Is there a wording I can use to express my distaste for the the blockade, a sentiment shared by Ban Ki-moon, that won't get me called anti-Semitic?
Jeremy Corbyn - Not Not Labour Party(?), not a Communist (BBC)
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Words are hardI don't know but there is one less word you could use in the question.
You must have missed the bit where I showed why MacPherson is a poor comparison to make as it has a very narrow and specific purpose.
And no it's not that obvious to me, please explain. Why shouldn't governments and organisations have similar documents for other minorities decided on by representives of those minorities?
The point I'm trying to make is that to get credibly accused on anti-semitism, the major determinant doesn't seem to be actual anti-semitic actions but proximity to established power (the Koch* network in the US is vast), and policy regarding Israel.**
Omar and Corbyn have faced multiple calls to resign, repeated condemnation from their own parties, but even though swathes of the Republican party and chunks of academia and think-tanks are run with Koch money, there has never been a campaign about it.
So it makes it hard not to think that the truthfulness or magnitude of the allegations is secondary to the fact that Corbyn is already loathed by most of the establishment.
**Haaretz did have objections to that Koch investment, not on the grounds of their past or holocaust denial associations, but because one of their organisations showed the film about Israeli lobbying in the US.
*Off-topic bonus - I just learnt that their father actually did the both-sides thing in a war, the Rothschild/anti-semitic trope, what Milo Minderbinder as an exaggerated parody of capitalism does in Catch-22:
"Winkler-Koch would later contract to refine high-octane fuel for US warplanes, many of which would eventually destroy a particularly high-value Nazi target in Hamburg Germany, the Winkler-Koch refinery."
It’s good to call out hypocrisy. But noting the perceived power differential shouldn’t have any bearing on an objective assessment of the “truthfulness or magnitude” of each case. It’s not like the leftist critiques of Israel and Zionism are entirely disinterested, they are tied into an overall approach to the question of power relations in this world which often also leads the left to overlook the faults and crimes of those who happen to serve its agenda. It should all be called out when appropriate.
It can very well undermine it, depending on what reaction there is to the presence and participation of antisemites. I've followed the disputes and activism around this topic for a long time, and it's safe to say that the majority of pro-Palestinian activists don't care at all.
To find examples you don't need to look further than the Caf, in fact just the page before your post. A proponent of the left defended a prominent Islamist and antisemite by quoting from a popular pro-Palestinian activism website. Together with other examples, the criticism towards that person (and, by extension, Corbyn) was labeled "complete shite". Such a stance doesn't leave a lot of room for error, to put it mildly. Another user then challenged that defense, showed up the deliberate omissions in the quoted web article, highlighted why the guy in question has indeed a history of open Jew hatred.
One could expect someone with a progressive outlook to take such criticism serious, but the reaction was - nothing. And in my experience, this is absolute standard behaviour. Just one small episode that shows a pattern I've seen repeating over and over in pro-Palestinian circles. Antisemites in one's own camp will be defended until that's not possible anymore - then the indefensible will be ignored and forgotten. Antisemitism is usually treated as a strictly tribal matter, meaning it will only be mentioned when it doesn't hurt one's own faction, and completely ignored otherwise. This is a widespread attitude towards Hamas, Hezbollah, Press TV, all kinds of pro-Palestinian activists and advocates with tendencies like that, and so on. It's a massively frustrating enterprise to try to challenge this attitude by pointing out relevant statements and incidents, and, as I have learnt, usually a futile one.
To be honest, I dont know. My guess is that we would get a similar if not quite proportional response. I'll lay out a couple of reasons why I think Israel gets the criticism it does other than anti semitism, which I concede explains part of it though I would say more on the right than the left.
- Israel has been extremely successful at their propaganda. They have a very strong influence over the foreign policy of a country on the UN security council and thus can exert influence far beyond that of a similarly sized country like Ireland or Serbia. Would an Irish PM be invited to address Congress as a rebuke to a sitting President like Boehner invited Netanyahu?
- Jews are not the only people accused of dual loyalties, Muslims (at least in the US) are routinely accused of this also. Hell, Illhan Omar is often accused of this.
- Israel's power seems to continually grow despite criticism. Israel now controls far more land and people than it did just a few generations ago and is the only nuclear power in the region.
- Peaceful attempts to protest and sanction have been almost completely ineffective and pro-Israeli lobbyists have helped enact outrageous anti-BDS laws.
- Left wing people who criticize Israel do so because they (rightly IMO) see Israel as the oppressor and Palestinians as the oppressed. I think your last paragraph addresses the issue as the left should protect minorities but I think its more than the left should protect the oppressed against the oppressor. Look at Israel's history of support for Apartheid South Africa, look at their rabid support from US Republicans, look at their alliance with Orban. These arent the minorities who need protecting here. They are the oppressors. At least that's the way the left sees this.
- Finally, I think most people have very limited experience with Jews. I'd wager than half of Americans have met only a couple Jews in their entire lives. There are 4 million jews in the US, slightly over 1%, and most of them are clustered in a few areas. I lived in one of those areas so I grew up with Jewish friends and went to dozens of bar/bat mitzvahs. For most people though, there really isnt a ton of interaction. Google says there are roughly a quarter million Jews in the UK and more than half of them live in London. When you dont have personal experiences with a people you are more prone to believing conspiracies about them.
Er....I think your talking about me here. I gave a quick read to @2cents post and yeah I agree and maybe my position might have been wrong but while I do have over 8,000 post on this place I also actually have other things to do in life as well.
It's merely an example for the standard non-response towards cases of antisemitism whenever they're inappropriate. Could have been plenty of other examples just as well.
Er....I think your talking about me here. I gave a quick read to @2cents post and yeah I agree and maybe my position might have been wrong but while I do have over 8,000 post on this place but I do actually have other things to do.
sure
Yep.sure
As i said in some previous responses, he doesn't actually care and is using the issue to get air time and position for an eventual leadership bid.
But it’s not true that macpherson was narrow and limited in its consequences. A cultural consequence is if someone says they are experiencing racism we have to listen. So if a load of Jewish people are saying they are experiencing antisemitism within the labour movement, then they deserve a fair hearing not denial or dismissal because it’s inconvenient to wider political fights.
The IHRA was created initially to combat ignorance about the Holocaust and its causes. There’s nothing stopping other minorities having their own equivalent I guess, but I’m not sure the point you are making. That it’s unfair that Jews have an organisation to remind everyone not to try to wipe them out again, please, and other minorities dont?
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Whatever reason IHRA was created for it has immediately been weaponised as a means of protecting Israel
I blame Israel for many things but Corbyn's inability to deal with his anti-semitic supporters isn't one of them.
He's being asked to stop abuse on the Internet, some trick considering Facebook and Twitter can't manage it.
@Eboue i had an even longer post written out but I’ll leave it for the sake of our time, etc. Enough to say that while I don’t share the basic assumptions which underlie your approach to this conflict, we could legitimately discuss and argue over any of your points without it ever crossing my mind that antisemitism was a motivating factor in your critique. I’ll just comment on the fifth point though, because it presents an opportunity to look at just how I feel the popular contemporary leftist critique of Israel tends to leave spaces to be filled by antisemitic discourse.
It is of course the nature of the left to focus on the power relations it deems define the conflict and issue its support accordingly. I think this approach has its limitations but it's completely legitimate as long as it's just the start of the analysis, not the end of it. A good old-fashioned Marxist approach to the conflict would strive to identify the roots of the apparent power imbalance by applying the classic critiques of imperialism and nationalism to the conflict, identifying the various material factors which produced it and continue to prolong it, while honestly and without hesitation accounting for everything that complicates a purely black-and-white assessment (this is the approach taken by the Marxist Arabist Maxime Rodinson who wrote one of my favorite books on this conflict, Israel and the Arabs).
Unfortunately I think today an influential (though perhaps not particularly large) section of the left has little interest or time for this kind of approach, it prefers a reflexive analysis based to some degree on the identification of the conflicting parties with the identity and racial politics which have come to dominate so much leftist discourse in the West. The idea that there are clear-cut divisions between certain privileged groups and the not so privileged - a valuable approach generally in my opinion, but always problematic when applied to the Jews because antisemitism requires at least some Jews to be perceived as privileged and powerful in order to flourish. So Israel becomes the privileged White Man in the Middle East, or worse the successful powerful Jew, imposing itself on a basically defenseless subaltern people, and no further explanation is really needed since all we need to understand are these relations of power.
Problems arise when this simple approach is confronted with complicating factors. Some obvious examples would be: the antisemitism which drove the original Zionist project and ultimately produced the Holocaust; the fact that about half the Jewish-Israeli population is descended from the MENA region; the very real and genuine historical, cultural, religious and emotional ties Jews have always maintained with the contested land; the genuine liberal strain that exists in Israeli society; the very real security challenges Israel faces in the region; the sorry state of politics in the surrounding hostile region; and the fact that the regional confrontation with Israel over the decades has been channeled primarily through two ideologies - Arab nationalism and Islamism - which are inherently illiberal, intolerant, and some might argue fascist in nature. Acknowledgement of these things needn't alter the ultimate conclusion that Israel is the oppressor and the Palestinians the oppressed. But without an honest accounting for them in the analysis, they will be ignored, minimized, distorted or denied when raised, and lazy, reflexive, conspiratorial and in some cases antisemitic rhetoric will fill the gap (hence "it's AIPAC" or "Zionist controlled-media!").
So Zionists are resented for having suffered the Holocaust which they now employ to secure their privileged status, while being told they are actually implicated in the Holocaust (or else the Holocaust is explained away in some fashion); Mizrachi Jews are told they're suffering from a false consciousness; Ashkenazi Jews are dismissed as the descendants of the Khazars; Israeli Jewish victims of Palestinian terrorism are told they themselves are responsible since they are represented by a "baby-killing" military; Israeli liberalism is an insincere facade used to "-wash" Israel of its crimes for a Western audience; Arab dictatorships are simply serving the Zionist agenda and nothing more; and the "resistance" is actually an authentic and legitimate left-wing socialist response in Middle Eastern garb. What this all looks like to any Jew with any kind of attachment to Israel (i.e. most of them) is a collective attempt to dismiss their history and narrative as contrived, fraudulent, and nefarious; so that even in cases where no antisemitic implication is intended or indeed even explicitly apparent, there is a natural tendency to see antisemitism nonetheless. I do think many Zionists could be more understanding of the ways that well-meaning people can get sucked into this kind of discourse. And of course there will be those who seek to cynically employ "antisemitism" in any case - in an age where so much political discourse places premium value on the idea of a hierarchy of victimhood, it would be extremely strange to find that Jews alone were somehow immune to the temptations of the race to the bottom.
It is of course the nature of the left to focus on the power relations it deems define the conflict and issue its support accordingly. I think this approach has its limitations but it's completely legitimate as long as it's just the start of the analysis, not the end of it. A good old-fashioned Marxist approach to the conflict would strive to identify the roots of the apparent power imbalance by applying the classic critiques of imperialism and nationalism to the conflict, identifying the various material factors which produced it and continue to prolong it, while honestly and without hesitation accounting for everything that complicates a purely black-and-white assessment (this is the approach taken by the Marxist Arabist Maxime Rodinson who wrote one of my favorite books on this conflict, Israel and the Arabs).
Unfortunately I think today an influential (though perhaps not particularly large) section of the left has little interest or time for this kind of approach, it prefers a reflexive analysis based to some degree on the identification of the conflicting parties with the identity and racial politics which have come to dominate so much leftist discourse in the West. The idea that there are clear-cut divisions between certain privileged groups and the not so privileged - a valuable approach generally in my opinion, but always problematic when applied to the Jews because antisemitism requires at least some Jews to be perceived as privileged and powerful in order to flourish. So Israel becomes the privileged White Man in the Middle East, or worse the successful powerful Jew, imposing itself on a basically defenseless subaltern people, and no further explanation is really needed since all we need to understand are these relations of power.
Problems arise when this simple approach is confronted with complicating factors. Some obvious examples would be: the antisemitism which drove the original Zionist project and ultimately produced the Holocaust; the fact that about half the Jewish-Israeli population is descended from the MENA region; the very real and genuine historical, cultural, religious and emotional ties Jews have always maintained with the contested land; the genuine liberal strain that exists in Israeli society; the very real security challenges Israel faces in the region; the sorry state of politics in the surrounding hostile region; and the fact that the regional confrontation with Israel over the decades has been channeled primarily through two ideologies - Arab nationalism and Islamism - which are inherently illiberal, intolerant, and some might argue fascist in nature. Acknowledgement of these things needn't alter the ultimate conclusion that Israel is the oppressor and the Palestinians the oppressed. But without an honest accounting for them in the analysis, they will be ignored, minimized, distorted or denied when raised, and lazy, reflexive, conspiratorial and in some cases antisemitic rhetoric will fill the gap (hence "it's AIPAC" or "Zionist controlled-media!").
So Zionists are resented for having suffered the Holocaust which they now employ to secure their privileged status, while being told they are actually implicated in the Holocaust (or else the Holocaust is explained away in some fashion); Mizrachi Jews are told they're suffering from a false consciousness; Ashkenazi Jews are dismissed as the descendants of the Khazars; Israeli Jewish victims of Palestinian terrorism are told they themselves are responsible since they are represented by a "baby-killing" military; Israeli liberalism is an insincere facade used to "-wash" Israel of its crimes for a Western audience; Arab dictatorships are simply serving the Zionist agenda and nothing more; and the "resistance" is actually an authentic and legitimate left-wing socialist response in Middle Eastern garb. What this all looks like to any Jew with any kind of attachment to Israel (i.e. most of them) is a collective attempt to dismiss their history and narrative as contrived, fraudulent, and nefarious; so that even in cases where no antisemitic implication is intended or indeed even explicitly apparent, there is a natural tendency to see antisemitism nonetheless. I do think many Zionists could be more understanding of the ways that well-meaning people can get sucked into this kind of discourse. And of course there will be those who seek to cynically employ "antisemitism" in any case - in an age where so much political discourse places premium value on the idea of a hierarchy of victimhood, it would be extremely strange to find that Jews alone were somehow immune to the temptations of the race to the bottom.
i dunno. I imagine if all this abuse from supporters of corbyn was about black people, you’d see a different response.
Yes, black people are never abused on the Internet
By the Labour party?
When did the Labour Party start abusing people?
Why don't you try reading again the post you originally commented on, again?
It said Corbyn supporters, not the Labour Party. Why don't you try reading what was written?
I wouldn't believe everyone claiming to be a member of the Labour Party that abuses people online is who they say they are
Dunno mate but black people were abused by Windrush and apart from the occasional mention it’s largely brushed under the carpet now.
Also I know it’s not the same but the Conservative party seems quite content with the growing Islamaphobia in its party. And the reaction there is flaccid at best.
I agree. But this is a thread about Corbyn and his weakness on antisemitism.
I understood @nickm's post more to be about the reaction among the Corbyn-aligned parts of Labour, not the public as a whole. Maybe he can clear that up. (Edit: he just did.)
But nevertheless: While my grasp of British politics isn't good enough to judge, I find it believable that the amount of public pressure differs. (The "reasonable center vs. extremists" ideology probably plays a part in this.)
Still, there are two basic ways to deal with something like this:
1) Since the reaction to the bigotry of camp A is too little, everybody should be more lenient towards bigotry from camp B.
2) Alliances with bigotry are unacceptable in any case. Camp B shouldn't receive any less criticism, camp A should receive more instead.
The way I see this argument being used, it often sounds more like leaning towards 1. than 2. (Perhaps not always consciously, but in its inner logic.) The argument @berbatrick made further up (not necessarily wrong or irrelevant in itself), has a tendency towards that direction too for me. It's the wrong conclusion in my eyes.
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By groups or fan clubs identifying with Labour or Corbyn?
Famously no one ever pretends to be something they aren't on the internet
As wrong as it is, and I agree with you, the difference is the Conservative party are already in power and unless Corbyn's Labour Party changes people's minds about him and this issue they are likely to remain in power.
I think there is a broader point that any hint of anti-Semitism is seen as a lot worse than islamaphobia which is why I initially responded to the post. But yeah you're correct that this is a hurdle that Corbyn has to get over, even though he genuinely has no control over what shitheads say on twitter.
Weak response.
That the best comeback you could manage?
So its march 2019, have Jeremy and the Labour party stopped hating jews yet?
hilarious
They don't have to because it's an Israeli conspiracy that's only on the internet and some people don't like blacks either.
which makes it alright...
Was this supposed to be funny?