Whoopi Goldberg's Universalism

Goldberg has fallen prey to a well-intentioned but very dangerous tendency to universalize every conflict - resulting in an amoral worldview.

“I just wanted to acknowledge the Bibas family in Israel. Their remains were returned last week… these two little boys… became, with their mother, kind of the symbol of October 7th, the tragic symbol… They paraded their bodies around, they screamed, they yelled, they misled Israel with the return of the wrong body; it’s been awful. I just wanted to acknowledge this one because there are sixty more remaining hostages in Gaza, and it’s a reminder that they’re still there. Our hearts are with Israel and the family. This is just the most heart-wrenching part for - for everyone.”

• Sara Haines on The View - February 25, 2025

“There is nothing positive about any of this…. But, y’know, for everyone who’s affected - for everyone - our hearts should go out. For everyone who’s affected, all the families, all the children; this is horrifying.”

• Whoopi Goldberg, responding to Sara Haines

From one perspective, Whoopi Goldberg’s comment should not be controversial. She is right: there is nothing positive about the war, there has been pain on both sides, and we dare not ignore the suffering of innocents no matter where they live.

Nevertheless, her assertion is misguided, inappropriate, and morally obtuse. There are at least two reasons why this is so.

First of all, there is a proper time and place to discuss the suffering of any given group; crossing that line inevitably minimizes the individualized nature of a particular tragedy. To use an obvious example, it would be heartless to visit a shiva house and, when the mourner mentions his grief, to qualify it by saying that lots of other people have sat shiva, too. That assertion, while technically accurate, demonstrates a shocking lack of empathy. But Whoopi’s comment was worse than that: her self-righteous and clueless insensitivity was exacerbated by the implication that the side who perpetrated the murder is deserving of sympathy, as well; we know that her “everyone who’s affected” includes the people who cheered the sadistic murder of the Bibas family. It would be as if, to extend the example above, a person sitting shiva for a murdered relative was told that the murderer’s family is also suffering. That may be true. It also minimizes the tragedy and qualifies the suffering of the mourner, perhaps even implicitly laying some blame at the mourner’s feet.

Apart from her minimization of the murders of the Bibas family, Goldberg also falls into the philosophical mistake that Rabbi Jonathan Sacks zt’l describes as among the most dangerous ideas that have become dominant in the past 150 years: “...The belief - superficially compelling but quite false - that there is only one truth about the essentials of the human condition, and it holds true for all people at all times… From this flowed some of the great crimes of history, some under religious auspices, others - the French and Russian revolutions, for example - under the banner of secular philosophies, but both under the enchantment of Plato’s ghost.”¹

I doubt that Whoopi Goldberg was intentionally invoking Plato’s belief in a singular universal truth that applies to all people at all times, but her drive to universalize the suffering of the Jewish people is drawn from the same philosophical stock. This is not the first time that she tried to universalize the specific suffering of Jewish people, either. About three years ago, Goldberg argued that the Holocaust is “not about race, it’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man. That’s what it’s about… You’re missing the point. The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is: it’s how people treat each other. It’s a problem. It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, Jews, Ital- everybody - eats each other.”

The elimination of the particular in favor of the universal carries severe moral costs. Paying attention only to that which we share turns individuals into abstractions, which can then be sacrificed in the name of a greater moral ideal. Moreover, the erasure of individualized suffering also erases individual blame, making murderers like the Nazis parallel to their Jewish victims - all of whom are merely different types of people, or (in Goldberg’s formulation) white men being inhuman to other white men. In contrast, noting the singularity of individuals and groups teaches us the values that we can then apply in universal situations. In Rabbi Sacks’s words, “The universality of moral concern is not something we learn by being universal but by being particular. Because we know what it is to be a parent, loving our children, not children in general, we understand what it is for someone else, somewhere else, to be a parent, loving his or her children, not ours. There is no road to human solidarity that does not begin with moral particularity - by coming to know what it means to be a child, a parent, a neighbor, a friend. We learn to love humanity by loving specific human beings. There is no shortcut.”²

This obviously does not imply that we should ignore universal concerns. It does mean that downplaying the distinctiveness of particular families and cultures undermines our ability to foster empathy, compassion, and altruism.

Goldberg’s stance is reminiscent of the Congressional response to antisemitic comments by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota in 2019. After Omar tweeted, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby” - a reference to Jewish money being the only reason that members of Congress support Israel - there was a call to unequivocally condemn her antisemitism through a Congressional resolution. But what began as a noble enterprise was soon completely undermined and utterly watered down by making it about all forms of bigotry instead of just about antisemitism. Its opening words were, “Condemning anti-Semitism as hateful expressions of intolerance that are contradictory to the values and aspirations that define the people of the United States and condemning anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry against minorities as hateful expressions of intolerance that are contrary to the values and aspirations of the United States.” Indeed, Speaker Nancy Pelosi emphasized that the resolution was “not about [Omar]. It’s about these forms of hatred.” This, despite the fact that the origin of the resolution was an attempt to respond specifically to Omar’s antisemitic rhetoric. When a condemnation is made universal, it loses it’s power and becomes meaningless.

It’s almost as if instead of condemning Hamas, people chose to condemn “evil in all its forms.” The result is that instead of including more evils under its banner, it essentially includes nothing at all.

I do not believe that Whoopi Goldberg was intentionally trying to minimize Jewish suffering, or absolve Hamas of responsibility; she makes it clear later in the segment that Hamas “are the bad guys.” I believe that she has fallen prey to a well-intentioned but very dangerous tendency to universalize every conflict. This does not make her an antisemite. It does make her a paragon of shallow moral calculus that, ultimately, can destroy moral considerations altogether. She would do well to learn that lesson.

1. Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference, p. 50.

2. ibid. p. 58.