This. A million times this. There are a lot of us anti-zionist jews out there. The israeli gov is a terrible, fucked up, den of fucked up. That doesn't make us bad jews, and it doesn't mean you get to be antisemitic about it.
And also don’t be antisemitic to Zionist Jews either. You can criticize them without doing antisemitism. Like. Just don’t be antisemitic at all ever to anyone.
The people who are or who defend being bigoted toward minorities who happen to suck are fundamentally untrustworthy and should never be given the benefit of the doubt.
This dynamic of not being able to criticize Zionism without earning the antisemitism label is one of many reasons I could not excel in my chosen field of Holocaust studies. I want to remember and honor those victims by preventing genocide regardless of circumstance. Never again should mean something
yep. being critical of a country’s government doesn’t mean you have to attack the race or ethnicity or culture, and doing just that is what the alt right wants so badly - they want Jews fighting themselves so they can go “see, they don’t know how to Jew” all while spouting white nationalism
Yup...It is so incredibly easy to point one's ire at the Israeli government, Netanyahu, and lobbying groups backing specifically them and that's exactly where the anger should go. One does not need to be antisemitic to make it clear what they're doing is wrong.
Problem is not many people know what antisemitism is & what's not. So the term can be thrown at critics by "defenders" of Israel without substantial pushback which itself muddles the term even more, eventually to the point of arbitrariness, thereby invalidating the term & its warning properties.
"Problem is not many people know what antisemitism is & what's not" well that's not true. You act as if it is hard to figure out the difference between "This gov sucks" and "this gov sucks because they're jewish" ppl get it. Yes ppl are trying to blur it because they're fucked, but ppl know the diff
Have you looked at for example Germany lately? Institutions, e.g. the Minister of the Interior & press outlets, have labelled phrases like "free palestine", "from the river to the sea" as antisemitic, giving way to a legal ban. The difference may not be hard to see, but it's made hard to see.
YEs this isn't that it is hard to figure out what is and isn't antisemitic. This is purposeful obscuring of the line. That is different. You see how that is different, right?
I see how you are a writer & editor, and I am an historian, who also studied law. We both have trained thinking about words & their meanings. Other people may not have the skill and/or the time to delve into definitions & concepts of antisemitism, so they may be easily confused by those who ...
I don't disagree with your point, but there is a lot tension right now over that anti-Zionism = antisemitism, and what it actually means to be anti-Semitic. Like for example "from the river to the sea": is that anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist? Who gets the final say?
Because it is being pushed by the far right so they can appear as if they suddenly aren't themselves antisemitic while also being able to blame arab cultures. It is all faked? No. but it is dangerously majorly heightened by their fake bullshit.
Forgotten?
“From the river to the sea”
was the first proclamation in #Israel Likud party manifesto in 1977 :
“between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”
#Likud is the party of #Netanyahu#Gaza#Hamas
