The difference between righteous disgust at Israel’s genocide vs actual anti-semitism
The latest tragic murder of two Jews in Manchester has the usual apologists out claiming anti-semitism as if two murdered British Jews are somehow comparable to the genocide Israel is waging in Gaza.
Let’s be 100% clear – anti-semitism has no place in our movement on the Left.
We don’t hate Israeli’s because they are Jewish!
We hate Israeli’s because they are butchering Palestinians with war crimes that amount to genocide!
I believe the terrible pogroms in Europe and the Holocaust against the Jews during World War 2 are a disgrace to humanity and the enormity of Germany’s industrialised extermination of the Jewish people demanded a response from us globally to support a Israeli homeland.
I stand with the Palestinian AND the Israeli people when it comes to peace, and I acknowledge the many, many, many Israeli’s who are as horrified as we are by what Netanyahu has done in their name.
Equally however, Israel IS a democracy (they love to remind us of that all the time) and ultimately it is because Israel is a democracy that this genocide is ultimately the responsibility of the Israeli people.
Caitlin Johnstone, possibly one of the best new wave Australian critical bloggers looks at the Manchester murder this way…
Whenever western Jews get hurt these days you always see the Israel supporters having a big parade where they go “Okay that’s it, wrap it up, nobody gets to criticize Israel’s behavior anymore because you’re causing terrorism!” And then everyone ignores them and goes back to protesting the genocide, because that’s ridiculous.
I don’t know whether the Manchester attack had anything to do with Gaza. It could have just been some guy having a mental health crisis. It could have been something else. But the fact that so many Israel apologists are jumping out of the woodwork to say this means everyone needs to stop defending Palestine is very revealing in and of itself.
Some thoughts:
Murder is wrong. Israel should stop committing it.
Antisemitism is wrong. Israel should stop fomenting it by massacring children under the banner of the Star of David while claiming to represent all Jews.
Terrorism is wrong. Israel should stop perpetrating it by deliberately targeting civilians with mass scale violence for the purpose of advancing a political objective.
Attacking places of worship is wrong. Israel should stop bombing mosques and churches.
I wish the attack on the Manchester synagogue had never happened. I also feel weird about even talking about it while dozens of Palestinians are killed today whose individual names I’ll never know and whose individual deaths I’ll never see decried in western media headlines.
Their lives didn’t matter any less than the two people who were murdered in the synagogue attack. They’re just not white westerners, so their lives aren’t treated as significant. Their violent deaths aren’t seen as horrific. Their murderers aren’t denounced as monsters.
I’m seeing Israel supporters claiming that this attack means everyone needs to stop protesting against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, just like they claimed after two Israeli embassy staffers were killed in Washington back in May. Their demands will be ignored just like last time, because they are stupid. Even if a double homicide is directly motivated by opposition to Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza, that is not a valid reason to stop opposing an active genocide. This shouldn’t even need to be said.
…exactly.
The should be zero tolerance for actual anti-semitism but righteous disgust at Israel’s genocide.
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I am not anti jewish but I am anti israel as a nation because how can what they are doing be the right thing for any human to do to another .What really annoys me is how one side are branded as bad because they are standing up against years of oppression by their neighbour and protecting themselves and their land from being take by colonists .When was Israel given the right to take any land .The enabelers ,the rest of the world ,need to step up and grow some balls and take the government of Israel down .They should be labeled as terrorists as they are the ones that have been active in terrorizing the Palastinians for decades .Who gave them the power to police what their neighbours could do on a daily basis for the last 50 or so years .Why were they allowed to control where people could go or not go in their own land or what they could eat or not eat .Why were they allowed to shoot and kill people at will or rape the women and kids for fun and go unpunished and lock people up for years because they objected to all of the above .And some of us wonder why there are some people out there that have had enough of the pandering to the jewish genocide of the last 50 plus years .
They love to bandy around this word, anti-Semitism. Why is it that no-one else has a special word all of their own, to use, to smite possible criticism and keep it at bay?
Israeli is a democracy and is committing genocide against its indigenous population who are mainly of the Muslim Abrahamic faith likewise in India a democracy committing murderous crimes against their Muslim population. What do these countries have in common?
“Zionism & Hindutva” share the same ideology remember India was a staunch supporter of the Palestinians however over recent decades especially with Modi as their PM its shifted and now supports the apartheid state using undemocratic methods to erase certain demographics of their population
“We don’t hate Israeli’s because they are Jewish!”
At least one regular commentator in this blog hates them for exactly that reason.
Please do tell?
At least one regular commentator hates Palestinians just because of their birth so both sides have unbalanced individuals.
That’s no excuse to allow the genocide to continue though.
“At least one”? Bonnie you are being somewhat overly generous with your description.
Let’s face it, there will be a lot of Israelis that are about Semitic as I am. Converting doesn’t make you a Semite.
Thanks Martyn for an intelligent Christ like response to this situation. Unfortunately there will always be people doing bad things in response to the genocide that Israel is committing so it’s completely fair to condemn both actions although Israel is far worse in the scale of evil that it is committing so it needs a coordinated response to expose their mayhem and cause them to stop it.
Boycott, disinvest, sanction.
Hmm, let’s see what the NZ Jewish Council- with tens of thousands of dollars of funding from YOUR pocket as a taxpayer through the Ministry for Ethnic Communities (under Labour)- and assistance from taxpayer funded extreme zionist academics like Paul Spoonley, Paul Morris, Roderick Brodie, and Evan Paul Moon- consider to be antisemitic. Specifically, these views are “Anti-Israel antisemitism”.
* Believing “Israel is an apartheid state” (believing in facts)
* Believing “Israel is committing mass murder” (believing in facts)
* Believing “Israeli government policies are similar to those of the Nazi regime” (the minimum any reasonable person believes)
* Believing “People should boycott Israeli goods and products” (believing evil should be punished)
* Not believing “Israel is the only real democracy in the Middle East” or not believing “The State of Israel has every right to exist as a majority Jewish state” (believing the zionist entity doesn’t have the right to exclude the natural human population of the land the zionists squat on while pretending to be a democracy)
* Not believing “Israel makes a positive contribution to global society” (amazing cheek here- you don’t just have to ignore this cancer on the human race, you must be deranged enough to think the tumour is a boon to humanity)
https://nzjc.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/AntisemitismInNewZealand2021_FullReport.pdf