Is this anti-semitism?

I wonder if Trump is going to crow about this.

don't really care, just glad it's a faraway nutcase and not somebody who might actually be planning to blow up a jcc

that said, i don't think this guy got on a plane and came to america to desecrate people's graves

No, he clearly wasn't responsible for domestic acts of anti-Semitism, and that's part of why I absolutely care that Trump is obviously going to get all DO U SEE about this. Just about the fucking worst case scenario, because now he'll actually have a legitimate example to point to when dismissing hate crimes, which will just further embolden people who are inclined to do this shit.

Has anyone confirmed the guy who called in the threats was Jewish? Or just Israeli? Is assuming every Israeli is Jewish ... anti-semitic?

Or anti-Arab, one of the two.

The religious affiliation of the Israeli population as of 2011 was 75.4% Jewish, 16.9% Muslim, 2.1% Christian, and 1.7% Druze, with the remaining 4.0% belonging to minor faiths such as Samaritanism, Baha'iism or no religion/

Let's blame it on the Druze, for once.

toi and haaretz both have that he's jewish (and american-israeli, and supposedly was rejected from serving in the IDF) - i don't think they'd run it without knowing for sure so i think it's safe to assume the information is correct.

Psh, it's clearly misinformation being spread, since we all know the Druze run the media.

oh man

The teenager, who was born in Israel, has a brain tumor that can affect his cognitive abilities and lead to “irrational” behavior, his lawyer, Galit Bash, said. She would not say whether her client, who she said did not have a criminal record, had admitted or denied involvement.

...

Israeli news outlets reported that when the teenager was arrested, he tried to grab an officer’s gun.

Yikes. But also...this is a fairly elaborate and sustained undertaking to blame on a brain tumor.

i heard they found bitcoins and stuff on his computer and there's speculation that he was being paid to do it?

fuck i hate how much i want to know who paid this kid

paid/groomed whatever

Front page of the London Review Of Books: article about Israel buying super expensive missiles from the US (haven't finished it yet, but didn't see anything objectionable in it so far - it's online at https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n07/daniel-soar/the-most-expensive-weapon-ever-built).

HOWEVER, on the bottom of the page, ads for two books from one publisher - one about the Hebrew language, the other about resistance and compliance within Jewish communities during the holocaust (looks interesting).

Is this probably just a coincidence of who bought the advertising space, or am I right in detecting a sort of hyper-defensive "don't you even try call us anti-semitic for this" stance in the placement?

Princeton university press always have that advertising slot under the first page of the first article, so I think it's probably a coincidence. (though looking back over past issues there does sometimes - not always - seem to be a thematic link between the subject of the article and the two books being promoted?)

i think it's reasonable to assume ppl reading about israel might also be interested in a book about hebrew + jews - i wouldn't read any nefariousness into it esp since LRB has run far more questionable articles before so it's not like they're afraid of controversy.

Having read the whole article now it's barely about Israel anyway so I certainly jumped the gun, sry.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/anti-semitism/real-trump-link-threats-jews/

kinda tendentious if you ask me

Makes no mention of the swastikas/grave desecration, anything that wasn't done remotely.

seems reasonable to me and no less tendentious than multitude of articles that initially blamed it on Trump. Politically inconvenient for sure but probably otm. xp

author tips her hand early on with the line about "media’s hysterical reaction to" antisemitic threats. if one could make the case that there was literally no increased incidence of antisemitic speech/activity in the run up to & immediate wake of trump's election, then one might reasonably characterize the response by jewish organizations and news media as excessive. but i very strongly doubt that such a case could be made. there was every good reason to be focused on the issue. that a couple of disgruntled attention-seekers took the opportunity to cause havoc doesn't negate criticisms of the trump camp's flirtations with the alt-right.

i'm also a little dubious about the author's attempt to spin this as evidence of trump as a potus of action. one might just as well say that the the suspect's recent flurry of activity - and, in turn, the news media's reaction to it - attracted the attention of the intelligence community. and, not coincidentally, put quite a bit of pressure on the trump administration.

to that pt:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/02/17/is-anti-semitism-on-the-rise-does-anyone-care/

wapo article says that it's hard to a) definitively tie this or that antisemitic incident to trump's election, and b) say for certain that american anti-semitism is on the rise. i don't disagree. but nor do those points suggest that jewish political organizations and news media in general should have been less worried about the possible consequences of trump's association with the alt-right.

What do people think of The Alien Corn, by Maugham? I'll admit that I love Maugham, and know very little about anti-semitism, so after re-reading it this morning I was wondering if it was thought of as anti-semitic at all.

He does seem to present British Jews as being 'apart' from 'Englishness', but I'm not sure if he's describing something he perceives or whether there is a normative/essentialist position behind it.

It did make me realise (why it hadn't occurred to me before I don't know) that Jewish people in the First World War faced a double-prejudice because of their 'German' names. Anyway, just an idle question.

I read the story today just to do justice to your question and imo it was a very sensitive treatment of English Jewry and spoke directly to issues of acculturation and alienation. I certainly found nothing in it objectionable or offensive. Even were he to present something normative/essentialist in it (which I don't think is necessary to read and it certainly feels more observational to me) I don't think that would inherently be problematic. I mean I think what you're noticing is this idea that "Jewishness" is baked in, even generations removed. But here it had never completely gone away and the family's Jewishness continued to play a role in their lives - both in terms of neuroticism (as they try to escape it), glib superficiality (telling Jewish stories), and ultimately this kind of direct grappling w/ it (in the case of George). But to that last point it is also a story about being caught between worlds as George observes the Jews in Germany and feels utterly alienated from them as well - linguistically, culturally - he's afraid he'll be thrown out of synagogue for doing something wrong. I quite liked it and I like these twin themes of repression/denial + explosion between this ethnic/religious heritage that they willingly repress but continues to come back, and this artistic urge that literally explodes by the end of the story. Certainly in comparison to some of my favorite writers (like Gogol) this is a world's apart in its treatment of Jewish characters and even Jewish themes.

OT Tablet published this today - http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/231133/gorka-forward-vitezi-rend-trump . nb that I know nothing about Vitezi Rend and have no authority to contest or confirm Leibovitz's conclusions here. nbx2 I went to Yeshiva with a student whose grandfather, a Hungarian poet, was one of the 1,600 Jews that Kastner saved in exchange for condemning the rest of Hungarian Jewry to death. At the time he was studying Hungarian to try and translate his grandfather's poetry. We were fairly close being as how we were the only two (maybe there was a third) students in the school with any interest in literature of any kind. I saw him a few year's later - he was the counselor at a Jewish summer camp my brother was attending. We haven't been in touch since.

Cool, thanks for reading it.

so now i know how to get mordy to read something

Terry Teachout says of it: "Some find “The Alien Corn” anti-Semitic, and I can see why, but my old friend Samuel Lipman, who wrote of it with great eloquence in Music and More, thought it by way of being a minor masterpiece." But he gives no details.

The story definitely deals with antisemitism (and self-hate) but to read the story itself as antisemitic imo creates a standard impossible to meet. I'd be curious to hear from the "some" who find it antisemitic and hear their precise criticisms. ime ppl can find ways to be offended by anything.

Probably just people trying to dissuade him from writing an opera based on it.

jews for bannon are an interesting crew

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/state-department-anti-semitism-office-unstaffed-article-1.3273439

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/the-anti-semitism-around-donald-trump.html

http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-islamic-preacher-calls-on-allah-to-annihilate-the-jews/

disgusting story obv but from strictly an anthropological perspective his linked sermon is fascinating.

new book that is relevant to my interests:
https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Semitism-Left-David-Hirsh/dp/1138235318

Today’s antisemitism is difficult to recognize because it does not come dressed in a Nazi uniform and it does not openly proclaim its hatred or fear of Jews.

really

i wouldn't pay too much attention to the copy. i've read his work elsewhere (like in Engage) and he's v good he has a strong grasp of the history of the left + its intersections w/ antisemitism.

most anti semitism these days actually comes from Yair Netanyahu

This is the most interesting nugget in that story about Facebook selling ads against the "jew hater" category https://t.co/L8xE0iWdJh pic.twitter.com/d9Jd5CyY3Z

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) September 14, 2017

Today’s antisemitism is difficult to recognize because it does not come dressed in a Nazi uniform and it does not openly proclaim its hatred or fear of Jews.

lol, that's a pretty untimely blurb

http://www.gainesville.com/news/20170914/gpd-receives-complaint-against-hot-cop

so, so difficult to recognize

w/ uk left's embrace of important jewish communities like Jewdas (ffs) it's hard to understand how they've completely lost the jewish vote. republicans pray that the dem party acts as philosemitic as labour.

clearly not completely ;)

I don't know much about Jewdas, but the Daily Mail/Guido Fawkes et al deciding which Jews are good and which are bad doesn't seem to be going down too well, even among Corbyn's critics.

aren't Jewdas the ones who describe Israel as 'sewage'?

Sincerely, yesterday was the first time I've ever felt "othered" as a Jew in the UK.

It does seem to have provided Jewdas with some sub-Onion beetroot material though.

guys think about what their name means for just a second