It continues to astound me this has to be stated as a political position, as though objecting to Israel committing mass genocide against Palestinians somehow makes you an antisemite.
Mass killing of innocent people is always wrong, no matter who is doing it.
The problem is that actual antisemites jump into the debate and work to linguistically push legitimate criticism of Israel into real antisemitism. You can see it right here, all over Lemmy, and presumably this thread. It’s incredibly obvious, and it’s also incredibly obvious that those people want to short circuit this conversation by making the issue black and white.
That’s why many people are very hesitant to engage with this even if they do have real concerns over how Israel operates.
And on the other side of the coin, hard-right Israelis work to paint any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, regardless of legitimacy.
So on the one hand, you have antisemites using this as an opportunity to blame all the world’s ills on tHe (((gLoBALiStS))) (I really hope that came across as sarcastic enough), and on the other, you have ultraconservative Israelis using the first group to lump the people saying “please don’t do a genocide” in with them. And on top of that you also have Hamas doing the goddamn Goofy “and I’ll fuckin do it again” meme, along with a bunch of people in Palestine who are literally taught antisemitism and hatred in the classroom, while Russia, Iran, and the same goddamn Israelis painting everyone as antisemitic pour money into the group that would genocide Israel back in a heartbeat. And caught in the middle of this category 5 shit hurricane are a bunch of innocent people who just want to be treated like human beings with equal rights, and to be able to go to the goddamn grocery store without worrying about getting exploded by a piss rocket / laser-guided cluster bomb made by Lockheed Martin.
I’m so goddamn fucking sick and tired of everything with this. Literally the only “good guys” in this entire fucking 70-year conflict are the noncombatants on either side of the Gaza border wall trying to go about their day and whose entire lives are reduced to a casualty sheet and a propaganda blurb, while both sides just keeps fighting and killing because perverse incentives mean it’s the only way both Netanyahu and Hamas can cling to power, innocent life be damned.
Russia, Iran, and the same goddamn Israelis painting everyone as antisemitic pour money
This is an important thing that many people ignore or don’t know. Most wedge issues are stoked by groups with money on each side. Even if you think something is a moral issue, large issues have money behind them. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be contentious because everyone would support only one side.
Iran and Israel are regional political rivals. Neither one actually wants or is ready for a war, so they support proxies that do dirty work for them. Both countries are run by conservatives and animosity and fear help them with domestic politics. The political parties in power in Iran and Israel both benefit from Hamas being scary, and anti-Semitism existing in the world.
Eh, sure you have antisemites saying Israel’s actions make Jews evil and that’s bad. But most of the antisemites are saying Israel’s actions make Jews evil and that’s good. Because they’re evil, and they like fellow evil as long as they aren’t competing for resources. Or because they’re evil Jews who like being evil and want to use Jewishness as a shield. For example, Netanyahu is an evil antisemite who wants everyone to think Judaism is about doing genocide, so that he can call anyone who objects to genocide an antisemite. But of course, saying Judaism is genocide is the real antisemitism.
I think the requirement for “have to be stated it as a political position” caveat is rooted in malice which has historically skewed the discussion in favor of controlling the narrative in the interest of the agenda at hand, in this case is blind support for Israel.
I remember having to use the same set of qualifiers back in the day during the “War on Terror”, when arguing that mass bombing campaigns would only lead to more extremism. I’d have to state that I didn’t “support terrorism” and the idea was to have an objective discussion around the policies in question.
It’s a tact to suppress valid criticism and garner support.
It was apparent then and it’s apparent now. We cannot have open discussions in the interest of actual progress when folks are implicated into a myopic tribal view of the situation for having an opinion that goes against the common narrative.
It’s no more antisemite to object to Israel’s actions than it is to be pro genocide to vote for Biden. But this is what the Trump trolls have chosen for everyone to be upset about now.
It’s this every four years. There’s always something to not vote over.
Yeah, you would think that it would be pretty simple and straightforward for most people to grasp, yet, the need to condition being pro-not-killing-innocent-Palestinian/any civilians with a disclaimer of not supporting Hamas and not being antisemitic within the same breath exists in conversations with most folks. It’s absurd. It’s like being against both what was done to innocents by Hamas on October 7 and what Israel is currently doing to innocents is impossible for many people to wrap their minds around (or at least, that’s how the national conversation is framed in the US). Neither action is an acceptable means of achieving goals (stated or otherwise), but Hamas and Netanyahu have long been in a toxic codependent relationship. My favorite is the look on “pro-Israel” peoples’ faces in instances where they’re informed that the person they just called an antisemite for daring to be against the bombing of innocent children and others is Jewish (whether by religious practice or genetics). It’s bullshit.
But it makes money for defense contractors. How can it be wrong? — Several governments
kinda hard to get that message across when woke ass idiots are chanting" between the river and the sea" as if that slogan meant support for Palestine.
The slogan From the River to the Sea is about Palestinian liberation that started in the 60s by the PLO for a democratic secular state, not Genocide. The Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad in 1966 maybe, but he’s not Palestinian.
Yeah the Al-Assad family are psychos
Their answer to the Cyprus dispute, the Israel Palestine dispute, and Kurdish unrest at being denied independence is “MINE MINE IT’S MINE FOR THE TAKING!”
The worst part about criticizing Israel and Biden is the quality of people who think you agree with them on other stuff…
I criticize both a lot, and have gotten some horrendous replies from people who assume we share other beliefs.
I also hate me some interracial marriage brother /s
Clarence Thomas, is that you?
The longform divorce scheme really should be talked about more,
This man is clearly committing a cry for help! /S
Really curious if it really is his way of getting out of the marriage or if he’ll put in an exception for himself
something tells me he wouldn’t be assuming they share beliefs in the first place
I’m confused by your comment. As Thomas is rather known for his hypocrisy. Maybe I’m just not reading you right.
But in all seriousness, Stalin was actually a pretty great dude
And women are getting too mouthy ever since I haven’t been able to beat them without them getting a divorce! /s
Against genocide -> antisemitic
Against antisemitism -> islamophobic
Shame on you OP, shame on you.
Why shame on OP? They’re saying that being a true progressive means being against all forms of hate.
I believe the comment you’re replying to may have been using rhetorical devices that we humans call “humor” and “irony”
Ah, makes sense. Apologies, I’m dumb.
Getting irony or sarcasm over text is hard. I’m autistic and more often than not I simply can’t “read” deadpan humor at all, I just take it at face value – much to the hilarity of my friends
This has happened to me countless times.
My god, does that mean they are a hatephobe?
Zionism =/= Judaism
I hate Zionism, and while I am not Jewish, I have a few friends of that faith and I will not see them slandered, mocked, or made to feel unwelcome in this world.
Same here. I am partly jewish. My great grandmother died in the Holocaust. And I am very anti zionist. And definitely not antisemitic. I have a ton of books on jewish life and history.
The problem is: what is antizionism? If to be antizionist is to oppose the government of Israel, then yes, antizionism isn’t antisemitism. If antizionism is a negation of the legitimacy of the Israeli state altogether, then it’s a form of antisemitism, because it’s denying Jew’s the right of self-determination.
I feel like when a country goes genocidal, it loses any legitimacy it once had.
I mean Germany is STILL apologizing for the Holocaust and still sweats anytime Poland’s in the news.
And I hope that, one day, Israel will react in the same way with Palestine. But Germany still exists, and Israel should too.
Fair enough
Allowing white Europeans to collaborate with the Nazis and change their last names to fake a national identity that never existed is a ridiculous concept as a right. Zionists were offered other options for their own state and self-determination, but they wanted to steal Palestine instead.
Britain even tried their damndest to help them peacefully integrate into the region, but they couldn’t stop doing terrorism and bombings against the British.
Jews didn’t steal Palestine. That’s a negation of history: you use a shovel three times anywhere in Israel and you find Jewish remains and artifacts. Cities like Jerusalem had a Jewish majority for ages before 1948. To negate that is antisemitic.
But to find a state legitimate doesn’t mean that the actions of this state are. Germany and Turkey committed genocides, and nobody want the destruction of these countries. France and Britain colonized other countries and committed a lot of crimes there but nobody want the destruction of these countries. Russia or Japan committed a lot of war crimes nobody want the destruction of these countries.
Israel is a criminal state committing genocide and other war crimes and should be stopped by all legal means necessary. We should stop arming them. Ee should stop financing them. We should arrest Netanyahu. Maybe we even should send blue helmets. We should fight for a free, independent and peaceful state of Palestine. But without antisemitism, thus without denying the right of self-determination for the Jewish people.
You’ll have to explain what you mean by Jewish person to me because it’s honestly so watered down as to be meaningless now. Do you mean Jewish people like the ones who were native to that region when those artifacts were left? Do you think those Jewish people were white and didn’t bother coming back until right after sunscreen was invented? Do you mean people who follow the Jewish faith? Because those people don’t support the existence of a modern-day Israel?.
The white zionists who stole Palestine were offered other locations to have a Jewish state and they insisted on using terrorism and Nazi collaboration to go there instead.
If for you “people” is a genetic thing, you’re also racist.
It’s absolutely a question for me given that I’m Ashkenazi Jewish but atheist. My family came here from Germany after the Holocaust and now are just white because nobody practices the religion and that’s how almost all Ashkenazi Jews self-identify in the United States. I have no meaningful connection to Palestine whatsoever and don’t really agree that other white people have some kind of right to it.
It is a simple fact that Zionism didn’t really take off until sunscreen was invented and that’s for a reason. If white people descended from Africans 10,000 years ago came up with some kind of genetic marker or religious excuse would you agree they should use violence to take African cities from their inhabitants?
Reminder that Zionism was built upon antisemitic myths of Jews and non-Jews cannot live together.
Well the track record in Palestine isn’t very good
Before the genocidal entity and the Zionist ideology, Jews and others lived together in that region
Clearly the solution is for someone else to control them
Are you advocating for the reestablishment of the Caliphate?
Or maybe it’s time to bring back the Roman Empire. Or Macedonian, Persian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian…
ooh ooh, egypt, i’ll larp the reincarnation of ankhenaten
I’ll be a Sphinx. It would be cool to be a cat/human hybrid or the common ancestor of cats and humans, whichever one the Sphinx were.
That or the British Empire. Either one is fine with me
The British didn’t have the best track record ruling the place
Eh, compared to now? I think it’d be fine. Besides, would be good to switch things up a bit anyway. I think everyone is so over this Arab-Israeli thing. It’s been done to death
Send in the Romans I say
Wonder why
Because both sides hate each other to a degree where they’d like to exterminate the other ones? If that’s not the answer then it sure doesn’t help
I think most people can separate Jewish people from genocide from the country of Israel.
The only people confusing the issue want to make it an issue. Quashing pro-Palestine protests claiming they’re anti-Semitic when they’re not. Questioning the country of Israel’s actions is anti-Semitic when it’s not.
The only people confusing the issue want to make it an issue.
This is key.
There are people who are anti-Semitic, and there are people who are islamophobic, and those people all view the opposition as sub-human. They will don’t want peace because they want to win.
And then there are the people who benefit from the conflict, and will stoke the fires on both sides. They don’t care who wins, who dies, who suffers, because while there is violence and death, they can benefit themselves.
Any progressive engaged in a discussion needs to recognize whether they are talking to a zealot or a profiteer. The former might be reasoned with. Supporters of Israel or Hamas might be shown the error in their thought process.
I feel like you are overestimating most people
Attacking Jewish people, vandalizing stores because they owners are Jewish. And calling to eradicate Israel from existence are antisemitic
The majority of hate crimes near me target Jewish people. I don’t believe that shooting at the Jewish school the other day was hate motivated because it happened in the middle of the night, I think someone just missed and hit the school. So if numbers include that then it’s obviously misleading
Pretending people calling it out are only the people in your 2nd paragraph would put you in the “fake progressive” group from the OP
You’re conflating hate crimes with the political stances people are taking in reference to Israel’s actions in Gaza.
We are not talking about the same thing.
Well, what political stances do you think the people committing the hate crimes have? You’re right to point out that most of the people protesting Israel’s actions are not violent or necessarily antisemitic. But the post your responding to is highlighting that it IS happening. Antisemitism existed before this and it’d be foolish to act like those people wouldn’t be the first people to jump on an anti-Israel political movement. So if you’re interested in keeping the heart of this political movement untainted by antisemitism, then you’d do well to acknowledge its presence.
You are being dismissive of people who are against antisemitism because “they couldn’t possibly be talking about actual antisemitism”
That seems to just be digging a deeper hole for yourself
No, he’s saying that criticism of Israel is not anti-semitic. In fact, I would argue that Israel’s actions and attitude are probably the main driving cause of anti-Semitism currently. They are the ones who insist that they represent all Jewish people.
So you’re saying their comments are entirely irrelevant to the conversation and come from a point of ignorance rather than an attempt to distract and discredit
I initially thought that as well, that’s why I corrected it until they decided to double down on the take
I’m a professional hater, I spread hate all over the world
equal opportunity hatred is real progressivism
if you truly believed that… you’d post this in helvetica. Or comic sans.
Ssshhhhhhh!
If I was Israeli leadership, I:
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Wouldn’t have ignored clear, specific intelligence reports warning of an imminent attack.
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Would’ve had stronger border security, if national security was truly a concern. (what good did all that IDF do if not at the point of entry of their most imminent threat?)
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Wouldn’t have played into Hamas’ hand and retaliated in knee-jerk macho-man authoritarian fashion. In the event I didn’t prevent October 7th I wouldn’t have invaded Gaza but instead condition Palestinian statehood on Fata or PA taking over while simply utilizing the military forces committed to invasion to defending the narrow border.
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Wouldn’t have committed dozens of October 7ths against the civilian population in response, dwarfing the original terrorist attack.
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Wouldn’t have created the conditions for radicalization to fester in the first place by, you know, annexing land, killing more civilians both pre and post October 7th, imposing blockades, and actually supporting the most radical groups while ignoring the less-radical (reminds me of how the US handled Syria).
Nuttyyahoo’s actions are so counterintuitive I have to question whether this is all just an example of the shock doctrine.
but instead condition Palestinian statehood on Fata or PA taking over while simply utilizing the military forces committed to invasion to defending the narrow border.
But the whole point of Israel nurturing Hamas was to destroy the authority of Fatah and the PA so they WOULDN’T have to negotiate for an actual two-state solution.
And the whole point of ignoring the intelligence about the impending attack was to have an excuse to flatten Gaza. At this point I wonder if Israel even needed an excuse, considering the shit they’re getting away with anyway
Don’t forget the bonus benefit of getting Trump elected!
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I don’t think the problem is the lack of real progressiveness, I think the problem is with an attempt to gaslight it from both extremes. Just got banned from worldnews (again) on completely gaslit reasons because of criticism I was making against the Act.IL remnants operating over there. Downvoting into oblivion isn’t enough for them anymore.
I’ve also noticed comparable instances of shadow removals from the other side of the coin in worldnews@lemmy.ml where they similarly gaslit their reasons. I’ve sort of decided if both sides are going to be this putrid, then I’m going to step out of their propaganda wars, and gotta say, the Mossad side is rapidly losing ground regardless of the advantage they might have had.
But that’s not what our glorious leader said!
One of the biggest issues I have with a ton of people is the need to have a “glorious leader”, or the assumption that everyone has one. I’ll vote against Trump doesn’t mean Biden is my “glorious leader”, nor Bernie, nor AOC. People are flawed and worshiping someone will always be problematic. Never meet your heroes, etc.
People also seem to act like hating what one country does means you have to love what the countries considered enemies of them do. America has done a ton of shit and still does a ton of shit it shouldn’t do, and I think we need to be honest about the impact and work to fix it. I think Russia and China also fits in those roles.
There isn’t a world leader today I’d treat as infallible, and I have never pledged my allegiance to a country (at first, for religious reasons, but now that I am not religious, more for ideological reasons). I will still work for the betterment of where I live, pay taxes, etc, but I’m not going to be some jingoistic nationalist nor act like there is some perfect country I’d rather be in. I might eventually want to be in a different country depending how the future goes, but it wouldn’t be because I think that country is perfect. I don’t believe such a thing exists.
That’s literally what Republicans do. They will vote for anyone as long as it’s not Democrat.
Then we painted that off as Glorious leader Trump that Repubs will vote for no matter what.
Now the Dems have a glorious leader as well.
Just want to point this out, but Palestinians are technically Semites.
I’m against both obviously, but I thought it was important to point out that the Jewish people themselves are anti-semitic for their genocide.
Just worth pointing out: the Israeli government are anti-Semitic. Many Jewish people (especially outside of Israel) are opposed to this genocide.
Hey Israel, you just got pwned.
If by “Semite” you mean “Semitic language speaking” then yes. But “Semite” isn’t actually a term that’s used, it’s an invalid racial categorization. “Anti-semitic” in standard and common language specifically refers to bigotry against Jews
There are approximately 330 million Semitic people in the world. Around 15.7 milllion (around 4.8%) of them are Jewish.
If the common usage of “anti-semitic” excludes the vast majority of Semitic people, it’s an outdated, racist term.
We should either drop it from our vocabulary or use it in an inclusive way.
I think you misunderstand my comment. I mean “Semitic” itself is an pseudo-scientific, outdated, and perhaps racist term (other than it’s usage in linguistics). It comes from the late 19th ~ early 20th century trend of linking linguistic groupings with race/physical characteristics without any reasonable scientific justification, in order to discriminate – Semitic was used in opposition to “Aryan” and sometimes “Caucasian” (equally pseudoscientific and racist usages of those terms) and was primarily part of the language of the predecessors of Nazism. You could of course guess how anti-semitism underwent semantic narrowing to specifically being discrimination against Jews based on that.
Generally the term “Semitic” shouldn’t be used as a racial or ethnic categorization of Arabs/Jews/etc. just as “Aryan” shouldn’t be used in its Nazi sense or “Caucasian” shouldn’t be used to mean "light-skinned people from the near-Mediterranean world. But more relevantly “anti-semitic” no longer is synonymous with “bigotry against Semites”, due to semantic drift it specifically means “bigotry against Jews”.
That’s fine. If we don’t want to use the word we don’t need to. If we’re going to use it then let’s use it in a non-racist way.
It’s kind of bizzare to say claim that we shouldn’t use the term “Semite” because it’s outdated but then continue to use “antisemite” and claim it’s only about a tiny subsection of the people that “Semite” used to refer to.
Because “antisemitic” and “Semite”/“Semitic” are completely different words. “Antisemitic” is no longer semantically just the “anti-” affix plus “Semitic”. That’s just how semantic drift works unfortunately. It’s become pretty much completely disconnected from the base morpheme, and most people that use the word don’t even know that the word “Semitic” actually exists in the original sense – it’s practically a bound morpheme now, outside of its use in linguistics. Semantic narrowing is a normal part of language change.
If we’re going by current usage rather than historical precedent, it doesn’t matter that “antisemitc” was originally coined to refer to hatred of Jews.
In that case we would look to the very common usage that includes hatred of all the other speakers of Semitic languages.
Or we could use the extremist definition of, “Any criticism of Israel.” If we go by that definition a whole lot of people (including many Jews) would also qualify.
(As are all other Arabs, as well as Ethiopians and more)
Yeah, but does etymology really mean anything any more? I don’t know when, how, or whyantisemiticcame to be used for Jews only, but that’s what it means now.also… just a wording thing…
the Jewish people themselves are anti-semitic for their genocide [emphasis mine]
That’s exactly the sort of discussion the OP is trying to prevent.
Nah. Embrace hatred for people who are cruel to animals.
If you participate in any sort of a support for Palestine group/organization/protest, please do not tolerate antisemites, deny them whatever it is they want the moment you see them. They are only going to create future problems, possibly take over whatever you’re doing and make you, who have done nothing wrong, look bad. Paradox of tolerance!
Likewise if you look to support Jewish people who are experiencing antisemitism, don’t tolerate the “nuke Gaza” types…
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I’ve been assured that “Death to the Jews” actually means “Israel is bad”, and that ethnically cleansing Israel isn’t antisemitic because “It’s only Israeli Jews” who will be ethnically cleansing, and Jews in other countries will be left alone.
Nobody is saying that, shithead
And I’ve been assured that “Biden should stop supporting genocide” actually means “I want LGBTQ people to be killed in the US.”
Now I wonder which user keeps saying that.
Don’t know why you’re bringing this up to me. I’m in support of Biden stopping support of genocide. I’m just not dumb enough to think that helping Trump get elected is anything less than support of genocide here at home.
The reason I bring it up to you is that you consistently interpret anyone saying that they don’t like how Biden supports genocide to be nothing other than complete cultish support of Trump.
Sorry for having a sense of pattern recognition and seeing when people peddle the same tired “BOTHSIDES” points over and over again and feign innocence when called out on it, I guess?
Dude, you say it to anyone who expresses any misgivings at all about Biden’s support for genocide. That’s not a pattern. That’s you losing your shit because someone doesn’t like genocide.
Uh huh.
I can’t help it that I can recognize patterns.
