Is this anti-semitism?

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

sleepingbag otm. i think the jews did learn a lesson from WW2 and it was a lesson that it's better to have a flawed but armed state than be a morally just victim

yeah seems to be working really well for us

all those victims of antisemitism in other places can just move to Israel, where there is none and everything's nice and safe amirite

Compare Jewish victimhood pre Israel to post Israel / I think it speaks for itself

If Israel had existed in 1933 how many lives could've been saved when the final solution was just expulsion?

Compare Jewish victimhood pre Israel to post Israel

well sure its not as bad in Europe cuz all (ok most of) the Jews are dead. who's left to victimize

i see part of the role of israel for diaspora jewry to both campaign on behalf of their rights when threatened (eg chastising USSR over treatment of refusniks) and accept them unconditionally when they become refugees (like the largest immigration of Jews from France this year than ever before). i think consequentially that jews worldwide are safer today now that israel is in existence. but i do agree that this is an interpretation and if your explanation is some mixture of a) horror over the holocaust, b) 99% of world jewry in israel + united states, c) more modern values dominating western world, then i think those are all elements too.

Mordy, do you think Israel could/should be an open society, with equal rights and opportunities for non-Jewish people? Or would you prefer it to be a have or safe places predominantly for Jews?

I think one reason why people equal Israel, its government and its actions, is because minorities aren't always treated equally.

xp have=haven

and xp equal Jews and Israel

i think that Israel's primary purpose is, and should remain, being a safe haven for Jews. i also think that without compromising that identity, Israel should strive to be as open. democratic and egalitarian as possible. i don't think that these two things are always compatible, and i believe that trying to mediate conflicts between these two purposes will likely always be unsatisfying.

yeah you kind of can't have preferential treatment without a corresponding discrimination

israel wasn't created bc the world needed another vaguely western democracy in the middle east. it was created bc the jews needed a nation state.

here's a provocative argument on the topic:
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/180022/anti-israel-protests-make-the-case-for-israel

lol @ anyone in berlin calling jewish people cowards

There are just so many double standards it makes me dizzy. Jews can't have a Jewish state, but Muslims can have several Muslim countries. Jews can't kill women and children, because they cede the high moral ground, but others can with much less criticism, because ... they never had any moral high ground? Nearly every country's boundaries were formed by war or decree, but Israel is the only one whose boundaries are worth protesting over. Israel must make concessions of land, laws, battle, but others don't. Israel must take pains not to kill anyone but a select few, but others - including Western countries - kill thousands with impunity, and stifle who knows how many with sanctions. The US can't aid Israel, but Iran and Saudi Arabia and who know who else can aid its enemies?

I dunno. I asked as a joke, sort of, but is Israel allowed to win? They can't do it by battle; clearly they could do much worse than they are doing now, but even that is too much for many. Clearly they can't gain land, only lose it. And even existing as Jewish state? No way, because ... Jews. Because even if Israel gave up every last inch of what's been demanded of them, to the letter - compromise! - Hamas and others would still happily lob missiles and rockets at Jews until they run off back to Europe.

The Hamas charter could not be more explicit in its goals. This is a war between Israel and Hamas. The question is how to handle Hamas, because if it's not done now, it will have to be done at some point. Otherwise, there will never be peace of any sort.

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

― Mordy, Wednesday, July 23, 2014 11:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

somehow I doubt you'd be the first

but you're right, it's not a concentration camp it's a ghetto.

In the early 1940s some 100,000 Jews and Romanis died of engineered starvation and disease in the Warsaw Ghetto, another quarter of a million were transported to the death camps, and when the Ghetto rose up it was liquidated, the last 50,000 residents being either shot on the spot or sent to be murdered more hygienically in Treblinka. Don’t mistake me: every Palestinian killed in Gaza is a Palestinian too many, but there is not the remotest similarity, either in intention or in deed – even in the most grossly mis-reported deed – between Gaza and Warsaw.

not the remotest similarity?

yeah could we all just slap a moratorium on any holocaust related analogied when hamfistedly accusing Israel of their crimes? there's enough room to discuss their actions in the conflict without really shitty hyperbole

if there's another term for apartheid state regions that are under blockade I'll use it. South Africans surely had one.

The Nazi ghettos being extremely bad does not mean that the term ceases to exist. There were ghettos before and after the holocaust.

Hm I wonder where that word ghetto comes from.

Also Josh fwiw I cant think of a single explicitly muslim (and not just majority muslim) state, as in officially a country for muslims, that isnt a disaster. Kinda feeds into my point about the desirability of separatiob of church and state.

Fuckin phone

And I dunno about double standards all my comments on this thread have been specifically about Israel, I havent defended any similar behavior by other countries. Thx for strawmanning tho.

It was nothing personal, just talking general.

The double standard I keep encountering elsewhere in particular implies there should be no Jewish state, or it is wrong to have a Jewish state, or any religious states, yet rarely note to any degree of passion the preponderance of de facto or explicit Muslim states, many of which, incidentally, came to be that way through war, or expulsion of its undesirables, or through artificial construct at the hands of international Western state builders. The criticisms against Israel, a generally socially liberal society, rarely seem to fall with any real volume on countries far more explicitly theocratic than Israel, who treat their minorities and women (and, hell, children) like shit, who embrace capital punishment like entertainment, who murder (yes, murder) their own people en masse. Which of course does not give Israel a pass for its various infractions, but I do find it disturbing that Israel often comes first in line for the placard waving protests, the divestment calls, et al. Again, it's a perpetual lose-lose scenario by way of what smells like propaganda. Israel is a barbaric bully, yet hardly comes close to the barbarism of Assad. Israel is a religious state, yet one that does not tell non-Jews to convert, move or die like Isis just did to Mosul Christians. And so on. And I think, again, this is in no small part due to the conflation of the quest for a Palestinian state (noble enough) with the war with Hamas, an extremist group whose hatred is endless and whose refusal to compromise is literally written into its charter.'

Seriously: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp

I read this, and I don't give a shit who they are fighting with. I don't want them to win. It's a problem proliferating all over the place: extremists scuttling the prospect of peace. And while some may accuse Israel of extremism, I've never read anything formalized from them quite as onerous as that Hamas charter.

Sorry, drinking a bit, but also, per the thread, really ill at ease. Think the people burning down synagogues and throwing rocks at Rabbis really, ultimately give a shit what I think about Israel?

Any discussion along those lines would presumably have to take into account the 35 year campaign against Iran being an Islamic state which included arming one of its secular neighbours to the teeth and largely turning a blind eye when they launched a war of aggression that killed around a million people. From what I recall at the time, even as their kids were being slaughtered, Iran was still painted as being at fault. Would also have to look at the complicity of governments and indifference of the public when democratic governments in Egypt and Turkey were removed in military coups for being too religious.

Israel, rightly in many respects, models itself as a modern, liberal state in its calls to international support. It holds itself out as an 'oasis of democracy in a sea of tyranny', etc. You can't do that and not expect criticism when you fall way short of those ideals by perpetuating the longest illegal occupation in modern history and launching punitive bombing raids on occupied territory. Mordy is absolutely right that substantially more opprobrium and self criticism should be directed at other "western" states, like the US, for drones, etc, though.

iran was doing a plenty good job slaughtering it's own kids

its

anyway that's not relevant

Josh otm.

really good thread imo

As Israel’s assault on Gaza intensifies, it is not anti-Semitic to say: not in my name

And so goes the vicious paradox. We criticize Israel because it has enough of a moral compass to be susceptible to criticism. And yet, lack of moral compass is one of the most common accusations lobbed at Israel; they're barbaric, they're genocidal, they're murderous. But were Israel really, fully any of those things - because we all know they have better/bigger weapons/armies - well, then, there goes the moral high ground. Which of course Israel does not and never did have, anyway, because etc. etc.

Once again, Israel not only can't win, but apparently is not allowed to win, either. If it "won" with no bloodshed, it still loses. If it "wins" through diplomacy, it still loses. If it wins through attrition, it still loses. If it wins by any historical standard of victory, it loses, because it long ago lost the propaganda war that simultaneously positions Israel as having a higher moral standard and no moral standing. Perhaps similar to the curious strain of anti-Semitism that claims the Holocaust was both a fabrication but also the fault of the Jews, that the Jews are Nazis but also that the Holocaust was "a lie invented by the Zionists."

Meanwhile, brutality on a much, much larger scale plays out with impunity around the globe. Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Mali, Sudan, not to mention all the countries and places so far gone no one even talks about them anymore. Are people still into Tibet? What's up with Somalia? Etc.

Hm I wonder where that word ghetto comes from.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, July 24, 2014 2:54 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Venice.

I think it comes from Elvis.