Thank you for this. Just a P.O.I. : Gabor Mate is not a psychologist. He's a family physician [who publishes books as if he were a psychologist]. He worked for a time with a harm reduction organization, hence his "authority" on addictions, but I was told by one of his former colleagues from that time that he is "incapable of getting anything done".
I wonder if you have thoughts on Ilan Pappé? I have recently lost friendships due to people disappearing down a rabbit hole of his writing. The claims my otherwise thoughtful friends now make: "Zionists are fanatics", "The kids at the peace rave were asking for it by dancing close to the fence", and more of this ilk, has left me in a state of despair. Bonhoeffer had a salient point, but there's more going on here. These people are not stupid, but have embraced a hateful distortion that is out of character and completely mystifies me. Do you know of anyone besides Benny Morris dissected Pappé's propaganda? These folks also dismiss Morris as a "fanatic".
Thanks for the clarification re: Gabor Mate. I could have sworn that he's been introduced on podcasts as a psychologist, but maybe I just got it wrong.
I know that Ilan Pappé belongs on this list, but I don't know enough about him to do a full takedown.
I'm not surprised he's been introduced as such, given the content of the books he's published. But he's not a psychologist by training, as far as I am aware. Just by celebrity.
I was going to post this! Gabor Mate is a family physician. I used to be a fan, and have read several of his books, and he almost exclusively uses case studies from his practice and conjecture to make his points -- there's very little research. He also repeats many of the same arguments that another (better in my opinion) Jewish trauma expert, Alice Miller, made decades before him ... without ever citing her work.
Gabor published a particularly stupid take in The Guardian recently, where he basically gets the science on how the amygdala affects personality backwards in an attempt to convince readers that conservatives having larger amygdalae on average than leftists means conservatives are more authoritarian. Except, whoops, a smaller amygdala is actually associated with psychopathy and Cluster B disorders, and a larger one with greater empathy.
Ilan Pappe knows Hebrew and has been in an archive. However, his interpretation of the '48 war and Plan Dalet is one school of thought in the vast historiographical debate that for lack of a better term constitutes Nakba studies. You can do a whole class on how various thinkers have interpreted Plan Dalet over time and why. The new ways of thinking about it came about as a result of the First Intifada. All historical writing reflects the conditions under which it is written, and when the conditions change, the interpretations change.
Rabbi Shmuley is also a schnorer. He wanted to know how to get a copy of my book. I told him where he could buy one for me to sign for him at my local bookstore. Neither the store nor me ever heard from him. I think he wanted it for free.
Oh my, the stereotypes he's meeting just keep piling up! He was in the news for selling his NJ "estate" for over $3 million. Pretty sure he could afford to pay for your book.
I second the message from @anne to include Pappe. My introduction to him came in the 90’s from a smug WASP ex along with articles by Eric Hobsbawm.
It was a bit like if a man would send me Phyllis Schafly and Anita Bryant commentaries. You may be too young to recognize those names, but they were the Ben Shapiros of cis-women. In the realm of batshit women, they were “palatable” to conservatives in ways that MTG and Bobert are not but which bred (I chose that word intentionally) those two hateful monsters.
[Progressive]/“Left” antisemitism has been spiced and stewing by narcissistic academics who have shown a wholesale contempt toward actually progressive Jews with a myopic hypocrisy from their thrones made of their own intellectual bile.
With that in mind, I would also add Judith Butler.
Oy! How could I have left out that entitled narcisstic peice of work.
If anything, I think these people often stand out for their egos which have been fed by an unrelentingly sanctimonious
Can I add David Remnick and Brooke Gladstone (I mean, media people, but still a version of “thinkers” I used to “know”. (I feel a Gotye song coming on.)
I listened to several shows on NPR this weekend and, as they have this entire year and prior, that were gobsmackingly myopic, fascinating in their choice of words and all the things they did not ask and all the people they ignored.
And today, the CBC (Canada’s public broadcaster, the ME reporter, with whom I was in uni back in the day, referred to Hezbollah saying “It had its heyday hijacking a few planes.” He actually used the word “heyday”. And meh, what’s a “few planes” when it comes to hijacking. (Gaaaaaaaa.)
Wow. It's like you channeled me! I have never heard someone write my thoughts before. And I never heard anyone articulate them anywhere. Glad to know there are at least 2 of us :) Well done. Kudos!
AMEN. From your electronic lips to Hashem's multi-dimensional ears!
Sadly, our Tribe has been plagued since time immemorial with Self-Hating Morons. From Josephus to Spinoza to Noam Chomsky and this pack of fools, they are a perpetual plague on our House. Hashem never said being Chosen meant having it easy.
L'Shana Tova.
Death to our enemies and silence from those who need to STFU.
The Jewish community of his time would disagree with you.
"Spinoza’s ties to the Jewish community would begin to weaken even before his excommunication, but he was in his early years a practicing Jew. After his father died in 1654, Spinoza recited the Mourner’s Kaddish for 11 months, in keeping with the traditional custom. Yet around this time he seems to have assimilated further into non-Jewish Dutch society, going to live with van den Enden, adopting the name Benedict, and deepening his identification with his country’s secular culture.
These actions likely precipitated the action taken against him on July 27, 1656, when he was formally excommunicated by the Jews of Amsterdam following a 30-day period in which Spinoza was enjoined to repent and declined."
Yes, all this is true, but it does not make him self hating or antisemitic. He never rejected being a Jew. He was just a non-practicing non-religious Jew, though some say that he was “God intoxicated” but it still does not make him hateful. I don’t really think that we can put every Jewish person who is not religious into the category of self hating or antisemitic. I have deep affinity for Judaism, but I’m not a practicing Jew and it always rubs me the wrong way when I see this type of association.
Sorry to hear this. It really leaves out a large number of Jewish people. To be completely honest, I don’t think we can afford looking at Jewish people through this lens. I believe that every Jewish person who cares about Judaism as culture and tradition not just a religion should be encouraged to stay within the tribe, not placed into a specific conditions. But I think we talked about it before and it is just my opinion. My strong opinion.
There was a debate a few years ago about whether Spinoza can be considered Jewish philosopher or a philosopher will happen to be a Jew. This debate resolved in viewing Spinoza as a Jewish philosopher.
Just because it's highly unlikely does not mean it is not worth doing.
The Rebbe always admonished us to think positively about everything and everyone because you never know if an errant Jew may be called back to reason and faith the 600,000th time he's head the message. So never stop trying. The trying itself is a mitzvah.
Another point about Shapiro that is far more relevant than when I originally posted this article: now that she won 'Antisemite of the Year,' it's important to note that Shapiro is one of the people directly responsible for Candace Owens's rise to fame. Think he'll take ownership of that?
Piers Morgan = Grifter of others sufferings and smiling all the way through it? AlJazzera without saying you are Aljazerra. He has had more islamic apologists in his show ( read terrorist) than Iranian Broadcasting has.
Ben Shapiro and that voice or.
how to remain a virgin until your wedding night.
Norman Finkelstein: Delusional at best, more likely inspired by Stalinist Marxisim and Mien Kampf and aided by fellow great thinker John Mearshmier?
Alan Douchewitz? Nuff said, you travelled multiple times on Epsteins Jet.
STFU AND DISSAPEAR!.
The others I will trust you on your judgment. Not to familiar with them
I absolutely agree with you about the list, but I’m confused about Ben Shapiro…. while I agree with you that the tone and speed of his voice are an abomination, even after re-reading your post on him, I don’t understand why he’s on the list….. I’d appreciate if you could expand on that further. Thanks so much.
I disagree with Ben Shapiro on certain topics and he can be off-putting but he is an excellent debater. He is super fast, sharp like a whip, and very knowledgeable. Putting him in the same group as Finkelstein is not fair.
The person clearly missing from the list is Thomas Friedman!
Thank you for this. Just a P.O.I. : Gabor Mate is not a psychologist. He's a family physician [who publishes books as if he were a psychologist]. He worked for a time with a harm reduction organization, hence his "authority" on addictions, but I was told by one of his former colleagues from that time that he is "incapable of getting anything done".
I wonder if you have thoughts on Ilan Pappé? I have recently lost friendships due to people disappearing down a rabbit hole of his writing. The claims my otherwise thoughtful friends now make: "Zionists are fanatics", "The kids at the peace rave were asking for it by dancing close to the fence", and more of this ilk, has left me in a state of despair. Bonhoeffer had a salient point, but there's more going on here. These people are not stupid, but have embraced a hateful distortion that is out of character and completely mystifies me. Do you know of anyone besides Benny Morris dissected Pappé's propaganda? These folks also dismiss Morris as a "fanatic".
Thanks for the clarification re: Gabor Mate. I could have sworn that he's been introduced on podcasts as a psychologist, but maybe I just got it wrong.
I know that Ilan Pappé belongs on this list, but I don't know enough about him to do a full takedown.
Jill, He is regarded in the treatment of trauma as something of an expert
Clearly, in light of his denial of the trauma that Israel experienced, he should not be.
Agreed! How ironic.
He might have been introduced that way by hosts trying to give him credibility.
I'm not surprised he's been introduced as such, given the content of the books he's published. But he's not a psychologist by training, as far as I am aware. Just by celebrity.
I was going to post this! Gabor Mate is a family physician. I used to be a fan, and have read several of his books, and he almost exclusively uses case studies from his practice and conjecture to make his points -- there's very little research. He also repeats many of the same arguments that another (better in my opinion) Jewish trauma expert, Alice Miller, made decades before him ... without ever citing her work.
Gabor published a particularly stupid take in The Guardian recently, where he basically gets the science on how the amygdala affects personality backwards in an attempt to convince readers that conservatives having larger amygdalae on average than leftists means conservatives are more authoritarian. Except, whoops, a smaller amygdala is actually associated with psychopathy and Cluster B disorders, and a larger one with greater empathy.
https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/authoritarianism-and-the-amygdala
Psychopathy and Cluster B disorders.
Meghan's Mike Drop!
Hi Anne, I have been in your same situation about Ilan Pappe' readers.. in Italian libraries, him and Norman Finkelstein and Francesca Albanese's books are everpresent and most sold about the conflict, with no other counter narrative... I've found this with sources quoted https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelPalestine/comments/18wb3ia/nobody_should_be_quoting_ilan_papp%C3%A9_or_his_works/?rdt=59952 and also other historians and https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-flaws-of-Ilan-Pappes-account-of-Israeli-history and https://www.camera.org/article/the-washington-post-ignores-the-facts-on-pappe/ and the most important one: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13531040802284130
Norman Finkelstein just cribs NGO reports.
Ilan Pappe knows Hebrew and has been in an archive. However, his interpretation of the '48 war and Plan Dalet is one school of thought in the vast historiographical debate that for lack of a better term constitutes Nakba studies. You can do a whole class on how various thinkers have interpreted Plan Dalet over time and why. The new ways of thinking about it came about as a result of the First Intifada. All historical writing reflects the conditions under which it is written, and when the conditions change, the interpretations change.
Thank you so much!
Rabbi Shmuley is also a schnorer. He wanted to know how to get a copy of my book. I told him where he could buy one for me to sign for him at my local bookstore. Neither the store nor me ever heard from him. I think he wanted it for free.
Oh my, the stereotypes he's meeting just keep piling up! He was in the news for selling his NJ "estate" for over $3 million. Pretty sure he could afford to pay for your book.
The number of successful people who ask me for free work greatly outnumbers the number of small business owners/self-employed asking me for free work!
Not surprising
OWE!
Yes, yes yes and yes. If only.
I second the message from @anne to include Pappe. My introduction to him came in the 90’s from a smug WASP ex along with articles by Eric Hobsbawm.
It was a bit like if a man would send me Phyllis Schafly and Anita Bryant commentaries. You may be too young to recognize those names, but they were the Ben Shapiros of cis-women. In the realm of batshit women, they were “palatable” to conservatives in ways that MTG and Bobert are not but which bred (I chose that word intentionally) those two hateful monsters.
[Progressive]/“Left” antisemitism has been spiced and stewing by narcissistic academics who have shown a wholesale contempt toward actually progressive Jews with a myopic hypocrisy from their thrones made of their own intellectual bile.
With that in mind, I would also add Judith Butler.
Judith Butler probably deserves her own separate article, along with Naomi Klein.
Oy! How could I have left out that entitled narcisstic peice of work.
If anything, I think these people often stand out for their egos which have been fed by an unrelentingly sanctimonious
Can I add David Remnick and Brooke Gladstone (I mean, media people, but still a version of “thinkers” I used to “know”. (I feel a Gotye song coming on.)
I listened to several shows on NPR this weekend and, as they have this entire year and prior, that were gobsmackingly myopic, fascinating in their choice of words and all the things they did not ask and all the people they ignored.
And today, the CBC (Canada’s public broadcaster, the ME reporter, with whom I was in uni back in the day, referred to Hezbollah saying “It had its heyday hijacking a few planes.” He actually used the word “heyday”. And meh, what’s a “few planes” when it comes to hijacking. (Gaaaaaaaa.)
Oh yes. And Masha Gessen
Wow. It's like you channeled me! I have never heard someone write my thoughts before. And I never heard anyone articulate them anywhere. Glad to know there are at least 2 of us :) Well done. Kudos!
Thanks. I try to be a voice for the oppressed (by which I mean disgruntled Zionists like me).
Keep up the good work!
I am totally Down with your STFU list. Beinart and Shapiro, two hideous sides of the same coin
AMEN. From your electronic lips to Hashem's multi-dimensional ears!
Sadly, our Tribe has been plagued since time immemorial with Self-Hating Morons. From Josephus to Spinoza to Noam Chomsky and this pack of fools, they are a perpetual plague on our House. Hashem never said being Chosen meant having it easy.
L'Shana Tova.
Death to our enemies and silence from those who need to STFU.
Why Spinoza? I would not put Spinoza on this list.
The Jewish community of his time would disagree with you.
"Spinoza’s ties to the Jewish community would begin to weaken even before his excommunication, but he was in his early years a practicing Jew. After his father died in 1654, Spinoza recited the Mourner’s Kaddish for 11 months, in keeping with the traditional custom. Yet around this time he seems to have assimilated further into non-Jewish Dutch society, going to live with van den Enden, adopting the name Benedict, and deepening his identification with his country’s secular culture.
These actions likely precipitated the action taken against him on July 27, 1656, when he was formally excommunicated by the Jews of Amsterdam following a 30-day period in which Spinoza was enjoined to repent and declined."
taken from https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/spinoza/
Yes, all this is true, but it does not make him self hating or antisemitic. He never rejected being a Jew. He was just a non-practicing non-religious Jew, though some say that he was “God intoxicated” but it still does not make him hateful. I don’t really think that we can put every Jewish person who is not religious into the category of self hating or antisemitic. I have deep affinity for Judaism, but I’m not a practicing Jew and it always rubs me the wrong way when I see this type of association.
Two Jews, three opinions.
I don’t truly trust a man who does not wrap tefillin every morning.
:)
Would you trust a woman who does wrap tefillin every morning? Just checking.
Why would I trust someone acting against Hashem's Stated Will?
Sorry to hear this. It really leaves out a large number of Jewish people. To be completely honest, I don’t think we can afford looking at Jewish people through this lens. I believe that every Jewish person who cares about Judaism as culture and tradition not just a religion should be encouraged to stay within the tribe, not placed into a specific conditions. But I think we talked about it before and it is just my opinion. My strong opinion.
There was a debate a few years ago about whether Spinoza can be considered Jewish philosopher or a philosopher will happen to be a Jew. This debate resolved in viewing Spinoza as a Jewish philosopher.
I write concisely. My ":)" has a meaning.
Telling jews to shut up? That's like asking Khamenei to convert to Judaism
https://marlowe1.substack.com/p/lshana-tova
You’re not wrong.
Just because it's highly unlikely does not mean it is not worth doing.
The Rebbe always admonished us to think positively about everything and everyone because you never know if an errant Jew may be called back to reason and faith the 600,000th time he's head the message. So never stop trying. The trying itself is a mitzvah.
Jill, this is fantastic. I will repost to my account and add my list to yours
Ben Shapiro was really good on the Israel stuff right after 10/7/2023, but I agree his approach can be off-putting.
Tip of the hat to The Liberal Jew for making a truly inclusive list of left and right wing Jews!
Sincerely-
A conservative Jew ;)
Another point about Shapiro that is far more relevant than when I originally posted this article: now that she won 'Antisemite of the Year,' it's important to note that Shapiro is one of the people directly responsible for Candace Owens's rise to fame. Think he'll take ownership of that?
Piers Morgan = Grifter of others sufferings and smiling all the way through it? AlJazzera without saying you are Aljazerra. He has had more islamic apologists in his show ( read terrorist) than Iranian Broadcasting has.
Ben Shapiro and that voice or.
how to remain a virgin until your wedding night.
Norman Finkelstein: Delusional at best, more likely inspired by Stalinist Marxisim and Mien Kampf and aided by fellow great thinker John Mearshmier?
Alan Douchewitz? Nuff said, you travelled multiple times on Epsteins Jet.
STFU AND DISSAPEAR!.
The others I will trust you on your judgment. Not to familiar with them
I agree about Dershowitz. I started listening to him and realized that it is just about him.
The sex rabbi was always after profits so he never interested me. I am surprised about Shapiro though I did not listen much to him or other podcasts.
But Spinoza really puzzled me. On this token, we can include Maimonides too, if we are him selectively.
שנה טובה ומתוקה
I absolutely agree with you about the list, but I’m confused about Ben Shapiro…. while I agree with you that the tone and speed of his voice are an abomination, even after re-reading your post on him, I don’t understand why he’s on the list….. I’d appreciate if you could expand on that further. Thanks so much.
Oops, you left out Bernie Sanders!
I wrote an entire article on him, it’s available on my archive.
I disagree with Ben Shapiro on certain topics and he can be off-putting but he is an excellent debater. He is super fast, sharp like a whip, and very knowledgeable. Putting him in the same group as Finkelstein is not fair.
The person clearly missing from the list is Thomas Friedman!
I do not think Ben Shapiro should be on this list.