5 ms·

For progressive, educated people, Holocaust education was a double-edged sword. It made us keenly aware that the belief in the need for the existence of a Jewis

by dkarl 1y ago

For progressive, educated people, Holocaust education was a double-edged sword. It made us keenly aware that the belief in the need for the existence of a Jewish state came from centuries of European Christian anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust. Therefore, when Israel justified its actions as defense against an existential threat, I think Europeans and American descendants of Europeans felt very nervous about rejecting that justification, since historically we're a big part of why they perceive an existential threat to their people. I think we're well past that now, though.

throwway120385 1y ago
For a while people would label arguments against Israel as being against the Jewish people or the Jewish faith. That is, decrying how Gaza and the West Bank were formed were seen as anti-semitic arguments. It was essentially an argument that Israel is Judaism. Whereas mature people can usually argue against a behavior without arguing against a person or a group of people.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  In so weaponizing "antisemitism" through unethical and immoral political attacks, it increases actual antisemitism and makes the term lose its importance. Meanwhile, 20k Hasidic Jews met in an arena in NYC to denounce what Israel was doing and that they don't speak for them. The sheer arrogance of a secular political regime claiming to speak for an entire people whom aren't citizens of their country and never agreed to this association.
  - woodruffw 1y ago
    A thought-provoking argument that I read recently was that Israel's relationship with the diaspora has undergone a fundamental shift in the last 20 years, largely tracking with demographics: it's no longer the case that Jewish life is primarily diasporic in nature, and Israel's growing impatience (and sometimes open disdain) for the diaspora tracks with that demographic reality. I think this is an underrepresented factor in why Israel feels unilaterally emboldened in this conflict: there's no longer a statistically more liberal, secular, identifiably Jewish majority outside of the country that serves as a check on its actions.
    - burnt-resistor 1y ago
      Yep, that's a big part of it: a disengaging, large diaspora of secular Jewish-ish people who are thoroughly Westernized, open society ordinary folks who are mostly shocked by what's happening but don't have any familial, social, political, or economic influence. I've been listening to Norman Finkelstein, Gideon Levy, The Salukie, Hamzah Saadah, and Corey Gil-Shuster for perspectives on what's happening inside and around the region.
      - woodruffw 1y ago
        He wrote it before the current conflict, but I'd also recommend Tablets Shattered by Joshua Leifer[1]. His book is where I first heard diaspora relations framed as such. [1]: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/704833/tablets-shattered-by-joshua-leifer/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/704833/tablets-shat...
  - pydry 1y ago
    It's become increasingly apparent that most accusations of anti semitism these days are a thin veil over genocidal islamophobia. which isnt to say anti semitism doesnt exist or even that it isnt getting worse, just that most of the pearl clutching is being done by rather extreme racists who are pretty happy to see muslims exterminated.
jedimind 1y ago
That's what we were thought in school as well, but the actual history quite a bit more complicated than that. Modern racial antisemitism and political Zionism were two modern political projects that grew from the same 19th century soil of nationalism and race theory. They did not agree with each other, but they converged, from opposite directions, on the same fundamental conclusion: that the Jewish people constituted a distinct, unassimilable national and racial body that could not coexist as equals within a European nation-state. Political Zionism did not adopt the idea of Jewish separateness from antisemites. It inherited this idea directly from traditional Judaism itself. The entire structure of Halakha (Jewish Law), with its dietary codes, Shabbat observance, and, most crucially, its powerful prohibition on intermarriage, was a system designed to maintain the Jewish people as a distinct, separate, and unassimilated nation in exile. This was the internal, self-defined jewish reality for millennia. Modern racial antisemitism took this existing reality of Jewish separatism and reframed it as a hostile, biological threat to the European nation-state. The secular European Zionists looked at this situation and synthesized two ideas. Zionists accepted the traditional Jewish premise ("we are a separate people") and accepted the antisemite's practical diagnosis ("they will never accept us as equals"). They rejected both solutions, the religious passivity of waiting for a Messiah and the "liberal delusion"(as Zionists described it) of assimilation. Instead, they chose to take the existing identity of Jewish separateness and reforge it using the modern tools of European nationalism and colonialism. That's also why Zionists published scathing articles about assimilated jews whom they perceived as deluded, cowardly, and "self-hating" for trying to be part of a European society. The leadership and foot soldiers of the early Zionist project in Palestine (1900s), were not suffering from the trauma of the Holocaust (it was decades before) and did not suffer from any meaningful antisemitism, which they also documented themselves ("the Palestinians are child-like and easy to befriend"). Zionist actions and attitudes were thus the direct, confident expression of 19th Century European settler colonialism, as evident in the writings of Herzl, Jabotinsky and co. Zionism was born in the same intellectual environment as the "Scramble for Africa" and the "White Man's Burden." Their argument was not: "We are traumatized victims who need a safe space.", because if that had been the case they wouldn't have rejected the ugandan land they were offered - it was: "You Europeans have successfully conquered and colonized vast territories inhabited by inferior natives. We, as a superior European people currently without a state, claim the right to do the same thing as you". It was the logical, confident, and systematic execution of a European colonial project by a group that chose to see itself as a superior people with the right to displace and subjugate an indigenous population it viewed as inferior (i.e. the 'kushim' of Palestine). Those secular European atheist jews who, despite rejecting religion as superstitious and irrational, still saw value in it as essential myth-making tool to justify the dispossession of natives and legitimize their colonial zionist project by weaponizing those myths ("our God [which they as atheists didn't even believe in] promised this land to us") .
burnt-resistor 1y ago
[flagged]
globalnode 1y ago
Germany refuses to speak up against anything Israel is doing. Hows that for cowed? Poor country has had a number done on them almost 100 years and now theyre done. For that matter all the western countries are done.

by dkarl 1y ago

throwway120385 1y ago

For a while people would label arguments against Israel as being against the Jewish people or the Jewish faith. That is, decrying how Gaza and the West Bank were formed were seen as anti-semitic arguments. It was essentially an argument that Israel is Judaism. Whereas mature people can usually argue against a behavior without arguing against a person or a group of people.

burnt-resistor 1y ago
In so weaponizing "antisemitism" through unethical and immoral political attacks, it increases actual antisemitism and makes the term lose its importance. Meanwhile, 20k Hasidic Jews met in an arena in NYC to denounce what Israel was doing and that they don't speak for them. The sheer arrogance of a secular political regime claiming to speak for an entire people whom aren't citizens of their country and never agreed to this association.
- woodruffw 1y ago
  A thought-provoking argument that I read recently was that Israel's relationship with the diaspora has undergone a fundamental shift in the last 20 years, largely tracking with demographics: it's no longer the case that Jewish life is primarily diasporic in nature, and Israel's growing impatience (and sometimes open disdain) for the diaspora tracks with that demographic reality. I think this is an underrepresented factor in why Israel feels unilaterally emboldened in this conflict: there's no longer a statistically more liberal, secular, identifiably Jewish majority outside of the country that serves as a check on its actions.
  - burnt-resistor 1y ago
    Yep, that's a big part of it: a disengaging, large diaspora of secular Jewish-ish people who are thoroughly Westernized, open society ordinary folks who are mostly shocked by what's happening but don't have any familial, social, political, or economic influence. I've been listening to Norman Finkelstein, Gideon Levy, The Salukie, Hamzah Saadah, and Corey Gil-Shuster for perspectives on what's happening inside and around the region.
    - woodruffw 1y ago
      He wrote it before the current conflict, but I'd also recommend Tablets Shattered by Joshua Leifer[1]. His book is where I first heard diaspora relations framed as such. [1]: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/704833/tablets-shattered-by-joshua-leifer/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/704833/tablets-shat...
- pydry 1y ago
  It's become increasingly apparent that most accusations of anti semitism these days are a thin veil over genocidal islamophobia. which isnt to say anti semitism doesnt exist or even that it isnt getting worse, just that most of the pearl clutching is being done by rather extreme racists who are pretty happy to see muslims exterminated.

jedimind 1y ago

That's what we were thought in school as well, but the actual history quite a bit more complicated than that. Modern racial antisemitism and political Zionism were two modern political projects that grew from the same 19th century soil of nationalism and race theory. They did not agree with each other, but they converged, from opposite directions, on the same fundamental conclusion: that the Jewish people constituted a distinct, unassimilable national and racial body that could not coexist as equals within a European nation-state. Political Zionism did not adopt the idea of Jewish separateness from antisemites. It inherited this idea directly from traditional Judaism itself. The entire structure of Halakha (Jewish Law), with its dietary codes, Shabbat observance, and, most crucially, its powerful prohibition on intermarriage, was a system designed to maintain the Jewish people as a distinct, separate, and unassimilated nation in exile. This was the internal, self-defined jewish reality for millennia. Modern racial antisemitism took this existing reality of Jewish separatism and reframed it as a hostile, biological threat to the European nation-state. The secular European Zionists looked at this situation and synthesized two ideas. Zionists accepted the traditional Jewish premise ("we are a separate people") and accepted the antisemite's practical diagnosis ("they will never accept us as equals"). They rejected both solutions, the religious passivity of waiting for a Messiah and the "liberal delusion"(as Zionists described it) of assimilation. Instead, they chose to take the existing identity of Jewish separateness and reforge it using the modern tools of European nationalism and colonialism. That's also why Zionists published scathing articles about assimilated jews whom they perceived as deluded, cowardly, and "self-hating" for trying to be part of a European society. The leadership and foot soldiers of the early Zionist project in Palestine (1900s), were not suffering from the trauma of the Holocaust (it was decades before) and did not suffer from any meaningful antisemitism, which they also documented themselves ("the Palestinians are child-like and easy to befriend"). Zionist actions and attitudes were thus the direct, confident expression of 19th Century European settler colonialism, as evident in the writings of Herzl, Jabotinsky and co. Zionism was born in the same intellectual environment as the "Scramble for Africa" and the "White Man's Burden." Their argument was not: "We are traumatized victims who need a safe space.", because if that had been the case they wouldn't have rejected the ugandan land they were offered - it was: "You Europeans have successfully conquered and colonized vast territories inhabited by inferior natives. We, as a superior European people currently without a state, claim the right to do the same thing as you". It was the logical, confident, and systematic execution of a European colonial project by a group that chose to see itself as a superior people with the right to displace and subjugate an indigenous population it viewed as inferior (i.e. the 'kushim' of Palestine). Those secular European atheist jews who, despite rejecting religion as superstitious and irrational, still saw value in it as essential myth-making tool to justify the dispossession of natives and legitimize their colonial zionist project by weaponizing those myths ("our God [which they as atheists didn't even believe in] promised this land to us") .

burnt-resistor 1y ago

[flagged]

globalnode 1y ago

Germany refuses to speak up against anything Israel is doing. Hows that for cowed? Poor country has had a number done on them almost 100 years and now theyre done. For that matter all the western countries are done.