When I write: ”Palestine shall be free, from the river to the sea”, am I an antisemite?
My view is I am not. Actually I don’t even even have a quarrel with with Israel existing.
The UN resolution that founded Israel didn’t say the Palestinians should leave. Israel made that decision all by themselves.
Having made that choice, one is fully responsible for the consequences. Including millions of people singing to have their homes back, and the sympathy for them.
@gimulnautti
The dilemma I have with the phrase comes down to in spite of some very reasonable arguments from respectable scholars and mature adults to the contrary, it has been hijacked by the more extreme members of the political spectrum.
Changing the word Palestine to Palestinians fixes it for me.
But that's really just a sop to my conscience... Still doesn't fix the actual problem :-(
@carl_klitscher Did you know that JRR Tolkien is quite consistently the favourite literary fantasy work of neo-nazis?
Every story gets hijacked by evil actors
Hamas is far-right, so is Netanyahu these days. The two breed off each other. Vctimhood of against a monster on the other side is core to legitimising their violence
Plight of Palestinians remains the same. They’ve been cheated by everyone who promised to help at every turn for the last 100 years
@gimulnautti
Aye... Unfortunately those with the power to do something are still in the Neville Chamberlain 'we can negotiate peace in our time' phase while Netanyahu is well into the Hitler 'annex first and screw you spineless bastards' phase.
And all the while forgetting who is bearing the brunt of the aggression.
Even down here in Ao/NZ our government haven't moved on from the hand-wringing sniveling plaintive 'please stop' general wailing and moaning. Cowards!
Any ideology can be repurposed and utilized to further right-wing politics. So it doesn’t really matter which one you choose, you’re bound to have some regime using ”your” ideology for something bad.
Anti-fascism is used by Russia as reason to invade Ukraine. Islamophobia is routinely used by Iran’s RG in propaganda. Antisemitism is weaponised by Israel to against criticism of it’s military action. Etcetera.
These are not bad ideas, any of them. I think most people would agree. But what it doesn’t agree with is our simpleton tribal instincts.
If one skips the mental gymnastics of considering people different from you with wholly different worldviews, or, in essence makes the mistake that your idea of the idea equals everyone else’s idea, the default is just to go with ”this is good and this is bad”, and someone’s ideas explained completely by the crowd they associate with.
Politics is still hard. I don’t think people appreciate that enough these days.
It’s really hard to do the work and apply the principle of charity to others all the time, every time.
The first signs of failing democracies are all around us. Parties refusing to vote for a motion brought forward by the other party, just because they don’t want to give the other credit for fixing a thing they use for campaigning.
Tribalism.. If we cease to work on ourselves, we just default to it.
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