If one takes a charitable read of his words, it might be less damning (although definitely questionable in terms of style):
1. It’s clear in the post that he’s speaking about Israeli Jews. While even Israeli Jews are not monolithic, and speaking of them like they are is suspect, he could have been clearer by using “Israeli Jew” rather than “Jew” in this post.
2. Furthermore, it seems more like he is speaking about “Israeli Jews” both in terms of being an actual Israeli Jew as well as a term used to represent the Israeli government.
3. He use the wrong pronouns. He used I/me when we/us would have been more standard when speaking of the acts of a nation state (esp. a democratic one). Even this creates problems since it would paint Israeli Jews as being monolithic in their thoughts (my experience is that they very very much are not monolithic). That said, with a charitable read, the stylistic use of I/me is definitely more powerful and more personal, and it probably provided the effect the author wanted of making the violence feel personal. As an editor, I would have given this stylistic choice a firm veto, but try explaining that to a young person who is finding their voice and is discovering the amount of violence towards various peoples that is occurring around the world.
TL;DR - Another way of interpreting the post is that a young kid trying to find a powerful voice made some very suspect stylistic choices when trying to write about the government of Israel.
I find the whole thing offensive in concept, even if he had used "Israeli" instead of "Jew".
If some white dude wrote "If I was a Black, I would find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Blacks have endured and the insatiable appetite for crime that permeates inner cities", we would rightly castigate him as a virulent racist.
It also wouldn't matter if you replaced "Black" with African, or Senegalese, or Mexican, or any other nationality. You aren't that thing, you don't have the experiences of that culture, you don't get to write from that perspective.
As you frame it, there is no other way to interpret his words (found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210601160519/https://www.kamau...).
If one takes a charitable read of his words, it might be less damning (although definitely questionable in terms of style):
1. It’s clear in the post that he’s speaking about Israeli Jews. While even Israeli Jews are not monolithic, and speaking of them like they are is suspect, he could have been clearer by using “Israeli Jew” rather than “Jew” in this post.
2. Furthermore, it seems more like he is speaking about “Israeli Jews” both in terms of being an actual Israeli Jew as well as a term used to represent the Israeli government.
3. He use the wrong pronouns. He used I/me when we/us would have been more standard when speaking of the acts of a nation state (esp. a democratic one). Even this creates problems since it would paint Israeli Jews as being monolithic in their thoughts (my experience is that they very very much are not monolithic). That said, with a charitable read, the stylistic use of I/me is definitely more powerful and more personal, and it probably provided the effect the author wanted of making the violence feel personal. As an editor, I would have given this stylistic choice a firm veto, but try explaining that to a young person who is finding their voice and is discovering the amount of violence towards various peoples that is occurring around the world.
TL;DR - Another way of interpreting the post is that a young kid trying to find a powerful voice made some very suspect stylistic choices when trying to write about the government of Israel.
Thanks to ‘andrewla for finding the original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27381980