Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Pattern-chaser]

I don't understand why anti-Semitic people are so worried about it being called out by others. If someone is clearly anti-Semitic, why not say it? Must we always be politically correct? If you judge the wrongs of Jews more than the wrongs of others, then why not own your anti-Semitism?

Whatever clarification you get, you persist in calling anyone who does not conform to your Zionist position "anti-Semitic". It is not fair, and it is not true either.

I, for example, do not judge Jews at all. [I respect their faith, as I expect them to respect mine.] I judge Israeli citizens, for the actions that they, their government, and their much-beweaponed allies, take in someone else's land: Palestine.

In your eyes, anti-Israel means anti-Jewish, although this is clearly not the case. And so, in your eyes, nearly everyone *is* anti-Semitic; you really *are* surrounded by people who harbour anti-Israeli political positions. But very few of them also hold anti-Jewish views. Some do, and that is wrong, but the majority do not.

The problem with calling everyone anti-Semitic is that the term ceases to have meaning, through over-use and inappropriate use. Please stop. Thanks.

[Pattern-chaser]

Still, your critique of Hamas is weak. Out of the blue they send missiles into Israel, killing thousands.

Not "out of the blue", but a consequence of 75 years of brutal oppression and occupation. An act of armed resistance, exactly comparable with the actions of WW2's French Resistance.

[Pattern-chaser]

Perhaps Israel would not have been a rogue state if America had left it alone.

In fairness, Israel would not exist if America had left it alone. The indigenous inhabitants of the Middle East did not want an externally-imposed homeland for anyone, right in their midst. Without American military backing, Israel could not even have been established. Even now, Israel relies for its continuing existence on being America's primary military base in the Middle East.

[Sy Borg]

Still, your critique of Hamas is weak. Out of the blue they send missiles into Israel, killing thousands.

Not "out of the blue", but a consequence of 75 years of brutal oppression and occupation. An act of armed resistance, exactly comparable with the actions of WW2's French Resistance.

Jews could correctly argue that the Nazis did much worse to them than anything they did to Palestinians. Thus, they would have similarly been within their rights to shoot missiles at Germany after WWII? It's just resisting oppression, right?

It's not armed resistance, it Hamas deliberately decimating their own population for Iran's political ends. Remember, Muslims don't actually care about each other but use each other as proxies. Palestine officially supported China's destruction of Uyghur people, So, what we have is one of Iran's proxies trying to destroy Israel.

They only care about Iran's bidding, not the Palestinian people, which is why they haved acted in a way that maximises their own casualties. Hamas are essentially Iran's sacrifice of western Arabs in order to remove Semites.

You think Palestinians want a two-state solution like the rest of us. Again, we infantilise Palestinians by not taking them at their word. When they say they seek the ttal destruction of Israel it is not rhetoric. That you side with a group that seeks the annihilation of Israel - knowing that that is their only aim - is inherently anti-Semitic.

[Mo_reese]

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Mo, it's refreshing to see you finally admit that Arabs actually did something wrong. It only took 20 pages, many of them with my posts about anti-Semitic double standards but someone finally cracked and almost managed to admit that Hamas are not entirely innocent victims.

For the record on 04-12 I stated that "I don't condone Hamas' actions on Oct 7, but understand how they were provoked." I don't condone their actions against civilians. In that post I listed the numerous provocations by Israel leading up to Oct 7. I hope that you don't condone Israel's actions against civilians.

You continue to claim that Hamas can end the slaughter by releasing the hostages and evacuating the "human shields". Where did that info come from? I haven't seen any Israeli officials make such a statement. Over and over they state that Palestinians need to be killed or removed from Palestine. I believe that the hostages are the justification for Bibi to commit genocide and rid Palestine of Palestinians. How would Israel know when the "human shields" were all evacuated? And why evacuate them if releasing the hostages would bring peace.

[Sy Borg]

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Mo, it's refreshing to see you finally admit that Arabs actually did something wrong. It only took 20 pages, many of them with my posts about anti-Semitic double standards but someone finally cracked and almost managed to admit that Hamas are not entirely innocent victims.

For the record on 04-12 I stated that "I don't condone Hamas' actions on Oct 7, but understand how they were provoked." I don't condone their actions against civilians. In that post I listed the numerous provocations by Israel leading up to Oct 7. I hope that you don't condone Israel's actions against civilians.

You continue to claim that Hamas can end the slaughter by releasing the hostages and evacuating the "human shields". Where did that info come from? I haven't seen any Israeli officials make such a statement. Over and over they state that Palestinians need to be killed or removed from Palestine. I believe that the hostages are the justification for Bibi to commit genocide and rid Palestine of Palestinians. How would Israel know when the "human shields" were all evacuated? And why evacuate them if releasing the hostages would bring peace.

Hamas could have ended the conflict by releasing hostages but, as you say, things have progressed beyond that. Israel seemingly has been provoked once too often and joined Hamas in going nuts. We become what we focus on, and when you focus on your enemies, you become more like them.

The problem Palestinian apologists have is that Bhutan and Philippines have been similarly provoked by China but they don't go sending missiles into China. Why? Because it would be suicidal for their people. So why did Hamas not care? Because they have never at any stage believed in a two-state solution. Israel did once, but it seems that they no longer do. They have become more like their enemy.

The other problem is the complete and absolute disinterest of anti-Semitic humanitarians in the catastrophe in Sudan. If one is concerned about injustice and human suffering, why not focus on the world's biggest humanitarian disaster? Answer: anti-Semitism - mostly the anti-Semitism of academia that has infected journalists and other opinion makers that highlights Israel's every detail while completely ignoring what's happening in Sudan.

Lets look at the Sudanese situation for context: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/12/sud ... l-approach

The conference comes a year after conflict broke out between the SAF and RSF in Khartoum on April 15, 2023, before spreading to other regions including Darfur and central Sudan. Despite the magnitude of suffering and violations by the warring parties, the situation in Sudan has received an underwhelming response from the international community.

Almost 15,000 people are known to have been killed since then, almost certainly an underestimate. The conflict has uprooted 8.5 million people, most internally, making Sudan the world’s largest internal displacement crisis. Around 1.76 million people have fled into neighboring countries.Without significant humanitarian assistance, five million people could risk starvation in the coming months.

Both warring parties have committed serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, amounting in some cases to war crimes and other atrocity crimes, Human Rights Watch said. The SAF have unlawfully killed civilians, carried out airstrikes that have deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure, and repeatedly obstructed humanitarian aid among other violations. The RSF has carried out widespread civilian killings, many of which appear to be ethnically targeted notably in West Darfur, while also hampering aid including by widespread looting of humanitarian supplies. They have used heavy explosive weapons in densely populated areas and engaged in widespread sexual violence and pillage. Both forces and their allies have recruited children and arbitrarily detained civilians.

According to the UN, approximately 25 million people, around half of the population, are now dependent on emergency food supplies, which SAF has deliberately restricted and RSF looted, in clear violation of international law, and in acts that could amount to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said.

And no one cares. It's all about the Palestinians because people have been told to focus on them by those whose opinions have been shaped by social Marxism. It is irrational to look at situations in terms of Oppressor v Oppressed, without considering what the Oppressed did to end up in that situation.

[LuckyR]

Pattern-chaser 's stated view of discrimination is that whether someone has such animosity or not doesn't matter - it's an act of discrimination regardless.

You're putting forward the (common) view that criticism is only antisemitic if it is motivated by "a personal animosity towards all things Jewish in their heart".

Okay.

So if PC's opinion is that actions (not intention) is what matters (when using the label of discrimination), how does Syborg's opinion that the (action of) criticizing Israel alone (leaving out Hamas, Congo etc), which is something that folks with and without traditional anti Semitic intentions could do, is de facto anti Semitism (discrimination), differ fundamentally?

Fair enough question.

What do you think, Sy Borg ?

Are you arguing that the action of singling out Israel for criticism is so blatant, so obviously biased, that it is evidence of anti-Jewish intent and therefore antisemitic ? How many of the nations of the world came to their present boundaries by conquest, after all ?

Or are you saying that discrimination is discrimination regardless of intent, and any bias that disadvantages Jews is antisemitic, regardless of how reasonable such a bias might be ? (We're all influenced by the news we read, after all ?)

The bias based on media exposure is reasonable for "normies", not for philosophy-heads. I think that the singling out of Israel over all others is anti-Semitic. As you suggest, not all anti-Semitism is driven by ill intent, but it's still anti-Semitism. It's been some time that I've spoken about Sudan, but no one is interested but their interest in Palestine grows more intense by the day.

Also, there has been an infantilisation of Palestinians, as if being dubbed "The Oppressed" means that they lack moral agency like a child. The choice has been there all along to evacuate human shields and give up hostages but, somehow, this is treated as reasonable. If that's fair, maybe Jews should have gone into Germany and killed, tortured and raped German innocents as retribution for wrongs of the past? Would people consider this to be as reasonable as they seem to find Hamas's terrorist and continuing intransigence (despite the human cost)?

Your red statement is true, by definition. However, not all criticism of Israeli governmental policy and actions is anti-Semitism.

Backing up the truck a bit to try to find more common ground (as a Philosophy-head), every group, whether racial, religious, cultural, social or economic is looked down upon by some other groups. Thus Jews are far from alone in being criticized unjustly (and with justification). Is anti-Semitism therefore identical to anti-Catholic or Muslim sentiment, or anti-Black or Asian actions (ad infinitum)?

In my experience there is a fundamental difference between anti-Semitism and the unjust criticism of (most) other groups. Therefore my answer is: no, they are not identical. The differences include the following:

First, the Holocaust happened. It's obviously not unique in concept, nor in scope, but it is unique in that it A) occurred during the time of mass media, B) it was successfully broadcast by the mass media in the West, C) has occupied a prominent place in the mass media even 80 years later with no signs of stopping, D) the perpetrators of it have therefore been (almost) universally condemned in the West, even by Germany.

Second, because of the above and the choice of many subgroups and individuals in the Jewish community to use their legitimate historical victimization to elevate most groupwide and many examples of individual opposition they encounter beyond mere opposition, or unjust opposition/discrimination (which most other groups suffering unjust bias can claim) to a situation whereby discussion of "both sides of the argument" is labeled as inherent bias. In other words, criticism of Jews is overtly or covertly implied to be similar in "quality" to Holocaust denial, that is: so absurd and based in anti Jewish sentiment, that it doesn't deserve to see the light of day, let alone be discussed. In addition, those who attempt to have the discussion are painted with a very broad brush that includes Nazis.

To be fair, because of the timing of the Holocaust within a human lifetime to the current time, the event is extremely raw for huge numbers who had very close relations as victims. So it makes logical psychological and emotional sense for Jews as a group to choose to elevate their historical experience to that level. However, such a choice does come with other psychological consequences. Namely, that if a group repetitively criticizes how they are currently treated by others, those other groups (after a while) will apply the same scrutiny to the behavior of the first group, out of an inherent sense of equity. It has taken a really long time for this examination to gain any traction in the West, since the mass media has been telling a contrarian story. Thus in the West, open criticism of Israeli governmental actions by the rabble (not the intelligensia) is the equivalent of Man Bites Dog, it's newsworthy because of how atypical it is (historically).


Long story short, are pro Palestinian protesters "anti-Semitic"? It depends which "anti-Semitism" you're talking about. Are you using the ADL definition? If so, then yes. If you're using the common historical definition, then mostly not (though a few are).

[Sy Borg]

The bias is right there in the fact that there is tremendous intensity regarding Palestine and absolutely zero interest in the far worse happenings of Sudan. The difference is that the west infantilises all parties in the Sudan conflict, as well as Palestine, effectively absolving them of expectations of moral agency. They don't know any better. But Israel should apparently know better, as if they are the only adult in the room.

Consider that over half of the UN's resolutions have concerned tiny Israel - more than all of the world combined. That is also anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitism is well-documented within the UN.

Why is Israel treated as the only party in recent wars (other than Russia and Ukraine) that has moral agency and expectations of fair play? It smalls like a mix of cultural imperialism and the influence of cultural Marxism in academia.

[Belinda]

The bias is right there in the fact that there is tremendous intensity regarding Palestine and absolutely zero interest in the far worse happenings of Sudan. The difference is that the west infantilises all parties in the Sudan conflict, as well as Palestine, effectively absolving them of expectations of moral agency. They don't know any better. But Israel should apparently know better, as if they are the only adult in the room.

Consider that over half of the UN's resolutions have concerned tiny Israel - more than all of the world combined. That is also anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitism is well-documented within the UN.

Why is Israel treated as the only party in recent wars (other than Russia and Ukraine) that has moral agency and expectations of fair play? It smalls like a mix of cultural imperialism and the influence of cultural Marxism in academia.

Israel is treated like that because Israel is the European style democracy situated amid the ME.

[Pattern-chaser]

Still, your critique of Hamas is weak. Out of the blue they send missiles into Israel, killing thousands.

Not "out of the blue", but a consequence of 75 years of brutal oppression and occupation. An act of armed resistance, exactly comparable with the actions of WW2's French Resistance.

Jews could correctly argue that the Nazis did much worse to them than anything they did to Palestinians.

[...]

This exchange considers the Middle East territorial conflict over ownership and control of Palestine, as the first two quotes, above, show. It is a conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

Jews and Judaism are not relevant, and neither are Nazis. Conflation of two different things leads to confusion and misunderstanding.

[Sy Borg]

There is no conflation. The only territorial conflict you and others care about is the one that involves Jews.

Academia has programmed many people to what is basically an automatic and reflexive anti-Semitism that seemingly happens at the unconscious level. It's clear that many anti-Semites have no idea that they are reflexively biased against Jewish interests.

Even now, you have no idea yourself why your are so red-hot about Jewish misbehaviour and so completely uninterested in the atrocities of Sudan and Syria. All you know is that what's happening in Palestine must be stopped. Why must it be stopped while all the actual genocides happening in the world - you know, the kind of genocides where populations actually reduce - do not matter one iota to universities, western media or their impressionable customers.

[Sy Borg]

The bias is right there in the fact that there is tremendous intensity regarding Palestine and absolutely zero interest in the far worse happenings of Sudan. The difference is that the west infantilises all parties in the Sudan conflict, as well as Palestine, effectively absolving them of expectations of moral agency. They don't know any better. But Israel should apparently know better, as if they are the only adult in the room.

Consider that over half of the UN's resolutions have concerned tiny Israel - more than all of the world combined. That is also anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitism is well-documented within the UN.

Why is Israel treated as the only party in recent wars (other than Russia and Ukraine) that has moral agency and expectations of fair play? It smalls like a mix of cultural imperialism and the influence of cultural Marxism in academia.

Israel is treated like that because Israel is the European style democracy situated amid the ME.

Thus, Israel is treated as the only responsible party with moral agency. The same expectations should be placed on all parties. When Palestinians have said for decades that they don't want a two-state solution and they seek the total annihilation of Israel, the west does not take them seriously ... "Oh, those emotional Muslims - so prone to hyperbole! Silly old things!" ... that is patronising and infantilising. When Palestine called for the destruction of Israel that should be treated with the same judgement that Israel would incur if they sought the destruction of the Palestinian state.

Now Hamas decided to destroy the Palestinian state themselves, using Israel as the conduit. Presumably, Iran's agenda will be progressed by Palestinian pais.

[Pattern-chaser]

This topic looks at "anti-Semitism", one of the most powerfully-charged words in our modern language. Its meaning is not its literal meaning. It carries a very strong, and very simple, message, and that message is,

"ℌ𝔬𝔩𝔬𝔠𝔞𝔲𝔰𝔱!".

It is the first time we recognised a need for the word "genocide", describing a 'crime' that seems to go far beyond mere criminality.

And so, when someone's behaviour is described as "anti-Semitic", according to its dreadful message, that person is being directly compared with those who hunted down, tortured, starved and killed Jewish people in astonishing numbers. It is a terrible accusation to make against anyone, or any country. "Anti-Semitism" should be used rarely, very rarely, by responsible and decent people.

Since WW2, Israel has worked to incorporate criticism of the state of Israel into our accepted definition of "anti-Semitism". Israel has also worked hard to establish the dual equation, "Israeli = Jew; Jew = Israeli". In this way, Israel has put itself in a position where it can/could use the Holocaust to deflect criticism from the geographical and political state of Israel. And Israel *has* often used "anti-Semitism" in this way, using the vile and terrible Holocaust to get its own way. Many people see this as a morally-wrong usage of the term.

And so I argue for the non-use of the term "anti-Semitism". It is a term that is misused, as I just described. And it is misused to mislead. So I suggest we use "Holocaust" to refer to those dreadful events of WW2, and "anti-Jewish" to refer to discrimination against those of the Jewish faith. If we do that, people will understand clearly what we mean. I plead for honesty and clarity, especially in a context as highly-charged as this one. Misunderstandings can cause great upset.

[Sy Borg]

No, anti-Semitism is rife. Universities are becoming dangerous for Jewish students but I suppose you'll rationalise that.

Anti-Semitism stems from Marxist influences on university subject matter and policies. It then feeds down through media outlets as many journalists are influenced. Many in the UN are anti-Semitic, further reinforcing anti-Semitism in academia, and thus wider society.

Now we have detailed descriptions of everything that Israel does, nothing about Palestinian strategies that make it more likely for civilians to be harmed, and certainly nothing about other conflicts that don't involve Jews.

The term anti-Semitism should disappear when anti-Semitism has gone, not when it is becoming ever more virulent and intense. To erase this reality would help to seal the fate of Jews. We would have a situation as we have with "white" people, against whom it is apparently impossible to be racist. No, if racism exists, point it out, whether it be direct - as in the Marxists who drive anti-Semitism in academia, or in the downstream subjects of their pervasive influence.

[Pattern-chaser]

Now we have detailed descriptions of everything that Israel does, nothing about Palestinian strategies that make it more likely for civilians to be harmed, and certainly nothing about other conflicts that don't involve Jews.

No, not "Jews", but "Israelis". "Jew" is *not* synonymous with "Israeli", any more than "Hindu" is synonymous with "French". One is a religion, the other a nationality. A particular person could be one, or the other, or both, or neither. But nationality and religion are two quite different attributes. Your words, above, concern nationality, so the correct term to use is "Israeli".