Israel-Hamas War 2023

[Valmy]

I will need to see a bit more evidence than simply people being bothered by tens of thousands of dead civilians. But certainly the nature of some of those chants puts it on my radar.

[Jacob]

Seems to me that there's a segment of the pro-Palestinian left wing that comes across as pretty antisemitic. I'm not certain how much is carelessness and somewhat incidental vs how much of it is deeply felt and central to their positions.

[OttoVonBismarck]

If I had to guess the general state of Jews in society feeds into an othering in the left and they simply don't ever process Jews as "minorities" or "oppressed" peoples. They internalize Jews as the "positive stereotype", wealthier than average, prominent in law, business, media etc. (Ignoring of course that this has always been exaggerated--most American Jews are not wealthy, and in Israel where a much larger % of the population is Jewish, the idea that all the Jews represent scions of some privileged economic status is farcical.) I think they also largely see Jews as "white guys", which is also troublesome because the "average" Israeli is about as white as the average Palestinian (which is to say--somewhat white, but often not having that Anglo-Saxon white oppressor look that they imagine the bad white people in America all have.)

TLDR people they see as landlords and bankers cannot be on the wrong side of oppression in society.

[HVC]

I'm more intrigued by the flip side, how conservatives embraced Jews/israel. From keeping them out of neighbourhoods and clubs to acceptance and support from the influence of a death cult.

[Barrister]

I'm more intrigued by the flip side, how conservatives embraced Jews/israel. From keeping them out of neighbourhoods and clubs to acceptance and support from the influence of a death cult.

I think that's easy.

The idea of who is "white" has just expanded over time.  It used to be about excluding the catholics - you know the irish, the italians, the poles - and yes the Jews.  Over time though those groups have come to be embraced as being part of the white in-group, and now they're much more worried about keeping out the blacks, or the muslims, or whomever.  You know - the darkies.

[Jacob]

I'm more intrigued by the flip side, how conservatives embraced Jews/israel. From keeping them out of neighbourhoods and clubs to acceptance and support from the influence of a death cult.

I think there are a few factors:

• Evangelical love for the holy land as the site of their pending end-of-times apocalypse. IIRC many Jews in Israel are going to "see the truth" when Jesus comes back during the end of times, so until then they should ideally be in Israel in readiness for the second coming. Something like that. Evangelicals have had a strong influence in North American right wing circles for quite a while.
• The Israeli right wing has a robust approach to the use of force in their chauvinism which appeals to American right wing power fantasies.
• Various forms of Islam is often cast as the enemy in right wing clash-of-civilization narratives. Those same forms of Islam also typically see themselves as enemies of Israel, so there's a "we hate the same enemies" thing going on there as well.

[HVC]

Did a little searching and found this. It's wiki, so you know...

A 2017 LifeWay poll conducted in United States found that 80% of evangelical Christians believed that the creation of Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy that would bring about Christ's return and more than 50% of Evangelical Christians believed that they support Israel because it is important for fulfilling the prophecy.[112

Wacky.

[Razgovory]

I will need to see a bit more evidence than simply people being bothered by tens of thousands of dead civilians. But certainly the nature of some of those chants puts it on my radar.

They were like that before the war in Gaza.  Remember all the statements in favor of the Hamas attacks just after October 7th?

Swarthmore College's SJP chapter released a statement on October 10, justifying Hamas's violence by saying, "Since early Saturday morning, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have valiantly confronted the imperial apparatus that has constricted their livelihoods for the past seventy-five years." The statement also said that "decolonization is far from a metaphor confined to the classroom" and that "There exists only a colonizer and colonized, an oppressed and an oppressor. To resist is to survive, and it is our right."

National Students for Justice in Palestine released a toolkit for their "day of action", describing the murders of Israeli civilians as "a historic win for the Palestinian resistance: across land, air, and sea, our people have broken down the artificial barriers of the Zionist entity." The organization added, "This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors." 

https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/anti-israel-activists-celebrate-hamas-attacks-have-killed-hundreds-israelis

[Solmyr]

"Swarthmore College's SJP chapter" doesn't seem like a major or important organization.

[Josquius]

I'm more intrigued by the flip side, how conservatives embraced Jews/israel. From keeping them out of neighbourhoods and clubs to acceptance and support from the influence of a death cult.

As well as the evangelical nuttiness about prophecies and such it is worth considering Nazi policy for most of their existence wasn't just to kill the Jews but rather to send them elsewhere where they couldn't interfere with the Aryans. The famous Madagascar Plan one of the more well known surfacings of this.

It does seem very ideologically consistent even with this most extreme of ultra conservative groups to support having the Jews far away. That they can create a west-friendly non-muslim state in the middle of the muslim world so much the better.

If I had to guess the general state of Jews in society feeds into an othering in the left and they simply don't ever process Jews as "minorities" or "oppressed" peoples. They internalize Jews as the "positive stereotype", wealthier than average, prominent in law, business, media etc. (Ignoring of course that this has always been exaggerated--most American Jews are not wealthy, and in Israel where a much larger % of the population is Jewish, the idea that all the Jews represent scions of some privileged economic status is farcical.) I think they also largely see Jews as "white guys", which is also troublesome because the "average" Israeli is about as white as the average Palestinian (which is to say--somewhat white, but often not having that Anglo-Saxon white oppressor look that they imagine the bad white people in America all have.)

TLDR people they see as landlords and bankers cannot be on the wrong side of oppression in society.

Its certainly true to say there's often a blindness of Jews as a minority. The Jews we have in the west are broadly very white and pretty much blend in. And this will be a factor in there being a bit of a disbelief in anti-semitism.
The rest though, no. Left wing distate for Israel is nothing to do with race and more policy.

I apologize for moron.  I thought you were using land stealing in the same way that viper uses killing all Palestinians.  That kind of thing really works me up. I realized after I had posted that you were probably talking about the West Bank.  Still no excuse for calling you a moron.

You know, not everything in discussions is meant to be about trying to "rebut" what other people have said.

Its relevant as "decolonisation is just an excuse to hate white people. What about the crimes of others?" is frequently used as a smoke screen by those who don't actually have any interest in the crimes and you often do find foreign nationalists weirdly on the same side as progressives for our historic issues...yet when it comes to their historic issues things are very different.

Agree that not everything is a rebuttal.  But I can't think of any other response that shows good faith.

One other option is the straw man.  No need to explain, I hope.

Another is guilt by association.  This is not a debate of the merits, who' sole ingredients in my way of thinking are reason, logic, evidence and facts.

Another is accusation of bad faith, which is kinda close to guilt by association.  "You claim to oppose de-colonization for these reasons, but I believe you really oppose de-colonization because you want to eat Palestinian babies."

There's also "Yes and" and "Did you also consider this angle".

I'm not accusing you of anything here. Just speaking about attitudes to historic misdeeds in the world.
Its certainly valid to say if you want to moan about say the Amritsar  Massacre then the Hindutva scum bags will be standing shoulder to shoulder to go on about how awful the British were.... but talk about the Golden Temple Massacre and suddenly your erstwhile allies are very angry and against you.

We concentrate on the misdeeds of our own countries because that's our history, our issues. And we are majority white countries.
Some people will talk about how horrid other countries were in history out of good faith... but you also find way too many people who just want to use it as a stick to beat other groups with and won't use the same standards for their own group. This makes stepping into that criticism quite a minefield.

[Razgovory]

"Swarthmore College's SJP chapter" doesn't seem like a major or important organization.

Names a bunch of Chapters.  I didn't put all of them out.

[Razgovory]

I'm more intrigued by the flip side, how conservatives embraced Jews/israel. From keeping them out of neighbourhoods and clubs to acceptance and support from the influence of a death cult.

As well as the evangelical nuttiness about prophecies and such it is worth considering Nazi policy for most of their existence wasn't just to kill the Jews but rather to send them elsewhere where they couldn't interfere with the Aryans. The famous Madagascar Plan one of the more well known surfacings of this.

The Madagascar plan was an extermination plan.  The survey done for the plan found that Madagascar could only support 10,000 people.  The rest would die.

[The Minsky Moment]

"Swarthmore College's SJP chapter" doesn't seem like a major or important organization.

Don't be so dismissive; Sarah Jessica Parker still has lots of fans.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The rest though, no. Left wing distate for Israel is nothing to do with race and more policy.

The fact that you continue to deny this is basically bordering on you being antisemitic as well. Someone who continually shoves their fingers in their ears and chants "this isn't happening" while his fellow travelers (some of whom, like Jeremy Corbyn, have been steeped in antisemitism since the 1960s) chant antisemitic slogans, is essentially normalizing and condoning said antisemitism.

And no, I am not saying everyone on the left. But if even 1 in 10 people I affiliated with was antisemitic, I would insist they be denounced, denounce them myself, and insist they be kicked out of any organizations I shared with them. If those organizations refused, I would leave them. I wouldn't affiliate with people who affiliated with people like that.

[The Minsky Moment]

Antisemitism has a long and continuous history on both the left and right, but historically far right-wing antisemites have displayed considerably more vigor converting slogans into action.  The Liberation Front of the National People's Revolutionary Resistance of Free Palestine is annoying, but I still find it less concerning than the Very Fine People chanting about being replaced.  The former have the bad form to picket synagogues, but the latter sometimes find occasion to shoot them up.