Is this anti-semitism?

No it should not. I don't think "Free Palestine" is problematic at all. Really sad if that's become an issue.

I quoted Ruhal Tarafder, the protester from that Guardian article, because he seemed to think using other words than the one phrase was no big deal. I found the small accommodation a moving gesture of support to Jewish people. That's all.

Not sure why it's only my job to quote Braverman.

― felicity, Sunday, 22 October 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I quoted that bit at Tom D to point out how The Guardian are still finding time to get any anti-Corbyn line, even at this time when he has gone back to being a backbench politician.

Not applying for a job on this but I wanted to point out that there are some terrible people pushing a line that any slogans and chanting is bad, and that given the context you could be arrested by the cops or sacked from your workplace, or harassed. That's all.

That is terrible. I am sorry about that.

Meanwhile I wondering if you are reading the stories people are posting in this thread about what is going on in the US. If you have I dont remember you acknowledging them.

There was just a university professor put on leave for posting on Twitter:

"One group of ppl we have easy access to in the US is all these zionist journalists who spread propaganda & misinformation,” she wrote. “They have houses w addresses, kids in school. They can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more.” [knife, axe, blood, blood, blood emoji]

This idea that people need to shut up if they don't precisely agree on a consensus of what chants and slogans mean or be ridiculed and shamed for even asking is something I just don't understand.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/detroit-synagogue-president-found-fatally-stabbed-home-rcna121559

xp - not telling anyone to shut up, merely putting across what's going on in the UK.

I'll stop by on US threads only now and then

I know. That wasn't to you.

Ok

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/detroit-synagogue-president-found-fatally-stabbed-home-rcna121559

This doesn't appear to be linked to the current situation in Israel/Gaza btw.

Yeah, as the subhead says, "Detroit's police chief urged the public not to speculate on motive."

That didn't stop all the online weirdos from using it to attack Rashida Talib

Yeah, that is/was ... weird.

I can't find it now but I thought Tlaib actually said she had considered Woll a friend. Woll was apparently very involved in Jewish-Muslim community relations.

I think "don't speculate on motive" means just that. There is nothing pointing to it either being linked or not linked to the Israel/Gaza situation. She seems to be a visible community member so it doesn't seem impossible, but I'm also not about to assume anything.

xp Yes, she said that on Facebook, which predictably was not enough to mollify Palestinian-haters.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/detroit-synagogue-president-found-fatally-stabbed-home-rcna121559

This doesn't appear to be linked to the current situation in Israel/Gaza btw.

But is it antisemitism?

Detroit police have no evidence to suggest it is... yet.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/focus/mayim-bialik-jewish-nose-1235758505/

https://ew.com/tv/melanie-hutsell-regrets-snl-prosthetic-nose-mayim-bialik-blossom-sketch/

How did this come up now? Wasn't that sketch extremely long ago?

1994. and hutsell has apologized and been forgiven by Bialik a long time ago. I think it just came up again in some podcast.

she mentioned the Bradley Cooper prosthetic in the Variety piece

it's also part of a whole "package" on antisemitism in Hollywood: https://variety.com/h/antisemitism-and-hollywood/

It came up in the essay she wrote, which was published a couple of days ago. Just her talking through some things that have clearly stuck with her since she was a kid. She doesn't mention Hutsell by name; EW reached out to Hutsell for a statement, which is in that EW link. Fwiw, Hutsell says even back then she didn't feel comfortable with it, but was threatened with firing if she didn't wear the prosthetic.

Follow-up on the story I posted yesterday.

BREAKING: Tube driver who led 'free Palestine' chant on London Underground train suspended, TfL says

🔗 Read more below https://t.co/Us4R0Et24r

— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 23, 2023

That article doesn't mention antisemitism

as the reason for the action taken, I mean.

"Informed protest can bring change. But on-trend bandwagons can cause rifts and fear in communities, increasing the threat to the safety of some passengers traveling among those crowds."

In what universe would a subway driver not get suspended or sacked for leading any kind of political chant over the loudspeaker? Also why is this in this thread? It just seems like baiting tbh.

it would seem that xyzzzz is including anti-palestinian and anti-arab prejudice under the umbrella of anti-semitism. technically speaking this has an argument in its favor, but it does rather muddy up the usually accepted meaning that solely addresses anti-jewish prejudice. seems like his recent posts could fit more comfortably in the British politics or Gaza war threads, but thread drift is inescapable.

Did this driver do anything other than join in with a chant of "Free, free Palestine"? Or are you telling me this is chant is Anti-Semitic in the first place?

xxxp - I am following this from the discussion yesterday, where we talked about what chants are acceptable or not.

And no, no driver should be sacked for a chant.

Lol or at least this chant, unless you think it's hate speech.

fuck off and start your own thread

What thread, what are you talking about?

I can't find it now, but I was reading a post in r/Jewish which talked about how some of the most supportive and kindest gestures towards Jewish-American people since the start of the Israel-Hamas was have been coming from Palestinian-American people and vice versa.

This post observed that lot of the hatred being stirred up is coming from people who are neither Jewish nor Palestinian.

Elsewhere somebody asked, wait - what were Roger Waters and Marc Lamont Hill doing at a Palestinian Writers Festival? Are they Palestinian?

This post observed that lot of the hatred being stirred up is coming from people who are neither Jewish nor Palestinian.

In what universe would a subway driver not get suspended or sacked for leading any kind of political chant over the loudspeaker?

They wouldn't be sacked. They are pretty strongly unionized over here.

Sky News did a low profile clarification/weak apology on behalf of the grotesquely thick Kay Burley for attributing/making up an inflammatory quote to the Palestine ambassador Husam Zomlot. Two weeks later, when it has already done the damage.

Hopefully for their indiscretion they will not have to reckon with The Full Force Of The Law™

(the train driver that is)

xp Saying her statement was "potentially misleading" is . . . not even a weak apology.

Oh that's helpful. Yeah that does make it seem vindictive and that is non-obvious to a casual observer not familiar with unionization of Tube drivers. And I do see what that has to do with the discussion of whether a chant is anti-semitic, given the way it could be a flimsy pretext to stomp on workers where you are looking for one. Sort of like how copyright infringement can be used to suppress speech.

I really don't know a good way to articulate this, but nowadays I think it's very difficult to take almost any factual premise for granted or to assume things are obvious to everyone. Because the spectrum of what is accepted as fact has been stretched so far. My brother thinks this makes it very difficult to change anyone's mind nowadays. I don't know.

xp to Tom D

Meant to say, I can't even tell as a factual matter if the chant was over the train's public address system or through a megaphone.

If it was over the public address system - I am struck at its clarity, it's nothing like the NYC subway announcements when I lived there

Sky News did a low profile clarification/weak apology on behalf of the grotesquely thick Kay Burley for attributing/making up an inflammatory quote to the Palestine ambassador Husam Zomlot. Two weeks later, when it has already done the damage.

She's at it again this morning, asking a government minister what they have to say about a tube driver being suspended for leading a chant of "From the river to the sea..." The minister didn't correct her.

Excuse my ignorance, but Kay Burley is a broadcaster and the original incident was that she falsely attributed "Israel had it coming” to Husam Zomlot, the most senior Palestinian diplomat in the UK, when Hamas attacked, correct?

And now Kay Burley has inaccurately reported the tube driver as chanting "From the river to the sea" when the driver was chanting "Free, Free," correct?

Sorry for being absolutely dense, but is there a connection between these incidents and antisemitism?

I'm responding to a post on this thread, where else should I respond to it?

The point is that the Home Secretary of this country (sorry it's not the USA, but there are other countries in the world) is pressing to have various chants prosecuted by the police as hate speech, so I'd say it belongs on a thread asking "Is this anti-semitism?" because are these chants anti-semitic?

Got it.

are these chants anti-semitic?

So if you are asking specifically about the chant "From the river to the sea," of course it belongs in this thread as I posted about three times that this is a good thread to follow it up on.

I am open to the case that it is or isn't, but when a non-zero number of sources have argued that it might be antisemitic - then even as a completely secular Jewish person I am going to pay some attention to that.

symsymsym cited this article for discussion generally on the meaning and history of "from the river to the sea"

I thought this article on the different things meant by the phrase was illuminating, was planning to share it in the other thread where the topic was brought up:

https://forward.com/opinion/415250/from-the-river-to-the-sea-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-means/

― symsymsym, Saturday, October 21, 2023 9:50 AM bookmarkflaglink

and it seemed to me that this quote from that article generated some discussion about whether Hamas had distanced itself in 2017 from its initial 1988 charter:

With Fatah seen as selling out, Hamas picked up the call for a free Palestine “from the river to the sea.” It sought to burnish its own anti-colonial bona fides at the expense of Fatah. And although many people point to Hamas’s 1988 charter as evidence of its hostility to Jews, in fact the group long ago distanced itself from that initial document, seeking a more explicit anti-colonial stance. Moreover, its 2017 revised charter makes even clearer that its conflict is with Zionism, not with Jews.

Then there was a citation to a news story about the 2017 charter https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-hamas-charter-20170501-story.html

And then to the Guardian article you quoted.

So happy to pick up the discussion at any of these points.

My secularish Jewish take is that the verse isn’t antisemitic, and the insistence that the verse is tarred by antisemitic association is agenda-led.

I think the verse might make some Jewish (and non-Jewish) people feel uncomfortable. But it’s okay to make people uncomfortable, that’s not the same thing as antisemitism. Additionally if you are an oppressor (whether Jewish or not) and it makes you feel uncomfortable - then good.