, being able to demand something so petty as the removal of crockery that offends and to have that demand met is an expression of power.
Well, I recommend reading the Guardian article. I think it's pretty obvious that anybody, kids included, can make a political statement and some of those plates are doing precisely that. What else is one to conclude from plates that depict Israeli territory with a Palestinian flag flying over it?
O the horror.
I would say this falls into a substantial grey zone, but it's not as innocent as pictures of teddy bears and unicorns.
And maybe it's just me, but what springs to mind when I hear this stuff is the videos of little kids in green headbands wielding toy guns.
I'm sure you do.
Those videos are simultaneously horrifying and kind of cute. A pretty good combination when it comes to making something stick in your head.
Seems that's a recent development tho. WC used to value and valorize the opposite, no?
Quick typo note:
"You may think that there doesn’t appear to be anything remotely confrontational about those places, but you can’t tell why they’re so wicked by looking at them; they become offensive only when you know that they were painted by Palestinian children, children from Gaza."
I presume you meant plates, not places.
I thought it was pretty funny when Jonathan Chait argued that Bari Weiss is recreating neoconservatism.
The biggest issue for Republicans right now in my small city is that the school board voted to have Columbus Day and Veteran's Day as school days. State law dictates that their must be programming to acknowledge these holidays in-school in this case. Scores of old Republican men are speaking out about how "offended" they are and how this decision was "divisive" and not "inclusive". I don't know if they think this is a clever way to turn progressive language around on their political enemies, or if they actually are offended and hurt by kids being in school on Columbus Day.
Except it's not surprising when insanity is a reaction to insanity. Or rather, when rationality disappears, or is relegated to insignificance, then we are left with only irrationality. IE, this piece.
I'm surprised this isn't a more widely shared belief - people don't get that neoconservatives were not originally about aggressive foreign policy, they were Trotskyists who liked socialism and wanted a global revolution for democracy rather than a global revolution for communism after seeing the horrors of Stalin and Lenin.
I’ve often been guided by the idea that you can tell a society’s fault lines by the subjects that are impossible to rationally examine or discuss. For the US, for example, it’s always been gun control. For Canada, it’s Indigenous rights. For the western world, apparently it’s Palestine.
And yes, I know that’s not the point of the article.
I call them religious-level topics; ones in which everyone's views are based in personal experience and beliefs, very deeply held due to identitarian or cultural factors, and any logical discussion would require a MASSIVE harmonization of priors. Politics is increasingly becoming this way, and so is culture, especially sexuality/gender.
"One plate showed the Dome of the Rock, a site in Jerusalem of religious significance to Muslims and Jews, with a Palestinian flag. Another, featuring the Palestinian fishing industry, was accompanied by a text referring to the shoreline of Palestine running from Gaza’s border with Egypt to Israel’s border with Lebanon. Since 1948, most of the shoreline has been in the state of Israel."
Please include a trigger warning before you describe something so traumatizing
I think Texans would find it a little strange if somebody put up a painting of the Alamo with a Mexican flag over it.
I'm sure I'd be terrified. *yawn*
Well, I'm sure you don't care. Regardless of whose flag flies over the fort the mice will scamper regardless.
"Even if every last Palestinian was actively homophobic, it would not in any sense suggest that gay people cannot or should not support the Palestinian liberation effort, as one thing has nothing to do with the other. "
Unless they actually have to live there after the liberation is complete.
I would suggest that the real people being murdered trump your hypothetical concern.
In terms of the chess issue the theory that I've heard bandied about is that aggression is essential for playing chess at the higher levels. It's why younger men are ranked higher than older masters and why the best women players aren't ranked anywhere near the best men.
In other words, testosterone.
I was just reading The Blank Slate and Pinker mentioned that supplemental testosterone makes women better at quantitative tests about abstract spatial reasoning, and taking estrogen makes men worse at them.
Now I'm wondering if any chess players are juicing 😮
Curious — who do you think the honest brokers are out there?
Or who does anyone else think is honest, lol! By which I mean “people who have clear principles from which they argue, and are willing to let those principles lead them to argue against their “tribe” where and when this comes up.”
I think Freddie belongs to this camp, and on the right I think David French does. Um, Nate Silver, I think.
Others?
On the moderate side, I'd put Matt Yglesias in this category, but FDB clearly doesn't. Wonder how he feels about Ezra Klein, who I think has been a tremendous voice of reason on Israel/Palestine. Scott Alexander.
Center right: I think I'd put Ross Douthat there, but again, don't think many would agree with me. Megan McCardel. Jane Coustan.
Right: Kevin Williamson. I'm not sure I could possibly name any MAGA-types - I don't think it's possible to be a good faith Trumpist, but maybe this is my blind spot. Agree w/ David French.
Left: Matt Bruenig (and Elizabeth Bruenig, but I don't see her write much anymore.) Jamelle Bouie (but again, I don't expect agreement there.) FdB.
but honestly, I feel very blessed to the the only person on Earth who has the intellectually integrity to see things as they really are
Nate Silver, Andrew Sullivan, Matt Taibbi, Jesse Singal, J K Rowling, Joe Rogan in terms of individuals who have a genuine commitment to being open minded.
I think David French is there to whip up controversy and I'm not impressed with the rigor of his thinking.
Off Topic: Freddie you may find this of interest if you haven't seen it yet.
https://www.persuasion.community/p/when-everything-is-eugenics-nothing
Blairism was the greatest victory of Thatcherism, in that Thatcher's embrace of the market was so total her opposition party assumed it. If the new GOP that emerges post-Trump supports gay marriage, legal weed, and abortion that would mark a victory for the cultural left (if it does in fact happen this way. Abortion is popular but still illegal in many states and the current GOP still has much leadership pushing a national ban).
However, for many on the right the victory of free markets proved hollow, as it came with a decline in the religion, family, patriotism that they valued. Similarly, many of the left may see a victory of individual liberties as hollow, and realize these individual liberties are good, but don't mean as much without economic security.
This is much more interesting take on our cultural world than FDBs. The smugness embedded in this piece is pretty damn off-putting. And shallow.
"Blairism was the greatest victory of Thatcherism, in that Thatcher's embrace of the market was so total her opposition party assumed it."
See also Reagan and the DLC.
Best piece you've written in a while. This is where Marxist scholars and thinkers have become important for me, on racism, the Reeds, the Field sisters, Cedric Johnson etc, on Israel/Palestine folks like Daniel Randall, Ben Burgis and Ralph Leonard-they are able to criticize the excesses of liberalism, academia, and social justice culture while maintaining and developing democratic, universalist progressive Left positions to struggle for.
Freddie, I think you should just be you. Your long paragraph citing your lefty bonafides means jack shit to me. It isn't like you have a strong desire to belong to some sort of in-group, is it? Trying to fit in with another group is just not your thing. I think it is lonely being as smart as you are sometimes.
We agree on only a few things, but I found you to be someone who can express lefty ideas intelligently, so I keep my subscription going so I can better understand our national dialogue.
Our recent public discourse is founded upon dismissing an argument if it isn't made by the Right Kind of Person. This goes both ways.
I think he's just trying to head off some stupid criticism he could receive for this piece.
He'll still get it because the people making that criticism aren't acting in good faith. Freddie is a clear leftist with a well articulated world view. People pretending he's somehow on the right and using that as a basis for criticism are simply being intentionally obtuse.
I find him to be one of the best representatives of the original class based Marxism on the Internet, right up there with David Harvey, whose RSA piece on the 2008 financial crisis is still a classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0
Thanks, Freddie. You've given me a lot to think about. I've consumed less and less anti-woke content over the past two years because, well, it's gotten kinda boring. I haven't read Quillette or listened to Joe Rogan in several years. The vibe has shifted.
As cringe as I still find elite liberal culture, and as unpleasant as woke mobbing and shaming is, I'm probably even more disturbed by how people have reacted to it by falling down the Dave Rubin/Tim Pool rabbit hole.
Social Justice culture does bear some of the blame for alienating so many people, but at the same time, people are responsible for the decisions they make.
Turns out any movement described as "anti-" is bound to the same fate as the cause they claim to oppose. And both wind up equally pathetic, with the anti side coming off worse, as they had no actual substance to their argument.
I hadn't heard of the "Gaza plates" controversy until now. But when I clicked onto the Guardian article, I saw that you weren't representing the objection fairly. The objection definitely was not the mere fact that the plates were made by children from Gaza, as you misleadingly imply. According to the Guardian, the objection was that some of the plates, and the accompanying commentary (which was presumably not by the children themselves) apparently made contentious political statements. I quote:
"One plate showed the Dome of the Rock, a site in Jerusalem of religious significance to Muslims and Jews, with a Palestinian flag. Another, featuring the Palestinian fishing industry, was accompanied by a text referring to the shoreline of Palestine running from Gaza’s border with Egypt to Israel’s border with Lebanon. Since 1948, most of the shoreline has been in the state of Israel."
And the pro-Zionist organization which campaigned for its removal said explicitly (according to the Guardian): "We asked for the artwork to be removed because of the propaganda, not because it was by children from Gaza".
You can still say - and I would agree with you! - that even so the exhibition should not have been taken down; you can also say - and I would agree with you here too - that some (not all) of the "anti-woke" are very unpleasantly selective in their anti-wokeness, and if they were consistent they would have mocked the taking down of this exhibition in the way that they mock conceding to sensitivities in other directions. Even if some of the exhibition was one-sidedly political, people really should be able to cope with seeing political art which they don't happen to agree with, and in other contexts the "anti-woke" would see that clearly.
But telling the real story makes it clearer that the hypocrisy goes in both directions: because it is fairly clear (I think) that if (to use your analogy) a Black student group objected to a set of plates made by white children, NOT because the makers were white, but because some of the plates and the accompanying commentary included (e.g.) support for a contentious political program like Blue Lives Matter, then most "social justice" liberals would support the Black objectors, and be very happy to see the exhibition removed. The problem is that "social justice" liberals typically do not see Jews as a minority whose sensitivities deserve to same consideration as is given to Blacks or Hispanics or Asians. If they did, then probably the "Gaza plates" exhibition would not have taken the form it did in the first place, just like we can't realistically imagine a hospital putting up a set of plates with commentary supporting Blue Lives Matter.
The only consistent people are those (like you, I think!!) who would argue that the exhibition should be maintained in both cases. Sadly, they are rarer than they should be.
How about some consideration as to whether a site is appropriate? Politics should just be kept out of hospitals. I have no idea why anyone would want to inject current affairs into such a setting.
A museum on the other hand? A college campus? Absolutely appropriate.
They probably didn't see them as political when they put them up - just some nice plates and a welcome gesture to Muslim patients. (I certainly wouldn't have second-guessed any of the designs.)
I agree that a hospital isn't an appropriate place for political art, but it's a dilemma once quasi-political art is already in place. Both leaving it up and taking it down is considered a political statement. Same challenge with statues and art of now-problematic figures.
Yeah, but let's say they put up a bunch of art featuring a certain cartoon frog.
I would say that taking it down is far less problematic than putting it up for the specific case where the people in charge were ignorant of the meaning of certain symbols, memes, etc. At least then you can claim ignorance.
I read the article; the plates should be left, to show us that Gazan children are taught from a young age to create propaganda serving a religious forever war.
I would argue that the exhibition should be maintained both in the actual case Freddie refers to and the hypothetical case you cite.
I have some knowledge of the deplatforming and silencing of voices on the Israel/Palestine issue by protagonists on both sides, and I consider it deplorable regardless of who is doing it and who it is being done to. However it cannot be denied that in some very important jurisdictions, such as countries in the English-speaking world, and in Germany, those on the pro-Israel side seeking to do the silencing generally have much greater power at their disposal to do so, although with some non-trivial exceptions.
By God there's a lot of precious snowflakes in this thread, afraid of literal artwork by literal children