Trap · reasoning move
◆ False dilemma
Sounds like: “You either support Israel or you support human rights — you can't do both.”
Two options are presented as the only ones, so that rejecting one seems to force the other.
Signs
'either … or …', 'you can't have both', 'if you're not with us you're against us'; a position you hold that appears in neither option.
Questions to ask
Who holds a third position, and has anyone proposed it in a document or a poll? Is the choice binary in fact, or only in the framing?
Example
'You either support Israel or you support human rights.'
The mirror
'You're either with Israel or with Hamas.'
How it works here, from both sides.
'You either support Israel or you support human rights' leaves out positions that hold both: supporting a state's existence while pressing for refugees' rights, as the Clinton Parameters tried to do (see 'Israel is evil and illegitimate — it has no right to exist.'). The mirror, 'you're either with Israel or with Hamas', leaves out Palestinians and others who oppose Hamas and also oppose how the war is fought (see 'Who speaks for them?' and 'Who can afford to speak'). In both, the missing option is the one most real people hold.
When it isn't a false dilemma.
Some choices really are binary at a given moment: a vote for or against a resolution, a ceasefire accepted or not. The test is whether a third option exists that someone actually holds or has proposed. If it does, the either/or is a framing, not a description; if it doesn't, naming the choice is not a fallacy.
Why it works on us
- Moral choices sometimes really are stark, so framing one as stark sounds like courage rather than a shortcut.
- It turns a complex position into a loyalty test that is easy to state and hard to answer in a sentence.
- The middle options exist mostly in negotiating documents and polls, which few people read.
Where this trap shows up
Your side does it too — look at both columns.