I think it’s a really, really bad idea to tell people that it’s antisemitic to be angry about people starving, children dying, and aid workers trying to solve that being targeted in direct strikes.
But there is a way to protest the fate of starving people who are under fire without being antisemitic, and lumping all people who do the former into the latter doesn’t help with this nuance.
Yeah - I think protestors do have some role in keeping an eye on the assholes who show up to be “on their side” but it’s not fair to say that they have to account for every single thing
I keep thinking of Sept. 11. It's not anti-American to say the Afghan and Iraq wars were disastrous responses to it. Just because a terrorist attack is awful, despicable, inhumane, it doesn't mean it's okay to commit war crimes in response to it (memo to Donald Rumsfeld).
Yes. So much this. Protestors (minus the bad actors) absolutely should be heard, and their rights should not be infringed. AND the fear and harassment Jewish students feel on campus is real and not okay. Both can be true at once and there is a way to handle this situation that respects each side.
Yeah - it's become impossible to talk about in any kind of useful way and that's bad for us as Jews.
But a deep, abiding, soul-powered fury at Israel is not antisemitism. And the war is the crisis, not how people talk about it
Most of them are the usual antisemitic thugs,
and you know they have no actual sympathy for Palestinians
and are just using it as an excuse to attack Jews.
Yup.
Its perfectly fine to call out the horrific war crimes for what they are.
What becomes antisemitic is saying *I* am responsible for stopping it. Or assuming I support what is happening. Just because I am jewish.
(Not saying you are doing that, just saying in general arguments i've seen).
It's exhausting, mentally and emotionally, seeing people who I have been friends with for years, people who are family, defending things that are objectively and obviously war crimes, cheering for civilian casualties, and dismissing any opposition to these things as antisemitism.
Same. The minute I posted a Palestinian flag in support of Gaza I got called a “Hamas supporter” by some really close friends. Needless to say I chose the people of Gaza over those supposed friends. If people could just realize the difference between Gaza & Hamas as well as Israel and Bibi
It's exactly the same as when we protested the war in Afghanistan and were called anti American. Except with the extra antisemitism of equating the Government of Israel with Jews in general
Not quite, but almost. There is some actual antisemitism going on, which makes the analogy imperfect. But I agree that the line we hear most often, the Stefanik-Altman take that any protest against the war is antisemitic, is like the accusation of antiamericanism re Iraq, Vietnam, etc, protests.
Meh, there definitely were some actual anti-American groups who tried to use Iraq War protests for their own ends. In that sense, the analogy is on point.
I think the real difference is that anti-Semites are actually dangerous, whereas the anti-American protestors were mostly just sign-wavers.
I do think that danger makes it important for pro-Palestinan organizers to try to push out the opportunistic anti-Semites who will try to exploit the protests for their own ends. (Which I'm not claiming they haven't; I don't know the specifics here.)
I would also say that Jewish people are in fact a minority that experiences (continually! at all times) oppression and discrimination in small and large ways, and Americans very much are not.
There is two fold, one fold is the people who SAY "it's antisemetic" but what they REALLY mean is "I don't care, they are people that can die and I will laugh cuz I have no empathy after years of 4chan and stupid anti-woke nonsense on Twitter and YouTube".
The other fold, maybe believes it.
At this point I'm convinced that for a certain area of the political spectrum, let's say, when they condemn antisemitism, they're really just complaining that the wrong people are being allowed to be antisemitic. They see antisemitism as a privilege to be reserved for themselves and their friends.
Yes. In part because, after all, that involves identifying people starving, children dying, and aid workers being targeted with some essence of Jewishness. Inaccurately and anti-semitically.
