I’ve seen a lot of posts on this site that are leaning into anti semetic tropes while criticizing Israel. I want to point it out so that folks can recognize it.
First, because I have to say it:
Israel is a colonial outpost of the United States. It was created by Britain and inherited by the US. The US gives Israel ~3,000,000,000 USD in aid every year. As a colony, it should be the goal of every socialist to destroy it, just as we seek the destruction of the US, Northern Ireland, South Korea, Canada, the Phillipine state, etc.
But! Israel is also a safe haven for Jews. This is seperable from the colonial nature of the state. Israel could have been created in Germany or Siberia or frankly Florida for that matter (in fact, annexing Florida to create a new state of Israel is what I mean when i refer to “the one state solution”). In many ways, the US with its civil rights act serves the same purpose, and in fact, most Jews live in the US.
Many of us had ancestors in Germany or Poland during the holocaust who did not stick around after the war. They saw Israel as their best shot at safety in the wake of the holocaust. Many Israelis are liberals, hoping to vote out Likud, stop supporting settlements, and negotiate palestinian statehood. These people are advocating half measures, sure, but they are not our enemies.
So I wanted to point out some anti-semetic tropes I’ve seen on this website and call them out so you can recognize them.
Conflating Jews in Israel with Zionists.
This can be done through omission. If you aren’t clear whether you’re talking about jews or a specific institution (for example, the I"D"F or the settlements or Likud), many people will read your statement as being about Jews. Be careful with the word “they”
erasing the ambivalent position of jews within colonialism / conflating jewishness with whiteness
The zionist entity is not a Jewish colonial project, but an Anglo colonial project. It was created by the British and now is funded by the US Americans. Jews are an oppressed minority whose oppression is leveraged against other oppressed peoples. Similarly to how the US uses Kurds to Balkanize Iraq or The Hmong to wage counterinsurgency in Laos, it’s uses Jews to destabilize the Levant.
Outside of the US, jews are largely understood as a racial group and oppressed on that basis. Especially in the Arab world where the Islamic hyper nationalism has gained ground in response to colonialism and been funded further by colonialists to their own ends (google “the safari club” or “Israel funds Hamas”)
Blood Libel
This one is the assertion that Jews are uniquely bloodthirsty / murder non Jewish children. The classic example of this myth that people are familiar with is Runplestiltskin.
It is true that the IDF under the direction of Likud and the US state is murdering many Gazans, the majority of whom are children. but! be careful to specify. When people talk about “jews” or “israelis” generally as perpetuating the murder of children, they are engaging in the blood libel trope. Again, be careful with the word “they” and specify which entities you’re talking about.
calling for ethnic cleansing
Okay, wtf ya’ll. It’s not jews as an ethnicity that are oppressing Palestinians, it is US imperial power. Jews have always lived in Palestine and the occupation only began in the 40s as part of a British initiative.
Jews will always be part of a palestinian state, and frankly need protections as ethnic and religious minorities. We do not seek the expulsion of Jews from Palestine, but their integration into it as citizens.
Jews are safe in the US not because its a colonial state but because of civil rights protections and generational wealth. If we can create civil rights protections in Palestine and a social safety net (ideally communism but I’ll settle for social democracy), then jews will be safe in Palestine.
Jewish control of America / protocols of the elders of zion
America controls Israel and not vice versa. APEC is not a cabal brainwashing otherwise Nobel Christian politicians. US politicians support Israel because they’re colonial politicians and Israel is our colony. APEC exists because lobbying is how power is exercised in the US, but if we had patronage instead, APEC’ functions would be carried our by a governor or an ambassador or whatever.
conclusion
Recognize the role of the US empire in Palestinian oppression. Recognize that jews are in an ambivalent racial category and are an oppressed people. Be specific when criticizing Israeli colonialism. Name who you’re criticizing, is it the settlements? The IDF? Likud? The US military Industrial Complex? Stop calling for ethnic cleansing of jews if you’ve been doing that. Don’t equate jewishness with whiteness / the Nazis. White people are white people, the US is the Nazis.
You must log in or register to comment.
Actually sweaty, the USSR did create a Jewish state in Siberia, as a true alternative to Zionism and took in Jews during WW2, which still exists today as the only autonomous state in Russia. So Zionists who moved back to Israel did in fact have an alternative. Mizrahi are cool. Zionists are not cool.
When Zionist movement was founded circa 1897, Russia was host to the world’s largest Jewish population. In fact, during the Russian civil war, the white army (Russian nationalists) led pograms against Jews, and killed up to 125k, mostly in UKRAINE, which surprise, surprise, is ran by Nazis today. It was the Red Bolshevik Army which had a policy of taking in or allying with the Jews, and many Jews embraced Soviet communism because of that. Moscow even hosts the world’s largest Jewish museum today, the Jewish museum of tolerance.
Russia is just as much of a home to the Jews as Israel in the 20th century. No one forced the Zionists to leave for Israel and commit genocide against the Palestinians.
I’m just here to say the Romanov children deserved it
I’m going to quibble with your claim that Israel is a safe haven for Jews. This attack should have ended this claim forever. There is no way Jewish people are safer in Israel than they would be in the us, Canada, the uk, France, Germany, etc.
Secondly, why do Jews need a homeland to be safe? No other group that has been attacked through history ever has been supported in creating an ethnostate in order to protect them. Where is the demand for Roma to have a state to protect that from racism in Europe? Where are the calls to give the descendants of enslaved Africans to be given a state they can control in order to be protected?
Antisemitism is a real problem, and as leftists we must always call it out just as we do for any other form of oppression. I will continue to my best at this as well, and pretty much agree with the specific arguments you make in the rest of your post
I think you’re right that Israel is factually not safe. Although, the attacks were mostly against forward settlements and not like, Tel Aviv (although the bombing obviously changes that). I think I should have differentiated more strongly between the motivations of apolitical and left wing Jews who moved to Israel after the holocaust and the reality of Israel not actually being safe. Thank you for your quibble.
I want to clarify one thing though. in my post, I’m critical of the idea that an ethnostate is the best way to secure Jewish liberation. My proposed solution was one secular state with civil rights protections for religious minorities.
apolitical and left wing Jews who moved to Israel after the holocaust
Being a willing genocidal settler-colonizer is neither apolitical or left wing
Most leftist jews after the Holocaust remained in, returned, or emigrated to the soviet union.
Where are the calls to give the descendants of enslaved Africans to be given a state they can control in order to be protected?
Isn’t that what Liberia is?
Liberia has the exact same problem as Israel. There were already people living there. To be done correctly I think descendants of enslaved Africans would deserve a homeland carved out of the US, Brazil, etc. with the caveat that indigenous peoples of those regions would also have full rights in these hypothetical countries
Edit: this would be similar to the idea that Israel should have been carved out of Germany/Austria but more complicated due the existence of righteous and just indigenous struggles in the americas and Caribbean
It ended horrible for Liberia. The Americo-Liberian attacked and segregated the natives, they ran the country as a one-party state until 1980’s. When the USA decided to fund a coup, they helped a radical right-wing native military goverment be established that caused more and more ethnical problems.
Just because the Americo-Liberian were starting to have diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, ended their one-party system, eased the segregation on the natives and they had started to support Palestine.
But! Israel is also a safe haven for Jews. This is seperable from the colonial nature of the state.
It absolutely is not. As an explicit settler-colonial project with racial supremacist justifications everywhere, you cannot distinguish some kind of “pure” Zionist just looking for safety (who? Be specific) from those who vote for the ethnic cleansing fascists and live on recently stolen land. The people who can be separated are children, those working against the Zionist entity, and possibly those who are simply propagandized and are on their way there.
I will also point out that there are other countries that are just as safe for Jewish people. This is not because those countries lack antisemitism (such as the US), but because the ethnostate in which Israeli occupiers live is not a safe place because the people they displaced and are displacing still live and still resist. You cannot be a safe occupier. Occupation is war.
Many of us had ancestors in Germany or Poland during the holocaust who did not stick around after the war. They saw Israel as their best shot at safety in the wake of the holocaust.
The implicit line here is always that this explains, even justifies occupation, disposession, genocide. Fleeing fascist genocide by settler-colonists does not mean you get to do your own. It was not acceptable then and it is not acceptable now. “Never again” includes everyone.
I know that you don’t mean it like this. But what I say is still true because the ideas are incoherent. Not because you explicitly want to justify the Nakba.
Many Israelis are liberals, hoping to vote out Likud, stop supporting settlements, and negotiate palestinian statehood. These people are advocating half measures, sure, but they are not our enemies.
Yes they are, just like liberals here in the US are our enemy. Liberals are constantly our enemies, they make themselves that by supporting fascism so long as it doesn’t have the name. They can be used by us, but they are the people who call the cops on their black neighbor and putting in a tip that their neighbor was at the protest last night. Liberals will sell you out and people will die by their hand if you’re not more cautious than this.
The question is not whether those settlers are the enemy, it is in how they should be approached.
Conflating Jews in Israel with Zionists.
I agree that nobody should do this. I haven’t seen it but it’s a common enough thing that I wouldn’t be surprised to see some examples.
As an aside, I’ve seen this conflation done by anti-Zionist Jewish liberals many times.
erasing the ambivalent position of jews within colonialism / conflating jewishness with whiteness
Eurocentrism does actually exist in the Zionist entity and Europeans invented the project and largely populated it. They have brought their biases with them and are the dominant culture there. This is the context in which I tend to see Jewish people brought up as being white - when people are talking about Israelis. That’s just an instance of conflating being Jewish and being Israeli.
Blood Libel
I simply have not seen this on hexbear dot net. I would hope that it’s because if it has happened, they were wreckers that are quickly banned.
calling for ethnic cleansing
This one requires citations. Show receipts.
Jewish control of America / protocols of the elders of zion
Same as above.
Conclusion: “blame America, Israel didn’t do nothing at all”
or maybe it’s both. Kinda like in Ukraine, America is to blame and so is Ukraine. But Ukraine isn’t a religion based ethnostate so it’s not a hate crime to criticize them fortunately. The need to suddenly be verrrrry specific with words because Israel are a nation of mostly Jewish people(and mostly settlers) is hilarious. Israel sure did find the loop hole. Israel has sovereignty, they can choose to not be a vassal state at any time they choose.
Don’t equate jewishness with the Nazis
simply the amount of segregation and police checkpoints for Arabs earns them that comparison. the IDF must say “papers please” so many times each day.
The need to suddenly be verrrrry specific with words
it’s no more effort than emphasizing that the islamic state or whatever sect du jour don’t represent ‘muslims’, or the actions of any muslim-majority nation for that matter.
when they say
Don’t equate jewishness with the Nazis
they mean you should say the state of israel, not jews.
For sure, but they conflate Israelis with diasporic Jews quite a bit. As well as differentiating the IDF from Likud as if they and frankly all settlers can be.
I’ve seen a lot of posts on this site that are leaning into anti semetic tropes while criticizing Israel. I want to point it out so that folks can recognize it.
You should take the opportunity to give examples of those posts and call them out directly by name and date of registration. Because I can’t imagine anyone leaning into anti-semitic tropes is anything but a reactionary wrecker. I don’t think you would accuse anyone of being anti-semitic in bad faith but it’s important to remember that this is the number one technique of the ultranationalist lobbyists of Israel when it comes to silencing or slandering pro-palestinian voices. And it’s a very good technique on their part because of the very grim and important history of antisemitism, mostly coming from the very nations funding Israeli settler-colonialism in Palestine.
Israel is a colonial outpost of the United States. It was created by Britain and inherited by the US. The US gives Israel ~3,000,000,000 USD in aid every year. As a colony, it should be the goal of every socialist to destroy it, just as we seek the destruction of the US, Northern Ireland, South Korea, Canada, the Phillipine state, etc.
And those same lobbyists would call you anti-semitic for proposing the destruction of the Israeli settler-colony. So it’s important to remember that the word “anti-semitic” is currently undergoing a semantic decomposition, a “Boy Who Cried Wolf” effect, where the neolib and neocon reactionaries of the imperial core are rendering the word utterly meaningless through their deceptive rhetoric. one of the unfortunate side effects of this, is that actual antisemitic nazis are going to see an opportunity to take advantage of the outpouring of support for Palestinians, and use it to worm their way into mainstream political discourse. This is why we should name these posts and quote them directly, rather than vaguely gesturing that they exist, so that these accounts can get take care and removed from our platform which has never in any way supported anti-semitism.
in fact, annexing Florida to create a new state of Israel is what I mean when i refer to “the one state solution”
Give Florida back to the Seminoles and Miccosukee and other remaining First Nations.
Conflating Jews in Israel with Zionists.
Jewish control of America / protocols of the elders of zion
Please call out and report these posts. These should be grounds for automatic bans.
Conflating Jews in Israel with Zionists.
Unfortunately, he does it in this very post.
When people talk about “jews” or “israelis” generally as perpetuating the murder of children, they are engaging in the blood libel trope.
Those two statements (with “jews” vs with “israelis”) are in no way the same. The first is antisemitism, the second is objective fact and the policy of the Israeli state. To conflate the two is antisemitic, and also plays into Israeli propaganda that they are the representatives of Jews and Judaism.
“Americans are nothing but a bunch of murderers” Correct statement, no issue here.
“Israelis are nothing but a bunch of murderers” Apparently this is blood libel now?
Ethnostates are always bad, Israel would still be bad if it were in Florida.
Right, there needs to be a distinction drawn between ethnostates and nationalism of the oppressed.
The thing is Israel cannot be nationalism of the oppressed. It is fundamentally settler colonial. Great video on why there is no good element to Israel, and why it must be approached as intrinsically opposed to liberation and socialism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mro9y8KZObk&t=1731s
“Antisemite” is basically another word for “whataboutism”. Also actual anti-semites get the
tooAnd since the Apartheid in South Africa ended 30 years ago, accusing anyone critical of apartheid rule of being a communist sympathizer grew out of fashion, so there was an “urgent” need to find a new label
say the line, bart
Semi-joking aside, I know where to not point the finger at. On the contrary also, it’s the people who make this accusation who themselves let it slip. The irony isn’t lost when the likes of Miko Peled and Ronnie Kasrils, along with groups such as SAJFP, JVP and B’tselem consistently get pelted with the “antisemite” accusations on the regular.
Do you think I’m acting in bad faith?
I think that through no fault of the left, this are a lot of hidden dangers to be aware of.
First, there are actual antisemites around. I expect there’s not many on hexbear, but we can’t let our guard down.
Next, fascists use so many tropes and dogwhistles and euphemisms that one can easily stumble into using one accidentally. And even when avoiding those, one can easily be misinterpreted by people who are understandably on alert. And we can also be intentionally misrepresented by zionists or imperialists or others acting in bad faith.
In this context, a post like yours could be read as an accusation or a slander or an attempt to start conflict. I don’t think that’s your intention and I think you were clear in your writing so it would be hard to read it that way. But most of us have experienced a lot of bad faith accusations this week (often from people with power over us) so we’re on guard for that as well.
bad faith
Yes. 100%.
Concern Trolling; False assumptions based on lack of foundation; Lib shit moral grandstanding; probably propaganda.
Instead of a callout to nothing in particular, report specific comments or give examples. Cause I’ve seen nothing of the sort here
how the fuck is Israel “a save place for jews” … what … did i miss the bronx calling a intifada or London needing a Iron Dome … ?
Israel is in fact among the most dangerous places, if not the most dangerous place, in the world to be Jewish, precisely because of the violence inherent in settler colonialism.
The idea that Israel serves as a safe haven for Jews has always played a justificatory role in Zionism but it has never been true.
Recognize the role of the US empire in Palestinian oppression. Recognize that jews are in an ambivalent racial category and are an oppressed people. Be specific when criticizing Israeli colonialism. Name who you’re criticizing, is it the settlements? The IDF? Likud? The US military Industrial Complex? Stop calling for ethnic cleansing of jews if you’ve been doing that. Don’t equate jewishness with whiteness / the Nazis. White people are white people, the US is the Nazis.
Why isn’t “Israel” on your list of OK to criticize groups? The colonialist state of Israel needs to be destroyed and wiped off the face of the earth, and this is not anti-semitic to say. I’ve not seen one person on this site blaming all jews for anything. Can you provide even a single example of this that wasn’t quickly removed by mods? Stop vague posting and concern trolling if you don’t have an explicit example, now is not the time to center the attention on yourself.
Well said. I agree with them when it comes to people saying “Jews”, but when it comes to Israel, any part of Israel, then condemnation is correct. Israel IS the settlements, the IDF, Likud, the MIC. It is the outcome of all of them and exists to carry out the MIC and Likud’s will, and uses settlements and the IDF to do so. Israeli Jews don’t get to use Jews writ large as a shield. They don’t get to claim the oppression of others while they colonize someone else’s land, and yes that means any Israeli citizen not actively opposed to israeli ie Neturei Karta.
Israeli also IS a white supremacist state, look no further than the treatment of Ethiopian Jews. Israel has accepted itself as white and framed itself against Arabs and other people of color. It is flat out not an ambivalent racial category. Jewish is, Israeli is not.
Quoting from BE’s video
i object to people singling out zionism not for the reasons that usually state like anti-semitism etc but because it’s just bog standard settler colonialism it still forms a wider part of settler colonialism it’s still a set of actions that are that easily identifiable as settler colonialism
Many Israelis are liberals, hoping to vote out Likud, stop supporting settlements, and negotiate palestinian statehood. These people are advocating half measures, sure, but they are not our enemies.
Maybe they aren’t your enemies, but they’re mine. Fuck off with this lib bullshit. It’s not only rge recent settlements in, eg the West Bank, that are settlements, ALL Zionists in Palestine are settlers, even those who are heckin wholesome liberals who think Palestinians can have a little of their stolen land back. Your post is soft Zionist apologia, and I think it’s gross
I’m distinguishing between enemies and political opponents. It’s the difference between socialist majority in DSA (our political opponents) and the democrats (our enemies)
The moderates within the oppressing group are a critical part of it with their own specific parts in the functioning of the oppression, and oppression as a whole is our enemy. Of course, we shouldn’t dehumanize them, but we also shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking they are somehow neutral.
Hmmm, maybe you’re right, I want to parse my thinking on this more
To be Jewish is fine.
To be a Zionist is to be a fascist of the same order as those that pursued Lebensraum and Manifest Destiny. They are villains and should never feel safe wherever they go.
P.S.
It’s a pretty easy distinction to make in that you (probably) don’t choose to be Jewish but you do choose to be a Zionist. A Jewish Zionist is awful not because of their being Jewish but because of their goals of ethnic cleansing and militaristic expansionism under the guise of “reclaiming a historic/prophesized homeland”; a non-Jewish Zionist is a Fascist using religion/past persecution/etc. to launder their bloodlust.
Israel is also a safe haven for Jews
Maybe some specific strands of Jewish people. As long as they are white or European or American or however you wanna categorise them. Ethiopian jews are ghettoised and forcibly sterilised.
Legit my fav question to ask people that make this statement conflating Israel with the entirety of Jewish peoples (a exceedingly diverse grouping of various ethnic and religiously distinct traditions/peoples). Also there’s the fact that Israel has a lowkey hate towards Eastern European ethnic Jews as well as also despising the use of yiddish language (legit goal of the Israeli state to ensure yiddish was never spoken). Also yeah never forget what happened to the Jewish ethiopeans that moved to Israel as refugees.
Why don’t they like Yiddish?
the many cultural developments of the diaspora go against the ethnostate desire for a single volk. for zionists, all of jewish history after the destruction of the second temple was a mistake that jews allowed to happen because they were too weak to resist their oppressors.
I’ve seen a lot of posts on this site that are leaning into anti semitic tropes while criticizing Israel.
This is a pretty strong claim to make without presenting any evidence. In fact, is an extremely common thing reactionaries will say, and if any evidence is eventually presented, 99% it’s something inanely unoffensive like a lot of words for “free parking” or “plz no murder”.
For anyone who choose to read my comment but not the rest of OP’s post, the rest of OP’s post does have good points about not using terms that can be interpreted as antisemitic dog-whistles.
IMO rephrasing this as an educational PSA instead an accusation would be better.
I didn’t say “if you’re criticizing Israel, you’ve been doing it antisemetically” I said “a lot of people have been leaning on antisemetic tropes while criticizing Israel.”
I’m not going to dig up every post I’ve reported, but I’ll encourage you to look out for it the next time you’re in the news thread. You’ll see what I mean.
Just dig up one then. Not that I don’t believe you, but the “its so prevalent that it’s not worth my time to show a concrete example” is a common tactic of people arguing in bad faith.
https://hexbear.net/comment/4096717 here’s one. I agree with this post but have been wary of calling it out specifically because of this response btw.
this comment breaks so many rules, including the nsfw tag rule. the only reason it wasnt removed is no one reported it.
REPORT THINGS.
the only reason it wasnt removed is no one reported it.
you WILL not be racistYes
“I’m not going to provide any evidence of the incendiary claim I’m making.”
Perfect, assertions made without evidence can be dismissed without thought.
Kicking out settlers isn’t ethnic cleansing. Did Haitians ethnically cleanse Haiti of French people? Was kicking German settlers out of Poland (that part that was already Poland before the war) ethnic cleansing?
if only the bible had said French people used to live in Haiti 5000 years ago they’d have the cheat code.
Exactly.
It’s fucking sad that even people on this site are doing the whole “but if the colonized people liberate themselves, what’s gonna happen to the poor smol bean colonizers???” deal.
The colonizers are a nuclear weapon state; if your take peaceful and equal coexistence of the colonizers and indigenous people off the table, the solutions you’re left with are ‘more powerful colonizer state dissolves away through the power of magical thinking’ or ‘complete indigenous genocide’, neither of which terribly appeal me.
“Peaceful and equal coexistence of the colonizers and indigenous people” is the fucking magical thinking, jfc. That’s the fucking impossible, blackpilled, nihilism take.
I’m more a fan of the colonizers state dissolves through the power of extreme violence personally. Might as well fucking give up on communism now if we’re gonna let the nuclear blackmail hold us back.
