Israel/Palestine post 10/7 - follow-on events/thoughts as relate to other countries

People are boycotting and targeting businesses owned by Michael Solomonov, whose culinary empire doubles as soft propaganda for Israel. https://www.zahavrestaurant.com/chef.html

"Goldie, Goldie you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide," the protesters can be heard shouting in the video.

The protesters shouted outside the restaurant and vandalized it, officials said.

This is not a great look.

My friend who lives in South Philly said it was more than just one guy’s businesses, that other Jewish-owned businesses were getting targeted. If that’s true, I’m not sure that’s how BDS is meant to operate (I don’t buy Israeli produce or goods fwiw, but personalising Zahav guy in that way doesn’t sit right with me).

Solomonov has raised around 100k for IDF related charities, and that seems to be what groups are protesting. However there's also a boycott of other businesses:

Since October, though, the Philadelphia Free Palestine Coalition has targeted what they claim to be “Zionist” restaurants and owners for boycotting — a boycott that has targeted not just restaurants who raise money for the IDF, but any restaurant owned by those they identify as a “Zionist” or raising money for “Israel” (“the Zionist State,” in the organization’s words). The lack of clarity from the coalition around the parameters around how they define a “Zionist” individual have left some to interpreting that they’re mainly boycotting openly Jewish restaurant owners and chefs.

BDS certainly isn’t meant to target individuals. I don’t know about the Philly Free Palestine Coalition’s goals around any bans or boycotts.

That said, Solomonov is an apologist for Israeli fascism, and isn’t some small businessman. I don’t really have a lot to say about it other than that, because we’re probably not going to agree.

Meanwhile, those businesses are still open and doing pretty well, and hundreds of Palestinians are getting murdered by a religious fascist Israeli government every day, so I am not too concerned about them at the moment.

In what sense is he an "apologist for Israeli fascism?"

If you’re raising funds for the IDF and you have said stuff like the below quote in official interviews, sorry, it’s apologism.

"Representing Israel and being an ambassador for Israel is my life's work, as is representing Philly. I think both places are often misunderstood and not appreciated to their fullest."

can’t believe i honestly have to debate people about this, the guy raises money for the military forces that are committing atrocities.

See, in that case I would probably not want to eat at his places but I wouldn’t picket - I’d recommend Palestinian food elsewhere instead. The last time I picketed a restaurant was at a UK burger place that deceived its workers (some of whom were undocumented) into attending a staff meeting where Immigration Control were waiting for them.

that's too bad, Zahav is an incredible restaurant.

I can attest to the absolute astonishment of Federal Donuts, but that’s all I know of his businesses— and I didn’t realize they’d switched ownership until a few weeks ago.

So the only info I could find about him raising money for an "IDF related charity" is United Hatzalah, which is a volunteer EMS service that serves all of Israel. I don't think the fact that it treats IDF soldiers along with civilians is really equivalent to making it an "IDF related charity" but maybe there's something more to it that I'm missing? I'm sure Palestinian medical services treat Hamas fighters too.

I guess I see the argument as far as him doing soft pro-Israel prop or whatever. Like I said, not going to lose my mind over it.

fwiw I saw this on bluesky when the protest came up: https://forward.com/food/378197/star-chef-solomonov-named-israels-new-culinary-ambassador/

But protesting this guy seems like a total waste of time and energy, tactically speaking

He told the public that he would be donating 100 percent of all sales on Thursday, October 12th to Friends of United Hatzalah — a nonprofit emergency medical service that is currently partnering with Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) during the war to provide medical supplies and training. The fundraiser raised more than $100,000, according to Solomonov’s Instagram.

While United Hatzalah is supporting the Israeli army during wartime, typically it functions as emergency medical support complementary to Magen David Adom, Israel’s paramedic and Red Cross service.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/04/white-house-philadelphia-protest-israel-restaurant-antisemitic

wow quoting Canary Mission just because they emailed you is pretty bad

The amount of manufactured consent that people are breathlessly buying into about this incident is wild— a few stickers were put on a door. Some slogans were chanted. And suddenly thousands of people calling for an end to genocide are guilty of antisemitism. Ridiculous.

Speaking of genocide and the inability of western media and governments to say what is happening:

Prism: Your research also touches on how the identities of the victims can shape conceptions of genocide. I was wondering if you could tell me a bit more about that.

Samudzi: It’s this idea that there are certain kinds of people that are inviolable: that certain kinds of people, because they are not human, can be killed and enslaved and rendered as collateral damage. And so what’s difficult and what’s challenging about these genocide recognitions or these utilizations of international law is that all of these liberal democratic international political structures have the logics of imperialism and colonialism enshrined within them.

For example, the ICC overwhelmingly has tried and convicted Africans. This is not to say that the people who had been participating in the ongoing brutal humanitarian crises in the Congo should not be brought to any kind of justice. But it is to say that—why is it so much easier for international law to consistently go after these African violators of international law while they’re so unable to confront these Western states? Why was there not more insistence for George Bush or Tony Blair to go to the Hague for what they did to Afghanistan and to Iraq?

The world has been divided into racial geographies of people who create these laws and invent and interpret definitions of criminality and people who are simply subject to their political and geopolitical whims.

Yesterday, I asked a Foreign Office minister if British soldiers were being deployed on the ground in Gaza. He refused to answer.

Today, I have written to the Foreign Secretary demanding urgent clarification. pic.twitter.com/uTvqA1Drri

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) December 5, 2023

Right now there's a House Hearing on Antisemitism on College Campuses and Congressmen are calling out UPenn Professors by name and saying they are members of terrorist organizations.

Horrible.

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Quite a brave thread, I think, in several respects. I hope Sky backs her in the way that certain other Anglophone news organisations definitely wouldn't. pic.twitter.com/0vH0NFQzPn

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) December 5, 2023

Right now there's a House Hearing on Antisemitism on College Campuses and Congressmen are calling out UPenn Professors by name and saying they are members of terrorist organizations.

Asking honestly, worried for some people I know.

I think it's over now, but I heard some of it through this page:

https://thehill.com/homenews/4341930-lawmakers-confront-university-leaders-on-rising-antisemitism-live-updates/

Here's a vid of a Congressman demanding specific profs to be fired:

UPenn's president tries to justify not firing faculty who have openly expressed antisemitic viewpoints.@RepJimBanks: "You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth. You're defending it." pic.twitter.com/NlqHtJhscx

— House Committee on Education & the Workforce (@EdWorkforceCmte) December 5, 2023

Okay, not anyone I know.

Still, completely absurd that this is happening at all IMHO. Just goes to show that Islamic students don’t matter to politicians or on college campuses.

One thing to keep in mind is that Philadelphia has the third highest Muslim population of any city in the US— a few blocks from UPenn’s main campus is an incredible and thriving Little Lebanon (tho of course it is made up of Lebanese, Palestinian, Yemeni, Tunisian, and other nationalities).

The anger at Solomonov is also part of this— even before the current conflict, he was accused of essentially appropriating Palestinian and Middle Eastern food and labeling it “Israeli.”

(Note that I merely know of these conflicts with Solomonov and am reporting them)

David Adler
@davidrkadler
BREAKING 🇮🇱🇩🇪 Starting this month, the German state of Saxony-Anhalt will require all applicants for German citizenship to submit a signed declaration of Israel's right to exist

Talk about overcompensating...

that house discussion was the lead up to this toothless resolution that conflates all anti-zionism with anti-semitism.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/05/politics/house-vote-resolution-condemning-antisemitism/index.html

that conflates all anti-zionism with anti-semitism.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Tuesday, December 5, 2023 3:43 PM bookmarkflaglink

Not this again.

We've done this.

In this case it’s the Congress stating that anti-Zionism equals Antisemitism rather than folks on the internet arguing about it.

From Rep. Nadler’s opposition statement:

More problematically, the resolution suggests that ALL anti-Zionism is antisemitism. That is either intellectually disingenuous or just factually wrong. And it unfairly implicates many of my orthodox former constituents in Brooklyn, many of whose families rose from the ashes of the Holocaust.

While most anti-Zionism is indeed antisemitic, the authors, if they were at all familiar with Jewish history and culture, should know about Jewish anti-Zionism that was, and is, expressly NOT antisemitic. This resolution ignores the fact that even today, certain orthodox Hasidic Jewish communities—the Satmars in New York and others—as well as adherents of the pre-state Jewish labor movement have held views that are at odds with the modern Zionist conception.

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “the anti-Zionist world-view of the ultra-Orthodox groups . . . like the Satmar Hasidism perceives Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel as an anti-messianic act. . .” This is to say that these ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jews believe that only the messiah can bring about the true Israel. And, I assure you, the Satmars are certainly NOT antisemitic.

I should also note that there are those who try to smear even progressive pro-Israel supporters with the inappropriate label of “Israel hater” or “anti-Zionist.” Under this resolution, those who love Israel deeply but criticize some of its policy approaches could be considered anti-Zionist. That could make every Democratic Jewish member of this body—because they all criticized the recent Israeli judicial reform package—de facto antisemites. Might that be the authors’ intention?

Again, let me be unequivocally clear: most anti-Zionism, particularly in this moment, has a real antisemitism problem. But we cannot fairly say that one equals the other.

this was a good report on it: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/house-anti-semitism-resolution/

I'm agreeing with you.

The resolution was stupid and the correct vote was "present."

It distracted from the testimony of the hearing of the horrific conditions on US campuses. It was an accountability for antisemitism hearing. Not an accountability for antizionism hearing.

Both violence towards Muslim students and death threats to Jewish students are abhorrent. They don't cancel each other out.

Except only one seems to be a real priority on campuses at the moment?

I think that one of the reasons I am so frustrated with current conversations about college campus environments is that there is an execrable rise in hatred toward both Jewish students and Muslim students, but the institutions seem to be really addressing only the former while presuming that the latter is just business-as-usual.

This is to say: the amount of latent, even blatant, antisemitism on college campuses before 10/7 was awful and real, and so was the amount of Islamophobia. I have taught students who told me that they didn’t wear their hijab because of Islamophobic harassment, and that’s in a city like Philly with a huge (and racialized) Muslim population.

I guess this is all to say that I really want people to feel safe, yet I become really frustrated when it feels like one group’s safety is privileged over another’s, in an almost exact mirror image of how things are playing out in the larger conflict.

It's a really stupid resolution and it's depressing that it exists. It strikes me as potentially somewhat inconsequential, but I really don't want to see further moves toward a McCarthy-like inquest into antizionism (and I don't even label myself as an antizionist).

Muslim students being shot does not cancel out with words directed at anyone.

yet I become really frustrated when it feels like one group’s safety is privileged over another’s, in an almost exact mirror image of how things are playing out in the larger conflict.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Tuesday, December 5, 2023 6:40 PM bookmarkflaglink

Did you watch the hearing?

What they are talking about is not privileging any group at the expense of another. It is about providing education in an environment free of bullying and harassment based on national origin, race, or ethnicity in accordance with federal law. This is an incredibly low bar and applies to all protected groups.

It's a nefarious thing to twist legitimate opposition to antisemitism in the US, or any group for that matter, into an affront against other US groups. Any principled legal argument against discrimination or harassment based on national origin, race or ethnicity is also a principled argument against illegal discrimination and harassment affecting other protected groups. If opposing discrimination or harassment of any protected group upsets you, then you might have some issues.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/05/nine-arrested-over-pro-palestinian-banner-in-london

felicity, your post doesn’t address the heart of my post, and willfully misreads me as another effort to smear me. i won’t be interacting with you or your bad-faith arguments on this site any longer.

Maybe a weird question, but is anyone familiar with Nissim Black? He's coming to perform at a Jewish solidarity rally here next week. I'd never heard of him, on first glance he seems like kind of a religious kook. But I have no idea what his standing is culturally in Israel or elsewhere.

Israeli officials justify bombing Gaza by recalling the Allied bombing of Dresden.

2 problems with that argument:
1 The Geneva Convention was brought in after WW2 to prevent such mass killings of civilians.
2 The destruction in Gaza is already comparable after just 2 months. pic.twitter.com/0HVbuc38SC

— James Schneider (@schneiderhome) December 7, 2023

The bombing of Dresden was two days.

I believe the point is that the destruction is still ongoing in Gaza

yeah I'm not sure what he's trying to convey in that post. that said both situations are deplorable and no one should positively compare their actions to the bombing of dresden as though that were some kind of good thing. maybe Israel needs to read Slaughterhouse Five.

They've been using that analogy since the start of the bombing campaign.

Sorry, James Schneider is "Israel"? Why do people provide these Twix posts without source or attribution.

Bombing is bad, sexual assault as warfare is bad, hostage taking is bad. What source are we discussing.

The tweet is discussing what Israel have said and why that's a problem. I don't know who is saying "bombing etc. is good here".