It continues to astound me this has to be stated as a political position, as though objecting to Israel committing mass genocide against Palestinians somehow makes you an antisemite.
Mass killing of innocent people is always wrong, no matter who is doing it.
The problem is that actual antisemites jump into the debate and work to linguistically push legitimate criticism of Israel into real antisemitism. You can see it right here, all over Lemmy, and presumably this thread. It’s incredibly obvious, and it’s also incredibly obvious that those people want to short circuit this conversation by making the issue black and white.
That’s why many people are very hesitant to engage with this even if they do have real concerns over how Israel operates.
And on the other side of the coin, hard-right Israelis work to paint any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, regardless of legitimacy.
So on the one hand, you have antisemites using this as an opportunity to blame all the world’s ills on tHe (((gLoBALiStS))) (I really hope that came across as sarcastic enough), and on the other, you have ultraconservative Israelis using the first group to lump the people saying “please don’t do a genocide” in with them. And on top of that you also have Hamas doing the goddamn Goofy “and I’ll fuckin do it again” meme, along with a bunch of people in Palestine who are literally taught antisemitism and hatred in the classroom, while Russia, Iran, and the same goddamn Israelis painting everyone as antisemitic pour money into the group that would genocide Israel back in a heartbeat. And caught in the middle of this category 5 shit hurricane are a bunch of innocent people who just want to be treated like human beings with equal rights, and to be able to go to the goddamn grocery store without worrying about getting exploded by a piss rocket / laser-guided cluster bomb made by Lockheed Martin.
I’m so goddamn fucking sick and tired of everything with this. Literally the only “good guys” in this entire fucking 70-year conflict are the noncombatants on either side of the Gaza border wall trying to go about their day and whose entire lives are reduced to a casualty sheet and a propaganda blurb, while both sides just keeps fighting and killing because perverse incentives mean it’s the only way both Netanyahu and Hamas can cling to power, innocent life be damned.
Russia, Iran, and the same goddamn Israelis painting everyone as antisemitic pour money
This is an important thing that many people ignore or don’t know. Most wedge issues are stoked by groups with money on each side. Even if you think something is a moral issue, large issues have money behind them. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be contentious because everyone would support only one side.
Iran and Israel are regional political rivals. Neither one actually wants or is ready for a war, so they support proxies that do dirty work for them. Both countries are run by conservatives and animosity and fear help them with domestic politics. The political parties in power in Iran and Israel both benefit from Hamas being scary, and anti-Semitism existing in the world.
Eh, sure you have antisemites saying Israel’s actions make Jews evil and that’s bad. But most of the antisemites are saying Israel’s actions make Jews evil and that’s good. Because they’re evil, and they like fellow evil as long as they aren’t competing for resources. Or because they’re evil Jews who like being evil and want to use Jewishness as a shield. For example, Netanyahu is an evil antisemite who wants everyone to think Judaism is about doing genocide, so that he can call anyone who objects to genocide an antisemite. But of course, saying Judaism is genocide is the real antisemitism.
I think the requirement for “have to be stated it as a political position” caveat is rooted in malice which has historically skewed the discussion in favor of controlling the narrative in the interest of the agenda at hand, in this case is blind support for Israel.
I remember having to use the same set of qualifiers back in the day during the “War on Terror”, when arguing that mass bombing campaigns would only lead to more extremism. I’d have to state that I didn’t “support terrorism” and the idea was to have an objective discussion around the policies in question.
It’s a tact to suppress valid criticism and garner support.
It was apparent then and it’s apparent now. We cannot have open discussions in the interest of actual progress when folks are implicated into a myopic tribal view of the situation for having an opinion that goes against the common narrative.
Yeah, you would think that it would be pretty simple and straightforward for most people to grasp, yet, the need to condition being pro-not-killing-innocent-Palestinian/any civilians with a disclaimer of not supporting Hamas and not being antisemitic within the same breath exists in conversations with most folks. It’s absurd. It’s like being against both what was done to innocents by Hamas on October 7 and what Israel is currently doing to innocents is impossible for many people to wrap their minds around (or at least, that’s how the national conversation is framed in the US). Neither action is an acceptable means of achieving goals (stated or otherwise), but Hamas and Netanyahu have long been in a toxic codependent relationship. My favorite is the look on “pro-Israel” peoples’ faces in instances where they’re informed that the person they just called an antisemite for daring to be against the bombing of innocent children and others is Jewish (whether by religious practice or genetics). It’s bullshit.
kinda hard to get that message across when woke ass idiots are chanting" between the river and the sea" as if that slogan meant support for Palestine.
The slogan From the River to the Sea is about Palestinian liberation that started in the 60s by the PLO for a democratic secular state, not Genocide. The Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad in 1966 maybe, but he’s not Palestinian.
The worst part about criticizing Israel and Biden is the quality of people who think you agree with them on other stuff…
I criticize both a lot, and have gotten some horrendous replies from people who assume we share other beliefs.
The longform divorce scheme really should be talked about more,
This man is clearly committing a cry for help! /S
something tells me he wouldn’t be assuming they share beliefs in the first place
Against genocide -> antisemitic
Against antisemitism -> islamophobic
Shame on you OP, shame on you.
Why shame on OP? They’re saying that being a true progressive means being against all forms of hate.
I believe the comment you’re replying to may have been using rhetorical devices that we humans call “humor” and “irony”
Zionism =/= Judaism
I hate Zionism, and while I am not Jewish, I have a few friends of that faith and I will not see them slandered, mocked, or made to feel unwelcome in this world.
The problem is: what is antizionism? If to be antizionist is to oppose the government of Israel, then yes, antizionism isn’t antisemitism. If antizionism is a negation of the legitimacy of the Israeli state altogether, then it’s a form of antisemitism, because it’s denying Jew’s the right of self-determination.
I feel like when a country goes genocidal, it loses any legitimacy it once had.
I mean Germany is STILL apologizing for the Holocaust and still sweats anytime Poland’s in the news.
And I hope that, one day, Israel will react in the same way with Palestine. But Germany still exists, and Israel should too.
Allowing white Europeans to collaborate with the Nazis and change their last names to fake a national identity that never existed is a ridiculous concept as a right. Zionists were offered other options for their own state and self-determination, but they wanted to steal Palestine instead.
Britain even tried their damndest to help them peacefully integrate into the region, but they couldn’t stop doing terrorism and bombings against the British.
Jews didn’t steal Palestine. That’s a negation of history: you use a shovel three times anywhere in Israel and you find Jewish remains and artifacts. Cities like Jerusalem had a Jewish majority for ages before 1948. To negate that is antisemitic.
But to find a state legitimate doesn’t mean that the actions of this state are. Germany and Turkey committed genocides, and nobody want the destruction of these countries. France and Britain colonized other countries and committed a lot of crimes there but nobody want the destruction of these countries. Russia or Japan committed a lot of war crimes nobody want the destruction of these countries.
Israel is a criminal state committing genocide and other war crimes and should be stopped by all legal means necessary. We should stop arming them. Ee should stop financing them. We should arrest Netanyahu. Maybe we even should send blue helmets. We should fight for a free, independent and peaceful state of Palestine. But without antisemitism, thus without denying the right of self-determination for the Jewish people.
Reminder that Zionism was built upon antisemitic myths of Jews and non-Jews cannot live together.
Before the genocidal entity and the Zionist ideology, Jews and others lived together in that region
