Is this anti-semitism?

roger-waters-antisemitism-unhelpful

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/157379/american-studies-association-members-defend-israel-boycott-by-citing-anti-semitic-911-truther

That's interesting, but what implication is it really trying to create, that the entire ASA is actually anti-semitic?

or bds proponents within org

lol Roger Waters has really saddled himself atop the Do What You Gotta Do To Get Press horse eh

?

Nicolas Anelka could face a Football Association charge for his controversial goal celebration during Saturday's 3-3 draw with West Ham.

Anelka confirmed to Downing that he did perform a quenelle, described by some as a "reverse Nazi salute", after his 40th-minute strike at Upton Park but as far as the West Brom hierarchy are concerned, it was done as a tribute to the French comedian Dieudonné, a friend of Anelka.

"This gesture was just a special dedication to my comedian friend Dieudonné," Anelka tweeted in both French and English on his official account.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/from-dieudonn-to-nicolas-anelka-hands-signal-new-french-race-row-9028420.html

Seems complicated. I doubt most neo-nazis have the dexterity for it.

It's like the nazi salute version of patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time.

There is a fairly big debate in France regarding the sign being anti-semitic. I've seen some people in Montréal use it.

debate - "is this gesture that Jewish groups keep telling us is offensive anti-semitic?"

Ok where dyou want to do that

debate - "is this gesture that Jewish groups keep telling us is offensive anti-semitic?"

― turkey & stfuing (Noodle Vague), Sunday, December 29, 2013 5:07 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The extremely dubious claim is that the jewish establishment (media, politicians) has turned the symbol into an anti-semitic one to isolate Dieudonné and pro-palestinian groups.

In response to Dieudonne's numerous antisemitic statements, French Interior Minister Manuel Valls stated that Dieudonne was "no longer a comedian" but was rather an "anti-Semite and racist" and that he would seek to ban all Dieudonne's public gatherings as they amounted to a public safety risk. He can not be an anti-semite, the system is trying to make him an anti semite. How come a show man that had spent his life fighting rasism can be treated of this sort. The quennelle sign is a sign against the system and not an anti-semite sign.[3]

Funny, all the French Jews I know are not crazy about Israeli policy towards Palestinians and they all say the gesture is COMPLETELY racist.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/anti-semitism-seen-driving-massive-rise-in-french-aliyah/

france giving hungary a run for its money!

where is the best place to be a jew in europe right now, in the sense of least likely to encounter anti-semitism

re quenelle: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/world/europe/concern-over-quenelle-gesture-grows-in-france.html

So I reported a facebook page for having a few guys doing la quenelle as their cover photo, it's for some kind of anti-sionist, pro-quebec separation, anti-capitalist TV show, all huge Dieudonné fans. Facebook took down the photo.

Funny, all the French Jews I know are not crazy about Israeli policy towards Palestinians and they all say the gesture is COMPLETELY racist

french jews are crazy racist tho

I want you to explain that comment.

When I think of french jews I think of the last time I was in Tel Aviv, when I was on the beach with H and K and this older french couple started talking to us. I guess I looked a little bit swaggy because i had my tortoise shell ray-bans and was kind of in shape, and the old guy was like "What kind of work - finance? finance?" And the way he pronounced it twice "fee-NAHNCE? fee-NAHNCE?" always rings out in my head.

He also told me I speak English "like an Englishman"

also my downstairs neighbor is apparently an older french jewish lady who smokes a lot and I can smell her damned cigarettes in my daughter's room, which is fucking gross. So I hate that lady.

From personal experience (family, living there), a lot of french people are crazy racists.

Yesterday I got into a Twitter argument with someone who insisted that anti-semitism didn't mean anti-Jew because not all semitic peoples are Jews. When I pointed out that "anti-semitism" was coined with that specific meaning, one that is widely understood and cited by all dictionaries and encyclopaedias, he responded that it was "confirmation bias" and most people were mindless sheep who didn't understand the true meaning of words. Predictably, it turned out that he was a raving anti-semite, in the popular sense of the word. Bigots love arguing about semantics.

"phobia means 'fear' but i'm not frightened of gays" etc

lol they're not anti-semantic that's for sur

Can't be anti-semitic if yr cool with Akkadians iirc

i'd Hittite

no wait they were Aryan sorry

lol

xp OTM re: homophobia. Also related to people who like to say the Nazis were National SOCIALISTS, ignoring the admittedly counterintuitive early 20C concept of anti-Marxist socialism.

considering anti-semitism was designed (by an anti-semite!) to be a more scientific term for jew-hatred, maybe we should just agree w/ these semantic assholes that they're not anti-semites and just go back to judenhass for the favored expression.

oh man it grinds my gears when i say i am anti-semitic and people think i just hate jews

yeah personally i only hate Edomites imagine how i long for a proper word

The anti-semitism in French is frightening, but it strikes me as a very racist and splintered society in general? I mean, it's a country that as lately as the sixties massacred hundreds of immigrants, threw the bodies in the Seine, and covered it up for decades. There's a lot of hate going round.

wow not to sidetrack but I never knew about that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961

An (African-American) friend of mine has been spending some time in Paris, and he sent me an email yesterday talking about what a wonderful city it is and yet, simultaneously, how mind-boggling anti-semitic the French are. As he put it, it makes him miss the more familiar, veiled versions of prejudice he experiences at home.

I do think the story of opression of North Africans is quite relevant to the discussion. To explain the hate, though, it makes the way it comes out as anti-semitism even dumber and more misguided, as most of the really inhumane stuff was being done by former vichy-collaborators. Afaik, I'm no expert.

Blaming Jews bc of your oppression is not a new story, and doesn't really add any nuance - that's always the context of judenhass.

I think the French are xenophobic in a particular, modern sort of way, where any group identifying itself as anything other than secular French is suspect. Of course at the same time French people are very protective of who gets to be considered/called "French" so it's a tough game to win. My sister-in-law who lived in France said that otherwise intelligent and well-meaning people seemed offended and uncomprehending at the idea of a "Jewish identity"

Yesterday I got into a Twitter argument with someone who insisted that anti-semitism didn't mean anti-Jew because not all semitic peoples are Jews. When I pointed out that "anti-semitism" was coined with that specific meaning, one that is widely understood and cited by all dictionaries and encyclopaedias, he responded that it was "confirmation bias" and most people were mindless sheep who didn't understand the true meaning of words. Predictably, it turned out that he was a raving anti-semite, in the popular sense of the word. Bigots love arguing about semantics.

― Deafening silence (DL), Friday, January 10, 2014 7:26 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Right, this is kind of linguistic shell-game. I don't really ultimately care whether it's called "anti-semitism" or not as long as everyone can agree on a word for it. But the goal of the person making that point is usually to avoid discussion of the substance.

I was reading some of noted jewhating author K3v1n McDon4ald last year and one of his major critiques - particularly in "A People That Shall Dwell Alone," - is that the Jewish people are an insular, self-promoting group that works towards their own economic success as opposed to larger groups. What struck me about this wasn't how unreasonable the assertion was, but rather how it is too reasonable. All peoples + communities obviously prioritize their in-group success over strangers - this occurs at every level from the family to the nation. One of the paradigmatic elements of antisemitism is the recontextualization of normal human behavior as demonic or condemnable. Cf Israel for a particularly obvious example of this (even tho "everybody does it" isn't a particularly compelling argument). This also resonates w/ things I learnt in a theological context growing up, particularly these two points 1) as the chosen ppl, jews are held to a higher standard of ethical behavior bc more is expected of them (which dovetails nicely w/ the critique that Israel should know better bc Jews were in the Holocaust - Howard Jacobson talks a bit about this), and 2) that the more Jews assimilate into the general culture, the more the general culture repels them (this is the standard theological line about WW2 + Europe - that antisemitism grew in light of the largest cultural assimilation in history*). It's relevant here I think bc France's big complaint about the Jews (ever since Napoleonic era) is that they didn't assimilate into French society ("We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals.") - again that the very right of peoplehood is denied in antisemitism. In that context it's not a surprise that the term antisemitism itself becomes undermined by antisemites - Jews aren't even allowed to acknowledge the persecutions that uniquely affect them w/out being told that the word actually refers mostly to Arabs (and if you're Sholem Sand then antisemitism ONLY refers to Arabs since the Jews are really just Khazars).

* nb I just wanted to mention that this is a canard - most assimilated German jewry was able to escape WW2 bc of their educational + economic advantages. The primary victims of the Holocaust were already-marginalized shtetl Jews in Ukraine + Poland who were certainly not assimilating, primarily the large chassidic community of the Pale

right, I've kind of come to reject the "one-drop" anti-semitism theory, or the idea that no matter how much you assimilate, society will always see you as a Jew first. I don't think that's entirely true. It's certainly not true in the US. I mean there are elements that will always trot that out, but they're more marginal here.

right, obv the one-drop thing is ridiculous but my point is broader that as a Jew you should be allowed to not assimilate if you don't want to. obv Hitler was esp odious bc he didn't care if you converted or not - he just cared about purity of blood. but the Spanish inquisition letting Jews live if they convert to Christianity is not better - acc to a lot of traditional texts the annihilation of the Jewish people as a people is even more problematic than the annihilation of individual Jewish lives. i'm not so sure about saying one is worse or better than the other, just that ppl (like the french) who are not against the Jewish body but against the Jewish people are not really evading antisemitism. also reminds me a little of this quote from the haggadah:

Go forth and learn what Laban the Aramean wanted to do to our father Jacob. Pharaoh had issued a decree against the male children only, but Laban wanted to uproot everyone - as it is said: "The Aramean wished to destroy my father; and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and he became there a nation - great and mighty and numerous."

also cf the channukah story where the greeks forbade torah learning + circumcision but let jews live who otherwise ceased practicing judaism

Jews in France are caught between secular republicans who find the idea of communautarisme a danger for the unitary Republic, Catholic and identity-centered right-wing anti-semites and left-wing anti-zionists who are highly influenced by the large Maghrebin population. To some extent they are also the victims of their own success, having assimilated relatively well and done well for themselves, they are a target of resentment from the petite-bourgeoisie.

this weeks' nyer story about the roma is interesting in the context of french xenophobia/bigotry/national identity. best thing ive read by adam gopnik who i usually hate