We all tend to believe claims that reinforce the opinions we already have and disbelieve or ignore contrary evidence. This is called “confirmation bias.” If you believe that immigrants are ruining our country, you’ll tend to believe and pay attention to stories about crimes they’ve committed. If you have the opposite view, you’ll tend to believe and pay attention to stories about their contributions to society.
Rachel Maddow dwells in her book Prequel on American antisemitism between the two world wars. Antisemites believed the forged Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion which accuses Jews of all manner of crimes, including kidnapping Christian children and using their blood in Passover ceremonies. People disposed to antisemitism tend to believe this because it fits into the low opinion they already have of Jews. They don’t check it out.
Maddow quotes, among many others, William Dudley Pelley, who accused Jews of a secret plan of world domination. Jews plan to “corrupt youth through subversive teaching;” “destroy family life;” “undermine the respect for religion;” “ruin the nervous system through inoculations and various poisons, and germs of disease;” and much more. If you’re already an antisemite, your confirmation bias will lead you to accept these allegations as fact without further inquiry.
Jews were harmed horribly by confirmation bias that reinforced antisemitism in the face of such wild claims. Jews were so unpopular in the United States due in part to increasing numbers of Americans believing the untruthful worst about them that FDR, who operated on the view that politics is the art of the possible, didn’t dare propose opening our borders to European Jewry as the Holocaust loomed.
Jews aren’t alone among those harmed by inattention to facts resulting from confirmation bias. Blacks were considered too unintelligent, lazy, and lustful to participate responsibly in politics. American Indians were considered too wild to be good citizens. Today, many people consider Muslims and immigrants to pose unacceptable risks of violence. People ill-disposed toward these minorities notice and remember stories of individual transgressions by Muslims and immigrants and ignore reliable statistics showing that other people pose much greater risks.
All this suggests that Jews and other minorities have a stake in discouraging inattention to truth. Such inattention, combined with confirmation bias, tends to strengthen ambient prejudices in the majority population, often with lethal consequences for minorities, including Jews.
Yet, most Zionist today succumb to their own confirmation biases. They tend to believe and remember well-documented crimes against Israel, and there are many, but not crimes and unrealistic scenarios put forth on behalf of Israel. By international standards, every Israeli “settler” is committing a crime by living on the West Bank without the permission of a Palestinian government. Few Zionists seem to notice.
Given my Zionist prejudices, I believed that Israel had offered the Palestinians a state in the waning days of the Clinton Administration. But that was never the case, because a state must be in charge of its own security externally as well as internally, and Israel never agreed to that, even when the Labour Party governed. Today, supporters of Israel seem to avoid thinking about the consequences of denying Palestinians a state of their own. It’s a fantasy to think that a people will live indefinitely in poverty and political impotence. October 7 should have burst that bubble.
Of course, Zionists should debunk false claims against Israel. Within its 1967 border Israel isn’t an apartheid state; but it runs an apartheid regime on the West Bank. Zionists who ignore that reality fuel prejudice against Israel. It must be acknowledged and addressed.
Israel is accused of genocide, which is inaccurate. But it is guilty of incremental ethnic cleansing. Its right wing government isn’t bent on killing all Palestinians, including those who live in Jordan and other states, so its aims aren’t genocidal. It just wants Palestinians to leave Gaza and the West Bank because Palestinians threaten Israel. But any of us would want to fight against a state that treated us as Gazans and West Bank Palestinians were treated before October 7.
It’s a dangerous Israeli fantasy to think that Israel doesn’t need a fully independent Palestinian state. Even if every Hamas terrorist is killed this year, a new generation of poor, angry, dispossessed people will rebel violently. This danger to Israel is reduced when Palestinians can run their own affairs and experience economic improvement by producing goods and services rather than tunnels.
Part of the current Israeli government’s fantasy is that Israel needs to retain the West Bank for its security. Jordan has invaded in the past. But it now contributes to Israel’s defense. Fantastical thinking, whether antisemitic or Zionist, endangers Israel and minorities around the world because it models the disrespect for truth that is often used to oppress Jews and other minorities.
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