Readers should note that, days later, Dick has still not even attempted to provide a citation for his claim that the ADL are “Likudniks” and that fact, coupled with them being Jewish, means he can discard their polling results with a wave of the hand.
Readers should note that Dick attempted to provide a cite to substantiate the meme that Dershowitz calls anybody who criticizes Israel an anti-Semite simply for criticizing Israel (despite the fact that Dershowitz himself is a critic of Israel), but Dick’s own cite showed that his claim was a purely fictional claim of persecution, and Dershowitz was instead calling Tutu to task for Tutu’s blatantly anti-Semitic statements. Readers will also note that Dick has, still, not provided a single cite to actually show that Dershowitz has ever called anybody an anti-Semite for simply criticizing Israel.
Readers may note, as well, that not only was Dick perfectly willing to handwave away years of polling results because of uncited “Likudnik” influence, now he is attempting to handwave away Tutu’s own words and claiming that some sort of context would make it not-bigoted to claim things like how Jews should be to a separate standard than the rest of the world and so it’s okay to engage in collective punishment against them. Dick has, in fact, not provided any contextual interpretation of Tutu’s words that would show that they were anything other than anti-Semitic statements. Nor has he made an attempt to do so. Readers can also puzzle out what tactic his argument is using when he demands footnotes from an op-ed.
And so far the last argument offered up about Tutu’s lack of anti-Semitic ideology relied purely on flaming when its assumptions and claims were shown to be false.
I think we’ve both had the opportunity to present our respective cases here and people can now make their own minds up which of us is closer to their reality.
Readers will note that far from making a case for the content or context of Tutu’s remarks and to explain why it’s not anti-Semitic to be saying things like that the Jews are a peculiar people who should be held to a double standard and can be punished as a group while Muslims and Christians can not, Dick has attempted to use ad hominems, handwaving and personal insults.
Readers will also note that he still has not provided the slimmest shred of substantiation for his ad hom claims against the ADL and their polling, claiming that he would simply reject their findings because they were Jewish and “Likudniks”, which of course he has not cited either.
Something tells me that since Dick has reached that point in the playbook, as well, he’s not even going to attempt to provide a cite for their 'Likudnik" status any more than he’ll provide substantiation for his claim that Tutu’s comments aren’t anti-Semitic.
One may wonder, perhaps, exactly why it is that he can’t provide a single cite or cogent argument to back up his claims, but must rely on people ‘choosing what to believe’. Funny, that.
Of course not, the suggestion is more than a little bit wacky. Zionist Jews in America are Americans. They live in America. Their homes, families, friends, loved ones, careers, possessions and memories are all in America. Why on Earth would you suggest that they’d be ‘more loyal’ to a foreign nation?
To say nothing of the fact that I’m not sure Zionist means what you think it means. It means, simply, someone who thinks that the state of Israel should exist. If an American WASP told you that he thinks that Great Britain should exist, would you assume that means he was more loyal to the queen than to his own home? If someone of European heritage said that we should support NATO even though it is expensive and can potentially expose us to getting dragged into wars, would your claim that they’re more loyal to Europe than their own home? If a black American said that we should engage in debt relief for sub-Saharan Africa, would you discuss the proposal on its merits, or say that the person saying that must be more loyal to the African ancestry than to their own home?
Would you even make “loyalty” an issue, at all, instead of noting that their politics disagreed with yours and perhaps why you believed they were wrong and you were right?
If not, why would you assume that its an issue of loyalty when it comes to American Jews?
Well, even if we defined it oddly, like “Someone who generally is supportive of Israeli policies”, then that still wouldn’t raise loyalty as an issue unless some extraordinary circumstances were in play.
Have you ever, even once, heard someone’s loyalty questioned if they’re of European descent and they generally support NATO?