Is this anti-semitism?

Anti-jews among French Arabs are vile and widespread.

xpost See, I don't even know what to make of that. Thailand was occupied by Japan in WWII, so assuming one knows about that, one would presumably know about the Germans/Nazis as well. But is it possible a young person in Thailand doesn't know they were once occupied by Japan? I have no idea. Probably.

https://www.vice.com/sv/article/xd5bdd/nazis-chic-is-asias-offensive-fashion-craze-456

One in 20 British adults do not believe the Holocaust happened, and 8% say that the scale of the genocide has been exaggerated, according to a poll marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

i know this sounds a little, uh, UKIP, but what's the overlap b/w that 8% and the growing number of british muslims? i imagine ignorance is growing among younger generations regardless of ethnicity/background, but i also wonder if the worst of this is a product of the rampant anti-semitism within that particular community or communities.

there's a bar graph about 1/3 down in this article that suggests that ignorance and denial of the Holocaust is much greater in the middle east than elsewhere:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/05/the-world-is-full-of-holocaust-deniers/370870/

uh, not b/w but b/t

Well that 8% compares to 9% in the US (per the first poll mentioned in this bump), where the Muslim population is proportionately smaller. This could be a common ratio in Western countries.

"It's not that I like Hitler," a Thai führer-chic designer who goes by the name Hut told the Jerusalem Post in 2012, "but he looks funny and the shirts are very popular with young people."

punk's not dead

behind every artschool-edgelord nazi-chic lover is a conservative reactionary bursting to get out. well that is what I learned from UK Punk.

British Muslims are overwhelmingly of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin and not, in my experience, as exercised about Jews and/or Israel as Arabs and North Africans are. Also the Muslim population of the UK is 5%, despite what Fox News might be telling you people over there.

fuckin yikes to this from harry potter theme park social media

https://i.redd.it/4hei93mjqxe21.jpg

Sorry, this New York Jew is not taking instruction about what constitutes anti-Semitism from Kevin McCarthy, Chelsea Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi. pic.twitter.com/Bks7BuNnE2

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) February 11, 2019

that is 100% how i feel.

my congressman tweeted some fake outrage about this and i called him and asked if he had any jews in his office. the communications director declined to comment. i suggested that if they were so outraged by anti-semitism they might have considered not spreading anti-semitic libels about george soros during the 2018 campaign. also, in my mind, i said "eat shit and die," but i'm not sure if that made it out of my mouth.

On a FB discussion post populated by MN5 voters, we had one vocal Zionist (“when I went to Israel I saw why armed guards and walls are necessary there, go Bibi!”) wondering what Ilhan says in private if that’s what she says in public, who wants her thrown off committees, one Reform person saying they accepted the apology, one very hard left Jewish person saying AIPAC is the NRA for Dems, and three non-Jewish people who grew up in a very Jewish community pretty much taking the middle path.

The Omar smearing felt like a bit of a last straw for me in anti-semitism-mongering, and I'm not exactly a JVP type.

Personally her comment didn't strike me as problematic but enough people who I trust explained their feelings in good faith that I don't think it's just bullshit. Among the things that made an impression on me are that it isn't her first comment so it's harder to dismiss as accidentally provocative, the song she picked to quote has antisemitic lyrics, and that she reduced a complex/multifaceted relationship to bribery. Again, I'm not really bothered by her comments but since I try to defer to people's sensibilities about bigotry/offensiveness even when they don't strike me as offensive I'm willing to accept that ppl were legitimately bothered.

It's complex/multifaceted bribery, and is in no way unique among lobbying in that regard.

The reason America supports Israel is not because AIPAC pays congresspeople.

AIPAC does not directly pay congresspeople, its network of bundlers and donors do though.

I mean, is that the ONLY reason? No. If you could imagine a world where, tomorrow, Palestine had an equally powerful lobby, I think the current alignment of US interests would still shift things in favor of Israel. But it's ridiculous to pretend lobbying and campaign donations haven't played a significant role.

From what I understand donations that come through AIPAC are fairly insignificant vis-a-vis campaign contributions as a whole and that their role is primarily educational + organizing trips. The reason American congressmen support Israel is because they're a regional strategic asset as well as there being significant cultural and religious affinity between the countries. Someone trying to disrupt that relationship (and btw you can't discount how much just the intent of 'trying to disrupt the Israel/America relationship' will scan as antisemitic to many ppl) needs to address these other issues. Reducing it to "Benjamins" indicates a superficial (and imo self-serving) account of why things are the way they are. Again, to me that doesn't necessarily indicate antisemitism but when you reduce a complex relationship to bribery and "ZOG" is a major antisemitic concept, you're gonna get blowback and even if that wasn't your intent it'll be deserved.

It's the fucking evangelicals that kiss up to Israel the most, lest anyone wonder how such a tiny minority can supposedly be so influential.

Omar ... I assume she is so used to spending time in certain circles where anti-Israel hyperbole plays well that she is still getting used to moderating her voice. Not to be moderate, necessarily, but as someone who no longer needs a megaphone and an angry placard to be heard. She's in Congress, she no longer has to live life in all-caps.

Some Evangelicals support Israel for eschatological reasons and others because they take literally Genesis 12:3 and similar verses. But even putting Evangelicals aside there is a long history of philosemitism in American culture and politics that goes back to George Washington (and even the Puritans who literally conceived of themselves in letters and diaries as similar to the Exodus Jews entering the Promised Land). Despite that US politics weren't always pro Israel and there was a period of time following 1948 when the US did not support Israel much at all (but countries like Germany, France and Russia did at various times). During the Cold War the US developed the alliance with Israel primarily to deter USSR participation in the Middle East as a counterweight. Even still the relationship isn't always smooth and if you look at the more modern "no daylight" positioning that really only showed up with GWB and Obama. Even Republican Presidents like Reagan and Bush Sr. were more critical and allowed many more UN resolutions to pass against Israel than Obama, etc. There's no question to me that 9/11 and the War against Terror played a big role in eliminating prior differences.

The theory of the case that Israel bribes the US to support it and without US support Israel could not oppress the Palestinians -- this is simplistic and wrong on multiple levels. Even if the US drew back its support Israel is a regional power that ranks near the top of multiple ratings for military, quality of life, technological development, etc. It's not a weak country being propped up by a superpower and it's hard to see how the Palestinians would win maximalist demands if only the US wasn't backing Israel. First of all it ignores that the US *often* criticizes Israel behavior in the territories and against Palestinians. Could the US force reconciliations by withholding support? Maybe (sometimes it has worked in the past and sometimes it has not). Or maybe the US would lose its ability to influence Israeli behavior entirely if it cut Israel loose. There's an assumption that Israel is enabled by US support but I could very easily imagine a more rogue Israel nation that doesn't have US support but has deepened its relationships with Russia, China, India, Africa, Saudi Arabia, etc, and acts much more viciously. It seems to me that by geopolitical standards Israel has been fairly restrained in dealing with the Palestinians, compare them to Assad in Syria or the Chinese concentration camps or many other regional actors who have to deal with separatist movements. This is all a little OT sorry.

this might sound aggro, and really it is not intended this way, but, what is the upshot of this observation, in your mind?:

It seems to me that by geopolitical standards Israel has been fairly restrained in dealing with the Palestinians, compare them to Assad in Syria or the Chinese concentration camps or many other regional actors who have to deal with separatist movements.

there's a framing issue here, too.
"separatist movements" might not be the best way to describe the political activity of people in a territory that even the elected gov't of israel acknowledges as not part of their own country. (even though there are often people in gov't who wish it were.) in other words, what do palestinians in the west bank or gaza wish to "separate" from?

i mean, for whatever it's worth, the Uyghurs live in a part of the world recognized by nearly all governments as part of the PRC. to say the least, the same is not true of the west bank/israel. so even if we were to decide israel behaves "better" than some of the worst geopolitical actors (to which in most contexts i'd say, so what?), the legal and practical framework is different.

My intended upshot was that the US is often viewed by critics of Israel as enabling Israel's behavior but it's worth thinking about the ways that it has restrained that behavior as well. Your point is taken that they're not a traditional separatist group (I used it as shorthand but that was sloppy) but they have been involved in a violent struggle for national rights with Israel for many years. At the very least they want to separate from Israeli military control.

Yeah, I'm not sure I see your point as relevant to mine here? Like if I were making a legal case for Israel to mistreat Palestinians based on their territorial status you'd be right but I'm just pointing out that when dealing with a military conflict plenty of nations unrestrained by a major superpower (or with a different power patron) often act far worse than Israel which suggests that the US may be a modulating influence.

i called him and asked if he had any jews in his office. the communications director declined to comment.

o_O

can't imagine why

oh, lol. it probably helps to know that i'm one of his rare jewish constituents and identified myself as such at the beginning of the convo.

like a lot of GOP politicians, when my representative attacks anti-semitism or cheers on israel, he's not really trying to appeal to people like me, but rather to evangelicals for whom a certain variety of "support for israel" is a key component of their political worldview.

that said, when i've called before to criticize his invocation of "soros" as a bogeyman, noting that it's anti-Semitic, my rep's spokespeople have tried to reassure me that he isn't anti-Semitic by referring to his "unwavering support" for israel. it's their only go-to.

ugh I hate the fact that I really do have a problem with omar's tweet (and am happy to see her statement, which indicates to me that she gets what people bristled at) and yet to talk about it in public fuels a bad-faith campaign against her by people who are only too happy to complain about the baleful influence of monied jews (sometimes referred to as "the media" or "the banks" or "globalists" or "george soros" rather than "AIPAC")

Mordy's OTM that money isn't necessary to explain the support of the US for Israel. Even eschatological reasons take a back seat to naked realpolitik. I would question whether any of that can be called philosemitism, though - if we can separate opposition to Israeli politics from antisemitism we can perhaps separate support for Israel from pro-Jewish sentiment. The American right can be both pro-Israel and anti-Semitic.

American "philosemitism" probably complicates things more than I intended bc what I really meant was more of philojudaism. "we can perhaps separate support for Israel from pro-Jewish sentiment. The American right can be both pro-Israel and anti-Semitic." it can also be, complicatedly, pro-Israel and pro-Judaism in that they feel strong affinities to Judaism as a religion, the Jewish People as a mythohistorical Biblical nation, and Israel as a representation of the mythic Hebrew - innovative, educated, industrious. I take your point to mean (and I agree) that this affection does not necessarily extend to the 80% of American Jews who vote Democratic.

It is interesting, though. I think people often get the money-influence thing the wrong way around. Financial ties to Israel follow from ideological positions, rather than the other way around. I just wanted to point out that the rightists I've met who hold Israel in high regard are usually anti-semitic too. They admire the impression of a hardline state dedicated to its self-defence, etc., but that's because they see the world as nations in a darwinian struggle which we should be more proactive in.

(I'm maybe too drunk to discuss such nuanced and delicate topics but...)

I saw that contradiction in my Grandad who, after leaving the RAF worked for BAE for a long time, in Israel and (for about 20yrs) in Saudi Arabia. And he was always very impressed by Israel, and Israeli pilots, talked approvingly of the six day war etc. He considered himself very pro-Israel. He was also very pro-Arab - in his will he left me his copy of the Koran which he'd been given by the Saudi royals. And he was very 'anti-nazi', for lack of a better word - I first saw Shoah on his recommendation, and he would talk about the horror of the holocaust and the necessity for an Israel for the self-defence of Jewish people.

But he was also an anti-semite. He would avoid and complain about supermarkets which were 'run by Jews', so you would get ripped off if you went there. He would talk about how jewish people looked out for their own, and talk about tormenting the 'Old Jew-boy' in the village he grew up in etc. I guess I just mean that I don't understand anti-semitism, but I can see that it's not incompatible with being pro-Israel.

Fucking hell.

'More tombs desecrated in France before antisemitism protests':

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/19/antisemitism-protest-marches-to-take-place-across-france

Maybe 30m from my apartment, last week someone spray painted "truie juive" on a wall; "truie" means sow, as in female pig (if you care to see, it's one of the pics on this page). My neighborhood is almost entirely Muslim, for what it's worth.

Jewish cemetery desecrators tend to be white supremacists (which isn't to say we should minimize antisemitism when it comes from other quarters).

There’s a tradition of Muslims and Jews in Europe working together on funerary things because their needs and timings are so similar.

Back in December, when the Jewish cemetery of Herrlisheim was desecrated, they also found the number 14 – code for the 'fourteen words', a neo-nazi credo – and this time around, some of the inscriptions were in German.

In Alsace, yes, I would expect neo-Nazis.

In Paris, I would not.

i think "pig" is a particularly muslim insult (for obv reasons)

I think it's worth being specific and talking about arab antisemitism rather than 'muslim antisemitism'

idk euler's particular area's demographics but "pig" is a muslim insult more than a particularly arab one (arab christians eat pig) and antisemitism exists in non-arabic muslim societies as well as arab muslim societies. but maybe i'm misunderstanding your point?

I disagree. While French Muslim antisemitism is especially prevalent among the Arab community, white converts tend to ferry the same kind of discourse, and at least two notorious antisemitic murderers were of Sub-Saharan descent: Amedy Coulibaly, the kosher supermarket shooter, and Youssouf Fofana, who tortured and killed Ilan Halimi.

xp

the antisemitism in iran seems of a piece with arab antisemitism but I'm not aware of substantial histories of antisemitism amongst the countries with the biggest muslim populations, at least no more than most of the west

the residents of my quartier are mostly African, probably about 50% Maghrebi (Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian) and sub-Saharan (Sudanese and Somali mostly). In France they're called "arabes" but they're not Arabs in the usual English sense.

I meant, 50% Maghrebi and 50% sub-Saharan African. There's also a non-trivial Tamil (Sri Lankan refugees) community right here who are Muslims as well.

I don't think descent is relevant so much as your social networks. I don't know much about these incidents but a quick google is showing both these people were born in paris, so I'm not sure what you can infer about the countries their parents came from