#2 — Why Don't I Criticize Israel?

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 July 2014

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

In the wake of the recent war in Gaza, many readers have asked "Why don't you criticize Israel?" Here is my response. You can read an annotated transcript of this podcast at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/why-dont-i-criticize-israel

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I was going to do a podcast on a series of questions, but I got so many questions on the
0:26.1	same topic that I think I'm just going to do a single response here.
0:28.9	We'll do an Ask Me Anything podcast next time.
0:32.2	The question I've now received in many forms goes something like this.
0:36.9	Why is it that you never criticize Israel?
0:39.7	Why is it that you never criticize Judaism?
0:42.7	Why is it that you always take the side of the Israelis over that of the Palestinians?
0:47.7	Now this is an incredibly boring and depressing question for a variety of reasons.
0:52.7	The first is that I have criticized Israel and Judaism.
0:55.8	It seems to upset many people as I've kept some sense of proportion.
0:59.6	There's something like 15 million Jews on earth at this moment.
1:02.8	There are a hundred times as many Muslims.
1:04.8	I've debated rabbis who want to assume that they believe in a God who can hear our prayers.
1:09.9	They stop me mid-sentence and say, why would you think I believe in a God who can hear
1:14.1	prayers?
1:15.4	So there are rabbis, conservative rabbis, who believe in a God so elastic as to exclude every
1:21.4	concrete claim about him, and therefore nearly every concrete demand upon human behavior.
1:27.2	And there are millions of Jews, literally millions among the few million who exist, for
1:31.7	whom Judaism is very important and yet they are atheists.
1:34.7	They don't believe in God at all.
1:36.6	This is actually a position you can hold within Judaism, but it's a total non-sequitor in
1:40.8	Islam or Christianity.
	...

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