Ctrl-F-Genocide

[Valin]

Tablet:

Sam Harris reminds Andrew Sullivan to choose his words wisely on Gaza

Liel Leibovitz

August 15, 2014

 

Last month, as the fighting in Gaza was raging on, Sam Harris posted a thoughtful essay titled “Why Don’t I Criticize Israel?”. Andrew Sullivan replied. Sensing the possibility of a robust conversation, and neither man having a reputation for shying away from confrontation, Sullivan and Harris got on the phone for a 90-minute chat about Gaza. What followed was one of the finest pieces of contemporary theater I’ve read in years, equally remarkable for Harris’s level-headed and intelligent replies as it is for Sullivan’s rants, defying logic and morality in a wild effort to portray the Jewish State as a genocidal demon.

 

Genocide is rarely amusing, but in one of the conversation’s sharpest points, Sullivan denies having used the term, and Harris sets the record straight (and delivers a short lesson in computer literacy along the way):

 

 

Sullivan: It’s ethnic cleansing.

 

Harris: Fine. But I don’t want us to slide off this point. Go back and read your blog post. You call it genocide, and you draw the concentration camp implication in a way that does not differentiate between the Jewish version, designed to get civilians out of the way, and the Nazi version, designed to reduce them to ash.

 

Sullivan: But the idea that anybody would come close to that is horrifying.

 

Harris: They’re not close at all. This brings me back to the other topic I mentioned at the top of this call, regarding why it’s so damn hard to talk about this issue in the first place. We have to be honest about the plain meaning of words. When you use a word like “genocide” to describe a person’s intentions—

 

Sullivan: I didn’t.

 

Harris: You do in your blog post. Just go back and look at it.

 

Sullivan: I’m looking at it right now.

 

Harris: Do a keyword search for “genocide.”

 

Sullivan: I’m not good at doing that kind of thing.

 

Harris: Just type control-F, or command-F, and then “genocide.”

 

Sullivan: I see now: “Genocide and ethnic cleansing.” You’re right. But he does believe in killing every civilian in Gaza who resists—

 

Harris: Andrew, he does not believe in killing every civilian in Gaza. He’s talking about combatants. I only know this person from your blog, but I read what you wrote, and I read what you quoted. The man wants to separate the civilians from the militants so that the IDF can bomb the hell out of the militants.

 

 

It’s an important distinction, but Sullivan does not concede the point......(Snip)