Israel Thread

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The context of this post is a couple of UK Labour party MPs being suspended for "anti-semitism" which to my mind looks more like clumsily articulated anti-zionism.

Israel is lucky in it's enemies. For every reasoned, compassionate, logical opponent of the occupation and the apartheid state, there are 3 nutters who come out with "jews=lizards and the holocaust never happened" type nonsense... or the more cynical would say that the media give 3 times as much coverage to the loons and breezes over the reasoned opponents.

So opposition to land grabs, removal of citizenship, home demolitions, detention without trial, destruction of infrastructure, separation of communities and families, etc are characterised as anti-semitic.

My question to those who say critical of Israel = anti-semitism; what would non-anti-semitic criticism of Israel look like?

So is this about Israel or about the problem Labour has with anti-Semitism?

As far as I can tell Naz Shah shared a facebook post which basically said that it would be cheaper, and safer, to ship the entire population of Israel to the US than keep funding Israel. Given that the context of the post was talking about defence spending I suspect the originator was American.

I haven't seen the post but if it was another one of those captioned images that swirl around facebook it probably wasn't intended to be entirely serious and Shah probably thought it was funny and sharing it would make her look witty.

Clearly she has been violently disabused of both notions, and has apologised. The fact that this has surfaced about a week before elections is unlikely to be a coincidence.

The response of the leadership has been pretty pitiful though - they tried to simultaneously condemn her remarks and excuse them, making her look worse and making a suspension and likely expulsion inevitable when it was perhaps not deserved.

On the other hand Ken Livingston is a card-carrying Anti-Semite. This is the man who compared a Jewish reporter to a Concentration Camp Guard, who said Jews would vote for him as London mayor because they were rich and has now suggested that Hitler plan to force Jews to leave Germany was "supporting Zionism".

He may not think he's an anti-Semite but can't see how anyone else could think that - he's clearly prejudiced against Jews, uncaring of recent history and prone to seeing them all through the most negative of stereotypes.

[InsaneApache]

Hitler.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Here's the sourse Livingstone is going to cite: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...srael-comments

Some Marxist from the 80's who, by the looks of it, was canting history pretty hard for his own agenda.

[Greyblades]

Hitler.

[InsaneApache]

Tell that to Mr. Newt.

[Greyblades]

Gingrich?

[Lizardo]

With the identity politics of today it seems only a Jew can get away with criticsm of Israel and not being branded a jew hater/antisemitic for instance Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein.

The anti-semitic accusation is just like politcal correctness it's used to stifle real criticsm of Israel. But what these labour members naz shah and dianne abbott said is bordering on racism and Red Ken is hilarious he keepa digging. the left in their blind support for palestine have turned to hatred of Israel not critiscm. Love it when the left eats itself up!

All this media fanfare for what a Blairite campaign to kick Corbyn out of Labour?

I'm sorry but Blair's Labour is gone the shift even further towards a communist party has happened silly new membership rules the influx of the young generation who overwhemingly believe Socialism is better than Capitalism and the reshuffling of MP's who align to Corbyn.

Brenus you refuse to see facts that go against your preconcieved notion of the right spectrum of politics.
University education goes a miss on you.
"the righties being anti-Semitic from birth" <-- please tell me your being sarcastic
If you think like this no doubt you hold sterotypical views aswell. The irony is lost on you,
TYPICAL LEFTIES lol, and their identity politics

The "right" are some of the biggest proponents of Israel!

I think the left to right political spectrum is an awful way of articulating general political stances.

This article would tell you a thing or two about the left http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/04/t...-to-do-racism/

[Hooahguy]

Finkelstein is certainly not free from antisemitism accusations, at the very least he is accused of being a self-hating Jew. As I remember he was even denied entry into Israel, which has got to be the first time a Jewish person was denied entry. Chomsky gets attacked with the label as well. I agree that the label is overused and real criticism is often stifled by it, but at the same time one must call it out when it actually happens. Its not easy to do as it can be disguised. But with the current state of overusing it, the term has been watered down and I am afraid it has lost its meaning.

And what I think Brenus meant by the right being antisemitic is the far right, AKA neo-Nazis.