Akamaister on Nostr: Laser, I think we're getting pretty far away from the point of my original post, but ...

Laser, I think we're getting pretty far away from the point of my original post, but since you raised several theological and historical issues I'll answer them.

First, my post was not a defense of Netanyahu, nor was it primarily a defense of Israel. In fact I explicitly said that people should question Israel, the United States, governments, corporations, the media and even me.

My point was that freedom and censorship resistance do not relieve us of our responsibility for what we say, and that serious claims should be supported by evidence.

I don't oppose antisemitism because I'm a liberal or because I've somehow been duped into accepting a progressive narrative.

I oppose antisemitism because I believe hatred of Jews is wrong, just as I believe hatred of any group of people is wrong.

I'm also a Christian, so yes, I believe Jews need Christ.

Ben Shapiro needs Christ even though I admire and respect him.
Netanyahu needs Christ.

Palestinians need Christ. You need Christ. I need Christ. That's Christianity, and I don't have any problem saying it.

Where you and I apparently have a real theological disagreement is over Israel.

I don't hold to supersessionism. I don't believe the Church simply replaced Israel and that ethnic Israel therefore ceased to have any particular significance in God's purposes.

Paul's language in Romans 11 is important to me. As a Gentile believer I am a wild olive branch grafted into the cultivated olive tree. I'm perfectly happy to be the wild branch -- there's no shame in that at all. I didn't replace the natural branches, and Paul specifically warns Gentile believers not to boast over them: "it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you."

Paul also says of Israel that "as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers" and that "the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable."

I realize Christians have debated these passages and the relationship between Israel and the Church for a very long time.

We can disagree about that without pretending the other person isn't a Christian.

I also believe the modern State of Israel has a right to exist. That doesn't mean Israel is perfect, that Netanyahu is beyond criticism, or that every decision made by an Israeli government is justified. Those propositions don't follow from one another. Israel is a real nation populated by real human beings, and like every nation it can do things that are right and things that are wrong.

I want Israelis and their neighbors to live in peace. Israel has in fact made peace with former enemies and established relations with a number of Arab states. I would like to see much more of that and much less war.

On the Holocaust, I have a much stronger disagreement with what you wrote.

Approximately six million Jews were murdered. Calling that a "relatively small genocide" or saying that it only "probably qualifies" as genocide strikes me as minimizing something that doesn't need to be minimized in order to recognize other atrocities.

The Holocaust wasn't the largest mass killing in human history. Stalin and Mao were responsible for or presided over systems and policies associated with enormous numbers of deaths, and there have been many other genocides and mass atrocities. We should be able to acknowledge all of them.

Genocide isn't a competition.

What made the Holocaust particularly horrifying was not simply a number.

Nazi Germany deliberately and systematically attempted to eliminate European Jewry.

Six million murdered human beings don't become insignificant because someone else murdered even more people somewhere else.

And this actually brings me back to the point of my original post.

If someone wants to argue that conventional Holocaust history has been exaggerated, that Holocaust remembrance has become an "industry," or that Jews have manipulated the history for political purposes, those are claims. They require evidence.

Saying that human beings are sinful doesn't establish those claims. I agree completely that human beings are sinful. That's one of the most basic propositions of Christianity. But "human beings are sinful" doesn't logically establish "therefore Jews exaggerated the Holocaust."

That's exactly the distinction I was trying to make in my original note.

Question Israel. Question Holocaust historiography. Question Christianity. Question me. I have no desire to censor you for doing any of those things.

But bring evidence and make the argument.

And none of this changes my original point about decentralization: nobody needs to force me to tell the truth for me to have a moral obligation to tell the truth. Nobody needs to censor an ugly joke for me to have the right to call it disgusting. Nobody needs to force me to exercise self-restraint for self-restraint to be a virtue.

The fact that a decentralized protocol permits me to say something tells us nothing about whether what I chose to say was true, good, wise or responsible.

That was my point.

Freedom gives us choices. It doesn't make every choice equally good.