Is this anti-semitism?

Mind you, reading about the Israel Palestine situation tends to bring on a sort of fatalism. The Israelis don't give a fuck about the rights or lives of the Palestinians and the UN, via the power of the US and the UK, lets them do more or less what they want; inevitably that's going to get all the anti-semites going in to support Palestine. That discredits any supporters of Palestine; and so the Israelis don't give a fuck about the rights or lives of the Palestinians and round and round it goes.

It's incredibly tiresome to have to process accusations of wanting all the Palestinians to be killed every time you critique creeping or blatant anti-semitism among the pro-Palestinian side; it's also incredibly tiresome having to process accusations of anti-semitism every time you critique the pro-Israeli side. You end up with the black spot either way.

Which then brings on notions of wanting to escape from it all with a small handful of 'decent' human beings, which is itself the kind of fantasy that drives the fucking mess you want to escape from.

cardamon, this doesn't seem to be a topic you're particularly interested in. do you have opinions about other territorial disputes too? like what are your thoughts on the TRNC?

really feel like israel/palestine is the king of territorial disputes. trnc is p trifling, prob less interesting than abkhazia, surely a bigger dog like kashmir or tibet wld be a more apt comparison

sure, I'm curious about any of cardamon's thoughts

U never want to talk about NI mordy is this a conspiracy thing or .....

what is NI?

oh wait - northern ireland?

i find talking about the NI situation tends to bring on a sort of fatalism

Probably best to consider my last post a whine and ignore it, tbh

that arendt article mordy posted is really good -- 'eichmann' is one of the most widely misunderstood books i can think of, ppl who criticize it seem to be responding to attacks on the book rather than the actual arendt text.

TRNC/Kashmir/Tibet = equal 'sense of fatalism', fwiw

yeah someone needs to send that article to ron rosenbaum

i want to read this: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15161.html

can a uklxor explain this to me?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2421231/Tottenham-consult-season-ticket-holders-use-Y-word.html#ixzz2f4dY7Hc5

well, essentially, For years Tottenham, who have a strong Jewish following, have been on the receiving end of cruel anti-Semitic abuse from opposition fans.

In an act of defiance, some fans of the north London club have coined the word "Yid" themselves, and chants of "Yids", "Yid Army" and "Yiddos" are regularly sung on the home terraces at White Hart Lane.

Last Monday the Football Association (FA) issued a statement warning supporters that use of such words could result in either a banning order or even criminal prosecution.

Tottenham responded by saying they would consult with their fans on the matter, and it has now emerged they will do so in the form of a questionnaire that will be sent out to all season-ticket holders.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2421231/Tottenham-consult-season-ticket-holders-use-Y-word.html#ixzz2f5VRLSyk

yes that is the article that i linked to, thx conrad

yes i pasted from your link didn't i

lmao

1. does Tottenham really have a larger Jewish following than eg man U?
2. has the anti-semitism directed against the club been based in this fandom? what kind of anti-semitism has it been?
3. are the Tottenham fans using the word yid Jewish fans or also non-Jewish fans?
4. if the former (or even the latter) why would the pro-jewish chanting (assuming that's what it is) be criticizing instead of the anti-semitism comments directed at the club?

be criticized*

also i'm pretty sure fans of the north London club did not coin the term Yid.

A bit larger. Insofar as British Jewish population is concentrated at all, it's concentrated in North London, where Tottenham are from. Fairly vicious chanting is standard at football games - Liverpool mocked for being poor, unemployed, eternal victims; Man Utd for having their best team killed in a plane crash; Spurs therefore for being Jewish. Chants of 'yids' were then adopted by some Spurs fans (whether jewish or not) as a term of approval - 'yid army' being their term for their own fans, 'yiddo' as a term of approval for players & each other.

The debate is whether certain words should be removed entirely from the lexicon regardless of context.

also i'm pretty sure fans of the north London club did not coin the term Yid

Yiddo otoh

Most of my Spurs friends who chant "Yid Army" are decidedly not Jewish.

i think gentile identification w/ jews through sports fandom is a really interesting concept

Liverpool mocked for being poor, unemployed, eternal victims

"You'll never walk alone" has been adopted by Liverpool fans so their competition sings it as "You'll never work again".

Yeah xp, I doubt there can be any stats on ethnicity of support but Spurs having a larger Jewish following can't translate into anything more than still a very small percentage of total support.

I think this is kind of dumb on the part of the FA. Anybody who's genuinely anti-semitic enough to call Spurs fans 'yids' in earnest is already pretty visibly malevolent (not to mention highly visibly stupid) and anybody trying to wind up Spurs fans by calling them Yids has already been answered by the majority of Spurs fans, Jewish or not.

Another Liverpool dig is for the opposing fans' supporters to sing 'sign on, sign on' over the appropriate bit of You'll Never Walk Alone.

Tottenham/Stamford Hill is a traditionally Orthodox Jewish area (although latterly Tottenham itself is known as the place black people riot against the police), with lots of Jewish people in North London generally, as Ismael says. Outer East London is also a Jewish area and a friend from there who went to a kibbutz for six months told me half-jokingly that it was East London Jews on one side of the pool, North Londoners on the other - and never the twain shall meet.

Apparently some opposing teams' supporters make a hissing noise at Spurs fans, which is supposed to be an allusion to gas chambers. Many Spurs fans are *incensed* that nothing gets said or done about the hissing.

The other complicating thing is that the abuse is mostly pantomime, but not always; and unless you know what's happening it might be hard to tell the difference, and impossible to legislate with that degree of nuance. With Liverpool 'sign on, sign on' gets trotted out in the first five minutes of any game and that's expected, but there's other abuse that might provoke actual violence.

With Spurs there was a highly-publicised instance of mass hissing last season which did aiui provoke outrage because it's become taboo. Ten years ago it wouldn't've.

I was among the Arsenal fans on Saturday and there was a chant I don't know (I'm not Arsenal myself) but which obviously used to have a yid + hissing coda because every time it stopped there was a very quiet continuation along those lines. I dunno what could or should be done about that tbh, because it's still an example of self-policing and even in the midst of it it's impossible to tell who's doing it or how prevalent it is.

Also I doubt that Arsenal have significantly fewer Jewish fans than Tottenham do (they're both North London clubs) so we're not really in the realms of hardcore racial theory here.

http://fanchants.co.uk/football-songs/tottenham_hotspur-chants/yids-clap-spurs/

btw, googled yids just now, first result was the tottenham score -- anyone else get same?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVwGKo2pOmc

Ajax Amsterdam have the same sort of issue - fans who aren't Jewish identifying with those who are via shared abuse, not always in an uncontroversial way. The wider problem is that people who aren't intentionally anti-semitic, often kids, will mirror the anti-semitic language out of antagonism to Spurs / Ajax without even knowing about the Jewish connection. The more the fans adopt an identity notionally linked to Jewish culture, the more that culture becomes a point of attack.

The hissing was mostly from Chelsea who have longstanding links to the far-right but it has diminished significantly since the club was bought by a Jewish owner.

Ajax indeed have the same problem. For decades now a majority of the fans (Jewish or not) chant 'Joden!' or 'Superjoden!' (Joden being the Dutch word for 'Jews'). It's probably the number one chant when they are winning, just scored a goal or have just won a game.
In the 90s there's been a terrible 'retaliation' by rivals Feyenoord, whose fans would hiss or sing things like 'Hamas, Hamas, Jews on the gas'. It lead to a ban on Feyenoord fans when they played Ajax in Amsterdam for some years.

More and more though, Ajax VIPs are expressing their concern and disagreement of using 'Joden' as a pejorative term used with pride by the people called that way. But the hardcore fans (them being Jewish or not doesn't seem to make a difference) will not have this 'taken away from them'.

The wider problem is that people who aren't intentionally anti-semitic, often kids, will mirror the anti-semitic language out of antagonism to Spurs / Ajax without even knowing about the Jewish connection

this, and where it becomes a problem, why it becomes a problem, the backwash of the football-aimed abuse that filters back to the jewish community and the connections between the aim/target/recipient and how, if it does at all, this changes the dynamics, etc, is all very interesting and worthy of much conversation and debate on any website but this one imo

i'd like to hear your thoughts darragh. i promise not to 'privilege' you.

iirc Rangers fans briefly adopted the star, not for any connection to Jewry (other than both being the chosen people) but because Celtic fans had taken on the Palestinian flag i.e. as a symbol to goad them a la Feyenoord

there's a whole mess of Israel/Palestine metaphors deployed within the context of Northern Irish sectarianism

other than both being the chosen people

LOL

Chosen to be models in the Simpsons' Big Book of British Smiles?

I'm not even Catholic, Scottish or into football but CHRIST do I hate Rangers.

Another Liverpool dig is for the opposing fans' supporters to sing 'sign on, sign on' over the appropriate bit of You'll Never Walk Alone.

huh?

Signing on for unemployment benefit

Oh, hold on though, I see what you mean, what is the appropriate bit?

sign on, sign on
with hope in your heart
but you'll never ... get ... a job

no, no. I didn't understand the sign on part. you explained it well. thanks.;

sounded like an AOL thing to me.