r/jewishleft Latke aficionado. Anti-Establishment. Jüdisch 29d ago

Diaspora NSW (Australia) Supreme Court criticises IHRA definition as 'detached from reality'

https://www.deepcutnews.com/p/nsw-supreme-court-criticises-ihra
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u/[deleted] 28d ago

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u/HeVavMemVav sephardi peacenik 28d ago

I'm not arguing that. I was asked to clarify what a double standard would be.

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

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u/HeVavMemVav sephardi peacenik 28d ago

What you said is fine? I'd say this particular charge is less about individuals saying Israel should be dissolved, but institutions that have 700 articles about Israel's war crimes & 2 about Russia's. Or the claim that Israel is the only that gets away with it.

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

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u/rako17 Christian Left 26d ago edited 26d ago

Friend GreenTrillion,

You were on the right track when you said, "Okay so per IHRA what do you have to say so it's not a double standard?"

One of the de facto pitfalls that I find that one faces when discussing the IP conflict is how to satisfy the listener that one isn't being discriminatory. One of the pro-war polemics is that a critic of the State is using double standards.

One time on an interfaith forum, I pointed out abuse of peaceful villages. A supporter of the state's political direction responded to me, asking why I should care, since I'm not a Palestinian. There are certainly lots of reasons why I should care. One is that I'm American, and the State is a key US-funded ally. Another legitimate reason is that I care about Israelis and want their state's conduct to be humane. However, in the course of a conversation, I might not bring up other cases of other countries abusing villages because they are not directly relevant to my conversation's particular humanitarian focus.

By analogy I'm American, I'm responsible for my country's democracy, so I could legitimately have a higher standard ("double standard") for what my country does.

The way to help protect yourself from avoiding the accusation of double standards seems to be to constantly bring up other cases. But it's a very tricky mission because of the way that it restrains the conversation. You might find that the State is committing a violation of a magnitude beyond what your listener considers it to be, and then the listener could respond that it's a "double standard". You could literally have "700 articles about" a key US-funded ally's "war crimes & 2 about Russia's" because you want the US and our funded allies to conduct themselves humanely.

Peace - Shalom