And the slanders in the Protocols don’t apply to all Jews?
Seriously, if this is the extent of your quibble with my statement, than change it to “Jews as a group” instead of “All Jews”.
Seriously, this is just fucking retarded. If I say, those conniving Jews are plotting to take over the world, that applies to all Jews. Even if I qualify it with, but not the good Jews!
“Those damn Israel-Firster Jews and their Zionist allies are conniving to subvert the United States in the service of the Jewish State! Mind you, not the good ones, they have the inherent moral decency to agree with my politics.”
Hmmm…
You know, there are Cuban-Americans who are very hawkish in their stance towards Cuba, and are against attempts to soften our stance towards the current government, even if improving relations would benefit America. You might say they are…Cuba-Firsters. If they’re people who fled Cuba and lost businesses and investments over there (or if they’re descendants of those people), and they stand staunchly opposed to lifting sanctions against the Castro regime and have sway with the American government, then it’s fair to question whether their agenda is in the best interests of America and to criticize them. If in response they tarred such criticism as evidence of “godless communism,” I’m pretty sure we’d think they were being dicks.
If someone said something like that, that would be anti-semetic. Luckily, as far as I can tell noone associated with CAP said anything remotely like that.
I’m not at all convinced that “Israel First” is an accusation of treason, as others have suggested. Maybe this has to do with my severe lack of rah-rah patriotism, but it doesn’t much bother me if someone places some particular group above their nation-state, not even if they’re a politician. Someone might be Jesus-first, they might be earth-first, they might be Israel-first, they might be banks-first, they might be gay-rights-first; in all cases, it’s an accusation of their attendance to a particular special interest. It’s not a particularly vicious accusation.
Perhaps folks who find Israel-first to be antisemitic (whether they’re the speaker or the audience) place a much higher value on loyalty to one’s country than I do.
It may be that you don’t grok the connection due to that bit, but it’s not just about patriotism. A traitor is, literally, someone “who betrays another’s trust or is false to an obligation or duty.” Politicians have an obligation and duty placed in them not to subvert our country in the service of foreign masters. Even pundits have trust placed in them not to deceive their readers in order to sell out their homeland to a foreign power. Hell, average citizens would have the same basic assumption made of them.
And you’re not grokking the spectrum of accusations. Saying someone is, for instance, “gay-rights first” doesn’t place them in opposition to the benefit of their home, as human rights are a fundamental principle of America anyways. Someone who is “banks first” would at the very least be putting the interest of banks above what might be best for a certain class of people or the nation as a whole. Someone who was “Europe first” would be putting the needs and benefits of Europe above their own home. Surely you understand that principle at least? It’s not patriotism that’s at issue, it’s the welfare of one’s own home. If you rip out all the insulation in your house and give it to Mrs. Smith because you’re a “Mrs. Smith-firster”, your wife would have legitimate cause to complain that you’d fucked over all the residents of your house even if she wasn’t particularly dedicated to those-four-walls-in-specific, right?
Just like (decent) people would consider a person to be an asshole if he accused someone of Cuban heritage of being “a Cuban-firster” simply because that person of Cuban heritage differed with their political worldview on how to interact with Cuba.
That’s essentially why I’ve stopped voting in U.S. elections. I’m technically a U.S. citizen, but I define myself as Israeli, and as such I cannot in good faith take part in the American political process.
So then you think Juan Cole, John Mearscheimer and Stephen Walt engage in anti-Semitism but that David Irving doesn’t? :dubious:
My guess would be, if treis offers a semi-cogent response at all that is, that when he says “something like that” he doesn’t mean “something” that is “like that” but something that uses those exact words. Something with the same semantic value won’t count.
So, for instance, when W&M claim that the US is acting in a geopolitical context that is not in America’s interest but is aiming at supporting Israel “unconditionally”, they’re not saying the words “conniving to subvert the United States in the service of the Jewish State” even though that’s the semantic content of their claims. When they claim that there isn’t a moral case for supporting Israel they’re not saying those who oppose US policy are “good ones” and that they have the “moral decency” to agree with W&M’s politics, because even though it has that semantic value they don’t use those exact words.
We’ll see if treis can come up with more than that. Truthfully with his record here I’d expected him to strongly deny that was anti-Semitic at all.
I don’t know who any of these people are.
Damn I’m good.
Maybe. At the same time, I think there are three things going on here that feed into the accusation:
And what record is that?
Truthfully, I don’t expect anything but a smart ass response from the biggest dick this board has.
There’s been a lot of “sloppiness” in debates about Israel and the Middle East. It behooves us to be less “sloppy” if we want to make real progress towards peace.
Did you miss my point 2 above? I’m conceding the term’s unsavory past.
But I’m not conceding that you ought to be putting “sloppiness” in quotes. There have also been sloppy accusations of antisemitism–should I put that in quotes as well?
But then they’re not Israel-firsters, they’re people who disagree with others as to the proper ranking of various international alliances. And that’s fine, but the use of the term “Israel-firster” is not, I hope you’d agree, a term that’s designed with the connotation of someone with perfectly defensible positions who simply happens to have a different schema of valuing international relations than the person making the claim. It’s not, after all, “Israel-first-among-international-alliances-in-the-middle-east-ers” or what have you. The use and construction of the phrase deliberately sets it up as someone who places Israel first, full stop.
While your point 2 is a somewhat welcome point, your point 3 is somewhat underwhelming. I’d argue that most of us who’ve had it to the gills with the term aren’t necessarily interested in “slamming” its users, but in doing away with its use. While that may sometimes entail education, truth be told it’s fairly exhausting to go through a thorough recitation of the facts over and over and over again each time it comes up. Imagine, if you will, instead of pointing out that Obama=chimp cartoons are racist, or even that they have a racist legacy behind them, every time it came up you’d have to provide a thorough debunking complete with pictorial evidence of its use over the decades. Then imagine that “Obama=chimp” was one of the, if not the single most common way that critics of Obama’s policies went about attacking him. That should give you some idea of the dynamic behind the use of “Israel-firster” rhetoric and its use by those who oppose certain politics wrt Israel.
And while it may or may not be a term that was used sloppily in the CAP situation (and let’s be frank, the OP is hardly doing any heavy lifting to craft a coherent, cogent, compelling argument on any counts), in general it is a term that should be avoided. At the very least it’s a term that should be avoided because it’s rhetorically sloppy and absurd and casts implications that are almost always wildly unwarranted when the actual issue is different prioritization, valuation, and classification. And at worst it’s a dog-whistle designed to invoke the image of perfidious International Jewry and the gentile pawns of the Zionists.
You choose to read use of loaded terminology that has a historic anti-Semitic context as sloppiness.
Not everyone is ready to dance down that yellow brick road with you.
So let it be said that:
Disagreeing with Israel is not anti-Semitic.
Most people who criticize Israel are not anti-Semites.
but
The absolute insistence from the anti-Israel movement that there is never, ever, such a thing as a legitimate accusation of anti-Semitism as long as the person being accused made sure to mention “Israel” or “Zionism” in his remarks, has made the movement a fantastic haven for anti-Semites, who, while a minority, are in fact present within.
I’d kinda like to know just why people get so worked up about Israel - especially people with zero connection to Israel or any issues that the Middle East is involved in. Why does it inspire such passionate and heated rhetoric?