Restoring the world’s ability to answer back: Antisemitism, Israel, and moral urgency
by Joanne Strasser
Joanne Strasser (Elysium's Daughter https://www.elysiumsdaughter.com) examines why discussions about antisemitism are so fraught. She argues that three factors prevent an actual exchange of views about facts: people confuse what is the case, what social conventions allow them to say, and what appears to be the moral urgency. The result is the kinds of clashes of opinion that have occurred in some U.S. universities. Instead, Strasser calls for these debates to apply consistent standards to all sides, to ensure people’s claim about what is happening can be tested with facts.
Something unusual happens in debates about Israel and antisemitism. Arguments often appear rigorous because they are saturated with supposed facts, yet rarely does anything get settled. Hopefully, when people debate, they share a tacit assumption that evidence could, in principle, prove a point. Participants may disagree about what the evidence shows, but they usually accept that it shows something. In discussions of Israel and antisemitism, that assumption is often absent. For example, the claim that Israel is an apartheid state is asserted, not debated.
When claims become insulated from challenge, the relationship between language and reality loosens. The result is what we understand to be true looks more like what we think or want to believe is true, not what’s real in the world. Statements circulate and arguments are made, but the pathways through which evidence normally revises belief close. In highly charged debates, questioning the prevailing framework can become difficult because the norms of the conversation discourage asking questions. Testimony can be dismissed before it is heard and narratives can harden until correction becomes morally impermissible. Someone who questions a claim against Israel, for example, maybe be cast as an apologist for genocide.
This how the connection between language and the word is lost. The task is to interrupt the process before it takes hold. We must notice when claims begin to insulate themselves from challenge. That way, we can keep conversations anchored to reality.
IS THE SNOW WHITE?
When we hear a claim, the basic question is: ‘does the statement match the world it describes?’ The logician Alfred Tarski captured this principle clearly: ‘Snow is white’ is true if and only if snow is white.
What that means is that a statement is true only if the world is as the statement says. So the question for Israel debates becomes: does a conversation leave room for claims to be tested against reality?
In principle, debates about Israel rely on statements that make empirical claims. These can include whether a particular action occurred, whether patterns of violence meet legal definitions, whether a statement or policy should count as antisemitic. Evidence should be able to settle these questions.
In practice, participants in the debate find themselves talking past one another because they confuse three different categories:
What is the case
What social conventions permit people to say
The apparent moral urgency of the stakes
When these categories remain separate, evidence can do its work. When they are mixed, language stops tracking reality. The truth of a claim becomes entangled with whether it is acceptable to question it at all.
Keeping these categories distinct from each other is vital. What is true depends on the world itself — as Tarski observed, what must actually be the case. Social conventions belong to the conversation as they state what participants can say without sanction. Moral urgency is measured by the stakes — how costly hesitation or dissent appears when the moment feels charged. And usually, the cost of questioning is immediate and personal, while the cost of error is delayed and externalised onto those who must live with its consequences.
MUTING REALITY
The disconnect between argument and reality can occur at several points along the chain that tethers language to the world. For example, a conversation may quietly change what kinds of responses count as relevant. Moral judgment can take the place of evidence, so that when evidence appears, it may fail to change minds. The conversation still looks like an argument, but it is not.
The question is how the connection with reality begins to loosen. This can be explained by specific mechanisms that block the world’s ability to answer back. They intervene at three levels: interpretive preemption controls meaning, normative override shifts the norms of the conversation, and evidentiary veto prevents evidence from doing its work. The result is a debate that remains intensely argumentative while becoming structurally resistant to correction.
INTERPRETIVE PREEMPTION: WHEN DISAGREEMENT BECOMES PROOF
Interpretive preemption ensures that the disconnect between statements and reality occurs before the debate has begun. People frame their claims so that every reaction counts as confirmation, be it agreement, disagreement, even silence. The claim is actually an accusation. It does not test statements, instead it absorbs every reply into proof that it was right all along.
Consider a familiar statement: ‘You’re just being defensive.’ Under ordinary conditions we would evaluate that claim by looking at what someone actually said (was it a defensive statement?) and how they said it (was the tone defensive?). However, in some settings the statement is an accusation that begins to function as though it were true simply because the other person responds at all. Every possible reply becomes confirmation. The accusation no longer waits to see what happens; it has already decided how any response will be interpreted.
That pattern occurs many times in debates about antisemitism. When Jewish participants challenge a claim or ask for clarification, their response may be interpreted as confirmation of a prior diagnosis — defensiveness, bad faith, or an attempt to silence criticism. The harder the effort to respond, the more firmly the classification seems to hold. A simple request — ‘can you explain what you mean?’ may be treated as evidence that the person asking is being confrontational.
A popular, but mistaken, approach to interpretive preemption is to invoke ‘lived experience.’ When Jews are told they are being ‘defensive’ about antisemitism, they can say they are uniquely placed to discuss the issue as we should ‘listen to marginalised voices.’ Lived experience often illuminates aspects of reality others may miss. The problem is that when the authority to identify antisemitism depends primarily on who is speaking rather than on criteria that others can examine, the standard for judging the claim begins to shift. Again, what has happened is a loosening of the connection between a statement and the world. While ‘lived experience’ matters, it should be a lens on reality, not a lock on discussion. As the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu warned, perspective should not be mistaken for a guarantee of truth.
NORMATIVE OVERRIDE: WHEN ASKING BECOMES WRONG
Normative override ensures that the disconnect between statements and reality occurs at the level of the discourse. The conversation moves from asking ‘Is this true?’ to asking ‘Is it wrong to question this?’ Once that transition occurs, moral pressure does the work that evidence normally performs.
In debates about Israel, normative override happens when analytic labels function as shortcuts to conclusions. Terms such as ‘settler-colonialism’, ‘apartheid’, and ‘genocide’ carry considerable moral weight. Used carefully, they describe claims that depend on specific criteria. There is, for example, a body of jurisprudence on genocide, with discussion on evidentiary rules. So the claim that Israel is committing genocide should stand or fall on whether the relevant criteria are actually met.
Instead, when it comes to Israel, the classification comes first, and the evidence is treated as inevitable confirmation rather than a test. In some academic arguments, for example, colonialism is taken to be inherently genocidal. Once that assumption is in place, applying the label already determines the conclusion, and the evidence doesn’t matter.
Of course, we rely on shortcuts like this in ordinary life. Think about voting with a slate card. Most people don’t research every candidate in detail, so a party label becomes a rough guide. The problem comes when the same habit shows up in questions of violence, intent, or culpability — instances in which the cost of being wrong is enormous and where labels cannot substitute for careful criteria.
EVIDENTIARY VETO: WHEN EVIDENCE CAN’T LAND
Evidentiary veto ensures that the disconnect between statements and reality occurs at the level of facts. Social conventions prevent testimony, documentation, or reporting from altering existing beliefs. Evidence becomes visible but inert — present without consequence. For example, people will dismiss any evidence coming from any Israeli source as tainted.
After October 7, this was exemplified by the manner in which many people dismissed the evidence of sexual violence by Hamas and its allies during the attack that day and in their subsequent treatment of the hostages. The evidence of sexual violence against Israelis threatens a preferred narrative, namely that Israelis are victimisers and Palestinians are victims. Those wielding this evidentiary veto keep raising the standard demanded of evidence so that they can keep their favoured conclusion intact. One way to do this is to insist there is no ‘independent’ confirmation of the claims, where ‘independent’ is used to exclude and discount Israeli evidence. Another is to argue that there is insufficient proof that the violence was “systematic,” thereby extending the veto.
A public exchange in early 2024 illustrates the structure of the evidentiary veto. When asked about reports of sexual violence during the October 7 attacks, a prominent intellectual responded with skepticism and demanded further documentation — even though contemporary reporting and a UN assessment had already concluded there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ such violence occurred. The motives of the individual speaker are not the point. What matters is the structure of the response, how the evidentiary bar moved just enough to preserve the existing conclusion.
WHEN THEORY OVERRIDES REALITY
Confrontations at universities after October 7 show how these mechanisms combine to create epistemic closure, with harsh practical effects on Jews. At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), anti-Israel protestors set up an encampment that limited access to parts of campus. They created a checkpoint that did not admit ‘Zionists,’ claiming these restrictions were for their own protection.
Such exclusion is by definition discriminatory and a violation of free speech norms. It also illustrates how the three mechanisms for detaching statements from reality produce more than hostile expression. Their consequence is the physical blocking of students and faculty from their own campus because of their beliefs and identity. Zionism, the struggle for Jewish self-determination, is closely associated with Jewish identity, just as Polish nationalism is connected to being Polish. Barring Zionists therefore meant barring Jews. By detaching their statements from reality, the protestors could convince themselves that they had grounds to act in a manner they would never have applied to any other group.
Even the fumbling attempts by UCLA to deal with the checkpoints attracted criticism which relied upon the same mechanisms of detaching statements from reality. Consider the frequently cited claim that ‘it is dangerous to frame all critiques of the state or government of Israel, or all critiques of Zionism, as antisemitic.’ This sounds reasonable in theory, but in practice it functions as a rhetorical shield, projecting antizionism by framing Jewish students’ reports of exclusion as attempts to shut down criticism of Israel. Once that interpretation takes hold, the complaint itself can begin to look like further proof that the complainant is acting in bad faith. Except that in the case of the UCLA protests, the actual practice of antizionism was clearly antisemitic. Indeed, theory was being used to overpower reality.
THE BENEFITS AND DANGERS OF SOCIAL CONFORMITY
The way that so many people went along with the UCLA protest, despite their obvious discrimination against Jewish students, begs the question: why? Part of that answer is that social conformity, even when it works against clear thinking, has real benefits. Shared assumptions, for example, allow people to cooperate.
However, social conformity can also have considerable dangers and can repress the exercise of logic and independent thought. Belief systems can reach a point where many people privately disagree, but publicly repeat the prevailing view. Often the reason is simple: the cost of dissent is higher than the benefit of correcting the mistake. Speaking up risks reputational damage or moral condemnation, while staying silent carries little penalty. In such situations, the safest move is to go along with the crowd.
The mathematician John Nash offered a useful way to think about this. He showed that certain patterns of behaviour persist even when many participants privately know something is wrong. The problem is coordination. If everyone changed course at once, the system might improve. If one person breaks rank alone, they absorb the cost while nothing else changes. We can see this everyday. Imagine a work meeting where a new policy is being discussed. Many people privately think the policy won’t work, but each person assumes speaking up will isolate them; silence just feels safer. The policy passes unanimously, even though few people actually believe in it.
LOGIC FOR ALL
To overcome the kind of trap that Nash identified, we need to apply the same standards to every side of every discussion. If the logic holds only when applied to one side of an argument, but not the other, that is a sign that one side is protecting its claims from reality, rather than allowing them to be tested by facts. Instead, we must allow evidence to retain the power to change our minds. Facts should be able to complicate our narratives, force revisions, and occasionally overturn conclusions we once felt certain about. Our strongest claims must leave room for the world to answer back.
We should aspire to connect our statements to the world because the alternative, as debates about Israel demonstrate, is dangerous. Hannah Arendt warned that when people lose touch with reality, they become easier to control. In morally charged debates, the temptation to let moral seriousness stand in for evidence is strong, but the discipline of truth is a precondition for justice. When that discipline erodes, people lose their bearings, and the institutions built on their judgment lose credibility as well. Then the distance between belief and the world grows.