• Ennui Elucidator
    494
    Here is a random link on the topic. It is Austrialian, so you can't blame the US.

    Racism takes many forms and can happen in many places. It includes prejudice,
    discrimination or hatred directed at someone because of their colour, ethnicity or
    national origin. People often associate racism with acts of abuse or harassment.
    However, it doesn’t need to involve violent or intimidating behaviour.
    Racism can be revealed through people’s actions as well as their attitudes. It can
    also be reflected in systems and institutions that operate in ways that lead to unequal
    outcomes. Racism is more than just words, beliefs and actions. It includes all the
    barriers that prevent people from enjoying dignity and equality because of their race.1
    — Australia
    https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/ahrc_sr_2021_4_keyterms_a4_r2_0.pdf
  • Vera Mont
    3.3k
    I already gave non-Israel examples of antisemitism.Ennui Elucidator

    I didn't deny the existence of antisemitism. I do maintain that labelling every remark on the subject antisemitic is ridiculous.
  • Ennui Elucidator
    494
    No, they don't. You just feel a deep need to make it about yourself so you can claim that you are somehow outside of your society/culture/etc. It is nice for you to make a conversation about other people and the problems they encounter about your feelings, but nobody actually cares about them. Be nice - that is what you should do. Great if you are. You might still do things that are bad as a result of your circumstance. (Like how your daily pollution actually hurts other people but so it goes because it isn't obvious enough to you what the relationship is.)
  • mentos987
    160


    So answer this. Does westerners hate Ukrainians?
  • Ennui Elucidator
    494
    I agree. Which is why I said Israel is complicated. There has to be room for legitimate criticism of bad actors regardless of their origin/circumstance. Israel obviously does contemptible things, but that doesn't change the larger conversation.
  • Ennui Elucidator
    494
    Again, irrelevant to whether there is systemic antisemitism in the West and the impact it has had on people's relationship to Palestine/Israel. Merely regarding a story that you have heard with concern makes you a fine person. In and of itself, it informs people of little. Western Media coverage of Ukraine can probably be used to demonstrate systemic racism given the unequal coverage it receives as compared to other amounts of suffering in the world.
  • mentos987
    160

    This also speaks against your first arguments, when you said westerners hate Jews because they care about Israel.
  • Ennui Elucidator
    494
    The danger with conversations like these is that any example I offer to show the problem will just lead to your allegations that I am trying to deflect. This conversation is about antisemitism, not Israel. Israel, unfortunately, is heavily implicated in antisemitism and so can be a good place to point to. How much aid has the US sent to Ukraine to fight Russia? How many people died in Ukraine and Russia regardless? How many people would have not died had the US used that same amount of money to support medical/food programs in any number of places around the world? Is focusing on Ukraine while neglecting the rest of the world evidence of Western racism?
  • mentos987
    160
    The danger with conversations like these is that any example I offer to show the problem will just lead to your allegations that I am trying to deflect.Ennui Elucidator

    That you like to deflect is already evident by the fact that I just had to ask the same simple question 5 times in a row and still never got an answer. You are a hopeless case.
  • Ennui Elucidator
    494
    I'm not sure what the "this" is. One need not look too hard to see that support of Israel is commonly attributed to Western guilt over the holocaust and trying to push the Jewish problem out of Europe and into the Middle-East who was not responsible for the European atrocities. It isn't that Europe is pro-Jewish, but that they are pro "Hey Jew, get out and go back to your own country!"

    Just try a little bit of historic context for how you exist in the world and you might find that identifying certain things as antisemitic is both accurate and useful, but that also may not mean that it is necessarily a problem in the particular instance being discussed.
  • mentos987
    160
    At this point I do believe I am talking to chatGTP, am I wrong?
  • Ennui Elucidator
    494
    You've asked a dumb question multiple times in an effort to change the conversation about antisemitism into a conversation about yourself. I've now responded that the West's self-infatuation (and the likely cause of your concern for Ukraine) is racist. So your support of Ukraine doesn't mean that you hate Ukrainians, but it may mean that you hate Africans.
  • mentos987
    160
    So your support of Ukraine doesn't mean that you hate Ukrainians, but it may mean that you hate Africans.Ennui Elucidator
    You claimed before that westerners thinking about Israel probably means that they are antisemitic.

    Do you retract this statement?
  • Ennui Elucidator
    494
    Is this an exercise in misreading? I said that focus on Jews is likely antisemitic and that Israel is an example of that. Focus on Ukraine is a different topic.

    One need not "hate" Jews to be antisemitic. One need not even have ever met one or know where to find one. The Jews were being blamed for all sorts of things in Europe at times/places where they weren't even present in the area. The Western institution of antisemitism is what the OP was referring to rather than "Jew Hatred" which is all you can seem to understand. That is why they suggested that antisemitism should be restricted just to Europeans and something like "jew hater" to everyone else in instances where they are engaged in actually identifiable negative conduct/speech.

    This is the equivocation that I referred to in my initial response. It is even equivocation that happens within the Jewish community. The problem is that people want to use (and do use) antisemitism as a euphemism for Jew hater, thereby confusing the issue of which is which.
  • mentos987
    160
    I said that focus on Jews is likely antisemitic and that Israel is an example of that. Focus on Ukraine is a different topic.Ennui Elucidator

    It doesn't hold logic that you need to be "anti" something to think about it. The other way around holds though, if you are "anti" something then you probably think a lot about it.
  • Ennui Elucidator
    494
    You are reversing the order of things. You think about things - perhaps dispassionately. What you think about is as much a feature of what happens in your head at the moment as it is what you are exposed to currently. There is no "X is required to think about Y" - either you are thinking about something or you aren't.

    What I have said, and continue to say, is that what you are exposed to (and ultimately what happens in your head even after the exposure ends) is a function of the systems in which you exist. Where those systems create a circumstance that you are exposed to A instead of B, one can inquire as to why A rather than B. That is all I am suggesting you do - consider why Israel and not anything else. If you say it is because Israel Cs and not Ds, it behooves you to at least find out if B also Cs. You can't justify the attention you pay to A by telling me more about A, you need to actually find out about B. But in the system you exist, you aren't going to passively learn about B, you will have to self-educate. All you will ever hear is A. And so you will think about A. And care about A. For all of the right reasons, because we know that A does C! But you will have missed the point.
  • mentos987
    160

    And this is all just some long-winded logic to convince us that we are probably antisemitic for thinking about Israel?

    Nah, I am not following.
  • mentos987
    160

    Thanks for the debate, you hold out well, even if I didn't follow your arguments.
  • mentos987
    160
    You are reversing the order of things.Ennui Elucidator
    Perhaps I misunderstood you, I thought you meant to say that caring about Israel was somehow a proof of underlying antisemetism, but now that I reread your comment I see that may not be what you claim.

    If that is the case, you have my apology, because then I have derailed the debate.
  • FrankGSterleJr
    89
    I have long been, and still am, publicly critical [mostly via published letters to editors] of what I see as clear maltreatment of the general Palestinian people by the state of Israel [i.e. its government and security/defense agencies] and, with few exceptions, Western mainstream news-media’s seemingly intentional tokenistic (non)coverage of it.

    By doing so, that media, whether they realize it or not, have done a disservice to its own reputation and the Israeli/Jewish people themselves [the road to hell, after all, is also paved with good intentions]. Not as widely criticized thus publicized as the violence are the considerable fossil fuel reserves beneath long-held Palestinian land that are a plausible motivator for war.

    Perhaps mostly because I have no Jewish heritage thus experience, I still never expected the level of anti-Semitic attacks in the West since the initial Hamas attack against Israelis. For one thing, the Jewish people in Israel and especially around the world must not be collectively vilified, let alone physically attacked, for the acts of Israel’s government and military, however one feels about the latter’s brutality in Gaza.

    It’s blatantly wrong for them to be mistreated, if not terrorized, as though they were responsible for what is happening there. And it should be needless to say that diaspora Palestinians and Western Muslims similarly must not be collectively blamed and attacked for the acts of Hamas violence in Israel or Islamic extremist attacks outside the Middle East.

    There seems to have been much latent animosity towards Jewish people in general, perhaps in part based on erroneous and disproven stereotypes thus completely unmerited. Also, incredible insensitivity was publicly shown towards Jews freshly mourning the 10/7 victims, especially when considering that young Israelis and Jews elsewhere may not be accustomed to such relatively large-scale carnage (at least not as much as is seen in other parts of the Middle East) in post-9/11 times.

    But also concerning about all of the highly publicized two-way partisan exchanges of fury is: what will young diaspora Jewish and Palestinian children think and feel if/when they hear such misdirected vile hatred towards their fundamental identity? Scary is the real possibility that such public outpour of blind hatred may lead some young children to feel very misplaced shame in their heritage.
  • FrankGSterleJr
    89
    And then there are the ugly external politics of polarization, perhaps in part for its own sake. Within social media the polarized views are especially amplified, including, if not especially, those of non-Jews and non-Palestinians.

    While the conflict can and does arouse a spectator sport effect or mentality, many contemptible news trolls residing outside the region actively decide which ‘side’ they like more or hate less thus ‘support’ via politicized commentary posts. I anticipate many actually keep track of the bloody match by checking the day’s-end death-toll score, however heavily lopsided those numbers are.
  • AmadeusD
    1.9k
    It can also be reflected in systems and institutions that operate in ways that lead to unequal
    outcomes.
    — Australia

    @Ennui Elucidator

    This is only ever even a reasonable inference if you can show the disparity is the result of some policy. Disparate outcomes don't indicate anything about discrimination in most cases.
  • mentos987
    160

    When civilized behavior fails us, we go back to being animals.
  • AmadeusD
    1.9k
    the Jewish people in Israel and especially around the world must not be collectively vilified, let alone physically attacked, for the acts of Israel’s government and military, however one feels about the latter’s brutality in GazFrankGSterleJr

    diaspora Palestinians and Western Muslims similarly must not be collectively blamed and attacked for the acts of Hamas violence in Israel or Islamic extremist attacks outside the Middle East.FrankGSterleJr

    The fact that this is not the starting point for any IRL activity around these two groups is bizarre.
  • Eros1982
    100
    I was seeing an old movie about Algeria a few days ago and just recalled that 60 years ago the most despicable nation for the Muslim world was probably France, not Israel.

    The reason: somehow millions of Muslims had come to believe that France was a Muslim murdering machine and they were reading more bad news from Maghreb countries, than from Palestine.

    Right now, Israel and US are killing more Muslims than France and this is a reason why many people in the Muslim world have forgotten the hatred of their grandparents against the French and other European (colonizing) nations.

    My conclusion in a few words: for the Muslims it does not matter too much whether "their killer" is a Jew or a Catholic, but it matters a lot to Europeans when the killer is a Jew. The comparisons and graffiti of Jewish soldiers with Nazi symbols most probably are made in Europe, not made in Middle East. For the Middle-Easterners all non-Muslim enemies are equal (they, unfortunately, have a blind spot about their own despots). But for many Europeans the crimes of the US, UK and France most probably are not equal with the crimes of Israel.

    If I am right in these beliefs, then the use of the antisemitic label should be confined to Europeans and Christians, whereas other labels should be valid for the rest of the world (who on their right have stopped believing that Europe and Bethlehem are the center of our Universe).
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