Segments of the Right have of course always been anti-Semitic, particularly the Far Right and conservative Christians. But my brief here is the Left, and it maddens me to see much of the Left also becoming anti-Semitic, both in Britain and the US. Sure, they mask their anti-Semitism by saying that they’re not anti-Semitic but only anti-Zionist (in my view they’re the same thing), or by supporting organizations like BDS that, they claim, aim only at correcting the bad behavior of the Israeli government (another lie: BDS’s goal, which the organization keeps quiet, is to eliminate the state of Israel).
It maddens me, but I understand why this is happening. Jews are perceived as “whites”, and Palestinians as “people of color”. When a white underdog clashes with an Underdog of Color, the latter wins. (This is also true for Western feminists who give the misogyny of Islam a pass.) But do remember that the per capita rate of hate crimes against Jews in America is twice that of crimes against Muslims, and that around the world Jews are being attacked not just because they support Israel, but simply because they’re Jews.
I don’t think we’re on the way to another Holocaust, but I am concerned at how readily the Left, traditionally champions of the underdog, now demonizes and dismisses Jews.
And that concerns Bari Weiss as well, as she explains in her New York Times editorial today (click on screenshot below). Weiss, of course, has alienated many of her colleagues at the paper not only by her attacks on anti-Semitism (the NYT is full of young woke reporters), but also by her criticisms of the Left in general. Yet she’s still a liberal, and I feel a kinship with her even though I think she may actually believe in God.
Anyway, read this piece; it’s not long:
Weiss begins with a story I’ve heard of (it’s got its own Wikipedia page), but didn’t know the outcome, which is unbelievable:
Two years ago, a 27-year-old man named Kobili Traoré walked into the Paris apartment of a 65-year-old kindergarten teacher named Sarah Halimi. Mr. Traoré beat Ms. Halimi and stabbed her. According to witnesses, he called her a demon and a dirty Jew. He shouted, “Allahu akbar,” then threw Ms. Halimi’s battered body out of her third-story apartment window.
This is what Mr. Traoré told prosecutors: “I felt persecuted. When I saw the Torah and a chandelier in her home I felt oppressed. I saw her face transforming.”
One would think that this would be an open-and-shut hate crime. It was the coldblooded murder of a woman in her own home for the sin of being a Jew. But French prosecutors decided to drop murder charges against Mr. Traoré because he … had smoked cannabis.
If France’s betrayal of Sarah Halimi is shocking to you, perhaps you haven’t being paying much attention to what by now can be described as a moral calamity sweeping the West of which her story is only the clearest example. A crisis, I hasten to add, that’s perhaps less known because it has been largely overlooked by the mainstream press.
Traoré remains in a psychiatric hospital, and might not even be tried for anything (that will be decided December 19). The judge didn’t even consider it an antisemitic crime until the prosecutors force him to. Now it may be that the killer is mentally ill, and can be considered “not guilty by reason of insanity” (I’m not sure that verdict is possible in France), but certainly he should be tried for murder. If he’s ill, then appropriate punishment/sequestration, coupled with therapy and rehabilitation, is indicated. But dropping charges, well, that’s not so cool, nor is saying the crime had nothing to do with Judaism.
Regardless, Weiss continues by calling out the anti-Semitism of Britain’s Labour Party and of Jeremy Corbyn, something that’s hardly contested these days, and then moves to Italy, where politicians recently decided against establishing a Holocaust memorial because it was considered “too divisive”. There’s the anti-Semitism of McGill University’s student council, something I described the other day, and the continuing bigotry of Linda Sarsour, who is a “surrogate” for Bernie Sanders—someone authorized to campaign on his behalf. She’s also considered a hero to many on the Left.
Weiss:
Elsewhere in the Democratic Party, Linda Sarsour, the activist who was removed from her leadership position in the Women’s March thanks to her history of anti-Semitic scandals and who now serves as a surrogate for the presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, gave a talk on Friday to a group called American Muslims for Palestine. The part of her talk that circulated online focused on the apparent hypocrisy of progressive Zionists: How, Ms. Sarsour asked about people who are the No. 1 target of white supremacists, can they claim to oppose white supremacy when they support “a state like Israel that is built on supremacy, that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else?”
Lest you think this is “just anti-Zionism,” consider that the Sanders surrogate was speaking at a conference that printed the following sentence in its program: “Zionism has come in like a disease to destroy the purity of Al Quds.” (Al Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem.)
Finally, there are the recent physical attacks on Jews simply because they appear Jewish. But read Weiss on that. Her conclusion: things look grim for Jews, especially in Britain and France, where a respectable number say they’re considering leaving their countries and moving to Israel (see here and here). Weiss concludes this:
There is a theme here. The theme is that Jew-hatred is surging and yet Jewish victimhood does not command attention or inspire popular outrage. That unless Jews are murdered by neo-Nazis, the one group everyone of conscience recognizes as evil, Jews’ inconvenient murders, their beatings, their discrimination, the singling out of their state for demonization will be explained away.
When you look at each of these incidents, perhaps it is possible still to pretend that these are random bursts of bigotry perpetrated by hooligans lacking any real organization or power behind them.
But Mr. Corbyn’s electoral prospects in Britain tell a different, far more distressing story — that a person with some of the same impulses as those hooligans can stand within spitting distance of the office of prime minister. This is what happens when a culture decides that Jewish lives are stumbling stones.
Will the Left embrace a hashtag like #JewishLivesMatter? Don’t count on it.
Sub
So, what is to be thought of or done about the bulldozing of Gaza to build Israeli settlements, the shooting of Palestinian medical workers & kids, the bombing of Palestinians by Israel?
I do not know the answer.
I am a feminist who abhors Linda Sarsour. And I am firm about the horrors that Muslim women must live with in their countries in the Middle East.
But what is the solution.
I also abhor war.
What is to be done about Palestinians sending flaming balloons over the border to destroy Israeli fields, the knife attacks and suicide bombings aimed at Israelis civiians, the tunnels dug under the border to facilitate terrorism.
Why are you only criticizing Israel (and the deliberate shooting of medical worker and kids is bogus, as you should know)? What is to be done about the things I mentioned above. You abhor war, but don’t seem to abhor terrorism.
“Why are you only criticising Israel?”.
This is a fair question, given the unfairness with which Israel is treated by the liberal-left. But another, equally fair question would be why you make absolutely no mention of the ferocious anti-Semitism on the right in this post.
No-one on the current left guns down Jews in synagogues, or marches through American cities chanting about how ‘Jews will not replace us’. It’s not the left that demonises George Soros, or puts echo marks around anyone with a Jewish name, nor does the left have a _central animating conspiracy theory_ about the Jews committing ‘white genocide’. Wherever there are Jewish anti-hate organisations they are manned by people on the left. Most Jewish people ARE left, or at least left-liberal. Why is there a reason to doubt that the left would reject a hashtag calling for solidarity with Jews?
That is uncalled for given the work the left does in combating racism against Jews. I know people who work at these kinds of charities, and they are overwhelmingly, staunchly left, as are their colleagues. If they criticise Israel they also ferociously fight against anti-Semitism without a moment’s hesitation, as you’d expect.
It is traducing an entire political movement to hone in solely on their perfidies and anti-Semitic impulses(which absolutely exist, no doubt about that) and ignore the much more dangerous strain of anti-Semitism on the political right.
I’m sure I’ll get grief for this – I don’t care.
Not here to give you grief but, technically, Dr PCCe did mention it. It’s the very first sentence;
“Segments of the Right have of course always been anti-Semitic, particularly the Far Right and conservative Christians.”
I agree with the central point here which is one you’ve made before on this topic (if I may paraphrase it); the perfidies of the Woke are small in number and we shouldn’t lose sight of the majority of the left who don’t share their bigotry. I think Dr. PCCe agrees too, but I can’t speak for him. I will re-iterate my comment to you from the other day, though; we on the left can ignore the fascist bigots that are the Woke but we do so at our peril.
I apologise for that oversight. I should not have said ‘absolutely no mention’, you’re right.
Nevertheless I stand by everything else I wrote.
incidentally, if I can crib some advice at this potentially fraught moment, how do you do the ‘bold’ thing? Or italics? I’ve googled it before and the instructions are always mind-numbingly complicated.
It’s just markup. The command for bold is B while the command for italics is I (case insensitive. The command goes between two characters that tell your browser what to consider. Open the markup with “” no quotes. Close the command with a backslah – to end the bolding use \B, to end the italics, \i.
So to make your name bold and italicized (and why not, you’ve earned it :-)) I might write (remove quotes) “ Saul ”
Saul
aww crappity crap….
trying again….
I might write (remove quotes) “” “” Saul ”” “”.
*sigh*
I give up. the markup is indicated by the pointy key thing immediately to the right of the M on your keyboard. Close it with the other pointy thing.
If I may…
Bold = text
Italic = text
Blimey, I hope that’s right, having dredged it up from the recesses.
Haha. I’ve had the same thing happen to me when trying to explain HTML. Let me try. remove spaces in the .
Damn. No joy.
Okay, you’re assuming I’m a lot more informed than I am…what’s ‘markup’? Why are you saying ‘no quotes’ right after quotes?
“B”””testing”””\B”
You have no idea how stupid I feel right now by the way.
See these greater than ans less than signs? you put a b or an I in them and that’s HTML markup. So to bold you’d out a < then. With no space a b inside the
It would look like this !b!! Hi there !/b!! Where ! =
Damn. My ! Equal the less than and the !! Equal the greater than signs.
I’m so sorry Saul but we don’t seem able to put the sideways carats into the body of these comments.
Markup is just the name for the commands you use to change the appearance of the text – “b” (no quotes) is the markup for bold. To turn that markup on for ALL THE FOLLOWING TEXT put a “b” (no quotes” between those sideways carat pointy things (the keys immediately to the right of the M on your board – I don’t know what they’re called except maybe “greater than” and “less than”, but they can’t be typed here.
To stop the markup simply repeat the command except this time put a “/” (no quotes) in front of it.
Since I can’t seem to display those pointy sideways carat things, pretend for a minute that those pointy sideways carat things are question marks. To make your name bold I’d write;
?b? Saul ?/b?
testing
Hallelujah
Thanks you everybody. This has been like one of those viral twitter stories where the world gathers round to know what happened next. …Will he learn this incredibly basic keyboard function or won’t he? Well he fucking well did.
Chew on that St Gerard’s career adviser, turns out I’m not ‘too lazy to succeed at anything’.
Ok, I might not have mastered it completely yet.
That’s the punishment for hybris kicking in.
Keep at it, Saul; you’ll show that St Gerard’s career adviser yet! 🙂
Oh fer Chrissake, I got it right but wrong at the same time.
Bold – type next to each other write the text, and to stop the bold write next to each other
Italic – do the same but substitute an ‘i’ for the ‘b’.
I chuffin’ give up. Sorry, Saul.
I SAID it was mind-numbing didn’t I? I’m glad it’s not just me.
Thankyou to you both, but I’m going to learn how to speak Norwegian instead.
Here, this is what we are trying to say except stupid WordPress keeps eating our tags. You can do the same with mark up in WordPress but this HTML is just as good. https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_formatting.asp
Try duolingo.
Bjørnen spiser kvinnen – The bear is eating the woman
Let’s say the vocab is ruggedly Scandinavian. I won’t tell you what the wolf gets up to.
fucksticks
Use HTML tags like this:
<b>bold</b>
<i>italic</i>
(in order to show the actual angle brackets and slashes without them being processed as HTML as I did above, I had to input them as escape codes – https://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/ASCII-HTML-Characters/)
THAT’S IT!!! Thanks, Mike
Derp
Lol I’m useless.
Oh you put the ASCII code so < b >
How the hell did you do that, Mike? That’s exactly what I wrote. Wanders off muttering like Muttley…Rassan,frassan, rassan…
You can’t type in directly the “<” character or it will be interpreted as an HTML tag. What I just typed (to get the less-than character in this comment) was the ampersand character, then “lt;” and that sequence gets processed into the less-than character.
https://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/ASCII-HTML-Characters/
Mike ‘Pitman’ Anderson, only all Turinged up. Cheers.
It’s interesting that, in this medium, this stuff is harder to talk about than to actually do.
What an interesting, and disconcerting, observation.
Hey Saul, re: your post Posted December 5, 2019 at 3:53 pm – & if you’re serious about learning Norwegian, catch this.
NORWEGIAN GOOD
Word nerd stuff.
En fisk – a fish Fisken – the fish
Et kjøtt – a meat Kjøttet – the meat
The rule: indefinite article before the noun, definite article, being the same word, after. Isn’t that clever, efficient and aesthetically pleasing?
Hey, I know that tune, Dermot:
Saul, you do italics like this as per the image below:
https://flic.kr/p/2hVsqFt
Bold is the same except replace the “i” with a “b”
Tnankyou Michael, I think I’ve got the hang of it now. Turns out it wasn’t as complicated as I thought. I’m embarrassed at how proud I am though.
I do italics like this.
I do bold like that.
Just checking.
Do I have it?
That’s lovely if you’re going for bold, but you killed an innocent bystander if italics was your aim 🙂
I don’t want to be held responsible for proper movie titles now. Or plays or books etc. I am good and this was fun.
Don’t be. I felt the same when I finally worked it out!
Thank you, Heather!
That was a shot in the dark. I cannot believe that just worked. Thanks again!
As was mentioned the Prof did mention the far-Right.
As for the left, my experience of the far left is that there was a very strong anti Israel position with tendencies to include basic anti-Jewness.
I haven’t moved in those circles for a long time but these days I do observe an alliance between the left and Islam and feminism and Islam on issues such as immigration, suppression of the problems Islam is bringing and the inherent Anti Semitism ingrained in Islam.
I don’t know how many Jews were at Charlie Hebdo that fateful day but I do know that the left was littered with if not dominated by people falling over themselves to justify the shooting because a cartoon they didn’t understand may have been politically incorrect. The same with Salman Rushdie.
There is a tendency in the left that ‘maybe they deserve it’.
Here’s an anecdote, Michael. Back in the 80s, I was in Militant, and nearly became a full-timer. What did we think about Muslim woman then? The starting observation was that they were thrice-oppressed: by their class, their religion and their sex.
The descendant of Militant now, the Socialist Party, is a public defender of Corbyn, fully aware of his kowtowing to the anti-Semitic Islamists in the LP. That would have been utterly unthinkable in the 80s, just as Militant’s refusal to support Troops Out differentiated them from the rest of the far left groups.
What seems to have happened is these far left groups have coaleseced and ditched their actual beliefs because they think of themselves as really near to power. I am frankly shocked that what is the basically the Militant organization could ignore JC’s anti-Semitism. Within Militant, it was just never imaginable, because it never supported the terrorism tactic.
Within the old far left groups the romantic solidarity with terrorists was the key. It was a sort of 70s form of the modern performative empathy for the marginalized group – blacks, dogs, Irish – which assumes that this group is neurologically monolithic, unchanging & possessed of superior virtue by virtue of their not being like my tribe. Though by no means as pervasive & zeitgeisty this, I think, was the route by which the far left groupuscules became increasingly anti-Semitic, spoken in the demotic of anti-imperialism.
To finish, anecdotally again, & thinking of my family & associates, the Venn diagram of IRA support & virulent, absolutely genocidal, anti-Semitism is practically a single circle.
As to your final point, that doesn’t sound at all surprising.
Catholics who are virulently anti-Protestant are also virulently anti-Jewish? Who’d have thought it?
Apart from anyone even remotely familiar with the last 500 years of European history, of course.
But no less unsettling for coming from a terminally-sick three score year and ten uncle in his spick and span Donegal middle-class living-room looking down on the life-enhancing view of Loch Foyle, as his liberal younger brother exasperatedly tells him to give over, and his nephews and niece wonder what to say and where to look.
Great observations.
That romantic attachment you mention may have been the significant factor in aligning with the PLO and the like.
I don’t know Militant as I was far away in Australia but I had dabblings communists as friends and being in a communist controlled union and then in Trotskyism.
Way back in the late seventies.
I don’t recall the problems of women being raised back then, except that feminism was sweeping through as well.
If it was raised it was a problem the revolution would fix.
Isn’t that “whataboutism?”
Whataboutery does rather lie in the eye of the beholder.
I’m sorry to say but you seem extremelly ill-informed. Israel left Gaza 2005, and took away all Israeli settlers, soldiers, even bones of dead Jews were dug up and taken to Israel. Israel, however, left state of the art greenhouses and other equipment that would allow Gazans to continue with profitable farming. All this Gazans destroyed in a few days, deliberately removing and breaking everything that was left.
They also started to shoot rockets at Israeli civilians. Until now, about 30,000 rockets and missiles have been shot from Gaza into Israel, not to mention incendiary devices they were sending with kites and balloons. Israel delivers to Gaza daily tons upon tons with goods: food, medicine, and everything needed with the exception of weapons and dual-use goods (from which weapons can be manufactured). Israel is also delivering electricity and water to Gaza.
Of course, Israel cannot allow its own civilians to be pummeled with impunity and from time to time is bombarding Hamas and Islamic Jihad installations, trying to save civilian Gazans as much as it’s possible – you probably don’t know it but the terror groups in Gaza (both Hamas and Islamic Jihad) are using their own civilians as human shields.
I have little doubt that the ignorance of people like Becky is willful. I know I’m being unfair, but I don’t give a damn. We’ve been down this road before; the kind of evil Ms Weiss’s article highlights is a beast that doesn’t seem to be killable and people like Becky feed it.
Exactly, and it is tiresome and tedious, but we must keep pushing back.
Another example Malgorzata could have used: about 20% of materials that Israel sent to Gaza to build schools, clinics etc. was used to build tunnels into Israel.
All schools and many other places in Israel have bomb shelters because of attacks from Gaza. When there is a war on, Gaza both uses their civilians as human shields or deliberately puts their civilians in harm’s way. That’s why their death and injury count is so much higher than that of the Israelis. However the death/injury count stats give Palestine an effective propaganda tool.
Never mind the fact that Palestinian wannabe terrorists are actively rewarded for even the most rank atrocities with adoration and money. And sweets of course. Nothing like a Snickers after you’ve fired on a schoolbus with an AK.
There is almost no incentive at all for ordinary Palestinians to pursue peaceful resistance while the people in charge reward them for atrocities, use their own people’s deaths as propaganda and teach primary-school-age children to despise Jews. I can concede all of Israel’s flaws yet still I’m left wondering how exactly they’re meant to deal with a neighbour like that?
Me too. I am not at all blind to the flaws in Israel either, There’s a lot to criticize. But when you have a neighbouring state that wants to kill you all, wipe your country off the planet, and many of whose people believe they’ll go to Paradise for doing all of that, you’re in a difficult position.
“bulldozing of Gaza to build Israeli settlements” – Eh?
At the time there were Israeli settlements in Gaza (which ended circa 2005 in case you don’t know) they were not built on “bulldozed” ground.
(These are facts, and have nothing to do with justifying those settlements)
On the other hand .
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2019/12/03/corbyns-response-to-a-horrific-assault-highlights-his-lifelong-fight-against-antisemitism/
I know The Canary is seen as a” Labour can do no wrong ” news site .
After the last time ,not going to say any more ,or reply to comments.
Scene: Hospital theatre
Characters: Consultant Surgeon Mendoza, Consultant Anaesthetist Bastani
Mendoza: Labour Party time of death, 12.05, Dr. Bastani. I think we’ve killed the patient. How are we going to explain this one?
Bastani: Isn’t the theatre nurse Jewish?
[For UK Weiters]
The peeps at The Canary are the “lifelong antiracists” who have never learnt what antisemitic tropes are, and believe you can’t be prejudiced towards Jews, ‘cos, you know, “power + privilege”, or something.
See also: “lifelong antiracist” Ken ‘Hitler was a Zionist’ Livingstone; “lifelong antiracist Jackie ‘the Jews funded the Slave Trade’ Walker”, and so forth.
This is one of the reasons I tend to ignore/dismiss claims of being “anti-racist” in people’s social media bios.
Oh come on. The Canary is an extreme left-wing conspiracy-fuelled Momentum vehicle. It revels in articles like this: https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2016/05/04/the-inconvenient-truths-that-prove-it-is-not-anti-semitic-to-compare-israel-to-nazi-germany/ Even Owen Jones, who is as about as woke and right-on as you can expect from a Grauniad journalist, criticies its fantasies: https://www.prweek.com/article/1418744/grilled-owen-jones-guardian-columnist-author-activist-sushi-socialist
I still do not understand how Bernie Sanders can be oblivious to Sarsour’s ideology. He is a cultural Jew for chr*st sake.
Yes, it’s maddening.
I know a Jew that loves her. It’s insanity but it happens.
Antisemitism is on the rise — sadly. And yes, demonising Israel can be used, and is used, as a pretext for antisemitism. But is criticizing aspects of Israel’s policies, or zionist ideas as such, tantamount to antisemitism?
As a Leftist, I think that all lives matter. Assuming that being of the left without the qualifier ‘regressive’ is a thing. (I think it is; close to or synonymous with ‘humanist’ or ‘rational’)
I will read Bari Weiss’s full article. Off the cuff I’ll say that the murder of Sarah Halimi is an atrocious deed.
Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.
That’s your opinion, not mine. Anti-Zionism is the view that Israel doesn’t have the right to exist as a state. I guess you don’t think that’s anti-Semitism. I do.
But isn’t it more complicated than that?
What does it mean to have a “State of Israel”?
Are you talking about a secular democracy which insures equal rights for minorities, or are you talking about a “Jewish Nation-State” (as Israel declared itself to be in 2018), defining itself on the basis of an exclusive ethnic and religious identity.
There is at least Zionist 1.0 and Zionist 2.0, and embracing the first would put you at odds with Zionist 2.0, for the same “that’s not who we are” arguments deployed against American Nativists. Any debate about the “real” Zionists versus the “false” Zionists is going to feature accusations of the other side being Anti-Zionist.
“…a secular democracy which insures equal rights for minorities”….the only one of those in the Middle East is Israel.
What does it mean to have a State of Poland? What does it mean to have a State of Germany, A State of Yemen or a State of Saudi Arabia? No matter what kind of government or regime there is there nobody calls for their elimination. Israel is a state in which Jews, who until now were in minority (a persecuted minority) everywhere, finally have a state in which they are in a majority. They want to have Hebrew as their language, they want to have holidays according to their customs and they want to retain this majority and the Jewish character of the state (that’s the reason for the National Law). At the same time minorities in this state have equal citizen rights as the majority does. Israel is not a theocracy (other states are and nobody is calling for wiping them of the map), it’s not a tyranny (there are many other tyrannies in the world, but Israel do not belong in this cathegory) and they treat their substantial minorities better than many countries in the world. To say that they can exist only if they fulfill some conditions no other country has to fulfill in order to exist, is ages old urge to treat Jewish nation differently from all the other nations in the world.
I don’t think I claimed anywhere that Israel was a theocracy or tyrannical. I said there are different and incompatible understandings of Zionism and Israel as a Nation-State.
Malgorzata, I actually do call for the elimination of Saudi Arabia 😁
Anti-Zionism may be Anti-Semitic most of the time, but it is not necessarily so if this Washington Post article is to be believed. It relates the story of a woman who escaped an extreme orthodox sect in Israel. The article states: “Ultra-Orthodox parties have been a key part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, and a backlash against Haredi influence is one cause of Israel’s protracted political stalemate. (Some sects, however, do not participate in politics at all. The Satmar, for instance, reject Zionism and the Israeli government.)” Of course, most people who claim to be anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic do not belong to extreme Jewish sects.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/shed-never-seen-a-smartphone-or-heard-a-radio-before-she-fled-shes-racing-to-catch-up/2019/12/04/c6347cf0-0709-11ea-9118-25d6bd37dfb1_story.html
Anti-Semitics hide behind this ambiguity. Occasionally the accusation of antisemitism among anti-Zionists is misplaced. But only occasionally. If it walks like a duck….
When people say this, my question is always, “do you spend even 1/100th of the amount of time you spend criticizing Israel on, say, criticizing Saudi Arabia for killing over 500,000 Yemenis and displacing nearly 3 million since 2015? Do you spend time on criticizing the many, many civil and other wars throughout Africa that have killed far more people than the Israeli-Palestine conflict has killed in its entire existence? If not, why not?”
That’s the question for “anti-Zionists”: why are they so focused on one particular conflict that, in its decades-long history (in which every war was started by Israel’s enemies, not Israel) has killed far, far, far fewer people than wars only a couple of years old? Why do they focus on a secular, inclusive democracy that gives everyone rights, while turning a blind eye to all the other countries in the region that rack up enormous death tolls, both through war and the execution of political and ideological prisoners?
The only answer I can come up with is that it’s because Israel is the only Jewish nation on Earth. I cannot find another one. Maybe somebody will say it’s because this is a longstanding conflict. Well, why is there no focus on Kashmir, the result of the partitioning of India and Pakistan, where about 45,000 people have died in the last 27 years, a death toll far greater than anything seen in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
And why is Israel the only country that doesn’t deserve to exist? Many countries on this planet were created the same way Israel was: by former colonialists drawing up borders. But nobody seems to care about those countries. Only the Jewish one seems to be in question.
I do. Absolutely.
Most of actors in Israel’s neighborhood are much worse than Israel, but that doesn’t insulate Israel from criticism. And of course I’m willing to criticize my own government (USA), regardless what Saudi Arabia is doing.
To say “what about Saudi Arabia” is, by definition, whataboutism.
What or who is to say that ‘whataboutism’ is not sometimes valid in making a point?
I think the point was made and made well.
A point that is a point and needs making.
You may use all the whataboutisms you like.
That’s the spirit.
BJ, you are probably right that that is the main reason, but I can think of another one:
Israel is a non-Islamic state in an area that muslims traditionally consider Islamic lands. The Wahhabist Salafist cabal has henceforth been promoting anti-zionism/anti-semitism worldwide (in madrassas and anywhere else), backed by virtually unlimited amounts of petrodollars.
Add to that the massive immigration of muslims into Western Europe, that as ‘minorities’ are pampered by the ‘blind left’, which in turn is indoctrinated by their ‘protégés’, and you have your alternative cause.
I don’t know that this is an alternative cause so much as an explanation of how BJ’s main reason came to be and is sustained.
I think what both of you described is accurate and complimentary.
“I understand why this is happening. Jews are perceived as “whites”, and Palestinians as “people of color” …”
It may be worse than that: categorising Jews as “white” and Palestinians as “non-white” seems more an output of their ideology, not an input.
It makes no actual sense, given the actual heritage of the two groups, but these days being “white” seems to be more about ones politics and attitudes than about heritage or race.
Israelis are thus “white” because they are on top in that region; Palestinians are “non-white” because they are not.
News are seen as the privileged white that are secret allies of the brown. It’s why they chanted “the Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville because they see the Jews, as the puppet masters of the world, replacing white people with brown people. It’s the craziest of the conspiracy theories. It’s even crazier than thinking we didn’t go to the moon.
Jews not News. I always fat finger my iPad keyboard.
What an apalling story!! Antisemitism is on the rise, sadly. And yes, demonising Israel can be used, is used, as a pretext for antisemitism. But is criticizing parts of Israel’s policies tantamount to antisemitism?
As a Leftist, I firmly believe that all lives matter. Black lives, Jewish lives, childrens lieves. Assuming that being of the left without the qualifier ‘regressive’ is still a thing. (I think it is; close to, or even synonymous with, ‘humanist’ or ‘rational’)
Please erase #8, I thought one version got lost.
Bari Weiss appeared on the Sam Harris podcast recently, and it was excellent:
https://samharris.org/podcasts/173-anti-semitism-discontents/
I am confused by this article.
If there was ever an administration that supports the aspirations and concerns of the Israeli government, it would be the “far right” Trump Administration.
As far as “conservative Christians”, Christians United for Israel is a large and influential Evangelical Christian organization that lobbies for policies that benefit Israel.
I don’t see any evidence that any mainstream member of the GOP or the American Conservative Establishment supports anything remotely like “Anti-Semitism”. Any person who remotely promoted anything approaching such an attitude was immediately purged (like Joe Sobran’s departure from the National Review in 1993). Right-wing “Anti-Semitism” is the exclusive domain of the internet Nazis basement dwellers.
To the extent that there is institutional Anti-Semitism, it is on the Left entirely. Sharpton has national voice despite his involvement in Crown Heights (and other venues). Farrakhan is alive and well on Twitter, and is even pictured in a close meeting with a former Democratic President.
On the other hand, the emergence and influence of a group like J Street suggests that the traditional Israel Lobby (groups like APAIC) are out of step with the concerns of many American Jews, not to mention non-Jews. I’m not sure why there can’t be a political discussion around American foreign policy and Israel without name-calling. Granted, there are plenty of extremists on both sides which would have a voice in that discussion, but when isn’t that the case.
Last, the article talks about “American” Anti-Semitism and then refers to events in France, Italy and the UK, which last time I checked were not in America.
All we have is some comments by Sarsour criticizing Jewish ethnonationalism by comparing it to “white” ethnonationalsim. I can’t say whether Sarsour is an “Anti-Semite” or not, but I don’t see how one derisive comment about Zionism makes a person an Anti-Semite. As I said above, the existence of J Street demonstrates there isn’t even a hegemonic “Jewish view” on the State of Israel, Zionism, and the Palestinian Question.
This is spectacularly one-eyed.
Just off the top of my head you have the far-right’s Jewish useful idiot Stephen Miller promoting actual white supremacist conspiracy theories _directly in the Trump administration._ There is nothing even approaching that kind of anti-Semitic influence in the Democratic party, and you’d be bursting blood vessels if there was a Stephen Miller equivalent in any of the Dem candidates’ teams.
Never mind Trump’s constant obfuscation and refusal to engage with the surge in far-right hate-crimes. People were marching through American cities chanting Jews Will Not Replace Us, and it took Trump two full days for anything approaching a proper condemnation. The guy couldn’t bring himself to condemn David Duke or his Klan supporters. He has openly accused Jews who don’t support him of ‘disloyalty’.
I don’t know of any evidence suggesting Stephen Miller is an Anti-Semite. I don’t think you do either. As far as whether he is laundering white nationalism or not, it is about as relevant as his views on Hungarian nationalism. Maybe he is a racist, maybe he is a white nationalist, there is zero evidence of Anti-Semitism.
As far as Charlottesville and White Trashnationlism, yes, we have enough domestic Nazi’s so that someone is always available if you are shooting a Jerry Springer episode or you want someone to do Howard Stern. None of them are in Congress, none of them are hosting MSNBC, none of them are organizing national woman’s marches.
I didn’t say he was an anti-Semite, I said he is very clearly promoting explicitly white supremacist policies in his job at the very heart of the Trump govt. He’s in charge of immigration. A white nationalist is in charge of immigration in the American government.
You might as well put Boris Johnson in charge of mandatory stretching exercises at a girls’ school.
And unless you’re of the belief that Jewish people can’t be anti-Semites, even ones as fucked up and confused as Miller, then there is exponentially more evidence of him being an anti-Semite than there is of Linda Sarsour, at the very least. And need I remind you that Sarsour, ghastly as she is, is merely connected to ONE of the Democratic candidates. She isn’t running his entire immigration policy ffs.
“As far as Charlottesville and White Trashnationlism, yes, we have enough domestic Nazi’s so that someone is always available if you are shooting a Jerry Springer episode or you want someone to do Howard Stern.”
This is the kind of glibness that gets on my nerves. As well as turning up on Jerry Springer(and has he even been on TV anytime this decade?) they have a funny habit of killing Jews in their neighbourhoods, firebombing synagogues, sending death threats to people with Jewish surnames, etc. so let’s not pretend they’re some kind of amusingly harmless fringe.
I didn’t say he was an anti-Semite, I said he is very clearly promoting explicitly white supremacist policies in his job at the very heart of the Trump govt.
Okay, but then how is your remark in any way responsive to my statement which addressed Anti-Semitism in the Institutional GOP and the Institutional Democratic Party?
Say the Nazis are not a “harmless fringe” (to which I agree), isn’t it telling that the Anti-Semitism on the American GOP is a “fringe”, whereas on the Democratic side, it is organizing woman’s marches and acting as spokesmen for presidential campaigns and serving in Congress and hosting MSNBC?
The fact that I didn’t say Miller was definitely an anti-Semite was down to nothing more than the reticence that keeps me from saying that Sarsour is definitely an anti-Semite. My suspicion, very strong suspicion, is that yes Miller is an anti-Semite. My suspicion is also that Sarsour is an anti-Semite.
“I don’t see any evidence that any mainstream member of the GOP or the American Conservative Establishment supports anything remotely like “Anti-Semitism”.
These were your very strong and patently absurd words. But Stephen Miller most definitely fits that bill, and he is arguably the single most important member of the Trump administration. He oversees the American government’s approach to immigration and he has a big say in writing the president’s speeches(the ones he reads, not the ones he free-associates during his ridiculous rallies). Jenny Hanniver has also listed plenty of other names in a perceptive comment below.
“Say the Nazis are not a “harmless fringe” (to which I agree), isn’t it telling that the Anti-Semitism on the American GOP is a “fringe”, whereas on the Democratic side, it is organizing woman’s marches and acting as spokesmen for presidential campaigns and serving in Congress and hosting MSNBC?”
You can’t go from talking strictly about the GOP versus the Dems, then in the next step start talking about liberal women’s marches which were organised by citizens, and people who host TV shows.
If you want to move the goalposts halfway through, I could just as well compare the women’s march, with its unpleasant but relatively harmless infighting, to the Charlottesville march, where some repulsive far-right neckbeard ploughed his parents’ car into an innocent bystander and crowds of far-right-wingers marched through the streets in the most open demonstration of anti-Semitism in years(at least it was, until the Tree Of Life shooting).
I think you’re living in denial if you really believe that first quote of yours.
Fugging bloody italics. It seemed so simple yesterday
You did say Miller was ‘promoting actual white supremacist conspiracy theories’.
Not ‘policies’.
How is it possible to promote white supremacist conspiracy theories without being anti-Semitic?
After all the left will label someone a Nazi or sexist or homophobe or… you know the drill, at the drop of a hat.
It seems to me that you did say he was anti-Semitic.
My point was that if you’re going to call Sarsour an anti-Semite then you’re also going to have to call Miller one too. The evidence is certainly a lot stronger, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he is himself Jewish it’d be entirely undisputed.
Either way, he’s a white nationalist and he’s at the very heart of the Trump administration. According to recent reports he’s also unsackable.
“How is it possible to promote white supremacist conspiracy theories without being anti-Semitic?”
Good question. You tell me.
My comment was a reaction to your first reply to KD who said,
“I don’t know of any evidence suggesting Stephen Miller is an Anti-Semite.”
And you replied, “I didn’t say he was an anti-Semite, …”
But you did and now you are doing it again.
There most certainly are ‘out’ white supremacists in congress: Steve King, Steve Scalise, Ron Desantis, currently Governor of Florida, had been in congress until last year. More and more will surely run for office.
At this time, there’s no hard evidence extant that Miller is an antisemite but if you go to the trough with white supremacists, at the very least, you shouldn’t be surprised if you’re tarred by association. But more than that, I’d sure love to meet a white supremacist who’s not an antisemite or read white supremacist literature that doesn’t demonize Jews. Perhaps there are some, but precious few.
I think it’s calculatedly disingenuous to put forth such a fatuity as “…whether he [Miller] is laundering white nationalism or not, it is about as relevant as his views on Hungarian nationalism.”
He’s not “laundering white nationalism…” he likes his linen dirty. He’s a prime architect of Trump’s anti-immigration policies, and whatever his views on Hungarian nationalism are, they are very important — Hungary has become a haven for white supremacists and he’s probably getting tips from Viktor Orban.
You have met our favourite Nazi, Richard Spencer right? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Spencer
How about Canada’s own Faith Goldie who was too much of a Nazi for he far right publication, Rebel Media? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_Goldy
The alt right is full of Nazis. In fact, our boy Richard is credited with coining the term.
Isn’t this how the Holocaust began? With small, individual crimes not only in Germany but in France and other countries? Winked at and excused by their governments and courts? I wouldn’t dismiss a second Holocaust.
This is one significant reason why Israel exists and must continue to exist.
It is notable that all that anti-Semitic stuff happened before Israel existed so that excuse wasn’t available. but there were always other excuses.
And now Israel will not allow another holocaust to happen.
They did, and do that which is necessary to prevent it.
Anyone who tries it again will get a big smack.
If you equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, you’re labelling a lot of Jews as anti-Semitic.
Lots of people engage in self destructive behaviors, and hold self destructive beliefs.
There are plenty of examples of White folks who spend an inordinate amount of time condemning the White race.
I personally believe that belief in Intersectionality is very likely to result in such contradictions, as it requires belief in several opposing viewpoints.
It is also true that a large percentage of followers of any movement are unaware of the actual motivations of the group’s founders and leaders. The leaders of BDS do not use pogroms as a recruiting tool. From what I have observed, they are trying to sell it as a resurrection of the anti-apartheid movement, or just sort of a cool “resistance” aesthetic that allows one to wear a keffiyeh and seem edgy.
Our local temple hosted a meeting of the “Jewish Voice for Peace”. They go way past anti-Zionism and right to the gates of Treblinka. It is a sort of pathology.
Non sequitur. Criticizing a country isn’t self destructive (unless the country you’re criticizing is Russia).
I don’t think the BDS movement or the majority of other anti-Israel organizations are content to “criticize” Israel. Unless we are using the word criticism as a euphemism for driving the last Jew into the sea.
As I see it, the completely secular and woke JVP or BDS member of Jewish heritage would fare no better in an Islamic Palestine than would the payot-wearing Hasidim.
There were quite a few Blanckes living in Nederland (Oss in particular) in 1940, who thought of themselves as secular and completely Dutch. They ended up in Sobibor regardless.
Let’s not forget the concentration ,s the are currently used in China for re uigars(sp).
The incident in France is heinous and should not be marginalized in any eay. My opinion
I am using a tablet and evidently I mve, misspell and erase.parts of my comments.. I trust you can fill in.
sub
At least historically, Jews were not exclusively “white”. Centuries ago, they proselytized as other religious groups did and took their religion to parts of the world that were not “white”. There used to be “black” Jews. I’d assume that there still might be some.
I would love for there to be a time when skin color was not used to categorize people and separate them from each other.
Over half of Israel’s Jewish population are Jewish refugees from Arab countries and from North Africa. Some are black and most are as dark or much darker than many Palestinians who have a substantial admixture of Slavic people from Bosnia who long ago converted to Islam and escaped persecution by migrating to Israel.
Thanks for the update. We humans are all so mixed that I think it useless to use skin color for any enumerating or separating purposes.
Reich’s Who We Are and How We Got Here discusses this in depth by analyzing ancient DNA from Neanderthals, Denisovens, ancient and modern Homo Sapiens etc. All human populations are mixed and re-mixed and have been for a very long time. Skin color absolutely has no separating power among modern humans. I highly recommend the book.
I completely agree with this, including the value of (David Reich with his wife)’s book.
I’d like to just add, and imagine you agree, that one can go back a far smaller amount into the past (not 50,000 years or so—an order of magnitude less), and see much more mixing than many, even thoughtful, people seem to realize. Recently here, I had referred to the book of Adam Rutherford entitled ‘A Brief history of Everyone Who Ever Lived’. Existence of (plenty of) single common ancestors, for ALL now-living persons, from less than 4,000 years ago was questioned in other comments, but now seems not to be any more.
I’m well aware that most likely, none of the actual genes from such an ancestor would be inherited by the present-day person (if the way some experts phrase this kind of thing is correct, my problem being not knowing how, if both mother and father have exactly the same gene, ‘x’ say, one knows, even in principle, from which ‘x’ came or even if that is meaningful). But, in any case, ancestral mixings of everybody completely obviates nonsensical racist blathering, whether it is skin colour, religion, or whatever they falsely believe to actually differentiate. Nor do I understand why people have ridiculously harmful attitudes on these matters even if they were distinguishable.
I imagine 4th or 5th generation pairs from a region, whether Serbs/Croats, or Israelis/Palestinians, etc., etc. are utterly indistinguishable with DNA.
I agree. Thanks for the comment and the book reference. I’ll check out Rutherford’s book; as I’m sure you know, research in this area is exploding and exceedingly interesting.
The #NewRacists and the Pharyngulites really dislike Bari Weiss, for some bizarre reason. She always speaks a lot of sense, is a genuine anti-racist, and is a solid liberal.
For what possible reason could the #NewRacists dislike Bari. Their obsessive hate for her is similar to their obsessive hate for Sam Harris (the podcast with Bari was excellent) and Steven Pinker (sorry PZ, still very much alive and well). What possible reason……
If you subscribe to an ideology, you may end up subscribing to views that aren’t supported by reason and evidence.
When somebody comes along with an argument that challenges your views you may find you can’t counter it with reason and evidence. What do you do? Do you give up on your ideology, or do you attack the challenge in other ways? All human history tells us that people are very reluctant to give up their ideologies, so you attack the challenger rather than the challenge.
Furthermore, having repelled a few challengers in this way, you may find that, even when you can refute their evidence or logic, it’s still easier to do the ad hom. As a bonus, if you can convince yourself that they are a really horrible person, it makes the ad hom easier, a bit like dehumanising your enemy in time of war makes it easier to kill his soldiers.
“If you subscribe to an ideology, you may end up subscribing to views that aren’t supported by reason and evidence”
So ideologies can sometimes be supported by reason and evidence? Or are ideologies things to be expunged by reason and evidence?
… and what ideology are we talking about here?
Yes, why not?
Sorry, got a closing blockquote wrong there.
“So ideologies can sometimes be supported by reason and evidence?
Yes, why not?”
I don’t know, I have to think about it.
“the #NewRacists and the Pharyngulites really dislike Bari Weiss”
Is there anyone they DO like? Apart from themselves I mean.
Meant to reply to Richard at 17
The like abusive a-holes on social media who abuse and bully Jews, liberal Muslims, ex-Muslims, and Humanists.
I live in London I dont know where you got hold of this crap that Jews are queuing up to leave the UK. Perhaps from the Israeli embassy? Who are very keen to see Corbyn flushed down the proverbial toilet for their own reasons. I don’t support Corbyn because he is useless. I also don’t support Borris because he is a liar. I have my doubts about any state that is founded for a particular religion . I am a Jew but I don’t want to live in any state with a religious preference
“Perhaps the fact that nearly half (47 per cent) of the Jewish community said in that same poll that they would “seriously consider” emigrating…”
From https://www.thejc.com/comment/leaders/to-all-our-fellow-british-citizens-1.491812
Yes i can see them all giving up their well-paid jobs and emigrating to Israel. I am sorry mate but I wouldn’t believe a word of this
Whether you will or not, this this “crap” you accused Dr PCCe of citing.
its crap, because he doesn’t live in the UK neither, do you. This article is just regurgitating rubbish. Jews are not under any threat here nor do many jews believe that Corbyn or Labour is in any way antisemitic. The left has always been against colonialism and Israel is perceived as a colonialist state. There is some confusion in the author’s mind because on one hand he denounces all religious belief yet on the other he supports a state that claims it is a Jewish state and gives preference to Jewish identity
<blockquote"….Jews are not under any threat here nor do many jews believe that Corbyn or Labour is in any way antisemitic.
Baloney.
There is only one thing that can be said to this (you may have seen this before);
This poll directly contradicts your claim. If you dispute these poll results, give a reason. The mere fact that you live in the UK doesn’t cut it.
The fact that you are talking out of your
American arse form 10000 miles away with such expertise about the situation here really does take precedence over anything I say.
I bow to you sir
As you are wrong, on this you should bow to me;
“The vast majority of British Jews consider Jeremy Corbyn to be an antisemite. In the most recent poll, last month, the figure was 87 per cent.”
“Shockingly, nearly half (47 percent) said they would “seriously consider” emigrating if Corbyn won. When it comes to perceptions about party leaders, 87 percent deemed the Labour leader to be antisemitic, 32 percent believe Nigel Farage to be antisemitic, with five percent saying the same of both Boris Johnson and Jo Swinson.”
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/election-poll-2019-survation-jn/
Paul, as convincing and articulate a response as we have come to expect from the Dear Leader’s barmy army.
If I were a detective describing the evidence against the Corbster for his anti-Semitism I might say it was an overwhelming circumstantial case, but that I was waiting for the forensics.
You will no doubt have seen this video released today of a British Jew (I think) interviewing the followers of he-who-must-be–adored in which he asks them about Boris Johnson’s anti-Semitic statements.
The thing about the Corbynistas is that they don’t seem to get Jewish irony. If this isn’t an 8-minute confession of rampant LP anti-Semitism & cognitive dissonance, I’m the blood libellist Raed Salah (whom you may also have seen on video today warmly greeted with radiant fellowship by the UK’s own Magic Grandpa).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=ITCX2mDiFzE&feature=emb_logo
How can anybody refute the poll when it is not referenced in the article? Even the article about the poll itself says nothing about how the sample was selected, how big it is or what the questions were.
Most people not of the right in the UK, don’t give the allegations of antisemitism any real credence. People left of centre tend to think of it as a conspiracy to stop Corbyn from getting elected.
Corbyn is, I think, anti-Israel and he has, in the past associated with people from Hamas etc which demonstrates poor judgement and a naive view of Middle Eastern politics. But I don’t think that makes him an anti-semite any more than his previous links with IRA members make him a Papist.
Corbyn’s going to lose the next election because he’s useless, not because hew is an anti-semite.
Jeremy – you make a good point. I hadn’t noticed that the articles don’t link to the poll itself.
Here is what you’re looking for
https://www.survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Jewish-Leadership-Council-Poll-Tables.pdf
The Jewish identity and the Jewish religion are not the same thing. Similarly the Greek identity and the Greek Orthodox Church are not the same thing. In most nation states there is an ethnic identity which constitutes a large proportion of the population.
its a fact that the vast majority of British Jews are secular and descendants of immigrants who came here in the early 20c. and are not identifiable The vast majority who are secular yet still Jewish, They have no affiliation with the Jewish religion or belong to a synagogue and many of them will vote for Corbyn and Labour. i would say probably a majority of jews will end up voting for labour and that you are wrong as can be
Sorry, Paul, wrong again. Historically, if memory serves, British Jews have been overwhelmingly pro-Labour, 80%, I think. That fell precipitously in recent years and was down well below 50%. I don’t have the figures to hand but it wasn’t even close.
Okay Paul, you are banned for rudeness. Criticize me if you want, but don’t say that what I cite (and yes, there are data) is “crap because I don’t live in the UK”.
You don’t live here any more.
Sorry to say this Edward, but that Survation Poll for the Jewish Chronicle is very dodgy. Only 710 Jews are counted in the poll out of a UK population of around 300,000, I am wondering how Survation identified their sample – if it was from Jewish Chronicle subscribers then it’s complete bollocks as a survey.
I haven’t got time to look at the Survation methodology but I note they have a London Weighing in their figures, suggesting they poll more in London & thus have to adjust down the London influence. I’m not a Pollologist, but 710 is tiny to my lay eyes – 1 in 500 say.
Polls have worked on the basis of 1,000 for the whole population in the past, Michael Although I am not up to speed with current methods. That figure of 700 for a 300,000 Jewish population therefore looks pretty normal (in my possibly out-dated experience).
You are probably right Dermot I would guess. I’ll look tomorrow, if time permits, at how Survation goes about forming a sample. I notice that 552 of the sample of 710 are from London [& thus the London Weighing], which leaves 158 Jewish opinions to represent all of the rest of the UK.
I suspect a lot of Jews live in London. Leeds & Bury, rather surprisingly, have significant Jewish pops. These things are always worth chasing up for the psephologically-nerdy with too much time on their hands.
Paul, as convincing and articulate a response as we have come to expect from the Dear Leader’s barmy army.
Dermot if you would take a bit more care with your reading you would discover I am not a supporter Of Corbyn nor do I have any intention to vote for him in the coming election
Paul, I responded to this little nugget between you and Edward M.
Edward: This poll directly contradicts your claim. If you (Paul) dispute these poll results, give a reason.
You, Paul: The fact that you are talking out of your American arse form 10000 miles away with such expertise about the situation here really does take precedence over anything I say.
Quite apart from the wobbly geography, the possible assumption of Edward’s nationality and your allegation of a biological miracle, your response, at first and several glances, does not seem to cover Edward’s request.
Oh God, how terrible the 2019 public conversation is. Good on you for not voting for the Shropshire Lad. And I do mean that. Chuff only knows who I’ll vote for. Cometh the hour, the man does not cometh.
“if you would take a bit more care with your reading you would discover I am not a supporter Of Corbyn nor do I have any intention to vote for him in the coming election”
a. how would taking ‘more care’ while reading any of your comments suggest anything other than that you’re a Corbynite? Nothing in anything you’ve written implies otherwise.
b. I strongly suspect that you’re dancing around the truth here. If you’re not voting for Corbyn it’ll be for some reason you haven’t let on, like you live in Sweden or something. Or inmates aren’t allowed to vote.
When Corbyn gets vapourised in the GE and is replaced by someone who’s not quite so utterly crap at everything, I hope you’ll expend just as much energy defending them.
Israel doesn’t have a “religious preference.” It is not a theocracy. 20% of its citizens are non-Jews and have all the same rights as Jews, including members representing them in the Knesset.
so then if what you say is true then you don’t support Israel as a Jewish state, right? I just wonder why the issued me with Jewish ID card whilst I was living there. It must have been just to show that it doesn’t matter at all what religion you are.
When you were living there Paul? According to Wiki:
Is MY SOURCE accurate?
Great, now paul’s originally from Israel too!
Israel wasn’t founded “for a particular religion”. It was founded for the protection of people of a particular religion.
(However rights and protections are extended to all citizens regardless of religion.)
These vicious attacks on jews demonstrate just how much the state of Israel is needed. How can anti-Zionism NOT be anti-semitic? To deny jews their homeland is tantamount to denying them a safe haven in a mostly hostile world. I stand with the jews who say, with good cause, “Never again!” The left is being hood-winked by Palestinians playing the victim.
Yes — hoodwinked by the Palestinian leadership’s portrayal of Palestinians as victims of Israel exclusively, and not as victims of the Palestinian leadership.
Obviously Palestinian culture is shot through with antisemitism, but they also live under enormous pressure to conform. When sweets are handed out in the streets to celebrate a successful terrorist attack against Israel, anyone who refused a sweet would instantly be in grave danger.
I don’t know French law (or even the version of the Napoleonic Code applicable in Louisiana according to Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire). But to the extent US law has an analogue in France, the issue at this stage of the proceedings would appear to be whether Traoré is competent to stand trial, as distinct from whether he was insane at the time of the attack on Ms. Halimi.
The former concerns whether a defendant is currently sufficiently compos mentis to assist counsel in the preparation and presentation of his or her defense; the latter, whether the defendant had the mental capacity at the time the offense was committed to appreciate the nature and consequences of his or her actions.
That there appears to be an issue regarding the defendant’s competency to stand trial suggests that his mental issues go well beyond being stoned on weed at the time of the attack.
Bari Weiss complains in her article: “Yet nowhere in the long article does the reader learn that two years ago, Ms. Plame tweeted an essay [by an anti-jewish conspiracists]”
When she discusses the odious Linda Sarsour, she hastens to add her association with Bernie Sanders, twice, writing:
I think you have a point here. Weiss, as with a lot of people on the centre-left, feels a need to criticise her own side just to make sure everyone knows how fair and reasonable she’s being. This impulse springs from a good place.
But to crib from Dickie, the truth isn’t necessarily perfectly equidistant between two points, and it’s specious to imply an equivalence between anti-Semitism on the right and anti-Semitism on the left. Weiss has to do some fact-mangling to make things fit.
I don’t think Weiss does say they are equivalent. From listening to her speak about these things a few times, I think she makes that clear and she especially talks about the dangers for the right wing fanatics like the one that shot up her synagogue.
It’s not my beef that she criticised left wing anti-semitism, or why she does it. Anti-semitism is anti-semitism, and such attitude easily travel around the ideological landscape.
My beef was that she sticks Sarsour’s reported anti-semitism to Bernie Sanders, but then not informing the reader that Sanders is a “proud” Jew himself, and reportedly a zionist himself (I remembered the jewish part vaguely and only learned about his zionist activism when I looked it up).
If she wants to name-drop Sanders that way, she must work with that information, too, wherever it may lead.
I don’t think she thinks there’s an equivalence – she seems clear-eyed and reasonable whenever I’ve heard her speak – but it’s not unreasonable to infer an equivalence from the article. I don’t think it’s intentional. It’s just a side-effect of of the liberal approach to reporting, which is to be as fair and even-handed as possible, often bending over backwards in the process.
Yes, I agree. People generally don’t seem to be very good with nuance, especially when it comes to politics and tribalism.
It seems very convenient to throw “whataboutism!” and decide that the argument is closed. But look at UN – the number of resolutions against Israel surpasses the number of resolutions against all the rest of the world combined. The number of denounciations of Israel by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, comparing to the rest of the world, is also staggering. How many demonstration there were in the Western world against Saudi Arabia, Syria etc. again comparing to demonstrations against Israel? Is there an international movemnet calling for boycott of Saudi Arabia, China, etc.? Just against Israel. This is not “whataboutism”. This is a quite different standard used for the Jewish state and for all other states in the world which are not Jewish.
The disproportionality of the UN resolutions is a very bold illustration of the double standard that is applied to Jews.
“But is criticizing parts of Israel’s policies tantamount to antisemitism?”
Absolutely not.
But it almost never happens like that. What you get instead are false allegations that are part of a gigantic rubric of lies from the Arab/Palestinian propaganda corp. Look at the first post in these comments. It’s exactly like a Gish Gallup by creationists.
A pretty good analogy is a creationist asking:
“Is criticizing evolution tantamount to creationism?”
“I have little doubt that the ignorance of people like Becky is willful. “
I don’t think that is necessarily the case. I think it is a product of the times, ie, the way that we get information (and more likely, misinformation) on the internet.
There has been a very large concerted propaganda effort against Israel since the 1960’s. And Israel’s enemies have a LOT of cash to finance these efforts. Billions have been spent influencing universities and subverting academic scholarship. Every major media outfit publishes news items and photos that have been generated by Arab agencies or personnel and these articles and news reports go out without any further scrutiny or editing.
All of these efforts pollute search engines. Anti-Israel sources far outrank and outnumber truthful ones. It is really very difficult for a person who is not willing to invest hundreds of hours in careful research to have a clue just what the facts are.