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There are posts here about the recent shooting at the synagogue in pittsburgh. most people realize that this was a horrible event and that antisemitism itself is horrible, but i am alarmed to see that some people are responding with antisemitic remarks, and annoyed (to put it mildly) that the "justification" appears to be twofold: 1. israel is treating the palestinians badly so it's okay to hate jews, and 2. judaism is a religion, jews are people who follow judaism, therefore they, like other religionists, should be hated. (jews are not all people who follow judaism; jewishness is not the same as judaism, though certainly they can go hand in hand. i'm jewish. i'm an atheist. bite me.) wanting to kill (or disenfranchise, or otherwise discriminate against or even just hate) jews on the basis that israel shouldn't exist (they get history wrong too, and cannot be dissuaded from their misapprehensions) or because bibi is a bad person (he is; so i, in minnesota, should die?) is wrong, ridiculous and alarming. it's also a case of what-aboutism. try explaining that to someone who's doing it on purpose. they know they're doing it. they're not going to say "oh oops sorry!"

i do have a question for americans who think israel should not exist, that the jews can drop into the sea for all they care (yes, someone actually said this), because jews stole the land from the palestinians (again, bad grasp of history, but let's even assume for a moment that that's exactly true): are you finished packing? obviously you intend either to move out of the united states or jump into the sea, since this land we're on was stolen from the native americans, and that's actually unambiguously TRUE, unlike the narrative about the state of israel. when do you intend to be gone? you are leaving, right?

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genessa 8 Nov 1
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8

This was terrorism, has nothing to do with Bibi (whom I can't stand), what is happening to the Palestinians ( which is awful) this is domestic terrorism and has nothing to do with Israel. And it is horrifying that anyone brings any other issue into it! This was a horrifying attack on a group of people who identify as Jewish. Sympathy and help is needed - not attacks on Israel. That deflects from the real issue of our president who incites these acts of terrorism.

omg nani, you said it. you got it, you likely got it before my post anyway, and you said it. i wish more people got it (and said it)! thank you!

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@genessa It is not that hard to understand. We can talk about Israel another time. It is not connected to this. The white supremacists in this country are home grown terrorists and why is that hard to comprehend? People are just ignorant and this is what Trump wants. He wants us fighting amongst ourselves so we don't pay attention to what is happening. Peace my friend!

@GreatNani peace back atcha, my friend!

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7

Religion is a bad story - and countries based on religion are really bad too....

Stig Level 5 Nov 1, 2018

so? did you actually understand the point of my post? or are you attempting to justify antisemitism by saying religion is bad?

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@genessa Love you - but religion is unfortunately a bad thing...

@Stig and what has that got to do with hating jews, even jews who do not follow a religion? and don't say you love me. that's really... ugh, don't say that. you don't even KNOW me.

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@genessa My friendliness and positive sentiment have been rejected. I will respect that and not repeat it....

@genessa Where I am it is the middle of the night and I've just completed my second bottle of wine -so don't take anything I write seriously...

@Stig i can dig that. no wine here, but it's morning, not a time of day i like much, and today makes four weeks i've been fairly ill, so i won't take it personally 🙂)

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@genessa I see you writing good posts. Wish you a good and speedy recovery........This you can take seriously 🙂

@Stig i shall do so and thank you 🙂)

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5

"Zionism is the assertion of the primacy of the Jewish claim to Palestine over the expressed will of the 70% Arab majority before 1948, and at its continued expense since. Israel, as a Jewish majority state, could not have been established other than on the debris of Arab Palestine, the destruction of its society and the dispossession and disenfranchisement of its indigenous population." The Guardian

AntiSemitism is racial/ethnic hatred, which ought not be conflated with anti-Zionism, but it is by both antiSemites and Zionists.

cava Level 7 Nov 1, 2018

expressed to whom? the land was held by the british and two parcels were set aside, a huge one for arabs and a tiny one for jews. the tiny one, at the behest of the arabs, was cut up a little more to make the larger parcel for the arabs even larger. zionism means belief that israel should continue to exist. that is ALL it means. the guardian may say something else. it's wrong. it distorts history and even if it was right in its history, which it is not, being anti-zionist means saying israel should cease to exist. there is every bit as much reason why only native americans should exist in north america as their is that israel should not longer exist. solutions are found by looking forward. be that as it MAY, whatever israel is or isn't, and whatever it is or isn't doing, has NOTHING to do with american antisemitism, except to the extent that it is being used as an excuse to hate jews.

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@genessa Well then provide specific reference(s) the same way I did, assertions don't get us anywhere

@cava no, and i'll tell you why: because it's irrelevant to my point, which is that antisemitism is bad and cannot be justified. you cannot come up with a good reason to hate jews. you can't. israel may be a horrible country (at the moment it is). it's a DIFFERENT PROBLEM. i made a post about people trying to justify antisemitism and i am saying it's wrong. the end. it is not my job to teach history, though more and more i am being obligated to do so.

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@genessa I don't think anyone can come up with a good reason to hate any ethnic group.

@cava well there ya go! i can't think why that seems like such a difficult concept for so many people!

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Yes, the key word is 'reason'. Any people who have seen their fathers, mothers, son & daughters slaughtered for no good reason, are likely to hate whom ever is responsible.
Of course such hatred may make awful sense in some places in the world, thankfully this is not the case for most of the world.

@PalacinkyPDX There is a conflation of being a Jew with actions by the state of Israel. That conflation is ignorant and it is rampant. Just read the UK Press's smears of Jeremy Corbyn.

It enabled Hitler to impose the fear of the Jews as aliens living in and infecting the German people, It is enabling Trump's to spread fear to his constituency by conflating villains with immigrants and then saying they are sponsored by the Jews.

5

i am seeing some answers to this post that are as bad as what my post is talking about.

so let me make it really simple.

i'm an atheist. i am also a jew. i do not follow judaism; i have told you already, i am an atheist. yet ethnically i am a jew. it's part of my cultural identity. i am not israeli. i am american. so some of you think i should be dead, or at least that i am worthy of your hatred, for a variety of reasons, some of which are stated in my post. i think those of you who think that way are haters and that there ARE no good excuses to hate me unless you know me personally and find me hateful. hating me for being a jew is stupid. there is nothing you can say about israel, religion, gods, devils, nazis, palestinians or little red wagons that will justify your hating me because i am a jew. if you hate me because i am a jew, you're an antisemite and that is a BAD thing.

i hope i made that clear.

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@TheMiddleWay no. i am an atheist and a jew. i am ethnically a jew. i am not a person with a jewish background. i'm a jew.

catholicism is a religion. islam is a religion. judaism is a religion. jewishness is an ethnicity. if you're stuck on judaism and don't recognize jewishness, than i understand your confusion and your comparison to other religions. but i do not follow the religion of judaism, though sometimes i participate in bits of it, because i like it (no, i don't think there is a god who wants me to light candles; i LIKE lighting candles!) i am a godless person, an atheist, and i am jewish.

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p.s. i was raised quite secularly (i just reread your post and realized i had not addressed the "religion in your past" part. i really don't have a whole lot of religion in my past.

@TheMiddleWay i didn't state that i don't have a jewish background. i said something LIKE that but that means something different: i said (by comparison) that i am not a person with a jewish background but (rather) a jew. there's a missing "only" in there (sort of like "black lives matter" includes a "too" at the end that shouldn't be necessary). i also said i don't have much religion in my background. i still always knew i was jewish. it's not about rituals and practices. it's about cultural identity. i really don't know how else to explain it! other people have tried and failed; i was hoping to have succeeded lol

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4

The Pittsburgh attack was domestic terrorism plain and simple. Trump is reluctant to declare it as such because he might offend some of his support base. This is a hidden encouragement for others to do bad things and it is also why we must clip Trump's wings and balance power. Let's get some sanity back in America. Vote blue.

amen! (we need a nice secular version of that lol!)

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4

I have noticed that alot here. It makes me sad. Some are hateful toward religious people and some seem to use that as an excuse to veil racism. I noticed it in a thread after that earthquake in Guatemala where the people were grieving and praying because their families and homes were lost. Also the Muslims screwing animals memes. And other stuff. I don't know really much of anything about Jewish history or even what is going on in Israel now but many of the hateful flippant stuff doesn't seem to be coming from a place reason or real concern anyway. Posts saying that Jews, Muslims, Christian's should die, or it's Ok that they were murdered make all athiests look bad.

MsAl Level 8 Nov 1, 2018

Whatever people believe because of religion, even if they believe that they should hate others, they are still victims of religion and are to be shown pity not hatred back. It is good to oppose ideology but not the people who are its prisoners.

@Fernapple I think it's a really fine line. Resentment of religion is appropriate. Saying its OK those people were murdered because they were Jewish, or being freely racist using religion as an excuse isn't.

4

There are far right/ left Atheists on this site. They are no different than the Christians or other religions they criticise.

I'm not a fan of Nuttiyahu but I can certainly agree with your comment. Jews are people just like other people. Is there any proof that a group or a race is responsible for anything? I think that would be in manipulated political jargon.

@DenoPenno i can't stand bibi. at BEST he is trump in the middle east. saying israel shouldn't exist as a nation because it has a bad leader right now... oh, hmm, lemme think who else has a bad leader right now, right?

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@genessa It is America who has a bad leader right now. Trump is the worst.

@DenoPenno yeah that's the one! i knew it was someone 🙂)

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4

as far as I remember from history lessons - Jews were given a portion of palestinian land by the three major powers - and the point is that they want to expand so are basically at war with Palestine an unfair fight because they have all the weapons and have pulled down the palestinians ancient olive trees , surely a crime against nature and humanity . Many Many countries lost people in the world wars but I don't subscribe to the idea that any one person was more deserving that any other- I have a jewish relation - I don't care what people call themselves I don't call myself anything I think the Brits mainly , started this and should go to help sort out the mess they left - You can't take land away from people who have had it for generations and treat them badly just because it happened to you in another context. The people I lost were fighting for justice - This is not justice!

actually that history lessons is only partly correct. the land was not held by the palestinians; it was held by the british. its residents already included arabs and jews. it was a very large parcel of land. the british divided it up into two bits, one huge bit, most of which was then called transjorda, and set it aside for arabs, and one tiny bit, and set it aside for jews. the arabs complained so the brits took a ltitle more away from the tiny bit and added it to the large bit. when the state of israel was formed, the jews told the arabs living there they could stay and be part of the new land and have full civil rights, but the surrounding arab nations told the israeli arabs that they were about to be murdered by the jews, that they should flee immediately. many did, and they fled into the larger bit of land set aside for them, now called jordan. the jordanians REJECTED the fleeing arabs, who now found themselves homeless. meanwhile, the ones who stayed behind became israeli citizens. some even serve in the knesset.

what the current israeli administration is doing is awful. it does not in any way justify the concept that israel should cease to exist and the jews therein be driven into the sea.

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@genessa Your history is rather shaky. The British never 'held' Palestine - they were mandated to administer it under the auspices of the League of Nations. It was then handed over to the UN (The LoN's successor) after WWII and it was the UN that partitioned the land to create the state of Israel.

@Gareth semantics, since my history, far from shaky, is correct in that the jews didn't steal the land from the palestinians. but my whole POINT is that REGARDLESS of that, using israel as an excuse to hate jews is pathetic, among other adjectives i could use.

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@genessa Facts are not semantics. You say the British divided Palestine along ethnic lines, They did no such thing. I know it's secondary to your main point but then it would have been better to have said nothing than to make a mis-statement of fact.

@Gareth my uncle Albert was one of those who stayed there in that role as he was too young to have fought in the war so was sent there as a peacekeeping exercise

@Gareth, @genessa I don't think so I have seen maps of how the country was divided and I rather form ed in my own mind from the actions of the jewish people (not the chassidic Jews who in this d day are being beaten up for not serving in the military by their own countrymen) Just how poorly they have treated the people on the same land we have borders here, England Wales Scotland ireland and Northern Island ,The Isle of Wight etc.they may not like each other at times but have settled down to not trying to invade each others boundaries so why cannot the jewsh peope cosider the plight of the Palestinians whose land is constantly being taken from them .

@jacpod why can't you understand that it is the israeli government, headed by the evil bibi, that is doing this, NOT the jewish people? i'm part of the jewish people. israeli citizens are sick of bibi. they're not doing it. some are... well gosh, if some people do it, and they're jews, obviously it's the fault of THE JEWS. this is EXACTLY the kind of idiocy i was posting about! call things what they are. the israeli government is doing something. "the jews" are worldwide doing whatever, mostly having nothing to do with shooting children. many are protesting israel's policies. but it's THE JEWS. right? right. WRONG.

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4

"israel is treating the palestinians badly" WTF? That has got to be the understatement of the year. What the israelis are doing to the Palestinians is on a par with what the Nazis did to the Jews.

The Nazis were certainly unkind to the Jews and the Russians and the Gypsies and Homosexuals, etc. etc. also quite unpleasant to the point of being not very nice.

oh okay, i am sorry i didn't go on about that for a couple paragraphs. it wasn't the point of my post. but it's not a pain contest, you know.

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@PalacinkyPDX amen!

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"And people who use that comparison are Jew haters. Period."

Many of the people who use that comparison are not haters - they are simply pointing to a similarity which they perceive to be valid, but which is based to a large extent on lack of understanding of the situation due to biased knowledge. They see rabid fanatics who want to get rid of all the Arabs from Israel and who steal land from them at the drop of a hat, and they react to that. They see children being killed in Gaza and regard it as terrorism by the state. They see protesters being shot dead for going near a fence. If you just write them off as Jew haters, you're pushing them further away rather than helping them see the full picture. It would be better to accept that some of the actions of Israel are indeed akin to Nazism and to condemn those. By failing to do that, you merely "confirm" the views of the people who think you're a Nazi. And if you want to understand why they use the word Nazi, it's usually because they're trying to get through to you - to make you understand how wrong what you're doing is by helping you to identify with the victims. That's their motive - they want to shock you into seeing what you look like to the other side. What they don't see is the Nazism from the other side - the fanatics who want to wipe out all the Jews. They don't understand that there are two sides made up of people who for the most part could live together peacefully, but that everything is stuffed up by the small proportion of hotheads who just want to stir up conflict and kill, and that will never end so long as the sources of primary hate are tolerated and where anyone who condemns the primary hate is branded as a bigot.

It's a mess - a tortuous puzzle that no one knows how to solve other than through genocide, and most people are content to sit back and just let that be the solution. My proposed solution though is to stamp on the real haters - the individual people who stir up conflict and want to wipe out the other side; the ones who commit the acts that lead to the word Nazism being used to describe them. There are Nazis like that on all sides, and it's our job to stamp on our own Nazis before we stamp on the Nazis on the other side. Denying that some of our tribe are Nazis and throwing accusations of hate when they are described as such is part of the problem.

@David_Cooper using that comparison in order to dismiss antisemitism is inappropriate. every damned time someone says "there is antisemitism" (referring NOT to israel but to something like pittsburgh, or the outcry against george soros, or anything steve bannon or stephen miller ever said) and someone ELSE says "what about israel" it's inappropriate, because it's changing the damned subject and making false conflations. i mentioned israel because of this, NOT because of anything to do with israel itself, or that situation. i wasn't defending israel's policies, which are awful, although i did go so far as to defend israel's right to exist.

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@Surfpirate as many Poles were murderd in that war as Jews

@genessa I was responding to a very specific point about whether people have any right to call Jews Nazis, and in some cases I think they should not be condemned for it. I only ever see the Nazi word being thrown at Jews in relation to Israel and the treatment of Palestinians. In the case of the Pittsburgh killer it is unlikely that he gives a damn about Palestinians being killed in Israel - he would doubtless like them all to be wiped out too because his motivation is racist/religionist, so he certainly isn't going to be calling Jews Nazis. When the word Nazi is flung at Israeli Jews though, it is being used in the same way as the word fascist, again widened from its original context. The word Nazi has developed a wide range of uses, some of which apply it to irritating but harmless people like "grammar Nazis". The use of the word does not equate the person it's used against with Hitler but merely means extremist (but with a bit of added bite). It is still highly unpleasant to use that particular word against Jews because it has such a horrific association for them, but the people using it against them are more than a little dim. My point was simply that it is wrong to write them off as Jew haters when so many of them genuinely believe they are throwing the word at murderers and people who give political support to those murderers.

@PalacinkyPDX I agree with you on almost all of that, but while some people are using the word Nazi with a very specific aim to equate Jews with Nazis in order to whip up hate against them, many others are not using it with that intention at all, but are merely expressing their horror at the things the see Israel doing. The Internet now pumps out one-sided propaganda which is programming them to hate Jews, and most people are trapped in their own bubble within the internet where only one side of things is ever fed to them. They are more than deeply ignorant as a result, but condemning them for using the word Nazi against people the they see doing things that they see as being directly equivalent to the behaviour of actual Nazis is counter-productive. You don't win people over by condemning them when they believe that they're doing the right thing. The way to win them over is to be kind to them and understand why they're behaving the way they are. That way, you have a chance of educating them and fighting back against the propagandists rather than pushing them into digging in against you.

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Sure you get to vent...but you expect a coherent, rational answer from an incoherent, irrational person?

lerlo Level 8 Nov 1, 2018

to whom do you refer? i wasn't expecting anything from anyone, just presenting my experience and observation here. yes, of course i expected responses. i was hoping i wasn't going to get quite so many that seem to be justifying antisemitism on the very bases i was decrying, but i'm not horribly surprised.

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@genessa Well that's what I meant--if you're calling out the idiots you can't expect rational, coherent responses from them

3

I honestly don't understand how anybody still hates anyone else for their borders, or religion, or sex, or skin color, or nation's history. I thought that was something children grow out of.

The actions in the Middle East are constantly justified by people citing some piece of history by the other side while ignoring their own atrocities. Americans do it with the Natives who were here before us, almost every country and nation has some ugly piece of their history.

Hating people you don't know because of something they had nothing to do with is pathetic. I've got loads of people I hate but I know them and they're assholes, I mean why waste the hate?

exactly! if someone is going to hate me, let them hate me because of ME!

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Violence motivated by hate, fear, greed, and jealousy is just plain wrong yet it is part of being human. As far as I'm concerned this planet is not owned by humans any more than it is owned by the plants and animals that reside here. It is a privilege to live here and we survive as best we can.

Greed has always played a role in human history, wars are fought and land is claimed. It has happened countless times in the past and will continue to happen long into the future and there will aways be groups of people blaming other groups and that usually ends up with violent acts.

What a waste of precious time.

Betty Level 8 Nov 1, 2018
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I support Palestine, I am not American but spent 22 years of my life married to a Jewish American man. Everyone needs a home and because it is special to all three Abrahamic religions, they all want to live there. The solution is enlightenment but we won't see that in my life time but it will happen, then perhaps fighting over a peace of land will seem pointless. I understand that the situation is very complex but we cannot rest until we can find a way for people to live together. Anti-semitism is wrong. It is hateful and does not help the move towards peace. No one deserves to die in the way those poor people did.

this is all true. i will just iterate that one of my points above is that people use the israeli-palestinian situation to justify antisemitism and i think there is no justification for antisemitism, which in the end really has nothing to do with israel at all. but everything you said is true.

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@genessa

There is no justification for hate of any kind.

@Betty If someone killed my puppy or my mother, I would probably hate them. How is there no justification for hate? It is a very common, natural, human feeling.

@Betty i was about to say this is true but i have to confess to a hatred. i feel hatred for nazis.

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@genessa I agree completely. Perhaps I didn't explain that well.

@Amisja lol no, you were fine 🙂)

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@genessa

I don't hate, not even Nazis. What I do believe in, is justice for the crimes they have committed as I would for anyone who has committed a violent crime.

@genessa Also, people will use antisemitism as a label for people who express sympathy for the Palestinian's plight. It works it more than one way.

@sadistic

Under those circumstances, I would be angry and want justice but I would not hate. The word is so loosely used these days to describe a variety of negative emotions but true hate motivates violence and I refuse to go there.

@Betty i'm human. i am not immune to human emotions. unlike nazis and kkkers and others of their ilk, i do not project my hatred beyond its correct target and i also do not act on it, at least not with hatred. i do vote 🙂)

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@genessa

Good to know. The word "hate" has so many descriptors now that it has lost some of its power in conversations, from I "hate this color to invoking extreme violence. I was taught at an early age that "hate" can lead me down a dangerous path so I try to use different words to express my emotions.

I understand that many use the word casually but it always gives me a pang in the gut when they do.

I apologize if you felt judged, it was not my intention.

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Im just here to say I proudly havent seen any antisemetism about (within this site); probably because I got all of the most extreme conservatives to block me post haste 🙂 If I see some Ill make sure to troll them just the same.

lolol that is a good way! i have been blocking people left and right myself. um, not left and right. just right rofl! i think only one got a chance to block me first (i do try to give them a chance but many of them just like to fight, and their modus operandi is usually of a gaslighting nature, which does then impel me to block them).

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@genessa antisemetism, xenophobia of all kinds, mysogynists n MRAs with more loyalty to their guns than their women/daughters, excuses for sex and war criminals... These are just a few of the fine symptoms of fascism that you too can eliminate by encouraging hardline conservatives to block you en masse! Despite being a gun owner thats banned from all related groups, I highly recommend it. The average quality of intellectual discussion goes way up.

@Wurlitzer you are a gun owner who understands that common sense gun legislation is not the same as confiscating everyone's guns (ar-15s notwithstanding) and that the words "well regulated" are actually IN the second amendment. no wonder they block you! you can't go around being reasonable and knowing facts and stuff and expect people to like you rofl

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@Wurlitzer, my women and daughters all have guns. Problem solved.

@genessa, you should go to that or any synagogue and ask the holocaust survivors what they think of "common sense gun legislation," which we already have in place and would not have stopped this or any alleged shooting in the past six years, and what happened when Hitler implemented it in his country. Or you could just look up the holocaust.

@genessa I know right, what was I thinkin? silly me ?

@genessa the main reason I knew the NRA nuts were losin it before they started laundering russian money was if you say the point of owning all these military weapons is so you can protect your freedoms from the government but you say nothing when unlawful search and seizure becomes weaponized, then youve already given up your other freedoms, you aint protectin shit with your toy. See how you do against a drone with that though good luck.

@Wurlitzer yes, use old betsy against the black helicopters rofl

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@sadistic well here's a suggestion for you: stop being patronizing and making false assumptions about what people know. your history is incorrect and your assumption about me about holocaust survivors, with some of whom i am personally acquainted, is incorrect. but get, reality is harder to deal with than your own idiocy, isn't it? ass. i don't need to hear from YOU anymore.

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@sadistic yeah thatll help them a lot when sex criminals are making their laws. But only if theyre willing to do something about it.

@Wurlitzer i think you tagged me in something i can't see because i blocked the ass. i trust it was pithy lol you, i like!

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3

Anti-Semitism is so thoroughly embedded into the Zeitgeist, that it's become not only acceptable, but barely even noticable for a majority.
I personally stand in stark opposition to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and am a proponent of a two-state, shared Jerusalem (either split it down the middle or have a joint Arab-Jewish city council) solution. That said, nowhere in the political discussion is there room for anti-Semitism, as Israel is only a scapegoat, beside the point. Anti-Semitism existed long before the Israeli state, and regardless of Israel's continued existence, will persist until anti-Semitism is universally addressed as what it truly is: racism.
Side note; you are not the only one who is disturbed by some of the rhetoric here. I myself have found it quite disgusting. I believe however that more people will stand for what's right than not.

wisdom i see in your words! i share your hope for a two-state solution (wiping out israel would be as horrible as wiping out the united states because europeans stole the land from indigenous peoples) and i share the views you have just expressed. i HOPE you are right that more people will stand for what's right than not. it's one thing when people are just haters; they must be in the minority. it's another when people really are misinformed and think that if you're jewish you must be a horrible person, whether it's because they think the jews are a race of evildoers (they've been taught this) or because they think every jew in the world stands behind bibi and wants to eliminate palestinians from the face of the earth, or because they think jews own everything in the world, or... well i've heard some wild ones, too, and yes, some of the folks who believe all that are haters, but some are believing what their parents and communities have told them. and there are an awful LOT of them.

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3

All antisemitism is abhorrent. But, you are making a huge mistake in equating disapproval of Israeli government and policy with antisemitism. Netanyahu is a thuggish ideologue with aggressive nationalistic and even imperialistic motivations. His actions against Palestineans treats them as third class sub-humans who have few, if any, rights within Israel. So long as Israel treats Palestineans as they do, it will never have peace. Indeed, Netanyahu's policies seek expansion and domination, not peace. If you cannot see that, you have moral blinders on.

i would be making a mistake equating them. however, i am not equating them. please read my post again. as for moral blinders, you have SOME kind of blinders on, because you 1. apparently think i like bibi and i hate him, and have SAID so (elsewhere including in comments here). even if i didn't say "i hate bibi" above i did not indicate in any way, shape or form my approval of him or his policies, and i did indicate without naming him that i do NOT approve. 2. apparently think i am equating not liking bibi and being antisemitic. i don't even know where you get this. what i am saying is antisemitic is "bibi is bad and israel is misbehaving and therefore jews are evil and i hate jews." THAT is antisemitism, it's not the only example, but it's one i've been seeing. i can't help wondering if you really read what i said. your response indicates that you think i said the OPPOSITE of what i said.

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All lands are stolen, usually several times over, if you accept the idea of "race" and that a race can own land. Yet the idea of race is technically disproved by science, we are all one family more closely related and with less genetic diversity that the average family of chimps. And the Jewish race is even more removed from reality, since it is a Pseudo-race made up from many different peoples from many different places and cultures at many different times, who are only connected by a variable ideology.

So what? It did not matter to the Nazis, Russians, Spanish, Turks or anyone else that have persecuted Jews that it was (allegedly) a made up race.

@273kelvin That's my point, that the justification for what the Nazis, Russians, Spanish, Turks etc. did/does not exist. Nor does the justification for what takes place in America now exist.

@Fernapple The justification is irrelevant. The act is. If you were a jew, you would be crazy not to want somewhere in the world you could go to to be safe.

I ma not sure that I do accept the idea of race I accept an idea that we are all human whatever colour we are (and people termed 'white ' are also people of colour as we have many hues ) I accept that we be often behave very badly to each other and haven't found the way to acceptance yet that we are all the same cut us we all bleed shoot us we all die make love we mostly get children- I would say nowhere in the world is safe.

@273kelvin You still do not seem to realize that I am not disagreeing with you, please try to read more carefully. When I said what is happening in America I was talking about the shootings, (topical) not about the Jewish community.

@jacpod The chimps have another lesson for us, since most chimps, who are our closest relatives, are born white and turn black at maturity. Some things are very superficial.

@jacpod, @Fernapple Race may seem irrelevant, superficial or bogus but tribes are not. Whether you subscribe to the ideology or dont? You must accept that it is the motivation behind many actions.

@273kelvin I do indeed, that is why I am on a site for people who reject tribal and ideological claims, especially those made with no evidence.

there is a jewish ethnicity. race doesn't exist; ethnicity is a thing. my point is not that jews are or are not a race. my point is that there is antisemitism here and elsewhere, and it's being expressed here in pretty dreadful terms, and various excuses are being made for it, and the excuses are bogus.

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@genessa Yes that it quite true. But to many of the people attacking Jews their motive is racial, and saying that I do not approve of attacking people for reasons of race, does not mean that I approve of attacking them for other reasons either.

@Fernapple Isn't it ironic that the only people who try to define the Jews as a race are either Jewish or anti-semitic? The rest of us regard all of it as nonsense.

@GarethYes, and It is I think an error to make too much of the difference between racial, religious an ethnic hate, we may do so but people who hate often do not, it is all one to most of them.

@Gareth i have not defined the jews as a race. i define jewishness as an ethnicity (actually more than one, but we usually mean the ashkenazic cultues). there is no such physical thing as race.

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@genessa Yes that is my point, it is the people who hate who are unable to disentangle religious. racial and ethnic reasons for hating, you misread my post.

@Fernapple no, i did not misread your post.

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Please don't believe all Americans think this way... Those things that believe this horrible stuff are probably living a shitty life and want to spread shit around to others... It's ridiculous.... Personally, I love most people...

well, i AM an american. so....

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Israel's injustice towards the Palestinians is no excuse for Anti-Semitism. It's ironic, but not surprising, that some rabid American Zionists are willing to support Trump because he supports Israel although his right-wing supporters endanger the lives of American Jews. To these Zionists, Israel - as a nationalistic, religious concept - has become more important than the security of American Jews here. In the wake of the Pittsburgh atrocity, let's focus on building secular, non-discriminatory societies here and in Israel-Palestine.

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the news broadcasts I get ,do rather support the fact that Jews are constantly encroaching on Palestinian territory - wasit not last justa few weeks ago palestinian children were shot at? It might be a good idea to look up Noam Chomsky for his take on it as he is always fair and accurate, We also seem to be always talking about the land issue without paying attention to how many beautiful Jewish perople live amongst us in the diaspora and I would hate it if everyone referred to me all the time as the Englander my name is Laura.

jews are? oh you mean me, or the jews of new york, or...? ISRAEL is. i am not always talking about the land issue. i am sometimes talking about antisemitism and inevitably someone brings up israel, as if the situation there justifies hating jews. yes, i am aware of mr chomsky; i do not have to look him up.

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Calls all stupid, homophobic, racist bigots because of their religion - lauded by atheists everywhere
Suggests that Israel miiiiiiiiight have some involvement in the murdering of women and children and the perpetual war in the middle east due to their religion - lambasted by atheists everywhere and called an antisemite

yeah i see YOU didn't understand my post. i did not say, imply or otherwise intimate that disapproving of israel's actions is antisemitic. what i said was that people who say "what about israel?" to justify their irrational hatred of jews (not judaism,not israel, not politics, JEWS, actual people, some of whom, like me, are atheists) are morons and bad actors. try to get it. it's really easy.

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Yes, Israel is stealing land from the Palistinians much like the US stole from Native Americans but it’s still not an excuse to shoot up a synagogue of people who have nothing to do with it.

What happened here in Pittsburgh was an act of terror. To cause fear in the Jewish community.

People that have lived here all their lives follow Mr Rogers’ philosophy of helping your neighbors and accepting people.

A mentally ill man full of fear and hatred trying to spread his feelings to everyone around when all he had to do was ask for help to cope with feelings and get the mental health treatment he needed.

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Netanyahu is like Trump with brains.

ha yes he is, rather. icky at any rate. just a reminder that my point is that whenever i bring up antisemitism, or anyone brings up antisemitism, someone always brings up israel in such a way as to imply that the situation in the middle east justifies antisemitism. i don't know -- maybe i should start mentioning that i am not related to bibi?

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@genessa -- You make the common mistake of assuming anyone who is not a Jew can understand antisemitism. There are some who can grasp it to a degree, but even indigenous peoples who have been sytematically murdered, driven off their lands, tortured, marginalized, dehumanized/demonized, and suffered long term prejudice can't really know what it is. Antisemitism as we know it today is a unique form of prejudice, a special case that even many Jews don't fully understand. It is, in terms of ordinary hatreds and prejudices, a newcomer on the human scene, and it is anything but ordinary. At least as I see it.

Ordinary hatred of a people who are in one way or another different from the predominant or majority people goes back well into the times when small bands were wandering the African savanna. Long before religions and color. Long before ownership or sovereignty. Long before economics or class. Hatred of the other generates from fear of the other (xenophobia) when anything, no matter how insignificant, causes a rift between them or justifies exclusion of the others. We and many other groups have been living with that since the beginning. Antisemitism evolved out of that, but it is something beyond.

Even when Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome sometime between 41 CE and 53 CE, that was not antisemitism. It was prejudice to be sure, but not the antisemitism we know now. In 136 CE, Hadrian renamed Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina and built a Roman monument over the site of the Temple Mount and we were banned from visiting. He then renamed Judea as Palestine to suppress the Jewish connection with the land. Even that was not how we experience antisemitism.

Not even when we were officially declared the murderers of that Dead Jew on a Stick did we know antisemitism. Antisemitism wasn't born yet. But it was on its way. I think the first hint of what we now know as antisemitism was when Wagner published his Das Judenthum in der Musik, though it still wasn't full blown. That wouldn't happen until much later. The pogroms weren't yet all out antisemitism. They were not in the least pleasant and often resulted in the deaths of Jews, but they were still expressions of 'ordinary' hatred, 'common' prejudice. Nothing unique. Not yet. The foundations were being laid and they were building up faster and faster.

Real antisemitism (at least as I define it) occurred the instant the idea took hold that the Jews, as a people, should be exterminated. That is the uniqueness to antisemitism. Calling me names, denying membership in this or that, classifying me by stereotype, etc. is merely prejudice. I don't use the term antisemitism unless I know that some action is accompanied by the idea that the Jews should be exterminated. I think we cheapen the word, take its edges off when we use it for acts or 'ordinary' prejudice. Then again, this is just my opinion.

hmm, it is an interesting take on it and i can't agree or disagree right off the bat, without giving it some thought. i tend to disagree because the idea that jews should be extinguished predates wagner, but that only means i tend to disagree with just that one bit. let me mull it over.

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@genessa -- Sorry, but the idea of extermination is post Wagner. Murder existed, yes, but not even Muslims entertained the annihilation of the Jews. If they had, we quite probably would not still be here. We actually played a rather important role in the Muslim expansion, particularly in Spain. The pogroms in the Pale were not aimed at wiping us out. Intimidate? Yes. Kill some? Yes. Eliminate? No. That came later and it is what came later that causes me to make the distinction between antisemitism and prejudice. It's a not too subtle distinction, either. However, it is difficult for most to see without investigating some.

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. That distinction is something that is important to me as I feel it unfair to accuse someone of antisemitism when they are only practicing blind, stupid prejudice, because the difference is important to me. I don't feel justified to do great bodily injury to someone who just hates me, whereas I have no compunction about nailing a Neo-Nazi who would be happy to see us disappear from the face of the Earth.

By the way, I know I'm splitting hairs here. It is merely my take on the subject.

Roman Palestine was comprised of more than Judea. The land of the Philistines was also incorporated. The word Palestine is Latin for Philistine. That's why the Romans chose that name. Palestinians are partially descended from the Philistines, Canaanites, and Jews who accepted Jesus and later Muhammad - among other origins.

@PalacinkyPDX -- Blood libel riots, pogroms of all times, the creation of ghettos and all of that I am well aware of. I am cognizant of all of it. As of the 15th of this month I will have been a Jew for 78 years -- I was born with the condition -- and much of my family were firsthand witnesses to the worst of the European hatred periods. You failed to understand the point of what I said. You also failed to notice that I said it was just my opinion that there is a distinction between the two. The distinction I draw is that the word antisemitism for me is restricted to and associated with the notion to destroy us utterly as a people, to specifically set out to drive us into extinction. To me, antisemitism was born in the mid 1800s and matured in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference.

In other words, my distinction between prejudice (even violent and deadly prejudice) and the move to remove us from the face of the Earth is not BS. I don't know about you, but my family here in the US fought in WWII and when my father and uncles returned, I was admonished in no uncertain terms in the following manner:

"Whatever you do, never say you are a Jew. Just remember, you are not a Jew." The family life changed radically in 1946.

@PalacinkyPDX -- As you wish.

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Word. Hate is wrong no who it is directed against when done solely on the basis of group affiliation.

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