Poor Logic From a Guardian Reader

Poor Logic From a Guardian Reader

CiF Watch has documented a humdinger. A bloke who calls himself William Bapthrope is troubled by Israeli transgressions against international law as he understands it, and suggests the situation could be rectified by slaughtering every man woman and child.

Seems a bit radical, don't you think, to correct a transgression against a law (if transgression there is at all) by genociding the transgressors. I'm a bit puzzled by the logic.

Anyway, I dropped a note to the editor of the Guardian 'alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk' and to the editor of CiF, 'georgina.henry@guardian.co.uk'. Sadly, my position is not fully aligned with that of my friends at CiF Watch, but I expect they'll forgive me:

Documenting the Malice

Ms Henry, Mr. Rusbridger

My friends at CiF Watch have alerted me to the recent case of a reader of yours, one William Bapthrope. Mr. Bapthrope is troubled by Israel's disregard of international law as he understands it, and advocates various methods to inform them of the seriousness of the matter. His third alternative is, and I quote, "they must be slaughtered, every last man woman and child". The staff of CiF Watch demands you ban Mr. Bapthrope from commenting at CiF.

I’m of two minds, I admit. If you assume murderous hatred of Jews is a contagious malady, rather like suicide, then having all mention of it disappear might make sense: people won't think of it on their own, or if they ever do they'll be ashamed of expressing their sentiments for fear of general ridicule and opprobrium. Assuming the media is the only venue where people communicate, which is probably not the case.

If, on the other hand, you're of the opinion that the excitement generated by dreaming of a world with far fewer Jews wells up from deep cultural sources reinforced by incessant lies about many things Jewish and constant reiteration of how uniquely evil Jews are, then of course the occasional censorship of an unusually crass expression of the Zeitgeist will have no positive impact on anything and will merely serve to cloak the pervasiveness of the hatred. Since the Guardian is one of the more important standard bearers of the animosity and purveyor of systematic and consistent lies, my inclination is to request that you desist from banning the worst examples of what you spawn, since your actions are merely an attempt to sanitize your own record.

The existence of the Jews and their well-being is fortunately not something the Guardian can impact on one way or the other. The full record of your malice, however, should not be tampered with.

Sincerely,

Dr. Yaacov Lozowick

Jerusalem

Update: Matt Seaton responds:

Regarding the post in the Blincoe thread which you respectively have complained about, let me assure you that – contrary to the impression Cif Watch chooses to give – the comment was deleted promptly by moderators, and as per our standard moderation protocol the user has been placed in quarantine as 'untrusted'.

I'm not convinced he read my comment.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations