The meme is you can’t do any such thing without being labelled antisemitic
Yup, it’s an issue that goes both ways. Israel has historically used the “antisemite” label as a shield for any criticism. And that has all recently come to a head, where any valid criticism of their literal fucking war crimes is treated the same as if you’re a neo-nazi. You can criticize Israel’s actions without stooping to antisemitism. But that won’t stop Israel (and Israel’s supporters) from labeling you an antisemite anyways.
It’s the same strategy that conservatives have used with things like Critical Race Theory. They work to undefine the term, so anything they don’t like can be labeled as such. Don’t like a classroom lesson? Label it CRT. Since conservatives have been taught to hate CRT, they’ll hate that lesson. Even if the lesson has nothing to do with CRT, that doesn’t matter because the conservative voters have already made up their minds about whether or not they’re against it. Antisemitism has become an undefined term for Israel’s supporters, where anyone they don’t like can simply be labeled an antisemite.
Yuo. Conservatives di this all the time. See: woke, politically correct, commie They use terms as cudgels without concern for meaning
The way israels been acting the last 3 months or so, (and also the 30 years prior) I think one could be forgiven for becoming more antisemitic. I mean, people very justly held heavy prejudice against Germans in the late 1940s and 1950s/60s, even though most obviously weren’t Nazis. Why exactly are Israeli Jews different?
It’s a tough needle to thread, because there is both a lot of antisemitism and a lot of opposition to genocide that is not motivated by antisemitism. Any support for Palestinians is joined by a chorus of calls to end the existence of Israel entirely, something that would require killing a lot of Jewish people. So it’s difficult to untangle the legitimate criticism from the antisemitism.
So I don’t disagree with you, but I also understand why people are quick to slap labels on critics.
Israel is not “Jewish people”. Israel “could” end without a single Jew dying. Also, Jews lived there when it was Palestine. I dunno did they die when it became Israel? How are you arriving at the end of a concept being mass murder?
I think if Israel stopped trying to run itself as an ethnostate they’d be fine. I think there’s an argument that the “concept” of what currently constitutes Israel may be too tainted to realistically save. Many unwilling to admit fault, apologize, and return what was stolen. And many unwilling to forgive them for doing it. It would take real concession and change. Something those in charge don’t want. So the people both Israeli and Palestinian will continue to suffer for the gains of wealthy genocidal bigots.
Many Palestinians were killed or died in the transition when Israel was established.
I agree with you that Israel needs to change, and that they aren’t going to change unless they are forced to change. But the Jewish people living in Israel will not leave peacefully. To “end” Israel is to kill a lot of Jewish people living there.
And the antisemites are counting on everyone making a distinction between the two.
There’s no scenario, in any possible world, in which the ‘abolition’ of Israel doesn’t result in the deaths of millions of Jews.
Israel “could” end without a single Jew dying
The history of this region proves this to not be the case though. Jews have mostly been chased out of the region a few times with many dead left in the wake.
Jews did not live peacefully before the British mandate ended, there’s a long list of pogroms and assaults leading to many dead in the hundreds of years leading up to the UN establishment of the state.
It would be great if they could live peacefully but history shows that’s a risk they can’t take.
Fuck that. Anti Zionism isn’t antisemitism. Israel is a fascist state with no right to exist. Anyone who associates that fascist state to Jewishness is the true antisemite
Eight in ten British Jews consider themselves to be a Zionist. Only six percent do not.
Anti Zionism isn’t antisemitism. Israel is a fascist state with no right to exist.
This is antisemitism on two counts.
- The reason is because you are singling out the only Jewish state as being uniquely lacking legitimacy as a state, and therefore Jews as the only people on this planet who don’t have the right of self-determination. Antizionism would be to call for the destruction of Israel, which is also antisemitic.
- Comparing the only Jewish state to the very regime which murdered more than 6,000,000 Jews is an antisemitic comparison and designed to hurt Jews.
It’s a tough needle to thread
It really isn’t as long as both parties are arguing in good faith and refraining from strawman arguments or other logical fallacies.
Sadly, even that is usually too much to ask for, as evidenced by your apparently good faith post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy of assuming that you can’t argue that genocide of Palestinians is a bad thing without people agreeing with you by arguing that genocide of Israeli people would be super neat.
Of course, claiming that what other people say apart from agreeing with you that Palestinians shouldn’t be murdered is the responsibility of you for some reason is in itself an association fallacy.
Come to think of it, ARE you arguing in good faith or are you just taking this chance to apply guilt by association without appearing to? 🤔
Anyway: NO it’s NOT difficult to defend Palestinians without being antisemitic and benignly doing so does NOT make you responsible for antisemites agreeing with what you’re saying and then adding a lot that you did NOT say.
It really isn’t as long as both parties are arguing in good faith and refraining from strawman arguments or other logical fallacies.
How would you know? That’s really my point. Antisemites are using this moment to inject their bigotey into the political discussion.
Come to think of it, ARE you arguing in good faith or are you just taking this chance to apply guilt by association without appearing to? 🤔
Case in point. I’ve called what Israel has been foing a genocide from the beginning. I think Netanyahu has committed crimes against humanity and should be deposed.
I also think Israel has a right to defend itself from Hamas, and a right to prosecute and root out terrorists.
For this, I have been called a bigot from both sides. And I completely understand, because you don’t know if I’m a secret bigot trying to sound reasonable.
I’m not at all suggesting that it makes me responsible for the statements of bigots, nor am I suggesting that anyone else should feel guilty by association as ling as they are challenging the bigotry. If you march shoulder to shoulder with them then yes you are guilty by association. If you tap into their hatred to achieve your political goals, however benign your goals are, you are guilty by association.
And that’s the hard part. I’m not suggesting it’s hard not to be a bigot. It’s hard to tell who is who from the sidelines.
If you see a beaten up homeless person in the street and they keep screaming something about “I’m gonna take over the united States government”, the threat is basically idle and has to be taken in the context of what power he has, as a homeless perspn, as compared to a state like the US. Israel has all the power and is in no kind of substantial danger from Hamas or anyone else. It can erradiacte the entire place easily. Palestine is the homeless person screaming how he wants to replace biden while in fact he is beaten to the ground and survives on scrapes of food.
Hamas has fired more than 12,000 rockets at Israel since October 7th and continues to fire hundreds more every day. The only reason they haven’t killed more people is because Israel has invested in the Iron Dome air defense system.
You’re also forgetting that on October 7th they raped and slaughtered and burned their way through every Jew they could get their hands on, men, women and children, killing more than 1,300 in the process. The only reason they didn’t carry on their slaughter was because the ‘evil’ IDF stopped them.
I’ll be sure not to concern myself with the rockets Hamas continues to fire at Israeli neighborhoods because those people shouldn’t be concerned given the power imbalance is so stark. I’m confident they’ll understand.
I don’t disagree with you that Israel has far more power and ability to influence things than anyone in Palestine does, but it’s disingenuous to portray Hamas as a harmless homeless person ranting about the government when they are often causing injury and sometimes death to people who certainly weren’t within earshot to hear the ranting in the first place.
I don’t have an answer for this situation, but Israel has an obligation to protect their citizens. That shouldn’t come at the expense of innocent Palestinian civilians, though. Everything about this conflict sucks, because there’s absolutely no good actors involved.
Here is a thought. Set a 60 second timer, see how fast you can reach a shelter within that timer. Now imagine that at the end of the timer rockets may or may not strike your home or your family’s home. Are okay with that? Remember that 60 second timer can go off at any moment, including your commute to work.
That’s what you’re calling an “idle threat” that Israelis are presented with constantly.
It’s not difficult at all. One is criticising government policies and extremists while the other is just bigotry using criticism of an entire people for their government policies and extremists.
Big shout out to all the Jews protesting against israel they completely destroyed this narrative.
Are others going to label them as “anti-semitic Jews”? I feel like it would be ironic and ridiculous but I’m not that smart.
Wouldn’t be the first time “self-hating Jew” has been used to shut down any kind of anti-Zionist critique. Bernie Sanders had his face shoved in that turd all through 2016. I remember hearing it tossed around since at least the Bush Era, when being against the Iraq War was framed as a form of anti-Semitism.
I’ve already seen it. I think the common term is “self-hating Jew”.
“anti-Semitism” used to be a term with a lot of weight and serious connotations. Now, it’s been misused and abused so often that the power it once had is gone.
If anyone who disagrees with the genocidal far right government of Israel is an anti-semite then, of course, the term will lose it’s power to shame actual bigots. It should surprise nobody that actual anti-jewish bigots are coming out of the shadows.
This is one of those memes where you can’t really be sure who it’s talking to.
Agreed. One one hand, some people have been using ‘antisemitic’ (sorry I have no idea how to spell that, and autocorrect isn’t helping lmao) to dismiss just about anyone who criticizes Israel’s actions. On the other hand, there absolutely are people going around being blatantly antisemitic.
I’m assuming that’s what you’re talking about, but correct me if I’m wrong ofc lol.
Condemning the deaths of Palestinians is not inherently antisemitic
FTFY
Anti-zionism =/= anti-semitism.
Pro-Palestine =/= pro-Hamas.
Anti-Hamas =/= Pro-Israel.
Since October it’s been a really easy concept to grasp. Hamas is a terrorist group that murdered and kidnapped a bunch (don’t know the exact number something around 200+) of Israeli civilians, the IDF responded in a predictably overzealous way and have now killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 civilians in Palestine. Neither Hamas nor the IDF have a moral high ground here. They both need to stop killing civilians. Super easy.
Neither Hamas nor the IDF have a moral high ground here. They both need to stop killing civilians.
The one thing both have in common is refusal to take peace talks seriously. Hamas refuses to let go of their hostages, and Israel continues their bombing campaign against Hamas.
Its a difficult situation because these are the “adults” in the room. The civilians involved have little power at all.
Your number is dangerously misleading.
According to Hamas, 20,000 Palestinians have been killed. As a matter of methodology, they do not distinguish between Hamas terrorists and civilians. It also does not distinguish between those killed by Israel and those killed by Hamas/Palestinian Islamic Jihad, whether through guns or misfired rockets. The IDF claims to have killed at minimum 8,000 Hamas terrorists, which would immediately bring the total of civilian dead down to 12,000.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza regularly issues statistics on the dead and wounded in the Strip. As of Sunday, the tally stands at 20,424 deaths. The ministry does not differentiate between armed men and civilians, nor does it denote the people killed by Israeli strikes and those felled by errant rockets fired by Hamas and other Palestinian factions.
This time the Israeli reprisal has been far greater. “The fundamental difference in this war is that almost zero organizations in Gaza are reporting on the number of casualties, save for the Palestinian Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas – and the Health Ministry is working with the Media Ministry,” Khoury says.
According to the Israeli military, 10 to 12 percent of the 10,000-plus rockets fired at Israel have actually landed in Gaza. According to Prof. Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, “I would say that there is a significant number of casualties … caused by failed rockets from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.”
**Michael, as well as others relying on the Israeli military numbers, put the number of Hamas members killed at over 8,000. If Hamas’ total numbers are used, this would put the civilian toll at about 60 percent. When asked how it has determined the number of Hamas militants among the dead, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit declined to comment. **
If that’s even close to the correct percentage, then it’s actually a remarkable achievement by the Israeli military to keep the proportion of civilian deaths so low.
According to the United Nations on 25 May 2022, on average 90% of deaths in war are civilians. If the Israeli military has managed to keep it down to 60%, as the analysts above suggest, then actually they’re doing a very good job.
Genuine question, would it be appropriate to say that the respective religions at play are not actually the core of the conflict? It seems like the only religious motivation would be concerning Jerusalem and not the entirety of the contested land.
On broad analysis, it seems similar to how the conflict between Irish Catholics and Protestants isn’t really religious, more just shorthand for idealogical differences between the two groups. Is that an apt comparison, or does religion play a more active role in this conflict?
Israel is a secular democracy with a minority political wing motivated by religious beliefs, so it’s fair to say Jewish belief is not at the core of the conflict for them. Muslim states such as Egypt, Jordan, and UAE have established peaceful relations with Israel, so it’s fair to say that Israel is willing to make peace with Muslim nations and Muslim nations are not motivated to religiously attack Israel.
That’s great until you encounter all the people condemning Israel, then committing hate crimes against the local Jews. The people that are pro Palestinians and cheer on Hamas. There are also plenty of people that condemn Hamas and support Israel in the same breath.
None of those people are the vocal minority. They’re the majority of supporters of these causes.
Zionism = the belief that the Jewish people have the right of self-determination in the form of the state of Israel in which their national aspirations
Anti-zionism = the belief that the Jewish people, uniquely among all the peoples of the world, have no right of self-determination or a state in which their national aspirations can be pursued.
Can you see why that’s antisemitic?
Israel is, besides all that, already established. Zionism was completed. It’s not going anywhere.
Anti-zionism = the belief that the Jewish people, uniquely among all the peoples of the world, have no right of self-determination or a state in which their national aspirations can be pursued.
How is that “unique?” I don’t think white nationalists or Christian nationalists have a right to their own state either. I don’t think Israel has the right to be the apartheid state it currently is.
Anti-zionism = the belief that the Jewish people, uniquely among all the peoples of the world, have no right of self-determination or a state in which their national aspirations can be pursued.
I don’t believe in rights at all. I believe the existence of nation states is an abhorration. but neither of those are why you are wrong.
antizionism is the belief that the Jewish people are part of a diaspora, and the creation of an Israeli state undermines that culture in addition to necessitating mass killing that is indistinguishable from genocide. antizionism simply opposes zionism, and makes no claims about denying rights to anyone.
The problem is that the term ‘Zionism’ has had scope creep.
Now it also includes a political movement in Israel that endorses the idea of Israel’s expansion and sees the Palestinian neighbors as occupying land to be.
So when many people say that they are “anti-Zionist” they aren’t necessarily saying that they don’t think Israel has a right to exist at all, but that they don’t think it has a right to have expanded and to effectively annex its neighbors (a 2023 theme that’s not very favorable to Israel with whom it shares the association). Or additionally that it doesn’t have a right to exist by committing war crimes and human rights violations to make that happen (another association with the same).
Some are saying that it doesn’t have a right to exist at all. And I agree in that instance it is pretty anti-Semetic. But Zionist expansion attitudes are also technically anti-Semetic given that both Israelis and Palestinians are Semetic populations, and both can trace their ancestry to the same exact ancestral indigenous Canaanite populations.
The problem is that telling which attitude of “anti-Zionism” is which just from the term “anti-Zionist” has become impossible because the term Zionism itself now means a spectrum of things.
some of the most chill, accepting, and compassionate religious people I know are jews. Funny how what those people all have in common is hating zionism.
Jews who stand against zionism don’t usually have a lot of motivation to live in Israel. It’s a structural issue with the country.
