I'm going to say something similar about "context". For the record: I am think context is tremendously important. I am very pro-context. But the problem with context is that there's an infinite amount of it, and that makes it susceptible to abuse. https://twitter.com/abesilbe/status/1391219297071083521

I've seen 1mil tweets providing "context" for a geopolitical crisis to try and tamp down on intuitive outrage. Sometimes they'll simply say untruths or misrepresentations, but often they're accurate as far as they go. But they're also shaded: their context itself lacks context.

Ex: A dozen explainers of Sheikh Jarrah offer "context" of TikTok attacks or Jews claiming title from pre-48; but withhold the "context" that only Jews can assert such pre-48 title claims or longstanding Isr gov efforts to "Judaize" E Jerusalem by squeezing out Pal residents.

There's a double-bind, of course: folks who dismiss any unhelpful context as a distraction bc it interferes w/their politics vs folks who endlessly table actual action by insisting that infinitely more and more context (usually slanted) is needed before action can be justified.

So one thing I teach my students is that they should resist both the temptation to make "hard questions easy", and the temptation to believe that just bc a question is hard, that means it lacks moral urgency (or that morally urgent question must be easy).

This is the gambit Abe's responding to: trying to leverage the "complexity" of a situation to sap it of its moral urgency. A simple response, then, is to deny the complexity. But the better one is to accept its complexity but refuse to accept the jump to sapping its moral force.

This thread is an example of someone providing "context" that's not false, but is clearly slanted. All the context that seems to indict Israel is cabined, hedged, or apologized. All the context that seems to favor Israel is given as straight shots. https://twitter.com/AvivaKlompas/status/1391152301541400588

And of course, the strongest bits of "context" for Palestinians -- things like the lack of parity for Palestinians who might wish to level similar claims asserting title to property in Israel, or the campaign to "Judaize" Palestinian neighborhoods -- are absent altogether.

So again, it's not that context like "TikTok attacks" can't at all aid in better understanding. But taken as a whole, this "contextualizing" obscures more than it illuminates--which people who know the missing context know, which generates suspicion of "context" altogether.