Sam Harris is wrong about Palestine

Not to write yet another post about Sam Harris, for whom I just recently questioned his acceptance in the mindfulness community, I have to address his recently updated blog claiming that he will not debate anyone on the issue of Israel, especially in its ongoing genocide on the people of Palestine, a genocide he wholly believes does not exist.

Now, he’s actually written too much to address every awful and incorrect claim he’s made, so I picked out a handful to address here.

In opening his argument, Harris writes:

First, my general attitude: I’m not interested in exploring all the ways that Israel has missed the mark—from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s corrupt alliance with the far right, to the many crimes committed by settlers in the West Bank, to the deaths of innocent noncombatants in several wars—because none of these failings, however grave, will alter my sense that the ethical difference between Israel and her enemies remains vast, and the global preoccupation with the Jewish state, as though it were the worst villain among nations, is contemptible, being the product of perennial lies and delusions.

This is an incredibly disingenuous way to start any argument, but fully dismissing any of the evil done by the side you’re defending. Israel blew up hospitals, attacked Palestinians while they received food aid, medical aid, and in some cases while Palestinians fled areas they were told to leave. They had their houses bulldozed, children murdered, women and girls raped, and Harris just doesn’t want to discuss it because he claims there is some “ethical difference” between Israelis and Palestinians so what Israel does isn’t really of interest to him. The only “ethical” difference he goes on to describe is that one group are Muslims.

He then continues this line of reasoning by claiming that “jihadists” are worse than Nazis. Yes, worse than Nazis.

I think militant Islam is ten times worse than you think it is. When I talk about “jihadists” and their various groups—Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the IRGC, etc.—I’m talking about people who I consider to be worse than Nazis (jihadists being, essentially, Nazis who are certain of Paradise). My views about the conflict in the Middle East will not fundamentally change unless my critics produce evidence that Israel has become as evil as her enemies.

The worse than Nazis claim isn’t all suprising giving that when neo-Nazis marched on Charlottesville in 2017, killing Heather Heyer, he blamed the left for attacking “peaceful Nazis.” The second one concedes that you believe Nazis can be peaceful, you’ve really chosen a side.

The Nazis killed 6 million Jews alone in just World War 2, not to mention the millions of deaths lost in the war waged by them. In contrast, the best estimates of deaths caused by so-called jihadists are estimated between 300 and 400 thousand. Which is a long way from the 6 million plus figure.

As ironic as it is to downplay the holocaust in a post that is about Israel, this is also par for the course with Harris. The Nazis were not Muslims, and to Harris, there is nothing worse on this planet. Not only is his claim simply non-factual and revisionist, it’s racist and xenophobic.

The problem in the Middle East is not, and has never been, the existence of the state of Israel. The problem is jihadism, Islamism, Islamic extremism, Islamofascism, militant Islam—or whatever words you want to use to describe the belligerence and triumphal lunacy of those who take the most pernicious doctrines of Islam too seriously.

A case he proves next when he just lays out that his issue Islam and those who adhere to the doctrine “too seriously,” but in every argument Harris has ever made about these jihadists, he never mentions that while they may share a religion, based on regional circumstances, and may be radicalized in those beliefs, that it is things like US foreign policy that have truly radicalized them. Being bombed by the US for decades, has created quite a lot of people willing to die to stop it. Harris simply blames the religion, no one else is to blame.

This also negates the fact that Israel carried out actions and even at one time settled in the West Bank prior to Hamas.

He then really takes the cake with the next claim:

If the Palestinians laid down their arms, there would be peace. There could be a two-state solution; there could even be a one-state solution; it wouldn’t matter. If the Palestinians simply stopped killing Jews and stopped building a culture that celebrates pointless murder and martyrdom as its highest values, there could be a diverse, tolerant, and prosperous society between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. There could have been one eighty years ago. But if the Israelis laid down their weapons, there would be a genocide. This was obviously true on October 7th, 2023. And for anyone who has been paying attention, it has been true on every other day since the founding of the state of Israel.

We have to focus here for a moment on October 7, and stop pretending this is when it started. Palestinians did everything they could to end the occupation before Hamas and before October 7. No matter how horrific we can agree October 7 was, an action I don’t want to see from any fight, we also have to understand that October 7 was not an anomaly and didn’t come out of nowhere.

Palestinians were living under Israeli occupation and other forms of restriction long before Hamas came to power in Gaza. Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza in 1967, while the West Bank has remained under occupation and Gaza has experienced periods of Israeli control and, since 2007, blockade after Hamas took over Gaza.

Hamas did not take power in the strip until 2007, yet prior to 2007, Israel had killed and displaced 100s of thousands of Palestinians, and during long periods in the 1970 through 2005, there were large non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation, all met with violent, and even deadly retaliation by Israeli forces.

So this is frankly a lie and nothing more from Harris. Before Hamas took power in Gaza, Palestinians tried peaceful resistance and it didn’t amount to peace.

This is because ultimately, Harris isn’t pushing “peace” but rather, he’s pushing subjugation. He’s saying that if Palestinians just gave up, they’d not be in a fight for their land, and they should just surrender. He then claims if Israel was to lay down their arms, there would be genocide.

In 2017, Hamas endorsed a two state solution, and even more recently offered to lay down their arms should a Palestinian state be recognized. Who wouldn’t accept this? Israel. One of the biggest obstacles to peace in the area is not Hamas, but Israel itself because they are not seeking two-states, they are wholly committed to a single state in which they control all of the land.

Even if, Israel took all the land and stopped the fighting, they would move to expel Palestinians from the land, conducting a cultural genocide of epic proportions. We cannot pretend this is a fight for peace, this is a fight for land and to create one large Zionist state, which has no room for Palestinian people.

Like he does in the rest of the Middle East, Harris refuses to understand Hamas and how they came to power. Armed struggle is nothing new, and when you’re living in an open air prison, subjected to oppression at the level Palestinians are, you eventually grow tired of failed diplomacy and corruption as you saw with the Fatah’s rule.

To just claim that Hamas is “militant Islam” is to dismiss their fight not for Islam, but for the people of Palestine. This would be like reducing those who fought against slavery in the US to just their religion, and then call them extremists for it. Armed struggle in the world may not be ideal, but it’s reality.

This also erases an important historical aspect of Hamas in which it had two wings. It’s militant wing, and it’s political wing. Strategically, Israel did all it could to send the political wing into hiding and all but destroyed it leaving on the militant wing which it could then use an excuse to carry out further military action.

But given the history of oppression and moves to further displace Palestinians in Gaza, October 7 was not a surprise to anyone, not even Israel, who by all accounts knew it was coming and played a role in ensuring it did so it had an excuse to carry out the genocide it had been seething for.

To dismiss what Israel is doing as just a justified war is outlandish, worse to then claim it’s justified because it must “wipe-out” jihadists, without ever taking a moment to look at the causes and conditions of what brought about the most recent fight, and to claim what Palestinian’s are doing as anything other than resistance and fighting for their lives is just pure evil.

In closing his post, in his own blog about why he won’t debate people on Israel, he says if people want to change his mind, they need to bring him better evidence, which, based on the title of his post, and the fact he won’t look into what Israel does wrong, he won’t accept. In this way, he’s no better than any religious fanatic he claims to hate who refuses any evidence that counters his worldview.