At what point does debate around Israel become antisemitism?

Great Debates
204

Part of the issue (and I feel this is on topic) is that a good part of the anti-Israel belief in the west is anti-colonialism. They see Israel as a western colonial project and are opposed to that aspect of it, not the Jewish aspect. if Israel was settled by western Christians with the backing of major western powers, a lot of people would be just as opposed to that nation. The fact that over time a lot of christians from the middle east moved there wouldn’t really be relevant.

I think thats part of the issue. Many people in the west aren’t anti-Israel because they are anti-Jewish, but they are anti-Israel because they are opposed to western colonialism.

But theres even more to it than that. Like Israel’s neighbors are constantly being defeated militarily which is humiliating for them. So its not just anti-Jewishness, or anti-colonialism, its also honor about being humiliated.

Also, and this is part of my thought process, is rejection of Israel (in the US) in a way a rejection of the fact that America doesn’t work for most people here anymore? Most people know politics is run by the oligarchs, and America is economically unsustainable for the bottom 80%. So being told to like America’s allies isn’t that appealing when you grew up in a nation that you knew didn’t represent you.

Plus some people support Israel and support the war against Hamas, they just don’t want Netanyahu and the Lukid party in charge while it happens. Theres lots of anti-Lukid protests within Israel among Jewish citizens who feel the war isn’t being waged properly.

My point is theres a wide range of reasons people would oppose Israel and/or its actions, and they all blur together (which I feel is on topic). So taking a half dozen reasons people might oppose Israel and trying to separate out the anti-semitism from the other reasons isn’t easy.

205

Since you quoted me, I’ll go ahead and reply with my personal feelings on that specific element, though I really don’t want to participate in the thread due to my internal conflicts and to minimize concerns of bias if I have to moderate it again.

I appreciate the specific statement Macklemore made after his original “Free Palestine” statements blew up.

“Criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide, is in no way a criticism of you,” he said, adding that he wanted people in Gaza and the West Bank to know they had not been forgotten.

That, there, is a specific statement avoiding the two terms in the OP. Though I might argue his specific definitions, plenty of people on this board do so daily. But his later statements:

“Taking a side can cost you. Money, brand deals, sponsorships, festivals, private shows, relationships and access. I’ve lost all of those things. But there is no neutral position between the oppressor and the oppressed,” he wrote.

IMHO (only!) doesn’t address what Hamas did on October 7th. Again, entirely IMHO it puts all the blame on Israel, which would be, probably, a focus tied directly into the terminology of being an “anti-Zionist”.

NOT, repeat NOT, refighting the blame game, just quoting some elements of that specific artist’s statements on the issue. Combined with their historical actions… I have doubts about their sincerity.

[ note, I’ve taken the quotes from a BBC article, since I find them slightly less biased than most American reporting, but YMMV ]

To my last point, and @Velocity’s question, here’s another BBC article from 2014 on the “Jew-face”.

Though in his defense, he claimed it was a funky disguise and after it blew up included links on his website to the ADL (irony!).

My absolute, limited, very human gut-take, is that he does have true sympathy for the plight of the people of Palestine, and probably doesn’t have strong anti-semitic feelings, but he’s coming at it as an outsider and pushing an over-simplified world view on a very complicated and long-ongoing series of conflicts. And possibly using such to enhance his visibility (very uncharitable, I know, thus -possibility-).

Which, bringing us fully back to the OP, means that his actions and statements are outside the frame of the problematic definitions. He’s closer to the colonialism discussion earlier, but even simpler: outsiders see a complex issue, and figure, “Hey, this is so simple! X is right, Y is wrong, so we should just fix it ABC way”.

Very human, but rarely helpful.

206

That may be true, but whether through ignorance or through malice, it is erasure of the Jewish people’s indigenous connection to the land, which is a form of anti-semitism.

You cannot deny Jewish indigenousness without anti-semitism. Whether it is done because of ignorance or outright hatred of Jews is pretty much irrelevant.

207

Oh, yeah, another example: is using the phrase “from the river to the sea” approvingly a sign of antisemitism or not? I have the feeling it’s another example of what I mentioned going on with the word “Zionism.”

208

The original chant in arabic was something like ‘from the river to the sea, palestine will be arab’ which is much more openly anti-semetic and a desire to erase Jews from the region.

209

From Water to Water, Palestine will be Arab

min el-mayeh lil-mayeh, Falastin Arabiyeh

210

Yes, thats true. Also arab muslims are also colonizers who colonized the area and erased existing religions and languages (which ties into the double standard thing. Arab muslim colonization is fine, but western or Jewish colonization is unacceptable).

However there is some merit to the fact that after the ottoman empire lost in WW1, that the UK took over the land of the levant and divided it. So the line between anti-semitism and anti-colonialism/imperialism can become blurred. But then you have the fact that many people who are anti-colonialist or anti-imperialist are only opposed to these things when the west does them. When anyone non-western does them, the same people don’t care. So its complex identifying people’s motivations.

211

The list I have are not items that each alone is a “giveaway” so much each one is a quack and enough quacks I start to become more sure they’re a duck.

Comparing Israel to Nazis. (Although on these boards someone recently did that just out of what I do assess is plain cluelessness.)

Alluding, even obliquely to classic antisemitic tropes, including control over media, money, clannishness, dual loyalty…

Statements that support the genocide of those who live in Israel (“from the river to the sea”, “Zionists should die.”) and support of those who express that goal.

Other past antisemitic statements or behaviors.

A long standing over the top view of Israel as evil far above a standard any other group is held to and as an extreme focus. (We have at least one poster here who I feel is that.)

I am sure there is more. Again it is more a collection to get to if not beyond a shadow of a doubt to at least more likely than not. And easier are those on the right in power using old Nazi dog whistles. Much scarier than a few posturing college students to me.

212

No argument with the indisputable fact that a lot of 17th- through 19th-century North American colonists were at least as ruthless and oppressive toward local inhabitants as a lot of 20th-c. Israeli ones. That doesn’t mean that modern Americans aren’t entitled to be critical of modern Israelis’ parents and grandparents for perpetrating some of the same mistakes and crimes that the Americans’ own great-great-grandparents did, for example. Similarly, there are a lot of white American descendants of 19th-c. slaveholders who denounce the segregationists of sixty years ago; that’s legit too. (There’s also the issue that the peoples victimized by US colonialism are at least (though it doesn’t wipe out past oppression) now all recognized as full citizens who have equal legal rights with the descendants of their oppressors. If that were the case in Israel/Palestine, I think the accusations of colonialism would lose a lot of their force.)

Anyway, more germanely to the specifics of the OP, I think that criticism of Israel is pretty much inseparable from antisemitism, however unintentionally. It’s like trying to mix blue paint in an improperly cleaned can that used to hold red paint. No matter how carefully you stir and how much you try to avoid mixing in the smears of red paint on the walls of the can, some of it’s going to get in there. Same with historically ingrained forms of cultural bigotry like antisemitism in the western world or former “Christendom”.

All you can do is watch out for the purple streaks indicating the contamination by red paint and point them out when you see them. It doesn’t mean the blue paint can’t still be usable and beneficial in many ways. But it will never be totally free from contamination. (And that applies to criticism of Israel by Jews as well: internalized bigotry among bigotry victims embedded in a historically bigoted society is absolutely a thing.)

213

Great list. I’d add “saying Jews should ‘go back to Poland.’”

214

That’s not a quack. That’s an immediate bigot jacket.

215

Wow that’s convenient

216

Nah, just realistic. As a Jew who has consistently criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians for decades, including on these boards, I’m obviously not arguing that the pervasiveness of antisemitism means that we can’t criticize Israel. Just that yeah, it’s not humanly possible in a historically antisemitic culture for criticism of the Jewish state to be completely untainted by culturally entrenched Jew-hatred. It’s that old systemic-bigotry concept that all we “wokes” have been banging on about for years. (Likewise, criticism of Palestinians in the same “historical Christendom” cultures can’t be completely free from Islamophobia.)

217

I don’t know—are Israelis allowed to complain about their own country? Maybe the cost of living is too high, or the public transportation is inadequate, or the government misled them into a war?— without it being anti-Semitism? Can someone outside of Israel not then do the same thing? An Israeli might reply that it is not any of their fucking business, but is it anti-semitic?

OTOH I think you are right that if someone is sitting in an armchair in the Netherlands and, for some reason, is always on about Israel and has theories about Jews and so forth, then we can smell something rotten.

218

Thanks for the clarification, but yes I think appeals to anitsemitism need to be justified, it can’t just be sloppily applied to any criticism of israel otherwise we get to the point where we aren’t allowed to criticize anything Israel is doing.

Summary

Indeed, I’d argue that’s how we’ve got to the current appalling state of affairs, with Israel flagrantly committing an ongoing genocide in Gaza, and war crimes in multiple countries

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220

Moderating

Stop hijacking this thread.
I’ll hide the part likely to blow up.
You’ve come in late and missed a lot of modnotes.

221

This topic was automatically opened after 24 minutes.

222

I think there is a difference between “criticism of Israel” like “taxes are too high” or “the lines at Kupat Holim are too long” or “it’s too hot, and it’s not even a dry heat!”… And even more substantive criticism like “Netanyahu’s attempted judicial reform bill would destroy democracy in Israel” or “I disagree with Israel’s conduct in a war”…

…and criticism of the concept of Israel like “Israel is a settler-colonialist enterprise by foreign white Europeans” (which gets into stuff we talked about up thread, like erasure of Jewish indigenousness and the Khazar Conspiracy, and into the D that is Delegitimization) or “all of Israel is stolen land”.

223

Yes, that’s definitely so. We can’t use the pervasiveness of systemic antisemitism as an excuse to disregard any specific criticism of Israel because “smells like antisemitism, your criticism is disqualified!”.

Equally, however, we can’t push back against overuse of the “antisemitism, disqualified!” defense without honestly admitting that antisemitic bigotry is systemic and historically entrenched in most western societies, and discourse in those societies can’t help being somewhat distorted by it—even among people who consciously and categorically reject antisemitic bigotry. Just because you’re morally opposed to a particular cultural prejudice doesn’t mean you’re magically, absolutely immune to its influence.