Is this anti-semitism?

ugh, my harper's sub just elapsed - worth resubbing for?

Is it anti-Semitic to be happy Ariel Sharon is dead?

the article was up free on their website for a while but looks like it isn't anymore. :(

i've kinda been craving chatting about sharon's legacy (i like him a lot, tho i'm not sad he's dead -- he was in a coma for a long time) but i'm not sure it would so satisfying - probably more upsetting

i think being happy that Ariel Sharon is dead is a lot like being anti-Israel - high correlation to anti-semitism but not 100%

I mean, I'm not talking about the 'is it okay to be happy someone dies?' stuff we got with Thatcher. I'm interested in whether or not Sharon was a good man.

what is a good man? i think he was loyal to his ppl and his country and an israeli patriot. it's kinda beside the point whether he's a good man (sabra and shatila certainly suggest that he was, like most military men, not totally in touch w/ value of all human life). his biggest legacy probably going to end up being withdrawal from gaza.

Oh, I have no idea what a good man is. I tend to take it by example :) But my only knowledge of Sharon comes from Waltz with Bashir and pro-palestinian fellow travelers during my activist days.

i think we'd probably find non-overlapping circles for ppl who mourned for arafat and those mourning for sharon

Is it anti-Semitic to be happy Ariel Sharon is dead?

― badgers moved the goalposts (dowd), Saturday, January 11, 2014 5:53 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think it's kind of pro-semitic in that it's good the poor guy finally has rest

i mean yeah he was horrible in many ways but i wouldn't wish so many years as a virtual vegetable on my worst enemy

apparently it was his sons that kept him that way against the advice of both doctors and other members of his family

(Jerusalem) – Ariel Sharon died without facing justice for his role in the massacres of hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians by Lebanese militias in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. The killings constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Q: Has anyone in history ever been charged with war crimes for allowing someone else's army to commit a massacre?

I'm no Sharon defender, but I think that's a pretty fair question in response to that lede.

sharon "allowed" it to happen in that he instructed the perpetrators of the massacre to go into the camps and restore order, and they did so by massacring civilians

In 1983, a UN commission chaired by Sean MacBride concluded that Israel bore responsibility for the violence.[13]

you don't seem to actually understand Mordy's question

the phalangists were sent in on the orders of the IDF = mordy's question is a nonsequitur

not that this specific argument matters, he was the genocidal leader of a settler state either way

If Sharon was "genocidal" he wasn't very good at it. Do the meanings of words matter to you?

re. "hungry4ass"

yeah I feel like you do violence to the word if you use the word in this context. not everything that is unforgivable and horrible and deliberate and kills a lot of people is a genocide. there has been no systematic attempt to destroy the entire palestinian population in israel, the occupied territories, and/or those in exile in surrounding countries. there has been systematic violence, systematic oppression, rampant violations of human rights, etc.

also i am troubled by the phrase "settler state" since it is hard for me to think of many states that would _not_ fit that description.

as you can see from my comments above i do not think of myself as a "friend of israel" in any of the common senses, but your comment is so hyperbolic that i'm a hairsbreadth from being unable to take your opinions on this matter the least bit seriously. not that you ought to care.

(scarcely possible to take anyone with that screen name "seriously" but anyway)

Don't think Sharon was some genocidal monster nor do I think he was a saint, obv, but all "patriots" should gtfo

irrespective of what i think of Sharon and being broadly pro-Israel i just wanna say that Hurting and amateurist, you're playing a bit semantically disingenuous if you want to restrict use of the term "genocidal" only to those who succeed in wiping out the entirety of a people

Q: Has anyone in history ever been charged with war crimes for allowing someone else's army to commit a massacre?

A fair number of Nazi collaborators, I'd have thought.

He was in effective command of their activities and would have foreseen war crimes occurring if they were allowed into the camps. That makes him liable whether he had a specific goal to kill 2000 civilians or not.

I'm sure it's possible for some people to look fondly on his legacy while acknowledging that he committed horrendous criminal acts (many fans of Milosovic, Tudjman, Taylor, etc do) but downplaying his responsibility in the face of international and domestic Israeli calls for him to face justice always looked a bit suspicious to me.

Sharon was a "centrist," per NPR! Wow, that term is even more fucked up outside the US.

(scarcely possible to take anyone with that screen name "seriously" but anyway)

― ★feminist parties i have attended (amateurist), Sunday, January 12, 2014 4:24 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hmm good point, feminist parties i have attended

irrespective of what i think of Sharon and being broadly pro-Israel i just wanna say that Hurting and amateurist, you're playing a bit semantically disingenuous if you want to restrict use of the term "genocidal" only to those who succeed in wiping out the entirety of a people

― Jargon Kinsman (Noodle Vague), Sunday, January 12, 2014 3:11 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I didn't say anything about success.

there are zionists who openly advocate the destruction of the palestinian people, but they are not the engineers of israeli policy, which historically has been awful enough w/o confusing things with the g-word.

i expect this won't stay up too long but here's a link to a copy of the cockburn article:

http://www.phibetaiota.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/2013-12-01-Cockburn-on-Kerry-as-Secretary-of-Nothing.pdf

irrespective of what i think of Sharon and being broadly pro-Israel i just wanna say that Hurting and amateurist, you're playing a bit semantically disingenuous if you want to restrict use of the term "genocidal" only to those who succeed in wiping out the entirety of a people

― Jargon Kinsman (Noodle Vague), Sunday, January 12, 2014 3:11 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I didn't say anything about success.

― ★feminist parties i have attended (amateurist), Sunday, January 12, 2014 10:45 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Right, as ruthless as Sharon could be, I really don't think his GOAL was to wipe out Palestinians.

letter from the lubavitcher rebbe to sharon:
http://www.chabad.org/therebbe/letters/default_cdo/aid/327408/jewish/Condolence-Letter-to-Ariel-Sharon.htm

whether or not sharon could legally or practically have been charged with 'war crimes,' it seems indisputable that he bore ultimate responsibility for the refugee camp killings. whatever else he may have been or done, i can't extend any admiration to a guy with that on his resume.

no admiration extended on my part

Sharon killed only those who deserved to be met with the force of carnage.I weep not for any of his victims

kiddies too, huh

whether or not sharon could legally or practically have been charged with 'war crimes,' it seems indisputable that he bore ultimate responsibility for the refugee camp killings. whatever else he may have been or done, i can't extend any admiration to a guy with that on his resume.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Sunday, January 12, 2014 12:53 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, I agree he has much culpability there. his later pragmatism permitted him to do some not-bad things before his stroke. i don't admire the man, but i wouldn't want the task of making a summary judgment of his life and actions.

i also don't know if i agree with the application of "ultimate" responsibility--seems to simplify something that was multi-causal.

a friend wrote this - imo, very beautiful - piece about baraka:
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/159747/amiri-baraka

“Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers/ to stay away from home that 

is this really the line? Cuz that doesnt even make sense. Is he saying that their home was the twin towers?

No, it actually says "to stay home that day"

Poem also contains the line "Who knows what kind of skeeza is a Condoleeza"

i like that essay

Context is good and useful...just seems a little convenient to me that his artistic/personal motivations fell so in line with the antisemitism of the Nation of Islam. I don't see anything personally or artistically brave about joining an angry mob.

http://www.jta.org/2014/01/27/news-opinion/world/paris-anti-hollande-march-turns-against-jews

I'm of about three minds when it comes to French anti-hate-speech laws. Dieudonné hasn't been funny in ages and he's a hateful tool at this point but giving him so much free press for violating the hate-speech laws and throwing free speech rights into the mix with old fashioned French anti-semitism and general right-wing provocation is awful. I mean he pals around with exactly the kind of ppl he used to lambaste and as much as I support taunting the French establishment, this situation is appalling.

My interest in French antisemitism is more linked to what I see as an inevitable emigration of French Jewry and less about policy recommendations.

As I pointed out up-thread, French Jews are caught between left-wing anti-semites and right-wing anti-semites and the presence of a considerably larger Arab population often, itself, marginalized by racsim, and increasingly anti-semitic. After the attacks in Toulouse, I'm not sure I wouldn't want to leave myself. I saw friends who grew up in the banlieue once united in their resistance to racism and the extreme Right, torn asunder by the Gulf War. When you throw into the mix the differing traditions and outlooks of Ashkenazim from Poland and Germany and Russia and the Shephardim from North Africa, the whole situation gets even cloudier.

I'm sure you know this, but the vast majority of French Jews today are Sephardim. The Ashkenazi community almost entirely disappeared after the war.

It wan't until the 60's following Suez and the 6 Day War that Sephardim outnumbered Ashkenazim in France. I think it's probably about 3/2 these days. I an't find anything on the Crif website and The Republic doesn't officially recognize race or religion.

is it anti-semitic to say "Jews control the media" or "Jews control the financial sector"?