Pro-Palestinian does not equal anti-Semitism; your thoughts?

[Trollheart]

Isn't it like the old argument, you're either with us or agin us? The pro-life twisted idea that labels those against them as pro-abortion, rather than pro-choice, that if we agree with abortion (no matter what caveats/limits are put on that, and I don't think anyone wants abortions just for the sake of them) then we are anti-life and we want everyone to have an abortion? Extending this to the current situation, and building on something discussed in the 2024 Presidential Election thread, but wanting to take it out of that discussion and into its own, isn't it completely disingenuous, even deliberately manipulative, to label anyone who professes sympathy for Gaza as being an anti-Semite, bent on the destruction of the Jews?

Isn't it possible to sympathise with, revile and revolt against the wholesale destruction of a people without being against Jews in general? I find the rhetoric being used by NetanGoogle sorry Netanyahu chillingly familiar: he says essentially "anyone supporting Palestine and wanting this war to end is anti-Semite", while only a year or less ago the noises coming out of the Kremlin were about "disturbing prevalence of Russophobia". Each is trying to justify mass-murder with a) being defence, which it is not and b) protecting their people, which they are not. Why can we not decry the slaughter of innocents without it having to be seen as a political belief? If these were Arabs or Mexicans or Cubans or Africans or Muslims or, hell, white Christians, I would personally feel the same. I don't look at Gaza and think "stinking Jews!" I look at Gaza and think "stinking murderers!"

Would it be too hyperbolic to say that Israel stands at the brink of the precipice, ready to fall into the abyss and join their historical oppressors? Can there, really, be too much difference between the Third Reich trying to exterminate the Jewish people, and the Jewish people (embodied in the State of Israel) trying to exterminate the Palestianian people? And yet, if you raise this question, you're anti-Semite. That can't keep being used as an excuse. Sometimes, evil is evil, regardless of race, creed or colour, or gender.

Thoughts?

(Incidentally, this is with reference to Israel alone; it has nothing to do with America's support of the war, which is being discussed anyway elsewhere.)

[jimmy jazz]

isn't it completely disingenuous, even deliberately manipulative, to label anyone who professes sympathy for Gaza as being an anti-Semite, bent on the destruction of the Jews?

Yes it is. Not that different to the way people like to throw around the word 'Islamophobia' whenever the religion of Islam is criticised.

[Trollheart]

Right. It's like there is no nuance: you either support these people or don't, and your views have to reflect that. I know it's a drama (and not a very good one) but I've seen occasions in the series FBI where someone will describe a suspect and say "I think he was Muslim" and one of the agents, who is (or plays) a Muslim, says "you THINK?" The inference being that every Muslim is seen, in many eyes, as a potential terrorist. So if Hamas are a terrorist group, does it follow every Palestinian mother and child is also one? It's fucking ridiculous, and as I think SGR said, the sympathy for the Holocaust is in danger of being overridden by what can only really be called the genocide of Gaza.

[Mindy]

"NetanGoogle" 

I don't have many thoughts to add really but I agree with everything in your post @Trollheart

[Lexi Darling]

At least it's not NetanAskJeeves.

[SGR]

One thing that seems eternally true about humans is that we like to put ourselves and others into 'groups'. I think there's two primary reasons for this:

• It provides us with a form of identity (or reinforces our own identity by excluding another group from our identity). And we crave identities. It allows us to feel like we're part of something bigger than ourselves, whether it's religion, nationality, political party, race, creed, or even sports fandom.
• It allows us an easier way to think about and discuss topics and issues without requiring us to observe or recognize many of the inevitable nuances. Am I "pro-life" or "pro-choice"? Am I 'anti-immigration' or 'pro-immigration'? Am I 'pro-enviromentalism' or 'anti-enviromentalism'?

To the point of identity, this has actually been studied in terms of how it motivates us and our thinking.

Identity-based motivation: Implications for intervention

Here's the abstract:

Children want to succeed academically and attend college, but their actual attainment often lags behind; some groups (e.g., boys, low-income children) are particularly likely to experience this gap. Social structural factors matter, influencing this gap in part by affecting children's perceptions of what is possible for them and people like them in the future. Interventions that focus on this macro-micro interface can boost children's attainment. We articulate the processes underlying these effects using an integrative culturally sensitive framework entitled identity-based motivation (IBM, Oyserman, 2007, 2009a, 2009b). The IBM model assumes that identities are dynamically constructed in context. People interpret situations and difficulties in ways that are congruent with currently active identities and prefer identity-congruent to identity-incongruent actions. When action feels identity-congruent, experienced difficulty highlights that the behavior is important and meaningful. When action feels identity-incongruent, the same difficulty suggests that the behavior is pointless and "not for people like me."

One finding of the study was that our identities and thus our actions are malleable, especially when we're young. To give a very simple example:

Say two different mothers wants their young child's help in doing the dishes. The mothers ask in two different ways:

• "Please go do the dishes"
• "Be a big helper, and help me by doing the dishes"

The theory goes, that more often than not, the second mother is going to have much more success with getting their child's help in doing the dishes, because not only has she made a request, she's attached an identity to doing the request - "a big helper". In the first request, the child could completely reject the request as something that is not congruent with their identity, and thus conflicts, even if their current identity is something as simple as "a kid who wants to play outside with his friends". Attaching a positive identity to the request is more likely to be successful, because the child (and people in general) want to embody that positive identity. It gives us humans a sense of purpose and meaning.

To this point, and the larger points made here by others, you can imagine how these identities (or 'labels' if you'd prefer) can be used both positively or negatively by politicians for the purposes of propaganda.

"Those guys are anti-Semitic!" - well, jeez, I don't want to associate or support people like that
"Those guys are pro-genocide!" - well, gosh, now I don't know who to support

Personally, I just want the war to end. Real brave and insightful, I know. 
The problem is how peace and stability could be kept and maintained between the two groups in the future. I don't know that it can.

[Janszoon]

Pro-Palestinian does not equal anti-Semitism; your thoughts?

I agree. And being pro-Palestinian doesn't mean being pro-Hamas. Not enough people understand that multiple things can be true at the same time. The October 7 attacks were horrific. Israel's bombing of Palestinian civilians in response continues to be horrific.

[Trollheart]

To your point, SGR, it can even be simpler in terms of labels or groups: everyone wants to be either good or bad, or at least perceived as such, as despite the likes of George Thoroughgood growling that he's "Bad to the bone" or Gary Moore spitting about the fact that he's "Cold Hearted", almost everyone wants to be seen as being good, however simplistic that term is. That means you (want to) stand up for the little guy, protect your family, do well in your life, leave some sort of legacy/remembrance behind. Last night I watched the last episode in Ken Burns' documentary The US and the Holocaust, and I felt horror and sympathy and sorrow for the Jews. I cried over Anne Frank. I don't feel any different today. I don't say to myself, should have let them all die. But I don't equate what Israel is doing today with what their ancestors went through almost a century ago now. I don't hate Jews. I have nothing against Jews. I have a lot against murderers and cowards, and people who hide behind the sacrifice - intended or not - of their forebears and use it as a blanket, catch-all excuse and premise to justify what they're doing now.

I want to be seen as a good person. I think I am, generally, or I try to be. And one way we do that is to try - even through lipservice and head-shaking - to decry the wrongs in the world. I don't worry that I'll be misrepresented if I post in outrage about Palestinian children being killed, hospitals being bombed, and Israel deliberately targetting Rafah, where all those who could have fled, as their next war zone, a tactic that has disturbing parallels with what both the IRA and the Loyalists used to do in Northern Ireland during the troubles: they'd set off a bomb, and when the emergency services arrived to tend to the wounded they would have another go off, deliberately luring them in. It was disgusting then, and it's disgusting now. And it should be and must be called what is is, not Jewish murder, but simple murder. The IDF have already killed over, by general estimates (though they're believed to be higher) 300 times the number of hostages Hamas took, and at least some of the latter are still alive.

Unless you're an Israeli - even if you are - how can anyone hide behind the accusation of anti-Semitism to allow such atrocities to happen? Have they learned nothing from World War II? Are we forever doomed to repeat history, and isn't what Netanyahu and his parliament are doing now only emboldening the far right, who will point - and surely are already doing so - to the destruction and indisciminate killing in Gaza to support their long-held belief that the Jews are nothing but a race of murderers, and that Hitler had it right all along? And how long, despicable as that sentiment is, will we be able to contradict it? Are we looking at Europe before appeasement and Europe after? Hitler has no intention of causing war versus Hitler is a warmongering dictator and needs to be stopped? There have got to be Germans either quietly or openly laughing at the way the world's eyes have been "opened" to the "threat" of the "international Jew" - how can Israel not see that they're playing into the very hands of their enemies? Why is nobody in Israel protesting this war? Or are they, and are being silenced? The forced closure of Al-Jazeera in Israel yesterday takes this to an even more worrying and darker place.

But to return to my original, or rather, SGR's original point: if the only true division we make among us is, are we "good" or are we "bad", then we all - with some very few exceptions - want to be good, or seen as such. Why? Because in a very general and simplistic sense, those who are "good", or seen as good, are listened to more. Even Trump and his far right never said "We're evil and we want to kill everyone who doesn't agree with us", because then nobody would have wanted to have been associated with them. Everyone - everyone, even fucking Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, you name it - couches their goals as being "for the good" of [insert cause here], otherwise nobody would support them, and even the most powerful dictator, president, king or warlord relies on others for his powerbase, a classic truism being that if you don't have the support of the military you are gone. So nobody will come out and say "I am evil!" We all want to be good. Unfortunately, it's not that simple, or to quote Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar: "We all have truths: are mine the same as yours?"

[Trollheart]

Sigh. More anti-Semitism! When will people learn? 

I suppose you have to give Israel points for style. Where did they get a mini-shredder, anyway?

[Lisnaholic]

Sigh. More anti-Semitism! When will people learn? 

I suppose you have to give Israel points for style. Where did they get a mini-shredder, anyway?

So that UN resolution is a small step towards a two-state solution, which, however unlikely it seems today, is surely the only fair solution to the Palestine/Israel conflict.

Thanks for the fact-check on the Pro-Palestine protests taking place across the US and Canada, Mindy. With such forceful Pro-Palestine protests going on, I began wondering why we aren't hearing about protests in Arab countries too. Why aren't neighbouring Arab countries opening their doors to Palestinian refugees? Alas for the ordinary Palestinian suffering in Gaza today, the old PLO has done lasting damage to the reputation of Palestinians in general. Unless I have my history wrong, Lebanon once let in Palestinian refugees: instead of being grateful guests, the Palestinians pushed the once peaceful Lebanon into a devastating civil war. In Beirut, Christians and Muslims had lived together in peaceful co-existence, but the PLO put a stop to that, pretty much destroying the city in the process. Something similar in Jordan too, where the PLO repaid the hospitality of King Hussein by trying to overthrow his monarchy.

Anyway, that's a part of the story that we are not hearing much about right now.
I have to go to work now, but just to be clear: yeah, what Israel is doing in Gaza is a terrible thing, imo.