9 ms·
I don’t see how his words based on the article were anti Semitic. They were anti Israel. And I find that you and everyone here and at google are having a hard t
by nashashmi 5y ago
I don’t see how his words based on the article were anti Semitic. They were anti Israel. And I find that you and everyone here and at google are having a hard time distinguishing between the two.
Further based on the other comment to this post he was quite an activist. Fighting for rights of the racially oppressed and in minority.
He went against white people and Israel? He is not racist. He is just anti majority dominant power holder.
- chadash 5y agoThe quote was: "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself" Yes, the sentiment is (possibly) anti-israel, not anti-semetic, but the wording itself implies that Jews have insatiable appetites for war. I'm not saying it wasn't an honest mistake, but someone who is chief diversity officer at a major corporation should certainly be attuned to the difference between Jews and Israelis.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ant6n 5y agoBut it was also quoted worse in the tweets. "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself," (…) "If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented. I would find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Jewish people have endured and the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired." It just became “If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing” in the tweets.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ABCLAW 5y agoI think with the more fulsome context you've provided that the prior post's attempt to reduce his statement as critical of Israelis alone is a bit reductionist; his argument here extends to the diaspora that also unwaveringly support Israel in their expansionary policy. I don't feel that position is anti-Semitic either, but I think it needs to be noted for the sake of intellectual honesty. He is critiquing a LOT of Jews here.
- throwaway894345 5y agoEven if he isn't saying all Jews are bad, it still reads something like "I'm just saying Israel is insatiably, vengefully violent and [an awful lot of] Jews support Israel...". I'm all for charitability, but it feels like we're contorting ourselves--why would any tolerant person with a decent penchant for writing not keep a wider berth between their criticism of Israel and antisemitism? I understand that there are always going to be bad faith people who willfully misinterpret all criticism of Israel with antisemitism, but those people aside I've never found it particularly difficult to criticize Israel in a way which is unambiguously tolerant of and respectful toward Jews (and he seems like a better writer than I am).
- TMWNN 5y ago"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself" is a straight quote from the last paragaraph of the post in question, not a paraphrase or elided excerpt. https://web.archive.org/web/20210602000424/https://www.kamaubobb.com/hidden-blogs/2007/12/if-i-were-a-jew https://web.archive.org/web/20210602000424/https://www.kamau...
- ant6n 5y agoIt’s not a straight quote if you delete the last four words of the sentence without an ellipsis.
- TMWNN 5y agoThe only thing I deleted is the period. "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself." is the entire first sentence of the last paragraph. Again, people can read the linked original post and see for themselves.
- ant6n 5y agoThat’s not how this was quoted to claim he’s an antisemite. See this: https://mobile.twitter.com/StopAntisemites/status/1400065933083877376 https://mobile.twitter.com/StopAntisemites/status/1400065933...
- sirjee 5y agoPretty sure he was not chief diversity officer 14 years ago but I agree it should have been "If I were an israeli...".
- grumple 5y agoEven then... do we accuse every American of bloodlust for our nation's warmongering? Or every Chinese person for their governments treatment of the Uighur/Tibet/etc? Governments != people of a nation people often / usually don't approve of governmental actions.
- sayhar 5y agoThank you.
- ska 5y ago> do we accuse every American of bloodlust for our nation's warmongering? Not bloodlust, but partial responsibility. 'Tis the nature of democracy.
- fighterpilot 5y agoNo, that's merely the nature of collective blame, which should be avoided.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agocertainly you can avoid being partially culpable for your nation's actions - by dropping out of society, refusing to pay taxes to it, and probably supporting yourself via a life of crime. If however you are a functioning member of a society and do things to support it you are partially to blame for the things that society does. That amount of blame is not the same for everyone - and for some people it is so minimal it hardly warrants mentioning - but you do have a share.
- sneak 5y ago
- michaelmrose 5y agoIt wasn't a tweet they provided at least some of the surrounding context in the article.
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y agoExactly. I'm a Jew (by heritage, though not by belief). I oppose Israel's actions WRT Palestine and related issues. The Israeli government seems to have that "insatiable appetite for war", but that's a pretty small subset of all Jews. Even the entire Israeli population is a small subset of all Jews.
- jobigoud 5y ago> I'm a Jew (by heritage, though not by belief) I never understood that concept. The idea that Judaism is transmitted from lineage is itself only a belief of Judaism. If you don't believe in Judaism there is no reason to believe in this particular fiction. This specific feature is obviously a hack on the reproductivity of the meme. There is no Judaism gene, it's not transmittable, it's not an ethnicity.
- mchaver 5y ago> I never understood that concept. No problem! It certainly doesn't make sense if one approaches it from a Western Christian mindset. I am not trying to imply that is how you are approaching it, rather I mention this because Judaism often gets compared to Christianity, but I think they are quite different. It is better to think of Judaism as a tribe. Membership to this tribe is mainly given under two conditions: through matrilineal descent or through religious conversion. Some subgroups within the tribe have different membership conditions like recognizing patrilineal descent, others may not recognize conversions done by other subgroups.
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y agoExactly this. It's a cultural thing, much like how you can be an American or a German or an African. There's no single ethnicity for any of those, but they're all cultural identities based on birth or citizenship.
- david38 5y agoHe’s clearly referring to Israel, and since it’s a Jewish date, it’s reasonable to assume many / most Jews feel somewhat represented by Israel, voluntarily or not. Or at least that Israel’s actions reflect well or poorly on them in regards to non-Jews.
- bjourne 5y agoIt's so incredibly wrong to pick lines from a text out of context like that to attack someone. It's exactly how some people tried to sink Bernie Sander 2020 presidential campaign by referring to his "rape fantasy" essay from the 1970s. Read Kamau Bobb's blog post in full (it's only six paragraphs or so). It s about how he imagines how a progressive Jew has to struggle with reconciling his commitment to Israel with his humanist views. His thought may have been misguided, and he may not fully have understood how Jewishness and Judaism works, but they are certainly not hateful towards Jews.
- ta2161 5y agoHe specifically stated "if I were a Jew", not "if I were a Zionist". That makes it explicitly anti-semitism. You'd think that the global head of diversity would know the difference between Jews and Zionist.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> You'd think that the global head of diversity would know the difference between Jews and Zionist. AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of diversity” for any organization when he wrote it, but only many years later. That’s not to say that being able to distinguish between Jews, Zionists, Israelis, and the Israeli government isn’t basic threshold knowledge that should be expected of anyone publicly commenting on Israeli policy and how it should make anyone feel based on group association, but setting expectations of people’s knowledge based on their future jobs is a bit bonkers.
- throwaway2162 5y ago>AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of diversity” for any organization when he wrote it, but only many years later. He was literally a founding senior director for "equity in computing" at Georgia Tech and was a national strategy advisor to the Obama administration for bringing "equity and justice" to STEM (when he wrote this blog post). Please update your post as you're spreading FUD. >AFAIK, he wasn't “global head of diversity” for any organization when he wrote it, but only many years later. He's been a DEI grifter for over a decade, including when he originally wrote his anti-semitic post.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> He was literally a founding senior director for "equity in computing" at Georgia Tech and was a national strategy advisor to the Obama administration for bringing "equity and justice" to STEM (when he wrote this blog post). Neither of those is “global head of diversity”. > Please update your post as you're spreading FUD. No, I’m not and I see no need to update my post. If the upthread post were updated to refer to his actual position at the time of the post, I might be bothered to simply empty out my response as it would be moot, but given that it seems (like your post defending it) to be from a single-use throwaway account, I don't expect that to happen.
- bigwavedave 5y ago> I don’t see how his words based on the article were anti Semitic. They were anti Israel. And I find that you and everyone here and at google are having a hard time distinguishing between the two. People are having a hard time distinguishing between the two because he had a hard time distinguishing between the two. Saying "If I was a {memberOf(someOrganization)}, I'd be concerned about how {adjective} I am," is calling out every member of that organization. If he'd said "If I was an employee of Buy N Large, I'd be concerned about how much I love to destroy the environment for personal gain", that's a blanket accusation of all BNL employees being greedy anti-eco monsters. If he'd said "if I was an exterminator, I'd be worried about how my complete and total lust for killing things is eventually going to accelerate into becoming a full fledged serial killer", that's a pretty clear indictment of all exterminators, regardless of who they actually are as individuals. Saying "If I was a member of BLM, I'd be worried about how much I love torching businesses and assaulting bystanders" is a sweeping attack on all BLM activists, not just anyone who was looking for an excuse to loot and riot. "If I was a dentist, I'd be worried about my insatiable bloodlust for hunting lions that were rescued and rehabilitated." I mean, come on. "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity."[1] It's not "If I was an Israeli governing official" like you claim, it's "if I was a member of an ethnicity/religion." It's a little unfair of you to be so dismissive of people who interpret his words the way he wrote them. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210602000424/https://www.kamaubobb.com/hidden-blogs/2007/12/if-i-were-a-jew https://web.archive.org/web/20210602000424/https://www.kamau...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eli_gottlieb 5y ago>"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity."[1] Also, notice how he writes that self-defense is an instinct. As in, he doesn't actually think self-defense is, prima facie, morally justifiable. He actually thinks you need to sit and ask yourself, "Am I the baddie, for existing?", if you are Jewish.
- Melchizedek 5y agoJews and Israelis are obviously not the same thing (even though the connection between them is very strong) but the reason you are not allowed to criticise _Israel_ in the US is that _Jews_ have a great amount of power there (hugely disproportionate to their population size).
- yownie 5y agoIs this statement a joke?
- Dma54rhs 5y agoWhat is not right about the statement? Jews are overrepresented, it's not a secret or some dumb conspiracy, but a fact.
- phlakaton 5y agoNonsense! People are criticizing Israel right and left around here in the Bay Area. Spend an afternoon in Berkeley and it will dispel any illusions you might have on the matter.
- rzimmerman 5y agoThere’s a post (“If I Were a Jew”) that accuses Jews in general of responding to the collective trauma of the Holocaust with “an insatiable appetite for war and killing” in pursuit of self defense rather than compassion for the oppressed. It’s naive, muddles Jewish identity with Israel, and assumes the worst about the motivations of Jews in general. Imagine how offensive it would be to make a similar argument about any other minority group that had experienced oppression in America or elsewhere. From the post: > If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity. There’s definitely more than criticism of the Israeli government here (some dog-whistle and overt antisemitism, whether the author understood that at the time or not). But I agree with the commenter - people can change and grow up. I don’t know the full story so it’s hard to really say what’s justified and what’s an overreaction.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- FridayoLeary 5y agoIt seems that many people have difficulty making this crucial distinction. That's why after every Israeli military campaign there is a spike in anti-semitic incidents all over the world. We just need more education! You are free to hurl the most libelous, disgusting and vicious accusations at Jewish people. Just make sure you call them Israeli. Because that's acceptable.
- mcguire 5y ago""If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself,..."" He confuses Judaism with Israel.