How to find love and...

In this episode, writer Ali Azad shares his experience of returning to social media after a 15-year hiatus, only to find himself caught in an algorithm that serves up nostalgia alongside intense "rage-bait". Triggered by a viral clip of academic Norman Finkelstein discussing Israeli society, Azad takes us on a deeply personal journey of fact-checking, self-reflection, and the pursuit of context.

By examining the rhetoric of public intellectuals like Finkelstein and Sam Harris, Azad unpacks the "Comparison Trap"—a depolarization concept explaining how we often judge opposing groups by their most extreme factions while evaluating our own side through its most peaceful intentions. Exploring modern conflicts like Israel and Palestine, as well as historical divides like pre-Partition India in 1924, this episode is a powerful call to fight back against the internet's culture of fear and hate with empathy and love.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• The Algorithmic Echo Chamber: How social media traps users in bubbles that relentlessly reinforce their own existential fears and prejudices.
• The Comparison Trap: Why humans struggle to extend the same grace to "the other"—whether Israeli, Palestinian, Hindu, or Muslim—that we so easily grant to ourselves.
• Critiquing Public Intellectuals: An honest look at how figures like Norman Finkelstein and Sam Harris adopt partisan stances that may speak hard truths, but often fail to persuade or connect with the opposing side.
• Historical Echoes: How the polarized language used today mirrors the "disgraceful outburst of distrust" seen between Hindus and Muslims in 1924 pre-Partition India.
• The Power of Empathy: Why believing in the inherent goodness of others is a necessary choice, giving people a reason to be good rather than fueling a cycle where hate begets hate.

About the Author

Ali Azad is a Pakistani-origin writer living in the United States,

The New Frontier Post. Venturing forth into new realms of knowledge. 

Transcript

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How to find love and tolerance in a post-truth world. Whether Israeli or Palestinian, Hindu or Muslim, why do we not give others the same grace we give to ourselves? By Ali Azad. A version of this article was first published in Sapan News. After a 15-year hiatus, I recently rejoined social media and found myself hooked on short-form videos from strangers. I had come searching for my friends. With each swipe, I revealed my history, culture, and interests. The algorithm served me music videos from the 80s Pakistani band Vital Signs and Soundbites from Farid Zakaria, identifying my nostalgia for the past and my interest in the present. It is in this context that I was served what I consider my first rage bait video. The one-minute clip featured a man, the academic Norman Finkelstein, I would later learn, speaking with calm certainty. He declared that Israeli society is a lunatic society, backing his claim with statistics. A poll showing that 47% of Israeli Jews support killing everybody in an enemy city when the IDF enters it, and another where 70% of Jewish respondents said there are no innocents in Gaza. My gut clenched as I heard these statistics. How can Israelis be so cruel? Believing there were no innocents and killing everybody implied that they were fine with the murder of women, children, and even babies. I fact-checked the polls and read up on Finkelstein, hoping the polls he cited were fabrications. One of my core beliefs is that humans are, by and large, inherently good but often misled. Figures like Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Mahatma Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King held this as a central tenet. Even if this tenet were not empirically true, I would still act as if it were. Believing in the goodness of others, we offer them more than just the benefit of the doubt, we give them a reason to be good. Distrust begets distrust, hate begets hate. But it turned out Finkelstein wasn't making up the polls. Millions of Israelis hold what I consider deeply troubling beliefs. Growing up in Pakistan, I had encountered prejudicial views about Jews. Not all Muslims think this way, but some do, and I wondered if perhaps the prejudiced views were more right than I'd realized. Ultimately, I looked for more context. I asked, how did Israelis come to hold these beliefs? Did they always think this way? Here's what I found. The polls were conducted after Hamas's brutality on October 7, 2023, resurrecting the ghosts of the Holocaust and centuries of violent antisemitism, touching the deepest nerve of Jewish historical trauma. In addition, the Israelis are in their own media bubble. Their screens were dominated by the faces of hostages and the funerals of their soldiers. They saw very little of the starvation in Gaza because they are trapped in an echo chamber that relentlessly reinforces their own existential fears and prejudices. And finally, the poles do not capture the nuanced, complex emotions of living, breathing humans. It reduces them to numbers and simple, unambiguous statements. In this context, I concluded that Israelis are not a lunatic society. They're regular humans going through something extraordinary. Now imagine a young Muslim man seeing the same clip. He might never fact-check Finkelstein. He may just log it away as definitive proof validating everything his parents had told him about Jews, that they are not to be trusted because they once betrayed the Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon him. The tragic irony is that even if this individual had fact-checked the claim, as I did, he would have found the data accurate. How can we stop someone like that from thinking Israelis are less than human? One way is to look within and extend the same grace we give ourselves to others. Polling by the Pew Research Center shows staggering prejudices in the Muslim world. Take Pakistan, for example. As many as 75% believe draconian blasphemy laws are necessary, 76% support the death penalty for leaving Islam, and a mere 7% accept the persecuted Ahmadi minority as fellow Muslims. Muslims often bend over backward to explain such numbers away, contextualizing them as poverty, illiteracy, brainwashing by the state, and other factors. Why not give Israelis the same grace? The irony is that some of Israel's supporters, while contextualizing Israeli society's disturbing beliefs, do not extend that courtesy to Palestinians. They make the case that Finkelstein makes about Israel, but in reverse. Muslims, they suggest, are a lunatic society. The American philosopher and public intellectual Sam Harris has greatly influenced me. I've used Waking Up, his meditation app, to establish my own daily meditation practice, and also to learn about Sufism, Stoicism, and Buddhism from the countless practitioners and teachers he's featured. So it is disappointing to see Harris adopt a partisan stance similar to Finkelstein's. Take one small example from a long post in which Harris asks us to undertake a thought experiment that will, he claims, immediately make the moral calculus clear and lead us to side with Israel. The line you keep hearing from defenders of Israel, he writes, is that if the Palestinians put down their weapons, there would be peace. If the Israelis put down their weapons, there would be a genocide. And, he adds, this happens to be true. By imagining disarmament in a contextless thought experiment, Harris gives Israelis the benefit of the doubt that they put down their weapons, but doesn't extend the same benefit to Palestinians. Let's contextualize his thought experience. Imagine that the context of the thought experiment is that Israel dropped their weapons as part of a process in which the two sides had meaningful dialogue, built trust, and healed wounds. Is Harris still certain that Palestinians, as a group, will commit genocide? Just like he cannot guarantee that every single Israeli will drop their weapon in any realistic context of peace, there is no guarantee that every single Palestinian will abide by it. But there is no reason to think in any realistic context that includes a real peace process that one side would behave better than the other. Both sides have shown a willingness to compromise and move forward, whether through the Palestinians accepting just 22% of their historic homeland during the Oslo process, or Israel uprooting its own citizens to withdraw from Gaza. However, the failures that followed each concession, expanding Israeli settlements after Oslo and the Hamas attack on October 7th, have left both populations feeling their historic gestures of peace were exploited rather than honored. The comparison trap. In Finkelstein and Harris, we see a manifestation of what the American depolarization group Braver Angels calls the comparison trap. Democrats and Republicans hold up the most uncompromising, extreme fringe of the opposing side as the true representative of that entire population, while evaluating their own side strictly through the lens of its most peaceful, well-intentioned citizens. This explanation applies not just to the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. It has historical resonance for the South Asian community. In 1924, Hindu Muslim polarization reached new heights in pre-partition India. Asaf Ali, a prominent Indian independence activist and the first Indian ambassador to the United States, wrote to Gandhi deploring the disgraceful outburst of distrust and passion which has engulfed the people. He blamed partisan local language newspapers in which every street brawl is a communal fight, and every worthless delinquent who bears a Hindu or Muslim name is held up as a type of the civilization which each name is supposed to represent. In other words, the comparison trap is an age-old phenomenon that's rampant today. One hopes we, especially the public intellectuals, would know to avoid it. Abiding by Sapin News' social media ethics pledge, which I signed and urge other writers to adopt, I give Finkelstein and Harris the benefit of the doubt. I assume good intent that they believe they are doing good by speaking out the way they are. But I think they forget that speaking truth is a virtue that often competes with other virtues, such as teaching, persuasion, connection, and peace. To quote a popular Pakistani journalist, Munir Ataulah, the bitter pill of fact must dissolve in the sweet solvent of our beliefs if it is to be absorbed in our bloodstream of reality. Finkelstein and Harris may be speaking some hard truths, but they are, in my opinion, definitely not persuading or connecting with the other side. They are mostly fueling the partisan flames. So why am I back on social media? Because there is too much fear, anger, and hate on social media, and I want to fight back with empathy and love.