Is this anti-semitism?

https://twitter.com/SamiraIbrahim4/status/225613031277735937

idgi, is she claiming that someone hacked her twitter, and it wasn't her reveling in the bulgarian bombing?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/03/the-long-data-of-european-jewish-expulsions/

fucking comments

lol obv it was her comment. btw, re that wired article, my friend wrote this very excellent response:

With all due respect, this is a bit overrated. The assumption that an expulsion=an expulsion is false-- you can't assume transitivity when dealing with qualitative, long duree' historical stuff like expulsions of Jews. How long were Jews expelled for? How long had they lived there for before? What were the legal conditions of both their residency and their expulsion? The legal issues of Italian city states who issued various conditional permissions for Jewish residency in the form of a contract (cf. Ariel Toaff) or of city states in the Holy Roman Empire who allowed limited Jewish residency for diplomatic or commercial purposes (cf. Jonathan Israel for a quick introduction to the phenomenon) are not interchangeable! Were the Jews meant to live in a place for a short period of time? Did they overstay their welcome? Had they been tacitly allowed by never really allowed? Were there warring Polish noble families who took various sides on the issue and Jews were expelled, readmitted, re-expelled due to these external factors (cf. Magda Teter, Gershon Hundert for examples? This is a Goldhagenian Whiggish dataset which assumes a unified phenomenon where there is none, reduces historical quality to quantity and then leads us to unfounded conclusions which obscure rather than reveal anything about jewish history. Bravo for expelling the Jews from our own expulsions.

Oh shit she got hacked again

رفضت الاعتذار للوبى الصهيونى فى امريكا عن تصريحات سابقة معادية للصهيونية تحت ضغوط من الحكومة الامريكية فتم سحب الجائزة #سميرة_ابراهيم

I refuse to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America under pressure from the U.S. government for previous statements hostile to Zionism

more on the krafft affaire:
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/11/we_let_charles_krafft_fool_us_partner/

i hadn't seen this story before but it's insane:
http://forward.com/articles/6615/white-nationalist-conference-ponders-whether-jews/

lolz all around there. even mentioning Nick Griffin. must be so awkward for white supremacists when they have to discriminate against a religion that is a choice.

that is crackerjack reporting

no prize in the box sadly

Mordy, I was out cycling when I found myself thinking about your statement that "the apartheid connection is spectacularly dumb". I found I wanted to ask you a very simple question.

Let's play a mind game. Let's set aside completely whether there is any inherent merit in the apartheid metaphor. Let's just imagine an alternative Mordy who does believe the apartheid metaphor is salient, and who acts on that belief.

What kind of things does this hypothetical Mordy do, that you don't do? Is he more liberal than you? More activist? Does he become isolated, do some even accuse him of anti-semitism? What are the real world outcomes of his belief?

Now let's go a step further and imagine that this hypothetical Mordy is not isolated and not seen as anti-semitic, because he now represents a majority of public opinion in the Jewish and Israeli world. Does Israel, does Palestine, does the region, and does the world become better or worse in this scenario?

I do not believe that a world where the majority of ppl believe Israel is an apartheid state (+ acts on that belief) leads to better outcomes for Israel or the Palestinians.

I don't believe in Grampsy

Okay, fair enough. But what kind of things does that Mordy do? And is he more liberal than you are, would you say?

I think I'm more liberal than theoretical Israel-is-apartheid believing Mordy - assuming both Mordys are equal in every other way. But the ppl who believe that Israel is apartheid tend to enjoy taking the most radically left wing position as an aesthetic choice and would likely be more leftist than me -> assuming you're defining leftist in some idiomatically appropriate to contemporary American politics way.

Interesting. The word "liberal" is a slippery one.

Might those people simply be taking the most radically left wing position as a political choice, rather than an "aesthetic" one?

Sure, why not.

What's the difference? I take the positions I take because they make sense to me logically and because they resonate with me politically/ethically. Some things are contradictions (my belief in God) and I try to parse out the difference. The idea that Israel is an apartheid society (and that convincing people of that fact might make the world a better place) doesn't make sense to me logically, politically, or ethically.

Gotcha. I see that other, hypothetical Mordy fading away before my very eyes! It's a pity, because I thought he was a kinda cool guy, politically and ethically, if not logically.

You're sweet if not passive-aggressive Grampsy. :) Why don't you play us off w/ an incredibly stylized Gramspy anecdote?

Why don't you play us off w/ an incredibly stylized Gramspy anecdote?

I will, if you like.

I was walking by the Dead Sea. I say "walking", in fact I was "there" via Google Streetview. It wasn't the car-mounted Streetview, but a more groovy one that (and you could see this by the shadows) was a guy on a kind of beach buggy with a camera on a pole. I'd dropped the little yellow man randomly on a map of Israel, from quite "high", not knowing where I'd land.

The place was a beach resort. It seemed very rich. There were elderly people with bellies spilling out of their beachwear, and groups of young, trim teenagers. The first thing I thought was "I'm amongst people like me", by which I mean very affluent, advanced people. It felt like an outpost of America, or perhaps a wealthy Mediterranean resort.

The landscape, though, was spectacularly alien. There was a strange white light coming off the Dead Sea, and the basaltic mountains behind the ziggurat-shaped resort hotels were utterly primeval. For some reason they made me think of the setting of weird sci-fi survivalist films featuring Charlton Heston.

Israel looked "nice" and "rich". There were showers on the beach, and some amazing looking modern architecture on the horizon. But I was very aware of an absence. It felt as if this was a rarefied, purified environment. Ethnically cleansed, even. It felt like some other places which are economically cleansed of the poor, like Monaco. I felt the same claustrophobia, a sense of privileged hedonism which was, in some way, brutal, despite the apparent ease of life there.

And I thought of the videos of Israeli artist Yael Bartana, who shows Israelis dirt-racing in off-road vehicles, or ascending in hot-air balloons. On the face of it, these are just people having fun. But "the face of it" isn't enough.

eh google streetview insights

Jobbik’s general antagonism toward Israel has blossomed in recent months into a fully fledged campaign. Gyongyosi has announced a national tour of lectures on the “Zionist threat to world peace.” In parallel, anti-Jewish and anti-Israel articles now take up more than 30 percent of the content on the party’s English-language website.

"Labour Party suspends Lord Ahmed from membership following allegations of anti-Jewish remarks" according to BBC...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9929154/Labour-peer-Lord-Ahmed-suspended-over-claims-he-blamed-imprisonment-on-Jewish-conspiracy.html

So. I think seeing anywhere as an apartheid state plays into a view where a given country is considered 'bad'.

'South Africa is a bad country.' 'Iraq is a bad country.' 'North Korea is a bad country.', etc. To me the attempts to label Israel as an apartheid state seem like an attempt to get it added to the list of 'bad countries'.

Which seems flawed to me, and bear in mind I'm severely under-qualified on this issue, because I don't think it's useful to go around looking for global villains, because such a search always ignores vast chunks of whatever else a given 'bad' country might be. I don't think we should be thinking in terms of 'good' vs 'bad' countries.

But. And this is where again I'm going to stress how under-qualified I am. If we're not going to call what the Israelis do 'apartheid', then perhaps we need to think about whether the attitude towards Jews which may be held by Palestinians is the same thing as 'anti-semitism'.

I mean, of course it's anti-semitism. But hating someone you're directly at war with, if you're a Palestinian, isn't the same as a European/American anti-semite's hysterical, made up claims about something Jews are supposed to have done to harm/weaken France, Germany, etc, right?

And if it's false comparison to use the phrase Israeli apartheid, because Israel is not apartheid South Africa, maybe we need to distinguish between these different forms of anti-semitism as well. Someone who identifies as Jewish has bulldozed your village for ostensibly Jewish reasons, with a vehicle which has the star of david on the side of it, then you're going to dislike 'Jews'. But you probably mean 'Israelis', more or less. I don't think it helps to imagine the people who feel that way as being in the tradition of European anti-semitism, which is really what we invoke when we use that term, because it's two different things.

If anyone's about to type 'stfu Cardamon', you're probably right.

omg @ that forward.com article, so hilarious

esp the "touched my genes" remark

cardamon, from the Postone article I quoted above:

Another strand of left anti-Zionism – this time deeply anti-semitic – was introduced by the Soviet Union, particularly in the show trials in Eastern Europe after World War Two. This was particularly dramatic in the case of the Slansky trial, when most of the members of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party were tried and then shot. All of the charges against them were classically anti-semitic charges: they were rootless, they were cosmopolitan, and they were part of a general global conspiracy. Because the Soviet Union could not officially use the language of anti-semitism, they began to use the word “Zionist” to mean exactly what anti-Semites mean when they speak of Jews.

These Czechoslovak CP leaders, who had nothing to do with Zionism — most of them were Spanish Civil War veterans — were shot as Zionists.

This strand of anti-semitic anti-Zionism was imported into the Middle East during the Cold War, in part by the intelligence services of countries like East Germany. A form of anti-semitism was introduced into the Middle East that was “legitimate” for the Left, and was called anti-Zionism.

Its origins had nothing to do with a movement against Israeli settlement. Of course, the Arab population of Palestine reacted negatively to Jewish immigration and resisted it. That’s very understandable. That in itself is certainly not anti-semitic. But these strands of anti-Zionism converged historically.

Show me on the doll where he touched your genes.

Postpone article isn't wrong but is not applicable here.

Treading carefully here, but I'm kind of bemused by this idea of 'the Left' secretly wanting to be anti-semitic and finding an excuse for it in anti-Zionism.

I suppose I'm on 'the Left'. Personally, I disagree with Zionism because I disagree with nationalism in principle - the equation of a state, and the physical territory owned by that state, with an ethnic group, be that 'the Poles', 'the English', or 'the Jews'. There's nothing inherently 'natural' about it, very little legitimate deep history, and it plasters over the much more complicated reality of who people are, have been or could be.

I can see that nationalism grew up because people didn't want to be part of an Empire - notably Austro-Hungary or the HRE - but other non-nationalist forms of statehood can include, for example, commonwealths.

I also disagree with anti-Semitism, because it's the systematic blindness to structural problems in a state by shifting the blame on to an innocent group in a position of vulnerability, leading to some of the most brutal atrocities in history (definitely in European history). Which is of course an understatement.

My disagreement with Zionism isn't anti-semitic, as far as I can see. (I'm open to correction, of course.) And while I'm not going to whine too much about this, when I hear anti-Zionism equated with anti-semitism, I basically think all sorts of problems with Zionism are being brushed over.

Or more precisely that people who are making legitimate critiques of Zionism are being brushed over.

(And by the way, apologies if I'm turning this thread into 'ITT cardamon thinks out loud for a bit')

I have no doubts that there is a degree of anti-semitism coming from *some* people on the Left, but yeah, it's an easy out for those who want to dismiss criticism.

It's a funny thing because even the most anti-semitic of organisations like the muslim brotherhood have a kernel of genuine beef with Israel that is not in any way related to it being a "Jewish" state. They (perhaps rightly) look upon it as a symbol of Western colonialism, which is not entirely unfair. (I'm not defending the muslim brotherhood here, I'm just trying to point out the inherent difficulties in discerning anti-semitism and anti-zionism and anti-Israel sentiments in any argument ... my friend just last week explained to me how he was a Zionist, but was anti-Israel...it's very complicated).

Personally, it's hard to wrap my head around intelligent people in 2013 being anti-semitic because...ya know...why the fuck does an intelligent person want to discriminate against a specific religion?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/131652687/Recognizing-Hate-Speech-Antisemitism-on-Facebook

Since coining the term ‘Antisemitism 2.0’ in 2008

'Similar images, however, remain on otherFacebook pages. Item 34 in this report includes an edited image of Anne Frank with the caption “#YOLOCAUST”. This is hash tag with reference to the phrase “You Only Live Once” and the Holocaust.'

See I'm wondering if people sharing this around because they think it's funny (in that amoral, internet meme 'humour' way) is more dangerous than the supposedly 'principled' thing of 'let's put a swastika on the Israeli flag to make a Political Point'. You can see what's wrong with the latter a mile off. But the Anne Frank image involves reducing a historical figure to figure of fun/distracts the viewer from the real life and death of Anne Frank.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/anti-semitism-british-muslim-community_b_2922013.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

I posted about that upthread. It's certainly shameful.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2139164,00.html

hungary is a terrifying place right now. worst place in europe to be jewish?

can't imagine greece is great atm either, but much smaller jewish pop

Isolated anti-Jewish events occur occasionally throughout Europe, but the frequency of these incidents in Hungary has accompanied a measurable darkening of public opinion. Andras Kovacs, a sociologist at Budapest's Central European University, found that from 1992 to 2006, levels of anti-Semitism in Hungary remained relatively stable. About 10% of adults qualified as fervent anti-Semites, another 15% had some anti-Semitic feelings, and 60% of the population was not anti-Semitic at all. But beginning in 2006, when Hungary's economy began to deteriorate and far-right parties began to rise, the intolerance started to intensify. By 2010 the percentage of those who qualified as fervent anti-Semites had risen to as high as 20%, and the percentage who said they held no anti-Jewish feelings had dropped to 50%.

as eurozone deteriorates further i think we'll see a resurgence throughout europe

europe doesn't have a great history of economic crises and being nice to jews

About 10% of adults qualified as fervent anti-Semites

this is a pretty fucked up baseline

i wonder what the u.s. % is

more on how scary hungary is rn http://www.newstatesman.com/austerity-and-its-discontents/2013/04/hungary-no-longer-democracy

I think this is a counter to that piece:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/hungary-ignorant-nonsense

There's been a lot of noise about antisemitism and anti-Roma sentiment in Hungary. Yes, there's prejudice and poverty in Hungary as there is in every country.

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