Joel retweeted
Replying to @MargolinRabbi
Sorry, but these points that you have made are super old hasbara.
On your first point: selective intensity of attention does not prove antisemitism as the driver. The Israel-Palestine conflict is uniquely sustained by Western (especially U.S. and European) military, diplomatic, and financial support for one side, unlike most other conflicts (which are usually proxy wars or ethnic conflicts fuelled from multiple sides by arms dealers).
Israel receives billions in annual U.S. aid, advanced weapons, and diplomatic cover that enable ongoing occupation, settlement expansion, blockade, and military operations in territories recognised under international law as occupied.
It is also the case that Israel is highly adept at international diplomacy and lobbying - to the extent that we see support for Israel almost wall to wall in establishment circles and media.
I should also point out that comparable scale or intensity of focus has and does occur with other conflicts (see Iraq, Vietnam, and Apartheid South Africa).
On your second point, I again do not disagree that historical anti-Jewish violence is real and indefensible.
Both the 1929 Hebron massacre and the 1941 Farhud were atrocities driven by religious/nationalist hatred, local politics, and (in the Farhud's case) wartime conditions and Nazi-influenced propaganda.
Antisemitism long predates modern Zionism and the State of Israel. Acknowledging this does not require accepting that contemporary Palestinian resistance or solidarity is merely the continuation of that ancient hatred. Palestinians are in conflict with Israel and Israelis because of the specific conditions of the conflict - not because they are antisemitic. Framing all Palestinian armed groups or solidarity protests as “cheering on terror” because some have antisemitic elements or because Jewish history includes pogroms flattens distinct phenomena and is frankly lazy.
On your third point, defining Zionism solely as “the right of the Jewish people to a homeland of its own, as every people has” is a selective, ahistorical abstraction. In practice, Zionism was a late-19th/early-20th-century political movement that sought a Jewish majority state in Palestine despite an existing non-Jewish majority population. Palestinians resist and oppose Zionism because of what has been done to them. I am an anti-Zionist on that basis and also because I firmly believe that we can and should tackle antisemitism rather than give in to it and succumb to the idea that the only 'cure' is for Jews to live in Israel.
Furthermore, Zionism's dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948, the prevention of their return, and the maintenance of a system that privileges Jewish national rights over equal citizenship for all inhabitants of the land is the reality. Prayer for return to Zion is a religious tradition; converting it into a modern ethno-national political project that requires demographic engineering and military dominance is a political choice, not an inevitable or universal right.
Israel’s non-Jewish citizens (primarily Palestinian citizens of Israel) enjoy formal citizenship but face documented structural discrimination in land, housing, family reunification, and political rights under laws that define the state as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Opposing Zionism is not the same as opposing the existence or safety of Jews, any more than opposing other ethno-national projects equates to hatred of the relevant ethnic group. Most Jews worldwide are not Israeli citizens, and significant Jewish currents (historical and contemporary) have been anti-Zionist or non-Zionist on ethical, religious, or political grounds. Equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism collapses a political disagreement into a racial or religious one, which left-wing anti-Zionists reject as both inaccurate and a barrier to addressing actual antisemitism.
I utterly reject your last remark and that isn't remotely what I have done nor is it the position of any anti-Zionist that I know.
I'm not buying this narrative that Michael Carrick is a poor brave soul who's been swallowed up by a rotten club and didn't have a chance. Yes he doesn't have the best squad but he's also failed spectacularly as a manager by any metric.
The right: we should have the right to lie as much as we want on social media
The left: we don't think people should be allowed to lie on social media
Idiots: that second scenario is dangerous and terrible
Seeing a bunch of articles debating whether the owners or Carrick are most to blame for this start to the season:
City fans have genuinely reached the point where they're tallying head to head court cases with their lead KC and that of the independent panel and claiming it's a win for them because it's 2-1 to theirs. Very excited to see how many more straws they can manage to grasp.
Does Michael Carrick think he's there to cheer the team on....? Would that explain the job he's doing?
“Listen, I’ve not given my own position any thought,” he said. “[My thoughts are] for the supporters – I was one of them watching that and I wasn’t happy at all.”
"Oh fuck I've got an exclusive inside scoop on the biggest sports scandal in British history, let me call Martin Keown" said no one. Ever.
🗣️ "I'm hearing rumours..."
😳 "This will be over in a number of weeks and it won't be as bad as we think!"
Martin Keown's heard some potentially very good news for #MCFC fans! 👀
Martin Keown reveals he's heard potentially good news for Man City!
Great but completely pointless until the wealth gap is addressed. All you're doing is alerting poor people to how unhealthy the food they can afford is.
Anyone who trusts space Karen to manufacture a safe flying car needs to ask the question as to why he hasn't even mastered FSD yet after years of promises.
I get why my For You tab is full of City fans echoing their owner's propaganda like cheap plastic singing flowerpots but I don't get why my app is suddenly defaulting to that instead of Following. Although I will appreciate that when the punishment is handed down.
None of his alleged victims will ever be the same person either but justice would at least go some way towards healing.
Trump really sold his soul to Putin for the grand total of 66% of one day's diesel consumption in the US. He's playing 9D chess as always.
Watched it through twice but I still can't bring myself to watch the final episode because then it's done forever.
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