The ironic thing is, conflating any and all criticism of the state of Israel with anti-semitism could be argued as anti-semitic itself, because to suggest that jewish people in general and the Israeli state/military are one in the same such that criticism of the later is also hateful towards the former, is also to suggest that jewish people as a whole are responsible for the actions of Israel.
As cultural groups as a whole are inherently unable to be guilty of crimes (since even if a large number of people belonging to one commit some crime, such a group will also contain members that cannot be guilty of it, like young children), but states and similar entities, being organized and capable of decision-making, can be, then any attempt to link the moral culpability of a state and that of a cultural group is inherently to apply unfair accusations to that group, and thus hateful to it.
I can’t tell you how frustrated I am from this from all directions. The inability to identify different things that are related but not one and the same. Yes, there are valid criticisms of the Israeli government, as with any government, but only some of these criticisms are actually anti-semitic. Not all are, and not all aren’t.
A podcast I listened to explained pretty well how to tell the difference between a valid criticism of Israel and an anti-semitic one:
If someone criticizes a particular action or policy of Israel on the same basis and reasoning that they would criticize any other country in Israel’s shoes, that’s normal. But if someone criticizes Israel’s very existence, or holds Israel to an unattainable higher standard than any other country in history, that’s anti-semitic.
Israel is a nation state for the Jewish nation, and to say that Israel does not have a right to exist is the same as saying that the Jewish nation is not allowed their own nation state. In other words, all nations can have nation states - except Jews. This is transparently anti-semitic. It’s also the exact meaning behind “from the river to the sea” - that leaves no room for the Jewish nation state.
The same reasoning applies when holding Israel to a higher standard: all states are allowed to defend themselves against existential threats to them, and all states are allowed to hold national interests - except Israel the Jewish state. That one is not allowed to have national interests, and it must restrain itself impeccably when fighting against terrorists with human shields. Again, this singles out the nation state for the Jewish people as the only one with less rights, and so is anti-semitic.
But that’s not all criticisms of Israel - far from it! And what frustrates me even more than anti-semitic protests of “from the river to the sea” over the world, is when legitimate criticisms of Israel are disregarded over here by the government and some of the media, grouped together with the less legitimate statements and called out as anti-semitic. IMHO that’s a fool-proof recipe to isolate us from the rest of the western world even more than we already are!
Heck, we know our government deserves criticism. The first half of 2023 had massive protests here aimed squarely at the government.
P.S. for any Hebrew speakers out there, the podcast is this fantastic one and I definitely didn’t do it justice: www.bac.org.il/podcasts/?seriesID=9 and I think it was episode 80.
When I hear Israel has a right to exist because Jewish people need a home, I immediately wonder whether the person saying so would agree that Nazi Germany had a right to exist because German people needed a home. Nazi Germany is gone now and ethnic Germans seem better off for it.
Are the fascists running Israel an ethnic group? No, they’re a bunch of war criminals who should be hanged for their actions so Israel can have some hope of transforming into a decent country whose people acknowledge its crimes.
I’m not going to argue that some of them, Bibi in particular need to be jailed but comparing them to Nazis is blatantly bullshit and if you don’t understand that, please take a trip to aushwitz or the memorial in DC for an education.
I just admitted that israelis have blame… there is no parallel here. Let me know when they start trucking Palestinians in from Jordan and Samaria to get burned up by the thousands.
As savage as this is, from a demographic perspective you’re talking 2% of a population. A population that’s growing faster than any other on the planet. We’re not even talking about it being decimated. By contrast, the Holocaust wiped out 50% of the global Jewish population and it still hasn’t recovered. There’s no comparison and attempting to make one demeans the Holocaust, holomodor and the actual genocides going on right now.
Did you miss the part where I said ““exterminating all non-Jews in the country” isn’t a legitimate interest”?
But yeah, perhaps I should also mention that locking them up, putting them in ghettos, denying them equal opportunity, etc. isn’t a legitimate interest either.
EDIT: apparently I can’t Lemmy, I thought you were replying to me when we were in fact replying to the same comment.
Zionism has had a long and troubled history by this point, and I don’t even know much below the surface. I’ll tell you right up front I view Israel as an apartheid state and I’m not even a leftist. It’s just right out there in the open, for anyone to see.
Here in the US, we have a Christian Nationalism movement that would love to set up exactly what Israel has in “The American Redoubt”, also known as “Greater Idaho”.
Fucking terrifies me and my property isn’t even in their sights for conquest. Building a nation state along ethnic or religious boundaries is wrong in my opinion. I hold that opinion because I’m an American who believes in immigration, mixing of races, and freedom for all. Just the phrase “Jewish nation” makes my skin crawl.
quick edit: of course, all the ethnostates surrounding Israel are immoral in my view also.
Honestly I’m more or less in the same boat - we just happened to have been born in different countries. You’re stuck with yours, I’m stuck with mine. (It’s possible to emigrate but it’s not in most people’s top 10 options)
I’m not religious in the slightest and I barely see myself as part of the Jewish nation - but I do, just barely. It is unfortunately true that anti-semitism is alive and well, and will be for the foreseeable future. Even if I don’t view myself as Jewish, some anti-semites will, and we all know where that could lead. So Israel is the only country in the world where we can know for a fact that the government (police) will protect us from anti-semitism, not to mention won’t take part in it.
Judaism is both a religion and an ethnicity. Even if you discount any validity for the religion - which I wholeheartedly do - the ethnicity still remains, and that’s the “Jewish nation” that I mentioned. Not the religion. Speaking of “different things that are related but not one and the same”…
As for the claims of an ‘apartheid state’ - I don’t have a clear answer, because like everything else about this conflict, it’s complicated. What I can tell you is that Arab citizens of Israel study in the same universities as Jewish students, in the same classrooms. I’ve learned from both Jewish and Arab professors - and maybe other ethnicities that I haven’t noticed. There’s no place that I’ve ever seen with a “no arabs allowed” sign. They get more freedoms and a better quality of life than anywhere else in the middle east. In the written law at the very least, they have equal rights.
That’s not to say it’s all sunshine and roses - of course there’s inequalities, of course there’s injustice. But show me a country that doesn’t have issues like that for a minority population. My vote always goes to a party that strive to reduce these inequalities.
Forgive me for going on the offensive, but since you’re American… How exactly is your govenment making up for the atrocities committed to the native Americans? A very quick search says it’s not all sunshine and roses either… Maybe USA is an apartheid state too?
I don’t want to end on that provocative note, but I’ve run out of thoughts… sorry.
“They get more freedoms and a better quality of life than anywhere else in the middle east. In the written law at the very least, they have equal rights.”
This is a hell of a statement to make.
For an interesting point of view, I recommend a book called “The Hundred Years War on Palestine.” It starts in 1917 and discusses the origins of the state before 1948. It then continues until 2017. I’d honestly like to hear your thoughts if you read it.
there were no “No Irish Allowed” signs during The Troubles either. This conflict, as with all other competing ethnic quarrels, is complex. But it isn’t any more complex than those conflicts. In fact, I’d say that the ongoing conflict in Malaysia is more complex than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Also to address the whataboutism, yes, I’d argue that the US is an apartheid state against the natives. Palestinians are living in a genocidal apartheid state. The treatment of Palestinians by the settlers in the West Bank are a clear sign of this. What recourse do the Palestinians have when an Israeli squats on their house while running out for groceries?
I’m not religious in the slightest and I barely see myself as part of the Jewish nation - but I do, just barely. It is unfortunately true that anti-semitism is alive and well, and will be for the foreseeable future. Even if I don’t view myself as Jewish, some anti-semites will, and we all know where that could lead. So Israel is the only country in the world where we can know for a fact that the government (police) will protect us from anti-semitism, not to mention won’t take part in it.
Which is the chicken-and-egg problem of ethno/theostates, isn’t it? If most/all of a group are isolated to one geographical location, and largely absent from the rest of the world, it becomes easier for hate to spread in that rest of the world, because nobody there has lived experience, can have that moment of “but I know Elsa/Ahmed/Luna/whoever, and they’re decent person” to challenge propaganda when they hear it (and anyone who’s a minority where they live has at least one story of being the cause of such a realisation). But if you’re a group that lives in those little geographical pockets, it becomes that much harder to move out, because you give up your support network and move into an area of potentially hostile people.
And of course, bigots know about this and weaponise it. Speaking as a trans person and noticing the current wave of vile legislation against us in the shit parts of the US, it sure as hell feels like the objective there is to force anyone who can leave to do so, and punish those who can’t, specifically to prevent a sufficient mass of trans people building up that those same deradicalising experiences can happen (hence why the use of a stereotypical trans name in above example). But in a way it’s both better and worse for us, because we aren’t just born into certain bloodlines or cultures, we emerge almost everywhere, so and have to fight to make the whole world queer-friendly, rather than just being able to set up somewhere in a small pocket and let the whole world slowly become most hostile to us in response.
Ya nailed it. See, the thing is here, both of you are citizens of nations where you don’t have a lot of actual personal choice in what your government does to “represent” you, despite both ostensibly being “representative government.”
They’re both apartheid states. I live in one, I didn’t choose to. You live in one, you didn’t choose to.
However, in the case of the US, we don’t keep them all in one single, open-air prison with a giant fence between us and them, and bomb the living shit out of all of them if one of them does something fucked up. Usually, we prosecute that individual.
I’m not saying the US is better, it’s not. Just look at Guantanamo Bay.
But I am saying the situation with Israel and Palestine is way more fucked up, based on the close proximity, how long this has been going on, and things like Netanyahu probably funding Hamas. Netanyahu is just like US conservatives, he’s willing to fund his enemies just so he can keep using them as scapegoats. Netanyahu has been a fucking piece of shit for over twenty fucking years in Israeli politics, and just like the US, we seem to be unable or unwilling to deal with criminal fucking scumbags like him.
Forgive me for going on the offensive, but since you’re American… How exactly is your govenment making up for the atrocities committed to the native Americans? A very quick search says it’s not all sunshine and roses either… Maybe USA is an apartheid state too?
The US was founded on a genocide that didn’t fully stop until the late 20th century. That much is true. We’re not an apartheid state because we don’t have a population of Native Americans who aren’t allowed to leave their designated areas. We do have areas called “Indian Reservations” where Native Americans have limited sovereignty (somewhat comparable to that of a US state), but the people who live there are free to leave and many of them do.
We might very well be an apartheid state if the native population hadn’t been genocided to the point that nobody sees them as a threat, so I’m not claiming any kind of historical moral superiority. And the US government still treats Native American groups badly in a lot of ways, but they’re at least not treated badly enough to inspire them to form terrorist groups, and it’s not because Native American cultures are inherently pacifistic—native attacks on white settlers were quite common in the 1700s and 1800s.
The lesson I take from it is that even people with the worst historical grievances are willing to set them aside if they’re given the same opportunities as everyone else.
and it must restrain itself impeccably when fighting against terrorists with human shields.
A base level of restraint would be fucking fantastic. Israel has killed more journalists in the past 10 weeks than ANYONE has EVER killed in a whole year. They dropped more bombs in a single week than America dropped in an entire year fighting ISIS, and in an area the size of a city. Calling it self defense is whitewashing intentional genocide.
The whole ‘why is Israel singled out?’ is just Israel’s main PR and main excuse for genocide. I find it hard to take anyone seriously when they make such a claim. You can tell them all these facts and they’ll pull out of their ass some other country with a shitty history and say, “OMG why are you holding us Israelis at a different standard?” as if we all forgot how it was after 9/11, how people protested the Iraq War, how no one justifies what Americans did to the natives… These people live in their own reality where everything is skewed and malformed to allow them to live in peace knowing too well they are committing ethnic cleansing and genocide.
I really applaud all the Israelis who refuse to serve in the IDF and who see it for what it is.
I think you’re conflating 2 other things: Religion and culture.
Jews as a religion should absolutely not be allowed their own nation state, just as Islam shouldn’t and Christianity certainly shouldn’t either. In fact, there should be no religion-states at all. One of the fundamental values in democratic societies is freedom of religion; people should be allowed to believe whatever religion they want. Any state that interferes with that right is in violation of one of the basic human rights, and a religion-state is by definition violating that right.
Jews as a culture should absolutely be allowed their own nation state, in fact, that’s what Israel is. Such a state is indeed allowed to have interests, but “exterminating all non-Jews in the country” isn’t a legitimate interest. In fact, you’ll recall that a world war was triggered because a country wanted to exterminate a specific ethnic / religious group not only within their borders but also in their neighbors’ country. Such a state is also allowed to defend itself, but I think it’s normal for a persecuted people to resort to terrorism when other avenues for ending their persecution failed. That doesn’t give the right to the persecuter to persecute even more. You’ll note that we also heavily criticize the US for their “war on terrorism”, and rightly so. Gaza is also not an existential threat to Israel the way Russia is to Ukraine either. There’s a world of difference between the 2 conflicts.
So yeah, I guess I agree with you in part (there’s a difference between Jews in general and the Israeli government), but I really disagree with you on the “Jewish nation” part.
That said, I’m just a random dude from the other side of the world, and I don’t know anything about the specifics of the situation in the country, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
In fact, you’ll recall that a world war was triggered because a country wanted to exterminate a specific ethnic / religious group not only within their borders but also in their neighbors’ country.
WWII was triggered by Nazi Germany’s attempt to take over the world. Ending the Holocaust was just a fortunate side-effect of beating back the Germans and removing the Nazis from power. Nobody in power have a shit about Jews until people started seeing images from the death camps after they were liberated.
Israel has no right to exist where it does right now. No group of people has a right to force others out of their homes to establish a nation for themselves. By your logic if all peoples have a right to establish a nation wherever they see fit then the Roma people can justifiably show up in tel aviv tomorrow and start conquering the place since they have no nation of their own
This is a theoretical moral quandary I’ve tried to determine for myself and have yet to figure out:
How long is “long enough” between when one group forces another group out of its land and when the invading group should/can be accepted as the “rightful” group for that area?
I often point out that some Palestinian people who were forced out of their homes in the creation of Israel are still alive as reasoning for why it’s not right to have Israel exist where it is, so I know that “within a lifetime” is too short. At the same time, I also know that thousands of years (i.e. Israelite homeland) is too long to reclaim land, so I’ve narrowed it down (if you can call it that) to “more than a lifetime, less than a few millennia.”
What about a couple hundred years? Is it when everyone who originally lived on the land has grown old and died? When their children have? Grandchildren?
So much of human history is violence resulting in displacement. I feel like the line has historically been drawn at “when the original group is either wiped out or too weak to say anything anymore,” which is not the moral line for which I’m looking.
I’d be really interested to see what anyone else thinks on this.
Take a look at the effects of colonisation. In 1788 the British First Fleet established a colony in Sydney, land of the Eora Nation, which is now functionally extinct. The following 245 years have led to the near-destruction of the some 200 nations and language groups across the Australian continent. Many are extinct, and genocides (particularly the “Black War” in Tasmania), intermarriage, forbidding indigenous language communication, and disease wiped out most of the rest of the cultural and linguistic heritage of Australia, dating back (in the northern parts east of Darwin at least) up to 65,000 years.
Do the Wiradjuri deserve a state? It would occupy much of NSW and Victoria, if Australia ceded their traditional boundaries. Yet their continuous culture spans far longer than the Jews or Arab Muslims. So I think the answer to your question depends on the circumstances a people have been subjected to, and whether there are enough of them left, with enough resources, to fight the status quo. Ultimately, might makes right, and after the horrors perpetrated by Nazi Germany a mere 80-odd years ago, there were enough European Jews who had fled the genocides, and enough of a nation/diaspora to band together and influence the world after the dust settled. The same cannot be said for the Indigenous Tasmanians, unfortunately, whose culture was annihilated to the point that their languages only exist on early recordings by anthropologists.
Should one be allowed to have a national state if that national state is an ethnostate, practices apartheid, and commits genocide? I’m seriously asking because that is a standard I would hold any country to. And I don’t see how it means that “Jewish people can’t have a homeland”, just that it’s unacceptable to build a homeland on the mass graves of the natives.
and it must restrain itself impeccably when fighting against terrorists with human shields.
Ridiculous. How does that single out Israel? No other nation shoots through 30 members of a single family to kill a “terrorist”. How are Israel held to a different standard?
There are over 20 ethnostates in the immediate region…are you saying none of them have a right to exist or just the Jewish one?
Each of those states is built on Arab imperialism, built on the graves of the natives as you say. Most of them have banned various cultures (including Jews) and commited genocide or are currently involved in one…
Personally I’d put it this way: Every ethnicity is entitled to a place to rightfully call home, a place to feel secure and welcome in. Our Frisian minority here never tried for independence, it just didn’t come up. It’s their rightful home, living there since time immemorial just like the majority, even as a mere district in a state in a federal state in a continental union. Quite literally zero ethnic tensions over the millennia: Sibling tribes, one happens to be numerically dominant. This place to feel secure and welcome in thing though is pretty much incompatible with what Israel is doing right now as with all the shit Kahanites and their stooges and stirrup holders are up to that’s never going to happen, they’ll never feel safe while continuing to antagonise. Fascists and their fucking need for eternal wars. I can still vividly recall when I gave up on Israel (part of my family moved there after the war, solid Labour Zionists): I was sitting on the floor, playing with Lego, listening to the radio, news came on, reported that the fucker killed Rabin.
It’s also the – not really critique, more like a question, that I have towards Germany’s stance on the whole thing: To support Jews having that homeland, sure, of course, but how far do we take this. Can we really call Israel a home for Jews if it’s just some random fascists no Jew elsewhere actually wants to have anything to do with, and do we really have to let it come to that before getting out the chairs for an intervention circle. Kinda waiting for New York Jews to rename a quarter there to Israel to put an end to this fiasco.
No other nation shoots through 30 members of a single family to kill a “terrorist”.
I agree with your argument in general, but hasn’t the US shot drone missiles (accidentally, for certain values of that word) at plenty of civilians as part of its was on terror?
It’s a complex answer to why I’d personally hold a drone operator in 2001ish to a similar but higher standard than a guard at their post, versus the IAF today. The former are working with semi limited/limited information: this uniform = enemy but there’s a dark shape in an alley, there’s the front line of contact but why is that person digging by the roadside, drone rolled up from its 32hr autonomous flight plan and now there’s live intel feed - all limited information. In those scenarios genuine, honest mistakes are possible but always avoidable. That’s the “fog” part of the ‘fog of war’ - making life or death decisions quickly with limited knowledge.
All that doesn’t apply to the IAF right now… The fog is clear now; the ISR and SIGINT capabilities of Israel are very strong, drones and satellites are all over Gaza, the bombing targets are clearly identified along with the “collateral” civilian deaths it will cause:
In the early days of the offensive, the head of its air force spoke of relentless, “around the clock” airstrikes… but he added: “We are not being surgical.”
Describing the unit’s targeting process, an official said: “The operatives of Hamas are not immune – no matter where they hide.”
Multiple sources told the Guardian and +972/Local Call that when a strike was authorised on the private homes of individuals identified as Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives, **target researchers knew in advance the number of civilians expected to be killed.**Each target, they said, had a file containing a collateral damage score that stipulated how many civilians were likely to be killed in a strike.
That’s no longer an “ooops, well we tried hard to limit civilian deaths” if you’re callous about the human cost to achieve your political/military goals. But as long as they’re not your people I guess?
Yes, it isn’t on the same level as erasing an entire bloodline on a genocidal crusade, but yes. Does that make it okay? Did the US not get shit for that and continue to get shit for that? During this whole war on Gaza, I’ve seen the history of America being used as a tell-tale example of how not to do this or any war ever in the future… And it doesn’t make Israel look any more “stellar”, especially not when it hides behind other atrocities to dilute its own in the eyes of the world. No different than Putin who makes similar remarks on a regular basis.
Pretty much. I wasn’t saying that so much to defend Biden as to agree with the fact that the US has done similar in the past.
I honestly think that Biden is conflicted;
On the one hand, I’m sure that it’s sound geopolitical strategy to support Israel. For the same kind of reasons it’s sound geopolitical strategy to support Ukraine.
On the other hand, Benny McGenocide over there is fucking it up for Biden and everyone else that supported Israel.
Biden reacted too slow, but he also had to balance competing interests. Definitely a no-win situation. He could not have easily stopped support for Israel, and I truly believe that he’s not a fan of the genocide.
His track record for pushing the US into war following 9/11 does reveal his character too. Actions do speak louder than words. It would be interesting to know what exactly was going on in his head back then. I think the conversation with netanyahu is interesting in that it shows what sounds like regret.
You’re right though. He’s done what he’s done. He’ll only ever at best be the least worst option.
The whole situation makes me sick and sad. War crimes answered with war crimes.
Not accidental, coincidental. They had lists of targets and next to each the level of acceptable collateral damage. Afghanistan showed very clearly where that kind of “ah fuck it” attitude leads: Somehow the German-occupied regions were much, much calmer than the US ones. Now you’ll hear Americans say “yeah of course we took the hard tasks and left you the rest” but the thing is: Americans made it hard for themselves. Taliban actually once wrote an apology letter to the Bundeswehr, saying “sorry for attacking your convoy, some idiots of ours confused you for Americans”.
I think it’s an interesting callback to show that the same tactics were being used by all parties 5 years ago. So much so that people often don’t even notice it isn’t current. Media references from 5 years ago are likely to have Twitter content because of its place in the zeitgeist at the time.
Israeli neozionist troll factory attempts have never really shied away from the public, with the most notable example being Act.IL, but that doesn’t make them harmless. Giving your identity away like this is the same as giving away your identity to Scientologists, expect a serious degree of gaslighting and bullshit to be headed the way of your personal and professional life.
And I do mean serious, because with extremists and radicals getting the reigns of government thanks to Netanyahu, foreign intervention having been normalized to such an excessive degree, and countries letting them get away with it so freely, expect the requirements to get labeled as part of a “problem group” to become significantly easier to achieve. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossad#Europe
I think a big part of it, here in the US, is besides all the post WW2 sentiment, a lot of folks here in the bible belt literally think they are God’s chosen people, and so whatever they do is right by God, no matter how terrible. I recently showed up for jury duty and was speaking to a lady there about her son who had joined the Marine Corps. and thought he might get deployed, and she said, I shit you not, “At least he’ll be fighting for God’s people”.
I’ve seen antisemitism. I’ve been in online communities that slowly devolved into rat caricatures and conspiracy theories about how Jews are out to destroy the world. So I know that modern antisemitism persists and is a thing to watch out for. But it’s not antisemitic to admit that Zionist Israel is butchering innocent people because they want to claim all of Palestine for themselves, and that the west is too weak willed to do anything about it for fear of being called antisemitic, or going against “God’s chosen people”. That’s not antisemitism, it’s an objective, observable fact.
The even bigger issue is the Bible Belt is those moron’s reading of Revelation, which has them thinking Israel has to control Jerusalem for the rapture to happen.
There’s a YouTube channel covering WWII week by week, and there’s a sister series called War Against Humanity, which covers the atrocities committed on all sides—not just the a death camps and the murders in the ghettos, but firebombing campaigns, the Japanese internment camps, the Bata’an death march, the famine in India at the hands of the Raj, and so on. Every episode ends with host Spartacus Olsson repeating the phase that we should be using, “Never forget”. Because a huge contingent of us seems to be forgetting.
Like The Great War, the shows are written and/or hosted by Indy Neidell and Spartacus Olsson (with additional programming by Olsson’s wife and daughter Astrid and Anna Deinhart, respectively), but there’s a different production team.
Bro can i just say that i fucking hate that anti-semetic is even an argument used when someone demonstrates support for Hamas? it doesnt even make sense because by definition both parties are semetic.
Colloquially yeah it makes a lot of sense to say Hamas is antisemitic, the word means hatred for Jews regardless of the etymology of ‘semite’. Take it up with marriam-webster, not the people correctly using the modern definition of the word
Hamas Charter, excerpt.
16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
if you choose to believe that Hamas is not antisemitic that’s your prerogative. I only note that so long as there is a hatred of Jews the word is being used correctly.
After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Jews of Mandatory Palestine became Israeli citizens, and the term Palestinian Jews has largely fallen into disuse and is somewhat defunct, in favour of the modern term Israeli Jews.
It says in the wiki article that they became Israeli citizens. What are you on about?
I’ve heard there are a few Jews living among the Arab population of the West Bank. I’ve heard nothing about Jews living in Gaza except for Israeli colonists who have since moved out. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that non-colonist Jews would live in the occupied territories, because they are free to move to Israel by virtue of being Jews.
There is a small population of Arab Christians living in Gaza, and I would assume in the West Bank as well, though I can’t recall hearing about them specifically.
I hope it’s because they got educated a bit… But there were few out there. They simply didn’t know wtf hamas vs Palestine was. They pleaded they thought they were the same. But it’s also very possible they’re stupid.
You’re telling me that you haven’t seen those green headbands at ‘peace rallys’? They’re at every one I’ve seen on the news. Including the one where they attacked Santa LoL.
Those are Hamas flags. Dunno what that could be other than support… they’re rocking the merch.
it doesnt even make sense because by definition both parties are semetic.
Oof, either you’re just grossly misinformed and performing a cringey “ackchually”, or you’re anti-semitic yourself and perpetuating anti-semitic rhetoric.
While yes, both are Semitic people, the term ‘anti-semitic’ was specifically coined by Nazi Germany to make their genocide seem like it had a basis in science. They specifically used it to refer to Jews. Nobody uses “anti-semitic” to mean all semites except hate groups and holocaust deniers who are trying to say “see, it doesn’t even mean Jews specifically! Jews are just playing the victim!”
I will assume you’re simply ignorant or misinformed, but feel free to correct me if this was actually an intentional dog-whistle.
I’d agree that both states are racist. It’s why I don’t really think people should support Hamas or Israel carte blanche and why you can make a case that a blank unqualified statement of “I support (Israel/Hamas)” does seem quite racist.
“Hamas vs Israel” is a category error. It’s Hamas vs Likud or Palestine vs Israel. Nobody should support Hamas or Likud. Nobody should even tolerate them. They’re both terrorist groups whose goal is genocide.
Biologically speaking, there is only one human race. So, does that make the word “racism” invalid? It’s a stupid term whose origin makes no sense, but I’d argue its meaning had transcended its original linguistic root. Same for anti-“semitism”.
Biologically speaking, there is only one human race
The colloquial term for a group with common physical features is race. That biologists have a different technical meaning isn’t relevant. If you deny that people categorize others and call it “race” then you deny racism.
Racial:
“relating to the major groupings into which humankind is sometimes divided on the basis of physical characteristics or shared ancestry.”
I’d argue its meaning had transcended its original linguistic root.
But this is religious discrimination. I’ve already shown that neither ethnic group nor racial group matters in this situation.
I agree that’s part of the culture but it comes down to religion. If you are of Jewish faith, you have automatic citizenship in Israel.
When Ethiopia had its famine in the early 90’s, the Ethiopian Jews, who were Black and culturally Ethiopian, en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Solomon#/media/… were evacuated to Israel simply because of their Jewish faith. Race had nothing to do with their becoming Israel citizens.
Due to the root word Semite, the term is prone to being invoked as a misnomer by those who interpret it as referring to racist hatred directed at all “Semitic people” (i.e., those who speak Semitic languages, such as Arabs, Assyrians, and Arameans). This usage is erroneous; the compound word antisemitismus (lit. ‘antisemitism’) was first used in print in Germany in 1879[17] as a “scientific-sounding term” for Judenhass (lit. ‘Jew-hatred’),[18][19][20][21][22] and it has since been used to refer to anti-Jewish sentiment alone.
The scary part is they very much may just do that. NSO Group is based outta Israel, it’s honestly terrifying. The man has much larger balls than some may realize.
Just do what? It sounds like you’re saying they’d hurt the journalist but the only context available makes it seem like you could be talking about the onion headline.
They’re attacking one of the most densely populated areas in the world
They’re committing a genocide - when they want to wipe out the entire population, journalists are going to get killed in their indiscriminate attacks.
They’re far-right too, so they’re a half-step from flat out executing dissenting journalists (and how are journalists in Palestine likely to be aligned?).
Isreal has a database of all the people living in Gaza as well as their places of residency. Most (if not all) of the prominent Palestinian journalists have been killed in their homes, along with their families, in strikes using smart munitions during the first few days of the “war”. It’s giving Isreal too much credit to say they weren’t specifically targeted.
Their mercenary software is no joke. They will own your phone without you noticing, and once they own your phone, they own you. This is like silencing journalists if you’re a nation state 101
No, silencing journalists as a nation-state 101 is having him tragically fall backwards onto twelve loaded assault rifles, wrap himself in a body bag and throw himself into the river, ruled a suicide by the judge, open and shut case.
Not defending Hamas or the IDF here Fuck both. This conflict was planned by both sides to galvanize support for their respective “governments”. Civilians are currency to both regimes it’s just a different exchange rate.
Hamas charter excerpt.
16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
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