From a hotel in Kyoto to a sandwich joint in Edinburgh, the world is becoming hostile toward Israelis who are learning that a vacation won’t shield them from the Gaza war.
During the nine months of war the Israeli tourist experience abroad has been marked by fears of antisemitism and efforts to avoid pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
According to reports by Israeli media and posts online, some of those worries have recently turned real for a number of Israeli tourists.Anecdotal incidents at touristic locations around the world are making it clear that even though there is no official policy of excluding Israelis, that is sometimes the situation on the ground.
An especially bumpy week began on June 17 at the Material Hotel in Kyoto, Japan, when an Israeli named Alex was informed that his reservation had been canceled due to the allegations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. The Material told Alex that it was “not able to accept reservations from persons we believe might have ties to the Israeli army,” as reported by Israeli website Ynet.
The story made the rounds on social media, produced a stern protest letter from Israel’s ambassador in Tokyo, and led to a rebuke by the Kyoto municipality that the hotel had breached Japanese business law and must ensure that such a transgression won’t happen again.
It honestly feels like we somehow have to take back the (very loaded) word “antisemitism”, as Israel and its supporters seem intent on making it mean “anything the Israeli government disagrees with”.
I’m not an antisemite, and have no hate whatsoever for anyone because of theirs religious beliefs or where they come from. My views are antizionist and antigenocide. Which are strictly political views, not tied to any specific demographic of people.
Definitely a good point, but not very relevant as the article doesn’t really touch on antisemitism, but more on blanket rejection of Israeli citizens with no regard for what their opinion may be
That’s because Israel got what they wished for when they adopted Herzl’s idea.
Herzl said that Jews will never be accepted as truly American or truly French etc. so they need their own country and form their own distinct nation. Well they got it and found out that form of nationalism is outdated and exposes them to these accusations. Israel claims to speak for all Jews, and thus people draw the false conclusion that Jews worldwide collectively support all Israeli policies even the rightwing and criminal ones. The existence of Israel only worsened the accusations that Jews are a fifth column or secretly more loyal to Israel over their own countries.
It’s actually kinda sad because diaspora Jews are more likely to oppose Netanyahu, and this discrimination is being wielded by Netanyahu to claim they won’t be safe anywhere unless they immigrate to Israel.
Zionism is the belief the Jewish people deserve a place to call their own, similar to the belief the Italian people deserve a place to call their own. Antizionism is the belief the Jewish people don’t deserve a place to call their own.
Had someone came up and said the Italian people don’t deserve a place to call their own, would you not call them racist towards Italians?
Why not the same here?
You can be against the actions of the Israeli government (I definitely am), but saying it shouldn’t exist is a whole other ballpark.
In your opinion am I a Zionist?
I believe Israel should be forced back to 1947 borders and there should be thousands of deportations to The Hague for war crime trials. I’d also like part of Jerusalem to be removed from both Israel and Palestine and turned into a world heritage site administered by UNESCO.
I am anti colonization and don’t think they should have created Israel as a nation state displacing an existing community but that horse has bolted.
It shouldn’t exist. They had a chance but they fucked around. There’s plenty of nationalities that don’t have sovereign countries. Anthropologists point to roughly 11 nations in the US alone. No government elevating one nation above others should be allowed to continue to exist. Especially where they commit human rights abuses to do so. In fact it’s generally the idea of a single nation country that begets these abuses.
So no. They don’t get a land specifically and only for Jews. They aren’t special.
To further drive the point home, you bring up Italy, but Italy was only recently unified in European history. If you want a Jewish version of Italy then you want a single state solution with equal rights and representation for Palestinians.
Exactly: I am antizionist because Jews getting a place of their own implicitly means that some other group, which currently has that place, must be displaced.
Saying that Jews should have a place of their own is not comparable to saying that Italians should have a place of their own, because being Italian is tied to having hereditary ties to the place that is Italy, whereas being a Jew has no tie to a specific piece of land. It is rather comparable to saying that Christians, Muslims, the Amish, or some other group of people that are dispersed and unified by beliefs not tied to a place should have their own place, and that if such a place does not exist it is legitimate to displace others to establish it.
I firmly believe that Israel should never have been created. As do many Jews (often ultra orthodox ones). However, I recognise the reality on the ground, that the state now exists and that many of those that moved there have now lived there for up to several generations. I do not believe that two wrongs make a right, and as such, I’m not a proponent of dissolving the state of Israel and displacing the Jews that now live there to make room for those displaced following 1948. However, I do believe that the displaced Palestinians should be allowed to return and have equal rights within the now existing state of Israel.
You mix up the religion Judaism with the ethnicity and culture. The jewish cultural and ethnic group is amongst the least religious peoples in the world, as many as 75% according to a study a few years back being atheist or agnostic (myself included).
The various jewish ethnic groups do have genetic ties to a geographic area and have diseases almost entirely unique to that ancestry.
That does however beg the question of whether ancestry is any sort of motivation to lay claim to an area of land in the first place. A question that can be endlessly debated and if accepted at face value opens up endless cans of worms. (How far back? Forever? Can it be lost? What if multiple peoples have claim to an area? etc. etc.)
There’s a few points of critique.
Religion is not the same as nationality, there isn’t a country that is dedicated to Christianity for example. (well, you have the Vatican but you get what I mean, it’s not a nation) It’s a different thing, so you can’t argue that Jews have no home since they too have a nationality from the country they were born in, like everyone does regardless of religion. I’m not arguing against Isreal existing to be clear, just that having a country for a religion isn’t some given right that only Jews don’t have. They mgiht be the only ones to have it depending on how interpret it.
There’s interpretations of zionism. At its core it’s the belief that the religion should also be a nation. But different sides form around the “how” part. While having a country to live in isn’t bad itself, if zionism means driving out others or straight up genocide of others, then it’s fair to bluntly oppose it.
Isreal exists now, but the continued killing and takeover of Palestine is horrible. And these days many bind zionism to the acts and opinions that flourish in Isreal that portray Palestinians as some evil that should be removed. It think opposing an nationalistic view like Zionism is a reasonable action when the country is engaging in invasion.
A point of critique to your critique. There are ethnic jews, cultural jews and religious jews. Most ethnic/cultural jews are not religious jews. See more in my other comment
Just because someone is born in a country doesn’t automatically make them “of that nation” identity-wise first and foremost. Take the romani peoples as another example, they often identify first and foremost as romani, rather than by the country of their birth.
The Italians already had Italy.
In this case, a proper analogy would be if furries demanded a place to call their own.
Would you just give it to them?
Italy is a worse example than that even. It wasn’t unified until 1861 and even then it was a country of two peoples. The North ruled at the expense of the South. (Yes I know there appear to be parallels to another, larger country with an 1861 event. But they are only skin deep.) And after World War 2 the country took care to be a democracy that represented the north and south.
They use Italy as an example like it was always around and unified. But it really wasn’t.
Or in a less ludicrous example, Romani people. It would still be met with relentless opposition from whoever you were trying to take the land from.
This has been going on for years though. In the same way that it is not islamophobic to criticize somebody who happens to be Muslim. It is not anti-semitic to criticize somebody who is Jewish. But you try explaining that to Jewish person and you get pushback as if somehow criticizing the military and their government, is the same as criticizing them even though I never even mentioned them.
According to my parents this argument has been going on since the '60s so I don’t think it’s going to get resolved anytime soon.
