What Sam Harris Gets Wrong About Israel

From a Jewish American living in Israel and a long-time fan of Sam

I noticed many of my pro-Israel friends enthusiastically sharing a recent article by Sam Harris titled “Why I Won’t Debate Critics of Israel.” The title itself is odd, as Sam prides himself on being able to talk to anyone. The recommendations were so gushing that, for example, one friend, whose opinion I value, described it as “absurdly well written”.

If you know me at all, you can imagine that, given the over-the-top accolades from an ideologically aligned group of people, my skeptical radar went off.

I’ve followed Sam for many years. I subscribe (paid) to his podcast, have listened to hundreds of hours of it, and have read a couple of his books. He’s smart, articulate, patient, and generally well-informed. He’s popular enough now that he can get pretty much anyone he wants as a guest on his show. I’ve heard Sam speak about the situation here in Israel many times, and I generally find his knowledge and thinking on the subject—uncharacteristically—to be fairly two-dimensional.

I read the piece, and it contained nothing that I hadn’t heard from Sam before. It’s definitely warmly affirming if you’re a Jew or Israeli who feels under siege in the world today, and I understand why people are sharing it so widely. But that’s not me. I think we need to be more honest with ourselves about how we see our place in this region and its conflicts if we’re to make any real progress toward peace and security.

Below is a comment I shared on Sam’s article.

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I’m a Jewish American who has been living in Israel for the past 20 years. I’m a fan of yours and have subscribed to your podcast for years. In general, you are rational and lucid. I do think you have some biases that affect your judgment. I believe that’s the case here, particularly because of your strong anti-Islam bias. Here are a few examples I compiled, with some assistance from AI:​

• ​You want to reduce a century-long national conflict to a single variable—“militant Islam”—and then declare history irrelevant. But land seizures, occupation, blockade, and legal inequality aren’t “narratives”; they are structures that shape what people believe is possible now. Ignoring them doesn’t make jihadism less real; it just guarantees we’ll misdiagnose why the conflict keeps reproducing itself.

• The slogan “if Palestinians laid down their arms, there would be peace; if Israelis laid down theirs, there would be genocide” is a moral Rorschach test, not an empirical argument. It compresses intent, power, and institutions into a fairy tale: one side as pure self-defense, the other as pure annihilation. A serious account has to grapple with what actually happened to nonviolent protest, village-level civil resistance, and diplomatic overtures over the last 30 years—not pretend they never existed.

• You keep saying “the problem isn’t Israel’s existence, it’s jihadism,” then you talk about “the Palestinians” as if Hamas and the entire Palestinian public share a single fanatical mind. That’s analytically incomplete. Polls show support for Hamas rises and falls with events, corruption, and the lack of alternatives; it does not prove that two million people in Gaza all endorse genocidal hadiths in Hamas’s charter. If you’re going to claim a whole population “wants genocide,” you need better evidence than anger at an occupation and one election in 2006.

• On Gaza, you jump from “Hamas fights from tunnels and uses human shields” straight to “the IDF is fighting the most ethical, unprecedented war in history.” The first claim is largely true; the second is speculation dressed up as moral certainty. Civilian protection isn’t measured by who you’re fighting, but by how you choose targets, rules of engagement, and proportionality when you know civilians are trapped. Saying your enemy is “worse than Nazis” does not automatically launder the way you wage war.

• You are right that Israel faces disproportionate scrutiny at the UN and that there is real antisemitism embedded in some anti-Israel rhetoric. But you treat three different things as one: criticism of occupation and policy, strategic focus on a key U.S. ally, and genuine Jew-hatred. Calling that whole bundle “the center of modern antisemitism” is a gift to both extremes: it lets antisemites pose as “just critics of Israel” and allows the Israeli government to dismiss every legal or moral constraint as bigotry.

• Finally, there’s something odd about writing a long essay titled “Why I Won’t Debate Critics of Israel” while insisting you welcome “better arguments.” If you really believe history is irrelevant, occupation marginal, and Palestinian public opinion essentially genocidal, then the people most qualified to challenge you are precisely the historians, legal scholars, and Palestinian and Israeli critics you’ve placed outside the bounds of debate. Refusing to engage serious adversaries while denouncing “grifters and moral lunatics” is less a defense of reason than a way of avoiding having to test your own assumptions.

Your piece strengthens the most hardline elements in Israeli society while making it more difficult for voices of moderation and critical self-reflection to gain traction.