Will antisemitism ever be looked at and dealt with in the same way as Islamophobia is?

Countries don't just exist, they are usually formed along political lines,which can change over time. Of course states like Israel are hugely controversial, it has been built upon and thrived only because of systemic oppression. You find it odd that people are bothered by that? And for the love of God, please stop trying to minimise the right for Palestinians to even have an identity. It's truly awful, but made so much worse when it's juxtaposed with how Jews aren't just a religion but an ethnicity too. It just reeks of a portrayed superiority.

Thanks for doing what I couldn’t quite face and unpicking what was untrue in the remainder of that post!

Tell that to Gazans, Iranians and Lebanese?

You seem quite confused and conflating different things. No, Arabs didn't identify as Palestinians before 1948, the Jews did! Of course there was a region called Palestine, it was called this since Roman times after they expelled all the Jews as a punihsment for them to call them after their ancient and despised enemies the Philistines, but absolutely no national identity. Only Jews living in mandatory Palestine called themselves and identifed as palestinan. Fact.

When the Brits left on 15 May 1948, on that very day, the Palestinian zionists declared the State of Israel in place of the colonial mandate of Palestine. You know who didn't declare a state of Palestine? The Palestinian Arabs. Why? Please do tell us. Why did then 5 surrounding Arab countries INVADE the new state of Israel? Also, antoehr question. The Arabs held the Gaza Strip and West Bank from 1948-1967. Why was no State of Palestine established there? Why did Jordan annex the West Bank (including the old city of Jerusalem and they forbade Jews - not Israeli Jews but all Jews - from accessing their most holy sites) and why was that ok?

Let's not pretentd Israel doesn't have its sights on South Lebanon? Like seriously? What social media dirge have you been consuming! Israel has zero claims on South Lebanon and never has. Even all the years when Israel got itself involved in the Lebanese civil war and kept a security buffer in south Lebanon, it never made any claims of soverignty. Israel withdrew from every last inch of Lebanon in 2006 as certified by the UN. What did they get in return? Hezbollah inserting itself and preparing to attack Israel at the behst of Iran as indeed has happened. Just like what Israel got in return from withdrawing from Gaza. What lessons do you think Israel is learning from this? That withdrawing from territory leads to peace or to further attacks?

Why did Israel return Sinai? What did it get in return?
Israel also offered nearly all of the WB wth land swaps for the reamining small percentage, all of Gaza, land corrdidor linking the two and a Palestinian State in return for a recognition of an end to the conflict. This happened under Barak at Camp David, theis happened under Olmert at Annapolist. Both times the Palestinians refused to sign. They didn't want to give up the right of return to Israel, they didn't want civil war with their extremist elements.

I mean, FFS, you can't pin this all on Israel. yes, israel has made mistakes especially with the settlements in land which is under military occupation for palestinians. Yes, the compromises of a peace deal would have a biitter pill for Israelis to swallow and not all supported. yes, Israel has definitely moved to the right over the last couple of decades and is becoming less and less democratic. But there's also a reason for it. And you can't ignore the fact taht the Palestinians did not want a two state and do not want peace with Israel. Hamas was blowing up buses in the 90s in order to prevent a peace deal. The reason this is such a difficult conflict is precisely because there is fault on BOTH sides.

You really need to educate yourself on the history and poltiics of the region.

It’s actually quite funny that you say my post contains lies and then go straight to repeating the same misreading of what I actually said that I have already had to re explain to another poster:

I never said Palestine didn’t exist as a region, I said it was never a country. And yes I know there can be nations or ethnicities etc without a country - like the Kurds or the Yazidis - I mean I’m not stupid - but the region called Palestine did not contain any such corresponding “nation” historically. That’s why old newspapers refer to Jews as Palestinians while their opponents are called Arabs. How could that happen if the Palestinians were an ancient people different from the Jordanians and Syrians etc?

The rest of your post is similarly misrepresentative and I don’t have time to go through it all just now. But it’s either wrong or misrepresents what I said and quite often both.

huh? Are you saying the Palestinian Arabs are ancient Philistines? WTF?

But to your question, civil war usually leads to displacement, sad but ture.

Many of the Palestinian Arabs fled out of fear, others were itnetionally dsplaced. However, every single piece of territory held by Arabs were also ethnically cleaned from jews like the old city of Jerusalen and the Etzion block. So it happened on both sides and one side just happened to win. BTW, many Arabs didn't flee and remained and now form 20% of the population of the State of Israel with Israeli citizenship.Why weren't they all cleansed the way the Arabs did to the Jews? Why were all Jews massacred or displaced in the territories of held by Arabs?

One could ask why were the refugees in the neighbouring Arab countries not assimilated the way that all otehr refugees int he world from the 1940s have been? Why keep them as refugees? Why do Palestinians have a unique status which means their refugee status never ends as opposed to every other refugee int he world?

Furthermore, let's take a comparative look as well.

Why were tens of millions of people displaced when India was partitioned into India and Pakistan?

Why were millions of ethnic Germans displaced from eastern Europe when they lost WW2?

Why were millions of ethnic Greeks, Turks and Armenains displaced during and following WW1?

First it doesn't really matter if anyone thinks Israel should exist. It does, that's just a fact. I always find it weird the whole discussion about a country's right to exist. Countries don't have rights, they exist because they do and Israel is most certainly a fully functioning nation state.

And Jews are an ethnic group, a people, it's far far more than religion. Fact is that Dreyfus was a secular French Jewish officer, he wasn't religious and it didn't matter. And the Nazis certanly didn't check if someone kept kosher before murdering them. However, your belief that Jews should have a country in their ancestral homeland does actually make you a zionist, by definition.

The Palestinians really aren't distinct from Jordanians. Most Jordanians are acutally Palestinian. And what became Jordan was part of the British mandate for Palestine in 1917, the Brits set up the Kingdom of Jordan. In fact, it's the Jordanian waqf which is responsible for management of haram al sharif compound. But, that said, the Palestinians do have a strong national identity which is distinct from that of Jordan and I can respect that even if they are indistinguishable in every other way.

Zionism is a poltical and cultural movement. Like any movement, it has its extreme and factions. The zionism you are thinking of is the most extreme and religion stream of zionism, one that doesn't represent most zionists. There are far more liberal strands of zionism. For example, you can read here about the ideology and platform of the "Meretz" political party - a zionist party but one which seems aligned with your own views and opinions as, indeed, are many Israelis. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meretz#Ideology

I think we have to agree to disagree on this.

There are clear examples here of people who claim to know but then show that they don't know/understand the basics like Jews are not only a religious group but also an ethnicity. There are many ethnical Jews that are not practising but still believe that Jews need a country where they are safe (UK is certainly not a safe country for Jews). Then the whole ignorance (but trying to be "smart") around that there are more semites than Jews or that some Jews come from Eastern Europe - just wow! You can't change the meaning of a word just because it suits your (racist) agenda. Antisemitism is Jew hatred. It is like "discussing" with MAGA "pro-lifers", who claim that abortion is murder, when murder has a legal definition. Same kind of exhausting ignorance.

Lastly, I find it mind-boggling how the same person can distinguish Trump from the US and ordinary Americans, but then spew hate over Israel because of Netanyahu and think that antisemitism towards British Jews is understandable (without the explanation of racism).

After years of campaigning against racism, I've stopped when I now can see that it is not real for many. I will just focus on trying to be a good person in my everyday life.

@LucyWestenra Please do look up John Mann. Admittedly I didn’t know he existed until I just googled, but it does mean I have a question for you.

Why are you ok with there being an antisemitism tsar in place since 2019, but so against one being appointed on Islamophobia?

Far from it. This thread shows that many people are against antisemitism.

They are simply against it being pitted against Islamophobia and arguing which one is worse. They are both awful and both need to be challenged.

I stopped engaging with this thread as it was obvious OP has an agenda so there was no point, but your post has so many lies I have to respond. As PP said, all Zionist propaganda so it’s important to challenge it to avoid others falling for it.

There may not have been a modern state of Palestine before 1948, but there absolutely was a recognised region called Palestine under the Ottoman Empire and later the British Mandate for Palestine. National identities don’t require prior statehood, as is evident by many countries today not existing in their current form until the 20th century.

Palestinian identity also didn’t suddenly appear with Yasser Arafat. This is a lie repeatedly told to deny the mere existence of Palestinians. The term “Palestinian” as a distinct people, rather than just a reference to those living there, was already developing at least 100 years before, with Arabs in the region identifying as Palestinians well before the 1960s and the first modern use of it recorded in the late 19th century, years before Yasser Arafat was even born. Suggesting it is a marketing ploy ignores how national identities actually form and worse, deliberately ignores the very existence of Palestinians in order to justify the take over of the region by Israel. Identities form through shared language, culture, geography, and political experience and Palestinians are no exception to that. By your logic, many modern national identities should be dismissed the same way

Suggesting everyone only hated Jews is a major oversimplification. Yes some people will have antisemitism as their reason for opposing Zionism but for most, it’s about opposing colonialism and the cost and impact on Palestinians as a consequence of pursuing Zionism. Reducing it to one motive distorts the history and again, deliberately disregards the suffering and losses of the Palestinians.

Black September was widely condemned, and it’s not accurate to say nobody cared. It does show, however, that regional politics involving Palestinians have often been complex and, at times, brutal, but that doesn’t invalidate Palestinian national claims and that doesn’t justify what is happening today. It’s the continued persecution and mistreatment of Palestinians that is happening today that is the issue.

And while Israel returning Sinai after the Six-Day War is real, it’s not the full picture, as other territories remain occupied and disputed. Look at the how the Palestinian territories have reduced over the past 60 years. Look at what’s happening in the West Bank. And let’s not pretend Israel doesn’t have it sights on south Lebanon.

So by all means, support Israel and all that they do, but don’t spread a false narrative in doing so.

I don't think this will convince antisemites/racists.They will say that it Jews playing victims and then disregard it all.

Don't you know that all Jews are white, and can just hide their Jewish identity?

Not that hiding who you are is something that is suggested to others to this extent, and rightly so, to avoid discrimination. And let's just have an oversight that Jews comes in all shades.

None of this matters, as Jews don't count. This thread is such a great example of this.

The Philistines? They disappeared the same way many other Bronze Age peoples disappeared. Like the Mycenaeans and the Hittites in the same region, or the Bell Beaker people in Western Europe.

I mean, we might all still have some Bell Beaker DNA, but I don’t think that's a meaningful definition of who we are today though.

Similarly, the people who now call themselves Palestinians are not related in civilisation and language and probably not even significantly related genetically, to the Sea Peoples whom the Assyrians, Egyptians, Jews and Babylonians all called Philistines.

https://www.visionofhumanity.org/gaza-conflict-leads-to-rise-in-antisemitism-and-islamophobia

Anti-Semitic hate crimes in London up 1,350%, Met police say.

Exactly.

And it seems the OP is quite deliberately provocative on most threads when she discusses Islam.

I think she'd like to think it was hate, rather than just posters seeing through her.

To be honest, I am sick of hearing special pleading from both sides.

I am sick of the utter wastefulness of the whole “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” grudge-holding, endless blood-feuding, vendettas, fighting endless battles from hundreds of years ago, the whole tribal mentality of the Middle East.

It is time to grow up and start accepting you are all human and need to learn to get along.

And stop expecting everyone to join in your endless feuding by agreeing with you that the other side are all baddies, but your chosen side can do no wrong.

I don’t give a shit whether anti-semitism or Islamophobia is “worse” - they are both the actions of nasty people, but I am NOT interested in being drawn into your bloody proxy squabbles.

I am sick of watching Israel repeatedly order civilians out of their homes in Palestine and now Lebanon in order to drop bombs. I am sick of watching Israeli settlers steal more and more land and treat local Palestinians like dirt. I am sick of Hezbollah and Hamas using their own people for their own political ends. And I am sick of Iran treating women like shit and subjecting their citizens to medieval laws.

I am sick of the men on both sides trashing their societies and ruining the lives of women and children because they are too puffed up by their own self- importance and bolstering their fragile egos and can never be seen to back down, or lose face.
What a fucking waste of human potential.

We don’t need to be fanning the flames of religious and tribal wars originating in other countries; we have got enough of our own problems.

How is that relevant to the existence of the country though?
Because that’s what was being argued - that being “anti Zionist”, ie against the existence of Israel, is not the same as being anti semitic, ie against Jews.
But as usual, the way the actions of Jews in the UK and Europe, and the actions of the IDF, are being conflated on here (such as the comment about a child being shot) seem to show that the link between the two is pretty close.

That's not what she said though. In one post she said there has never been Jewish terrorists and in another she asked for any example of Jewish people that had committed atrocities. You're being very disingenuous to now say that you can't include Israelis in that list. Why should they get a pass?

If they had disappeared, why did 750 000 people need to be displaced in the creation of Israel? 🙄 Why did hundreds of villages need to be destroyed, just like they are now doing in Lebanon?

I didn’t say Palestine didn’t exist - I said it was never a country, which is true.

Syria-Palestina is the name that was given by the Romans to the land previously called Judea (of the Jews) when the Jews were expelled after the Bar Kokhba revolt.

The renaming was done deliberately to erase the existence of the Jewish kingdom in that land. It was named for a people that had already long disappeared by then, the Philistines. They’re thought to be invaders from somewhere around the Aegean, who settled along the coast in a collection of city states called “Philistia” - but they were not “Palestinians”. That was a Roman invention.

The political party currently leading the polls in this country are group of open Islamophobes. And they’re now trying to enlist the Jewish community.

I hope that most Jews will be able to see it for what it is.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/11/nigel-farage-heckled-reform-jewish-alliance-launch

You know Israel has Arab and Muslim citizens and they also serve in the IDF, right? And they are represented in parliament?

We don’t call Pakistan a close ally.