Question for who made the "Against Anti-Semitism" or "Pro Israel" User Groups

[CMD1986]

Should there also be a group against "Racism Against White People" or "sexism Against Men", or defending the USA's or European country's rights to exist as a white majority country?

[motion denied]

Against anti-semitism is quite adequate - even more so for Europeans.

Pro-Israel, however... Anyway, this thread pops every now and then.

[CMD1986]

Against anti-semitism is quite adequate - even more so for Europeans.

You think Jews are a discriminated group today in Europe?

I am against anti-semitism in the same way I would also be against hating someone for being white, or being British, or being German, or Spanish, or Japanese, or for being a man...but if you ask me is this a serious form of racism in Europe today, then no, I don't think so.

[Quail]

I think that the point is that some people blame the poor treatment of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli state on Jewish people in general, so it is important to remember that as communists we should also fight against anti-semitism.

[Sasha]

You think Jews are a discriminated group today in Europe?

I am against anti-semitism in the same way I would also be against hating someone for being white, or being British, or being German, or Spanish, or Japanese, or for being a man...but if you ask me is this a serious form of racism in Europe today, then no, I don't think so.


wonder why we have the bulletproof glass and armed police guards in front of synagogues, jewish primary schools and holocaust museums here then, must be fashionable.

[CMD1986]

I think that the point is that some people blame the poor treatment of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli state on Jewish people in general, so it is important to remember that as communists we should also fight against anti-semitism.

I understand and I agree, but you could say the same that some people blame White People (or at least Americans, British, French, Germans, Dutch etc.) for the past/actual crimes of their governments, so we should also be against those kind of "racism". Or that you should not blame all men for sexism.

Of course I agree that you cannot punish civilian individuals, but I think if someone made a group against those things (Against Racism Against Whites or Against Sexism Against Men), people would be unconfident of them, so in my case, I have the same feeling when I see this Against Anti-Semitism group.:glare:

[DOOM]

Should there also be a group against "Racism Against White People" or "sexism Against Men", or defending the USA's or European country's rights to exist as a white majority country?

Are you implying jews aren't confronted with antisemitic injustice on a daily basis?
And I'm the admin of the latter group. Fight me.

[CMD1986]

Are you implying jews aren't confronted with antisemitic injustice on a daily basis?

Of course they are not.

[DOOM]

Against anti-semitism is quite adequate - even more so for Europeans.

Pro-Israel, however... Anyway, this thread pops every now and then.

This thread and the other ones are proof enough for the left's pseudo-critical position against anti-semitism.
There are many groups on this board defending various states and regimes which have a massively bigger body count than Israel has and yet I have to wait for threads which are appearing at the same frequency and are condemning the position and the existence of a group called "support for Syria" or whatever.
Fucking double standards.

And then there are people like OP which are even neglecting the relevance of anti-semitism today and comparing it to non-existent phenomena like "racism against white people".

[CMD1986]

This thread and the other ones are proof enough for the left's pseudo-critical position against anti-semitism.
There are many groups on this board defending various states and regimes which have a massively bigger body count than Israel has and yet I have to wait for threads which are appearing at the same frequency and are condemning the existence and the position of a group called "support for Syria" or whatever.
Fucking double standards.

And then there are people like OP which are even neglecting the relevance of anti-semitism today and comparing it to non-existent phenomena like "racism against white people".

If you are worried about the body count in Syria maybe you should start asking your friend Israel why it has been supporting Islamist terrorists there for 3 years.

[Sasha]

If you are worried about the body count in Syria maybe you should start asking your friend Israel why it has been supporting Islamist terrorists there for 3 years.


lol, Israel has all but actively propping up Assad the last years; http://middleeast.about.com/od/israel/a/Israeli-Position-On-Syrian-Conflict.htm
No surprise considering their joint operations during the Lebanese civilwar against the PLO

[DOOM]

If you are worried about the body count in Syria maybe you should start asking your friend Israel why it has been supporting Islamist terrorists there for 3 years.

Really? Is this your objection to my post? Semi-conspiracial stuff about israeli involvement in the syrian civil war?
You know I was referring to the crimes done by Assad?

But this isn't even the point, we aren't discussing here whether Assad is the anti-imperialist Salvator Mundi or just another power-hungry oppressor.In fact, it's far more than that. And if you can't object to my post without deranging into irrelevant discussions than you didn't really make a point.

[CMD1986]

I don't think it is irrelevant that Israel is supporting Islamist terrorism. For anyone progressive this should be quite a big problem!

[Sasha]

so before we talk about your new bullshit claim (Israel tends to be one of the few players in the region not having an islamist dog in the game, excluding hamas in its very earliest founding the mossad mostly works with secularist groups as the kurds and the mudjadeen khalq) lets first go back to your claim that anti-semitism isnt a problem in europe. are you going to stand by this claim?

[contracycle]

This thread and the other ones are proof enough for the left's pseudo-critical position against anti-semitism.
There are many groups on this board defending various states and regimes which have a massively bigger body count than Israel has and yet I have to wait for threads which are appearing at the same frequency and are condemning the position and the existence of a group called "support for Syria" or whatever.
Fucking double standards.


Syria, however, is not a colonial project heavily subsidised and militarily supported by the West. We are involved, indeed complicit, in Israeli apartheid in a way that we are not in regards Syria, or wherever.

[DOOM]

I don't think it is irrelevant that Israel is supporting Islamist terrorism. For anyone progressive this should be quite a big problem!

And yet you show support for syria. It's quite funny that die-hard anti-imperialist are the likeliest type of "leftists" who would support full blown reactionaries such as Assad.

Oh boy. And yet you're trying to make this a discussion about whether israel is involved in the syrian war or not. I'm seconding Sasha and I won't participate in a serious discussion unless you explain how there is no anti-semitism in europe.

Some stuff you'd maybe like to read before you write a response:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/07/22/france-jewish-shops-riot_n_5608612.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Museum_of_Belgium_shooting

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.616083

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Sarcelles_riots

etc.

[consuming negativity]

the difference is that anti-semitism is an actual problem whereas racism against white people isn't

not that racism against white people is okay - that racism against white people is not a serious problem anywhere in the world (that i know of - i could be wrong, but i doubt i'm wrong)

white people aren't having their homes spraypainted by [minority] telling them "leave cracker now", and, apart from in majority-black inner-city neighborhoods, i've never heard of racial profiling against white people by the police

there are no, as far as i know of, black churches in 20XX who are refusing to marry interracial couples

christians aren't having their churches burned down by radical jews who want their country to be jewish-only. there is no history of jewish people putting [insert group here] into extermination camps and making soap out of them, either

america has no "right" to anything because it is an artificial construct (a country) that doesn't actually mean anything. and no, the people of america do not have some god-given "right" to not be around people who don't look like them because they're racist. sure, they can try to make america pure white by voting for it if they want (ahaha), or they can move and be racist somewhere else, but there is no reason to defend these racists from the consequences of their racism (ie. being angry because non-white people exist in proximity to them)

[CMD1986]

And yet you show support for syria. It's quite funny that die-hard anti-imperialist are the likeliest type of "leftists" who would support full blown reactionaries such as Assad.

Oh boy. And yet you're trying to make this a discussion about whether israel is involved in the syrian war or not. I'm seconding Sasha and I won't participate in a serious discussion unless you explain how there is no anti-semitism in europe.

I didn't say there is no antisemitism, just like I know there are people who hate white people and who hate men, etc.

But if you tell me Jews an oppressed minority, then I have to laugh, Jews are completely integrated into western society and I would even say that the Jewish elite has "merged" with the white elite, especially in Britain and the USA, and Israel is the most priveliged partner of the imperialists.

[Lily Briscoe]

Against anti-semitism is quite adequate - even more so for Europeans.

Pro-Israel, however...

Yes. Some people here seem to have a suspiciously difficult time separating the two.

[CMD1986]

the difference is that anti-semitism is an actual problem whereas racism against white people isn't

Why do you say this?


not that racism against white people is okay - that racism against white people is not a serious problem anywhere in the world (that i know of - i could be wrong, but i doubt i'm wrong)

There are many places in this world where there are negative attitudes to white people.


white people aren't having their homes spraypainted by [minority] telling them "leave cracker now", and, apart from in majority-black inner-city neighborhoods, i've never heard of racial profiling against white people by the police

I never heard of racial profiling against Jews by the police, and where are Jews homes being spray painted any more than white peoples?



christians aren't having their churches burned down by radical jews who want their country to be jewish-only.

Well many Arabs are treated this way in Israel, it does not matter if they are Christian or Muslim.

Can you tell me where is this happening on a wide scale to Jews?

I can tell you it is also happening to Christians in many Islamic countries, and to Muslims in others (eg India, Burma), but I do not see any User Groups about this issue.



there is no history of jewish people putting [insert group here] into extermination camps and making soap out of them, either


I don't understand this point. British or French didn't do this either, does this mean they can't be imperialist?


america has no "right" to anything because it is an artificial construct (a country) that doesn't actually mean anything. and no, the people of america do not have some god-given "right" to not be around people who don't look like them because they're racist. sure, they can try to make america pure white by voting for it if they want (ahaha), or they can move and be racist somewhere else, but there is no reason to defend these racists from the consequences of their racism (ie. being angry because non-white people exist in proximity to them)

So you would say the same for Israel then? Which is defined as a "Jewish State" eg it can only exist by excluding the Palestinians, the rightful owners of those lands...

[contracycle]

Uugh. Frankly, I think this attempt to conflate criticism with Israel and anti-semitism is both ridiculous and self-defeating. It just ends up making the anti-semites argument for them, because it turns it into an issue about race than the politics of the Israeli state.

[Sasha]

I didn't say there is no antisemitism, just like I know there are people who hate white people and who hate men, etc.

But if you tell me Jews an oppressed minority, then I have to laugh, Jews are completely integrated into western society and I would even say that the Jewish elite has "merged" with the white elite, especially in Britain and the USA, and Israel is the most priveliged partner of the imperialists.

well, that was fun...

time to read up on reality

bye.

[contracycle]

There are many places in this world where there are negative attitudes to white people.

"Negative attitudes" doesn't amount to systematic, let alone state-supported, discrimination.

The Western media loves nothing more than a "whites-being-persecuted" narrative, much of the bullshit spouted about Zimbabwe being a fine case in point.

I think you're completely wrong on this point. Anti-semitism certainly still exists, and many European Jews do indeed suffer personal discrimination. It has not gone away, it;s just been somewhat rebadged as anti-Islamic "resistance".

None of this shit serves the argument that Israel deserves criticism.

[DAN E BOY]

This gives me an idea for a thread. :)

[PhoenixAsh]

Uugh. Frankly, I think this attempt to conflate criticism with Israel and anti-semitism is both ridiculous and self-defeating. It just ends up making the anti-semites argument for them, because it turns it into an issue about race than the politics of the Israeli state.

Really? Because unfortunately the vast majority of criticism against Israel is fuelled by anti-semitism and the revolutionary left is riddled with latent and not so latent anti-semites.

This does not devaluate criticism against Israel or automatically mean that criticism against Israel is anti-semitism.

but unfortunately it is true.

[contracycle]

Well, you say "riddled", I say "has a few entryists".

My experience does not accord with yours. I've worked with campaigning organisations critical of Israel, and while you might find a few people with racist placards on a demo, that's really it. And yet now I expect that you're going to respond to that by alleging that I must be blind to anti-semitism, or unwittingly aiding it, if it was not "obvious" to me that it was so "riddled". This is of course a classic self-fulfilling argument.

[PhoenixAsh]

Well, you say "riddled", I say "has a few entryists".

My experience does not accord with yours. I've worked with campaigning organisations critical of Israel, and while you might find a few people with racist placards on a demo, that's really it. And yet now I expect that you're going to respond to that by alleging that I must be blind to anti-semitism, or unwittingly aiding it, if it was not "obvious" to me that it was so "riddled". This is of course a classic self-fulfilling argument.

Well I am sure the personal experience with organisations "critical" of Israel by somebody who confuses anti-semitism with racism and who limits the entire anti-Israel movement to some demo's they personally attended...trumps mine...

[contracycle]

I said neither of those things. I merely said my experience did not lead me to the conclusions that you draw. Do you have any more reliable source, other than your own impressions of articles you've maybe read, people you've seen?

You said: "the vast majority of criticism against Israel is fuelled by anti-semitism". This does not appear to be the case to me. I think the vast majority of criticism of Israel is fuelled by hostility to apartheid backed by state terror and openly supported by American imperialism.

[DAN E BOY]

lol, Israel has all but actively propping up Assad the last years; http://middleeast.about.com/od/israel/a/Israeli-Position-On-Syrian-Conflict.htm
No surprise considering their joint operations during the Lebanese civilwar against the PLO



So i don't make the same mistake as the chap who just got banned, could someone in a position of ''authority'' please tell me this forums position on the Israeli/Palestine conflict?

[PhoenixAsh]

I said neither of those things. I merely said my experience did not lead me to the conclusions that you draw. Do you have any more reliable source, other than your own impressions of articles you've maybe read, people you've seen?

You said: "the vast majority of criticism against Israel is fuelled by anti-semitism". This does not appear to be the case to me. I think the vast majority of criticism of Israel is fuelled by hostility to apartheid backed by state terror and openly supported by American imperialism.

Don't try and weasel your way out of it. Yes you did say exactly that:


Well, you say "riddled", I say "has a few entryists".

My experience does not accord with yours. I've worked with campaigning organisations critical of Israel, and while you might find a few people with racist placards on a demo, that's really it. And yet now I expect that you're going to respond to that by alleging that I must be blind to anti-semitism, or unwittingly aiding it, if it was not "obvious" to me that it was so "riddled". This is of course a classic self-fulfilling argument.

So don't play cute with me. You did that in another thread. You are doing it here.


So let me ask you another question...what specifically have you done against those racist placards in the revolutionary left demo's? And how were they tolerated in the first place?

[Sentinel]

So i don't make the same mistake as the chap who just got banned, could someone in a position of ''authority'' please tell me this forums position on the Israeli/Palestine conflict?

We don't have a position on that, it is a matter of debate here as it is in the movement. We do however have an absolute zero tolerance position on support or apologism for, as well as denial of, antisemitism.

The user in question was banned or the latter, as is also outlined in the admin action logs.

[contracycle]

Don't try and weasel your way out of it. Yes you did say exactly that:

Hmm. It don't think it is incorrect to describe anti-semitism as racism, although it may not be sufficient, it's not innacurate.



So let me ask you another question...what specifically have you done against those racist placards in the revolutionary left demo's? And how were they tolerated in the first place?

On some occassions, march marshals told them they weren't welcome. But they do not fundamentally have legal powers to police a demo, so it's not something they can enforce. I've also sometimes seen them snatched down and destroyed by other marchers. What I've never seen is such things ever come remotely close to be being more than a drop in the ocean.

Anyway, have you ever been on a demo? It's not like even the organisers can or should somehow vet the public before they are allowed to participate. You publicise, you leaflet, people show up, that's how it goes.

[DAN E BOY]

We don't have a position on that, it is a matter of debate here as it is in the movement. We do however have an absolute zero tolerance position on support or apologism for, as well as denial of, antisemitism.

The user in question was banned or the latter, as is also outlined in the admin action logs.


Thank you for your reply.

Let us all debate.

[PhoenixAsh]

Hmm. It don't think it is incorrect to describe anti-semitism as racism, although it may not be sufficient, it's not innacurate.


It is severely downplaying anti-semitism and reducing it to a small component which is more specifically noted as racial anti-semitism. Anti-semitism is however much broader in scope and has cultural, religious, political, nationalist and linguistic components.


On some occassions, march marshals told them they weren't welcome. But they do not fundamentally have legal powers to police a demo, so it's not something they can enforce. I've also sometimes seen them snatched down and destroyed by other marchers. What I've never seen is such things ever come remotely close to be being more than a drop in the ocean.

Right. So we weren't actually talking about revolutionary demo's because revolutionaries don't concern themselves much with such trivialities when it comes to "legality within the context of the bourgeois state"....if racist and anti-semitic placards and flags are allowed within the demo this is a cause for deeply rethinking the priorities of the demo you are participating in which offers a platform for racism and anti-semitism and thereby endorsing it. And it is THAT specific attitude that is prevalent within the revolutionary left which is in itself anti-semetic.



Anyway, have you ever been on a demo? It's not like even the organisers can or should somehow vet the public before they are allowed to participate. You publicise, you leaflet, people show up, that's how it goes.

I have a little experience...been in one or two.....

....enough demo's, enough DA, enough events and other types of activism and worked with international organizations who operate either through peacefull or non peacefull means ...both revolutionary left and non revolutionary left with respect to Israel and Palestine over the scope of the last 21 years to be declared persona non-grata in the state of Israel and untill a year or so back in the US

[contracycle]

It is severely downplaying anti-semitism and reducing it to a small component which is more specifically noted as racial anti-semitism. Anti-semitism is however much broader in scope and has cultural, religious, political, nationalist and linguistic components.

Can you cite any example of racism that does not have "cultural, religious, political, nationalist and linguistic components"?



Right. So we weren't actually talking about revolutionary demo's...

Oh FFS. Obviously not. I think you're rather missing the point of such demos.



if racist and anti-semitic placards and flags are allowed within the demo this is a cause for deeply rethinking the priorities of the demo you are participating in which offers a platform for racism and anti-semitism and thereby endorsing it. And it is THAT specific attitude that is prevalent within the revolutionary left which is in itself anti-semetic.

And this is where IMO you go completely of the deep end. So your version of anti-semitism means not getting into a fistfight while surrounded by schoolkids and little old ladies, which is sure to bring the cops in, have the whole thing shut down, and the entire point obviated?

With friends like these etc.

You know what, in any demo large enough, you get a sprinkling of crazies. You can't do anything about it if you want the public involved, rather than just a bunch of cadre walking tightly in lockstep. There will always be the guy who thinks he was abducted by aliens, has a chip in his head, and that at any vaguely anti-government protest he's going to find like minded souls. There will always be a few with placards claiming that the royal family are really lizard people, or masons, or what the fuck ever. Should loyal comrades be watching them all with damning eyes, and taking them off into back allies for a good kicking?

I think you've jumped the shark there old bean.

[G4b3n]

You think Jews are a discriminated group today in Europe?

I am against anti-semitism in the same way I would also be against hating someone for being white, or being British, or being German, or Spanish, or Japanese, or for being a man...but if you ask me is this a serious form of racism in Europe today, then no, I don't think so.

Does anti-Semiticism still exist?

Many non-Jews say No.

[PhoenixAsh]

Can you cite any example of racism that does not have "cultural, religious, political, nationalist and linguistic components"?


You know the actual definition of racism...right?



Oh FFS. Obviously not. I think you're rather missing the point of such demos.

I think you are missing the point of the argument I was making.




And this is where IMO you go completely of the deep end.

No...actually this is where you go of the deep end.

I said:

1).

Because unfortunately the vast majority of criticism against Israel is fuelled by anti-semitism

2).

and the revolutionary left is riddled with latent and not so latent anti-semites.

You used your experience with some general non-revolutionary anti-Israel demo to disprove the second statement about the revolutionary left....while you reduced the mentioned criticism in the first statement to some local demo's you attended rather than the totallity of global criticism against Israel which is quite a bit more massive in scope than your attended local, regional or national demo's.



So your version of anti-semitism means not getting into a fistfight while surrounded by schoolkids and little old ladies, which is sure to bring the cops in, have the whole thing shut down, and the entire point obviated?

Here you go of the deep end again....further illustrating not only the points I mentioned above...but also some worrying ageist sexist mentality that somehow little old ladies can't handle themselves very well considering they walk within a massive demo...aand that little kids need to be shielded from actual appropriate action.

Again...your analysis is that these are nuts and fringe aspects within the larger sane demo...which apparently can't eject these nuts without using violence but which also opposes these ideas in totallity (and not to mention very silently). Your assumption is that the demonstrators marching there are against racism and anti-semitism and are completely aware about their own prejudices, supremacism and privileges. That however is not the case. These elements are not so much abberrations...they are allowed, overlooked and tolerated because of inherrent anti-semitism which is a root cause for allowing such elements to be platformed within the larger demo and ignored...

You also make the classic assumption failure to think that all racism and anti-semitism is displayed openly. Which it is not. Or that the motivations of all participants was pure, holy and good.

Lets explain one thing. Your demo's were poorly organized, politically incoherrent, incompetent and platforming (and thereby) explicitly endorsing racism and anti-semitism without confronting it while pretending to march for tolerance.

I have NEVER been to a demonstration which I helped organize or which were properly organized by others, revolutionary or not, which had openly displayed racist material that was not immediately confronted and ejected by the demonstrators themselves.

The mere fact that anti-Isreal demo's have this open display of racism and anti-semitism is because these demo's are the only demo's where this is generally accepted...outside of the demo's organized by explicit anti-semites. That anti-semitism is usually downplayed in importance, ignored, glossed over....and it is continuously allowed, accepted and tolerated.

....naturally because of little old ladies...if only there were less little old ladies we would have racism and anti-semitism free demo's.



With friends like these etc. You know what, in any demo large enough, you get a sprinkling of crazies.

Yeah that is your mistake...reducing the problem to some finge elements when anti-semitism is thriving attm around the world.


You can't do anything about it if you want the public involved,

I can't facepalm this statement hard enough. What buffoonery is this?

First it is some sprinkling of crazies....and all of the sudden opposing those mere handfull of crazies is driving away the public...which...if you thought more than a nano second...according to you doesn't agree with opposing racism and anti-semitism.


rather than just a bunch of cadre walking tightly in lockstep.

Yes...because these are the only two options.


There will always be the guy who thinks he was abducted by aliens, has a chip in his head, and that at any vaguely anti-government protest he's going to find like minded souls. There will always be a few with placards claiming that the royal family are really lizard people, or masons, or what the fuck ever. Should loyal comrades be watching them all with damning eyes, and taking them off into back allies for a good kicking?

We are not talking about crazies...we are talking about endorsing structural forms of oppression. We are talking about somethings we ideologically oppose. Apparently...this is not really an issue for you.

And that is exactly the issue.

Now...obviously because of your initially explained little trickery in using your experience in a general non revolutionary demo as argument that the revolutionary left is not riddled with anti-semite sentiments...we have wandered and we are now mixing revolutionary left terminology with the general public nature of the demo.

But as I explained above...your own arguments indicates the problem:

The general public will stay away from the demo against Israel when you confront racism and anti-semitism.



I think you've jumped the shark there old bean.

No...I think I was spot one there and you have manged to prove to the thread yourself (rather than me saying it) that you are blind to anti-semitism.

[cyu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy applies to racism, sexism, nationalism, classism, bigotry, and probably most mainstream political movements. If politics concerns groups of people, then politics will make statements (ie. generalizations) about groups of people - which almost guarantees association fallacies.

Some people are ignorant of the association fallacies in their political beliefs. If that is true, then it may be possible to change their beliefs by unraveling the fallacies they don't realize they hold. Others, particularly political operatives, intentionally use association fallacies in their statements, as part of a political maneuver - so pointing out association fallacies in their statements won't change their mind - you'd have to aim for their audience, instead of them personally. If you actually wanted to change the mind of those who intentionally use fallacies, you'd have to start with the assumption that they don't actually believe the words that come out of their own mouths.

[Devrim]

the difference is that anti-semitism is an actual problem whereas racism against white people isn't

not that racism against white people is okay - that racism against white people is not a serious problem anywhere in the world (that i know of - i could be wrong, but i doubt i'm wrong)

You could ask the Armenians in Turkey. Of course, it's a little difficult because most of them were murdered. Of course, there are still some left, and when they speak too loudly they get murdered by fascists, like Hrant Dink.

You could equally ask the Bosnian Muslims.

Of course there is racism against groups that are white. It's only a really lazy thinking that would think there wasn't.

Devrim

[jullia]

For anti white racism, you can find it in many African country.
For antisemitism in Europe, is there aren't any organize racism, some agressions target specifically jewish people.

[Sasha]

You could ask the Armenians in Turkey. Of course, it's a little difficult because most of them were murdered. Of course, there are still some left, and when they speak too loudly they get murdered by fascists, like Hrant Dink.

You could equally ask the Bosnian Muslims.

Of course there is racism against groups that are white. It's only a really lazy thinking that would think there wasn't.

Devrim


but the racism against armenians and bosnian muslims isnt based on the colour of their skin, i dont know how much whiter they are than those who persecuted them but i assume that if they where significantly darker the racism would have been even more vile because then it would have gotten that aspect as well.
you also wouldnt say, if i was attacked for my jewish name by an dutch arab that this was related to my skin colour.

[Devrim]

No, I don't think it is about skin colour at all. I think the intellectual laziness here is viewers my racism through the eyes of your own country only and assuming that it's only about colour. It's also about religion and ethnicity. There are white people who are victims of racism as I've pointed out. It is not because they are white, but there are still white people who are victims of racism.

Devrim

[contracycle]

You know the actual definition of racism...right?


Shrug. Maybe; depends which one you're thinking of. The usual dictionary ones are inadequate, IMO. I mean, I'm only from South Africa, clearly I've never thought about racism before, so do enlighten me.



I think you are missing the point of the argument I was making.

No, I'm really not. Like so many apologists for Israel how throw out this spiel, you're suggesting that criticism of Israel can't possibly be motivated by outrage at the daily atrocities of this apartheid state. Mere sympathy for the plight of Palestinians is not sufficient; there must be something else, something extra, that REALLY explains why people protest and object.

All you're doing is providing moral cover for apartheid. That's all there is to it.



You used your experience with some general non-revolutionary anti-Israel demo to disprove the second statement about the revolutionary left....while you reduced the mentioned criticism in the first statement to some local demo's you attended rather than the totallity of global criticism against Israel which is quite a bit more massive in scope than your attended local, regional or national demo's.

I addressed pretty much the only piece of solid "evidence" you've got. All the rest is inuendo supported by the rickety apologia for apartheid I outlined above.



Again...your analysis is that these are nuts and fringe aspects within the larger sane demo...which apparently can't eject these nuts without using violence but which also opposes these ideas in totallity (and not to mention very silently).

Correct. This is an accurate statement of fact. They are fringe elements, and they cannot be ejected. Deal with it.



Your assumption is that the demonstrators marching there are against racism and anti-semitism and are completely aware about their own prejudices, supremacism and privileges.

Don't be ridiculous; I can't possibly speculate as to the inner mental life of thousands of marchers. What I know is that they turned out for this cause.


for allowing such elements to be platformed within the larger demo and ignored...

This is hyperbole. If it were that anti-semitic speakers were addressing the crowd, you would have a case that they were given a platform; the mere fact that they joined a large crowd in a public space in which they have the civic right to be simply does not, however much you may want to spin it that way.


You also make the classic assumption failure to think that all racism and anti-semitism is displayed openly. Which it is not. Or that the motivations of all participants was pure, holy and good.

Lol, that's hilarious. But look at the position you're now arguing - not even displays of bigotry are required, apparently it can all be hidden and covert; not actually in evidence, but merely assumed. By you.

so there really is no way that I or anyone can possibly counter your argument, because you claim to know what is secretly going on in the heads of millions of people, even if they don't really know themselves. Well just who was it who died and made you Pope? This is weapons grade sophistry.


I have NEVER been to a demonstration which I helped organize or which were properly organized by others, revolutionary or not, which had openly displayed racist material that was not immediately confronted and ejected by the demonstrators themselves.

I can only assume, then, that you've never been to a big one.



Yeah that is your mistake...reducing the problem to some finge elements when anti-semitism is thriving attm around the world.

No, I haven;t said that. I addressed fringe elements in demo's because without it all you have is speculation as to what's going on in someone else's mind. That is, I have addressed the best and most plausible form of your argument. And found it wanting.



First it is some sprinkling of crazies....and all of the sudden opposing those mere handfull of crazies is driving away the public...which...if you thought more than a nano second...according to you doesn't agree with opposing racism and anti-semitism.

Were you born yesterday? That kind of violence will bring the police in, as I already pointed out, and they will clout anyone within reach, and the demo organisers will get the blame. I'm not even arguing for peaceful demo as a matter of principle, but tactics: that stuff drives the public away from participating. It is counterpoductive.




Yes...because these are the only two options.

Yes, they are.



We are not talking about crazies...we are talking about endorsing structural forms of oppression. We are talking about somethings we ideologically oppose. Apparently...this is not really an issue for you.

No, we aren't. We're talking about a handful of crazies whom you are using as a stalking horse to construct a fake apologia for apartheid.



The general public will stay away from the demo against Israel when you confront racism and anti-semitism.

Not the case.



No...I think I was spot one there and you have manged to prove to the thread yourself (rather than me saying it) that you are blind to anti-semitism.

Shrug. And I think you've managed to prove yourself an apologist for apartheid. Your argument is both historically and politically naive, and exists merely to shroud Israel from the criticism it rightly deserves.

[DAN E BOY]

There is anti-Semitic attacks in Europe, and across the world. But i think the problem is exaggerated by the media.

In regards to the conflict,I'm neutral. I'm not a Palestinian/Muslim or Israeli/jew, so i really don't have much of a stake in the battle. But i can tell you that our main news channels always sympathies with Israeli.

Personally i can't understand the (British news) justification. How any non-Jewish person would support the Israeli regime is a travesty. And i think of it in these terms: if someone invaded my home country, threw me and my people out, and kept building settlements to push me and my family further and further out of my own country. . .I'd feel pretty intimidated and mad.

There's also the ugly business of the united states bankrolling the Israeli government, so they can build a military to use against the Palestinians. They've received tens of billions of dollars through ''foreign aid''.And back in the 1940's Britain had a hand in creating Israeli. This in turn has inspired a lot of Muslims around the world to hate Americans and Britons.

Sorry if my post is a little top heavy, but i can't side with the aggressor of a conflict.

[PhoenixAsh]

Shrug. Maybe; depends which one you're thinking of. The usual dictionary ones are inadequate, IMO. I mean, I'm only from South Africa, clearly I've never thought about racism before, so do enlighten me.

Racism is based on biology. People aren't seen as different because they behave different...but they behave different because they are biologically different.


No, I'm really not.

Yes...you really are. I know the argument I am making. You are giving an answer and reply that is not in line with the made argument. There are two major possible reasons for this:
1). You don't understand the argument
2). You are willfully misrepresenting the argument in your answer

Whichever it is it is clear that you are not in a position to say that you did or did not understand my argument when your reply doesn't illustrate this.


Like so many apologists for Israel how throw out this spiel, you're suggesting that criticism of Israel can't possibly be motivated by outrage at the daily atrocities of this apartheid state.

I see you are trying your hand at a straw man argument since I explicitly stated this is not the case in my original post. So you are trying to be cute again...and again you are failing misserably.

Now...you seem to be suggesting that anti-semites can not be honestly outraged by the daily attrocities of that apartheid state.


Mere sympathy for the plight of Palestinians is not sufficient; there must be something else, something extra, that REALLY explains why people protest and object.

Nope..you are still failing at straw manning.


All you're doing is providing moral cover for apartheid. That's all there is to it.

Actually no. What you are doing is being extremely naive, ignorant and providing (as you have downright explained here) moral and ethical cover for racism and anti-semitism. You however can't deal and cope with the fact that anti-semites and racists are not fringe sentiments of some lunatics and is not always clearly displayed on signs. Why? Because you are freaking clueless to the sheer size of the anti-Israel movement and can only compare this with your limited experience with some critical demo's.



I addressed pretty much the only piece of solid "evidence" you've got. All the rest is inuendo supported by the rickety apologia for apartheid I outlined above.

Awww....you are such a peach. Trying ad hominem attacks founded on your obvious straw man arguments....

And such courage after you have ecxplicitly admitted to tolerate racism and anti-semitism within demo's you attend...because of your sexist argument of little old ladies...


Correct. This is an accurate statement of fact. They are fringe elements, and they cannot be ejected. Deal with it.

Nope. Neither a statement of fact or true. There is wide spread anti-semitism in South Africa even openly expressed by your elected officials in government. And you think they can't be ejected because you clearly don't understand the problem, aren't able to recognize anti-semitism beyond what is made visible on signs, and lack the willpower to do something about it.

So you try to explain it away and downplaying the problem...and find sexist and ageist excuses

Deal with it.



Don't be ridiculous; I can't possibly speculate as to the inner mental life of thousands of marchers. What I know is that they turned out for this cause.

Oh? You can't? But just a few posts ago you were arguing that anti-semitism was merely an expression by some fringe elements and not really an issue at all....

Weird. Really weird.

So the logical conclusion is that you have no fucking clue how widespread the problem actually is beyond those fringe elements you can easilly observe and identify and which are consistently allowed to particpipate openly in the demo's and justify it because of the end justifying the means.


This is hyperbole. If it were that anti-semitic speakers were addressing the crowd, you would have a case that they were given a platform; the mere fact that they joined a large crowd in a public space in which they have the civic right to be simply does not, however much you may want to spin it that way.

They are carrying signs. YOUR words. Not mine. They OPENLY display their message YOU recognized as both racist and anti-semetic. So they HAVE a platform.

But sure...bourgeois rights of freedom of expression. How liberal of you.



Lol, that's hilarious. But look at the position you're now arguing - not even displays of bigotry are required, apparently it can all be hidden and covert; not actually in evidence, but merely assumed. By you.

It is not assumed. It has been researched. It is evident from the language people use in criticizing Israel. It is also a main reason for millions of people to oppose Israel...because they see Jews as inherrently evil because they are Jews.



so there really is no way that I or anyone can possibly counter your argument, because you claim to know what is secretly going on in the heads of millions of people, even if they don't really know themselves. Well just who was it who died and made you Pope? This is weapons grade sophistry.

Most people wouldn't actuaally argue the bullshit position you have with such ludicrious and insanely ridiculous arguments and straw man arguments....they would actually read some literature on the issue of anti-semitism in the revolutionary left...as well as the global anti-Israel movement.


I can only assume, then, that you've never been to a big one.

lol.


No, I haven;t said that. I addressed fringe elements in demo's because without it all you have is speculation as to what's going on in someone else's mind. That is, I have addressed the best and most plausible form of your argument. And found it wanting.

As I am now explaining to you for the third time. Your reduction to protests of the anti-Israel movement is neither representative of the anti-Israel movement nor of the revolutionary left.

You do realize that the anti-Israel movement consists of so much more than demo's, right?

Your argumenst have been beyond ridiculous. Did not even begin to address even the arguments you think I made let alone what I actually said and have so far been one appology after another originating in serious denial.


Were you born yesterday? That kind of violence will bring the police in, as I already pointed out, and they will clout anyone within reach, and the demo organisers will get the blame. I'm not even arguing for peaceful demo as a matter of principle, but tactics: that stuff drives the public away from participating. It is counterpoductive.

No but you apparently are born yesterday and have no real experience, however much you like to pretend, to deal with dissenting voices within a larger demo beyond your notion that it somehow has to involve violence.

You are also ridiculous in thinking that there is a special kind of violence required even if you do use violence...

The idea that ejecting those racist elements from any demo driving the public away is telling that you apparently think the public doesn't support the action against ovbvious racists and anti-semites and is actually accepting of their position.


Yes, they are.

nope...they are not....but you have already explained how limited your actual experience actually is.


No, we aren't. We're talking about a handful of crazies whom you are using as a stalking horse to construct a fake apologia for apartheid.

You keep trying to straw man an argument which the original post you replied to already dealt with.

And what is more...you use this argument against me...then deny the argument you make....to rehash it again...in the same post.

You are hillarious. But you are also a clown.



Not the case.

hahahaha. You have argued exactly that three times now.


Shrug. And I think you've managed to prove yourself an apologist for apartheid. Your argument is both historically and politically naive, and exists merely to shroud Israel from the criticism it rightly deserves.

:laugh::laugh::laugh:

Omg...you fail so hard that it is beyond pathetic.

:laugh:

[contracycle]

Racism is based on biology. People aren't seen as different because they behave different...but they behave different because they are biologically different.

Or theologically different. This may be splitting hairs, in that these theological distinctions are presumed to be innate and physical, but it's not the case that all racism depends on bastardised biology.



Yes...you really are. I know the argument I am making. You are giving an answer and reply that is not in line with the made argument. There are two major possible reasons for this:
1). You don't understand the argument
2). You are willfully misrepresenting the argument in your answer

Sigh, how tiresome. Option 3 is that you haven't actually laid out any argument. You keep asserting that it is, to you, supposedly obvious that the left is "riddled" with anti-semitism, but you have not supported this allegation with anything remotely approaching evidence, rather simply repeating it as a truism.



I see you are trying your hand at a straw man argument since I explicitly stated this is not the case in my original post. So you are trying to be cute again...and again you are failing misserably.

Not quite. I may well believe that you are entirely sincere in your beliefs. I may be entirely convinced that you are taking the position that you because you believe it is the best and most evidentialy based position you have discovered. And yet I can also believe that you are mistaken, and that the actual arguments you make are contrary to your stated goals and purpose.

When I say you are providing moal cover for apartheid, I'm not alleging that you are doing so purposefully. I am however saying that it is, functionally, what you are doing.



Now...you seem to be suggesting that anti-semites can not be honestly outraged by the daily attrocities of that apartheid state.

No, I did not say that. What I specifically said, let me repeat, is that you consider such outrage to be INSUFFICIENT, and that another explanation is REQUIRED.

That does not preclude the existance of some notional group of anti-semites who may be genuinely outraged, if even needs to be considered for some reason.

What it does you is ask you to justify why you think expressing such outrage should be assumed to arise from anti-semitism.


Nope..you are still failing at straw manning.

Pluck the log from your own eye etc.




Actually no. What you are doing is being extremely naive, ignorant and providing (as you have downright explained here) moral and ethical cover for racism and anti-semitism. You however can't deal and cope with the fact that anti-semites and racists are not fringe sentiments of some lunatics and is not always clearly displayed on signs. Why? Because you are freaking clueless to the sheer size of the anti-Israel movement and can only compare this with your limited experience with some critical demo's.

See, I think you've given yourself away here. By referencing the anti-Israeli movement, rather than anti-semitism, you're doing exactly what the Neocons and Israeli right you to do - conflate all criticism of Israel with criticism of Jews. You have confirmed that you are operating as a useful idiot on behalf of Israel.

And so now we return to your repeated, although as yet unsupported,claims that the left is riddled with anti-semitism. It is obvious that it must appear to you to be the case, because for you, opposition it Israel IS anti-semitism.

Frankly I think that's game, set and match.



And such courage after you have ecxplicitly admitted to tolerate racism and anti-semitism within demo's you attend...because of your sexist argument of little old ladies...

:rolleyes:




Nope. Neither a statement of fact or true. There is wide spread anti-semitism in South Africa even openly expressed by your elected officials in government.


I'm shocked and appalled. state that has been built on racist premises includes people who are racist. Who would ever have thought?

You might be interested to know, however, that SA classified Jews as white.


And you think they can't be ejected because you clearly don't understand the problem, aren't able to recognize anti-semitism beyond what is made visible on signs, and lack the willpower to do something about it.

No, I'm telling you that ejecting them is a physical impossibility. These people were out, for example, in the large demo against the Iraq war. That was 1.5 million strong; even if the entire membership of every vaguely leftist body in the UK had been drafted to police this march, it couldn't have been carried out.

I'll just leave the suggestion that it is some way the right, nay the duty, of the left to police the working class lying there.



Oh? You can't? But just a few posts ago you were arguing that anti-semitism was merely an expression by some fringe elements and not really an issue at all....

I was discussing the likely elements that Israeli apologists seize upon. If you have some other element which you think supports your claim to raise, then we can support that. However, as we have now seen, you don't draw a distinction between anti-semitism and opposition to apartheid, so any critique of apartheid is going to draw from you allegations of anti-semitism.

Fox news would be proud of you; you have taken their talking points and borne them bravely out into the world.


So the logical conclusion is that you have no fucking clue how widespread the problem actually is beyond those fringe elements you can easilly observe and identify and which are consistently allowed to participate openly in the demo's and justify it because of the end justifying the means.

I told you right from the outset that these claims do not accord with my experience. So yes,I am saying quite explicitly that the alleged "problem" that you claim to be addressing is nothing more than apologists fiction.



They are carrying signs. YOUR words. Not mine. They OPENLY display their message YOU recognized as both racist and anti-semetic. So they HAVE a platform.

Semantics. Try a real argument next time.



But sure...bourgeois rights of freedom of expression. How liberal of you.

I cannot even begin to deal with the idiocy exhibited. It is simply too monumental.



It is not assumed. It has been researched. It is evident from the language people use in criticizing Israel. It is also a main reason for millions of people to oppose Israel...because they see Jews as inherrently evil because they are Jews.

Well, this is straight out of the Neocon list of standard rebuttals. And yet the only person inm this discussion to attempt to conflate Jews and Israel is you. As I said at the top, one of the reasons I oppose this nonsense is precisely because it gives anti-semites their argument, and makes it a race issue and not a political one.



Most people wouldn't actuaally argue the bullshit position you have with such ludicrious and insanely ridiculous arguments and straw man arguments....they would actually read some literature on the issue of anti-semitism in the revolutionary left...as well as the global anti-Israel movement.


I have actually read a fair bit of that Neocon stuff. Not only do I not agree with it, I think is a mendacious attempt to shield Israel from criticism. If you want to convince me otherwise, you're going to have to a better job than insistently telling me what you feel in your water.



You do realize that the anti-Israel movement consists of so much more than demo's, right?

As I have already explained, and which you have chosen to ignore, I did you the credit of assuming that you were arguing about real things that really happen, and therefore opened a discussion of those things.

Increasingly its apparent that your argument is not at all reliant on real things that really happen, but a conspiracy theory.



The idea that ejecting those racist elements from any demo driving the public away is telling that you apparently think the public doesn't support the action against ovbvious racists and anti-semites and is actually accepting of their position.

Actually what I;m saying is that most people aren't going to know what started it, and that all that are going to see is the march organisers beating seven colours of shit out of someone for failing to be sufficiently pure.

"He started it" doesn't work in the adult world, you know.

Anyway, I think we can agree that we've finally teased out the thread of illogic and nonsense which you've been following, to whit: opposition to apartheid is anti-semitism, and the left is guilty of anti-semitism by virtue of apposing apartheid. In short, standard grist for the Israeli apologists mill.

Next!

[PhoenixAsh]

I will spell it out for you since you apparently are to fucking stupid to understand the argument that was made. And while it was cute the first three or four times...it stopped being that

Here is my initial post which you, by now, have straw manned the hell out off in your sexist, ageist attempts to downplay racism, prejudice and anti-semitism in the anti-Israel movement.



Really? Because unfortunately the vast majority of criticism against Israel is fuelled by anti-semitism and the revolutionary left is riddled with latent and not so latent anti-semites.

This does not devaluate criticism against Israel or automatically mean that criticism against Israel is anti-semitism.

but unfortunately it is true.

Now lets start with this part:


Because unfortunately the vast majority of criticism against Israel is fuelled by anti-semitism

This is simple fact. Whether or not you feel comfortable admitting it or not the a majority of the entirety of criticism against Israel is based on the fact that Israel is a Jewish nation or comes down to bluntly in your face anti-semitic ideology or is fuelled by the conflict between Islam and Judaism or has its origins in the conflict between the different Abrahamic religions which inherrently is anti-semitic in nature. You could argue till you are blue in the face...but make a few quick google searches and you will understand why I am arguing this and that it is an absolute and undisputable fact.

A whole lot of people are ignorant on the issues but ignorance does not negate the fact that it is still anti-semitism.

Which brings us to point two:


and the revolutionary left is riddled with latent and not so latent anti-semites.

Now...anybody who has read the early socialists, knows the history between the socialists and the Jews within Europe...knows that from Proudhon to Marx to Bakhunin to eventually Bolsheviks like Lenin and Stalin were extremely critical of Judaism and expressed that criticism in covert and overt anti-semitic language and actions. For far into the 2nd half of the 20th century European and Russian socialists, communists, anarchists OPENLY expressed anti-semitic sentiments....and depending on the region...many still do so openly and without reservation.

You can argue against this. But again. This would be a fallacy and is pretty fucking well documented. Now I don't blame you for not knowing European history and I don't blame you for not having read all the texts...but what I do blame you for is trying to dishonestly use your limited experience which is of NON revolutionary protests which are a mere spec in the massive amount of anti-Israel activities daily as proof that this statement is untrue. And as a cherry on top these protests did not even deal with Israel but with the situation in Iraq.

That aside. The anti-semitism within the revolutionary left is still real and riddling the organizations. Whether it is conscious or unconscious or the result of increased polarization is really besides the point.

Again...this is a well documented issue and there are numerous radical left wing sites detailing the international Jewish conspiracy in one way or another.

But unlike what you want anti-semitism to be (overt, mallicious, clearly defined, nazi-esque??) it is quite a bit more and not always so overt and so malicious (something which you do not seem to be able to distinguish) but can be as simple of not trusting Jews on the subject of Israel or Zionism. This is a subconscious conflagration of Judaism with Zionism and finding guilt in the policies of the state Israel within the Judaic religion. Or it could be as simple as comparing the situation in Palestine to the Holocaust. This sentiment very often leads to Jewish comrades being looked upon with disdain or distrust merely because they are Jewish and it requires, forces, them to take a strong position on the issue. This is anti-semitism. Or when revolutionary leftists become suddenly very accepting and tolerant towards obvious anti-semitism because it is levelled against Israel. And this is NOT something which is fringe or which is the result of some fringe elements. This is happening to such an extend that in several countries this has led to large debates throughout the last few decades. In Germany specifically this fuelled the anti-Deutsche movement which by now often and unfortunately has become a parody of itself.

Again...these are facts whether you feel comfortable with acknowledging them or not.

Now for the part you have been trying to straw man the fuck out of:


This does not devaluate criticism against Israel or automatically mean that criticism against Israel is anti-semitism.

Here I quite litterally contradict your later accusations of deligitimizing criticism against Israel.

Had you had a spec of intelligence in your body you may have had the inclination to do a site search to my positions on the subject....and if simply reading what is posted was not enough for that.....the fact that I am banned from Israel should have tipped you off that I probably have been involved beyond walking in a few demo's and probably know what the hell I am talking about.

The fact that the majority of criticism is fuelled by anti-semitic sentiments however does not devaluate the fact that there is criticism to be levelled at Israel or that all criticism is anti-semitism. But this does not mean that people critical of Israel are always simply fuelled by honest motives of being appaled by human rights...and sometimes people level criticism against Israel specifically but refuse to criticise the same issues in other countries.

One huge clue should have been the argument you yourself make that openly carried and expressed racist and angti-semitic signs are allowed in a demo, accepted in a demo, or would drive the public away when opposed. For any logical person who has some experience there would be the realization that this means that these views have a wider audience who is accepting of these statements and therefore see no problem with them...they have been accepted in the polictical discourse. Logical people would also conclude that since it is a general demo and we know for a fact that there is a large undercurrent of all kinds of anti-semitic sentiments within society in general...this means that these are also at play within the demo itself.

What you fail to understand is that not only is your entire demo argument is completely and utterly useless and has no actual bearing on the arguments I made in the first place but it also hinges on you reducing the argument to something that is only expressed at demo's and is only real when visible on signs. The sheer short-sightedness of your entire line of reasoning is astonishing.

You further reduce your argument to rubble when you straw man it even further and suggesting that the majority of criticism of Israel being fuelled by anti-semitism means all critics of Israel are anti-semites. This does not follow from anything I have said...but is an argument which does illustrate your ignorance on the subject of anti-semitism and its nature.

Nor is the fact that somebody is an anti-semite immediately delegitimizing the criticism they are making of Israel. When Iran, which thrives on anti-semitism, criticizes Israel some of their arguments are in fact true.

Now...you equate racism with anti-semitism...and I disagree because I make the distinction between biological and religious prejudice. You have made it obvious you do not...which I think is short-sighted. This however ultimately does not matter. What I am puzzled about though is your argument whether Jews are classified as white in South Africa...and what you think this argument contributes to the debate. Aside from the fact that that is blatantly untrue (Lemba's are still classified as either black or mixed for example)...it makes no sense whatsoever in the light of this debate. Now...I am 100% sure that not all Jews in SA are classified as white....and that not all Jews in the world are white. If you doubt this I suggest you do a google search. (http://www.jewishmultiracialnetwork.org/)


So what you have done so far is create straw man arguments both intentionally and out of sheer blind stupidity and ignorance. And that is the least of the stupid things you have done in the debate. But what is readilly aparent is that you have no fucking clue what the hell you are talking about and are blatantly presenting facts that turn out to be downright lies. Pathetic.

[contracycle]

I will spell it out for you since you apparently are to fucking stupid to understand the argument that was made. And while it was cute the first three or four times...it stopped being that

Spare me.



This is simple fact. Whether or not you feel comfortable admitting it or not the a majority of the entirety of criticism against Israel is based on the fact that Israel is a Jewish nation....

There we have it. Criticism of Israel based on the fact that Israel is a Jewish nation. Let's chew on that one for a while. What this means is that only Jews, or people determined by some process to be Jews, are full citizens.

That's apartheid.

Plain, simple apartheid. There is no possible defence against this. There's a bunch of waffle about this being "not so bad, really," but Israel itself steadily tears away these translucent fictions.

I do not see how anyone who thinks of themselves as a democrat, let alone having pretensions leftism, can possibly, even for one second, contemplate endorsing a state defined by race. That would be true even if it were not also engaged in state terror and expansionism.

I'm not going to let off the hook for this. Defending the specifically racial character of Israel makes you not just an apologist for apartheid, but an advocate.

Now let's have a look at some of the rest of the crap spouted by our friendly neighbourhood racist:




Now...anybody who has read the early socialists, knows the history between the socialists and the Jews within Europe...knows that from Proudhon to Marx to Bakhunin to eventually Bolsheviks like Lenin and Stalin were extremely critical of Judaism and expressed that criticism in covert and overt anti-semitic language and actions.

Yes yes. And flirted with eugenics. And a bunch of other stuff that was neither surprising nor novel for their milieux.

But hey, maybe you can take advantage of this! Perhaps you could start measuring the skulls of Palestinians and prove that Israel has every right to treat them as racially inferior! I'm sure you can.


You can argue against this. But again. This would be a fallacy and is pretty fucking well documented. Now I don't blame you for not knowing European history and I don't blame you for not having read all the texts...

I'm pretty familiar with European history, not least becuase South Africa, like Israel, was a European colony; an island of whiteness surrounded by swarthy, savage hordes. Sound familiar yet?



but what I do blame you for is trying to dishonestly use your limited experience which is of NON revolutionary protests which are a mere spec in the massive amount of anti-Israel activities daily as proof that this statement is untrue. And as a cherry on top these protests did not even deal with Israel but with the situation in Iraq.

As I have already pointed out, I offered this only as an example of a real thing, not the summation, be-all-and-end-all, of arguments on the topic. The fact that this is now the third time I'm having to point this out to you only shows that you are not arguing in good faith.

Because I was trying not to impute motives to you. I consider it a bad habit to think you know what;s going on in someone elses head, and so offered up something tangible for discussion. But now that you've gone and given yourself away, my later response are proven to be correct: what you see is criticism of apartheid, and you choose to interpret that as anti-semitism because of your adherence to the utterly racist and completely awful idea that Israel can or should be a "Jewish state".

As I also pointed out, this sort of tactic is wholly self-defeating. While I'm out there making the case that Jews are not responsible for Israel, you're fucking doing the opposite, arguing that in fact Israel and Jewishness are linked after all. Your racist bullshit is exploited to justify anti-semitic attacks here, and everywhere else. YOU are part of the problem.


But unlike what you want anti-semitism to be (overt, mallicious, clearly defined, nazi-esque??) it is quite a bit more and not always so overt and so malicious (something which you do not seem to be able to distinguish) but can be as simple of not trusting Jews on the subject of Israel or Zionism.

Thanks for the attempted lecture, but I am more than familiar with the fact that racists can actually be very, nice, personable people. They can even masquerade as being democratic and leftish, like, say, oh, you.


Here I quite litterally contradict your later accusations of deligitimizing criticism against Israel.


you provided a pro-forma contradiction. But then you went and confirmed that you regard criticism of Israeli apartheid as "anti-semitism", and proved me right.


.the fact that I am banned from Israel should have tipped you off that I probably have been involved beyond walking in a few demo's and probably know what the hell I am talking about.

It does not, hero. What's next, are you going to tell me that one of your best friends is Palestinian?



Now...you equate racism with anti-semitism...and I disagree because I make the distinction between biological and religious prejudice. You have made it obvious you do not...which I think is short-sighted. This however ultimately does not matter.

Actually, it matters a great deal. Because you see, Israel is not a unique and special flower. When Dutch settlers first arrived in SA, they declared it to be their Promised Land. They, like many Protestant factions, asserted that they alone were the new and true heirs of a specific covenant with god, in which god gave them land in return for adoration and obedience, any and all previous claimants to this title having failed or fallen away. So apartheid in South Africa, right from the outset, had an extremely similar religious character to what it has in Israel. And like many apologists for Israel, these Calvinists then declared that this was a "land without a people for a people without a land" - I'm sure you've heard that line before. But then when, inconveniently, that land turned out not to be people-less after all, they either had to be made to vanish, or some justification concocted by which they were not real people after all.

Later on, SA was occupied by the British; in a couple of subsequent rebellions, the British deployed the idea of... drumroll please.... the concentration camp. They then proceeded to round up the non-combatant families and starve them to death en mass. The results were recorded in a some famous photographs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_van_Zyl#mediaviewer/File:LizzieVanZyl.jpg), and I'm sure that what they show will strike you with a certain resonance.

And so we arrive at apartheid - a state defined as specifically belonging to one ethnic group, which tolerated or otherwise any other ethnicity as it saw fit. Which regarded this as only fair, indeed as defensive, given their historic persecution and divine mission. Which was inevitably locked in permanent state of war with all its neighbours, declared or undeclared. Which maintained territorial Homelands, the "bantustans", created to provide a legal fiction of the "real" home of the people actually displaced by this European colony, while also serving as a labour reserve and a captive market.

Please, stop me when this starts sounding familiar.

So no, I utterly reject the claim that the Israeli context is special or unique. I do not concede to you one inch of this "special case" apologia. Your pretensions to a uniquely justificatory historic and religious dogma are utterly dismissed.



What I am puzzled about though is your argument whether Jews are classified as white in South Africa...and what you think this argument contributes to the debate.

You seemed to be suggesting that the racist character of the old SA state would have curried classic anti-semitism, and applying this to me, but that isn't what happened at all. Indeed, Israel was old SA's chief ally. Although it's not really known where SA got those three (maybe four (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_Incident)) nuclear warheads from, Israel is the main candidate.

Actually, this point is worth expanding on. Israel probably equipped apartheid South Africa with nuclear weapons specifically intended to be used as a last ditch genocidal retaliation against the native people of the region. Apartheid states flock together, huh? Comparisons to the Holocaust are really so outrageous, are they?

---

And so to sum up. You've given the game away. Like virtually everyone who sprays this anti-semitic slander about, we discover that all this really means is that you think democracy and racial equality are anti-semitic, because the specifically racial character of the Israeli state is where your beef kicks in. You don't want to tear down Israeli apartheid, you want to shore it up. You don't want to confront and defeat racism, you want to preserve it.

Which makes it all the more ironic that you demand some hopelessly unrealistic policing of mass demonstrations, because if I were doing that sort of thing, I would absolutely, certainly have you expelled from them for being an open and outright defender of racism and apartheid.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Your argument seems to rest entirely on the assumption that all criticism of Israel is being labeled as anti-semitism, when that's obviously not the case. Instead what is being attacked is criticism of Israel that really is based in explicit or implicit anti-semitism. I at one point held views entirely similar to yours, this non-sense about complicity on your part towards the actions of a foreign capitalist state you have no control over is some ridiculous dogma. I would ditch the graveyard morality and try re-reading this thread and the points made within it with a mindset that isn't endlessly looking for Israeli plots to delegitimize criticism.

[contracycle]

So you say. But I think PA's posts make things completely clear. PA is NOT limiting criticism to only those minor elements which opportunistically leap on the anti-apartheid bandwagon; it is anti-aparthied activism ITSELF which is self-regardingly interpreted as anti-semitic, and it is this basic thrust for democracy and equality which serves as justification for claiming the left is "riddled" with anti-semitism.

This is absolutely non-negotiable in my book. Defence of the specifically racial character of SA, or Israel, or any-the-fuck-where-else, is no more and no less than blatant racism as far as I am concerned.

[PhoenixAsh]

You do know that I know you are a troll right?

And you do realize that you just posted a conspiracy theory which featured regularly on Strom Front and several anti-Jewish blogs about the motives for Israel to supply South Africa with nuclear weapons because of genocidal intent towards black people. That paired with your continued and consistent insistance of denying anti-semitism within any movement critical of Israel and reducing and diminishing it...is kind of obvious....

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

In the US I regularly encountered tropes that only later did I recognize as anti-semitism. To be sure the only hate filled rants about jews I have ever encountered in real life have originated from people I would categorize as mentally unstable, so that's of course not what I mean. What I'm talking about is the belief, in my country, that all Israeli-related legislation is controlled by Israel itself via a lobby, or that Israeli agents infiltrate and control all social media discussions revolving around Israel. Or of course the belief that anti-semitism doesn't really exist anymore and someone, presumably Israel, has control of the media to make us all think otherwise. This is classic jewish cabal bullshit for the 21st century. These ideas were pervasive during my activist days, it's crazy now to look back and see how obvious it was, but such is the power of ideology.

[contracycle]

And you do realize that you just posted a conspiracy theory which featured regularly on Strom Front and several anti-Jewish blogs about the motives for Israel to supply South Africa with nuclear weapons because of genocidal intent towards black people. That paired with your continued and consistent insistance of denying anti-semitism within any movement critical of Israel and reducing and diminishing it...is kind of obvious....

Are you completely fucking insane?

What is it that you are denying, that these weapons existed, or the intent with which they were to be used?

The decomissioning of these weapons was filmed live on TV, so that can't be it. As for the intent, one might conceivably speculate, but the very fact that they were NOT used as a threatened deterrent, I think, speaks volumes.

Anyway, who the fuck are you to tell me what the Afrikaaner mindset would be? Have you ever even met so much as met one? Christ on a crutch, ignorance compounded on arrogance compounded on ignorance.

Further, military co-operation between SA and Israel is well recorded. Frex, the SA standard assault rifle, the R-4, is identical to the Galil, except for the calibre. This weapon was developed as a joint project between SA and Israel.

Additionally:


At the same time, in South Africa, Israel became the object of widespread admiration, particularly among the country's political and military leadership. The editorial of Die Burger, then the mouthpiece of the South African Nationalist Party declared: "Israel and South Africa are engaged in a struggle for existence... The anti-Western powers have driven Israel and South Africa into a community of interests which had better be utilized than denied."
...
Within less than a decade, South Africa would be one of Israel's closest military and economic allies, whilst Israel would occupy the position of South Africa's closest military ally, and Israel had become the most important foreign arms supplier to the South African Defence Force.
...
By 1973, an economic and military alliance between Israel and South Africa was in the ascendancy. The military leadership of both countries was convinced that both nations faced a fundamentally similar predicament, fighting for their survival against the common terrorist enemy of the PLO and the ANC.
...
Israeli and South African intelligence czars held regular conferences with each other to share information on enemy weapons and training.[11] The co-ordination between the Israel Defense Forces and the South African Defense Force was unprecedented, with Israeli and South African generals giving each other unfettered access to each other's battlefields and military tactics, and Israel sharing with South Africa highly classified information about its missions, such as Operation Opera, which had previously only been reserved for the United States.

The South African government's yearbook of 1976 wrote: "Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples."
...

From the mid-1970s, the two countries were allegedly involved in joint nuclear-weapons development and testing. According to Seymour Hersh, for example, the 1979 Vela Incident was the third joint Israeli–South African nuclear test in the Indian Ocean.[21] Richard Rhodes concludes the incident was an Israeli nuclear test, conducted in cooperation with South Africa, and that the United States administration deliberately obscured this fact in order to avoid complicating relations with Israel.[22]

By 1980, a sizeable contingent of South African military and government officials were living permanently in Israel, to over-see the numerous joint projects between the countries, while their children attended local Israeli schools.[11] Scientific collaboration also continued to increase, with many scientists working in each other's countries. Perhaps most sensitive was the large group of Israeli scientists working at South Africa's Pelindaba nuclear facility.[11]

During Operation Protea in 1981, the South African Defence Force made military history, as arguably the first user of modern drone technology, when it operated the Israeli IAI Scout drones in combat in Angola. They would only be used in combat by the Israel Defence Forces a year later during the 1982 Lebanon War and Operation Mole Cricket 19.[23]
...
The commanders of the South African Defense Force were present at the test-firings of Israel's Jericho ballistic missile system, where they stood alongside the IDF generals.[11] Israel's ballistic missile system, the Jericho II missile, was subsequently licensed for production in South Africa as the RSA series of space launch vehicles and ballistic missiles. The RSA-3 was produced by the Houwteq (a discontinued division of Denel) company at Grabouw, 30 km east of Cape Town. Test launches were made from Overberg Test Range near Bredasdorp, 200 km east of Cape Town. Rooi Els was where the engine test facilities were located. Development continued even after South African renunciation[26] of its nuclear weapons for use as a commercial satellite launcher.

The RSA-2 was a local copy of the Jericho II ballistic missile and the RSA-1 was a local copy of the Jericho II second stage for use as a mobile missile


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93South_Africa_relations#Blossoming_o f_relations

[Rusty Shackleford]

Oh good, he band.

Against anti-semitism is still fucking valid.

[contracycle]

You do know that I know you are a troll right?


I know that you believe that, because otherwise you'd have to admit to yourself that you are racist.

[contracycle]

Just for reference, this is a Galil:

http://world.guns.ru/userfiles/images/assault/as23/galil-arm-r.jpg

This is an R-4:
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh108/BaronUberstein/450px-VektorR4.jpg

[Rusty Shackleford]

They are actually completely different, it was only a coincidence that they came to look very similar. One is gas piston, and the other is solely recoil operated.


careful with the doppelposten tho.

[contracycle]

Wrong.

Action Gas-operated, rotating bolt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMI_Galil

Action Gas operated, closed bolt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vektor_R4

"The weapon is a licenced variant of the Israeli Galil ARM assault rifle[4][5] with several modifications; notably, both the stock and magazine are now made of a high-strength polymer and the stock was lengthened, adapting the weapon for the average South African soldier.[4]"

[PhoenixAsh]

Nope. Sorry this has nothing to do with believe. This is a confirmed fact.


**

Lets decontruct this debate here.

My position that the majority of criticism against Israel is based on anti-semitism and that the revolutionary left is riddled with anti-semites is untrue simply because you feel criticism against Israel is warranted because it is an apartheid state and the conclusion that anti-semitism is rampant in the anti-Israel movement delegitimizes that movements arguments.

Hence you are going out of your way to deny the existence of anti-semitism, try to diminish it as something which is merely expressed by fringe elements, reduce it to something which is only virulent and readilly observable and immediately self identified and by creating red herrings and straw man arguments and downright lying over the nature of your own experience which never matched the arguments that you pretended to attack.

Now....so far we have you doing the following:

* Denying anti-semitism
* Apologizing for anti-semitism
* White washing anti-semitism
* Sexism
* Ageism
* Repeating anti-semite mythology of the Israeli genocidal conspiracy to kill South African black people
* Arguing that the situation in Israel is like the Holocaust
* Arguing that the situation in South Africa was like the Holocaust

Naturally all this rejection and denial is based on your vast experience with a large demonstration against the war in Iraq.

So when the nature of vast sections of the mentality behind the anti-semitism is explained to you and the way anti-semitism works in vast parts of the world your instinct is to red herring this as an argument I am making and endorsing. Obviously denying that I am attacking it as anti-semitism in the first place and being extremely critical of it. Which is beyond hillarious and pathetic of you....and one of the many reasons why I know you are a troll. Other reasons include your general lack of knowledge about the revolutionary left terms and instead transplanting them with notions of democracy; freedom of speech and equality...as if these are real things in current society...which is a very liberal position to have. Your adjustment of the same arguments in contradiction with eacht other in order to suit your needs multiple times.

But such is your character as you have repeatedly shown here.

[Tim Cornelis]

PhoenixAsh claiming something as a fact and labelling him a troll kills debate. It's a nasty habit.



There we have it. Criticism of Israel based on the fact that Israel is a Jewish nation. Let's chew on that one for a while. What this means is that only Jews, or people determined by some process to be Jews, are full citizens.

That's apartheid.


And so we arrive at apartheid - a state defined as specifically belonging to one ethnic group, which tolerated or otherwise any other ethnicity as it saw fit.

That isn't apartheid. Apartheid isn't defined by the existence of second class citizens or the state belonging to one ethnicity. That's more akin to the concept of the nation-state. But it would beg the question, if this is indeed apartheid, and indeed the source of outrage, why are similar "apartheid states" not attacked by anti-Zionists? Syria is defined as an all-Arab state, turning Kurds into second class citizens, yet many anti-Zionist leftists support Assad in some form. Dito Gadaffi. He excluded berbers, turning them into second class citizens.

Apartheid was a specifically South African system of forced segregation through legal means depriving non-whites of civil liberties and rights which whites did enjoy. Israeli Arabs Arabic Israelis have have active and passive voting rights. There's no laws against interracial marriage, etc. Therefore, there's simply no "apartheid" (legally sanctioned racial segregation) in Israel.



I'm not going to let off the hook for this. Defending the specifically racial character of Israel makes you not just an apologist for apartheid, but an advocate.


the specifically racial character of the Israeli state is where your beef kicks in. You don't want to tear down Israeli apartheid, you want to shore it up. You don't want to confront and defeat racism, you want to preserve it.

Being a Jew is not a race, and Jew is not defined as a race in Israel. Jew is an ethnoreligious denomination and includes Africans, Europeans, Middle Easterners, and Turkic peoples, etc.

[consuming negativity]

But it would beg the question, if this is indeed apartheid, and indeed the source of outrage, why are similar "apartheid states" not attacked by anti-Zionists? Syria is defined as an all-Arab state, turning Kurds into second class citizens, yet many anti-Zionist leftists support Assad in some form. Dito Gadaffi. He excluded berbers, turning them into second class citizens.

The majority of Palestinian persons affected by the Israeli state's policies are outside of the borders of Israel. This statement, though, reminds me of what a lot of right-wingers do when we criticize the action of X conservative group, or X group of white people, or the police, or anybody else, when they will then go "oh but how come you aren't criticizing X or Y or Z!" as though to cast their debate partners as hypocrites. For one, I've not heard of either of these things. Why? You tell me. And what is actually going on there? Because I somehow doubt that the situation is the same. But ignorance is not hypocrisy and you are, without saying it, implying that opponents of Israel are at least hypocrites, and, at worst, anti-Semites. Now, is there definitely some percentage - I don't have any clue how much or how little - of attacks on Israel that are based in anti-Semitism? Definitely. Is the person you're quoting here an anti-Semite? It's possible, but I seriously doubt it.

[contracycle]

That isn't apartheid. Apartheid isn't defined by the existence of second class citizens or the state belonging to one ethnicity.

Apartheid is a word that means "separateness". That is the best English translation I can come up with, one that captures both the literal and poetic meaning. However, you are quite wrong to assert that this means anything other than belonging to one ethnicity; that is exactly what it meant. SA was conceived of as being the specific property of the Afrikaaner people; even whites of Anglo descent were technically not included. Even in my day, a good 40 years after the foundation of the Afrikaaner state, even after a degree of reconciliation between Anglos and Afrikaaners, all military and political correspendence, all civil services, were delivered in the Afrikaans language alone. Today,SA has 7 official languages, precisely because the ethnic dominance of the Afrikaaners was recognised to be exactly what it was.


That's more akin to the concept of the nation-state.

Nonsense. Rousseau provides a perfectly workable definition of the bourgeois state, and it is in no way reliant on race.



But it would beg the question, if this is indeed apartheid, and indeed the source of outrage, why are similar "apartheid states" not attacked by anti-Zionists? Syria is defined as an all-Arab state, turning Kurds into second class citizens, yet many anti-Zionist leftists support Assad in some form. Dito Gadaffi. He excluded berbers, turning them into second class citizens.

I have already explained why: Westerners are not complicit in these outrages in the way that they are in either Israel or South Africa. This is our mess to clean up. Israel is simply another colonial project -the transplantation of a bunch of white people into an alien land and declaring it to be there own.


Apartheid was a specifically South African system of forced segregation through legal means depriving non-whites of civil liberties and rights which whites did enjoy. Israeli Arabs Arabic Israelis have have active and passive voting rights. There's no laws against interracial marriage, etc. Therefore, there's simply no "apartheid" (legally sanctioned racial segregation) in Israel.

Non whites had voting rights in SA. SA operated through a tricamaral parliament, which, much like the system in Israel, allowed non-whites to vote in what can only be regarded as an "advisory" capacity; that is, their decisions were in no way binding. Similarly, Israel has imposed express conditions on the political activities of non-Jews, including restrictions as even so much as arguing that Israel should be a state of all its citizens rather than one of specifically Jewish character: that is, non-Jews are specifically forbidden for arguing for the existence of a secular, non-racial state.

Moreover, non-Jews are also subject a whole array of ethnically specific restrictions; they are not allowed to drive on some roads, they are not allowed to live in certain areas, they are not allowed to own property in certain areas.

And this is all assuming the fiction of Israelis "democracy", that is to say, ignoring the daily reality of bulldozing Palestinian homes, driving the inhabitants away, and rendering this up as a new area for "Jewish settlement".

Sorry, but no: merely half-heartedly and unconvincingly aping some elements of pro-forma multiculturalism does not get Israel off the hook.



Being a Jew is not a race, and Jew is not defined as a race in Israel. Jew is an ethnoreligious denomination and includes Africans, Europeans, Middle Easterners, and Turkic peoples, etc.

Bollocks; it's tracked through female descent. It's every bit as reductive as the Nazi attempt to define who was and was not a real "aryan", and employed for exactly the same purposes.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Bollocks; it's tracked through female descent. It's every bit as reductive as the Nazi attempt to define who was and was not a real "aryan", and employed for exactly the same purposes.
Sorry, but Jewish isn't a "race". There are white Jews, brown Jews, black Jews, Asian Jews, etc. The term Tim used, ethnoreligious, is what fits best.

[Tim Cornelis]

@communer That's irrelevant when determining whether Israel is an apartheid state. There's no apartheid if there's not at least legally sanctioned racial segregation -- which there isn't. At most, one could then say that its treatment of Palestinians (non-Israeli citizens) parallels apartheid in some important ways.


Apartheid is a word that means "separateness". That is the best English translation I can come up with, one that captures both the literal and poetic meaning. However, you are quite wrong to assert that this means anything other than belonging to one ethnicity; that is exactly what it meant. SA was conceived of as being the specific property of the Afrikaaner people; even whites of Anglo descent were technically not included. Even in my day, a good 40 years after the foundation of the Afrikaaner state, even after a degree of reconciliation between Anglos and Afrikaaners, all military and political correspendence, all civil services, were delivered in the Afrikaans language alone. Today,SA has 7 official languages, precisely because the ethnic dominance of the Afrikaaners was recognised to be exactly what it was.

Nonsense. Rousseau provides a perfectly workable definition of the bourgeois state, and it is in no way reliant on race.

I have already explained why: Westerners are not complicit in these outrages in the way that they are in either Israel or South Africa. This is our mess to clean up. Israel is simply another colonial project -the transplantation of a bunch of white people into an alien land and declaring it to be there own.

Non whites had voting rights in SA. SA operated through a tricamaral parliament, which, much like the system in Israel, allowed non-whites to vote in what can only be regarded as an "advisory" capacity; that is, their decisions were in no way binding. Similarly, Israel has imposed express conditions on the political activities of non-Jews, including restrictions as even so much as arguing that Israel should be a state of all its citizens rather than one of specifically Jewish character: that is, non-Jews are specifically forbidden for arguing for the existence of a secular, non-racial state.

Moreover, non-Jews are also subject a whole array of ethnically specific restrictions; they are not allowed to drive on some roads, they are not allowed to live in certain areas, they are not allowed to own property in certain areas.

And this is all assuming the fiction of Israelis "democracy", that is to say, ignoring the daily reality of bulldozing Palestinian homes, driving the inhabitants away, and rendering this up as a new area for "Jewish settlement".

Sorry, but no: merely half-heartedly and unconvincingly aping some elements of pro-forma multiculturalism does not get Israel off the hook.

I suppose that SA was conceived of as the property of Afrikaners, but the specific policy framework that expressed this was apartheid, not the notion itself. And this specific policy framework was a system of legally sanctioned forced segregation specific to South Africa, or at least one virtually identical to that of South Africa. There are no country-wide separate bathrooms, beaches, facilities, etc.; non-Jewish Israelis have equal passive and active voting rights; races are allowed to intermarry; etc. You seem to think that denying apartheid exists means denying that discrimination, ethnoreligious xenophobia, and racism exist in Israel.


Bollocks; it's tracked through female descent. It's every bit as reductive as the Nazi attempt to define who was and was not a real "aryan", and employed for exactly the same purposes.

You just added a new element to the discussion that is as disturbing as it is uninformed. You are saying that Judaism (a religion) has a system of racial classification for purposes of racial supremacy that is identical to Nazism. This is disturbing because it hinges on arguments used by 'new anti-semitism' of drawing parallels between Jewry and Nazism, and it is unbelievably, stupefyingly ignorant. I'm not even sure where to begin.

Well, first something of lesser significance Nazism had a one-drop rule, which already sets it apart. Second, it's already been pointed out multiple times that Jewry is not a racial group. I don't understand why you keep denying it. Third, you point to matrilineality as somehow evidence that Jews are a racial group. How does this refute the empirical fact that there are black Jews (Beta Israel); Turkic Jews (Bukharan Jews); Arabic Jews (e.g. Yemenite Jews); Middle Eastern Jews (Mizrahi); and East Asian Jews? You ignore this fact completely for whatever reason. You do realise that first, you can convert to Judaism if your mother is not a Jew (whereas I cannot convert to being black); and secondly, that if a woman, of whatever race, converts to Judaism that her children will be Jewish per the matrilineal interpretation of the halakhah?

What you say makes almost as much sense as claiming that Islam is a racial group and Muslims belong to the Islamic race because the Islamic faith is patrilineal. Of course, a difference is is that Jewry is an ethnoreligious group, and Islam is not. Nevertheless, it's still amazingly ignorant.

I'm assuming most here would consider race a social construct, usually around phenotypical appearance, but there is no racial construct in the world that would include these:

http://ziomania.com/who%20are%20the%20jews/jews305.jpg

In what world are these three people the same race?

[cyu]

If a Chinese person does something "wrong", Chinese people shouldn't feel the need to defend him just because he's Chinese. If a Chinese person does something "wrong", non-Chinese people shouldn't assume that all Chinese people are like that.

Of course, this never happens in the real world. Human beings are pattern matchers, and they at times attempt to find patterns even where it doesn't make sense. Correlation / causation debates, astrology, superstition, etc etc. Our tendency to try to learn from our environment has been a great boon to our control over the world, but that doesn't mean we always do it right.

[PhoenixAsh]

O good...the Judaism is akin to Nazism argument. Well...we really haven't heard that one before. Especially not by somebody who alse equates Israel's politics with the Holocaust :rolleyes:

...o wait...yes...daily on Strom Front. The same site where the Israel-South Africa connection is directly linked to motivate this as "Israel's genocidal tendencies towards black South Africans".

And what a fucking surprise...that is also something this user argued.

And that is aside the fact that the user goes out of their way to deny, down play, justify and reduce anti-Semitism in the anti-Israel movement.

:glare:

[Sasha]

tldr this thread;

"there is no such thing as anti-semitism"
"fucking jews that run imperialism"

[motion denied]

I don't think conctracycle said that.

[Sharia Lawn]

We need threads like this every once in a while. It helps root out people who don't hold to the unique pro-Israel variety of 'anti-zionism' advocated from above.

[DOOM]

tldr this thread;

"there is no such thing as anti-semitism"
"fucking jews that run imperialism"

the left in a fucking nutshell. I'm glad there are still sane people on this board who aren't completely ignorant towards the problem antisemitism is.

[STALINwasntSTALLIN]

tldr this thread;

"there is no such thing as anti-semitism"
"fucking jews that run imperialism"

It is not just in Europe either. I came across this video a couple of years ago in which a Japanese anime known as Angel Cop "revealed" that Jewish bankers caused all the wars in the Middle East and Asia and were even buying up Japan(!?) to use as a nuclear waste dump. Seriously I know that the Japanese think highly of themselves, but why would the Elders of Zion want to own Hokkaido anyway?

oDdr-1iOqag

[contracycle]

@communer That's irrelevant when determining whether Israel is an apartheid state. There's no apartheid if there's not at least legally sanctioned racial segregation -- which there isn't. At most, one could then say that its treatment of Palestinians (non-Israeli citizens) parallels apartheid in some important ways.


Ahuh. What you seem to be forgetting is that black South Africans were not South African citizens either. They were citizens of their artificially created "homelands". This is why they had to carry passes; this is why they were not allowed to own property; this is why they were not entitled to access public services.

Sorry, but consistency demands that you have to pick one interpretation or the other. If it is OK for Israel to do what it does, than it must have been OK for apartheid South Africa to do what it did, or vice versa. There is no way to wriggle off that hook.

Furthermore, as I pointed out before, Israel itself makes this fiction harder and harder to support. Just a couple of months ago, legislation was proposed to grant "national rights" to Jews only; this was approved by the Israeli cabinet. So even if you really must insist on somehow ignoring the fact that an Arab Israeli can be evicted from their own home so that it can be given to a Jewish Israeli, even if you fatuously resort to the apartheid apologists arguments that Palestinians are not citizens, Israel itself is busily calling your bluff.

Given what come next, it's worth mentioning that an Arab Israeli in the Knesset denounced this proposal as "racist" - but hey, we all know that the opinions of Arabs are worthless, don't we?

Furthermore: the ANC has made no bones about the fact that it considers Israel to be an apartheid state. It has said so explicitly many times. Who really are you to tell them that you know better? They lived it; you're just playing semantic and legalistic dodgeball. If there is to be any credibility in the idea that the oppressed are best placed to understand their own oppression, or that political consciousness emerges from below through struggle, then I suggest that you should take this view rather more seriously than the white liberal handwaving I've seen so far suggests.



You seem to think that denying apartheid exists means denying that discrimination, ethnoreligious xenophobia, and racism exist in Israel.

Well, I can't see any other purpose to it. And I would point out that you are resorting to bourgeois legalism to explain away actually existing material conditions.



You just added a new element to the discussion that is as disturbing as it is uninformed. You are saying that Judaism (a religion) has a system of racial classification for purposes of racial supremacy that is identical to Nazism. This is disturbing because it hinges on arguments used by 'new anti-semitism' of drawing parallels between Jewry and Nazism, and it is unbelievably, stupefyingly ignorant. I'm not even sure where to begin.

Between JEWRY and Nazism, or between ISRAEL and Nazism? Again, it's not me trying to drag innocent Jews in other states who have nothing to do with Israel, may well by opposed to Israeli apartheid, into this mess.

And so onto the religious/ethnic nexus stuff.

Here's something that's probably going to go down like a lead balloon, but needs to be discussed because it is real. As we all know, modern nation states are constructs; all of them used to include smaller, localised identities that were often in conflict to the point of war. So the development of a specifically national consciousness, however limited it might be, is in its way a step toward a greater universalism. The Men of Kent and the Men of Essex stopped fighting each other, became English, and started fighting the French.

The pill that's hard to swallow here is that Nazi-style race consciousness follows this same pattern. It proposes that multiple nations can now be consolidated in a larger, more general category. It's tied up in the same sort of ruling class bullshit and opportunism as nationalism, but, however wrong-headed and scientifically baseless, it's still a sort of stumbling step toward a kind of universalism. In the same way that Marx described religious faith is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart in a heartless world, so too race consciousness is in a way an attempt to see past prevailing structures of oppression. This is one of the things that makes Nazism bot seductive and dangerous.

The concept of Jewishness that makes a direct link between ethnicity and religion is much older than this. It's simply one of the few examples of a bronze age tribal identity that has managed to survive into the modern day. Almost all the others were dissolved into larger national identities at some point, with culture and phenotypic differences blurring away through the centuries. On might speculate that the persistence of this tribal identity is down to the fact of monotheism, which provided a hard core to the identity that could not be similarly dissolved.

Either way, what we are left with is an identity that is even less universalist than Nazi race consciousness. Because a salient feature of those bronze age tribal identities is that they all arrogate to themselves the status of being "the real humans", and relegates everyone else to being Not. And sure, modern Jews have been brought over to the idea that, frex, there are black Africans who can nevertheless show a descent through mother right that means they must be considered to be Jews too, even if this was neither easy nor universally accepted. But what we are left with now is an extremely narrow in-group/out-group identity that is armed with all the firepower of the modern military machine, and the administrative power of the modern state. In this regard, Israel is less like Nazism than it is like ISIS, and I see at least one wit has recently referred to it as JSIL, the Jewish State of Israel and the Levant.

Now, meanwhile, for many secular Jews in the West, strict adherence to this old tribal identity is fading away; they care less about marrying out, about descent through mother right, and Jewish observance becomes as commercialised and more or less content-less as most Christian observance. The racist allegation that Jews are more likely to be loyal to each other than to the state, or society, is just as much bullshit as the presumption that all Muslims are ISIS sympathisers. But in the context of a specifically Jewish state, it acquires the force of law.

It really isn't as simply as just saying "it's not racism". In it's exclusivity, in it's appeal to innate and inherited nature, it operates identically to racism; it's just a kind of racism with an unusual backstory, not a different kind of thing. And having covered all this, where do we know end up? Talking about the oppressor, and not the oppressed. The plight of the Palestinians fades into the background, a faint wail of agony that serves as the backdrop to our comfortable ruminations over semantic, but not material, differences.

[contracycle]

...o wait...yes...daily on Strom Front. The same site where the Israel-South Africa connection is directly linked to motivate this as "Israel's genocidal tendencies towards black South Africans".


Look mate; you yourself made the case that even Iranians, with all their anti-semitism, can sometimes level a criticism that is accurate. I suggest to you that this is a similar case.

Look, maybe I can't convince you of this, but then again, you didn't live through it, and I did. During the Boer Wars, the Boers fought ferociously and many refused to consider surrender, the so-called "bitter enders". And when that is married to a Calvinist belief system that regards themselves as being the Elect, and therefore bound for heaven automatically, the idea that some Afrikaaners would have preferred to go out in a blaze of retaliatory "glory" is very easy for me to believe. Even as negotiations with the ANC were underway, new self-declared bitter-enders were openly trying to organise a sort of militia lead by the AWB with the intention of fighting both the ANC and South African army, if need be.

So, I think the idea that this was is what use those weapons were to be put is credible. You may not believe it, but I'm afraid I do.

The issue of whether Israel knew that this is what the SA state intended to do with those weapons is a separate one, and which I can't say anything about. I have not claimed that Israel was somehow trying to use SA as its catspaw to nuke a bunch of black people; I can't see why Israel would even care.

What I have said, is that Israel was willing to break sanctions and military embargoes to arm an oppressive state. It doesn't really matter to me whether Israel believed that SA was going to nuke Johannesburg or Luanda; what matters to me is that they gave an extremely violent and racist state the bomb.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

the left in a fucking nutshell. I'm glad there are still sane people on this board who aren't completely ignorant towards the problem antisemitism is.

Opposition to settler-colonialism =/= Antisemitism

It is precisely this sort of formulation, that equates the Isreali state with Jewishness that serves to perpetuate antisemitism, particularly on the left.

So, to be crystal clear: The Israeli state, despite its ideological claim to Jewishness is not a "Jewish" state - the proposition itself is ridiculous and lacks any foundation in Jewish religion or the concrete reality in Palestine. Israel is a colonial state founded by right-wing terrorists and politically dominated by racist extremists to this day. To equate this with Jews generally is at best insulting. At worst (and this is, unfortunately, often the case) it serves to reinforce negative stereotypes.

If we want to seriously combat antisemitism, naming the Israeli state as an usurper of Jewish identity, and an illegitimate project of a racist minority, is a good place to start.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

A critique of Israel is automatically antisemitic, a critique of a critique of Israel is automatically pro-israel. How stupid.

[Redistribute the Rep]

Every discussion on Israel is an absolute train wreck, and the ones on revleft are no exception

[DOOM]

Opposition to settler-colonialism =/= Antisemitism

It is precisely this sort of formulation, that equates the Isreali state with Jewishness that serves to perpetuate antisemitism, particularly on the left.

So, to be crystal clear: The Israeli state, despite its ideological claim to Jewishness is not a "Jewish" state - the proposition itself is ridiculous and lacks any foundation in Jewish religion or the concrete reality in Palestine. Israel is a colonial state founded by right-wing terrorists and politically dominated by racist extremists to this day. To equate this with Jews generally is at best insulting. At worst (and this is, unfortunately, often the case) it serves to reinforce negative stereotypes.

If we want to seriously combat antisemitism, naming the Israeli state as an usurper of Jewish identity, and an illegitimate project of a racist minority, is a good place to start.

Beware of ye jewish settler colonialists, fleeing from their former grave called europe, forming an anorganic nation (because leftists are in favor of organic ethnogenesis)
And let's face the fact; nations are generally bourgeois constructs, the religion is a factor but it's not mandatory for ethnogenesis. There is no need for theological justification.
And really, if you believe that the jewish state is responsible for the antisemitism we see today, then you're pretty naive. The most common form of antisemitism jews have to struggle with today isn't racial antisemitism, it's antisemitism in which jews are identified with capital. I don't really see how Israel is reinforcing the myth that jews strive to take over the world, unless you believe Israel is trying to do this very thing.

[PhoenixAsh]

Opposition to settler-colonialism =/= Antisemitism

It is precisely this sort of formulation, that equates the Isreali state with Jewishness that serves to perpetuate antisemitism, particularly on the left.

So, to be crystal clear: The Israeli state, despite its ideological claim to Jewishness is not a "Jewish" state - the proposition itself is ridiculous and lacks any foundation in Jewish religion or the concrete reality in Palestine. Israel is a colonial state founded by right-wing terrorists and politically dominated by racist extremists to this day. To equate this with Jews generally is at best insulting. At worst (and this is, unfortunately, often the case) it serves to reinforce negative stereotypes.

If we want to seriously combat antisemitism, naming the Israeli state as an usurper of Jewish identity, and an illegitimate project of a racist minority, is a good place to start.

And still this is exactly what a vast amount of people the world over and in the revolutionary left argue....which is exactly my point. They do this overtly or, like contracylce here, semi- (or in oher cases) completely unconsciously but it still is and always will be anti-semitism and what is more, because of a dogmatic principle of anti-Israel spirit, open anti-semitism is very often condoned, deminished, justified or even worse adopted by revolutionary groups, individuals and organizations. This happens to such an extend that Jewish comrades are looked upon with distrust and disdain whenever the subject of Israel is involved and it is basically a requirement of them that they take a strong position against the state of Israel.

[PhoenixAsh]

Look mate;

I am not your mate and not your friend....


you yourself made the case that even Iranians, with all their anti-semitism, can sometimes level a criticism that is accurate. I suggest to you that this is a similar case.

I have not been talking about particular cases from the start. The one who took my argumenst to be directed at your insignificant personal motivations is you or meant to devaluate and delegitimize criticism against Israel eventhough I explicitly stated repeatedly this was not the argument.

So let me repeat it in teletubby language for you, because apparantly you need this:

1). The global anti-zionist movement; which is huge, extremely diverse and not a singular entity; is in its vast majority motivated by anti-semitic sentiments
2). The revolutionary left is riddled with open and unconscious anti-semites (either out of ignorance, political or religious or ethnic, economic motivations and more often than not based on socialist sourcematerial) who are confusing legitimate criticism with anti-semitic arguments, conspiracy theories or turn a blind eye to those being expressed or in the way they treat Jewish comrades when it comes to Israel or in adopting parts of those sentiments in their analysis or publications.
3). The fact that there is widespread anti-semitism in the anti-Israel movement and outside it...does not negate the fact that there is legitimate criticism nor does anti-semitic sentiments always mean that the criticism levelled is untrue. In other words...just because somebody is an anti-semite does not make certain things they say about Israel untrue.

Now in the process of doing your utmost best to reject these very basic facts....you have so far

1). Diminished the problem of anti-semitism by linking it to fringe elements
2). Denied it was an actual problem
3). Expressed openly and latent anti-semitic sentiments by

Comparing Israel with the Holocaust
Comparing South Africa with the Holocaust
Linking Israels policies to Judaism and comparing that to Nazism
Expressed the motivation of Israel to commit genocide in South Africa


And that is aside from your argument that you can't expell anti-semites and racists from your demo because of the sensibilities of little old ladies. Which is both sexist and ageist.

You are debating whether or not Israel deserves criticism while this was never the argument to begin with. Your little Don Quijote crusade you have going here is basically attacking windmills instead of giants.



Look, maybe I can't convince you of this, but then again, you didn't live through it, and I did. During the Boer Wars,

You did not live through the Boer wars. You are not over 105 years old.


the Boers fought ferociously and many refused to consider surrender, the so-called "bitter enders". And when that is married to a Calvinist belief system that regards themselves as being the Elect, and therefore bound for heaven automatically,

Calvinists do not believe they automatically go to heaven. They believe the salvation or wrath is predestined and that show of devotion can be a sign that one is predestined to be saved. Calvin however rejected the notion of automatic salvation because of faith and argued that it was the sinfull nature of the individual that was predestined.

But please continue about the Boer wars that raged from the 19th to the very early 20th century between the Boers and England.



the idea that some Afrikaaners would have preferred to go out in a blaze of retaliatory "glory" is very easy for me to believe.

This has never been a contestation.


Even as negotiations with the ANC were underway, new self-declared bitter-enders were openly trying to organise a sort of militia lead by the AWB with the intention of fighting both the ANC and South African army, if need be.

Ahh...so you are not talking about the Boer wars...but you are talking about the AWB which is completely and utterly different.

Now...I may have not lived through the Boer wars...but the AWB was a violent fringe group of extremists consisting at most of a couple of thousand members and their two little battles did not amount to much. The first time they were squashed by the cops (the bloody cops! for crying out loud) and the second time the took some hostages and spray painted a building before they left.

Now...the AWB consisted of what? 9...10...11K members of a Boer population of 2 million?


So, I think the idea that this was is what use those weapons were to be put is credible.

Sure.


You may not believe it, but I'm afraid I do.

I don't


The issue of whether Israel knew that this is what the SA state intended to do with those weapons is a separate one, and which I can't say anything about.

Yet you did


I have not claimed that Israel was somehow trying to use SA as its catspaw to nuke a bunch of black people; I can't see why Israel would even care.

And yet you felt it was worthy of linking that to Israel.


What I have said, is that Israel was willing to break sanctions and military embargoes to arm an oppressive state.

What you actually said was:


Actually, this point is worth expanding on. Israel probably equipped apartheid South Africa with nuclear weapons specifically intended to be used as a last ditch genocidal retaliation against the native people of the region. Apartheid states flock together, huh? Comparisons to the Holocaust are really so outrageous, are they?

I would like to also state here that your "believe" not only linked Israel to genocide but also is used here to link both South Africa and Israel to the Holocaust.

So no...you did not merely state that Israel was willing to break embargo for another oppressor state.

[Tim Cornelis]

Ahuh. What you seem to be forgetting is that black South Africans were not South African citizens either. They were citizens of their artificially created "homelands". This is why they had to carry passes; this is why they were not allowed to own property; this is why they were not entitled to access public services.

Sorry, but consistency demands that you have to pick one interpretation or the other. If it is OK for Israel to do what it does, than it must have been OK for apartheid South Africa to do what it did, or vice versa. There is no way to wriggle off that hook.

Furthermore, as I pointed out before, Israel itself makes this fiction harder and harder to support. Just a couple of months ago, legislation was proposed to grant "national rights" to Jews only; this was approved by the Israeli cabinet. So even if you really must insist on somehow ignoring the fact that an Arab Israeli can be evicted from their own home so that it can be given to a Jewish Israeli, even if you fatuously resort to the apartheid apologists arguments that Palestinians are not citizens, Israel itself is busily calling your bluff.

Given what come next, it's worth mentioning that an Arab Israeli in the Knesset denounced this proposal as "racist" - but hey, we all know that the opinions of Arabs are worthless, don't we?

Furthermore: the ANC has made no bones about the fact that it considers Israel to be an apartheid state. It has said so explicitly many times. Who really are you to tell them that you know better? They lived it; you're just playing semantic and legalistic dodgeball. If there is to be any credibility in the idea that the oppressed are best placed to understand their own oppression, or that political consciousness emerges from below through struggle, then I suggest that you should take this view rather more seriously than the white liberal handwaving I've seen so far suggests.

No national legally enforced racial segregation, no apartheid.

You use so many fallacies, I can understand PhoenixAsh's frustration with you. A false dichotomy ("critique of Israel is automatically antisemitic, a critique of a critique of Israel is automatically pro-israel. How stupid."); an appeal to authority ("ANC said it, so it must be true") You also implicitly state that apartheid and racism are synonymous. The proposal you mentioned has been regarded as racist, which is somehow evidence it is also apartheid -- it speaks for itself why this is wrong. And of course, in any case, it's an appeal to authority as well.

Unless you can show that there is a nationally and legally established system of forced racial segregation, there's objectively speaking, no apartheid. And since such a system does not exist, there's no apartheid. There's no point in discussing it further.

So the question to you would be, is there a national legally sanctioned and established system of forced racial segregation in facilities, civil activities, rights, and liberties?


Between JEWRY and Nazism, or between ISRAEL and Nazism?

Between Jewry and Nazism. You appealed to the Jewish religious law (halakhah) to make this argument, not to Israeli civil law.

The rest of what you wrote, I wont even quote it to save some bites from being wasted on so much stupidity twice, is just ill-informed mind-numbing tip-toeing around the fact that being a Jew is not a race, and that there are Jews of all races. And it certainly doesn't help your case that you weren't comparing Jewry with Nazism.

[Rurkel]

Palestinians of the West Bank are in many respects under Israeli control and are subject to various harmful policies originating in Israeli state, without any bourgeois-democratic means to influence Israeli policy. They are not citizens of Israel. It doesn't directly control Gaza, but due to its small, cramped size and IDF's raids there Israel also subjects this bit of land to aggressive policies. It may not exactly be apartheid, but it's something as close to it as it can possibly be, if we define it as "people limited in their movements under control of a state, having no liberal rights while other people do have".

[Tim Cornelis]

Palestinians of the West Bank are in many respects under Israeli control and are subject to various harmful policies originating in Israeli state, without any bourgeois-democratic means to influence Israeli policy. They are not citizens of Israel. It doesn't directly control Gaza, but due to its small, cramped size and IDF's raids there Israel also subjects this bit of land to aggressive policies. It may not exactly be apartheid, but it's something as close to it as it can possibly be, if we define it as "people limited in their movements under control of a state, having no liberal rights while other people do have".

But that's simply not what it means. Contracycle was right, now we're talking about this. It was not intended to be a conversation, but simply pointing out that his use of the term does not conform to its definition. Instead of conceding he rationalises it, it's discrimination, and it may not be racial discrimination, but it's close enough, so we might as well call it racism, and apartheid perhaps isn't racism, but it's like apartheid, so discrimination = apartheid.

Your definition would make any state that enforces its rules on illegal migration an apartheid state. Malaysia, European Union, United States, Japan, essentially any country really.

[Lily Briscoe]

It is possible for someone to be wrong about the subject of Israel without being antisemitic. Personally I don't happen to think that it's useful for people with communist politics to participate in 'pro-Palestinian' rallies or whatever, which - by the nature of these sorts of demonstrations - draw in all kinds of people, some of whom will inevitably have antisemitic views. It is possible for someone to disagree with this without being an antisemite, though.

I think 'contracycle' is wrong about some things (the idea that Jews are a race, for one), and I disagree with his politics, but the insinuation that he is antisemitic on the basis of his arguments in this thread is absolutely ridiculous.

Generally speaking, throwing around the accusation of antisemitism at people in discussions, even if they hold problematic views that may be unconsciously rooted in antisemitic tropes (e.g. 'the tail wagging the dog' with regard to US-Israeli relations), tends to be a really unhelpful approach in terms of confronting these kinds of ideas. In most cases like these, it's better to try to explain to someone why they're wrong than to shout "antisemite" at them, particularly considering that supporters of the state of Israel very often do use such accusations in order to shut down criticism.

The discussion has moved on a bit from the stuff I'm addressing here, but...

[Rurkel]

Your definition would make any state that enforces its rules on illegal migration an apartheid state. Malaysia, European Union, United States, Japan, essentially any country really.
Not necessarily, see the "under control of a state" part. If Japan annexed the Philippines, either formally or in all but name, and kept the immigration restrictions regarding the local population there, while refusing to give them the vote, then the situation could be called an apartheid one. And Israel controls West Bank to a large degree and strangles Gaza to a large degree, too.

[PhoenixAsh]

It is possible for someone to be wrong about the subject of Israel without being antisemitic.

Yes...unless the thing they are wrong about is their anti-semitic rhetoric.

You know...like denying anti-semitism and proceeding to link Judaism with Nazism


I think 'contracycle' is wrong about some things (the idea that Jews are a race, for one), and I disagree with his politics, but the insinuation that he is antisemitic on the basis of his arguments in this thread is absolutely ridiculous.

It is beyond ridiculous that you even argue this.

So...what did you not consider anti-semitism?


When he linked Judaism with Nazism
Linked Israel with Judaism in the process
Explicitly stated Israel had genocidal intentions in breaking the embargo (this idea originates directly from the openly anti-semitic blogs and fora btw)
Diminished anti-semitism and brushed it off as legitimate criticism
Compared Israeli politics to the Holocaust


Because I have news for you...these are all anti-semitism.



Generally speaking, throwing around the accusation of antisemitism at people in discussions, even if they hold problematic views that may be unconsciously rooted in antisemitic tropes (e.g. 'the tail wagging the dog' with regard to US-Israeli relations), tends to be a really unhelpful approach in terms of confronting these kinds of ideas.

We have to cuddle them with kindness and love and patience. We should avoid calling their arguments what they are....this may upset the anti-semites.


In most cases like these, it's better to try to explain to someone why they're wrong than to shout "antisemite" at them, particularly considering that supporters of the state of Israel very often do use such accusations in order to shut down criticism.

And often they are completely right....which is why it is such an effective strategy.

there is no explaining things with Contracycle. It was explained to them...they upped the ante even further.

At some point you need to face reality Strix...if somebody is expressing anti-semitic views...you explicitly tell them they are doing so.


The discussion has moved on a bit from the stuff I'm addressing here, but...

No...it has not. Contracylcy is still expressing anti-semitic opinions and he still needs to be confronted on them.


***

What I also want to address is the willingness of people on this site to gloss over openly anti-semitic statements. Because if something is ridiculous it is exactly that. Not calling somebody out...but going out of your way to diminish and reduce the significance of their arguments and meeting it with understanding kindness in the hopes they change their minds. Because well...as has been made perfectly clear in various posts doing this...the vieews may be problematic but hey...it is about Israel.

What the actual fuck. :rolleyes::glare:

[PhoenixAsh]

Not necessarily, see the "under control of a state" part. If Japan annexed the Philippines, either formally or in all but name, and kept the immigration restrictions regarding the local population there, while refusing to give them the vote, then the situation could be called an apartheid one. And Israel controls West Bank to a large degree and strangles Gaza to a large degree, too.

No...it really can't because that is not the definition nor the concept of apartheid.

You can't call a car a bike because it has tires.

[contracycle]

I am not your mate and not your friend....

Good.


I have not been talking about particular cases from the start. The one who took my argumenst to be directed at your insignificant personal motivations is you or meant to devaluate and delegitimize criticism against Israel eventhough I explicitly stated repeatedly this was not the argument.

So you keep saying, although your actual argument shows this to be purest fiction.



1). The global anti-zionist movement; which is huge, extremely diverse and not a singular entity; is in its vast majority motivated by anti-semitic sentiments

You assert this as if it were fact. It is not fact. It is simply a colonial narrative designed tio deflect criticism of Israel, which you, unfortunately, have bought into.

You denied this, immediately above, but here you giving yourself the lie.

I can't be bothered dealing with the rest, it would serve no purpose.


Now in the process of doing your utmost best to reject these very basic facts....you have so far

They are not facts.



1). Diminished the problem of anti-semitism by linking it to fringe elements


Nope. I pointed to the fact that fring elements may appear in leftist demos; I did not say that was the only, or even the main, expression of anti-semitism.
That's your fictitious claim.


2). Denied it was an actual problem

I did not deny that anti-semitism was an actual problem; I denied that alleged anti-semitic infiltration of then left was a problem.


3). Expressed openly and latent anti-semitic sentiments by
Comparing Israel with the Holocaust

Specifically, not the Holocaust, but the racist character that the two ideologies share.


Comparing South Africa with the Holocaust

Specifically, not the Holocaust, but the racist character that the two ideologies share.


Linking Israels policies to Judaism and comparing that to Nazism


At no point did I link Judaism to Israel. I specifically refuted that link, which you seem so keen to make. Indeed you should, and probably do, know that there are many Jews who oppose the very idea of a Jewish state for internal theological reasons. so this in fact is rather more than a simple misrepresentation, let alone misunderstanding, of my position, it is actual deliberate lie.


Expressed the motivation of Israel to commit genocide in South Africa

Quote me. I specifically said that I could not see that Israel had any such motivation. This again is a deliberate lie.


You are debating whether or not Israel deserves criticism while this was never the argument to begin with. Your little Don Quijote crusade you have going here is basically attacking windmills instead of giants.

Yes, it IS the argument, because you are using false allegations of anti-semitism to provide Israel with a shield. As I pointed out tat the beginning, you are simply reading from the NeoCon playbook.



You did not live through the Boer wars. You are not over 105 years old.

Even a six year old would have parsed that correctly. Either you are a complete fool, or this is simply another deliberate lie.



Calvinists do not believe they automatically go to heaven. They believe the salvation or wrath is predestined and that show of devotion can be a sign that one is predestined to be saved. Calvin however rejected the notion of automatic salvation because of faith and argued that it was the sinfull nature of the individual that was predestined.

Have you ever met a Calvinist who believed that it was going to be them who turned out to have that preordained sinful nature? No? Neither have I.



This has never been a contestation.

Maybe; it is not clear to me what it is that you are contesting. Is it that the Afrikaaners would have done it, or that Israel provided the means?



Ahh...so you are not talking about the Boer wars...but you are talking about the AWB which is completely and utterly different.

Well done! Now you can move on to "My Dog Spot".


but the AWB was a violent fringe group of extremists consisting at most of a couple of thousand members and their two little battles did not amount to much. The first time they were squashed by the cops (the bloody cops! for crying out loud) and the second time the took some hostages and spray painted a building before they left.

Now...the AWB consisted of what? 9...10...11K members of a Boer population of 2 million?

You're speaking from the advantageous position of hindsight. NOW we know that the AWB was a paper tiger; but nobody knew that at the time. Solid rumour had it that they could field a "commando" 40,000 strong, all of whom - given male conscription - would be trained and experienced soldiers with experience in the field. If an actual full blown Afrikaaner insurrection occurred, this would only be the core around which it would form. On top of that, Constand Viljoen, a serving general, was making sympathetic noises, and threatened to bring a sizable chunk of the serving army over. It would also be very likely that much of the SADF would not resist them and would hand over arsenals and materiel.

What broke the AWB, and revealed that the threat was illusory, was its attempted invasion of Bophuthatswana. That turned it into a laughing stock; but up until that time, everyone, black and white and other, considered it a serious danger.

You are showing a truly immense failure to understand what was going on at the time. If you wish to educate yourself, you could do worse than watching this documentary on YouTube, The Death Of Apartheid: The White's Last Stand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DBGVHZc30k

Sure.




I don't

Everyone has the right to be wrong.

Btw, SA had 3 nukes. It also had 3 capitals: Cape Town, the legislative capital, Pretoria, the administrative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.


Yet you did

No, I definitely did not.


And yet you felt it was worthy of linking that to Israel.

Of course. Because such close cooperation between Israel and SA revealed that they each recognised their similarity. They both knew they were apartheid states, and they were both fighting the same kind of colonial war.



What you actually said was:

Oh I see what you're doing here; you're choosing to interpret my "specifically intended" as being applied to Israel, rather than SA. Becuase it;s all about you, huh? FFS.



So no...you did not merely state that Israel was willing to break embargo for another oppressor state.

This is another lie.

[Rurkel]

No...it really can't because that is not the definition nor the concept of apartheid. Why wouldn't the Japan-Philippines situation I described qualify as an apartheid one, in your option?

[PhoenixAsh]

Why wouldn't the Japan-Philippines situation I described qualify as an apartheid one, in your option?

Because apartheid goes a lot, lot further than restriting voting rights and immigration. It is the complete separation of races in all senses.

[Rurkel]

Even South Africa didn't have a "complete separation of races in all senses". :glare: EDIT: although to be "fair", it did went further than Israel on this point. Although the situation with the settlements in West Bank is really close. Segregated roads, anyone?

[contracycle]

No national legally enforced racial segregation, no apartheid.

Bu there IS enforced segregation - between Palestine and Israel proper. This is a complete nonsense.


You use so many fallacies, I can understand PhoenixAsh's frustration with you.

OMG. The irony is strong in this one.


an appeal to authority ("ANC said it, so it must be true")

Bullshit It's an appeal to the perspective of people ACTUALLY INVOLVED, rather than your apparent assumption that you can dissect everything from afar and assert that your comprehension is better than theirs.


You also implicitly state that apartheid and racism are synonymous.


Absolute nonsense. I have done no such thing, not here, not ever. You clearly have not the slightest idea what you're talking about.



The proposal you mentioned has been regarded as racist, which is somehow evidence it is also apartheid -- it speaks for itself why this is wrong. And of course, in any case, it's an appeal to authority as well.

It's not an appeal to AUTHORITY. It;s an appeal to the actual lived experience of a discriminated against group, which you are cavalierly dismissing because it doesn't fit into your comfortable, remote, prescriptions.

I am, frankly, appalled. I'd expect this sort of thing from a dyed-in-the-wool Tory wearing a "hang Mandela" tie, but not here.


Unless you can show that there is a nationally and legally established system of forced racial segregation, there's objectively speaking, no apartheid. And since such a system does not exist, there's no apartheid. There's no point in discussing it further.

Well, you're probably right there is no point in discussing it further, because it's clear you're not interested in comprehending reality. Nevertheless,i feel obliged to point out how fatuous this argument is.

South Africa may indeed have had a bunch of "niet blankes" up, and racial groups may well have been restricted to certain carriages on the train; but whether you like to admit or not, this was actually better than the Israeli position of restricting Palestinians to specific militarily policed corridors, creating an open-air prison in Gaza, and bulldozing houses, farms, and olive groves that had stood for hundreds of years.

I'm beginning to understand why Stormfront gets referenced so often here, because clearly some of you must spend quite a lot of time there hobnobbing with your buddies.



So the question to you would be, is there a national legally sanctioned and established system of forced racial segregation in facilities, civil activities, rights, and liberties?

And the answer is obviously, incontrovertibly, yes.



Between Jewry and Nazism. You appealed to the Jewish religious law (halakhah) to make this argument, not to Israeli civil law.

So you are in fact resorting to the anti-semitic conflation of Jews with Israel. Good to know.

[contracycle]

No...it really can't because that is not the definition nor the concept of apartheid.

You have literally no idea what you're talking about.

[Tim Cornelis]

Okay, at this point I'm just going to have to assume that contracycle is intentionally playing dumb to get a rise out of me. Grow up.

[PhoenixAsh]

So you keep saying, although your actual argument shows this to be purest fiction.

Nope.


You assert this as if it were fact. It is not fact. It is simply a colonial narrative designed tio deflect criticism of Israel, which you, unfortunately, have bought into.

Actually it is the result of quite a few studies done on the subject. But here you are again...denying anti-semitism. This has become quite a theme for you.


You denied this, immediately above, but here you giving yourself the lie.

I can't be bothered dealing with the rest, it would serve no purpose.

you can't be bothered because:

1). You are a troll
2). You have no actual arguments except your one demo about Iraq
3). You are very committed at not addressing any actual argumenst but creating straw man and red herrings


They are not facts.

Yes...they really are. Do a nice google search. Read some actual stuff.


Nope. I pointed to the fact that fring elements may appear in leftist demos; I did not say that was the only, or even the main, expression of anti-semitism.
That's your fictitious claim.

Actually that is your core argument as I have already proven several posts before by quoting you.

Your entire denial of anti-semitism was based on reducing the argument to a demo here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2814123&postcount=26

This demo turned out not to be about Israel. It turned out to also be a non-revolutionary demo.

So again...you are a lying little cheat.



I did not deny that anti-semitism was an actual problem; I denied that alleged anti-semitic infiltration of then left was a problem.

Nobody is talking about anti-semitic infiltration. We are talking about actual leftist being anti-semites. Now...In have already pointed towards writings with anti-semite constructions and I hav pointed you towards the open and explicit anti-semitism within the history of the revolutionary left (which is pretty well documented).

I suggest you go read up on the issues and actually stop being an ignorant little asshat.


Specifically, not the Holocaust, but the racist character that the two ideologies share.

I have quite litterally quoted you three times doing exactly that.


Specifically, not the Holocaust, but the racist character that the two ideologies share.

Again...you have been quoted repeatedly doing exactly that.


At no point did I link Judaism to Israel.

Yes you did when you linked Judaic marriage laws with the laws of Israel as part of your argument that Israel is an apartheid state.

So again...you lie.


I specifically refuted that link, which you seem so keen to make.
Indeed you should, and probably do, know that there are many Jews who oppose the very idea of a Jewish state for internal theological reasons. fact is rather more than a simple misrepresentation, let alone misunderstanding, of my position, it is actual deliberate lie.

I have at no point made any such link at all. I have said that this is what is argued often in the revolutionary left and what their argumentss come down to. You on the other hand chose to make that my argument.

You on the other hand did directly link Judaism to Israel and you have been quoted on that by both me and Tim.

So again...you lie.



Quote me. I specifically said that I could not see that Israel had any such motivation. This again is a deliberate lie.

I litterally quoted you in the post you answer me to.

So no...you did NOT specifically say that there was no motivation.

You explicitly stated there was and when confronted by it you then backpeddled by saying that you originally said something entirely different.

Again...you lie


Yes, it IS the argument, because you are using false allegations of anti-semitism to provide Israel with a shield. As I pointed out tat the beginning, you are simply reading from the NeoCon playbook.

Nope. You have expressed several arguments which are directly anti-semitic in nature.

Now I know you attempt to try and weasel your way out of this by trying to shift the tables...but the irony of this whole story is that I am probably the most vocal and most extreme anti-Israel member here...with the judicial record to boot.

So your attempt is a little stupid.


Even a six year old would have parsed that correctly. Either you are a complete fool, or this is simply another deliberate lie.

even a 6 year old...especially one who comes from South Africa as they claim....would know what the Boer wars were.



Have you ever met a Calvinist who believed that it was going to be them who turned out to have that preordained sinful nature? No? Neither have I.

Don't answer the question for me. Because yes...I live in a nation with a rich tradition of Calvinism you fucking reject....incidentally also the one where your Boer and their Calvinism originated from.



Maybe; it is not clear to me what it is that you are contesting. Is it that the Afrikaaners would have done it, or that Israel provided the means?

That a very small group of less than 0.1% of the afrikaaners would fight to the death.



Well done! Now you can move on to "My Dog Spot".

Then do not call it by a historically incorrect name.


You're speaking from the advantageous position of hindsight.

No I am speaking from the advantageous position of what the AWB was described at the fucking time you are talking about by both the ANC and the NP.


NOW we know that the AWB was a paper tiger; but nobody knew that at the time.

The ANC and the NP didn't have a problem at the time of making a corect assessment....neither did the SACP by the way.

incidentally...this argument still does not make any sense in the context of the debate....because it doesn't prove your base statement for which you are making this argument that Israel intentionally with motivation for genocide helped South Africa get nukes.

:rolleyes:


Solid rumour had it that they could field a "commando" 40,000 strong, all of whom - given male conscription - would be trained and experienced soldiers with experience in the field. If an actual full blown Afrikaaner insurrection occurred, this would only be the core around which it would form. On top of that, Constand Viljoen, a serving general, was making sympathetic noises, and threatened to bring a sizable chunk of the serving army over. It would also be very likely that much of the SADF would not resist them and would hand over arsenals and materiel.


Again...the argument in context of the debate makes no sense and still does not prove what you want to prove. You merely store up facts in order to sound intelligent. This is hot air ballooning to trump your fallacious argument. .


What broke the AWB, and revealed that the threat was illusory, was its attempted invasion of Bophuthatswana. That turned it into a laughing stock; but up until that time, everyone, black and white and other, considered it a serious danger.

I never said they were not a serious danger. I have said your argument was dumb, ill informed and doesn't make any sense in the light of why you are making it....because it doesn't provide a basis for your assertion that Israel intentionally helped South Africe to use nukes against the black population...


You are showing a truly immense failure to understand what was going on at the time. If you wish to educate yourself, you could do worse than watching this documentary on YouTube, The Death Of Apartheid: The White's Last Stand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DBGVHZc30k

I did not. I base myself on publications of that time from the NP, ANC and SACP.


Everyone has the right to be wrong.

I don't subscribe to the insane notion of freedom of speech...so I disagree with this. Some wrongs should never be allowed.


Btw, SA had 3 nukes. It also had 3 capitals: Cape Town, the legislative capital, Pretoria, the administrative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.

I have four teddy bears. My car has four wheels. There must be a correlation there.

Still not proving your intial assertion that Israels motivation of helping South Africa get nukes was motivated by genocide.



No, I definitely did not.

denials in the face of quotes...sorry...but again you are lying.


Of course. Because such close cooperation between Israel and SA revealed that they each recognised their similarity. They both knew they were apartheid states, and they were both fighting the same kind of colonial war.

No. It does not.


Oh I see what you're doing here; you're choosing to interpret my "specifically intended" as being applied to Israel, rather than SA. Becuase it;s all about you, huh? FFS.

Nope. You are the one making the statement. Which was explicitly ment to link Israel to the genocide...so you could prove your link to Israel and the Holocaust.

And that is still anti-semitism.



This is another lie.

Again...you were quoted on it. Again you deny your own words.

Now...one of three things is happening:

1). You are unable to express yourself clearly because everything you write turns out to mean something else....and have problems with understanding the arguments others make against you because somehow you don't really read them well or understand them correctly

2). You are trolling the fuck out of this site...with anti-semitic statements.

3). You are only now realizing what kind of anti-semitic things you said and instead of owning up...are doing your level best to backpeddle in the hopes you can escape unnoticed.

[contracycle]

Your definition would make any state that enforces its rules on illegal migration an apartheid state. Malaysia, European Union, United States, Japan, essentially any country really.


No, this completely ridiculous nonsense. The key to understanding apartheid is that it uses the LEGAL FICTION of distinct political entities to justify the ACTUAL PRACTICE of racist discrimination.

According to your conception South Africa was not an apartheid state. Because SA was defined as the state of the European settlers; therefore, no Zulu, no Xhosa, had any right to expect anything from South Africa.

No right to political representation, because they were legally citizens of a different state. No right to amenities, because they were legally citizens of a different state. They had no rights to anything at all, because SA law maintained that they were NOT CITIZENS.

The fact that this was a complete fiction, that the Bantustans were artificial constructs whose existence was entirely dependent on SA, whose notional "independence" was guaranteed by SA, is the material reality of apartheid.

Thousands of Zulus commuted to work within SA because those "homelands" were utterly untenable; they worked in the mines, digging out gold that made white people rich. And because they were NOT CITIZENS they had no rights.

Just as, every day thousands of Palestinians cross over into Israel, and work in Israelis businesses, making Israelis rich, and they have no rights because they are NOT CITIZENS.

And indeed, Israel doesn't even perform the courtesy of setting up Palestine as a proper Bantustan; they are simply a captive labour force and market, exploited by a state that is de facto in power over them. Israeli apartheid is even more naked, more obvious, than it was in SA, because it has dispensed with much of the fiction in favour of pure coercive power.

You completely fail at even comprehending what apartheid is, never mind being capable of determining whether it applies in other contexts.

Israel is, absolutely and undeniably, an apartheid state.

[contracycle]

Nope.

I'm not going to bother responding to this racist jibber, not least because I've dealt with most of it already. At this point, I'm happy to leave the previous exchanges to lie there for others to read, and from which to draw their own conclusions.

[PhoenixAsh]

I'm not going to bother responding to this racist jibber, not least because I've dealt with most of it already. At this point, I'm happy to leave the previous exchanges to lie there for others to read, and from which to draw their own conclusions.

And yet you did.

At this point I think it is fair to conclude that you have become tired of deying your own words when your are repeatedly confronted with them and/or are running out of ways to deny them.

[contracycle]

I have neither denied them, not had any reason to deny them. I have exposed your racism for what it is, and with this I am content.

[PhoenixAsh]

I have neither denied them, not had any reason to deny them. I have exposed your racism for what it is, and with this I am content.


:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

you do understand that that is an admission of guilt there do you?

:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:



See what I did there?

[Tim Cornelis]

Well thank you for that. You've truly convinced us that NAZIonism is bad. Bye now.

[contracycle]

I hope so. Perhaps we can now put this foolish apologia for Israeli apartheid behind us, and longer indulge its racist apologists.

[PhoenixAsh]

I hope so. Perhaps we can now put this foolish apologia for Israeli apartheid behind us, and longer indulge its racist apologists.

I heard there are some people apologizing for Israel on Storm Front. You could go there for your next mission.

[contracycle]

I'm not surprised; they can surely unite behind a shared Islamophobia.

However, I'll not be intruding on your stomping ground, I'm sure you have that market cornered.

[PhoenixAsh]

I'm not surprised; they can surely unite behind a shared Islamophobia.

However, I'll not be intruding on your stomping ground, I'm sure you have that market cornered.

what is it? First I am pro-Israel and now I am islamophobic because apparently being pro-Israel means you are Islamophobic ..... You do need to make up your mind....in fact you need to get one because the one you are currently not using is either defective of absent. Or..is it....because you lived through the Boer wars and are now over 105 years old...

[contracycle]

I was pointing to the fact that pro-Israeli and neonazi anti-muslim groups often cooperate. Here frex is a pic of English Defence League members flourishing the Israeli flag:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/05/article-1211414-064DD132000005DC-417_636x525.jpg

The pro-Israeli camp has long had problems with accepting support from dubious elements, such as the millenarian christians whose only interest is their belief that an Israeli state is required for the end times, heralding the Second Coming and the end of the world. But these days, with the rise of Islamaphobia, the pro-Israeli movement is increasingly dominated by the far right.

So it would in no way surprise me if you spent a lot of your time hanging out on Stormfront communing with your pro-Israeli allies.

[contracycle]

Here is also an interesting interview in Haaretz with a prominent member of the EDL's Jewish Division.
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/what-are-israeli-flags-and-jewish-activists-doing-at-demonstrations-sponsored-by-the-english-defence-league-1.307803

[contracycle]

And here is a little clip of Britain First's Paul Golding declaring that they "stand with Israel":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am76b80yf00

Britian First, in case you are not familiar with them, is a militant Christian group that affects a pseudo-military uniform and has been carrying out "mosque invasions".

[contracycle]

Oh and there was also the BNP leader Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time, in which he loudly proclaimed their support for Israel and, to a borrow a term from some of his writings, its "ethno-nationalist" character. I'm not going to post it, as it's ten minutes long and these remarks were only a small part, although it is on YouTube and quite fun if you enjoy watching neo-Nazis humiliate themselves in public.

Anyway, sorry or the multiple posts, but I've never quite had to draw this stuff together before.

[Rurkel]

Yeah, some far-right groups deliberately toned down their antisemitism somewhat, desiring to make alliance with Israel, and there're some nasty types who realize that once you get past the "omg-evil-jews" thingy, Israel's ethnocratic character is fairly close to their ideals. It varies with location, though.

[PhoenixAsh]

Anyway, sorry or the multiple posts, but I've never quite had to draw this stuff together before.

Nor the BNP nor the EDL are as you claim:


neonazi

I can't believe I have to explain and draw that out for somebody who suppposedly is an expert on racism, anti-semitism and apartheid.

So do enlighten us more with your wisdom of stupidity...

[Rurkel]

BNP isn't neonazi?

[DAN E BOY]

I heard there are some people apologizing for Israel on Storm Front.




Been on the storm front forum causing mischief have you PA? :)

[PhoenixAsh]

I think I still have over 7 accounts on there....A few of them from the beginnings of the forum.

[DAN E BOY]

I think I still have over 7 accounts on there....A few of them from the beginnings of the forum.



Seven accounts!?

My goodness, what are you planning on doing over there? a forum takeover! lol.

[cyu]

Their entire forum is people like PhoenixAsh trolling each other ;)

Maybe one day, RevLeft will be mostly government agents from around the world trolling each other too - but at least you'll know that when you make a post, your audience won't be just high school kids, but may include the heads of various international intelligence agencies - Mike Rogers probably won't have time for RevLeft, but the head of intelligence in Tuvalu? Maybe xD

[Sasha]

Maybe one day, RevLeft will be mostly government agents from around the world trolling each other too xD

it isn't already?

[cyu]

Who do you work for?

I work for the NSA :wub:

[Sasha]

the ZOG obviously

[cyu]

How much do they pay you?

Is the dental and medical any good?

Uh, more on topic, earlier I was remind of this from http://mondoweiss.net/2009/03/my-wife-and-i-argue-about-chomsky

My friend said that his memory was that Chomsky had not begun writing about Israel/Palestine till his parents died. Chomsky's father was a noted Hebraicist in Philadelphia, Chomsky himself had been a Zionist when young, and it would have hurt his parents too much for him to speak out against Israel's conduct.

[Sasha]

How much do they pay you?

Is the dental and medical any good?


Free circumcisions for everbody....

[DAN E BOY]

9545

[contracycle]

never mind

[PhoenixAsh]

I recently transfered from the AIVD to CIDI because I had problems acclimatising to the new culture when the BVD transformed it's mission statement.

[BIXX]

Bow to my agencies incompetence: I am MI5

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460


You would not believe some of the dumb shit I have to deal with.

In mi5 revleft is punishment duty. This account in its existence has passed hands around 16 times.

[RedKobra]

I have solidarity and sympathy with Israeli's who want peace. Israeli workers are our comrades. The Israeli state is another matter entirely. Disgusting right-wing racist imperialists.

[Ⓐdh0crat]

I heard there are some people apologizing for Israel on Storm Front. You could go there for your next mission.
From my experience, most of the StormFront crowd support Palestine purely out of spite. They have a hell of a ride grappling with whether they hate Jews or Arabs most.

[PhoenixAsh]

There is a schizm on the very subject on SF between the different sub-groups....and that has led to some interesting infights.

[DAN E BOY]

There is a schizm on the very subject on SF between the different sub-groups....and that has led to some interesting infights.



And do you try to influence the board towards a pro-Jew/anti-Arab position with your seven accounts Phoenix? :laugh:

[DOOM]

And do you try to influence the board towards a pro-Jew/anti-Arab position with your seven accounts Phoenix? :laugh:

You got me

[cyu]

I recently transfered from the AIVD to CIDI


http://www.cidi-icdi.ca/ ? Well, you're in the right subforum :lol:



do you try to influence the board towards a pro-Jew/anti-Arab position with your seven accounts Phoenix?


Some of his accounts rally the troops in one direction, some rally them in the other. He's actually the source of the schism :grin:

[PhoenixAsh]

hahahaha.

No the CIDI is a dutch organization and is the "independent" Center for Information and Documentation Israel. Its a unofficial propaganda organization for Israel which is intrinsically linked to the Democratic State of Israel. Its official tasks are:

* providing information and broaden knowledge about Israel and its population.
* strengthen ties between Israel and The Netherlands
* improve relations between Israel and the Arab world
* fight racism, anti-semitism and intolerance through democratic means.

What it actually does is basically apologize for everything Israel does and police
Dutch media, entertainment...and private youtube video's, blogs and other social media channels/outlets....and when some thirteen year old kid says something stupid during an interview they will point out that that is because of the influx of people from anti-Israel countries and a sure sign that Jews are very unsafe in The Netherlands and legal action should be taken to charge this very dangerous anti-semite....which will surely be the reason for another Holocaust.

Nope...not kidding...this is paraphrasing what their arguments boiled down to.


****

I am trying to create as much schizms as possible.

[Sasha]

My grandpa always sighed whenever the head of the CIDI appeared on tv "that man breeds anti-semites", strangly enough I got to know him a bit because my sister was friends with his daughter and outside the subject of Israel he is a very reasonable, liberal and secular man. Which strengthend me in my believe that Zionism has more its base in deep internalized trauma and pathological paranoia than a coherent political project. Which explains a lot about the conflict, how we should operate to resolve the conflict and why the tactics of most of the radical left are complete contraproductive and self defeating. Israel is a paranoid schizophrenic patient and should be treated as such.

[DAN E BOY]

i am trying to create as much schizms as possible.





9549

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Beware of ye jewish settler colonialists, fleeing from their former grave called europe, forming an anorganic nation (because leftists are in favor of organic ethnogenesis)

There were Jewish people in Palestine before Zionism, and before the advent of right-wing terrorists setting up the Israeli state. The distinction is important.


And let's face the fact; nations are generally bourgeois constructs, the religion is a factor but it's not mandatory for ethnogenesis. There is no need for theological justification.

But let's be real - Israel sets itself up as "the Jewish state" - it has a specific ethno-religious character (and laws premised on this fact!). There is therefore an internal contradiction - not because nations need an ethno-religious basis, but because Israel specifically claims one on flawed premises.


And really, if you believe that the jewish state is responsible for the antisemitism we see today, then you're pretty naive.

I dunno. Claiming to speak for the world's Jewish people, then carrying out ethnic cleansing ostensibly on their behalf seems like some pretty shitty messaging.


The most common form of antisemitism jews have to struggle with today isn't racial antisemitism, it's antisemitism in which jews are identified with capital.

I suppose by acting as a key regional ally of imperialist powers, and heavily utilizing devalued Palestinian labour, Israel is really doing important work to challenge anti-semetic tropes which identify Jewish people with capitalists.[/sarcasm]

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I think DOOM is referring to the special and widespread brand of hate and conspiracy mongering that focuses on finance capital as the quintessential enemy that manipulates and extorts productive capital and state institutions. It's easy to see how this has become a kind of code word for Jews or Jewish conspiracy.

Overall I agree with you though, it's strange to constantly point out that Israel does not represent Jews as a whole while never acknowledging that Israel contually relies on an image in which they really do represent Jews as a whole for credibility purposes.

[Lily Briscoe]

Yeah, the conflation of the state of Israel with 'The Jews' is something that supporters of the state of Israel and the most problematic kinds of anti-zionists are very much in agreement on. Funny how that works.