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Sam Kriss asked me to provide a gesture of goodwill before he’d agree to a real-time conversation (substack.com/@samkriss/…) by substantively responding to his point about the May shooting of the Israeli embassy staffers.
I already gave an essay length response (ymeskhout.com/p/slicing…) but Sam disputes it was responsive so I’m kind of stuck stabbing in the dark now.
As best as I can tell, our disagreement has two different axes:
An attack on Israeli government employees is a fundamentally different thing than an attack on random Jews
Elias Rodriguez was obviously engaged in the former and not the latter
(Apologies in advance if Sam thinks I butchered his positions; I’m trying my best here)
On #1, I might agree but it entirely depends on what distinctions you find material. The whole point of my Kosher Salami essay is that nothing is the same as anything else in the sense that you can always draw some sort of distinction, the question is whether that distinction actually matters.
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln is quite obviously not the same thing as the assassination of JFK in the sense that they took place in different places and times and involved different people, but they’re materially comparable in the sense that a US President was shot and killed. A ham sandwich is not the same thing as a cheese sandwich, but both are food. A bayonet is not the same as a scalpel, but both are stabbing instruments. A car is not the same thing as a bicycle but both are locomotion vehicles. On and on and on.
It’s simply a meaningless assertion to insist that A is different from B, because that’s trivially true of literally everything. If you say “he was cut open by a dirk” it’s probably meaningless for someone to correct with “actually it was a dagger” but probably meaningful to correct with “actually it was a surgeon performing surgery with a scalpel”.
For the difference to actually matter, you first have to specify exactly what dimension of comparison you’re using.
I have repeatedly asked Sam to specify his comparison axis (e.g. substack.com/@ymeskhout…) and it just went nowhere. This is precisely why a real-time conversation would be clarifying, because the first thing I would try to ask is for him to explain why this particular distinction matters to him. Why is it important to identify it as A and not B? We can’t go anywhere without that foundation.
On the second point, Sam is asking me to presume precision on the part of Elias Rodriguez’s actions. I don’t believe the evidence supports that conclusion. When the only information early on at the time is that two people were shot and killed outside a Jewish museum, it was reasonable to presume it was an attack on random Jews (I said it was “likely” substack.com/@ymeskhout…). When the identity of the shooter and his manifesto were revealed, it was reasonable to update your conclusion towards something more concrete, but not conclusively so.
For one, another point of my Kosher Salami essay is that a disturbing amount of violence done in the name of “Free Palestine” does indeed target random Jews, and so the existence of a Gaza manifesto is not enough evidence to distinguish between two different hypothetical scenarios (crazy guy using palatable cover to hide his deranged Jew hatred vs coldly-calculated anti-genocide assassination).
Secondly, I have no idea what Rodriguez knew or thought at the time. It’s possible he travelled to an event he assumed would have some nexus to Israel and his randomly picked victims just happened to be Israeli embassy staffers. It’s possible he saw some ID badges or overheard a conversation and drew some faulty conclusions. It’s possible he knew they were embassy staffers and drew false conclusions about their nexus to Israeli military. It’s possible he knew they had no connection to the Israeli military at all but nevertheless deemed complicit solely by virtue of their employment.
On top of all that, I also don’t know what difference any of the above would have in changing my perspective of the event. Should people feel better if it was one motivation but not another? It’s why asking for the comparison axis is such a vital first step.
Sam insists I am “stunningly wrong” about the above, on the same degree as he was wrong predicting Russia would not invade Ukraine. I disagree, but I welcome any further challenge on this point, ideally in real-time so we can efficiently short-circuit misunderstandings.