Is it real antisemitism or just not supporting Israel?
About when they start going on about “Zionists” Is where I draw the line and where it typically takes a turn.
As a Jewish person, I find it healthy to criticize the Israeli government. Most young Israelis do. Their government has been steamrolled by a wannabe dictator that is corrupt as hell and his team of racist, backwards conservative orthodox buddies.
They were just protesting in the streets weeks ago and now we’re expected to turn around and support the government? Nah. This doesn’t change anything.
People should really stop conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Unfortunately it’s very common and even part of the official classifications used by some countries. To me it seems obvious that this is another attempt to cut off any criticism of the state of Israel by labeling critics as anti-Semitic. Here’s an interesting read about how flawed that logic is:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/07/debunking-myth-that-anti-zionism-is-antisemitic
Could you elaborate on the “zionist” thing? I haven’t really followed the Israel situation (I tried, but it’s just so complicated). What I heard, is that “zionist” is used when talking about the Israel activity in “taking” territory from the surrounding area, is that correct or did I just misunderstand? If I’m not wrong, then what happens when people start going on about it?
The idea that discussing Zionism is a sign of an anti-semite is a shit take. The Zionist movement worked very hard to establish a colony in the middle east, in an area where they knew there were already natives and those natives were hostile to being colonized. It’s impossible to truly study the founding of Israel without learning about the Zionist movement.
This isn’t about religion, or even very much about race. It’s about the powerful asserting their will over the powerless. To some extent you could argue that the Zionists were used by the British to screw over the Arabs, but that doesn’t make the Zionists innocent.
Equating discussions of Zionism with anti-Semitism is part of the Israeli propaganda playbook for dismissing all criticism of Israel’s founding.
You cannot separate Zionism from the formation of the state of Israel and how the history of the conflict has been shaped since.
In order to obtain a more holistic perspective of the conflict people need to know about Zionism, it’s history, and how it currently affects Israeli leadership.
There are still people alive on both sides that lived through Zionist conflicts with the British Mandate and the Nakba.
I’m one of the Israelis who frequently attended the anti-government protest.
I expect you not to support the Israeli government, but to support the Israeli people’s right to defend ourselves from terrorists.
Regardless of whether Israel has a right wing or left wing government, we will not allow thousands of us to be massacred.
We won’t stand by and twiddling our thumbs waiting for the next Hamas attack to kill more of us without responding with our full force.
None of this contradicts the fight to end the occupation. You can be anti-Hamas and anti-occupation at the same time.
Nuance is possible!
I would say isreal has a right to defend itself, but not if they keep stealing land and oppressing the people who attack them.
If you want to defend yourself, first, you have to stop attacking the people who you claim to be defending against.
Hamnas is human garbage, but one can not separate the creation of Israel from the ghettoizing of the Palestinian people.
Nobody deserves terrorist attacks, but this didn’t come out of the blue.
Isreal needs to own up to it’s complicity in the violence before they try to claim to be the sole victims of it.
Then how about your government stop killing and abusing Palestinians. It’s almost as if decades of apartheid oppression, murder, and human rights abuses have consequences
They specifically stated that they where attending anti-governmsnt protests. 🙄
The problem is a lot of people don’t differentiate between the israeli government and the israeli people as a whole - i’ve seen some straight up ‘they had it coming’ style bullshit that is verrry careful to place Good Jews and Bad Jews (the festival goers) to try and get a pass on antisemitsm and maaaan it is transparent as fuck.
What are you talking about? I know Jewish people that openly condemn the behavior of their gov. A person is good or bad depending on their actions - you cannot lump everyone together based on whatever characteristics you want and after that starting a genocide campaign.
The festival goes were just normal people like you and me that were trying to live and enjoy life. Same with the innocent people that are dying in Gaza.
No child is to blame about any of this. And when I think about this (i’m sorry) very stupid conflict, all I can think is people killing children because of land. FUCKING DIRT. Not a specific people, just people, humans, killing children becuase a piece o land, that to be fair it fits everyone! That is of a stupidity that I can not fathom
I must admit, it’s quite refreshing to hear a critical take on the Israeli government from a Jewish person. I don’t know if it’s due to the news sources and forums I typically frequent (e.g. BBC, Guardian, etc), but I feel like it’s quite rare to hear an opinion from someone who actually lives there or who practices the religion.
It’s also quite reassuring (as a fairly ignorant outside observer who is only beginning to learn the tiniest bit about the complex and bloody history of this region) to hear that not every Jewish person or every Israeli likes the way that the state is developing.
Edit: I made some language changes because upon re-reading the parent comment I realised that the poster didn’t actually say whether they lived in Israel or not and I had made a faulty assumption.
I also disagree with many things the Israeli government does. But when people ignore the complete history of Israel and exclusively ventilate the pro-Palestinian propaganda, a red line is crossed for me.
The complete history of Israel forcing Palestinians into ghettos and systematically slaughtering them? The fact that they told civilians to flee to the south and then bombed the very area they claimed would be safe? The fact that they claim the right to self determination but refuse to allow the Palestinians the same right? The fact that netanyahu funded Hamas to destabilize the region so that he’d have pretense to carry out his war crimes?
I don’t condone the attacks by Hamas, but to pretend that Israel isn’t trying to carry out a genocide is crossing a red line for me.
This whole conflict has just always felt like a massive grey area as an outsider. Both sides have done horrible things over the years, with the retaliation often being even worse. Most governments (including mine) are actually supporting both sides, for example through humanitarian aid. That’s just kind of weird when you think about it, in a way they’re enabling both sides to keep going. And I just don’t know if there’s any way out of this besides one side completely destroying the other. Peace talks have been had so many times and it just doesn’t lead anywhere. It just feels inevitable.
