Wait a minute. That would be a personal attack, and it would be modded. I mean, calling your post anti semitic might not be, but calling you one? I’d like to see a cite please.
Speaking of a term that has been overused- genocide.
Like the idiotic “call the post racist, not the poster” rule, that’s a distinction without real difference.
Not with the precise word “antisemite”. But the intent is always clear, as in posts like this one:
in a thread where I was one of the posters doing exactly that. I’m not a radical Islamic fundamentalist, so that would make me a…?
Not going to get into another one of these hijacks.
.
Were you replied to? Mentioned by name?
So, in other words, no one has actually called you an antisemite .
Are you calling our rules idiotic?
Does it matter?
If you call all of a particular group of posters in a thread antisemites, you’re calling all of them, individually, antisemites.
Are you getting personal about an unrelated issue? There’s the Pit for that, thanks.
I think Crane’s post is incredibly offensive, to far more than just the people who support Israel’s current actions, and specifically more offensive and malicious toward Jews.
It measures the Waffen SS in kindness units. Yes, it says “less kind” but it’s obviously a strange way to measure and compare groups of people committing atrocities. That rhetorical device is going to deliver a pretty big payload to a whole lot of Jews.
I think invoking Nazis in comparison to Israel’s actions is probably rarely going to be inoffensive, but this really goes over the top, well into antisemitism to me.
There will be non-Jewish supporters of Israel’s actions who won’t be particularly bothered by it, and there will be Jewish people who are strongly opposed to those actions who will be harmed by it.
Imagine if someone said, “the KKK was less kind to Black people than slave owners were.”
It’s not saying either of them is kind, technically. It’s still a pretty inherently racist and extremely offensive thing to say. And there’s really no reason to put it that way except to be hurtful and inflammatory.
How about… “Jim Crow was worse than slavery”? Racist, or just a hot take that needs to be further justified before it should gain widespread acceptance?
Or “slavery was more kind than Jim Crow”.
Yep. KKK is a bad example.
They didn’t like anyone who wasn’t themselves.
Umm? Kinda like Nazis?
While it very well may be what is certainly offensive is the antisemitism inherent in conflating Israelis with Jews.
I very specifically did not do that. That’s part of my point. The statement is hurtful toward Jews, and will hurt Jews, not just Israelis, and not really hurtful in the same way toward non-Jews who support Israel’s actions. That’s part of what makes it antisemitic. Disagreement with Israel leads to something damaging to Jews, not just Israelis.
Jim Crow and slavery are a little too faceless, I think. And your version is missing the whole point of that illustration – it’s about quantifying in “kindness” units a group where that is let’s say, not an appropriate unit of measurement.
It’s not a perfect analogy on my part because I don’t want to set up the same comparison in terms of “group you agree with” is less kind than “almost universally reviled group.” I’m just trying to make the point about how inappropriate it is, and targeting Jews (not just Israelis) by referring to Nazis in terms of kindness.
So I guess another example would be saying George Wallace was less kind to Black people than slave traders. But I think my original analogy works just as I intended.
KKK is exactly what I meant. Neither slave “owners,” nor the KKK nor Nazis should have their kindness levels quantified vis a vis their target groups.
I just see “less kind than” as a tongue in cheek way of saying “worse than.” While we might quibble over whether it’s ever appropriate to be tongue in cheek when discussing the mass killing of civilians, I don’t think the line between “antisemitism” and “not” rests on whether the author/speaker tries to make their point “tongue in cheek” or more directly.
Likewise, I might admit that it’s problematic to reduce discussions of mass war crimes to relative or quantitative comparison (comparing one set of atrocities to another risks a sort of apples to oranges comparison that might not be particularly helpful), but, again, I don’t think whether a remark is antisemitic or not should hinge on that.
The fact of the matter is, Israel, as a state actor and not merely a bunch of individual who happen to be Jewish, is killing a lot of civilians. The Waffen SS also killed a lot of civilians—a lot more civilians than Israel has killed since October 7, to be sure, but then again, I understand some might question why we should narrow the scope of inquiry to just the past few months when this has been going on for decades.
So if someone wants to make reference to the Waffen SS when trying to make a point about what Israel is doing… I think it’s at least an admissible argument, even if it’s not one I’m inclined to adopt myself.
Don’t want to be compared to mass-killers of civilians? Don’t kill so many civilians. Don’t want to be compared to the mass killers of civilians of a particular nationality or ethnicity? Don’t kill so many civilians of a particular nationality or ethnicity. Don’t want to be compared to a group that ghettoized civilians of a particular nationality or ethnicity…
You get where I’m going, right? Whether the comparison is fair or not, there’s at least, in legal parlance, a sort of prima facie case laid out already that the comparison might have merit. Whether it might stand up to scrutiny… well, I leave that to Israel’s defenders. Of which, when it comes to their actions in Gaza of late, I am most certainly not one.
I’m certainly not one either.
I also think I can spot the kind of mismatch that takes “criticism of Israel” into saying things that hurt Jews generally.
This is racist and anti-Semitic as all fuck. Not all Jews support Israel’s actions, and even those who do don’t deserve to be subjected to blood libel by Nazi-cuddling scumfucks like Crane.
By the way, this thread is nearly a week old. Ate the mods going to do anything about this, or are we just going to put a swastika on the front page and declare the SDMB to be a safe space for anti-Semites? I would like a straight answer from a Mod on this.
You know what is also completely unacceptable? Non-Jews telling us how we are supposed to feel about shit like this. Imagine if it were any other group.
Indeed. It’s incredibly frustrating.
Let’s close this until @engineer_comp_geek is feeling up to sorting it.
Moderator Warning
This is an official warning for personal insults outside of the Pit.
As I said upthread, keep it civil and treat others with respect in ATMB, no matter how much you disagree with their opinion.