I just don’t think you can debate logically with them. It’s like talking to a brick wall - and they don’t have their heads directed that way praying as they are busy haranguing people.
i have had three conversations with people over the last two days - each entirely different and enlightening.
one with a Jewish friend of mine who had been to Israel not long ago - her views are not unlike mine - horror at the approach, great distaste for Netanyahu and his fundamentalist supporters that are making him blind, clarity about the misrepresentation of facts about Israeli society in general, and the far smarter propaganda war driven by Hamas and its bank rollers, and that this is unleashing a far worse future for everyone - including the west by having emboldened fundamentalist Muslims
a second, a well read man who is outraged by the misrepresentation of history and facts and what is in effect translating into support for terrorism however ghastly the Israeli attacks are - and he too questions the figures being bandied around - because he’s devoured so much on the topic
a third friend spent time telling me off for being a smart arse because I hadn’t included some actual, demonstrable facts about history in response to a Facebook post. What made me a smart arse was stating these facts and she could see nothing else of what I wrote so upset was she. Apparently when they don’t even know anything much at all about the region, the history or even the Holocaust or post world war or about Judaism trying to share facts is unwelcome and gets you a label. Then she tried to excuse it by adding she understood I was a Jew - when I responded I was not but had an interest because I was well aware of how Hitler might have regarded me as opposed to the facts of history she responded that it was really about how one identified - a bit like being indigenous. I’ve always known she is a zealot in whichever cause she adopted but this attack left me stunned. It took another hour to work back to the state of loving and appreciating each other.
in any complex situation there are different views about what is right, what is or has happened and about consequences. Those i understand, but forming such intense views with so little knowledge and so much conviction and so much intolerance for other possibilities is exactly the type of problem we face in any war.
and in this case as my second friend said “it’s so much easier to ignore all the other atrocities around the world and so much easier to hate when Jews are involved”
