Restoring The World’s Ability to Answer Back

Originally published in Fathom Journal.

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:

1. what is the case

2. what social conventions permit people to say

3. 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 externalized onto those who must live with its consequences.