Antiunfalsifiabilitarianism

In my regular trawling of the blogosphere for anti-Israel arguments, I stumbled upon the blog Tikun Olam, belonging to Richard Silverstein. I could fill a post and a half with an account of the outrages I have read there; suffice it here to say that the proprietor is a Jewish kumbayista, a left-wing Jew who still believes, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that before us is a land dispute between two nations, solvable by negotiations and concessions (on the part of mainly one of the sides—you guess which), obstructed by “imperialistic aggression” (on the part of one of the sides—you guess which). I posted a few comments on one of the threads, following a link on LGF (Silverstein derives delight from hearing of FBI visits to Charles Johnson), but quickly withdrew, after an act of censorship (same story as on Daily Kos). I still read his blog as part of my monitoring, and the other day I found an entry worth commenting on, called “IDF: Killer of Women and Children—in Cold Blood”. You can see here quite clearly how the outrage begins with the title. But this post is a commentary rather than a fisking, and it is of general anti-Muslim interest and not just from the Jewish outlook. Also, it concerns one of the comments to the post, and Silverstein’s answer to it, rather than the post itself. Commenter “yosef” says:

Now lets look at the facts. Israel withdrew 100% from Gaza but rocket attacks have continued. This operation is an attempt to stop these attacks.

To which Silverstein replies:

Your comment is typical of the bankrupt thinking of many Israelis, I’m sorry to say. Israel “withdrew” from Gaza. How did it withdraw? Did it allow Gaza to maintain commerce, an independent economy, transportation, free government? Of course not. After withdrawal, Gaza was no more “free” of Israel or Israelis than before withdrawal.

Of course rocket attacks continue. As long as Israel does not negotiate a final settlement with the Palestinians in which it agrees to return to 67 boundaries, resistance to Occupation will continue. (All emphases mine —ZY)

Besides a little taste of the outrage of having a fellow Jew—one whom the “Palestinians” would not spare from their sword in distinction to any other—spouting the enemy’s lines, there is here the general dhimmi flaw of unfalsifiability: he does not let the evidence, such as the side-by-side comparison of the greenhouses in the Gaza Strip before and after the Jewish evacuation, change his mind, and worse, he moves the possible point of falsification every time the evidence runs counter to his preconceived notions.

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