The meme is you can’t do any such thing without being labelled antisemitic
Yup, it’s an issue that goes both ways. Israel has historically used the “antisemite” label as a shield for any criticism. And that has all recently come to a head, where any valid criticism of their literal fucking war crimes is treated the same as if you’re a neo-nazi. You can criticize Israel’s actions without stooping to antisemitism. But that won’t stop Israel (and Israel’s supporters) from labeling you an antisemite anyways.
It’s the same strategy that conservatives have used with things like Critical Race Theory. They work to undefine the term, so anything they don’t like can be labeled as such. Don’t like a classroom lesson? Label it CRT. Since conservatives have been taught to hate CRT, they’ll hate that lesson. Even if the lesson has nothing to do with CRT, that doesn’t matter because the conservative voters have already made up their minds about whether or not they’re against it. Antisemitism has become an undefined term for Israel’s supporters, where anyone they don’t like can simply be labeled an antisemite.
The way israels been acting the last 3 months or so, (and also the 30 years prior) I think one could be forgiven for becoming more antisemitic. I mean, people very justly held heavy prejudice against Germans in the late 1940s and 1950s/60s, even though most obviously weren't Nazis. Why exactly are Israeli Jews different?
valid criticism of their literal fucking war crimes
Sir, why do you work for the genocide of the Jewish race? Have you no shame, sir? Have you no decency?
/s
It's a tough needle to thread, because there is both a lot of antisemitism and a lot of opposition to genocide that is not motivated by antisemitism. Any support for Palestinians is joined by a chorus of calls to end the existence of Israel entirely, something that would require killing a lot of Jewish people. So it's difficult to untangle the legitimate criticism from the antisemitism.
So I don't disagree with you, but I also understand why people are quick to slap labels on critics.
Israel is not "Jewish people". Israel "could" end without a single Jew dying. Also, Jews lived there when it was Palestine. I dunno did they die when it became Israel? How are you arriving at the end of a concept being mass murder?
I think if Israel stopped trying to run itself as an ethnostate they'd be fine. I think there's an argument that the "concept" of what currently constitutes Israel may be too tainted to realistically save. Many unwilling to admit fault, apologize, and return what was stolen. And many unwilling to forgive them for doing it. It would take real concession and change. Something those in charge don't want. So the people both Israeli and Palestinian will continue to suffer for the gains of wealthy genocidal bigots.
It's a tough needle to thread
It really isn't as long as both parties are arguing in good faith and refraining from strawman arguments or other logical fallacies.
Sadly, even that is usually too much to ask for, as evidenced by your apparently good faith post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy of assuming that you can't argue that genocide of Palestinians is a bad thing without people agreeing with you by arguing that genocide of Israeli people would be super neat.
Of course, claiming that what other people say apart from agreeing with you that Palestinians shouldn't be murdered is the responsibility of you for some reason is in itself an association fallacy.
Come to think of it, ARE you arguing in good faith or are you just taking this chance to apply guilt by association without appearing to? 🤔
Anyway: NO it's NOT difficult to defend Palestinians without being antisemitic and benignly doing so does NOT make you responsible for antisemites agreeing with what you're saying and then adding a lot that you did NOT say.
If you see a beaten up homeless person in the street and they keep screaming something about "I'm gonna take over the united States government", the threat is basically idle and has to be taken in the context of what power he has, as a homeless perspn, as compared to a state like the US. Israel has all the power and is in no kind of substantial danger from Hamas or anyone else. It can erradiacte the entire place easily. Palestine is the homeless person screaming how he wants to replace biden while in fact he is beaten to the ground and survives on scrapes of food.
No! This is lemmy! Only one thing can be true at once. The entire world is zero sum, those are the rules, no take-backs.
Big shout out to all the Jews protesting against israel they completely destroyed this narrative.
Are others going to label them as "anti-semitic Jews"? I feel like it would be ironic and ridiculous but I'm not that smart.
Wouldn't be the first time "self-hating Jew" has been used to shut down any kind of anti-Zionist critique. Bernie Sanders had his face shoved in that turd all through 2016. I remember hearing it tossed around since at least the Bush Era, when being against the Iraq War was framed as a form of anti-Semitism.
I've already seen it. I think the common term is "self-hating Jew".
"anti-Semitism" used to be a term with a lot of weight and serious connotations. Now, it's been misused and abused so often that the power it once had is gone.
If anyone who disagrees with the genocidal far right government of Israel is an anti-semite then, of course, the term will lose it's power to shame actual bigots. It should surprise nobody that actual anti-jewish bigots are coming out of the shadows.
I was misquoted by an industry rag as one many years ago. I'm a huge fuckin Jew. People look for the negative
I heard them being called "self hating jews" or "traitors" think Dixie chick's during Iraq or MLK in the boondocks.
I've been labeled an anti-semetic Jew for speaking against Israel's government.
This is one of those memes where you can't really be sure who it's talking to.
Agreed. One one hand, some people have been using 'antisemitic' (sorry I have no idea how to spell that, and autocorrect isn't helping lmao) to dismiss just about anyone who criticizes Israel's actions. On the other hand, there absolutely are people going around being blatantly antisemitic.
I'm assuming that's what you're talking about, but correct me if I'm wrong ofc lol.
Condemning the deaths of Palestinians is not inherently antisemitic
FTFY
Anti-zionism =/= anti-semitism.
Pro-Palestine =/= pro-Hamas.
Anti-Hamas =/= Pro-Israel.
Since October it's been a really easy concept to grasp. Hamas is a terrorist group that murdered and kidnapped a bunch (don't know the exact number something around 200+) of Israeli civilians, the IDF responded in a predictably overzealous way and have now killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 civilians in Palestine. Neither Hamas nor the IDF have a moral high ground here. They both need to stop killing civilians. Super easy.
Judaism =/= the Israeli government
I'd make this into a T-shirt but the amount of people that have no idea what ≠ means is too damn high.
Genuine question, would it be appropriate to say that the respective religions at play are not actually the core of the conflict? It seems like the only religious motivation would be concerning Jerusalem and not the entirety of the contested land.
On broad analysis, it seems similar to how the conflict between Irish Catholics and Protestants isn't really religious, more just shorthand for idealogical differences between the two groups. Is that an apt comparison, or does religion play a more active role in this conflict?
That's great until you encounter all the people condemning Israel, then committing hate crimes against the local Jews. The people that are pro Palestinians and cheer on Hamas. There are also plenty of people that condemn Hamas and support Israel in the same breath.
None of those people are the vocal minority. They're the majority of supporters of these causes.
Zionism = the belief that the Jewish people have the right of self-determination in the form of the state of Israel in which their national aspirations
Anti-zionism = the belief that the Jewish people, uniquely among all the peoples of the world, have no right of self-determination or a state in which their national aspirations can be pursued.
Can you see why that's antisemitic?
Israel is, besides all that, already established. Zionism was completed. It's not going anywhere.
some of the most chill, accepting, and compassionate religious people I know are jews. Funny how what those people all have in common is hating zionism.
"Those that shoot missles and kill civilians are responsible for their death regardless of circumstances."
"If you think I am criticizing Israel instead of Hamas then you are admitting you can't tell the difference - and that's a 'you' problem"
The classic Israeli response is the same line used in Iraq and Afghanistan to justify civilian deaths. Terrorists are hiding behind human shields, so its their fault if civilians die.
Combine this with the modern military rhetoric of "smart bombs" and "precision strikes", the chronic effort by military bean counters to reclassify collateral murder victims as "enemy combatants", and the intentionally gullible media establishment more invested in getting interviews with high profile bureaucrats than establishing an objective view of world events, and you end up with news articles that posit all state military claims as true-until-proven-otherwise.
Even the framing of the conflict, calling it the Israel-Hamas War rather than the Israel-Palestine War, is intended to deflect any criticism of the genocidal intent of the invading Israeli army onto the Palestinians they are slaughtering.
Antisemitism can be defined arbitrarily by Zionists. Criticizing Zionism is often labeled as antisemitic. You cannot win by playing this game.
The easiest is to ignore this label and look at the facts. If I am an antisemite for not wanting psychopaths to kill Palestinian children, and want said psychopaths to be justly charged for their crimes, then so be it, I am an antisemite. I don't care.
I think it crosses into antisemitism when any/all Jewish people are targeted. Like the people shouting "death to all Jews" have certainly crossed that line.
I have seen far more "death to America" on here than "death to Jews", in fact I haven't even seen a "death to Jews" on lemmy yet.
We generally overrate labels. Labels can always change their meaning depending on who you ask, and this meaning is manipulated to gain political points.
Majority of people here do not oppose Jews based on nationality and only stand against Israeli army and government committing war crimes and inflicting massacre on Palestinian civilians. Good luck twisting that.
I say fuck Israel, not fuck the Jews. Not sure who's the target audience here
Yeah, fuck isntreal
Well that's a relief, I thought I was missing out this whole time
And if it’s all too complicated, you’re always free to STFU.
This was me for most of the time since this started lmao. I read a lot of news about it, but had pretty much no idea what was going on (still don't 100% ofc). No shame in STFU-ing :)
We've lost the art of stfu if you have nothing to offer, and apologizing or admitting you're incorrect or your opinion isn't defensible. Marc Maron does a bit in his most recent Netflix special. We used to say "oh man, I'm so stupid, how'd I miss that, you're right, sorry" .. there's no regular old stupidity anymore
Those PARTICULAR Jews suck!
Authoritarians don't want you to know this, but:
The people are not the state.
The state is not the people.
Nobody is born anywhere on purpose.
You can condemn the Israeli state without being a Nazi.
The problem is that "Jew" can refer to the ethnicity, the religion, or the state. The same word for 3 different groups. One of them should be denounced but people are too stupid to realize the other 2 groups aren't necessarily the same people.
Another problem is that Israel is an ethnostate, which is rare in the world today. Yes, you can be an Arab Israeli technically. It's not a perfect example.
The problem is that creating a state as a "Jewish homeland" is inherently exclusionary to non-Jews. It's a really backwards idea since the concept of adoptive nationality arose in the late 1700s.
France has a strong culture but is not exclusionary to it's neighbors (Germany, Spain, etc.). Many border regions share culture with those countries. A person from the south of France has more in common with northern Italy or Spain than someone from northern France.
Do the parts of Israel that neighbor the West Bank and Gaza have similar interchange of culture and ideas? No.
Some people can, others... well... i think the antisemitic comments are the point for some.
Did anyone else never notice Double D is pointing at a page that's double the width of the book and has been folded out?
That's the joke™️
My god can beat up your god, nuh uh, bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb
If someone wants to tie their religious identity to a fallible government, that's their brain damage.
This cartoon is antisemitic
Separating the actions of the state from the actions of the church: Impossible
people give a shit about antisemitism far more than any other anti religious sentiment, especially anti muslim rhetoric
My friend, you know that's just not true. You're probably trying to talk about your particular country or perhaps your particular city, but on a global scale the claim is simply false.
Sadly these days that's just not reality.
My Jewish neighbors shot out window is a reminder of this. I don't think that 30 year old Canadian lady has much sway over the Israeli war cabinet. I could be wrong. She was followed home from a peace rally in front of a human rights museum.
Cops are investigating it as a hate crime, hopefully they catch the terrorists who did it but a buddy on the force tells me they don't have much to go on. No doorbell cameras caught the car, the house is only a few off the corner. The neighborhood is freaked out.
Lately I’ve been seeing a whole lot more crying about antisemitism than actual antisemitism.
Seems like someone doesn’t appreciate questioning support for Israel’s colonialist genocide they call Zionism.
I don't condone the use of drugs on a given day in the week.
*Murders. Not deaths.
Crazy upside world. Liers are all around us laughing like idiots
Antisemitic is a meaningless term at this point.
No it really isn’t. There are people who have a problem with people just because they’re Jewish and you help nobody but them by acting like antisemitism is a meaningless term.
But being against what Israel does, is not antisemitism. It has nothing to do with religion altogether!
Really? So Elon wasn't being antisemitic when he said Jews were destroying white people? That was a perfectly acceptable thing to say?
What in the bad faith.... Do you not understand what you're replying to?
The usefulness of a words ability to describe something has nothing to do with how bad the actions someone does are. Both can be true that the word has lost its meaning and the things that elon do are bad
Lol, we have a massive issue with anti semitic people showing up at protests and taking over.
It keeps happening every time here and it fucking sucks
It means hostile to or prejudiced against Jewish people.
