It's not the job of a journalist to kiss the interviewee's ass and finish their sentences for them. That's not journalism, that's marketing and promotion.
The Jon Stewart interview is two people who don't understand Israel at all talking as though they're experts on Israel. Stewart didn't ask Coates a single difficult question or challenge his narrative in any way at all.
Dokoupil did his job and the fact that he's received so much backlash shows just how far journalism has deteriorated.
Coates thinks he's an expert on Israel because he took one trip sponsored by Palestinian activist organizations and openly admits that he was only there to hear one side of the story.
Really? Does every country have this “right”? Or just Israel? Cause it sounds to me like you granted all of Israel’s enemies the right to go to war against Israel.> Do I really have to walk you through this? Israel has the right to go to war because it was attacked first and has lived with genocidal enemies on its borders for decades.
The responsibility of the consequences of a bullet being fired or a bomb being dropped rests with the person who pulls the trigger. This is true even when those actions are justified. Israel still has agency, and therefore moral responsibility. Nothing you said even brings to refute this.> None of those deaths would have happened if not for the attack on 10/7 that started the war. While the proximal responsibility lies with the people who pull the trigger, the moral responsibility ultimately lies with the organization that carried out the attack knowing full well that Israel would respond and civilians would die.
Says the guy trying so hard to justify the murder of children lol. Just a few thousand more bruh, that’ll make Israel safe.> Deaths that occur during military actions are not murder. That's why the concept of collateral damage was articulated. This is basic stuff here.
Your movement is defined not by your words by the actions taken in its name. The moral bankruptcy of those actions speaks for itself .> Actions are being taken to defend the existence of the Jewish homeland, and any other nation would do the same. I'm sorry you find the idea of Jews defending themselves from annihilation "morally bankrupt."
I know where you're headed with this so I'm just cutting it off now before we argue about your claims about what Israel is doing.
This isn't difficult to grasp. Israel has the right to go to war against its enemies, and children die in war. If you can explain how to fight a war without children dying, I'm all ears. But the responsibility for those deaths lies with the people who started the war - especially since they started it knowing full well that large numbers of Palestinians would die in the process. They want those deaths.
Honestly, you're just incredibly naive about this. It's frightening that so many people are so blinded by their hate that they have come to see barbaric terrorists and radical Islamists as the good guys. Your moral compass is just so messed up.
Oh, and don't lecture me on what Zionism is. It's our movement. We defined it.
My initial comment describes all the things anti-Israel protesters are doing that aren't "criticism of Israel." That's the point. They're not criticizing Israel, they're calling for its destruction.
It's not impossible if there was a commitment on both sides to make it happen. There has never been a commitment on the part of the Palestinians, and there isn't one with the Netanyahu government.
As I said before, Israel WAS interested in a two state solution. Until the second intifada. How many plans and proposals would the Palestinians have to reject before you admit that maybe they actually don't want peaceful coexistence?
Israeli nationalism is not the problem. Israel exists. I has existed for 76 years. The problem is Arab and Muslim rejectionism. They simply won't give up on their dream of driving the Jews into the sea. Moderate Arab nations have given up on that dream but the radical Islamists haven't. That's why Hamas launched their attack when they did, because they wanted to destroy the Abraham Accords.
And sorry, but there is no room in any reasonable moral system for accepting barbaric terrorism as "legitimate resistance" or a response to grievances. Blowing up nightclubs full of young people and busses taking people to work and school is not political protest. Besides, they have had opportunities to negotiate peace and chose not to take advantage of those opportunities. They had a chance to turn Gaza into a legitimate state when Israel withdrew in 2005 and they chose to turn it into a Hamas terrorist base.
Israel has not won total victory, which is why this cycle has continued for so long. The US and the international community has never let them achieve total victory. This war is different. The Netanyahu government has decided to finally achieve total victory.
Perhaps you should actually read my initial comment. Or is that too difficult for you?
"Won't anyone think of the poor children?" If you don't want children to die in war, don't fucking start war.
Literally no possibility, huh? WTF do you think they sponsor Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis for? Why do they have a doomsday clock in Tehran literally counting down to Israel's destruction? Just for shits and giggles? But here's the bottom line: Neither you, nor any other ignorant Western leftist, has the right to demand that Israel takes that chance. That's exactly what Jewish self-determination (AKA Zionism) is all about.
Tell me something: What have those UN peacekeepers been doing all this time? Are they there to protect Hezbollah so they can continue to fire rockets and missiles into Israel? Because they sure haven't been keeping the peace, and they also haven't enforced UN Resolution 1701. So get the fuck out and let Israel take care of business.
You know what's ironic? The past 60 years of conflict could possibly have been avoided if the UN held their ground back in 1967 when Egypt asked them to leave. They were actually doing their job back then and their decision to pack up and leave at Egypt's request was a major contributing factor to the Six-Day War. Seems almost as if they're biased against Israel, huh?
Typical. Can't engage in a discussion, huh? I'm guessing that's because you know as much about Israel as Coates does.
There are roads that both Israelis and Palestinians are prevented from using FOR SECURITY PURPOSES. That's the problem with Coates' perspective, he refuses to even ask how it got to this point. He just looks around, sees fences and soldiers acting as security guards and says, "This feels like apartheid."