Is this anti-semitism?

Surely what Jacobson is saying is flat-out wrong, though. Critics of Israel (anti-Semitic or not) have nothing like the monopoly on political discourse that he claims, and isn't that his central claim? This isn't to deny that some criticism of Israel might be anti-Semitic.

how-j's perspective on the world is pretty much limited to the tonier parts of media london; within that, he's not wrong.

The view from Hampstead, you mean?

comments section on that article is a fucking shocker

I'm genuinely unclear about what's so shocking in that comment section! There's no point of view expressed there that I'm surprised to see.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_A5FW0Zqf2LA/SMm_Ep8GXRI/AAAAAAAAA7g/OfpwL7X55Xk/s320/blahzay_blahzay_blah_blah_blah_1996_retail_cd-front.jpg

?

you're cool with the first comment being: "this guy has a jewish name, don't listen to him"?

Nice job on equating "I'm not shocked" to "I'm cool with", there.

if you don't find it shocking you should probably spend more time among people who aren't complete fucking goons.

"No, A pro Isreali Anti Palestinian Shoddy Second Rate Piece of 6th Grade Reporting is the name of my dog!"

enrique i cant really believe that youre shocked, given how often you talk about the anti-semitism prevalent in the british left

you should probably spend more time among people who aren't complete fucking goons.

What, ILX?

xpost shocking = offensive or distasteful, not neccessarily surprised

dude still insists on reading the guardian too, what can you do

Yes, because "I'm not shocked by opinions expressed in a newspaper comments thread on the fucking Internet, you know the place where we have Youtube comments thread and the like" translates to "I hang out with anti-Semites". Again, well done.

(xposts)

Do I just not really understand the background here? Because I see a lot of comments like this one, which seems extremely reasonable to me:

Are we allowed to criticise Israeli actions at all? I criticised British and American actions during the Iraq war. Am I unpatriotic? If criticism of Israel descends into anti-semitism then it must be checked and noted I agree but those who abhor violence must be allowed a voice.

That seems like kind of an obvious comment that doesn't address the issue.

By the way, I DON'T think it's anti-semitic to have Israeli parents say "Don't tell them about the baby-killing" or whatever. I think it's easy and cheap and not very subtle or interesting, but it's not anti-semitic to bring up the fact that Israeli actions resulted in the deaths of babies just because there happen to have been some blood libels in the middle ages involving jews and babies.

There are certainly people -- I wouldn't say there are many, but they exist, and I've known a few -- who argue that no Western criticism of Israel is legitimate, because (a) whatever Israel's transgressions or mistakes, there are many countries and regimes deserving of opprobrium (and so if you're singling out Israel the only conceivable reason is anti-Semitism), and (b) the Holocaust, or at least the fact that the West permitted the Holocaust to happen.

(xpost)

(That being said, it's a fairly extreme point of view.)

Shimon Peres bottle opener

Caryl Churchill relying on easy and cheap polemics??? Hold the fucking presses this is breaking news

However I do think parallels between Israel and Nazi Germany is ... something. Maybe not anti-semitic, but problematic, because it seems to imply a canceling out of past wrongs.

i think this has 0 to do with anti-semitism and 100% to do with Caryl Churchill's time being over some time about 30 years ago

I mean I don't have as much of a problem with people saying "apartheid" or even "ethnic cleansing" as long as they can back it up/justify it, but using Nazi Germany as the analogy seems to have an especially questionable motive.

There are certainly people -- I wouldn't say there are many, but they exist, and I've known a few -- who argue that no Western criticism of Israel is legitimate, because (a) whatever Israel's transgressions or mistakes, there are many countries and regimes deserving of opprobrium (and so if you're singling out Israel the only conceivable reason is anti-Semitism), and (b) the Holocaust, or at least the fact that the West permitted the Holocaust to happen.

(xpost)

― Charlie Rose Nylund, Wednesday, 18 February 2009 17:45 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

strawmensch

stating the obv here, but yeah the whole Nazi comparison thing is done to get a rise out of Jewish people rather than to make any real political statement.

strawmensch

Hey, I was answering Laurel's question. I'll look up the people I've known who've expressed the opinion I described, though, and tell them about a great casting opportunity for them in The Wizard Of Oz.

It's ALL kind of obvious, the playwright's point is, as you say, obviously and not very complex or interesting, but in that case...why are people upthread calling the comments shocking and terrible?

well the majority of them are surely terrible, just not shocking as in a surprise

Okay, well, I don't see why they're so terrible either. But I guess that means I don't understand the issues.

xxxposts fine, you've met people who've said this, whatever. but it's a travesty of mainstream arguments about criticism of israel, not the real thing. saying that israel is "singled out" doesn't mean that you can't criticise it - just that it shouldn't be targeted with extraordinary measures not applied to other human rights abusers eg boycott movements.

and it is not often said that complicity in the holocaust means that there should be no western criticism of israel, but that it feeds into israeli fears about neighbours and political organisations in palestine who have the stated aim of the destruction of the jewish state.

Didn't most of ILX pretty much reach this viewpoint after a day or so of argument about the Gaza invasion?

Talking about the crimes of Hamas is a smoke and mirror comment as the Palestinians are an occupied and embattled people. The original sin is being committed against them. We will address their crimes once Israel has cleaned up its act.

I see a continuum between lunacies at either end of the spectrum, admittedly with far more at the anti-Israel end. But we still have charming lines like "If Israel messes up the hair on an arab's head a million people scream and riot in the streets", the guy who says there's no such thing as a Palestinian, and the guy who basically asked why they all can't just go to Egypt.

xpost it's a travesty of mainstream arguments about criticism of israel, not the real thing

I more or less agree with the rest of your post, but this is awfully reductive. "The real thing"?

I mean, one elephant in the room with all these discussions -- or at least one clear demarcator -- is whether questioning Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state = anti-Semitism. There are a lot of people who would say an emphatic "yes" to that, a lot of people who would do the opposite, and a lot of people who aren't sure.

(This is a totally separate/different issue than asking whether it's pragmatic, reasonable, or appropriate to open up that question. I think Nabisco or Hurting summed that one up nicely, some time ago.)

questioning's Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state may not be anti-semitism, but it's stupid and pointless because Israel's realistically not gonna stop being a Jewish state. Israelis would have their country go down in flames before that happened.

it's a solution to the middle east crisis about as much as "what if everyone there became atheists?" is a solution.

so, like the nazi thing, its only use in political discussion is to get jews angry and paranoid. it might not be philosophically anti-semitic, but it has a similar end result.

Didn't most of ILX pretty much reach this viewpoint after a day or so of argument about the Gaza invasion?

Talking about the crimes of Hamas is a smoke and mirror comment as the Palestinians are an occupied and embattled people. The original sin is being committed against them. We will address their crimes once Israel has cleaned up its act.

― How can there be male ladybugs? (Laurel), Wednesday, February 18, 2009 7:12 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no because thats a retarded viewpoint

iatee, what do you think of the argument in this article?

(And by "what do you think" I mean "do you think it accurately reflects the perspectives of the parties involved", rather than "do you endorse it".)

^ article makes a very good point. question being put to palestinians/hamas is in some ways comparable to a (hypothetical) c. 1900's demand for native americans to issue a blanket statement honoring the US's "right to exist"

There is an enormous difference between "recognizing Israel's existence" and "recognizing Israel's right to exist." From a Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to concede that the Holocaust was morally justified. For Palestinians to acknowledge the occurrence of the Nakba – the expulsion of the great majority of Palestinians from their homeland between 1947 and 1949 – is one thing. For them to publicly concede that it was "right" for the Nakba to have happened would be something else entirely.

Slight of hand with two very different uses of the word 'right' here. And then on top of that, there's the translation issue. What does 'recognizing Israel's right to exist' imply in the Arabic language vs. what he's reading into it in English? Overall, I'm not buying that sorta philosophical depth from an organization that quotes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in their charter.

so iatee are you refusing to recognize palestinians' right to refuse to recognize israel's right to exist?

I think I have the right to

which by his logic, makes it 'right'

Israel has a right to exist --> Israel did not exist prior to the Nakba --> the Nakba was morally justified, or, in other words, "right"

but apparently this is "sleight of hand" which only works because it uses the word "right" twice

Israel has a right to exist = Israel is a state that exists right (argh) now and will continue to have the right to do so

if we buy his logic, doesn't that make Palestinian moderates who *are* willing to say 'Israel has a right to exist' a horribly self-hating group?