Is this anti-semitism?

But I mean what are you supposed to do if you're an anti-Zionist Jew? Keep quiet about it because you know you're going to be a useful source of selective quotation by anti-Semites? I'm a Zionist as you know but I feel for people in that position. I feel like all you can do is say what you have to say and then loudly protest that the anti-Semites "know nothing of my work"

I guess if you're a fervent anti-Zionist you should speak your truth, it's just odd to me that an otherwise bright person would not know immediately that they were being used as a token Jew. You might say "well, ppl are going to misuse my stand but I'm willing to take that risk," but to not understand this entire dynamic seems like a glaring blindspot. Especially when so often Jewish critics of Zionism are presented in this "As a Jew..." rhetoric, or in this modality of "one of the good Jews." Like don't they realize that the impact is painting the vast majority of Zionist (or Zionism sympathetic) Jews as "bad Jews" who can be dismissed and marginalized for the common good?

spotted in the wild:

Outside my suburban PA train station someone posted fliers on all the telephone polls that ask people to "Research, Google, Youtube Khazar Jews, NWO, Rothschild Bloodline" for the sake of their children's souls.

Disgusting. What station??

Jenkintown

i didn't realize you were so close to me! i grew up in elkins park! (i was actually in jenkintown a couple months ago to see a generator in Fox Pavilion (that I think is now just called Pavilion)).

(obviously disappointing hearing about the posters there but - ugh, whatever - ppl are assholes)

Coincidentally Ezra Pund lived in Jenkintown as a child

http://forward.com/opinion/335007/inside-the-twisted-anti-semitic-mind-of-oberlin-professor-joy-karega/
https://jewishphilosophyplace.wordpress.com/2016/03/04/adjacent-intersectional-terrain-anti-semitism-and-anti-zionism-joy-karega-at-oberlin-college/

http://www.thetower.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2016-02-24_125817_Joy_Karega_01202016.jpg

what a fucking lunatic. why hasn't oberlin fired her yet?

Lol wat

it goes against the academic principles of the university to interfere with inquiries into the methods thru which the rothschild family control the world

slate: Compare Oberlin’s response with the recent firing of James Tracy, a tenured communications scholar, by Florida Atlantic University, related to declarations on his blog that the 2012 massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, was really an elaborate government play for more gun control laws. (A termination letter sent to Tracy in January said that he was being terminated for failing to turn in outside employment or professional activity reforms in a timely manner, but the letter referenced activity on his blog and Tracy maintains his case is about free speech.)

Sounds like they make some great hires over there

has everyone here already read this james baldwin essay? i hadn't and it's v powerful (even if there are points i disagree with or have a different perspective on): https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-antisem.html - i really need to read more of his work his writing is so achingly beautiful

I read it out of the Library of America James Baldwin collection while standing in the bookstore a while ago and was basically blown away, agree on achingly beautiful.

One thing I am REALLY tired of in the whole zionism debate is hearing from world-racism-expert college students who say "Zionism's racism is also evidenced by its treatment of Mizrahi Jews." I am fine with accusing Israel of racism, but this particular statement displays no understanding or concern whatsoever for the people being used as a political football, who (1) are vast majority "zionist," and (2) who experience nothing close to the level of discrimination experienced by African Americans in this country -- intermarriage rates are very high and gaps in income and achievement are closing. It's much more comparable to something like lingering WASP prejudice against "ethnic" whites than it is to the kind of racism they think it supports.

Not to mention that a lot of them experienced far greater discrimination in the countries they were forced out of.

well written thoughtful piece about anti-semitism at stanford:
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2016/04/07/on-gabriel-knight-and-what-anti-semitism-really-means/

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4639165,00.html

has this UN women's rights report been discussed here yet? A friend posted about it on FB and it was just WTF?

No not posted here. I had seen it but at this pt outrageous anti Israel bias from the UN is very dog bites man and I try not to be a broken record.

it's also biased against women, specifically, the women in countries that actually are dire and oppressive of women

http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/uploads/2016/04/Vlodymir-a-waiter-who-calls-himself-Moishe-at-the-Pid-Zolotoju-Rozoju-restaurant-in-Lviv-on-March-14-2016.-Cnaan-Liphshiz-965x543.jpg

http://www.timesofisrael.com/i-ate-jewish-food-in-lviv-and-lived-to-tell-the-tale/

oops -- http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/uploads/2016/04/Vlodymir-a-waiter-who-calls-himself-Moishe-at-the-Pid-Zolotoju-Rozoju-restaurant-in-Lviv-on-March-14-2016.-Cnaan-Liphshiz-965x543.jpg

:|

holy moly

Yeah, I think I might have posted about that place before. It is run by a chain that has a bunch of very odd theme restaurants in the city - one is dedicated to the Ukrainian nationalists who sided with Hitler to try to defeat Russia, one which actually sounds quite cool which is faux masonic and hidden in an apartment block and this one. They are all designed to reflect the history of Lviv in some way. There doesn't seem to be any overarching political animus behind it, it's all for joeks, but clearly both hugely offensive and reflective of a lot of the latent antisemitism and stereotypes that still remain in that part of the country. As reported, the trad Jewish food is apparently pretty good. Lviv is a great city but politically quite odd. It is supposedly the most European-focused part of the country but has very deep nationalist roots which, like a lot of nationalist roots in the region, often overlaps with strong antisemitic sentiment.

jfc i cannot handle that

the restaurant, i mean.

jfc could be a p good guaranteed-kosher chicken franchise

ha!

a hopeful take on what the recent bernie anti-semitism moment means
http://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2016/04/boos-and-cheers-from-bernies-harlem.html

translation of an excellent text posted by the Italian editorial collective Il Lato Cattivo in July 2014 that speaks to a lot of the issues of antisemitism + communism we've discussed above: https://thecharnelhouse.org/2016/04/29/letter-on-anti-zionism/

from the same blog: https://thecharnelhouse.org/2016/04/30/reflections-on-left-antisemitism/

(good looking bibliography at the top of that second one that i plan on delving into when i get some time)

this in particular from the letter:

Under the spur of the general restructuring of class relations from the seventies onwards, during the last forty years, capital development has made a clean sweep, and little or nothing was left from that story. After Second World War, the movement of support for the Third World was legitimated, among others, by the function of supplier of cheap raw materials of this part of the world; but through the two “oil crises” in 1973-1974 and 1978-1980, the restructuration completely destabilized the previous situation: the price of crude increased in an unprecedented manner, and in Europe one began to speak of nuclear power stations. Therefore, more fundamentally, came successively the intoxication by oil rent in Middle East (that improved Hamas’ cash flow through intervention of Saudi Arabia), the end of Arab nationalism and the rise of Islamism. At the same time, even the economical and social structure of Israeli state completely changed. “Zionism,” strictly speaking, was the protection and safeguarding of “Jewish labor,” either for Israeli capital, against international competition, or for the working class against the Palestinian proletarians: it was in short a special case of the post-1945 “Fordist compromise,” of rooting in a given national state of a fraction of capital. Zionism implied that a “left-wing” character be given to state and civil society. This is what Likud gradually liquidated, and the radical resizing of the role of the kibbutz demonstrates that. Conversely, out of a logical deduction, one understands that the slow erosion of the Palestinian area goes hand in hand with a major use of the Arab workforce. Yet the definition of Israel as “Zionist state” resists, and even in this semantic quid-pro-quo manifests itself the tragic nature of the present situation. To let out words like “Zionist” or “lobby,” etc., only serves — consciously or not — to surround the existence of Israel with a halo of intrigues, mystery, conspiracy, and exceptional character, of which it is not difficult to catch the subliminal message: Israelis, i.e. the Jews, are not like others. While the only secret in this whole story is the open secret of capital: competition, which opposes “those who are at the top” as well as “those who are at the bottom.”

A thing I was thinking just now: do Jews in America tend to have a Plan? Like, keeping passports up to date, looking into what European nationality they might be entitled to, wondering how they would get by in Vancouver or Mexico City…I'm thinking it's worth planning for, after I get earthquake preparedness squared away.

i don't know about a plan per se but i know a lot of jews who keep their passports up to date. generally speaking tho when this topic comes up in conversation - and i should mention here that i think it's a bit hysterical and imho the US is the safest place in the world for a Jew to live - no one talks about vancouver, europe or mexico city - they just assume they'd be fleeing to israel.

A thing I was thinking just now: do Jews in America tend to have a Plan? Like, keeping passports up to date, looking into what European nationality they might be entitled to, wondering how they would get by in Vancouver or Mexico City

In my circles (notably more secular than Mordy's but religiously involved / synagogue members etc.) I have never heard of such a thing in my life and anyone making such plans would be thought of as slightly kooky. On the other hand, I certainly know Israelis who are trying to figure out how workable it would be for them to move to the US.

Yeah, the closest I can think is a friend in Texas who has started collecting guns and I want to say has a canon on his property now. But that's more Texas than Jew. I can't think of what would possibly drive me to Israel.

i should clarify that no one i know discusses it /seriously/ only in off-hand comments or as brief asides - it's the kind of thing that comes up when it seems like antisemitism in the diaspora is on the rise and conversations are happening about eg the french jewish community and then the jump to what if this happened here.

tom, you read this thread sometimes right? thought about posting it to uk thread but u kno
http://www.timesofisrael.com/hate-crimes-against-jews-sharply-increasing-in-britain-audit-finds/

The National Antisemitic Crime Audit from the non-governmental group Campaign Against Antisemitism said that nearly 1,000 incidents were reported in 2015, representing a 25.7% increase in anti-Jewish crimes on 2014, and making it the worse year on record.

Data collected from all of the country’s police forces showed that during 2014, UK police forces recorded 746 anti-Semitic crimes; that figure rose to 938 in 2015.

Violent crime jumped to 196 incidents, a 50.8% rise, in 2015 and accounted for 20.3% all crime against Jews, compared to just 126 incidents representing 16.9% of violent crimes the year before.

However, “despite the growth in antisemitic crime, police forces charged 7.2% fewer cases in 2015 than in 2014, meaning that only 13.6% of cases resulted in charges being brought,” the CAA said. In total 138 charges were brought in 2014, but just 128 in 2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/opinion/the-british-lefts-jewish-problem.html?_r=0

without following this controversy very closely, this article seemed reasonable:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/adam-ramsay/multiple-truths-of-labour-antisemitism-story

Was just reading that. v dismissive of the controversies and polls, mostly agree in the wider context as an attack on the current Labour leadership although Livingstone should've kept his mouth shut and not stepped in.

Also quite a few schoolboy errors eg. Diane Abbott is a shadow cabinet minister, not a 'spokesperson'.

Sorry - this is the piece I was talking about, from the open democracy too:

https://opendemocracy.net/uk/jamie-stern-weiner-norman-finkelstein/american-jewish-scholar-behind-labour-s-antisemitism-scanda

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14493679.Freedom_of_speech_row_as_YouTube_refuses_to_take_down_Scots_Nazi_Dog_video/

saw this bumped and thought it would be about #renegadejew

xp. lanarkshire is never in the news for a good reason