Is this anti-semitism?

not sure how many 'ordinary voters' (hard working or otherwise) are even aware he's Jewish, same when Howard was Tory leader. But, for sure, the media certainly are.

Is this anti-semitism?

Just kidding. I have no idea how one determines this, but my guess that the number of people who identify as Jewish and the number of Jews who keep kosher, don't eat bacon, don't eat pork.shellfish, are widely divergent. Growing up outside Philadelphia, I didn't know a single family that kept kosher, and even now, it's usually just a symbolic gesture I come across. Ie, don't cook pork at home, but bacon is OK, and everything out of the house is up for grabs or whatever.

YouGov polls are inherently unreliable but the results are plausible in the context of similar polls in other countries and, even if they're 5% or 10% out, it's pretty clear that antisemitism, like other forms of racism, is widespread across all groups. Highlighting the risk of bodily harm from radicals is valid but not at the expense of acknowledging that the majority of minor things that make the lives of British Jews marginally harder than they should be are not from that world. I genuinely think that 'mainstream' antisemitism could be a factor in determining the next Prime Minister.

― Wristy Hurlington (ShariVari), Friday, 23 January 2015 08:31 (10 hours ago)

though mostly i would rate you at the top of the list of posters writing on british public life, this sort of constant via media statement of the obvious is as good as you have to a flaw

'highlighting the risk of bodily harm from radicals is valid' that's reassuring to know, although people visiting jewish municipal buildings surrounded by cops with mp5s probably don't feel it needs highlighting

'at the expense of acknowledging that the majority of minor things' idk if anyone has spent more time here noting all of these than i have in relation to eg the paedophile scandals etc, so why bother saying this?

these homiletic checks and balances are just a way of always ensuring that censure is distributed, so that clearly any reference to jihadism has to be balanced with a daily mail editorial slyly undermining ed miliband, nevermind if that has been amply documented here

'socially reinforcing the idea that antisemitism is racism and racism is unacceptable' this is presumably in response to the common policy position that racism is unacceptable but nobody should do anything about it

nevermind that the appeal of racism for a lot of people is that it is unacceptable, this is clearly not what i was talking about, that is the work of everyone ever in private life, it is not an instrumental response, not anything that pertains to the particular lethal threats to a particular group that i was discussing

it does not follow that consideration of that means the accretion of small hatreds that corrupt civil society are forgotten, nor does it represent a 'compartmentalization' to detail a particular and recent threat that exists in addition to all the extant, ancient and local antisemitisms

and wrt ed miliband -- antisemitism quite clearly will affect the election because if one assumes at least 5-10% of people are acitively antisemitic, with a larger cohort subject to largely unknowing antisemitic biases, it is enough to make a difference in a very tight race

since we're partially discussing UK polling/statistics, have we mentioned this yet?

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/128586/scotland-yard-reveals-huge-rise-antisemitic-crime-london

yeah i mentioned it yesterday and i am not nearly as sanguine as sv that it will fall back again quickly

certainly some of the spike is attributable to the gaza conflict inflaming muslims in the uk, which could mean it might recede as we get farther away from op protective edge but that relies on israel never having military conflicts w/ middle east muslims again which seems super unlikely to me. also i think prob the vast majority should be attributable to radicals coming back from fighting in the middle east (obv all these things have interlocking dimensions - radicals coming home who find themselves angry about gaza but now w/ the skills/will to do something about it)

idk i would guess most of the increase is just domestic yobbery, plenty of it not committed by muslims but fomented by the general upsurge in self-righteous hatred wrt palestine, and the final erasure of any remaining sense of the difference between israeli state actions and jews

the people involved with syrian jihad or recruitment represent a smallish group (maybe a few hundred) most of whom will be caught, prosecuted, or tracked by security services, it's a sporadic but lethal threat

I live in the middle of the biggest Orthodox Jewish area in Europe and haven't seen any armed police but have seen lots of lower-level prejudice and dickery over the years. It's not about apportioning blame evenly. Within the British Muslim community, which I agree is going to more antisemitic than the baseline, the number of potentially dangerous individuals is absolutely dwarfed by people who just don't like Jews. The potential for terrorism is the single most serious threat but, in terms of broader community cohesion, making the effort to tackle antisemitism about a trickle of returning ISIS sympathisers and radical mosques that are already being targeted seems like useless grandstanding that adds nothing to what is already being done as part of the broader effort to curb terrorist threats and radicalisation. If there is more to suggest, that could be implemented, it would be good to hear it. I'm not accusing you of compartmentalising but it's something I've seen a lot of recently.

What potentially can be addressed is that accretion of small hatreds using the same techniques that have lessened the strength of other racisms over the last twenty years. I don't get the impression that antisemitism is taken as seriously or judged as harshly within the mainstream as many other forms of prejudice. Outside of formal education there isn't much the state can do but anyone with social power to slap down the erosion of the line between Israeli policy and Jewish responsibility, for starters, needs to be doing that.

Idk, we're not arguing about what is worse and neither of us have appears to have a particularly solid policy framework for moving forward.

Would secularising all education be a start? S

i think the bigger problem w/ the unserious treatment of antisemitism in the mainstream is actually bc of how unique the prejudice is. bc it's about jewish power / conspiracies it's easy for ppl who exist within the discourse to think that jews are not disadvantaged, or that they're advantaged enough, or have too much power actually, etc, so that charges of antisemitism are easier to dismiss bc after all jews are doing okay so there must not be that much /real/ prejudice against them.

Yep, I think that's probably true.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/01/22/yarmulke-clad-swedish-gentile-reporter-attacked-in-malmo-video/

*hits buzzer* not antisemitism! wait, shit

the fuck is going on in argentina

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/23/rogue-agents-alberto-nisman-death_n_6532882.html

i suppose that might be a better post on MENA? idk, it's iran related (allegedly)

*hits buzzer* not antisemitism! wait, shit

this joke gets made a lot itt but afaik this is the only thread to discuss antisemitism as a general phenomenon

just riffing on his identification as "gentile" in the hed. of course it is.

the fuck is going on in argentina

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/23/rogue-agents-alberto-nisman-death_n_6532882.html

― goole, Friday, January 23, 2015 4:47 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seriously, wtf. that article gave me whiplash. all i know is it's going to make a great movie someday.

http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z120/j77gm/greenfields-00006_zps50497f1f.png

Standards for cartoonists' right to offend seem fluid.

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.638240

shit rip that cartoonist eh

wow i can't believe that the private self-regulatory organization Australian Press Council mildly condemned a newspaper for breaching Standards of Practice. whatever happened to freedom of speech???

meanwhile how many articles have been written so far saying that no one should be massacred for drawing a cartoon but charlie hebdo was asking for it.

extraordinary misreading of howard jacobson imo

idk if you think i'm saying jacobson wrote one of those articles and obv he didn't, or you don't think he was responding to those sorts of articles (which is why I linked to him)

The "but" that was deemed so necessary after 9/11 - that great "but" from which all the lesser "buts" have sprung - was the "but" of extenuation. It was the first, grammatical step in shifting blame from perpetrator to victim. Not only on the back of that "but" was America reminded that others had suffered, that America was instrumental in that suffering, and that America could therefore be said to bear a share of responsibility for what happened, the "butters" finally came within a whisker of condoning the act of terrorism itself.

Standards for cartoonists' right to offend seem fluid.

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.638240

― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Sunday, January 25, 2015 6:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Morbs, honestly, posting that in this thread is clear trolling. Do you go in the rolling race thread and complain about people being offended by caricatures of black people?

http://www.antisemitisme.fr/dl/2014-EN.pdf

In 2014, the number of Antisemitic acts recorded on French soil doubled. They increased to 851 versus 423 in 2013. This represents a jump of 101 percent.

In 2014, violent acts increased by 130 percent compared to 2013. There were 241 violent acts in 2014 versus 105 in 2013.

Antisemitism has become increasingly violent and hyper-violent. Today, Antisemitic threats in France include persistent bias, sectarian stereotypes, deep hatred, but especially Antisemitic jihadist terror. Men and young children are killed for the sole reason that they are Jewish.

51 percent of racist acts committed in France in 2014 targeted Jews. Jews represent less than one percent of the French population. Less than 1 percent of this country's citizens are the target of half of all racist acts committed in France.

The 30-percent increase in racist acts committed in France in 2014 compared to 2013 comprises exclusively an increase in Antisemitic acts. Indeed, racist acts, excluding Antisemitic acts, that were recorded in 2014 decreased by 5 percent compared to 2013. This shows once again how much we need tailored programs, adequate measures, and specific tools to fight Antisemitism efficiently. Many anti-Racism programs do not stop the rise Antisemitic acts, far from it.

Cities most impacted by Antisemitic acts in 2014 include Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Sarcelles, Strasbourg, Nice, Villeurbanne and Créteil.

61% of all violent racist attacks recorded in France, 241, were directed against Jews, who are less than 1% of France's population. By comparison, only 55 violent racist acts were anti-Muslim. This means that in France, a Jew is nearly 50 times as likely to be the victim of bias violence as a Muslim is.

if true, that's rather harrowing. i wonder about the methodologies; i'll have to look for closely.

/more/ closely

to the conversation about UK antisemitism:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2926724/I-m-going-Jew-bashing-teenage-thug-texted-friend-thugs-beat-Orthodox-Jewish-man-protest-against-conflict-Palestine.html

Born in Germany to a Turkish family, Can is well-known for his anti-Israel activism. According to Die Welt, Can was caught on tape at a Copenhagen protest shouting into a borrowed police megaphone, “Death to the Jews,” “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas chamber.”

At his Essen hearing this winter Can was prosecuted for his use of the term “Zionist” as incitement against a minority.

During the hearing, Can claimed he was not an anti-Semite and had nothing against the Jewish people but only against the Zionist state. In response, Judge Sastry is quoted by Die Welt saying, “‘Zionist’ is the language of anti-Semites, the code for ‘Jew.'”

Sastry’s judgment, which does not form a binding precedent in German law, essentially semantically equates anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

Can was sentenced to three months’ probation and a fine of 200 euros. He has until Friday to appeal.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/german-judge-rules-anti-zionism-is-code-for-anti-semitism/#ixzz3QbyVA29n

i don't totally understand why they needed to prosecute him based on the coded meaning of "zionist" when he said things like "death to the jews," maybe there was only recorded evidence for the former?

The former was also in Denmark which might have a bearing on whether it could be prosecuted in Germany.

Latter.

smart dude if the moment he crosses the border back into germany all the "jews" become "zionists."

ffs these guys are such assholes. some french ppl made fun of mohammed so how do we protest? obvs make fun of the jews
http://www.timesofisrael.com/iranians-to-host-holocaust-cartoon-contest/

A racist agitator has appalled members of Britain’s Jewish community by announcing plans for a march next month against “Jewification” in Stamford Hill, the centre of the ultra-orthodox Haredi population.

Joshua Bonehill, who describes himself as a “nationalist, fascist, theorist and supporter of white rights”, has called for a mass protest in the north London area “against the complete Jewification of the borough” and against the Shomrim, a neighbourhood watch group, that he claims wrongly is an illegal religious police force.

In February 2015, Bonehill was also charged in St Albans on allegations that he had written a hoax story on the website claiming that food from Tesco was infected with Ebola.[17]

Not expecting a big turnout for this tbh.

more like Bonehead

more bad news for french jewry
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2938009/Three-soldiers-anti-terror-patrol-Jewish-community-centre-Nice-France-stabbed.html

ummm

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/world/americas/argentina-prosecutor-alberto-nisman-arrest-warrant-cristina-de-kirchner.html

holy shit

Message on that Nice stabbing is pretty clear: don't protect Jews.

http://www.clarin.com/politica/Afiches-antisemitas-Villa_Crespo_0_1297070300.html

kirchner has always been a horrid piece of shit

so kirchner et al are basically arguing that the prosecutor was being fed stuff against them by rogue elements of the security services? weirdly, i can kind of imagine that happening.

what a mess.

"Underscoring the tension surrounding the death of Mr. Nisman, who was buried at a Jewish cemetery last week, anti-Semitic posters began appearing in central Buenos Aires this week. They read: 'The good Jew is the dead Jew. The good Jew is Nisman.'"

fuck these ppl