We reject antisemitism in all its forms, including when it masquerades as criticism of Zionism or Israel’s policies. We also recognise that, as journalist Peter Beinart wrote in 2019, “Anti-Zionism is not inherently antisemitic—and claiming it is uses Jewish suffering to erase Palestinian experience.”
The fact that this even requires saying is a testament to how thoroughly drenched the (so-called) “west” is in regurgitated pro-Israeli propaganda.
Israel itself is drenched in a culture of racist anti-Palestinian tropes, and denial of the ethnic cleansing called the Nakba.
The crimes of the Third Reich are invoked disingenuously to construct a counterfactual demonization of the Palestinian people.
Meanwhile, Jews in the West are often antagonized in their communities and families if they challenge the prevailing dogma.
There is a soft but tragic irony, that many liberal Jews feel free to approach their religious heritage critically and skeptically, but any who question political doctrine are greeted as heretics.
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your insanity and blatant racism is fucking embarassing
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Racism is not history.
You provided the former.
Fuck you, you racist ghoul.
So they have to bomb hospitals and refugee camps, or the terrorists win?
It wasn’t a viable excuse after 9/11, it’s not a viable excuse after 10/7 either.
There is no easy answer, especially not one involving indiscriminate killing of civilians. From the IDF or Hamas.
The Jews are the only people for whom criticizing the government of the country they’re typically associated with is interpreted as racism. If I say the Chinese government is committing crimes against humanity no one thinks I’m a racist. If I say Donald Trump is a moron, no one thinks I hate all Americans. If I say the Israeli government shouldn’t be responding to Hamas’ attack the way they are? Oh man, now I’m an antisemite and hate all Jews!
The fuck is wrong with this world?
It’s public relations spin. If you haven’t noticed, the Israeli government isn’t exactly what one would call ethical. They use every trick in the book to insulate themselves against criticism, up to and including crying antisemitism.
It’s disgusting, really. After WWII, many people did what they could to distance themselves from even the barest hint of antisemitism, and with good reason: the actions of the Nazis were reprehensible. Israel has taken that cultural awareness, unwillingly purchased with the blood of their ancestors, and used it to commit genocide of their own.
Yep, guilt over WW2 from Western governments (no country went to war to save the Jews, it was a byproduct of wanting to kick Hitler’s ass) without realising they’re now enabling the same thing to happen to another ethnic group.
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The foundational myth of Israel is that Jewishness is a national essence holding a supreme right to control over particular territory, above the rights of those who contest the right.
Conceding the distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Israel is conceding the fallaciousness of the myth on which depends “Israel’s right to exist”.
Protecting the myth depends on disparaging any Jewishness of critics and disparaging the humanness of the occupied population.
Jews must be united in their claim to the lands, and any opposing the claim must be opposed, as an opponent of undivided and untainted Jewishness.
Which is funny since there’s plenty of Jews that are against Israel at the moment or as an artificial construct instead of a miracle from God, believing that it should be peacefully dismantled so that God would be the one to choose when they are to go back from exile, not men.
I suppose the more favorable kind of religious zealousness is the kind not entrenched with political power.
The fuck is wrong with this world?
Religion.
Ok maybe not all of it, and not all religious people. Kinda like how #metoo wasn’t actually about all men, just the problematic ones. When I say religion is what’s wrong with the world I’m not talking about memaw going to church on Sunday. I’m talking about people fucking people blowing each other up in the furtherance of what they perceive to be some divine goal.
Sure, the type of person to feverishly go to war over some stories would probably be extremely opinionated without religion, but you don’t see anyone going down to the fucking Renaissance faire with a rifle because of the guys dressed as pirates.
Believing things strongly isn’t the problem. It’s the system of organized moral superiority that’s the problem.
I would actually disagree on China, the position that it was possible the WIV was the cause of COVID was successful painted as xenophobic or racist, rather than a viable option.
Which always struck me as odd considering a bunch of your people eating random jungle meat so much they cause worldwide diseases sounds like you could be way more racist about it. Yet, somehow that was painted as the less racist option.
If I say the Chinese government is committing crimes against humanity no one thinks I’m a racist.
I see you haven’t met any tankies
They’re such a small group of extremists that their opinion doesn’t matter, that’s all! 😂
I haven’t read the article, but the title made me go “what the fuck”?
Of course it’s not antisemitism. It would only be antisemitism if you said “those people are bad because they are Jews”.
Or am I wrong?
You have to remember that you are on lemmy here that is inherently more left and pro Palestine. There are people that get their news through sources that are using this argument against anti Israel arguments.
This letter is meant for those people.
In Germany the public discourse as lead by political parties and mainstream media , but also cultural organizations is pretty much claiming any criticism of the shape of thr Israeli state, any analysis towards the occupation as a source of violence or current criticism of israeli war crimes as antisemitism.
Because of that jewish protests for palestinian human rights have been banned like arab and leftist protests, jewish protesters have been violently arrested by police, palestinians have been kicked out of book faires, art exhibitions and other events where just before they were supposed to receive prizes. The head of the main government party has loudly cancelled a meeting with Bernie Sanders because he would be too critical of Israel. Sanders is a jew and has lived in Israel in the past.
So in Germany the term antisemitism is instrumentalised to supress any serious criticism of Israel, which includes in particular jewish criticism of Israel.
By the perversion of the term, Germany is acting antisemitic by banning jewish voices from the public, sometimes with police violence and denyingthe existence of plurality in the jewish communities.
Incidently they try to blame arabs and other immigrants for antisemitism in Germany, deflecting from the widespread antisemitism in German mainstream society. Just two month ago the vice-prime-minister of the state of Bavaria was uncovered to be a Holocaust endorsing Neonazi in his youth and instead of it harming his election it helped his election. Also now the Bavarian state attorneys are investigating the people who brought this Neonazi past to light.
The US is cracking down on protests right now based on this pretext
And not just right now. For decades you would lose your job in academia and media for showing too much sympathy for Palestinians.
Always amuses me how there’s endless discourse about Islam being antisemitic and therefore movements associated with muslims are jew-hating pogroms, but the reality is almost all antisemitic attacks across the “Western world” are done by white christians.
It’s purely projection from the columnists and newsreaders who see antisemitism as a tactic to shut down anti-colonial protests.
What do you guys think about Thunberg’s statement? In my country it’s framed as antisemitic and FFF Germany renounced it but I don’t think so
I don’t understand why FFF would denounce it, they’re a climate strike movement, nothing to do with this. I feel like someone at the “top” of FFF managed to get their own agenda into this, it’s so strange for someone like them to condemn a call for ceasefire.
What was her statement?
the world needs to speak up and call for an immediate ceasefire, justice and freedom for Palestinians and all civilians affected
We are of course against any type of discrimination, and condemn antisemitism in all forms and shapes. This is non-negotiable
That does not ring antisemitic at all.
That statement was denounced?
Asking for a ceasefire is apparently antisemitic.
You never know, there could be a secret Hamas tunnel under that ceasefire.
Even when in the next breath you are making it explicitly clear that your comments carry zero prejudice, only concern for civilians.
The second part of the statement was added later. She was denounced because she initially only mentioned sympathy for the victims in Palestine, omitting the Israeli victims. After criticism, she added the second part to her statement.
Oh, I see, thanks for the clarification.
They called Israel an apartheid state (which Amnesty international also did at some point) and had an octopus stuffed animal (which is an antisemitic dogwhistle).
I don’t think that they knew about the dogwhistle but then again I don’t know why to but a random stuff animal there in the first place.
German media often says “antisemitic and anti-Israel” as if they were the same. Is that the case in other western media as well or is it a German thing due to our history?
Oh I didn’t know about the octopus. That is weird, I’ll look into it thanks.
And at this point, it would be difficult to not classify israel as an apartheid state.
Conflating antisemitic and anti-Israel is not just a German thing, but I think it’s very rare to hear “anti-Israel” in the English-speaking news I read. I only ever hear pro israel pro Palestine, which may imply you are anti one or the other, but the discrete term anti-Israel almost never comes up is that I read anyway. Anti-civilian death anti terrorism, anti the specific acts rather than anti a whole country.
I hear “anti-Zionist” incorrectly conflated with antisemitic more often in the news I come across, anti-zionism is accused of rejecting the establishment of an Israeli state, but anti-zionism also refers to rejecting the continuous illegal israeli occupation of Palestine, so can be seen as a racist dog whistle or a protest against imperialism based on who’s saying it and who’s interpreting it.
The west is so majority-supportive of Israel as a military ally and the Holocaust is so historically recent and rightly popularly vilified that most people take the Israeli side or look at a conflict solely from their perspective regardless of what the news is.
“No, it totally is.”
-Israel
I am not Jewish, but I am married to an Israeli and have spent a decent amount of time in Israel, having traveled to many areas of the country.
The current situation is not surprising and it really comes down to one thing: LAND & RESOURCES.
All of the rhetoric about apartheid, anti-semitism, genocide, pogroms, etc, etc, etc are merely cover-ups for the real issue: Israel is a TINY piece of land that now supports close to 10 million people. The birthrate in Israel among everyone is among the highest in the world. Even secular Jews rarely have fewer than 3 kids. Muslim Arabs and Orthodox Jews frequently have 8, 9, 10 or more kids.
I have been visiting Israel fairly regularly over the last 20 years and I have seen the visible effects this uncontrolled population growth has had. Land is at a premium, everything is expensive and scarce, and it is FREAKING CROWDED. Towns and villages often support far more people than they were designed to support. Everyone there is worried about water and land and money.
And so you get to the real issue - this is about a fight over land. It’s a fight over which group is going to have a place for their own families and future generations to live there. It’s about fights over resources like water.
I think a lot of the discussion is very rightly focused on the war crimes and human rights abuses, but you’re absolutely correct.
I personally think that Netanyahu made many huge mistakes, including building the wall, and he should resign and leave politics forever, but I’m going to criticize him only after Hamas is eliminated.
Now, any pro-Palestinian voice is perceived as pro-Hamas. I heard the crowd chanting “from the river to the sea”, which basically means “kill all Jews”. It is antisemitism, yes.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is not an antisemitic chant. It’s calling for the liberation of Palestinians from their genocidal apartheid.
By killing all Jews and destroying the state of Israel. This is literally their political program.
If you’re referring to “landback”, that’s a far deeper act of decolonization that indigenous people all across the world have started fighting for, rooted in leftist revolutionary ideals. It started with Native Americans. No one gets genocided in landback, that’s a colonialist projection. Explain how it’s a slogan for genocide.
Most of Arab countries have far-right government. Hamas is a far-right terrorist organization. What are you talking about?
I don’t give a fuck about Hamas in this conversation. This is strictly about liberation for oppressed peoples.
When you talk about liberation, it’s usually good to clarify what exactly you mean by that.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was called “liberation” too by the Kremlin.
Liberation means that Palestinians get to be treated as human beings, not trapped in an open air prison, not limited to the bare minimum amount of food and water, and not harassed and beaten by the IDF just for being Palestinian. They live in an apartheid state with very few rights or freedoms.
I personally think that Netanyahu made many huge mistakes, including building the wall, and he should resign and leave politics forever, but I’m going to criticize him only after Hamas is eliminated.
Idunno man this kinda sounds like as a politician he has no incentive to eliminate Hamas and every incentive to radicalize more Palestinians against him.
Wild, you are the person the article was written to inform.
Yet you missed the point entirely…
