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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Red ken and antisemitism
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lilBuddha
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# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
Boris Johnson's point is that the US President in fact has America's interests at heart when he advises Britain to stay in the EU, and that those might not be the same as Britain's interests.
Rubbish. He deliberately aimed a slur to discount Obama's statement.
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
It's not so much that we should assume that Obama hates us as that we shouldn't assume that he likes us (oh, and by the way, he has cause to not like us. We think that Americans are naturally predisposed to like us because of our shared heritage, but this President has some different history.)
Kinda depends on what you mean by "heritage". He has more shared ancestry than the vast majority of Americans.
As far a cultural heritage, he is American. Some of that culture will have come from Britain, much from other places. Ancestry needn't to do with it.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Just going back a bit, quetzlcoatl wrote: quote:
Also, some of them seem more interested in defeating Corbyn than the Tories. There are even rumours that they are hoping that Labour do badly in the local elections, but I don't know this for a fact.
It looks that way at times. It's a bit of a tangent but does anyone have any inside info on what's happening? Not guesswork please - I can do that one myself.
Good point. Well, I am off to consult with my Red, radical and extremist friends, to see if there is any substance to this. At the moment, I would doubt if any Blairite is going to say, I want Labour to lose, as this would be ne plus ultra.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
Well, this was on the BBC website:
quote:
Privately some in Labour's ranks have been wondering whether to "take the foot off the gas" when it comes to campaigning because a poorer result could convince some of the newer members of the party that Jeremy Corbyn is indeed unelectable in large parts of England, outside London.
Of course, this is still non-attributable, but I would think that it's pretty hard-core, I mean reliable. It sounds like an off the record comment.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35972431
This is from Prescott in the Mirror:
quote:
Sadly, a small number of MPs – I call them Bitterites – are still desperate to remove Corbyn. They’re gutted the Tories are in chaos and Labour edging ahead.
The main Bitterite MPs – whose only “skill” seems to have been Press spokesmen for Blair and Brown – want to drive down Labour ’s standing in the polls and encourage bad results in this May’s elections.
[ 04. May 2016, 14:20: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Anglican't
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# 15292
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Posted
There are also some Tories (probably few in number) who hope for a Sadiq Khan victory as it would help secure Jeremy Corbyn's leadership until 2020.
Posts: 3613 | From: London, England | Registered: Nov 2009
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
The odd thing about the Blairites wanting to despose Corbyn, is the lack of alternatives. Who would they want? Starmer? I saw him in the Commons and he was about as interesting as a wet flannel. Angela Eagle, I suppose.
Also, their policies seem to amount to, cut benefits, support Trident, and keep brown people out. Really going for the Tory vote there.
[ 04. May 2016, 15:01: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Thanks for the links, quetzalcoatl. Not sure I would want to bet any real money there, but it was at least one of my imagined scenarios.
The problem with all this double and triple - bluff stuff is that if things go the way your machinations would like, then people can find the net result more pleasing than expected, so you could finish up shafting yourself rather than anyone else.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
We think that Americans are naturally predisposed to like us because of our shared heritage, but this President has some different history.
History that doesn't involve the Boston massacre, crossing the Delaware or General Cornwallis the treaty of Ghent or burning Washington?
If only he had more of that in his blood he'd love the empire.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Jay-Emm
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# 11411
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
Perhaps Sadiq Khan needs to be more careful with who he hangs out with?
Perhaps Mr Cameroon needs to be careful who he tries to recruit as a councilor.
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Leorning Cniht
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# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I think most people hearing 'ancestral' will think of the biological ancestry of the person in question rather than of the specific personal histories of the person's parents.
The biological ancestry of the person in question is his specific parents and grandparents. To me, at any rate, the phrase invokes specific people rather than national or ethnic groups.
It's got nothing at all to do with the colour of Barack Obama's skin, or some sort of vague association of Kenyanness about him, and everything to do with the treatment of his own personal grandfather at the hands of the British colonial authorities.
I'm not arguing that it's accurate (I don't think it is), but I am arguing that it's not racist - it's about the specific personal history of Hussein Onyango Obama. It's no more racist than making claims about other current politicians based on the politics and attitudes of their parents and grandparents.
You might compare, for example, some of the statements made in the right-wing press about Ed Miliband and his father Ralph (a prominent Marxist) in the run-up to the last election. Nasty and inaccurate? Sure, but not anti-semitic.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Dave W.
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# 8765
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Well this argument is just fucked up in a number of ways. Are we to presume that all those WWII vets who claimed to have reconciled with their former enemies were just lying?
No, of course not, and I said nothing of the kind. My friend, as it happens, had long since forgiven his captors, but his kids couldn't. quote:
Or is it only "ancestral dislike" rather than personal experience which can't be overcome.
Well, I think it might well be easier to forgive sins against you than sins against someone you love. But that's not the point. Nowhere did I say that "ancestral dislike" or any other negative opinion can't be overcome.
But you know your friend's kids are prejudiced because they told you so. You've no real reason to think that about Obama, unless you think it about everyone with an ancestor mistreated by the Empire. quote:
quote:
In either case, Obama's father wasn't tortured in a POW camp,
According to his wife, he was beaten in prison. Which may or may not be true, and Barack Obama may or may not believe it, but if it's true, it's not so far from the same thing.
Jesus, this is sloppy stuff. First you pass off Boris Johnson's dramatic invocation of a right-wing conspiracy theory as a "throwaway remark", now you point to an article that says "grandfather" in the very headline, and still provides absolutely no evidence that Obama himself bears the sort of grudge which would support the insinuation of "ancestral dislike". quote:
Boris Johnson's point ...
... hardly requires or justifies his rooting around in the cesspool of rightwing birther conspiracy tropes. You may claim it's not racist, but it's definitely racist-adjacent - that's how insinuation works.
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
You might compare, for example, some of the statements made in the right-wing press about Ed Miliband and his father Ralph (a prominent Marxist) in the run-up to the last election. Nasty and inaccurate? Sure, but not anti-semitic.
A more apt comparison would apply if it was something connected to his father being Jewish that was identified, and if a word implying some sort of biological link was used such as ancestral.
If the claim had been that Ed Miliband had a deep-seated ancestral dislike of Britain due to the failure of the British to support Jewish aspirations in Palestine then I think that would be anti-Semitic.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
According to his wife, he was beaten in prison. Which may or may not be true, and Barack Obama may or may not believe it, but if it's true, it's not so far from the same thing.
It is not unlikely that he was imprisoned by the British and could well have been beaten, but that article is strange in that the David Anderson quote seems very out of character. (i.e. that they must have had "damn good evidence" to lock Obama Sr up). I wouldn't expect him to use such un-nuanced language and he spent a lot of time in his book cataloguing various abuses by the British of locking people up, including senior people, with absolutely no evidence at all.
The surprising thing is that a Luo was caught up in Mau mau at all. It was almost entirely a Kikuyu thing.
But all this is a tangent to the fact that the whole line of reasoning is ludicrous anyway.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Looking back over the public debate, some of the things circulating on Facebook, and this thread, has changed my mind slightly on this issue. It's not the Labour Party that has the problem with antisemitism. It's a particular part of the left that traces its intellectual and political descent to part of the new left whose entryism that Neil Kinnock and John Smith exercised themselves to fence the Labour Party against. It's the reappearance of that issue that has caused the excitement now. quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
There's a post on this topic ( Antisemitism in the Labour Party - what's going on?) on the lefty academic blog Crooked Timber. ...
That's quite a thoughtful article. I don't 100% agree with it but it says some useful things. The bits about relating to the two factions in Ulster and looking at tribal packages a bit like being a football supporter are worth reflecting on.
I still think, and am unlikely to be persuaded otherwise, that there is a strain on the left whose fondness for the Palestinians does tip them into antisemitism. I would also still go the further step and say that there are some whose identification with the Palestinian cause is a crystallisation of a pre-existing antisemitism, in some cases conscious, in some possibly not. The fact that a person avoids using words like 'yid' or 'kike' no more lets a person off the charge than the argument, 'well I'm not antisemitic because it's only Zionism of the existence of the State of Israel and their treatment of the Palestinians that I've got a problem with'. Saying that you are not a racist does not demonstrate that you aren't one.
Here are some things that do mark a person as antisemitic.
1. Holocaust denial.
2. Saying Hitler did a good job.
3. Using words like 'yid' or 'kike' or this new one 'zio' and using Jew as an insult. Likewise, desecrating Jewish cemeteries.
4. Not being a Gazan and regarding Hamas with anything other than abhorrence.
5. Advocating any 'solution' to the problems of the Middle East which does not include the survival of Israel as a Jewish state.
6. No-platforming Jewish people at conferences.
7. Believing world affairs are being orchestrated by a Jewish conspiracy whether your version of it is manipulated by Jewish bankers, Jewish influence in the CIA, or Mossad.
Here are some things that do not mark a person as antisemitic.
8. Saying you wish Israel were not so heavy handed in the way it treated Palestinians resident either in Israel or the occupied territories.
9. Opposing the grab of Palestinian farms by Jewish settlers.
10. Suggesting that 9 is being done illegally.
11. Suggesting that a Jewish state should not treat people the way the Nazis treated them.
12. Going on work camps in the occupied territories unless combined with any of 1-7
13. Criticising the wall, and even painting on it unless combined with any of 1-7.
14. Suggesting that either side, whether Israeli or Palestinian are being their own worst enemies by being intransigent, ideological or unrealistically idealist about the outcomes they want or imagine they should be able to achieve.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
I object to 5 on the grounds that I don't believe any state should have an established religion - but I realise this is an issue I'd need to take up with about half the world including the UK.
(I.E. i have no problem with Isreal being a state, and/or having a majority Jewsih population - I just don't think a state should in general have a religious affiliation, as this tends to adversely affect the right of its population to exercise freedom of religion. I'd be more willing to see Mecca, Jerusalem and the Vatican as quasi autonimous city states with a religious affiliation than entire countries.)
[ 05. May 2016, 17:45: Message edited by: Doublethink. ]
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Yes, I have an aversion to theocratic states, although you could argue that Israel isn't that.
I have certainly heard arguments for a secular Israel, and while this strikes me as very impractical, in present circumstances, I don't see it as anti-Jewish, since the secular bit means that Jews and other religions could live together.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Enoch wrote:
quote:
I still think, and am unlikely to be persuaded otherwise, that there is a strain on the left whose fondness for the Palestinians does tip them into antisemitism. I would also still go the further step and say that there are some whose identification with the Palestinian cause is a crystallisation of a pre-existing antisemitism, in some cases conscious, in some possibly not.
You may well be right, but I am curious as to who you are referring to. It all sounds very nebulous, but presumably you have some actual people in mind, although I realize that it's difficult to name names sometimes.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
I object to 5 on the grounds that I don't believe any state should have an established religion - but I realise this is an issue I'd need to take up with about half the world including the UK.
I think French-style secularism equally excludes minority religious believers from mainstream society and has an effect on freedom of religion as restrictive as most Western European established religions.
On the other hand, as a general principle I don't think any state should be based around race. No doubt it's easy for me to say so while I live in a state in which my race is the majority, and I can see why many Jews think they want to live in a state that's majority racially Jewish, but that doesn't mean it's not problematic.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
I fundamentally disagree with Enoch's point 5. There are plenty of people - including a fair sized number of Jews - who believe in a "single state" Israeli-Palestine solution, where all residents are full and equal members of a new state. I don't see any particular correlation between this and anti-Semitism.
Personally, I think this wouldn't work. At best it'd be an uneasy hate-hate relationship like Belgium, at worst it'd be an all-out civil war. And I can see how Jews feel vulnerable if they allow all the Arabs in East Jerusalem (who are currently without nationality), together with everyone else in the West Bank and Gaza full citizenship. The nature of Israel as a safe space for Jews is likely to be totally lost as soon as the Arabs are in the majority, and it is an open invitation for others from Iraq, Syria etc to attack them.
But then clearly the current situation, whereby a space has been carved of safety to Jews but to the detriment of everyone else (Druze, Israeli Arabs, Palestinians and other minorities) is a pretty awful situation too.
The trouble is that there is no easy way out - and it isn't helped by deep Northern Ireland style religious hatred that runs deep on both sides.
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arse
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
4 is nonsense too.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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PaulTH*
Shipmate
# 320
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Posted
I think Enoch's point 4 is perfectly valid and that Hamas is a very abhorent organisation. People could justifiably criticise the way Israel pulverises Gaza following attacks, but in every case the trouble has been started by Hamas using Gaza to launch its rockets against Israeli civilian targets. And by placing its rocket launchers close to schools and highly built up civilian areas. These people don't want peace, they want jihad.
Point 5 is advocated by those bent on destroying the Jewish state by subtler means. Eliminate a Jewish majority and it won't be difficult to eliminate the state. When two opposing populations claim rights to the same small piece of land, there is no real solution to conflict. Perhaps the setting up of the State of Israel, like the creation of Northern Ireland as a Protestant enclave against Catholic Ireland, was a mistake, but it was made long ago. Israel exists and has a right to exist in peace within secure boundries.
It was only the recognition of Northern Ireland's right to determine its own future by all mainstream political parties within the UK and Ireland which brought armed conflict to an end. If Israel's neighbours allow it to exist in peace, it will make no further attacks on any of its neighbours.
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Yours in Christ
Paul
Posts: 6387 | From: White Cliffs Country | Registered: May 2001
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
I think Enoch's point 4 is perfectly valid and that Hamas is a very abhorent organisation. People could justifiably criticise the way Israel pulverises Gaza following attacks, but in every case the trouble has been started by Hamas using Gaza to launch its rockets against Israeli civilian targets. And by placing its rocket launchers close to schools and highly built up civilian areas. These people don't want peace, they want jihad.
How about criticizing Israel because their response is disproportionate? How would that sit in the plan?
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
I'm not going to come back at length on this as I've come in and am about to go to bed, but 'Jewish' is not a religious identity. It's an ethnic/national one which is partly defined by religion.
Whatever might have been the case before 1916-21, the same incidentally now applies to the two populations in Northern Ireland.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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PaulTH*
Shipmate
# 320
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
How about criticizing Israel because their response is disproportionate? How would that sit in the plan?
I did criticise Israel's response as disproportionate. I said it could justifiably be criticised. But that doesn't give me any more affection for Hamas. They launch attacks in Israel in full knowledge of the likely response, because that is what they want. They want the entire Muslim world to turn against Israel and drive it into the sea. I think they are despicable cowards who use the lives of their own people in pursuit of their political ends. If they stop firing rockets into Israel, Israel will stop attacking them. Is that difficult?
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Yours in Christ
Paul
Posts: 6387 | From: White Cliffs Country | Registered: May 2001
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
Whatever one thinks of Hamas as it exists at present, it seems difficult to see a way forward that doesn't include Hamas. Hamas and Israel both need to recognise that the other isn't going away and has to be talked to. And pragmatically speaking it's up to the stronger power to stop playing, you go first.
[ 05. May 2016, 21:46: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I'm not going to come back at length on this as I've come in and am about to go to bed, but 'Jewish' is not a religious identity. It's an ethnic/national one which is partly defined by religion.
Whatever might have been the case before 1916-21, the same incidentally now applies to the two populations in Northern Ireland.
I'm not cool about defining nations by ethnicity either.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
How about criticizing Israel because their response is disproportionate? How would that sit in the plan?
I did criticise Israel's response as disproportionate. I said it could justifiably be criticised. But that doesn't give me any more affection for Hamas. They launch attacks in Israel in full knowledge of the likely response, because that is what they want. They want the entire Muslim world to turn against Israel and drive it into the sea. I think they are despicable cowards who use the lives of their own people in pursuit of their political ends. If they stop firing rockets into Israel, Israel will stop attacking them. Is that difficult?
Have you studied any history? Of liberation? Of what is necessary for the weak to defeat the strong? You would be the despicable coward in revolutionary terms.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
I think Enoch's point 4 is perfectly valid and that Hamas is a very abhorent organisation.
Since the parallel has already been made with Northern Ireland, point 4 is the equivalent of saying that Sinn Fein is a very abhorent organisation. But, the Good Friday agreement wouldn't have happened if they weren't at the table. Excluding Hamas from any future for Palestine/Israel will mean no end to the hostilities as surely as excluding Sinn Fein from the future of Northern Ireland would have done.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
If they stop firing rockets into Israel, Israel will stop attacking them. Is that difficult?
And if Israel would stop expanding Jewish settlements?
There are horrible things on both sides.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
The problem with 4 is that 'Do you condemn Hamas?' is used as a gotcha question by people who have no interest in the issues involved but who want to be able to brand their opponents as terrorist sympathisers. I think people who are sympathetic towards the Palestinian cause are right to be wary of it.
That said, I also object to 11. Even if one thinks it's justified, I don't believe comparing a Jewish state to Nazi Germany is ever going to have a positive or constructive outcome. This should be predictable to anyone with an entry-level understanding of human behaviour, which then raises the possibility that those who make the comparison are in fact not really interested in positive or constructive outcomes.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
I think it is very easy for people to try to put all Palestinians into the camps of "terrorist" or "victim", wilfully ignoring the complexities of a society which has been under intense pressure for many decades and has nothing approaching a normal economy.
The reality is complex and over-simplified statements are used by all sides to use ordinary people as pawns in a wider religio-political conflict.
On Hamas - there are several things to be said here. First, it appears to be a historical fact that Hamas was initially supported by the Israelis to bring instability to the Palestinian people. Which if true, and from what I can gather it is, then that gives a puzzling perspective to the whole thing.
Second, as I said above, I am a pacifist. However under international law, an occupied people have the right to use violence to defend themselves. So there is something of an irony if one is saying that the Israeli military can use overwhelming force against civilians in a space from which they can't escape but armed factions on the other side are not able to use force in return. My issue with Hamas is that the violence is counter-productive - and indiscriminate -, not that it is unjustified.
Third, Palestinians have several times tried campaigns of non-violence which have gotten them absolutely nowhere, so it isn't really a great surprise when they're pushed into a corner that they react with something that is literally suicide. Palestinians are a very stubborn people.
Finally, Hamas have reformed and made concessions, the reality is that nobody gives them any credit for that whatsoever. Instead the message that the Palestinian people get from the "democracy loving" western countries is that they've made the wrong democratic choice and therefore deserve to be ostracised and punished for it.
fwiw, I have no love for any of the Palestinian factions or the pockets of deep nasty fundamentalism which exist around the Palestinian territories. But simply allowing Israel to impose de-facto unilateral punishment on a whole people because they don't like the way representatives have been elected - and let's not forget that a large number of Palestinian elected officials are currently in Israeli prisons, many without charge or conviction - is to sit back and tell Palestinians that they only matter when they give the correct answers.
Most Palestinians agree with a two-state solution including Hamas. Most want peace, freedom of movement, contiguous land, external borders, airports, deep-water ports and a functioning economy. Those things are entirely in the hands of Israel as occupier, not Hamas. It is that the hard-liners in Israel have no interest in a viable Palestinian state.
[ 06. May 2016, 07:34: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
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arse
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
You may not have noticed that I didn't say 'talking to Hamas' was antisemitic. Nor did I refer to comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. What I referred to was an example of a self-reflective process.
This next comment is tangential. It does not always work, but long experience suggests that however much it may stick in one's craw, talking to abhorrent people or organisations offers more prospect of getting them to become less abhorrent than any other approach. Even 100% eradication, which some people usually advocate and think will be more effective, has less prospect of being achievable.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
Your list is a very helpful discussion point because some interesting things emerge.
For instance I don't think anyone is challenging Holocaust denial as a marker of anti-Semitism. Would it be possible simply to be honestly mistaken about the historical evidence? To think that accounts are unreliable simply as an academic judgement and to want to ask questions in a free-thinking spirit? In theory it must be, but in practice consensus seems to be that if your free-thinking leads you to conclude that the Holocaust didn't happen you probably have a prejudice that guided your free-thought.
On the other hand Cheesy illustrates very well how one can thoughtfully disagree with the statement "Hamas are abhorrent".
Taken out of context "it isn't really a great surprise when they're [Hamas] pushed into a corner that they react with something that is literally suicide" could be quite inflammatory and considered evidence of anti-Semitism. Whereas seen in context one might disagree but one could hardly describe it as anti-Semitic.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Your list is a very helpful discussion point because some interesting things emerge.
For instance I don't think anyone is challenging Holocaust denial as a marker of anti-Semitism. Would it be possible simply to be honestly mistaken about the historical evidence? To think that accounts are unreliable simply as an academic judgement and to want to ask questions in a free-thinking spirit? In theory it must be, but in practice consensus seems to be that if your free-thinking leads you to conclude that the Holocaust didn't happen you probably have a prejudice that guided your free-thought.
It is. I've met normal people who are just swept along by a tide of conspiracy theories about the Holocaust and do not have the resources to research the truth. In that circumstance it isn't very surprising that the easiest option is to believe, along with everyone else in the group you belong to, that the Holocaust didn't happen.
To me that is a form of Holocaust denial that is just born of ignorance. One could go after those who perpetuate this nonsense - which do indeed include Hamas - but I don't think you can necessarily allocate blame equally to everyone.
That said, there is a level of chicken-and-egg here. If one believes that the Holocaust is a great lie, then it isn't so much of a step to believe other lies about Jews, particularly if the only time you see a Jew is when they're pointing a gun at you or disrespecting your grandparents.
This is one of the reasons why it is so important for Jews to meet Palestinians and for them to hear about the Holocaust. And also why things like the Breaking the Silence meetings between former Palestinian and Israeli combatants are so important.
[ 06. May 2016, 09:05: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
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arse
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
You may not have noticed that I didn't say 'talking to Hamas' was antisemitic.
Sure, but 'abhorrent' in itself is just describing my mental state, which shouldn't be relevant, and indeed isn't relevant if I am nonetheless advocating dialogue with them.
quote:
Nor did I refer to comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.
I'm not sure how else to interpret 'Suggesting that a Jewish state should not treat people the way the Nazis treated them'. The implication is that (in the mind of the speaker) that is how the Israelis are treating the Palestinians.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
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chris stiles
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# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:
Nor did I refer to comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.
I'm not sure how else to interpret 'Suggesting that a Jewish state should not treat people the way the Nazis treated them'. The implication is that (in the mind of the speaker) that is how the Israelis are treating the Palestinians.
I expect Enoch was thinking of examples like this:
IDF general compares Israel to Nazi German then walks back comments after right-wing backlash/
Which isn't the first time something similar has been said by someone from Israel.
[Edited to fix scroll lock. Replace long URLs with text. - Gwai]
[ 06. May 2016, 11:12: Message edited by: Gwai ]
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
To me that is a form of Holocaust denial that is just born of ignorance. One could go after those who perpetuate this nonsense - which do indeed include Hamas - but I don't think you can necessarily allocate blame equally to everyone.
Isn't that then also anti-Semitism born of ignorance? One might be variably culpable for one's racism depending on resources available to be critical, so the degree of willfulness may vary but it is still anti-Semitism.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Isn't that then also anti-Semitism born of ignorance? One might be variably culpable for one's racism depending on resources available to be critical, so the degree of willfulness may vary but it is still anti-Semitism.
I think this may just come back to the issue of defining anti-Semitism.
If we're meaning (in extremis) that an anti-Semite is someone who considers a Jew sub-human and will take any opportunity to berate, beat or murder him - a definition that I've just made up - then I don't think having ignorant views about the Holocaust inevitably means personal animosity to Jews. Or even necessarily animosity to a specific group of Jews.
Animosity to a large number of people is a bit more difficult to call, I think. I've met Palestinians who talk a load of shite about the Holocaust, who don't have a good word to say about Israel and so on. And yet who were very polite to the Jew that I was with.
Now, I'm not claiming to have met all Palestinians by a long stretch, and I'm certain that there are some who are itching to get into a personal fight with a Jew as a representative of everything they see as evil in the world. But the ones I met have a very strong sense of hospitality and appeared to be able to spout mountains of rubbish whilst at the same time apparently caring for the individual in front of them.
I've never met a skinhead Neo-Nazi, but having seen them recently protecting in Dover, I'd be much more worried about them meeting a Jew in the street.
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arse
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alienfromzog
Ship's Alien
# 5327
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Posted
I think Mark Steel has nailed it:
quote:
In the Independent...
You can’t help wondering, if you’re a bit cynical, whether people who scream and yell about antisemitism only when it suits them as a stick to beat their opponents, might be the most insulting towards Jews of all.
AFZ
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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
[Sen. D.P.Moynihan]
An Alien's View of Earth - my blog (or vanity exercise...)
Posts: 2150 | From: Zog, obviously! Straight past Alpha Centauri, 2nd planet on the left... | Registered: Dec 2003
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
I was once grabbed behind by a skin-head who stated a desire to do something unpleasant to my black face. (Or words to that effect). As he got a closer look he realized we knew me - we had been "friends" in school (a relationship clearly in need of re-appraisal). He apologized and left me to stagger off looking for some alcohol.
Was he not a racist because he was able to view me as an individual?
People are contradictory and aspects of them in different context may be racist or not racist. Perhaps it makes more sense to categorize statements and actions as racist/not racist rather than individuals.
(By the way the police didn't make such fine philosophical distinctions, although did find it quite a low priority to follow up on my report and eventually decided that the word of 5 bystanders all apparently known to the accused but luckily in the area against 1 (me) wasn't going to go anywhere useful and dropped it. This was quite a while ago.)
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
mdijon wrote: quote:
People are contradictory and aspects of them in different context may be racist or not racist. Perhaps it makes more sense to categorize statements and actions as racist/not racist rather than individuals.
That's got a lot going for it. It can be helpful in pointing out that even in the hands of the best-intentioned, something can have negative consequences. Even if your self-image is as someone implacably opposed to racism or anti-semitism - a stance which though laudable has the possibility of blinding you to the fact.
Though I guess that against it, there really are some people who have adopted these stances into their identity, and for them I would say the terms can stand.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
I am still curious as to which people on the left are reckoned to be anti-semitic. Enoch referred to a 'strain on the left', but wasn't more specific than that. I have heard rumours that the SWP have had trouble with this, but no hard facts. Where else?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
We have to pour aid in to Gaza and the occupied West Bank. We HAVE to, can ONLY, obtain peace through universal social JUSTICE.
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I am still curious as to which people on the left are reckoned to be anti-semitic. Enoch referred to a 'strain on the left', but wasn't more specific than that. I have heard rumours that the SWP have had trouble with this, but no hard facts. Where else?
The SWP has imploded, quetzalcoatl, though more over sexism than this I think.
But its a good question. I think there are some strains on the further left that are implicated, though not all by any means.
I think they are largely those that take the entire thoughts of Marx (perhaps) and Lenin (definitely) as definitive. And some the Trotskyite outfits as well. The problem with identifying them is more that these groupuscules come and go, whilst arguing virulently among themselves.
But if you wanted a more detailed explanation as to what is going on, I am not Enoch, but I could give it a try, though my knowledge is distinctly partial.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
People are contradictory and aspects of them in different context may be racist or not racist.
Very true. For example, it's my experience that racists who are also football fans have few problems with black players who play for their team. As long as they play well, of course...
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I am still curious as to which people on the left are reckoned to be anti-semitic. Enoch referred to a 'strain on the left', but wasn't more specific than that. I have heard rumours that the SWP have had trouble with this, but no hard facts. Where else?
Quite a while back the SWP had an issue with Gilad Atzmon's blatant anti-Semitism.
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arse
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I am still curious as to which people on the left are reckoned to be anti-semitic. Enoch referred to a 'strain on the left', but wasn't more specific than that. I have heard rumours that the SWP have had trouble with this, but no hard facts. Where else?
Quite a while back the SWP had an issue with Gilad Atzmon's blatant anti-Semitism.
Except Atzmon's ideas predate his association with the SWP by a very long way, are complicated by that fact that he himself is a Jew (albeit an aggressively secular one) and it is not always clear to what extent what he says are in parody.
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
.. and seriously, if your evidence for widespread anti-semitism in the Labour party is the involvement of a particular loose cannon in the fringes of a fringe of the party - who is in addition foreign and Jewish, I'd say you were on fairly shaky ground.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Outside the recent Tory attacks, is anyone saying there is widespread antisemitism within the Labour party?
(Genuine question - just calibrating).
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
I am forty and have been a a labour party member pretty much all my adult life. It is not something I've heard raised before, and as I said upthread, we have recently had a labour leader and foreign secretary of Jewish heritage.
I found the stories about the Oxford group quite wierd, I literally wouldn't have known what "zio" meant if I hadn't seen it explained in a news article.
On my father's side of the family they fled the Russian pomgroms at the end of the nineteenth century and came to Britain. I remember my great aunt talking about the people they knew who died in the holocaust, so it is the sort of thing I would notice.
Just thinking back more generally I live in a fairly wealthy place, but work in a more deprived area, with some significant immigration - both people from in and outside europe. I have come across homophobia, I have a client chose to leave the area and go to london because a five year old in a shop called her a "nigger". But I have yet to hear direct, anti-Semitic insults.
I have heard people talk alot about the arab isreali conflict in the course of my life, not least cos I spent chunks of my childhood in the middle-east. Where the line is is those conversations is probably a matter of debate - but it was usually people talking about actual fighting / state actions in that actual location. (As opposed to assuming all Jewish people are a proxy for Israel.)
In discussing the recent issues with my mum, discovered that her boss referred to my dad once as "a pushy jew" - this would have been in the sixties before they were married, he's 79 now - she said "you didn't tell people they were racist in those days, so I just said he's not jewish".
[ 06. May 2016, 19:59: Message edited by: Doublethink. ]
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
In discussing the recent issues with my mum, discovered that her boss referred to my dad once as "a pushy jew" - this would have been in the sixties before they were married, he's 79 now - she said "you didn't tell people they were racist in those days, so I just said he's not jewish".
Anecdotally, whilst I've heard plenty of racist remarks in working class circles, the only time I've personally heard anti-Jewish/Semitic remarks is from the middle classes and up, with the remarks becoming more oblique the further up the social scale one moves.
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