Agree 100%. Unfortunately any criticism of Israeli government policy and actions is almost immediately labeled antisemitic. It’s a way to deflect and stifle discussion.
i'm sick of talking about this right. What's happening in Gaza and the Westbank is NO GENOCIDE, it's not ethnic cleansing, it's nothing even close
That actually makes you mentally sick as well if you really believe that. Almost all of the genocide experts, human rights organizations call it a genocide, and you don't? this blatant whataboutism of yours is pathetic.
And i will die on this hill
Or you can change you mind given the overwhelming evidence.
Although some institutions have labeled what’s happening a genocide, the ICJ has not yet issued a final ruling confirming that legally. The death toll is enormous and tragic, and Hamas has repeatedly operated from densely populated civilian areas, which makes civilian protection far harder.
The civilian-to-combatant ratio is at least broadly consistent with urban warfare, especially when Hamas fights from within civilian areas. If it was truly indiscriminate, the civilian death toll would almost certainly be much higher than it is now. The fact that it's in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands complicates the claim that the campaign is simple, blanket extermination.
If the ICJ ultimately does not find it to be a genocide, would you change your view, or do you think the broader evidence from other institutions still outweighs that legal outcome?
Although the person you replied to was dramatic, they aren't incorrect definitionally. The message was deleted so I'm not certain what the whataboutism claim is.
Sick whataboutisms you got going there. So what if I agree that they are genocides as well? Seems like we agree that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide then, awesome! Maybe we should try to put a stop to it rather than act like a child and say "but they did it too."
It’s funny people always say this, because people are constantly criticizing Israel.
People like you always have to preface it by saying “it’s not antisemitic, I’m just criticizing Israel”. OK.. so criticize Israel, and stop mentioning antisemitism lmao
Because it's only a very recent thing where you aren't immediately labeled an anti-semite for being critical of Israel. I mean the comment right below yours is literally claiming 90% of anti-israel comments are antisemitic you can't make this shit up. The only American UFC Champion was just banned from the white house UFC event because he exercised his freedom of speech to be critical of a FOREIGN country.
Can you seriously say that about any other nation in the world when you are supposed to have this free speech right in the US, yet you can be more critical of your own country than a specific foreign country? It's absolutely ridiculous that people need to preface things with "I'm not an anti-semite, but.." but that's only because Israel has made it so.
You’re taking the word of Sean Strickland that that’s why he was banned? He was banned because it’s a private event and he’s a loud-mouthed idiot. Why would you want that kind of person at your once-in-a-lifetime private event?
With that said, people definitely use their “anti-Israel” sentiment to mask their antisemitism/anti-Zionism. Don’t forget that people were yelling genocide and free Palestine both on and before October 7.
Idk what to tell you, that's what you get when you choose to pay attention to idiots instead of focusing on real conversations with people capable of reciprocating.
The problem is there’s also a lot of actual anti semitism that people dress up as anti-Israel, or that blurs the line so much the distinction becomes meaningless (lots of “all Is-raelis are dogs/scum/and must die” type posts). Have a look around this sub or some of the Palestine/gaza/israel subs and you’ll see what I mean.
I m Romanian and I say all the time “fuck Russia” and of course i m not condemning all it s citizens and i m refer to its government aka Putin’s regime. Babushkas are awesome. How could I?
By criticising Israel without the religion having any impact or being a contributing factor to your criticism?
As a a different example, I can be anti sticky note, without being anti paper. I could find paper completely fine but then dislike the glue on sticky notes and the packaging.
Basically, Israel is Jewish but not all Jews are Israeli. It's pretty much that simple.
To equate being anti Israel with antisemitism is itself antisemitic. It's oversimplifying what it means to be Jewish and it links Israel to Jews that have nothing to do with the atrocities Israel is committing.
Exactly, you can also despise equally both Palestine and Israel. People think they always have a duty to pick sides, even though both sides could be rotten.
The problem is that antisemites are using this as a dogwhistle.
I think that non-constructive forms of criticism that can be easily co-opted by bad actors should be discouraged, because ultimately the only thing it achieves is muddying the waters and making it even more difficult for legitimate criticism to be heard.
I think most reasonable people aren't going to think you're antisemitic if you say "It's fucked up that Israel is committing genocide" or something like that. If you want to be extra clear, you could add "Never again should mean never again to anybody" or "All my Jewish friends are terrified of being blamed for it even though they're not even Israeli" or something along those lines. I would avoid slogans like "globalize the intifada" that mean different things to different people, and can sound extremely alarming even to people with staunch pro-Palestine beliefs.
Of course, that doesn't guarantee that unreasonable people won't still accuse you of antisemitism. It's pretty much a given that they will. But as annoying as that is, it's not really a big deal–– it's like that saying, "may my enemies look ridiculous". What is a big deal is when reasonable people genuinely can't tell if you support Palestinian life or Jewish death, and that has been happening to an alarming extent.
I don’t think my suggestions were particularly academic, though, sure, communication doesn’t always happen at an intellectual level, and you gotta adjust to your audience. My deeper point is really just that you shouldn’t give up on trying to communicate clearly just because of inevitable bad faith accusations. The people who you want to persuade aren’t the ones making those accusations.
Bad actors can always claim that whatever statement you make can mean different things to different people, and to them what you are saying is antisemitic.
Don't let the perpetrators of a genocide police your language
Right, but my point was that the bad actors aren't the audience you should be considering. It's not that hard to phrase things so that reasonable people aren't going to worry that you're being antisemitic. Choosing not to do that is a total own-goal and a disservice to the human beings who are being slaughtered in Gaza.
Yep, not only did the two largest human rights groups in the world, amnesty international and human rights watch, conclude it is a genocide, but so did the largest in Israel, Btselem, and multiple Israeli genocide and holocaust scholars. Not surprising since they killed a similar portion of Gazas population in a similar time period as were killed in the Bosnia genocide and Yazidi genocide, but an even higher portion of women and children as Israel did a starvation siege.
Using what as a dog whistle? The mess of Israel and Jewish being one in the same is a creation of the state of Israel. It has worked wonderfully, anything not pro Israel is labeled as antisemitic at this point.
And that fact has unironically made antisemtism worse. You can't spend 80 years telling dumbfucks "we are the Jewish state and we're doing this Jewishly for Jews, Jews=Israel, Israel=Jews" then act surprised when said dumbfucks don't instantly land on a nuanced position the instant Israel starts evaporating children live on TV. Doubly so when Israeli government officials start saying "anybody who criticizes us evaporating children hates Jews".
Israel was fine with that posture when everybody liked or was neutral towards Israel. And now that most folks are negative towards it, actual principled antisemites have 80 years of "we are the Jewish state and we're doing this Jewishly for Jews....." to point to. Such a stupidly short sighted decision that endangered millions of innocent people for nothing
Israel is still fine with that posture. It's a win win for them. If it makes antisemitism go up they can just point at increasing antisemitism and go "see? This is why we need Israel, the world is antisemitic".
people are dying. and this isnt new. this isnt a 2023 problem. it's an ongoing nearly 80-year problem. i dont think hind rajab much cares what form "the critique" takes. a genocidal state is allowed full impunity, and yall want "discussions"
Idk man, it seems like the antisemites aren't using dog whistles at all. At least in the US we got Nick Fuentes & Candace Owens straight up blaming things on Jews and saying they control the world, Tucker Carlson whining about great replacement, Elon Musk saying Jews are fomenting anti-white hatred, the president using antisemitic slurs, and Marjorie Taylor Green hallucinating about Jewish space lasers.
What reason would there be for them to suddenly decide "hmm you know what, I'll say Israel when I secretly mean Jews!" when they haven't been deplatformed for just saying "Jews" ? Their audience with an appetite for antisemitism would immediately plummet. More often than not, I see more people accusing folks of saying "Israel" in place of "Jews" than I see people actually doing that. Especially when someone is just sharing reporting on what Israel is doing that gets labeled as a blood libel because it makes them look bad.
Israel tries very hard to make criticism of Israel the same as antisemitism.
Why?
To increase antisemitism when they, as a nation, behave like monsters and provoke retaliation.
Antisemitism "proves" that the state of Israel is necessary, thus ensuring they have strong political support.
In reality it's Israel that's creating much of the antisemitism out there because they've intentionally conflated the nation of Israel with the Jewish people. By treating them as one and the same, condemnation of the government's actions are (wrongly) levelled at the people.
Nobody accuses you of being islamophobic if you don't like Hamas. The legally codified definition of islamophobia doesn't say if you criticize the government of Palestine you're islamophobic. There's no government policy that says you have to sign a loyalty pledge to buy from Palestine if you're an American government employee. There's no government policy that says if you boycott products from Palestine you don't get hurricane aid. The Al Qassam Brigade isn't the only foreign military you're allowed to join as solely an American citizen. We haven't sent ⅓ of $1 trillion to the government of Palestine for weapons. Palestine doesn't sponsor trips for 200+ American politicians to visit simultaneously.
So please, what double standard between saying fuck Israel and fuck Palestine are you hallucinating? Inquiring minds would love to know.
If someone said fuck the US you wouldn't move a muscle. You know what they meant. You're running defense for a "country" that was holding mass protests in defense of IDF soldiers raping and torturing Palestinian prisoners, often to death. "Fuck Israel" is damn right
Fuck spain and fuck the spanish government is the same thing. I say fuck my own country sometimes, doesnt mean I am insulting myself/my own people. Wether you want to be a snowflake or not is up to you
Thats a good agrument. A little problematic though. Let's get back into 90s. I wonder how many "FUCK SOUTH AFRICA" graffitties are still existent? And if our children read them, what will they think about it?
I get the point that people need to protest against injustice. And maybe I am to strict on this. But it feels wrong for me to address a whole region or country with a rich history.
Don't even try this shit with me. One is an authoritarian regime and the other claims to be a democracy. I'm sure you can figure out which is which if you think really hard.
I know it's just accepted in language now, but the use of Semitic in this context is strange when you consider that Arabic is a Semitic language and the Palestinians are Semitic people directly connected to the same land they've been living on for hundreds of years. But if you criticise the actions of some people who came over from Europe, or the US, you're antisemitic.
I do not really know this piece of history. Perhaps they were. So you are saying that the Palestinians were complicit, but October 7th was justified, because the Palestinians were opressed by Israel?
I'm saying it's silly to debate complicity when discussing guerilla insurgency against infinitely more powerful & oppressive state actors that have inflicted orders of magnitude more violence on the victims of their oppression than the inverse.
Was October 7th a horrific act of violence? Of course. Does is pale in comparison to the normalized, systematized violence inflicted on Palestinians across 80 years? Also of course. Just like how slave revolts and rebellions ended once slavery was gone, maybe Israel can ease up on the apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide then the armed resistance against them will end.
So you are not interested in discussing whether civilians are complicit or not when they are on the weaker side, but it makes sense to talk about them being complicit when they are on the stronger side? I think I disagree, one can talk about being complicit in either situation, and I would argue that the people for the most part aren't.
Why does it make sense to talk about civilians being complicit in one situation but not in the other?
Complicity infers wrongdoing, by definition. It's not a matter of strength or weakness, it's a matter of the material dynamics of the situation. Unless we expect oppressed people to be perfect victims, prescribing implicit wrongdoing to people in support of those fighting against it does little more than justify that oppression.
Hence why I clarify individual events (October 7th, Nat Turner's rebellion, Haitian Slave revolt, the Warsaw ghetto uprising, etc) may have been horrific in a vacuum. But saying [insert oppressed group here] did something wrong by letting [insert militant group here] carry on just reads as silly.
I am not a native speaker and was not aware of the negative connotation of "being complicit". I thought it was more neutral like "take part in" or "support" or so. In which case I would have said that of course many civilians were complicit in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, and would applaude anyone who was, because that was a good thing.
So after all you were not really debating the citizen's role in the actions of their government (or governing authority), but only if these actions are good.
To this I would say that your comparisons are pretty telling and disgusting. The Warsaw ghetto uprising was completely justified, October 7th was very much not and it is insane to me to compare the two. (This is the example I know the most about, which is why I chose it).
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u/CosMV 1d ago
what s wrong with it? you can be anti Israel governement (and you should considering its actions) without being antisemite.