Israel has been enforcing its will on Palestine and the rest of their neighbors for decades.

And what do you think will happen to Israeli Jews when “the lands of Palestine [are] fully restored?” Jews have been chased out of the rest of the Middle East. Baghdad, which was once one-third Jewish, now has no Jews. The great Jewish populations of Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo are gone. What makes you think that,…

I think this is a yes-but-also-no situation. Israelis are very proud of their scientific and technological achievements, but the culture still places a lot of value on machismo and strength.

I don’t know—I’m sure Captain America would be really disappointed in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon for keeping Palestinians in refugee camps for decades and then shelling them.

“Indigenous peoples” like the Jews who come from Judea?

Israel has nuclear weapons, but what does that mean? It’s not going to nuke Tyre to get Hezbollah to disarm. It’s not going to nuke Damascus to force the Syrians to formally cede the Golan. Nukes don’t really do anything for Israel.

In fairness, Israelis have, since even before statehood, cultivated exactly that characterization of themselves in order to differentiate themselves from the diaspora.

There are also plenty of people who think “legitimate criticism” looks like Der Sturmer cartoons where the hook-nosed Jew is labeled “Israel” and therefore it’s perfectly acceptable political “criticism.”

I don’t understand why they didn’t change Sabra’s name to Tzabar, the Hebrew version of the name, which doesn’t share an unfortunate homophonic relationship with a refugee camp.

Egyptians have always been both African and Mediterranean, like the Amazigh people of Northwest Africa. “African” doesn’t mean “has a skin color Americans would identify as ‘black.’” It’s absolutely wild that the director doesn’t understand this.

I think Emma Watson also suffered from the Mary Sue-ificiation of Hermione in the movie series. In the Harry Potter books, Hermione is much more complex, and capable of almost sociopathic acts of cruelty. The movie made me into the much less complex “brains of the operation,” almost always better than Harry and Ron at…

I am on a real emotional roller coastal of a response to this article: 1. “Wow, Jake Gyllenhaal looks amazing for his age!” 2. “How old is Jake Gyllenhaal, anyway?” 3. “Oh, he’s 42. That’s... not old at all.” 4. “Well, he still looks good. Good for him.”

Not to be sassy, but you’re clearly forgetting about the Patel twins.

I feel like it’s important to remind everyone that the UK is not, in fact, America. In 1991, when Rowling was writing the first book, the UK was 94% white. Having a book that’s basically all straight white British people is pretty accurate for the 90s.

Did you watch the movie? All the backup dancers in the actual movie are white, because the context is that the two Indian leads are crashing an all-white party in colonial India, and they get all these white attendees to join their dance-off against the villain.

Titus Burgess was robbed. Ursula is 100% camp. Casting Melissa McCarthy as Ursula is like casting Meg Ryan* as Maleficent.

I think it’s very apparent from the fact that this continues to be a controversy that not everyone agrees with the assessment that JKR’s arguments “have been found disingenuous and hateful.”

I mean, replace “Rowling” with literally anyone. It’s a generic statement about how “deplatforming” doesn’t work, because it doesn’t actually refute the “bad ideas,” it just shows that there’s a big enough group of whiners to make whatever institution runs the venue think that it’s more trouble than it’s worth to host…

I am not at all convinced that that problem is restricted to the Republican Party these days.

The problem is that the problematic ideas are still very easily accessible, and “deplatforming” inevitably creates has a Streisand-effect backlash of making those ideas much more publicly known than had the original speaker just been allowed to speak to 20 people who already agree with them.