Anti-Semitism

NovaSaber

Well-known member
Citizen
My basic line of thought is: if you can replace the noun in the sentence with "aliens" and the statement become a full blown conspiracy theory, the source is a full blown conspiracy. Let's practice:

* Jews / Israel control the media / economy / politics / the weather / the world
* Aliens / Xeno's control the media / economy / politics / the weather / the world

See what I mean: it's the perfect litmus test.
You didn't even use an example that's not a blatant conspiracy theory without aliens.

But even, or maybe especially, with something known to be true, replacing the subject with "aliens" turns it into a conspiracy theory.
(In fact, "made up causes for real events" are a more common type of conspiracy belief than the "one group controls everything" type. The former tend to be used as "evidence" for the latter, though.)
 

PrimalxConvoy

NOT a New Member.
Citizen
If you have already concluded that you can't possibly be mistaken about antisemitism and that any attempt to get you to reconsider your priors is mere "gatekeeping," then what could ever change your mind in a discussion like this?

Incorrect. Nothing I've written was anti-semitic. That matter is closed, due to the obvious reasons already stated above. Further baseless insinuations about my posts being "anti-semetic" will end up with you being blocked. Drop it.


When you flatly refuse to consider that calling Jews aliens who don't belong in the Middle East and have ruined it is antisemitic, then what possibly could cross the threshold?

I did no such thing. Criticising how the modern state of Israel was created and/or in the behaviour of the Israeli or associated governments does NOT equate to "Jews don't belong in the Middle East". Other people have already called you out or at least stated similar POVs.

As someone who is not Jewish, who doesn't know much about Jewish history, and who lives in one of the least diverse countries in the world, where out of 125 million people barely 300 are Jewish, there are probably more sets of living quadruplets - you really do need to be able to grapple with the possibility that there is more to both Jewish and Middle Eastern history than whatever you have heard from your "Palestinian boss." It takes a little epistemic openness and humility to join a real discussion. Do you have it?

As someone who has taught in Southern Indian, Japanese, Islamic, American, British, and many other international schools throughout Japan, and who has had the privilege of working with, teaching and forming close personal ties with people from India Bangladesh, Egypt, Japan, Korea, China, the Philippines, Brazil, Peru, Russia, Ukraine, America, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Taiwan, most of Europe and, heck, most countries in the world (and formed romantic, professionaland plutonic relationships with both British and American Jewish people), I would say that I've also had the pleasure of being exposed to quite the eclectic mixing of POVs and cultures in over 20 years of living and working in Japan.

Furthermore, my Palestinian boss has made no such comments regarding Israel, apart from apologising for taking a few days off work after the Al Jazeera reporter, Shireen Abu Akleh, was apparently recently shot dead in cold blood by Israeli armed forces ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shireen_Abu_Akleh ) and her Christian funeral was apparently attacked by Israeli armed forces at the hospital it started from :

-

My boss said that he was very upset as he had lost either friends or family in Palestine due to the problems there but also that he didn't like to get involved in politics, at least not at work. I only mentioned this to highlight that just because I had some (vague) link to such issues, I had no authority to "gatekeep" this discussion. This is something you have again seemed to be guilty of and again you have mistakenly jumped to the wrong conclusion. Please stop it.

In conclusion, whether the issue of Palestine is relevant to an "anti-semitism" thread is perfectly open to debate. I might even agree it would be better served in its own thread. However, discussing it and/or criticising Israel is NOT in itself "anti-semetic" and your apparent confusion between these two subjects needs to stop, as does your insistence you are somehow " more correct than others because you're Jewish".
 

Thylacine 2000

Well-known member
Citizen
So when your response to my prior post started with just a plain "No" and continued in rejecting my arguments, that was not meant to be a "No"/"Rejection" to the examples I had listed of "criticisms" that are actually antisemitism, one of them being that Jews are aliens who don't belong there? Well, that's good to know, and very much changes the tenor of the post and how I receive it.

I have not said, and do not believe, I or any other Jewish person are "more correct than others just by being Jewish." What I said is that Jewish people are more likely able to recognize antisemitism than non-Jews, and should be taken seriously when we talk about it. Even if a person winds up disagreeing with the claim. If a Jewish person says that a comment about "Pharisees" or "tentacles" is antisemitic, hear them out and recognize the level of danger that may have been associated with it.

The Abu Aqleh matter is very sad. It's likely an Israeli bullet killed her, and what happened at the funeral was awful.

In your first comment about Israel in this thread, you said it wound up killing a lot of people who would otherwise have lived. That's absolutely true. What goes along with that is it wound up saving a lot of people who would otherwise have died. Israel represents the largest surviving Jewish population, the only one that is still growing, and a majority of all Jewish children live there; in 10 years or so it will house the majority of all Jews. As other people here have already noted, criticizing specific policy, with a specific alternative in mind, is well in-bounds.
 
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PrimalxConvoy

NOT a New Member.
Citizen
What I said is that Jewish people are more likely able to recognize antisemitism than non-Jews, and should be taken seriously when we talk about it. Even if a person winds up disagreeing with the claim.

And again, I disagree. Nothing I wrote was anti-semetic


That issue is closed as far as I'm concerned.
 

Xaaron

Member
Citizen
I don't understand how there are so many Islam countries and one damn Jewish country is a threat. Explain it to me like I'm 5 because I don't understand.

Part of it is that the "one damn Jewish country" occupies the space that three major religions claim as their ancestral sacred Holy Land. Possession of that one, single spot in the world has been the casus belli for wars throughout human history. So, according to some religious groups, Israel having Jerusalem isn't just them "existing", it's them "winning". If the Jewish state back in the 50's was formed in, say, Switzerland, we wouldn't be having the same problems.

And, as other posters demonstrated so vividly above, it can be difficult separating anti-Israel statements from antisemetic ones. The government of Israel can make bad decisions and should be subject to criticism. Suggesting otherwise about any other government on Earth would be absurd. But antisemitism is still an issue around the globe, even at institutional levels, especially in Israel's neighboring countries. So the first in line to say something anti-Israel is almost always going to be an antisemetic voice in power. Therefore, criticizing Israel at any time, for any reason, means many people who agree with you will be anti-semites.

So the choices are either
  • Allow Israel's government to go unquestioned on the world stage or
  • Accept criticism of Israel's government, even when many voices raise that criticism for disingenuous and anti-semitic reasons
This means there is an inherently bitter dispute between the parties before we've even brought up the reason WHY Israel is being criticized at any point.
 

Cyoti

Member
Citizen
Nah, let's just steal some country halfway around the world, declare it to be a new Jewish ethnostate, and tell anyone who's sick of being shat on to move there.
Aren't you an American? How is that any different? It's pretty hypocritical to condemn Jews trying to flee anti-Semitism/Pogroms/the Holocaust while you pretty much live on the land genocided from the Native people. At least Israel only displaced the former inhabitants compared to outright genocide and legitimate biological warfare practiced by America/Canada/Australia.


It's cool because they used to live there almost 2000 years ago, so really it's where they belong, you know? 🙄
There have always been Jews living there. Just because there was a diaspora in the New World/Europe/Middle East doesn't mean it was emptied of Jews. I think it's pretty patronizing for you not to understand how Jewish religion and culture continued to venerate "Eretz Yisrael" despite their thousands of years of Exile. By your same standards, shouldn't Palestinians just "get over" being displaced and kicked off their land since a) most of them are probably living in Jordan anyways and b) the ones who remember Palestine are pretty much all gone?
 

PrimalxConvoy

NOT a New Member.
Citizen
Aren't you an American? How is that any different? It's pretty hypocritical to condemn Jews trying to flee anti-Semitism/Pogroms/the Holocaust while you pretty much live on the land genocided from the Native people. At least Israel only displaced the former inhabitants compared to outright genocide and legitimate biological warfare practiced by America/Canada/Australia.



There have always been Jews living there. Just because there was a diaspora in the New World/Europe/Middle East doesn't mean it was emptied of Jews. I think it's pretty patronizing for you not to understand how Jewish religion and culture continued to venerate "Eretz Yisrael" despite their thousands of years of Exile. By your same standards, shouldn't Palestinians just "get over" being displaced and kicked off their land since a) most of them are probably living in Jordan anyways and b) the ones who remember Palestine are pretty much all gone?

As much as your points might have some merit, don't they perhaps have just a whiff of whataboutism?
 
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Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
Aren't you an American? How is that any different? It's pretty hypocritical to condemn Jews trying to flee anti-Semitism/Pogroms/the Holocaust while you pretty much live on the land genocided from the Native people. At least Israel only displaced the former inhabitants compared to outright genocide and legitimate biological warfare practiced by America/Canada/Australia.
America was also a mistake, yes, and colonization in general has been responsible for probably the majority of bad things that have happened in the world since it started. I thought I'd made my position on that clear already, but it bears repeating.
 

Thylacine 2000

Well-known member
Citizen
Fair comparators for Israel would be Liberia or Taiwan: a group of people with ancient roots in an area were horribly persecuted elsewhere, and with a huge wave of immigration were able to reshape that area's demographics and politics, setting up a society favorable to themselves at the expense of other groups who also had roots there.

It is not the story of Englishmen in Canada or Australia or wherever. But certainly, if one can treat an Australian in the present day as socially and politically normal....
 
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Thylacine 2000

Well-known member
Citizen

Anonymous X

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Unfortunately, in Britain it seems that most people who declare themselves to be an “anti-racist activist” are antisemites who doesn’t believe antisemitism to be a form of racism, mostly likely because they don’t consider Jews to be actual people.
 

PrimalxConvoy

NOT a New Member.
Citizen
Unfortunately, in Britain it seems that most people who declare themselves to be an “anti-racist activist” are antisemites who doesn’t believe antisemitism to be a form of racism, mostly likely because they don’t consider Jews to be actual people.
Could you provide any citation or evidence to back-up your claims? Personally, I've never encountered such people in the UK.
 

Thylacine 2000

Well-known member
Citizen
Anonymous X said "most self-declared anti racist activists in Britain," which is different from your characterization of that as "most people in Britain."

And that claim was in response to a report outlining problems with at least 4 self-declared antiracist activists in one fairly well-known group. To that list we can add George Galloway, Ken Loach, the painter of the New World Order mural and all of his supporters, the people who blamed Jews for the poor immigrants burned in the Grenfell tower fire, etc. "Corbyn was framed!" is a common attitude among the UK Left.


A YouGov poll commissioned by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) has found that 67% of British adults who strongly support UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn “hold at least one antisemitic view,” while 33% hold four or more antisemitic views.

In explaining his decision to resign, [former co-chair]
Chalmers wrote on Facebook: “A large proportion of both OULC and the student left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews."
 
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