Western antisemites do tend to overlap a lot with the sort of ethnonationalist supremacists who are hung up on “bloodline”.
The Kaifeng Jews?
The world, not just the US, largely doesn’t care when Moslems kill Moslems. It doesn’t much care when Africans kill Africans.
But when Palestinians and Israelis are killing each other, it not only cares, it takes sides.
For me in particular, it’s partially a feeling of betrayal and shame (as well as of horror over the Israeli atrocities and US complicity). For almost my whole life, as a Jew and descendant of Holocaust survivors, I was taught, and believed, that Israel was special, that the lessons of the Holocaust were forever baked into Israel’s DNA, such that, while Israel was full of humans and could make human mistakes, it was utterly inconceivable that Israel could ever knowingly allow or commit mass atrocities. For almost my whole life I believed that, while the plight of Palestinians was terrible and Palestinians were just humans as well, Israel had done everything possible to extend and achieve peace and was rejected over and over again, due to extremists on the other side.
The factual reporting about this conflict, and my further reading about the history, show how wrong I was, and I feel very bad and dumb about how I was misled for so long. Not that Israel is some uniquely monstrous nation, but that there’s nothing special about it. The lessons of the Holocaust are categorically not baked into the DNA of the country, and Israel and Israelis are just as likely to allow or commit atrocities as any other nation and people. And that, in general, things are getting worse, not better, in terms of the actions and atrocities that the Israeli government and military allow, and commit. And that, in general, Palestinian civilians have suffered far, far more in this conflict than Israelis – not because Palestinians have behaved worse (statistically, they’ve killed far fewer Israelis then the reverse, based on the statistics I’ve seen), but because Palestinians have significantly less power and wealth.
And summing up, there’s nothing really that special about this conflict. We’re seeing the same sorts of factors involved – religion, wealth, resources, politics, ideology, etc., as in most other conflicts. Generally, the strong are oppressing the weak. Generally the wealthy are oppressing and exploiting the poor. Generally, leaders use propaganda and lies to manipulate, in order to continue this status quo, and maintain their wealth and privilege. It’s not much different here as compared to anywhere else.
There are plenty of other conflicts as bad or worse, but none with this personal feeling to me, as well as few that include as much direct complicity by my country.
Do they?
What about all the other peoples who lack a homeland, like the Rohingya people?
And frankly, I have ZERO desire to ever set foot in Israel, despite being Jewish. It’s not my country. I’ve never been there. How could it be my “homeland”? My homeland, for better or worse, is the US. It’s the nation I was born in. It’s the only nation I’ve ever lived in. And given how unpopular Americans are becoming thanks to the shit-show in our government it’s probably the only nation that will have me.
Israel? I don’t know the language. I don’t like or agree with the more extreme forms of the state religion. My marriage to the man I deeply loved would have been forbidden there. Hell, the rabbis cozying up with Netanyahu don’t even recognize me as Jewish and would probably call me an abomination. Not to mention a nation where bus stops often feature public bomb shelters does not strike me as a “safe haven”. I’ll take my chances with Midwestern US tornadoes, thank you very much. If other Jews want to live in Israel more power to them, I’ll support their right to decide where to live but I can’t think of a single thing about Israel-the-geographic-location or Israel-the-modern-nation that appeals to me. Other than some individuals from there I’ve had the pleasure to meet and to know, but that’s true of a lot of people from a lot of places and backgrounds.
My apologies in advance, because I don’t think @Wesley_Clark falls into this group, but my experience has been the people most ardently advocating for a “Jewish Homeland” are the evangelicals who feel Jews and Israel must exist for their end-times myth to come about but don’t actually want those icky Jews living anywhere near them. They want them over there, far away. That’s partly an artifact of where I live in the US - not a lot of Jews but a LOT of rabid fundy types. Had I grown up in, say, New York City my outlook may have been different.
They get fucked over, over and over again, just like the Jews did for the last 2000 years. What kind of question is that?
Yes, the Rohingya deserve their own country too, because until they get one, Myanmar will continue to fuck them over, again and again and again, until they go extinct.
Not exactly.
Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the great Jewish community of medieval eastern Germany, Sephardic Jews are descended from the great Jewish community of medieval Spain, and Mizrahi Jews are Jews from Muslim countries. There is, a great deal of overlap between the groups: Jews from Northern Africa are both Sephardic and Mizrahi; Jews from the Balkans are Sephardic but not Mizrahi; Persian and Yemenite Jews are Mizrahi but not Sephardic. Indian and Ethiopian Jews are, of course, none of the above.
Which gives you my family. We’re three children, and our parents were Ashkenazic from the U.S. My wife’s family are Sephardic from Greece and Bulgaria, my sister’s husband’s family are Sephardic from Algeria, and my brother’s wife’s family are Ashkenazic from Argentina (oddly, being from Latin America does not make you Sephardic). Our children are just Israeli Jews, and beautiful.
No fault found. Believe me, I looked.
Thank you.
So how much of the, as of late, increased anger towards Israel and sympathy for the Palestinians do you think is based on thinking similar to mine, and how much is based on antisemitism (or, if not antisemitism, something flippant like knee-jerk activism, social media silliness, etc)? I don’t know for sure, but I think there are plenty of others like me. On this board and out in the real world. So plenty of real, legitimate and legitimately new anger at the Israeli government and military, IMO.
If I don’t support equal rights for other people why would they support my rights?
Given how many slices of real estate in this world have multiple claimants, how many groups want a homeland, and how impossible it would be to truly balance the scales with any form of justice… well, I’m just as glad I’m not some world dictator charged with making those decisions.
The Jews are special to the Jews. They are also special to a couple other groups, most of which are not their friends. But they aren’t any more or less special than any other minority group that has endured oppression and genocide. There are a depressing number of such groups, and even more than have been rendered extinct.
I do know, however, that the modern state of Israel as it currently stands is NOT helping Jews world-wide, indeed, the actions of Netanyahu’s government has made things more difficult for the Jews where I actually live. I may be a Jew but I am NOT an Israeli, yet the actions of Israel tar my reputation. I want Netanyahu and the government of Israel to stop claiming they speak for all Jews because they most certainly do not.
I, for one, am glad my grandparents opted for the New World instead of staying in the Old. I am happy to be an American Jew. I have no desire to be an Israeli Jew.
My understanding is the group started in Germany in the 10th century, but moved to eastern europe due to persecution. But they started in Germany. I guess its semantics.
The way I view it is this. There are about 195 countries on earth.
Of those, about 120-130 are christian majority
About 50 are muslim majority
The other 15-20 are neither christian or muslim (Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, various Hindu and buddhist nations in asia, etc).
But both christians and muslims have a long, long history of abusing and persecuting the Jews. The rohingya people can move out of Myanmar and be safe. Theres almost nowhere for the Jews to move to, since virtually all countries on earth are muslim or christian majority. Its basically (for the Jews) like the entire world is mississippi and they are black people. No matter what town they move to within mississippi, theres going to be a huge white supremacist presence there. Jews can’t really escape christian or muslim nations with a long history of mistreating them. So they need their own nation.
But I support the concept of a homeland for the Romani people in Europe, for the Kurds in the middle east. Recently south Sudan broke off from Sudan proper. Eastern european nations broken off from Russia in the 90s.
There is an alliance between Islamic extremists (greens), leftists/communists (reds) and right wing extremists (browns) against the Jews. They are targeted in ways that other minority groups are not.
I place a lot of value on concepts like human capital and human rights as a secular humanist. I don’t care about the Jewish religion, but the ashkenazi Jews have a lot of human capital to offer the world. So selfishly, I want them to be safe irrelevant of whether that is in Israel, the US or somewhere else.
But I also do not like religious extremism. I know that the government in Israel is doing a lot of damage to Jewish identity with their policies and I wish Netanyahu was in prison. But I don’t forsee any situation where I’d support Islamic extremism. Opposition to Islamic extremism is something I agree with Israel on, but thats also something a lot of arab governments are also opposed to (like Jordan).
Probably…? I couldn’t remember the name of that group.
I’m not sure I follow?
I support equal rights for other people. Both countries that I’d call mine (Israel and the US) enshrine that concept in law, and that is a large part of why I think these countries are good.
The problem is that Myanmar is not run by me (well, that’s actually fine, I don’t want to be the dictator of Myanmar; but you get my point). It’s run by people who don’t want to give the Rohingya equal rights. And there’s no way to force them to adopt a liberal worldview. So the next best thing is to give the Rohingya their own country that can defend their rights if needed.
Oh, so in fact it’s not the “double standard” or disproportionality of media coverage that bothers you, where “the world” allegedly “largely doesn’t care” about all the “horrific human rights abuses, displacements, ethnic cleansing and real genocides taking place of tens and hundreds of thousands of innocent lives” (i.e., the vast majority of the violent inhumanity being perpetrated throughout the actual world).
No, apparently what bothers you is simply that when “the world” of mainstream media and public opinion ignores all those other atrocities in favor of giving hugely disproportionate attention to the Israel/Palestine situation, some of them criticize Israel as well as Palestinians.
World media and public opinion were overwhelmingly on “Israel’s side” in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks. Never did I see any of the complainers about allegedly antisemitic “double standards” complaining that a disproportionate amount of world media attention was being devoted to Palestinian terrorism, and the world should instead be taking more heed of all the other human rights abuses, displacements, ethnic cleansing and genocides affecting so many thousands of lives elsewhere.
But as soon as somebody’s criticizing Israeli abuses rather than Palestinian ones, it’s “oh no why u no care about all the displaced Armenians and kidnapped Nigerians and assassinated Burkinabe, this is an unfair double standard”.
(For additional context: I have always been and remain convinced that all debate around Israel/Palestine is to a greater or lesser extent contaminated by antisemitism (and also Islamophobia), just as all debate around, say, inner-city gang violence in the US is to a greater or lesser extent contaminated by racism. But that doesn’t mean that every criticism of the organizations involved can automatically be dismissed as mere bigotry.)
Well, that was my point - if you’re advocating for the Jews to have a homeland then you should also advocate for the Rohingya to have one. And the Kurds. And the various opposed Native peoples of the Americans should get their lands back. And… the list goes on.
But that will never happen because Empires never willingly yield power or land.
And where would you put these homelands?
A really, really big problem is that the Levant was not vacant when modern Israel was formed and a lot of the people who had been living there were displaced. That was never going to end well.
There no more vacant land to settle on this world. There hasn’t been for centuries. Anyone wanting a homeland will have to displace someone else.
…you’re joking, right? On October 8th there were already PLENTY of people finger wagging about how Israel isn’t the victim and how can you even talk about dead Israelis when there’s a genocide and open air prison and blah blah blah blah blah.
If I had to put numbers on it, the plurality of anti-Israel sentiment I attribute to what I call benign antisemitism stoked by social media, knee-jerk left-wing activism, and performative moral virtue signaling. These are people who are easily led and generally have a desperate need to be part of something that feels good in the moment.
The next largest group is probably the right-wing antisemites and racists. We know them by their tiki torches.
You (and I) are in the smallest group of the three.
Or have whoever is the metropole surrender the space that group occupies now. Which as you point out, they normally don’t do willingly.
I certainly never meant to leave that impression.
I mean, I literally do?
Especially the Kurds, who the US basically had an understanding with - fight ISIS with us and we will support you having a state - and after they held up their end of the bargain with flying colors, we left them out to dry.
I don’t know about “get their land back”, but if they wanted the independence that we did promise to them by treaty on what today are reservations, they’d probably deserve to get it.
Realistically, America today is a pretty friendly place to Native Americans all things considered, and should a reservation secede the standard of living of their population would undoubtedly have crashed. But if they really wanted it, I don’t see a good reason to deny them. Reservations are supposed to be sovereign land, by treaty.
And if the US ever returned to the mass persecution of Native Americans and different bands were able to fortify their reservations and secede, I’d certainly find them defensible.
The British Empire literally did.
There were many places that WERE vacant, and plenty of places that were legally purchased from their rightful owners. If the Palestinians accepted the two states in 48 then very little displacement would have taken place.