Is this anti-semitism?

Yeah he pretty much destroys Cohen and Goldberg's points.

Without going a bunch more into this bc I don't really want to spend significantly arguing about Mearsheimer - his defense is more serious than I gave him credit for, and in that particular piece he comes off as perhaps more nuanced than the impression the Commentary article gave. At the same time, some of his critiques are kinda disingenuous and I can never help but feel like his tone is a really clever guy who is good at "just asking questions" without ever addressing the subtexts of some of those questions. If he can't see how some of the assertions he makes (or that MANY of his commenters seem to think he's making) would be terribly upsetting to Jewish people, then he's particularly myopic. If he can, he's cruel.

Thats' why I said that that Talk of the Nation I heard with him and someone like Cohen was eventually unlistenable - they talked past each other and gave themsleves every permission for exageration and mischaracterization. I was largely sympathetic to him but then he'd say something so tone-deaf I'd wince.

I strongly recommend not reading the commentary to that piece btw.

i kind of get why hawks for israel would want to write pieces based on all the sick internet comment box garbage they run into. i mean, we all do the same on the corner and elsewhere. you wonder how prevalent the attitudes really are.

Although I did learn this from the comments which is actually kinda hilarious in a "rebellious kid badgering his teacher" sorta way:

"Goldberg says that Atzmon's book suggests that historians reopen the question of whether or not the Medieval Blood Libels had any basis in fact."

No, actually, that accusation appears to be completely baseless.

Goldberg clearly did not read the book, and THAT particular accusation was culled from a blog called "Harry's Place", where that blogger had himself culled this quote from the book:

"It seems I didn’t learn the necessary lesson because when we studied the middle age blood libels, I again wondered out loud how the teacher could know that these accusations of Jews making Matzo out of young Goyim’s blood were indeed empty or groundless. Once again I was sent home for a week. In my teens I spent most of my mornings at home rather than in the classroom."

That's pretty fucked up. :/

http://www.theonion.com/articles/the-israeli-conflict-is-far-too-nuanced-and-comple,11576/

Hollywood is cannuck now anyway, isn't it? Flappy-headed bastards.

like ilxuk and the tories

LOL guy in Ireland thinks Tories discriminated against

http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/89404/sounding-off/

If what Rosenberg and the others on the left want is a debate—by which I understand them to mean a debate about the wisdom of a war with Iran, and about the proper role of the U.S.-Israel relationship—great. The left, I think, will win that debate on the merits, because it recognizes that if Israel is to survive as a Jewish democracy living in peace beside a free Palestine, an assertive United States has to pressure a recalcitrant Israel to come to its senses, especially about the insanity of attacking Iran.

But that debate will be shut down and sidetracked by using a term that Charles Lindbergh or Pat Buchanan would be comfortable using. I can’t co-sign that. The attempt to kosherize “Israel Firster” is an ugly rationalization. It shouldn’t matter that the American Jewish right proliferates the term “anti-Israel.” The easiest way to lose a winnable argument is to get baited into using their tactics. I don’t fetishize false civility; bullies ought to get it twice as bad as they give. People disagree, so they should argue. Shouting is healthier than shutting up.

Call me a squish or a sellout or a concern troll. Whatever. But if you can’t be forceful without recalling some of the ugliest tropes in American Jewish history, you’re doing it wrong.

i've always liked spencer ackerman, will read

that is one of the worst magazine graphics i've seen in a while tho

I like his tone

"New antisemitism is the concept that a new form of antisemitism has developed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, emanating simultaneously from the far-left, radical Islam, and the far-right, and tending to manifest itself as opposition to Zionism and the State of Israel. The concept generally posits that much of what purports to be criticism of Israel by various individuals and world bodies, is, in fact, tantamount to demonization, and that, together with an alleged international resurgence of attacks on Jews and Jewish symbols, and an increased acceptance of antisemitic beliefs in public discourse, such demonization represents an evolution in the appearance of antisemitic beliefs."

that had been bugging me for some time, glad i learned about that concept today.

:(

rolling 'is this anti-semitic' thread

i'm as much of a WE ARE CREATED BY THE DISCOURSE, DO YOU SEE humanities twat as anyone but saying that "the concept" posits such-and-such is doing some interesting work here

I keep winding up watching youtube videos and reading youtube comments that I should probably just not be watching at all, but I'm noticing a kind of rhetoric that I'm starting to get very uncomfortable with although I once thought it was harmless -- "I'm not anti-semitic, I'm anti-zionist." I used to feel like, "yeah, that's fair, of course you can be against the idea of a jewish state without being anti-jewish," and I still feel that way, except that now I see that the line is often followed with fairly scary stuff about how it's the "zionists" who control the banks, the money supply, force the US to fight wars, drink blood, whatever. I haven't changed my mind about criticism of israel or anything, but I think that the attempt to draw up a categorical bad guy is always a dangerous way to go.

― pass the duchy pon the left hand side (musical duke) (Hurting 2), Monday, October 31, 2011 12:18 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/world/europe/gunman-kills-3-at-a-jewish-school-in-france.html?_r=1&hp

I have said this other places but 'zionist' is not a word that needs to exist in contemporary political dialogue and anyone who uses it isn't just making a neutral argument, they're using a word w/ a lot of weird associations in 2012. the best way to say "I'm against the idea of a jewish state" is by saying "I'm against the idea of a jewish state"

yeah this is fucked up. the killer successfully escaped too, hopefully they find him today. but what is there to say... 'hopefully he just picked a school at random to shoot at children and it just happened to be the jewish school'? there is ignorance and then there is being fucking deranged and evil.

--

france has become such an intolerant place in recent years and much of this election is being fought on anti-islam ideals of the right and I wonder if this has just spread over into general xenophobia, racism and hatred of anything different. Hopefully Sarkosy can fuck off and a more tolerant socialist government makes it (they are ahead in the polls iirc.) I don't think that would have anything to do with this, I just feel like venting.

There's a very strong suspicion that the killer is the same guy who killed some Foreign Legionnaires in Toulouse and Montauban recently.

Unlikely that the shooter is a Sarkozy supporter, that's for sure.

Or if he is, I've got some news for him that's gonna make his head fuckin explode.

nah the kill-people right has its own party there

iatee, I think hurting is referring to the fact that Sarkozy's mother was Jewish (though a practicing Catholic).

I know that, I was just saying that it'd be extremely unlikely that he's supporting the moderate-right party regardless

Oh yeah, sorry I didn't mean to imply that. The French right (incl. the far right but also the current cunts) are cunts but I have no idea if they have anything to do with this cunt's sympathies.

Anyway, killing children is about as horrific a thing a person can do and I hope to hell they find this guy.

thx for that

I have said this other places but 'zionist' is not a word that needs to exist in contemporary political dialogue and anyone who uses it isn't just making a neutral argument, they're using a word w/ a lot of weird associations in 2012. the best way to say "I'm against the idea of a jewish state" is by saying "I'm against the idea of a jewish state"

otm and really can't be said enough. i think this is partially the point of norman finkelstein's interview with the BDS guy - if you're not upfront that you're against having a Jewish state, then you think you're getting away with something but you're just being transparently disingenuous. and if you're upfront that you're against having a Jewish state, then you're fucked bc that's not a popular position, which is why ppl aren't upfront about it.

anyway, off-topic. news from france is terribly depressing and france obviously has a long history of anti-Semitism - Dreyfuss etc. when my parents went to France on vacation about a decade ago they told my dad not to wear his yarmulke in public but to keep it under a baseball cap or something. anyway, right after shabbos they were walking back to their hotel and he was wearing his yarmulke and ppl shouted "Juif" at them.

france has become such an intolerant place in recent years

is this true? compared to what?

are you kidding

I think "become" might be questionable -- it's always been a somewhat intolerant culture in general on many levels, not just in terms of religious/ethnic minorities.

friend of mine who works in France gets a lot of casual anti-Semitic stuff under the guise of "but why won't Jews respect French culture" - e.g. given a lecture on French "secularism" when he said actually he couldn't come in and do overtime since it was a Jewish holiday (as if they'd ask an xtian for overtime on Easter Sunday), or people telling him off because kosher butchery is ~so cruel~ (from the country that brings us foie gras), etc.

xp I don't think the kind of stuff he faces is particularly a recent development tbh

there is a difference between white ppl anti-semitism in france and muslim anti-semitism in france

xpost yeah my sister-in-law who lived in france said that a lot of it is this refusal to understand why anyone would want to identify in any way as anything other than "French," coupled, ironically, with making it fairly difficult to assimilate.

yeah i'm saying that figuring what is going on with intolerance in france is complicated, and vague "woe is france" statements like "has become such an intolerant place" need clarification if you're going to tie them into an apparently crazy person with a gun shooting people

i don't know that "intolerant" is the world. france has become a minefield of ethnic tension and antipathy.

what did france used to be, exactly

I think you maybe had less ethnic tension when you had fewer ethnicities?

or rather when the ethnicities were confined to the colonies more, then the tension was in the colonies more?

You know, when I vent you don't need to pick apart the exact language of it all.

what did france used to be, exactly

a bit less diverse, i.e., "for the french"

not to be "my irish ancestors had it rough" about this, because to be a jew or an algerian was always outside any ideological definition of what could be 'french', but "fewer ethnicities" strikes me as loose talk. gascons, bretons, occitan-speaking folx, basques, german alsatians, etc. the central/republican state kind of did a number on identities like that.

i wonder if the lingering blithe insistence on "secularism" and "french culture" doesn't speak to a suppressed knowledge that to be "french" means to take part in a constructed identity? i.e. to have something jewish or otherwise ahem mediterranean in you is something unconstructed, idk

this is like the only thing i know about france btw, thanks benedict anderson

There's a vein of anti-semitism on the left in France that isn't comfortable with ethnic identity (or responds to French ethnic chauvinism by championing post-racist 'universal' identity politics) and isn't comfrotable with the religiosity of many French Jews. Add to that the widespread criticism of Israeli policies and it can get ugly. It's by no means helped by the anti-racist crowd having as its largest constituency North African muslims. There's populist 'traditional' Xtian anti-semitism and right-wing racist and ultra-Catholic anti-semitism though that has become a little more complicated since, similar to the American extreme right, parts of the French extreme right sometimes pretend to like Israel since it gives them a better place from whence to beat up on Islam and Arabs.

also u know

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lQsC-7_wBSU/TdlKwdwP-oI/AAAAAAAAABk/NK9LezvJK_0/s1600/d08_aurore_janv_98.jpg

Yeah, goole, francity is an invention. During the ancien régime it was mostly aspirational and after the Revolution increasingly imposed by a more and more centralized State often in opposition to the old aristocracy and the Church.