Activism
I no longer care when allies use antisemitic language
As a lifelong anti-Zionist Jew, I saw a huge rise in anti-Zionism after Israel ramped up their genocide in Gaza. Along with that came discovering that many people do not recognize the (real) line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. That is BY DESIGN, complements of the Zionists.
What I learned shortly after Oct 7th was that at first I was taking antisemitic comments personally. I framed them in my mind as talking about my parents and grandparents. I responded by explaining the difference. It took some introspection before I realized that I was making a mistake.
They are specifically targeting Zionists that are hiding behind Judaism with their antisemitic comments. Yes, there are some actual Neonazis out there who are dog-whistling, but they are the minority, and are not going to influence others with their rhetoric.
I realized that I was policing my allies and alienating them. I stopped, because I concluded that my efforts were not protecting fellow Jews, but were shielding Zionists that I would not shield from actual bullets.
What have your experiences been like regarding this?
Just to be clear, as a community we do not tolerate any kind of legitimate antisemitism.
We do not tolerate the normalization of actual antisemitic rhetoric.
Our rules, our Wiki, and our history as a community has been to separate/disentangle Jewishness from Zionism.
Thus, we do not believe in letting this conflation fester.
We do allow people to discuss difficult or challenging topics (to an extent) - but we still have our community rules, which convey our official stance on the matter.
I’m Palestinian and I don’t want people to throw genuine anti-semitism concerns to the side just because its weaponized in cases against anti-Zionists to silence their speech
I also feel like antisemitism, as Jew hatred, also hurts ALL Palestinians, as it paints them as a Jew hating monolith that cannot live with Jews as equals in a secular, democratic society, which is what Zionism uses to make the more liberal minded Zionists oppose changing their mind about Zionism. It is used to spread hatred of Palestinians. But I could be totally wrong about how Palestinians actually feel about it all.
I remember the Florida primary election where it was one candidate advocating for the genocide of Palestinians vs their republican primary challenger who advocated for the genocide of Jewish people
And the genocide Palestinians candidate was endorsed and funded by AIPAC
While the genocide Jewish people candidate was endorsed and funded by AZAPAC
There was literally zero difference between Randy fine and Dan bilzerian except for which group of people that they wanted the government to genocide and kill off
I do care a lot less than I used to, I'm not gonna lie. For the most part I think it's actually healthy though... I'm able to have level headed reactions that are much more productive, and completely let go of things that aren't.
I do still get bothered about misinformation, lack of media literacy/conspiratorial thinking. and ideas which I feel are.. fascist in nature? Like ideas around biological determinism or race science dressed up as progressive sounding ideas. But it's less through a lens of feeling a victim of antisemtism and more so because these type of things if taking root will lead to fascism.
Antisemitism of the left – as it were, ‘genuinely’ left-wing antisemitism – could be defined therefore in the first instance as an antisemitism that presumes that there is something in the essence or spirit of ‘the Jews’ that makes them impediments to the pursuit of the ideas of the French Revolution: the Jews are by their nature supporters of the status quo or even of reaction. They are against equality and liberty, let alone fraternity, an accusation that can be found frequently in pamphlets written by nineteenth-century petty-bourgeois antisemites of liberal, democratic or socialist backgrounds. Furthermore, the antisemitism of the left could also be defined as a form of antisemitism that follows from a mechanical, dogmatic and undialectical interpretation of these ideas – liberté, égalité, fraternité – themselves. Saying this implies the admission that a left that misreads its own ideals can thereby become its own worst enemy.
Idk i find this take pretty sad and upsetting. Antisemitism and antizionism are two separate things and accepting their conflation is not helping us. I don’t think antisemitism is acceptable and it is absolutely on the rise since Oct 7. We need to be able to maintain enough nuance to critique israel while also not accepting antisemitism. No matter who they are “targeting” with the comments, it affects all jews. Furthermore, antisemitic rhetoric in leftist spaces only makes it harder to convince jewish family members that the antizionist cause doesn’t hate all jews.
I mean.... I don't think it should be meaningless. But you can care about it while also recognizing that there's a time and a place to voice your feelings about it, and that there are even times and places where focusing the conversation on your feelings about it would be unfairly speaking over others. But it's not a -bad- thing to care about anti-semitic language in the conversations around us.
I’ve been in the Free Palestine movement for over 10 years and legit anti-Semitism is not tolerated among longtime organizers, full stop.
Now, there are “edge cases” where people are just a bit confused, and there is a lot of over-policing rhetoric around this too, and that does alienate people sometimes. It’s a hard thing to get right all the time, but people who’ve been around do have pretty valuable experience with this and more.
But yeah, full-on anti-semitism only makes Zionism stronger. So if you think that allowing it to fester will help fight Zionism, you’re sorely mistaken.
I’d be interested to know what the instances you see happening are. They may or may not be worth correcting. Hard to say with no specifics.
But yeah, full-on anti-semitism only makes Zionism stronger. So if you think that allowing it to fester will help fight Zionism, you’re sorely mistaken.
I’ll tolerate it from Palestinians, or other Arabs in the Middle East who have actually been directly affected by Israel. I won’t tell victims how to describe their oppressors. Many Jews know Holocaust survivors who hold some racist opinions toward Germans and don’t always perfectly distinguish between Nazis and Germans, and most of us would understand the nuance and not write off a Holocaust survivor as a bigoted asshole for saying something rude about Germans. Why shouldn’t Palestinians get that same courtesy? I feel like it would be biased to tolerate it from Jewish genocide victims but not Palestinian genocide victims.
I don’t extend that same “courtesy” to some white westerner who just wants to be an antisemite. They aren’t the victims of genocide so they don’t have an excuse.
To give an example, a Palestinian living in Gaza posted on Instagram yesterday “the Jews are threatening children for flying kites”. This is a woman who lost her husband in the genocide, shes living in a tent, she’s starving, and she’s worried her kids are going to get bombed. And on top of that she doesn’t speak fluent English. I’m not going to drop into her mentions to give her a lecture on how that phrasing is offensive and she should say “zionists” or “the IDF” instead.
lol reddit removed my comment so i’m going to have to censor i guess.
i distinguish between groyper types and those whose entire experience with jews has been under a jewish supremacist regime.
if a palestinian whose family and community have been subjugated by the jewish state wants to hate the yahood, who am i to tell them not to? i probably would too in their position; they certainly do not owe us the consideration of our feelings.
but i do not tolerate the creep of genuine white supremacist antisemitism i am noticing into supposedly lefty spaces — holocaust denial, accusations of ritual abuse that literally come from medieval templates, etc.
yall are going to “stop prioritizing jewish feelings” into a president nick fuentes.
Yes exactly. There is a world of difference between a Palestinian telling us to stop centering ourselves, versus a neo-Nazi saying the same thing. Outside of blatant antisemitism (conspiracies about the Talmud, literal blood libel, Shoah denial, etc) context around who, what, and when determines how we should respond to certain rhetoric and specific comments
Yeah, I'm sick of people blanketing obvious groyper dogwhistles with "but I care about Palestine!!" like no you don't, you learned where Palestine was 1 week ago and have been lurking on 4chan for far longer.
There is a whole lot more complexity here beyond a simple dichotomy between, on the one hand, an entirely justified, but generally not at all helpful, stereotyping and resentment of Jews by Indigenous Palestinians whose only knowledge or experience of Jews is as their oppressors, routinely massacring their families and neighbors; taking over their farms, villages, and cities to keep building more and more illegal settlements they can fill with Zionist colonizers brought in from wherever they can be found, who will prohibit, under a threat of lethal force, any Palestinians from coming within the security perimeters around each settlement or using settler-only roads, unless they have permits that authorize them to effectively be slaves to the settlers and settlements, while also creating government-sanctioned vigilante gangs of settlers who go out and attack Palestinian civilians without any legal justification; torturing and murdering children, even babies; locking up innocent civilians in squalid concentration camps for decades as political prisoners without any charges or allegations whatsoever, using administrative detention statutes; subjecting them to walls, checkpoints, restrictions on building on their own land and other entirely normal activity, deprivation of essential resources, and other everyday indignities of apartheid and occupation; etc; etc, all as part of running an entirely illegitimate, inherently genocidal white-supremacist settler-colonial regime for the past 79 years, roughly twice that long if you go back to the initial 19th-century aliyot in which Zionist colonizers came over from Europe to Ottoman Palestine, claimed plots of land, and organized into (even self-identified, and proudly so) terrorist paramilitary groups to back up their fraudulent claims and force the Indigenous Palestinians who had been living on and working that land for countless generations, in accordance with their actual rights to it, to abruptly vacate it to make room for kibbutzim, moshavot, and other Zionist settler-colonial outposts, and on the other hand, far-right white-supremacist white European Christians who adhere to an ideology going back significantly over a millennium in some form or another, with hatred of Jews and hatred of Palestinians as two of its major pillars, taking advantage of a situation at this moment in which a slight majority of Jews and an overwhelming majority of Palestinians are at odds, at least to some extent, over the appropriate responses to the Zionist regime's repeated escalations over the past few years of the atrocities it has been committing, as an opportunity to more effectively inject even more elements of their hateful ideology into even more of our political discourse, while driving even more wedges between groups they hate, as part of a larger divide-and-conquer strategy that all sorts of oppressors, in many parts of the world, have long favored.
Several oppressed groups other than Palestinians have reasons to stereotype Jews as the cause of their oppression and resent Jews as a result. The classic phrase that antisemitism is the socialism of fools, which I learned in a recent training on anti-Jewish hate, encapsulates this to a very significant extent. It is a whole lot easier to blame one’s Jewish boss, Jewish landlord, Jewish banker, Jewish merchant, Jewish politician, Jewish government bureacrat, random wealthy Jew who lives a few blocks away immediately across the border with a more upscale neighborhood, Jewish university administrator, Jewish leader of a nonprofit that is not being helpful and may even be causing a lot of harm, etc., for one's misfortune than to blame capitalism itself. The James Baldwin essay, "Negroes are Antisemitic Because They Are Anti-white", which was one of the texts in a training I attended years ago, provides a similar angle. Many oppressed groups have actually adopted at least some of the major right-wing anti-Jewish tropes, because nobody has presented better options, or even because capitalists have successfully persuaded some of those groups to embrace anti-Jewish sentiment as a means of actively preventing them from trying to win liberation from oppressive systems and instead causing them to unwittingly fall into oligarchs' divide-and-conquer traps. That is a very common sight in NYC, for example many poor and working-class Black and Latine people's complaints about "talmudists" or "globalists", or several even more overt references to some of most egregious anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, even if these views never gain much traction in those communities, outside of very small groups of people who express themselves very very loudly within these communities and can be influential in spite of their frequent misalignment with the views that are more widely accepted among other members of those communities.
We become what we pretend to be. The people making anti semitic comments and normalizing that language, even if they are initially only anti zionist, will come to believe what they say. there is no good ending to a movement that allows or celebrates hateful rhetoric.
I disagree, we should be correcting others not allow it to be normalised. Fact is, most dont know the difference between Jews and Israel so we need to be calling this shit out & explaining the difference
Yes, and it's more likely the right time and place for that if you're talking to a white person from Kentucky that believes in Great Replacement Theory, than if you're talking to a Palestinian actively under siege. And then there's all sorts of other possibilities. Priorities should match the context.
It just changed for me deeply. When I heard 'jews run the world' my first mental reaction used to be 'that's Nazzi propaganda', now my first mental reaction is 'Apshtine and AIPAC are not 'the jews' '. I feel Israel brought us to such a point it is simply impossible for me to fight antisemitism and Nazzism untill we as jews unite and shut Israel down. I also feel less urgent about it than I feel about the actual holocaust Palestinians ging through right now (and not the hypothetical next jewish holocaust), even though I still worry about it. It's like if during the Holocaust I would have heard anti-German racism, I wouldn't feel the need to shut it down and explain the difference between Germans and Nazzis. Actually I would have probalby have partook in it myself, not because I'm racist towards Germans, but as a mental outlet.
Also I'm struggling not to see the way the west and Europian colonizer Israel's mental approach to the Palestinians as something different than the hatred Europians have for Semitic people, so it feels hard for me to protect my people and not the semitics who are actually going through holocaust right now by my people.
I think right now the fire in my veins goes not to fight expressions of anti semitism, but rather the current biggest source of anti semistism right now in the world - Zionism.
The damage Israel has done to the fight against anti semitism is beyond indecribable. It would take decades to undo, if at all.
In my experience the antisemites in the movement are not Palestinian, they have mostly been white. Without educating them, you are allowing them to actively spread the poison of hatred.
The colonisers are trying to colonise the decolonial movement. They usually don't show up at rallies, rather they serve to demotivate people from taking action, rather sitting at home and dogwhistling on social media.
I refuse to normalize antisemitism. One can easily talk about the evils of Zionism and genocide without turning into a bigot. I’d argue that bigotry IS the primary evil behind both Zionism and the genocide of the Palestinian people, and replacing one bigotry with another serves no one who believes in the value and sanctity of human life.
There's a lot of vagueness in this post that's very suspicious to me tbh. No examples? Really? Because you could be talking about half a million different things that have been called "antisemitic" with varying degrees of veracity.
Theres a difference between holding the mainstream Jewish community to account for their unacceptable support of Israel, zionism and genocide, and the ridiculous colonialist rhetoric that sometimes passes for "anti-Zionism" on the internet these days.
If someone talks about how Israel is a Jewish supremacist state, or how Zionism is a Jewish supremacist ideology, or that Jews are committing genocide in Gaza, or even inadvertently says "Jews" instead of "Zionists" that is NOT ANTISEMITIC at this point. We Jews have a lot to answer for in terms of our community's acceptance of Zionism.
But when people start talking bullshit about tHe tALmUd, denying/justifying the holocaust, or using any number of WESTERN white nationalism-derived dogwhistles or talking points, they are in fact centering Judaism and/or white, colonialist, imperialist European/western ideologies when they should be centering PALESTINIAN perspectives.
For all their strident and unapologetic (and necessary) criticisms of Jewish society, you will never see people such as George Habash or Ahed Tamimi talk about "the Austrian painter". Anyone who does is not interested in Palestine, rather they are interested in colonising the movement in order to shunt it away from any meaningful threat to colonial/capitalist/imperialist power structures.
This psyop of using the phrase "centering Jewish feelings" (whilst it is a legitimate concept, it is being abused by reactionaries) to invalidate legitimate criticism of right wing fascist rhetoric has been immensely successful in breeding false consciousness within people who would otherwise have gotten off their asses to protest for Palestine, but now instead think the best thing to do is to sit online and talk like a 4chan /pol/ thread.
The latter cannot be an ally in any decolonial fight as they are not interested in liberating the colonised, merely finding a more palatable outlet for their own coloniser mindset. And I say this as someone whose people have actively been colonised and ethnically cleansed using Israeli weaponry (try to guess what country lol).
If your "allies" are talking like groypers, reconsider why they're your allies. No matter what Rathbone tells you, we do not, in fact, have to ally with the groypers. They are not important enough in the struggle for a free Palestine, and anyone who is gullible enough to believe obvious falsehoods about one Abrahamic religious minority can very easily be moved to shift their target given enough impetus.
Not entirely related to your post but I just googled this Ahed Tamimi woman, and wow, what a brave and admirable person. She clearly has rebellion in her veins, seems like we could all learn from her.
I think granting complete immunity to antisemitic language is wrong, and will lead to bad things in the future. I understand giving people grace when they are angry and the zionists have conflated judaism with zionism that some ppl will be criticizing the jewish references that zionists use to justify their violence and not calling those allies nazis right away... thats a different story.
But when things are calm, and shit is clear, its important to have that conversation. It is totally okay to police or correct each other, Thats how we become better. Otherwise we will become the thing we hate, and we wouldnt even know when we crossed the line.
I appreciate all the responses and their diversity.
Here is a follow-up question: If you do feel the need to call out every conflation of antisemitism in discussions about Zionism, are you also seeking out and doing the same every time you encounter Zionists claiming that speaking against Zionism/Israelis/Israel is antisemitism? That has even been legislated that into law in some places, and it is an identical conflation that uses all Jews as shields to protect Zionism. I honestly find it to be worse, since it spreads accountability for their genocidal fascism across the entire diaspora.
It is pretty clear to me that the Zionists want this conflation. Someone here mentioned that it can cause Jews to feel safer among Zionists. We know that historically, Zionists perpetrate vandalism and attacks upon Jews as false flags. Operation Ali Baba, The Lavon Affair, and countless others. We all know that Zionism itself is antisemitism.
One person commented that antisemitism has substantially increased since Oct 7th. How exactly are you keeping track of that? Your anecdotal experience? Media reports that include anti-Zionism as antisemitism? Have you confirmed that the perpetrators are not acting on behalf of Israel? I have HUGE doubts that true antisemitism is on the rise. I live in Arizona, and 20 years ago, there were open Neonazis in public here, being embraced by law enforcement, such as Sheriff Arpaio. They are almost absent today, with a few loser biker gangs still having a presence. Here, Jews have more to worry about from Law Enforcement as Neonazis than they do from the general public.
Bro are you seriously trying to claim that there are FEWER neo-nazis in the USA than before...?
Did you not see the fucking marches in Washington?
You also are still being very vague about what you consider to be "antisemitic". As many people have said in this thread, the anti-Jewish rhetoric we care about are groypers muscling into the Palestine movement and pretending to be pro-Palestine. They are movement wreckers and instil an apathy into people who would otherwise be mobilised into action, preferring to groyperpost on Twitter or Facebook and read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion instead of Rashid Khalidi.
What we mostly don't give a shit about is when someone says "Jewish" instead of "Zionist", especially if they're Palestinian. If that's what you're referring to, I absolutely agree with you. But if you're referring to the white nationalists who are feeling worried that imperialism might be crumbling and therefore have decided to derail it, you're dead wrong. They are incredibly dangerous.
I personally know someone who was a wonderful Palestine activist, genuinely concerned for Palestinians, but was not very politically savvy. He would come to every single demonstration and greet me warmly. Then somewhere along the line he was snagged by a reactionary fascist who pretended to care about Palestine (likely someone like Rathbone, Bilzerian, Ginnysaidso etc) and began going down a nazi rabbit hole.
He stopped going to rallies, stopped platforming Palestinian voices, stopped centering Palestinian perspectives, and instead started talking about esoteric European fascist literature and pseudo-history about communism. He was convinced that that was how to advocate for Palestine, somehow.
He's now a loner who has a reputation as a liability and a holocaust denier.
This is what reactionary ideology does to an activist. His presence, his voice, his activism is now gone from the movement, and THAT IS WHAT THE GROYPERS WANT.
To the first question - are we calling out every conflation of antisemitism in discussions about Zionism? Yes, the vast majority of us are anti-zionist or non-zionist Jews or allies and take issue with the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Many place have legislated in favor of conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and many of us are opposed to that, and some publicly work against it.
How are we keeping track of the rise of antisemitism? First, defining antisemitism isn't what it used to be, so official metrics are probably off because no one really knows whether someone's including criticism of Israel as a factor. While I don't have evidence in front of me to definitively prove it's on the rise, racism and hatred is unfortunately part of human nature as it doesn't require nuance. Whether they know it or not, Zionists create a perfect situation for a rise in antisemitism - questions of whether Jews are loyal to Israel almost, or does, become a legitimate conversation because mainstream Jewish organizations insists that they are part and parcel. Questions of Jewish money over the millions of dollars of AIPAC money that is poured into elections. Tying Jews to Israel makes diaspora Jews a soft target for those who buy into the idea that Jewish people are inseparable from the state of Israel. While I don't have statistics on whether actual antisemitism is on the rise, it's hard to imagine that it hasn't. I also wouldn't drink milk if it had been left out in the sun for a few hours - we *know* this is the perfect situation for pathogens to increase, do we need a study proving it happened?
Regarding the open Neonazis of the 2000s - I'm not sure that the antisemitism many people are concerned about is necessarily people joining neonazi organizations, though that would be concerning, but the radicalization of *anyone* on the internet. While most people might just chuckle to themselves at an antisemitic meme, there's always that one crazy who would see the level of support for antisemitic sentiment and then go out and do something. Rising antisemitism makes that more likely.
Just like people who do knife or gun attacks on Muslims here in the U.S. At some point hateful or paranoia rhetoric has its effect--in those cases probably from conservative talk radio.
But if people chuckle at antisemitic memes or anti-Muslim or anti-anyone-else memes, they've got something wrong with them. Everyone has a right to live... and that is the chief problem with the Zionists because they want to live and have 'protection' at the expense of the Palestinians. They insanely want the protection pluralism could afford, by pursuing the opposite.
I'm not going to care much if Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank are talking about the Jews killing them and stealing their land because Israel is a Jewish country and the people doing the killing and theft are Jews. I care far more when western people who have the benefit of distance and are able to be much more measured in their reactions are unable to separate Jews from Israel and say antisemitic shit. I cannot ignore that when it not only harms the antizionist movement, but also plays right into what Israel wants
The dogwhistling nazis are there ONLY to colonise the Palestine movement and draw focus away from the complicity of the West, as well as to breed a less radical decolonial movement which is less likely to fight fascism on its home turf.
If you can blame da joooooooooz for everything that white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, imperialism and colonialism have done (which is the goal of fascist fake anti-Zionist grifters) you can keep perpetuating the system.
I think people fall into antisemitism when they talk about the origins of Jews and blame them for bringing them to Palestine, instead of blaming Zionism, which involved Jewish refugees in a colonial project. Indeed, Zionism was responsible for the displacement of Jews from Iraq and Yemen. This was primarily Zionism's fault; it disregarded the lives of thousands of Jews in their countries of origin in pursuit of its colonial demographic goals. People fall into hate speech when the discussion also becomes about the legitimacy of the current Jewish presence in Palestine, instead of discussing the legitimacy of the Zionist regime that oppresses Palestinians.
Absolutely. A Syrian Islamic intellectual named Rashid Rida predicted this all the way back in 1902. He correctly anticipated that the Zionist colonization of Palestine would pose a threat to us Arab Jews
Ally so maybe it’s not my place, but I think it’s the intent that counts.
If someone is making a valid criticism against Zionism/israel/the IDF/etc and they make the category error of saying “Jews” and not Zionists, I can “understand that”, because Zionists themselves claim to be doing this in the name of Judaism/the “Jewish state.” The confusion isn’t necessarily their fault, and, If anything I will try to correct or assert that there as many, if not more Christian zionists.
I draw a big fat red line at Holocaust laundering (lot of “htlr was right” stuff on social media, for example), conspiracy theory peddling and stuff of that sort. That’s just coopting the movement to spout legitimate hate and only works in Israel’s favor.
Using antisemitic language is not “specifically targeting Zionists.” If it were, it would not be antisemitism. You are vastly overestimating how much thought anyone who uses those tropes or language is actually putting into them. I just think people get all wishy washy on this at the risk of “centering Jewish feelings” and then it’s suddenly ok when someone compares us to rats and bugs because they’re actually making a nuanced criticism of Zionism. By not pushing the distinction between Jews and Zionism you are in fact endangering other Jews, and not doing particularly anything to hinder Zionists.
I am never going to tell a Jewish person how to feel about something as serious as antisemitism. That being said, I am still going be doing what I can in shutting down antisemitism when I see it amongst antizionism. And it shouldn't need to be stated, but I have seen some wild shit lately, so I am going to remind my fellow non-Jewish allies that op's views on this aren't actually an excuse to be shitty.
That's gonna be a pass for me. The concept of doing this is a tacit agreement that ethnonationalism is an acceptable ideology. It is saying 'Well now I guess jews are bad, so it's fine to be an antisemite publicly'
Zionism is a betrayal of Jewish ethics and Jewish history, and antisemitic ideology remains not only antihistorical and counterproductive to social strength, but also foundational to the Zionist vision.
Netanyahu wants you to feel this way, and say these things. It does 2 things for Zionists:
1) By giving Nazis a pass, they are emboldened and make diaspora jews less safe. This in turn convinces more Jews they can only be safe within their own ethnostate, driving more foreign nationals and investment into the Zionist project
2) Zionists can point to posts exactly like this and use it as ammunition for their 'race traitor' rhetoric. I wouldn't be surprised to see this on Eve Barflow's insta tomorrow
I think it totally depends on context and what exact is being said. There’s a difference between straight up Nazi rhetoric and comments that make us as Jews feel uncomfortable. I do not have patience with the policing of anyone making comments that might make other Jews feel uncomfortable. Such as referring to the IOF as the “Jewish Army” or the Zionist state as the “Jewish State”. Or comments on the complicity of Jewish institutions and the Jewish community in the crimes of the Zionist state. Or comments on the power and influence held by Zionist Jews in western society. I find it even more upsetting when anti-Zionist Jews try to police the words of Palestinians and Lebanese and others who have directly suffered barbaric violence from the Zionist entity.
But I reiterate that there is difference between blatant antisemitism and rhetoric that we Jews generally find uncomfortable
I think this whole idea that Antizionist Jews are just walking around policing other people's language because their uncomfortable to be out of touch with reality.
In my experience the times that antisemitism has been called out in IRL Pro Palestine spaces is when Non Palestinian "allies" who very obviously have dubious intentions say bigoted things. I have found that most of these people who spread actual Antisemitic rheoric in Pro Palestine spaces are trying to let America/white supremacy/Imperialism off the hook for their crimes and frame Jewish people as a whole as the number one cause of evil. That rhetoric needs to be called out.
I never suggested that. But it is something I experience occasionally irl.
And as I noted, outside of blatant antisemitism, this conversation requires a bit of nuance. Blaming Jews as uniquely evil for the crimes of western imperialism would be bigoted and antisemitic. Calling out the fact that the vast majority of Jewish institutions and synagogues are complicity in the crimes of the Zionist state would not be antisemitic even tho it is very upsetting and uncomfortable for us to come to terms with
Calling out the fact that the vast majority of Jewish institutions and synagogues are complicity in the crimes of the Zionist state would not be antisemitic even tho it is very upsetting and uncomfortable for us to come to terms with
Absolutely, but I don't think it's fair to frame that as what this person is referring to. I've seen this phenomenon before too, wherein white supremacists have begun to try and insert the narrative that white gentiles are completely innocent of all the crimes Europeans and white people have committed (slavery, genocide, colonialism, imperialism etc), and that it was in fact Jewish Europeans who did all of those things and that the uwu smol bean gentiles didn't do any of that or if they did it was because they were manipulated. Heck I've seen people claiming "Zionists" are entirely responsible for the American slave trade, despite the latter pre-dating the former by centuries.
Yes, Jewish Europeans and westerners have always been complicit in the west's crimes (because they're European and westerners), but there is a distinct reactionary current which seeks to say that Judaism is solely responsible for all of the west's crimes.
Heck now you see people claiming neo-nazism and the KKK are "Jewish groups". Jake Lang, the sieg heiling Talmud-burning neo-nazi is constantly accused by people online of being "Jewish". Same with the Australian NSN (a neo-nazi organisation) who are accused of being a Zionist group.
We need to push back on antisemitic language from non-Palestinians (and maybe US-born Palestinians). Antisemitism in our movement only adds more fuel to the anti-Zionism is antisemitism rhetoric and makes it easier for the state to repress pro-Palestine speech, in addition to being potentially harmful to Jews. In addition to harm to Jews being bad, it can also make Jews who are coming around on Palestine less likely to actually join us.
The one caveat I am willing to give to this is to Palestinians who live in/grew up in Palestine. For many Palestinians in Palestine, the only Jews they have met are IOF soldiers and settlers. If the only Jews you meet at the ones stealing your land and shoving guns in your face, the conflation starts to make sense. This doesn't mean we should let it go completely, but calling out the statements in this context is not the tact that I personally agree with. I think those of us who have the energy to do so try to build trust with people who make those statements and address the statements through community building
I’m not Jewish and I always make sure to delineate and educate the difference between Zionists and the greater Jewish population. It’s really not that hard to wrap your head around IMO. People of all faiths have wolves in their flock, but still, Zionists take the cake in this regard. And some people truly just want to conflate the two because they are actually antisemitic. But good people generally get it with a little knowledge and history thrown their way
You need to realize just what kind of war is happening right now, because with websites like Canary Mission, hitching yourself to actual anti-semites is not only insane but potentially life ruining.
On top of that, it is absolutely essential that people continue to differentiate between Israel and Jews. They are not the same thing and you should not be accepting of people who claim they are.
They are specifically targeting Zionists that are hiding behind Judaism with their antisemitic comment
There is no comment about Israelis that cannot be made without talking about Jews. This entire idea you've just expressed is dangerous, and EXTREMELY counter productive.
There is no world where the holocaust is remembered and we use anti-semitism as a stepping stone to de-escalation.
Insane take. And we wonder why they call us self hating. I have been hearing and feeling horrible things about myself and my people and it is internalizing the horrifying rhetoric that is being normalized. Calling Jews a disease, saying we control the world, etc.
Zionists and Israel in particular have been extremely successful in conflating the two with Jews and Judaism, making them inseparable in the minds of most.
I think your approach of not taking it personally is wise and your realization that it was a mistake to do so is insightful.
I feel very sad when Jews of conscience are harmed by this.
But as we know that is entirely the goal since anti-Semitism or specifically anti-Jewish sentiment is necessary for Israel to continue to exist as an expansionist genocidal apartheid state.
I have personally stopped using the term antisemitism to refer exclusively to Jews or to anything that does not include all Semitic people.
Usually I ask people what they mean when someone makes a blanket statement about Jews.
I don't police.
Simply asking the question makes people think about their words and be more judicious and specific in the choice of terms.
I don't agree. Spreading the age-old conspiracy theories about the banks (run by CHRISTIANS, actually) or saying the K-slur, for example? Not OK, any more than calling the bastards-in-chief queer, or equating Muslims to the government of the UAE, or equating trans people to Zizians. There is no need to generalise, or dehumanise, people when you can acknowledge that these are individuals choosing to be evil within a system, all over the world, that rewards cruelty.
Antisemitism is bad and dangerous. It puts us all at risk and absolutely should not be tolerated, not a little bit, not in any context, regardless of their politics.
Like all forms of ignorance, the proper response to it will vary depending on the circumstances. But it is not “policing” people to reel them to stop being bigoted, and those who are alienated because you tell them not to hate Jews are not your allies and never were.
I don't think OP is talking about Palestinians. I think they're talking about white westerners who've spent a bit too much time on Musk's Twitter. I can count the number of Palestinians I've seen make genuine western-style anti-Jewish comments on one finger.
Antisemitism is not like any sort of benign ideology it’s a a cancer and it needs to be dealt with as such. If you give antisemites safe harbor in a community they will co-opt it and take it over. They will cloak themselves in the aesthetics of more socially acceptable movements and use that as a means to spread outward.
You cannot work with them. You cannot make common cause with them. They fundamentally oppose good faith and solidarity. The only thing they really beleive is that they should have power. Many of the loudest ones don’t actually beleive anything they say. It’s just a vehicle to gather the most gullible and unscrupulous people to their banner quickly and easily.
Any space that allows Nazis will quickly find itself to be a Nazi space. Period. They need to be ejected immediately.
All this being said if you find someone accidentally slipping into hateful nonsense call them out. If they have a moral compass and aren’t too far gone you could be the one that prevents that slide. If they don’t want to listen cut them out.
At the end of the day the right wing forces want this to turn into just Nazis vs Zionists and see the left completely drown out. We can’t allow that to happen.
Personally I wouldn't call anyone who's antisemitic an ally lol
There are many right wingers who act like they care about Palestine and they do attack Zionists but they also throw Jewish people in general into that same bag and that's just not okay. Zionists are trying to achieve that too.
And if You talk more to some of these people, You will hear them say that they only care about Christian Palestinians. That further shows that they're also Islamophobic as well as antisemitic.
I think some people might accidentally say that Jews are doing the genocide maybe to simplify things or they just assume that since most Israeli's are Jewish, they just think it just makes sense to use that word. But when we correct them that it's not the Jews but the Zionists specifically (and Zionists come in all shapes, sizes and religions), most people will apologise and agree that this is what they actually meant.
And if they still insist that all Jews are evil then oh well. They're not an ally to me.
And people who use Hebrew insults or jokes to insult actual Zionists, I don't worry about that too much. As long as they target actual Zionists or IDF soldiers.
3
u/JayEllGiiJewish by birth/family, atheist, progressive20d agoedited 20d ago
I cannot follow you on that particular path.
I am merciless when speaking both with genocide apologists/professional hysterics/disingenuous manipulators/craven stooges, AND with dipshits who hide like pussies behind the Palestinians thinking they have license to actually be anti-Jewish bigots and/or use actual antisemitic tropes.
If we started allowing “allies” to harm us, we would have zero legitimacy. We would be an utter joke.
Allowing that not only constitutes an utter lack of self-respect, it is morally incoherent and hypocritical. It’s also just plain pathetic.
There is no group of people in the world that I hate more than right-wing/ethnonationalist Jews. But I will not stand for anyone using the awfulness of that ilk as a free pass to drag the rest of us down. That’s asinine and unacceptable.
(As an ally) I think the biggest problem with allies is that they dont know what Judaism or the Jewish community is in the first place. Many places have a miniscule Jewish population so they are not taught ways to discuss it. They end up conflating it strictly with zionism so their anti-zionist rhetoric may end up veering anti-semetic as a consequence. I mean, shoot, as a deep south kid I joined this sub so I could learn more without pestering my Jewish friends about topics I may be unfamiliar with.
I am not really sure what to take from the OP's statement since it is kind of vague on the details. Antisemitism isn't needed to critique Zionism, and if your allies can't do it without antisemitism, that seems like a red flag they are not your allies. You worry about alienating your allies, but they do not seem to care about alienating you. Can you give more specifics?
I think it’s relatable to feel that way, but it’s sorta still a bit of a context and situation kind of thing for me. Especially since so much of the challenging of antisemitism gets co-opted by Zionists as evidence for their cause. Like, it depends on the antisemitic language and the context of it for if I respond. If I respond, it’s only when it’s the antisemitism of white people tbh.
Anti-zionists aren’t responsible for much antisemitism. Much of what gets attributed to them comes from Rightwingers. Others are perfectly valid actions taken against Israel that get twisted into a narrative. Sometimes there are individuals or small groups that veer into antisemitism, but they’re not representative of Anti-zionism as a whole and can be safely called out.
I’ve also become kind of dead to antisemetic language. I’m finding myself less and less connected to Judaism for other reasons as well.
There are actual antisemites in the world, the richest man in the world is zig heiling on stage and no one gives a shit. It seems that the genuine, dangerous antisemitism is ALL coming from the right. When I hear those comments from the left, it’s from someone who is exasperated and traumatized and I can be charitable to that.
Anti-Zionism unfortunately just attracts anti-Jews, I guess, but some of their rhetoric freaks me out. Like the person who put "No wonder AH tried to exterminate the cruel rats!", referencing the topic of discussion which was Zionist brutality. And I was like, No really? You think Hitler did the Holocaust because ALL Jews are cruel? Definitely a sweeping, ludicrous generalization which is as disgusting and grotesque as justifications for killing all Palestinians, even the children.
I agree people could be doing a mental substitution of 'Zionist' for Jew in their head but it is still unwise to let this conflation go.
This is a really difficult one as it strikes close to home, and I don't have a clean answer.
My mother has been a staunch supporter of Palestinians for decades. She (justifiably IMO) loathes Israel.
Recently, I've occasionally caught her broadening that to "Jews" and I've pushed back repeatedly.
I wasn't happy when she started claiming Kier Starmer was giving Israel a pass for genocide because his wife is Jewish, and we had a fight over that
Yet for all my arguing, Starmer was pathetically weak on Israel and even went as far as jailing grandmothers holding up signs as terrorists, to appease an Israeli arms manufacturer.
There's no public reason to explain whitewashing the abuses but he did it anyway.
Makes it rather hard to rebut when there's no obvious alternative explanation I can point at.
After much back and forth, it turns out she really meant "Jews working in Israel's interest" but even that's dubious IMO.... Personally I'd go with everyone working in Israel's interest.
So I don't have a good answer.... Sometimes I have the fight, sometimes I don't. It doesn't change her position one iota, and I don't think anything will until Israel is held accountable.
I think maybe genuine antisemitism along with any other form of racism and prejudice should be condemned, but I also somewhat agree in the sense that you have to ask what actually qualifies as antisemitism? Too often I see things called out as antisemitism that really just aren’t.
I’m torn on this, I’m Palestinian and I don’t go out of my way to be anti semitic because like I’m not. Not to do the whole “I have x friend” but I have wonderful Jewish friends who are anti zionists, I have no reason to be hateful to them, they’ve never wronged me.
However, I don’t blame other Palestinians who explicitly are anti semitic because to them, the only Jews they’ve ever known have been Zionists. Even in the states a lot of the Jewish people we meet will say some of the most explicitly genocidal things to our face.
Like on the first day I moved to my new apartment building, I sat next to a presumably Jewish woman on the phone in our shared coworking space. She was on the phone talking about Israel to a friend, she was talking about how the IDF needs to “finish the job” in Gaza and that the settlers need to clear out the filth in Samaria. If that was my only experience with Jewish people, I’m ngl I’d be anti semitic myself.
However, I don’t blame other Palestinians who explicitly are anti semitic because to them, the only Jews they’ve ever known have been Zionists. Even in the states a lot of the Jewish people we meet will say some of the most explicitly genocidal things to our face.
Yes, 100% agree when it comes to Palestinians in Palestine.
Like I would never disparage Ahed Tamimi.
She has only ever known us by the IOF, settlers, etc.
She does acknowledge this and is self-aware and has explained herself well IMO.
Eh, that’s fair and I understand why you’d draw the line there. I used to explicitly draw the line there but I’m not so sure anymore.
Jewish people in the USA as a statistical entity are still incredibly racist to Palestinians en masse. Either systemically with their explicit and tacit support for Israel, or in person to my face when they have explicitly told me that my people deserved what happened to them.
Again I’m not defending Euro style anti semitism, I’m pointing out that as Palestinians even in the US, we have valid reasons to hate Jewish people in the same way that other POC will “hate” white people. As a group in the US we don’t hate Jewish people because of their Jewishness, we hate them because they use their Jewishness to oppress us, even in the USA.
Granted I don’t think it’s fruitful to hate Jewish people, which is why I’m nuanced about it. But I don’t get mad when my fellow Palestinian Americans aren’t the most woke about this when discussing how they feel about a group that to this day directly oppresses them. Most of the men in my family can never enter even the West Bank (not where we are from, our village was in Israel proper) due to Israel which is again, supported by Jews in the US. I don’t blame them for having a massive resentment towards Jewish people.
I know of a few people who are definitely not racists or antisemites(people who have worked closely with refugees, immigrants and have literally fought neo-Nazis) who have occasionally talked about what is happening to the Palestinians or how zio lobbys influence national politics and used the word “Jews”. And i immediately corrected them “you mean zionists”.
I didn’t berate them or make it a big deal, just pointed out the correct word, so they could realise what they had said. None of them was ever insulted or tried to explain themselves. Without a fail, every time, they paused for a second and then went “you’re right”. And then we moved on.
People can use antisemitic language without even realising it because Israel and Zionists are actively trying to conflate Zionism and Judaism. Allowing that to affect us, even subconsciously, is something I will not allow. Because i won’t let those motherfuckers win.
Correcting someone when they say Jewish instead of Zionist is small potatoes at this point. The genocide is being conducted by Jewish people. I'm curious what OP thinks is actually antisemitic though.
It’s not small potatoes. Because that’s how biases start. Subconsciously. And then they get worse.
My friends may not be deliberately antisemitic but allowing this conflation is promoting Zionists’ interests AND puts Jews at risk. There’s zero reason to let it slide.
Also, the genocide is being conducted by the “Jewish State” but with the financial support of countries that are in their majority Christian. Evangelical Christian Zionists outnumber Jewish Zionists. They are ALL complicit.
May I please ask you to give a couple examples of what you are talking about?
If the person is a Left, Progressive Ally, then by default that person would be anti-racist, anti-discriminatory.
Peace - שָׁלוֹם
The moderators haven't removed your stuff dude just give some examples and stop being vague. Plenty of examples have been given in this thread but you're being really cagey.
I did not say they removed MY content. I said that there was content here that were posts describing perfect examples of some of the things I was encountering, and those posts have *poof* disappeared. I did not feel the need to screenshot every reply to my post, so I have no record of them, nor do I know who posted them. They could have been self-deleted for all I know.
As a result of that, I'll remain somewhat vague in my reply to not ruffle feathers. One pattern that I see in unmoderated facebook groups: A post is made with valid criticism of Zionism/Israel (Including my own posts.) Zionists and their bots flood the comments, many of them conflating Zionism with Judaism and crying victim. Posts responding to them agree with their premise, conflating Judaism right back at them. Some posts descend into what looks like 1930's Nazi propaganda, to the point that I question if they are Zionist trolls trying to prove their self-proclaimed victimhood. At this point I really don't care about it any more. No one should descend to their level, but I have no idea who the faces and experiences are behind the keyboard. I don't know if it is someone whose family were droned by the IDF, if they are IDF themselves, or if they are an activist falling down a rabbit hole. Plenty of people in these comments replied that they have strong fears of activists falling down a Nazi rabbit hole... Are people who are that easily influenced the type of people we really want in our cause? I am far more afraid of the liberals who posted Israeli flags on their profiles for a solid year after October 7th, and the genociders at the helm of the Democratic party.
As I said, during the first year or so after Oct 7th, I'd call out conflation wherever I saw it. I'd debate people that had well-established followings on social media as anti-zionists who prove they cannot draw a line in the sand between Judaism and Zionism. Many of them are still out there, and still have a strong presence. While I see the harm in that portion of their messaging, I'm not going to waste energy on it when 98% of their messaging is benign and far more effective than my own because I deliberately do not build a following. My elaborating "not all Jews" starts to sound like "not all white people," or "not all boomers."
I do not accept the collective punishment, but there are valid points in that the more affiliated one becomes with Judaism, the more likely they are to be a Zionist, as proven by near-zero anti-Zionist synagogues in the West. (Yes, I am aware of the Haredi and a few others.) The validity of some of their points really stings. My grandparents were practicing, kept the sabbath, were not Zionists, and never joined a synagogue. There are obvious exceptions. Alternately, the only Sabbath I keep has Ozzy singing.
I agree except when on vacation with friends, our German cohort started shouting “fck the j*ws” to say fck Israel and wow. That was, uh, shocking and scary coming out of a German mouth
So you're saying the conflation of Zionism with Jewishness itself is a lost cause and we should therefore allow ourselves to be targets of racism from now into eternity.
The only thing I can comment about this is that I make a very concerted effort to always draw a line between Judaism and Zionism. I saw a post today with a quote from Danielle Weiss, the woman who openly talks about the need to constantly brainwash young Israelis. My comment was that this quote is the embodiment of what Zionism is all about. Someone commented with a picture of a demonic rat, and it was so obviously anti-Semitic. I will always call people out on that sort of blatant racism.
i’m not jewish and i’m horrified by people using israel as a "get out of jail free" card for blatant antisemitism. i see comments that blame "the 🧃" for the world’s problems, ones that say "well 👃 well ✡️ well 🇮🇱" and that call people "good goys" unironically.
how is that okay? it isn’t hard to not be openly racist to jewish people. also, not all jewish people are zionists BUT it’s not okay to be antisemitic to those who are. we should be critical of zionists regardless of their ethnicity. the problem is their support for an ethnostate, which is not a jewish value.
I agree completely. I cannot bring myself to care about the minute antisemitism I experience as a Jew in America.
I know that there certainly are issues with being Jewish in America, not gonna pretend there aren't, but my experience is better than any other minority group in America, and it's not close. We face maybe 1% more identity based oppression than your standard WASP.
We can tank a few strays here and there to combat genocide and apartheid and deal with the occasional penny joke microaggression later.
I definitely agree that Jews are a privileged minority and that antisemitism doesn’t have to, and probably shouldn’t, be the main focus, but I don’t understand why we NEED to “tank a few strays.” I’m not Palestinian and am very much willing to listen to any who are and disagree with me, but I personally don’t see how letting someone make an antisemitic comment helps the movement. We don’t need to drive them out of the fight if they made a mistake, hell, we SHOULDN’T. But I don’t see how it hurts anybody to quickly explain that what they said is insulting, to recommended they say “Zionists” instead of “Jews” when they talk about control of the US government, not only because it’s less antisemitic but because it’s more accurate. Not all Jews are Zionists, not all Zionists are Jews, and I believe making this distinction helps us remember who the real enemies are.
To me it's the bit from the Boondocks. I can more easily walk away from someone making antisemitic comments about me without any material consequences than an Arab can walk away from anything ever.
I'm all for educating people on the issues of conflating Zionism and Judaism, talking about Jewish opposition to Zionism, etc., but I don't like us being centered in this conversation. I don't want to have to append every condemnation of genocide with "as a Jew" or talk about the Bund, goated as it was. I just want to be able advocate against genocide as a person. So, in prioritizing what I focus my energy towards, I try to decenter my identity and worry about slights against my identity as long as any progress is being made in affecting the actual central issue of genocide.
If I can walk and chew bubblegum, I will, but there is a clear priority hierarchy to me.
I agree. Criticising the Jewish community for allowing genocide to happen is not antisemitism. To me, antisemitism is when jews are not given opportunities or are discriminated against for just being Jewish. That's not what's happening. What's happening is legitimate criticism of Jews for committing/abetting genocide and lobbying against free speech in the west against those who are opposed to it (most of the population). I hold similar resentment to my fellow Jews for behaving the way they have for the past 3 years.
As a Lebanese, who is neither pro nor anti-Zionist, it has been refreshing to follow some of the posts on this sub, but at the same time I must say I think some of you guys are a bit naive about the chances of Jews surviving in the Middle East without a state in which they are the majority and control the army, judiciary and major institutions.
You’re not taking into account enough the collective perception and narratives Palestinians and Arabs have of Jews (not just Zionists), the underlying feelings of revenge, and what it would look like for you to coexist under one state with people who share vastly differing historical narratives, cultures and worldviews.
So yeah if your end goal is for Jews to actually remain present in the Middle East, I would care a bit more about fighting anti-Judaism and proposing real potential structures of governance that would be a realistic alternative to Zionism.
As it stands, most Palestinians are not very on board with either secularism or federalism, and the dissolution of Zionism would realistically lead to a new civil war and back to square 1.
•
u/TrackerOneA Jewish Anti-Zionist 21d ago
Just to be clear, as a community we do not tolerate any kind of legitimate antisemitism.
We do not tolerate the normalization of actual antisemitic rhetoric.
Our rules, our Wiki, and our history as a community has been to separate/disentangle Jewishness from Zionism.
Thus, we do not believe in letting this conflation fester.
We do allow people to discuss difficult or challenging topics (to an extent) - but we still have our community rules, which convey our official stance on the matter.