Is this anti-semitism?

but maybe it's not a calculated and deliberate attempt to color the conflict in as inflammatory a way as possible, perhaps it's an expression of widespread revulsion and outrage against israeli actions?

i've seen 'murder' and similar language used a lot in regard to civilian deaths in iraq, syria, libya, drone strikes, et al. i'm not totally antiwar but i think civilian casualties ought to horrify and disgust us, never really excusable imo and i don't think it's particularly 'radical' to think so.

i agree that the protestors find israel's actions more outrageous than any other world conflict

why?

an army inflicting civilian casualties (while, by all reports, making enormous effects to limit them - and obv every honest person realizes that every civilian israel kills hurts them; they have a huge interest in not killing civilians) and an army intentionally committing genocide against a civilian body?

lol "by all reports" you mean by the IDF's own propaganda I assume. I doubt anyone who was killed while lying in a hospital thought Israel was doing everything they could to limit civilian deaths. And yeah you would think that Israel realizes that civilian deaths are not in their interest and yet it doesn't seem to deter them *that* much - they play this game of chicken of "well if we kill fewer than X civilians it will be worth political goal Y" - which is just the sickest most cynical fucking shit, I cannot abide by it, even moreso because I am associated with it by virtue of the state's identification with the Jewish people.

I think the distinction you draw between civilian casualties and intentional genocide is primarily one of scale, and that's pretty much it. Which is why I would not call this a genocide. But it is death at the hands of a military, which I consider murder, and I consider it wrong.

xp

take a look at the thread title xp

by "protests" i don't mean breaking windows

if you're question is why i think the I/P conflict moves so many ppl despite being relatively inconsequential by global standards (involving very few ppl, not dealing w/ areas of high economic value) there are a lot of good reasons. a) it has been going on for so long. b) it has a dramatic arc that involves the UN. c) it's an easy target for anti-colonialism, anti-western leftism. d) protests primarily occurring in areas w/ large immigrant arab populations who obv have very high affinity w/ palestinians. e) idk you could think of many more reasons i'm sure. but why leftists, who are often scrupulous about facts + reality [having a left-wing bent], would call this operation a 'genocide,' and post pictures of dead children on fb? i think anti-semitism + hate. or emotions stoked by ppl who have an interest in fomenting anti-semitism + hate (eg Erdogan, Hamas, etc).

your*

idk why anyone posts anything on facebook tbh

I do think its weird to suspect American leftists of being (not so secret) anti-semites that just doesn't reflect the reality of any of the leftists I've ever run with

like maybe they are just really appalled at Israel and America's complicity in it and go overboard with the strongest rhetoric at hand (leftists def prone to hyper-extreme flights of rhetoric)

i think the part about the complicity of western governments is a big thing

why are people not protesting against assad? because our government is already applying pressure to get rid of him.

also perhaps because the conflict is grossly disproportionate compared to, say, sectarian violence in iraq

except people don't protest in the same ways about things that our very western governments do. i can't even find an exact number of children that the united states has "murdered" in yemen this year alone. these statistics are barely thought worth keeping. certainly no graphs that detail each dead baby w/ a baby icon (like i saw today)

and btw - US v. yemen or pakistan is also "grossly disproportionate" - though generally disproportionate doesn't really mean the way i think you're using it? from what i understand proportionality is about the number of combatants killed v. the number of civilians. not the comparable military might of the two actors (which is obv disproportionate any time we're discussing unconventional warfare).

i meant the military might of the two actors

btw i think that graph would be a very good thing for most americans to see, and i certainly don't support US drone strikes on yemen or pakistan. i try to protest those too, when i can.

i meant a dead baby graph for yemen

well to what do you ascribe the difference between protests of US civilian fatalities in yemen and pakistan versus similar IDF fatalities in gaza?

Obama. Mainstream left will not criticize his foreign policy - and he is directly responsible for drone deaths in Yemen (and Afghanistan, and Pakistan etc) as our respected Dr. Morbz never fails to point out. Only the hardcore left takes him to task over this (and have done on this very board), otherwise Democrats circle the wagons.

xp you win, antisemitism, i guess

¯\(°_o)/¯

obv we can agree that some things are def antisemitism. like #hitlerwasright twitter tags trending. or protest chants in berlin that call jews pigs:
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/179842/berlin-protesters-chant-jew-jew-cowardly-pig-come-on-out-and-fight

i guess i just see more of it on the continuum and maybe you guys are more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to things that have some level of plausible deniability.

left was plenty eager to get apoplectic over Dubya's civilian deaths, at least once Iraq turned into the total shitshow that it was destined to become. My bro put civilian death photos in Arthur iirc (not that that's a huge mainstream publication or your facebook wall but it was leftist press)

xp

yeah I'm not really going to express surprise that their rabid anti-semites in france, belgium, germany etc. the U.S. not so much. Sure we have our st0rmfr0nters and whatnot but a) they are not leftists and b) they are p small (and justifiably ostracized) minority

there are rabid anti-semites

that should say

well the united states is broadly very pro-israel. i'm not so worried about jews in the united states being exposed to antisemitic violence under a pretext of protesting gaza. both major parties are still outdoing each other trying to express support for israel atm.

but i think probably jews in turkey should leave asap
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/17/violent-riots-target-israel-embassy-in-turkey-ihh-head-says-turkish-jews-will-pay-dearly-photos/

there are rabbit anti-semites

http://mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_640x430/public/bugs-hitler_6.jpg

Mordy knows my stance - and many among me - that Israel is way over the line, killing many, many innocent people, women, children. And I am glad that even in Holland - always a staunch defender of Israel no matter what - Israel is under more and more scrutiny over this.

Fortunately I do signal - here at least - a slow yet steady improvement in that people do not blame 'the Jews' for it, but distinctively Israel/Israeli government. The people that are responsible. Not an entire people, not "the Jews". Which is heartening.

Heartening probably not the right word here, but you catch my drift.

As someone who identifies as of the left (as opposed to as a liberal), the presence of anti-Semitism in our "circles" (I use quotation marks because its such a fractured mess it would be silly to call it a movement, but that's for another time) is disgusting and deplorable, and it's our job to fight it. Shit politics, shit morals, shit people. Same goes for anti-Semitic sentiments and violence in wider society, but that should go without saying.

At the same time what Mordy some others are doing here - painting pretty much all criticism and opposition to the actions of the Israeli gov't and its military which is coming from outside of Israel as anti-Semitic is imo cynical and unfair. Don't want to get into an argument about this as we'd be here for the next decade (I'd site Butler's piece in the LRB on this but then iirc Mordy doesn't think much of her) but if you don't accept outside criticism, then I'm sure that you are aware of numerous people and organisations inside of Israel (Jewish and non-Jewish, leftist and liberal) who are harsh in their condemnation of both the Israeli gov't wider policies wrt to Palestinians and Arab-Israelis as well as military operations by the IDF, including the targeting of civilians, - +972, B'Tselem, and others, and who write at length and do (very brave, in the face of reactionary, often violent opposition) anti-racist, anti-war, anti-occupation activism in Israel.

yay holland
http://ejpress.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49816&catid=10

i want to say for the record that my critique is not about "all criticism and opposition to the actions of the Israeli gov't and its military" but rather about the inflammatory language and the very obviously explicitly anti-semitism acts + words found throughout the pro-Palestinian international 'movement.'

yeah +972 is good

xp

"all criticism and opposition to the actions of the Israeli gov't and its military" but rather about the inflammatory language

yeah the problem that I have here is that you consider "murder of innocent women and children" and authentic pictures of casualties inflammatory, whereas I think they are simply accurate.

for example ppl who argue that israel's actions in gaza are counterproductive to their security - those arguments tend to come from a very thoughtful, intelligent place. but yes, ppl who argue that gaza is just like a concentration camp - that kind of rhetoric is 100% of the time anti-semitic (in deed if not intention) and designed to encourage people to attack jews worldwide.

the late great's call for a Yemeni dead baby graph is macabre but I can't help but agree that if people were exposed to images of the real, physical horror of war they would be less likely to support it.

(or maybe not idk people are fucking sick)

xp

One example of anti-semitism doesn't say anything about it occurring on a whole Mordy. But why do I even bother pointing that out to you... Sigh.

ppl who argue that gaza is just like a concentration camp

I think these people don't actually understand what a concentration camp was.

There is a kernel of truth imo in the argument that as victims of horrific war crimes/discrimination/vilification etc. Jews should be more hesitant to engage in such behaviors themselves. It bums me out that Israel has essentially cost the Jews the moral high ground we had obtained by surviving the Holocaust. That's all been hopelessly obscured now; we aren't solely the innocent victims anymore, we have our own bully to be ashamed of (or proud of, depending on your disposition).

xp

that's kind of a part of the sickness of the comparison. i think this, which i posted in the MENA thread i think is otm:

Given the number of besieged and battered cities there have been in however many thousands of years of pitiless warfare there is only one explanation for this invocation of Warsaw before any of those – it is to wound Jews in their recent and most anguished history and to punish them with their own grief. Its aim is a sort of retrospective retribution, cancelling out all debts of guilt and sorrow. It is as though, by a reversal of the usual laws of cause and effect, Jewish actions of today prove that Jews had it coming to them yesterday.

Berating Jews with their own history, disinheriting them of pity, as though pity is negotiable or has a sell-by date, is the latest species of Holocaust denial, infinitely more subtle than the David Irving version with its clunking body counts and quibbles over gas-chamber capability and chimney sizes. Instead of saying the Holocaust didn’t happen, the modern sophisticated denier accepts the event in all its terrible enormity, only to accuse the Jews of trying to profit from it, either in the form of moral blackmail or downright territorial theft. According to this thinking, the Jews have betrayed the Holocaust and become unworthy of it, the true heirs to their suffering being the Palestinians

haha waht you think there would have been an Israel without the Holocaust?!

to say "Jews" should know better bc of the holocaust (or the opposite claim, that jews commit genocide against the palestinians bc of some cycle of trauma) is pretty racist + essentializing.

i'm not going to try to make a counterfactual but saying that the event of the holocaust helped lead to the creation of the state of israel is much different than saying that the jews should know better bc 50% of world jewry was exterminated by the germans between 33 and 45

i promise you that when bibi establishes treblinka 2.0 in shuja'iyeh i will be the first to bring out the holocaust comparisons

I think it does cost us the moral high ground. Before Israel, you couldn't reasonably point to Jews as being responsible for any particular war or systemized oppression (sure you had random guys like Judah Benjamin but he was not part of a Jewish organization/state/center of political power) - we were a historically oppressed minority, p much everywhere we went. And the Holocaust was the extreme low point of that condition, the ultimate victimization. There's a certain righteousness in that condition: the endurance against all odds; the inherent sympathy with other oppressed peoples; the lessons learned. That's gone now. We don't occupy that space anymore.

xp

Well I strongly disagree with rhetoric that invokes WWII or the Holocaust in relation to the I/P conflict - I think ~at best~ it is insensitive and dumb, and often it is just disgusting and cynical and aims to deploy and exploit a horrific historical event. So yes, I disagree with characterising Gaza as a concentration camp. Otoh, I've seen the description "open-air prison" which is certainly very emotional language but imo not inaccurate when you take into account the geographical / economic / social / etc conditions created by the occupation.

xp, sorry

if only the jews would just simmer down and remain an oppressed people they could retain the coveted 'moral high ground', it's a win-win

I don't think this is anything more complicated than expecting (wishing?) that people who have historically experienced discrimination/oppression/racism be more averse to engaging in the discriminating/oppressive/racist behaviors.

Bringing out specific numbers or stats is sort of unnecessary hairsplitting/oppression olympics stuff

xp

lol sleepingbag