Anti-semitism thread: onwards from 2023

To more directly answer your question (I didn’t mean to obfuscate; I just get distracted), I do not personally advocate that Israel cease to exist.

I really appreciate this. It means everything.

I didn't think you were obfuscating either. I think these are very emotional issues and it's hard to focus and think straight when you are fearful of being accused of this or that.

And I absolutely sympathize and emphathize with the existential threat to Palestinian people. I think we have a lot in common that way.

Yes both of you otm

what does saying Israel shouldn't exist mean to you? does it imply something genocidal? or that Jews shouldn't have anywhere where they can be safe?

I'm not sure what my responsibility is here or if I should even be engaging considering my ancestors are a small part of the reason Israel became a lifeline to millions of people. I have considered that I should never talk about the subject at all. at the same time I can't ignore or punish the people of Gaza because of my inherited guilt that they have nothing to do with. I need to learn to sit with the uncertainty and contradictions and avoid my usual kneejerk reactions. I want to jump in and fix things with easy answers which is not helpful to anyone.

Well, I think there's what it could theoretically imply and what it practically implies. Theoretically, it could imply some kind of binational democratic state with equal rights for all. That sounds fine to me, but I don't live in Israel nor do I intend to, so easy for me to say. I don't think it actually has much support as an idea on either side. That, of course, doesn't mean that can never change, we just aren't very close to it now. There are also all kinds of demographic prognostications in play about who would *really* control the state if that were to happen. And of course there are fears of retribution and retaliation and civil war (in fact I think there could also be intra-Jewish and intra-Palestinian civil war).

I think it's important not to imagine that if you create a power vacuum, it will necessarily be filled with the thing you hope for. We see this play out over and over again, where we naively assume an overthrown repressive state will be replaced with democracy, and instead it is replaced by whoever is best organized, often another repressive group.

Not that this is really immediately on the table anyway. But Hamas's political goal has been to simply resist until Israel is gone, and Israel's goal under Likkud has been to erase the possibility of a Palestinian state. I do hold Israel particularly responsible for failure to do more on the settlement issue before Likkud took power. I want to scan and post a great essay from 1967 or 68 by Yeshayahu Leibowitz called "The Territories." He basically predicted that the occupation of the West Bank would be a disaster for Israel and that the fantasy of creating a "secure border" was illusory as long as Israel antagonized whoever was immediately on the other side of that border. I can't really speak to whether or where Palestinian leadership went wrong or what they were or weren't truly willing to give up under Oslo vs what they said. Negotiations are a poker game, intent is very hard to discern. But I do know that Israel has made it harder to negotiate by settling the territories, and I hold Israel responsible for that.

I think a lot of us here find ourselves in the difficult position of wanting something for Israel/Palestine that a lot of people there don't want, and that the current Israeli government is trying to destroy (and that Hamas also tried to destroy, fwiw, as their entire raison d'etre is non-capitulation to the Israeli state on anything, but I still hold Israel more responsible). I am constantly struggling with this dilemma, and as much as I would like to just wash my hands of it, I don't feel like I can, because I am too personally connected to it.

I really appreciate the reasonable and thoughtful discussion happening here. I especially appreciate the input of horseshoe, for lots of reasons but specifically for a vantage that incorporates or at least has referenced the partition of India, which may (or may not) be a model going forward. (I only say that like that because I'm not particularly well versed in its history or specific repercussions.) Conveniently, India and Pakistan have existed as they are for about as long as Israel has (a product of similar colonial meddling). Has that partition been considered a success? I'd love to know why, or why not, or how.

I would certainly not look to India and Pakistan and the partition as a model for anything!

Assuming Israel and Palestine are one day split into two, there would seem to be parallels. No?

I can only speak for myself but I think it’s a disaster. It’s fairly positional. I suppose if you’re an upper-caste Hindu nationalist, it’s working out okay for you right now, but I imagine even those people are occasionally kept up at night with anxieties about the potential for nuclear war. More specifically, Partition itself unleashed waves of brutal sectarian violence that no one has forgotten, that continue to echo in today’s sectarian violence in the subcontinent. There are plenty of Muslims (and Sikhs, and Christians, etc) in the putative Hindu sanctuary of India, and that’s been working out less and less well for them. Tolerance was enshrined in the Indian constitution in 1948, but Modi has actually removed that language and the majority of Indians seem to agree that tolerance has failed. Pakistan has repeatedly oppressed its religious minorities and also its Muslim populations (Bangladesh) and is just a terrible kleptocracy that is corrupt and terrible.

Again, my family is Kashmiri Muslims, so I have a Point of View on the whole thing. Kashmir…is going to be unrecognizable soon I think; properties considered valuable are going to be settled by Indian Hindus and Muslims will be priced out or killed. Partition was bad, and at this point I am not sure how to staunch the bleeding.

lol Tom D. much pithier and otm

Thanks for that. To be clear, I didn't mean a model as in something to be emulated, something that works, just as an example of how things might turn out. Which doesn't bode well.

Given that India and Pakistan spent nearly 20 years fighting over a glacier, it’s definitely not a model to follow. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siachen_conflict

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/suspect-arrested-in-death-of-jewish-man-after-socal-pro-israel-and-pro-palestinian-rallies/3270208/

A man has been arrested in the death of a 69-year-old Jewish man who suffered fatal injuries at dueling pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian rallies in Thousand Oaks.

Loay Alnaji, 50, of Moorpark, was arrested Thursday at his home on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Paul Kessler. Alnaji's bail will be set at $1 million, according to the Ventura County Sheriff's Department.

Details about what led to the arrest were not immediately available. In a news release announcing the arrest, the sheriff's department did not provide details about the altercation between Kessler and Alnaji at the Nov. 5 rally in the community northwest of Los Angeles.

It was not immediately clear whether Alanji has an attorney who can speak on his behalf. The Ventura County District Attorney's Office said a charging decision is expected by later Thursday and a case status update will be issued at that time.

Analji was identified as an employee with the Ventura County Community College District, where he was employed as a computer science professor. The district said in a statement released Thursday that Analji was placed on administrative leave.

Huh, go figure:

"Antisemitism was rising online. Then Elon Musk’s X supercharged it."

https://wapo.st/47GpBEA

was arrested Thursday at his home on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter

Seems right. You give a guy a shove, he trips, hits his head and dies, that's the charge. And yet when this happened my feed was evenly split betweeen "elderly Jew murdered by crazed Arab / woke prof" and "the Zionist lunged at the peaceful protester who had no choice but to meekly defend himself with his megaphone." And I'm sure those same people will now be evenly split between "FREE ALNAJI" and "the short prison sentence he's likely to get is a slap on the wrist that emboldens the pro-Hamas tendency on campus."

"Antisemitism was rising online. Then Elon Musk’s X supercharged it."

I'm just gonna come out and say it, and you guys are probably gonna think I'm naive, but I am pretty surprised that Musk just went straight to classic "Jews in the shadows are behind everything" antisemitism. And I still don't know whether to think something has gone organically wrong with his brain or whether from the very beginning when he talked about "free speech" he meant "the freedom to reveal the shadowy Jews behind everything is in danger from the shadowy Jews who control the means of information transmission." I can't rule that out!

The ADL is now cool with him cause he’s pro-Israel

Well I'm not the ADL

And I think Musk is about as pro-Israel as John fucking Hagee

Cool, cool

🚨ADVISORY! 🚨
Masked neo-Nazis have been spotted at the Library Mall marching toward the Capitol Building. They look like they might be Blood Tribe but unconfirmed. More info to follow as it becomes available.
Please stay safe! pic.twitter.com/bpILMsVgFd

— MadCityRWWatch (@WiRWWatch) November 18, 2023

It’s so weird for an extremely powerful billionaire to complain that Jews control things. Like he has more power than all but a handful of people in the entire world. Unless Jewish space lasers blew up his latest launch.

But he lacks the freedom to say whatever racist or anti-semitic shit he imagines, that's the rub.

must be economic insecurity

But the thing is despite being perhaps the most powerful and autonomous man in history, he doesn’t have 100% power to just control reality. So it must be the Jews.

Lots of people disagree and/or dislike like him, and objectively this can't be the case if people were acting with free will, but as we know individual agency doesn't exist it is a question of who is pulling the strings. He is now in a powerful position and is pulling the strings and yet.....thre are still people not playing ball.

This can only mean there are more strings that people somehow further up than him are pulling

dilettante and anvil fully otm about how this psychology works

I wish I could find it now but a couple of years ago I read a long article about Tolyatti, and if I recall correctly it had something about the city mafia boss and then an FSB head meeting, and one of them asking "yes but who is pulling the strings really", and that at the top there was still the perception someone further up was really controlling things (which may just have been a function of the fact their control wasn't omnipotent)

The point being I guess that leaders and powerful people aren't immune to conspiratorialism, may even be more prone to it, as controllers themselves and perceiving the world through a controller/controlled lens

only the Jews could be so devious as to get him shadowbanned on his own website

Also, I think some of this stuff is anti-semitism, but some isn't anti-semitism - but these aren't completely distinct, and some of the stuff that isn't anti-semitism today could become so tomorrow

For a lot of people with this mindset, its not necessarily Jewish people that are pulling these other strings, its the CIA, its capitalists, its Americans - and there's nothing inherently anti-semitic about that. But there's overlap and underlying thinking is the same

So its not just individuals that have no agency, the same is true for movements such as color revolutions or Maidan. Its also why Ukraine isn't real, and neither is Ecuador, Albania, or New Zealand.

I don't feel like posting this on the Israel thread(s), but I thought this was some interesting context/background for those Philly restaurant protests. Apparently this group has been antagonistic to Israeli restaurants for years. They consider Israeli food Palestinian culinary appropriation. This is a story I saw from a couple of years ago:

https://philly.eater.com/2021/6/23/22546803/philadelphia-food-festival-canceled-apologies-israeli-food-truck

And this was a more recent piece about the failure of "food diplomacy":

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/dining/israel-hamas-war-divides-american-chefs.html

I don't think it's anti-Semitism, but it does seem like small potatoes (no pun intended) in the grand scheme of things, and a waste of energy on the part of protestors. But then, I also feel it's kind of ridiculous when any group claims exclusive rights to any particular cuisine, given that historically food has always been a fusion of influences and ingredients.

It’s like this group never heard of Mizrahi Jewish people?

I think (and this *is* suited to the anti-Semitism thread) that a lot of people conflate Judaism with Eastern-European immigrants. Maybe because they're more easily recognizable as immigrants? But of course there are Jews in Israel from all over, including from the middle east and Africa. My rabbi growing up was from Morocco.

I long for the day the I/P hummus wars are at the jokey level of the Nigerian/Ghanaian jollof rice wars.

Many of the MENA foods that have come to be a part of Israeli food are not even from the Levant. If a Palestinian restaurant serves shakshuka, is that cultural appropriation?

I don't know that it's antisemitism directly -- I guess you could tie it to a trope about Jews being inauthentic, not having "their own culture" or whatever, but mostly I think it's just ignorant and an example of why that framework of looking at culture has its limits.

Yeah, I think it's just a trope tied into thinking of all Jews in the area as being Eastern European. Oh, look at these Polish people coming down here to serve falafel, the audacity!

We got into an argument as a family about those congressional hearings. My position was that those university presidents made fools of themselves, not just for their meal-mouthed responses but also because they were easily led into a pretty familiar "when did you stop beating your wife?" trap that left them with no good answers, at least none that would satisfy their disingenuous interlocutors, who want to define the terms of protest to use to their rhetorical and legal advantage. I also pointed out my own discomfort at seeing these Trump supporting assholes coming to our purported defense, and raised their presence as a red flag.

My family's response was outrage at these higher education avatars, since there *has* been a rise in anti-semitism, and anything close to a denial felt like a further assault on at least their perception of safety.

I sympathize and am conflicted myself. I think one reason that anti-semitism sometimes seems inflated or amplified is that the number of Jews is relatively minimal. You never see huge numbers of angry people in support of Jews in any context, so a mass of people in the mere tens, let alone tens of thousands, pointing angrily in your general direction, even if they are not necessarily pointing at you specifically, is bound to raise the level of paranoia and, again, at least the feeling of being targeted (imo). Someone on that cursed thread invoked "the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend," and that of course works both ways and can lead to the alienation of those in the middle (in every sense). When I point out to my daughter that Stefanik is a piece of shit, and my daughter's response is essentially "well, at least she's against anti-semitism," it does maybe indicate that a lot of so-called allies aren't being clear in their support of Jews in the face of all this Israel/Palestine noise.

I personally have seen a whole lot of "well, *of course* I'm against anti-Semitism," or "no one I saw at the rally was anti-semitic," which is kind of the rhetorical or anecdotal equivalent of "one of my best friends is Jewish," invoked as a form of inoculation. If just a handful of voices among the protests and protestors are virulent and they still have a place there, I take little comfort in the support of the silent majority. It's like saying "not all cops" or "not everyone at Charlottesville." That's little solace if you're someone targeted by the proverbial bad apples.

Anyway, here's some good old fashioned anti-semitism amplified by current events and ignorance:

"Festival’s rejection of menorah lighting leads to accusations of antisemitism"

https://wapo.st/41fYHBk

That Virginia incident was extremely sad and ignorant. The WaPo headline added insult to injury.

But the question, Josh, is would you hesitate for a second to send your own kid to any of those colleges? I wouldn't.

OK, sorry, I guess that's not THE question, that's not fair. It's just A question.

I'm not Jewish, but the incident at Cooper Union (where the students hid in a library while protestors banged on the windows and yelled at them) is pretty concerning to me and I think that, yes I would have major issues with that if I were Jewish and my child were considering going there. That's something that crosses a line and it sounds like the college could have done a better job in addressing it. If these students were black and those protestors were white this wouldn't even be a discussion.

If these students were black and those protestors were white this wouldn't even be a discussion.

Josh, I found that a really thoughtful and interesting post.

When I point out to my daughter that Stefanik is a piece of shit, and my daughter's response is essentially "well, at least she's against anti-semitism," it does maybe indicate that a lot of so-called allies aren't being clear in their support of Jews in the face of all this Israel/Palestine noise.

I guarantee you if you had white supremicists marching on a college campus screaming at black students huddled in a library in the US the motherfucking shit would hit the fan, and for good reason. It would be all you'd hear about for weeks. There would be BLM marches across the country again. I'm not saying authorities or those in power would necessarily be responsive but people would care!

This isn''t the synagogue I grew up in, but it's down the street and I spent many hours of my childhood hanging out there. My parents still live in Albany most of the year. gift link:

Man Is Arrested After Firing Gun Near Albany Synagogue

One thing I have learned in the past two months is that while I become more emotional as I get older on the superficial level of e.g. crying in movies, I also become more dispassionate in how I form my beliefs about things. Which is to say, this incident is horrifying and literally hits close to home, but I just immediately classify it as an outlier from which I don't jump to conclusions or feel triggered to react. As I wrote about a month or so ago on one of the other threads, my wife is in the (non-clergy) leadership of our synagogue and for the past couple weeks she is drowning in demands from the more law-and-order/paranoid faction of our community to have an armed guard at the synagogue. While I recognize that there is value in that as a deterrent, I feel completely clear-eyed that that choice would be complicit in a descent towards a way of life -- paranoia, distrust of others, belief that conflict and tribalism will win out over basic human decency -- that I don't ascribe to. But then shit like this happens and that position just gets harder and harder to defend to the people who don't see it that way. Sigh.

my synagogue has had security (not sure if armed) during the high holidays as long as i can remember. there have never been any anti-semitic attacks or anything to prompt this, i think it was prompted by violence in israel

Here's the local reporting: https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/mufid-fawaz-alkhader-heads-court-temple-israel-18541327.php

this happened in the Bay Area a few years ago: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/man-with-history-of-mental-illness-convicted-of-threatening-san-francisco-synagogue/

Nothing happened to this guy when he did it in Berkeley because people here dismiss threats by the mentally ill. He finally had to threaten an SF synagog for anything to happen to him.

The Jewish Community Center in SF has always required trunk checks when you park in their garage and have major amounts of security when you enter. It's paranoid to a degree but yeah, shit like this happens and then you think "well, alright".

I guarantee you if you had white supremicists marching on a college campus screaming at black students huddled in a library in the US the motherfucking shit would hit the fan, and for good reason. It would be all you'd hear about for weeks. There would be BLM marches across the country again. I'm not saying authorities or those in power would necessarily be responsive but people would care!

our synagogue doors lock automatically, and since 10/7 we have a rotating group of volunteer congregants who stand by the door on Saturday mornings to greet (read: screen) people as they walk in.

High holidays is common to have that level of security, it's inherently a high profile time. To do it regularly feels pretty different, especially outside a big city (I'm in Western Mass).

Who organised the BLM protests? Black people, many of whom have since died in mysterious circumstances. This is a version of the argument made about battered women’s shelters - why don’t they exist for men - when the answer is always the same: the group that wanted them had to push for them themselves.

I think I mentioned before but maybe not on here, I was travelling through some random bit of Essex years ago and passed a Jewish cemetery. It had high gates, barbed wire, what looked like a guard’s office. I’d never seen anything like it. I texted a friend of mine who’s local and Jewish to ask about it, and I was like, is this a special cemetery? and she was like, no, that’s just what they’re like. I found the unsaid, that this is how people are forced to live so unspeakably awful.

There is a separate community security force I would see when I lived in London, called Shomrim, which is dedicated to this sort of protection and the CST (Community Services Trust) also covers synagogues. There is an old synagogue near me that’s in use and I take pictures of churches and such often so I was outside looking at the stone and the windows and I’d been there maybe ten seconds when I saw the CST sign, warning me that I was being filmed. I knew I was doing nothing wrong, but the notion of having to live in such fear - unspeakable.

But the question, Josh, is would you hesitate for a second to send your own kid to any of those colleges? I wouldn't.

No, but I think that's because Jews are so attuned to a baseline level of discomfort that many understand there is no definitive "safe" space, with an irony being the closest many may feel to such a thing (synagogue, say, or Hillel or similar concentrations of Jews) just emphasizes your bullseye status, not least because imo Jews are not often perceived as a protected class (as the man said, Jews don't count). I do know a vibrant Jewish community was important to my older daughter when she was applying to school, and it's important to my younger daughter as well. But it's just another stress inducing aspect of being stuck in the middle when, say, you're interested in Penn because their bachelor of nursing program is well regarded but slightly less competitive to get into than some other schools, but then you see all this shit on the news (legit or no) that make you question your decisions and goals.

There is so much we just look beyond - meetings with the FBI at our synagogue, for example (which in our case has apparently been happening), extra security at cemeteries (!) - because it's expected by us. But it's also mostly invisible to the public at large, because why wouldn't it be? I know this is true for other groups as well, but there is literally no place on earth where Jews are anything more than a tiny minority except ... well, you know. Hence the baseline level of discomfort.