Let’s start with something very simple: Israel is committing a genocide is Palestine, and the Israeli state was founded by terrorists and has always been based on ethnic cleansing.
After World War II there was a huge backlash against anti-semitism: prejudice against Jews, because we had seen it end in Germany’s gas chambers. The Zionists used that in their project to take another people’s land for their own: to stand against a Jewish country after the Holocaust seemed wrong.
But this is a case of kindergarten ethics: two wrongs not making a right. The Zionists (not the Jews, the Zionists) stole another people’s land and did so violently.
Then, especially from the 67 on, they engaged in vicious apartheid, and continued to steal the land and homes of Palestinians.
After the first Intifada they started routinely killing Palestinians, along with other atrocious behaviour.
I have stated and firmly believe that the current death toll from the Gaza war is in the hundreds of thousands. You can check out the methodology here. They are certainly nowhere near as low as the official death count of something over 40K.
This is the result of deliberate starvation; attacks on hospitals till there is only one left slightly operating; cutting off medicine and water; herding refugees into high density camps then attacking them; shutting off water, and policies intended to lead to plague. All of these policies are entirely deliberate and done with knowledge of their certain effect.
Now let’s talk about anti-semitism v.s. anti-Zionism.
One is ethnic hatred: “Jews are evil.” The other opposes a political movement, “there should be a Jewish apartheid State on land taken from other people.”
Zionism started with ethnic cleansing and has moved on to genocide. To not be anti-Zionist is to be, at best, a moral imbecile and more commonly is a depraved political stance. That stance starts at “I’m OK with genocide” and ends with “I support genocide.”
The next issue is that accusations of anti-semitism have been weaponized. I lost my patience when they were used to take out Corbyn, who was in no way anti-semitic and if there were a Holocaust would be one of the people willing to die to try and stop it. We’ve seen how every protest against the Gazan genocide has been labelled anti-semitic.
So ordinary, moral people, have stopped having a default belief in accusations of anti-semitism because the vast majority of such accusations are now attempts, in effect, to use the Holocaust and people’s repugnance at what led to it to justify ethnic cleansing and another genocide.
Further if there is a rise of anti-semitism in the world, it can be laid 99% percent at the feet of Israel, Zionism and those who cover for the Gaza genocide. When a country wrapping itself in the fig-leaf of “we’re the Jewish nation” undeniably commits a genocide then accuses those who protest of hating Jews and Judaism, some people will fail to make the Zionist/Jewish distinction. “They say they’re Jews, and that Judaism permits this, so Judaism is bad,” such people will think.
The greatest enemy Jews and Judaism have and the greatest creator of anti-semitism in the world is Israel. And anyone and any nation supporting them is helping create more anti-semitism.
All ideologies aren’t bad, though all can go bad, but Zionism was born with ill will: it was always the project to steal the land and homes of another people.
To Sum Up
Zionism is an ideology which starts with ethnic cleansing as its base. Evil.
Judaism is a religion, which, like almost all religions, can be used to justify evil, but is pointed more towards the good. Hillel’s “Whatever is hateful and distasteful to you, do not do to your fellow man” would have prevented this entire sickening mess, and is far more representative of Judaism than the Zionist perversion.
Jews are an ethnic religious group (there are lots of secular Jews), who are no more intrinsically evil or good than any other group.
Anti-semitism is bad, like all racism.
Anti-Zionism is good, like all opposition to ethnic cleansing and genocide.
shagggz
To put the imbecility of presumptive anti-semitism into even starker relief: Palestinians are a Semitic people. So protesting their genocide cannot be anti-semitic.
Jan Wiklund
I don’t believe, however, that this genocide in the end will lead to hatred of Jews. The German genocides didn’t lead to hatred of Germans – except, perhaps, for a very short period.
When it’s over, perhaps for economic reasons, see post Aug 13, people will forget. Perhaps, let’s hope, they will remember that Zionism was an idea quite as bad as Nazism.
Mary Bennet
shagggz, your post brings up a question which I have never seen asked or answered, why was the word ‘anti-Semitic’ chosen to express hatred of Jews? Why not simply call the prejudice anti Jewish?
Willy
I was raised amongst people who believe that “The Holy Land” can only ever belong to the Jews.
Today it’d be very difficult, if not impossible, to try and convert them to the idea that their Jesus believed that all are capable of redemption. In fact, if I proclaiming that genetic studies proved that Palestinians and Jews have the same basic origins, I’d be declared something between a blasphemer and a witch. A drug-addled satanist, criminally insane, and quite possibly even trans.
And so I instead ask questions. Such as “What would Jesus do if he’d been born in Nazareth in the modern age?” When they started giving each other a look like “So is Willy a tricksy trans witch?”, I’d change the subject to Ben Hur.
Obviously, a modern Ben Hur would be a NASCAR driver. And the modern equivalent of the Valley of the Lepers would be Gaza. So after Ben Hur retrieved his mother and sister from Gaza, would Jesus still have been able to bless them with a miracle cure?
My point is, any argument with them would be very difficult if it didn’t involve the Gazans being subhuman monsters worthy of leprosy. The idea of Right and Wrong extending to everybody ‘not them’ doesn’t seem possible. A lot of people have a psychological need to be tribally superior. So do we ignore them, mock them, or try to gently show them that their religious views have gone off the rails?
Soredemos
I appreciate seeing someone correctly point out that Jew is an ethicity. I’m forever seeing people either assume that most Jews meaningfully practice Judaism (many don’t, and in fact within Israel itself the more hardcore believers are viewed as annoying parasites), or realize many don’t, but then claiming secular Jews aren’t real Jews.
Jew is an ethnicity, and the genetic evidence makes clear that most of the diaspora has maintained a meaningful continuity with their Levantine origins. Many (most?) Zionists maintain they’re entitled to the Levant on the grounds that their ancestors once loved there, not necessarily because they literally believe God gifted it to them. A tragedy in all of this is that the Palestinians also have significant genetic connection to the region; they’re the closest cousins, the descendents of Jews who never left to begin with. Zionists try to get around this by claiming Palestinians are later Arab colonists, but that snot what the DNA evidence says.
I don’t think one has to go all Shlomo Sand and claim that Ashkenazi aren’t ‘real’ Jews to refute Zionism. ‘My ancestors used to live here, therefore it’s mine’ simply isn’t a valid chain of logic.
shagggz
@Mary Bennet,
From what I gather, the terminology comes more from a hodgepodge of historical contingencies than something etymologically tidy or straightforward, as often happens with words. Almost as if to drive home the imperialistic purpose: don’t think about it, just obey!
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/where-the-word-anti-semitism-comes-from/
capelin
@ Soredemos “Jew is an ethnicity”
Well, not entirely. It’s also a religion/cult/identity. My understanding is that only about 30% of Israeli “Jews” have Ashkenazi bloodlines.
A key part of the Israeli settler project was to, well bring in settlers, “a homeland for all the Jews yada yada” and were not too fussy about whether they were “Jews” before they settled them on other people’s land.
mago
In the early 90’s I spoke with a Jewish professor of religious studies who had recently returned from a trip to Israel, and what he said stuck with me.
Basically: ‘They yell and argue constantly, on the phone, in the home and on the streets. The aggression is everywhere. I’m never going back there again.’
I have anecdotes from others who visited or lived in Israel back in the day, and accounts corroborated the gestalt, except for one friend, a Hungarian, who reported spontaneous singing on buses and other public places, thus implying some kind of old Hollywood musical movie vibe.
His take is long gone
Fear and aggression rule.
Speaking of rules, whatever happened to the golden one?
Ian Welsh
About 91 or so I worked with a women who had run a youth hostel in Jerusalem in the 80s. She told me that Israelis were extremely aggressive and the men were misogynistic and very pushy towards women.
She wouldn’t let Israelis or Arabs stay at the hostel, and she told me “Americans only sometimes.”
Soredemos
@capelin
It’s like you blew past everything I said.
Soredemos
@Ian Welsh
Paul Jay, himself Jewish, of The Real News and analysis.news, maintains that Israel is the most openly racist country he’s ever visited.
I don’t know myself; happily I’ve never set foot in the shithole, and never plan to.
Willy
I was speaking of ignorant evangelicals whose own traditions use the Jews as useful puppets in their own metaphysical script. It’s ironic that both evangelical and Jew have ethnic cleansing in their histories.
I think of how Martin Luther started out sympathetic to Jews, but unable to convert significant numbers of them to his own way of thinking, was driven so batshit his ideas formed much of the basis of genocidal Nazism. I’m sure Jesus wept over that one. What’s up with that?
As for types of Jews, my fave is the Haredi, partly because they’re anti-zionist, party because they seem the least likely to get confrontational if they catch you wearing cheaply made payot and shtreimel on Halloween.
I saw something about body mod types proclaiming their own were the kindest and most helpful folks out there. If one was in a strange city sporting visible demonic tats and piercings, and unable to find work outside the coffeeshop realm, other body mod types would be the only others eager to take them in. Everybody else treated them as at best invisible, at worst diseased lepers. Therefore, body mod types were the kindest and most helpful folks out there, and everybody else was an asshole.
I’d assume the same if you were instead, wearing payot and shtreimel of higher than Halloween quality. A Haredi would be far more eager to take you in than a body mod type would. Of course, you’d better be up on your Halakha and other Haredi stuff. But evangelicals? Forget about it. They’re far too busy virtue signaling to their own for the sole purpose of material gain.
In a civil society, whenever a group starts rationalizing genocide it seems like tribalism gone mad. Maybe to a nihilist, strongly competing when resources are highly limited is acceptable. But outside of those stresses? It should be an obvious insane evil. And then when one group uses another group as useful puppets in their own metaphysical script, double that.
StewartM
Norman Finklestein on this matter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyvOlllV_NI
(And Finkelstein is Jewish).
Tc
“and is far more representative of Judaism than the Zionist perversion.”
Am I the only one that’s read the Old Testament? Cuz it seems like everyone thinks “real” Judaism is Spinoza or Hillel or whatever and it cant possibly be the bloodthirsty bronze age mythology extolling war, revenge, genocide, ethnic cleansing fratricide, betrayal, sexual defilement of one’s enemies’ corpses, and too many other depravities to list. The 50 years I have been aware of Israel all I see is Jews taking the Old Testament quite literally, and everyone else pretending they dont see it.
One game I have is when I see a particularly deranged bible quote or story, I google it and there is usually a christian bible study website , but sometimes a jewish one, that explains how this is really a lesson about god’s love. Usually good for a chuckle, if you dont think about how many people take it seriously.
A huge potion of world Jewry lives in Israel, and even more support and defend its conduct. Israel today is JUDAISM in action, not merely zionism. Stop living in denial.
capelin
@capelin “Well, not entirely. It’s also a religion/cult/identity. My understanding is that only about 30% of Israeli “Jews” have Ashkenazi bloodlines.”
@soredemos “It’s like you blew past everything I said.”
“I appreciate seeing someone correctly point out that Jew is an ethicity. ”
“Jew is an ethnicity, and the genetic evidence makes clear that most of the diaspora has maintained a meaningful continuity with their Levantine origins.”
Not following your logic. “‘My ancestors used to live here, therefore it’s mine’ simply isn’t a valid chain of logic.” – is a good point, but – again, my understanding – is that many Israeli’s don’t even have ‘ancestors that used to live there.’
I believe we agree on the larger point.
Ian Welsh
The great Rabbis of the Middle Ages cleaned Judaism up and made it a far more moral religion. Like Christianity, as long as it has the old Testament as a sacred text it will be easier to undo that work. While the Jews were powerless, the unexploded bombs of the Old Testament didn’t matter.
Similarly, if I had my way the Old Testament wouldn’t be part of Christianity: indeed I might just keep the Gospels, since that’s what Jesus was preaching.
Tc
Sometimes it seems like Jerusalem is like the “precious” fromLOTR and the former kindly hobbits are now reduced to repulsive golems. Like, stay away from the holy land if you arent pure in heart or spirit or it will destroy you from within via your own evil and zealotry.
Benjamin took it from the Jebusites, from whom Abraham earlier got his religion, then the rest of Israel nearly wiped Benjamin out.
Then David took it and his sons ended up killing each other, and his kingdom was over in 2 generations. One exile followed by another short lived jewish kingdom and temple, then more destruction and exile by Rome.
Not to mention the western Xtians disastrous brief kingdom (especially disastrous for the native xtians) and the meteoric rise and grisly fate of the Templars.
If you believe in religion or the supernatural, its not much farther fetched to wonder if the nazi holocaust was like instant karma for zionism and its underhanded means to its eliminationist goals, which were well under way by the 1930s.