Rising anti swmtism in the UK....do we really need to crack down I n the Iran regime Hamas supporting mobs?

I dont think anyone is suggesting they should. People who care about this region tend to be very clear who the main culprits are, the various actors who threaten Israel also threaten any sort of peace process, which would lead to a Palestinian State, and ordinary Palestinians who are pawns in there game. People who align with Hamas, Iran and other terrorists have no concern for ordinary Palestinians.

there doesn’t appear to be another country who has to suffer as part of its existence ideological foes whose objective is the destruction of that country per se!

Theres Palestine, a country and a people which is being slowly eradicated by very powerful countries. Israel is very open about wanting to destroy Palestine and has taken several active steps towards that happening.

Why do you think people who have no affiliation with either country should care more about Israeli lives than Palestinian lives?

It really is this simple. And people should listen & try to hear the experience of people like @PurpleThistle7.

This debate on this thread on whether Israel has a right to exist is utter nonsense.

Israel does exist. It already exists.

If you think it shouldn’t, you are calling for the destruction of a nation of people who already exist.

There’s a word for that.

When people say Jewish people have a right to self determination, this statement is within the two millennia long context of Jews being persecuted, murdered and/or being expelled from other countries across the world.

History has taught, and the years since Oct 7th 2023 have reminded, Jews that they cannot rely on the societies or governments of other countries ( than Israel) to keep them safe. They are constantly cast as ‘other’ in the societies they live in. The sign I saw a Jewish man holding at the last March Against anti-Semitism in London put it well. ‘I used to think I was a British Jew. Now I realise I’m a Jew who happens to live in Britain.’

Jews are, yet again, again being attacked and murdered and othered in the West.

Israel gives Jewish people a right to self-determination in their own homeland where they are able to defend themselves, rather than rely on others to defend them as citizens. Because relying on that, has led to terrible massacres and expulsions for two millennia.

Some familiar faces some totally predictable name-changing for a thread about antisemitism 🙄

The rise in antisemitism in the UK is something that could be covered in Philosophy & Ethics ( which used to be called Religious studies when I was at school).

This subject encourages students to think about other cultures so the issue of other forms of racism would also be covered, such as racist beliefs and actions in UK society against Muslims.

It would be a good thing in my opinion for youngsters to get formally educated about, they are particularly vulnerable to online influences that encourage antisemitism or other forms of racism.

See some familiar faces here!

British nationals can serve in other armies. There’s thousands fighting in Ukraine and even some in Russia. There is nothing illegal about it. Israeli citizens who live in Israel as adults will almost always be in the IDF for a few years - as per any other country with compulsory service.

My father is an IDF veteran. My Jewish American parents met on a trip to Israel, married, had me and he served 6 months in an immigrant division. They then moved back to the states so I grew up American. My husband and I immigrated to the UK 20 years ago and had our kids here - they are British / American / Israeli citizens but obviously feel and act British first as they’ve never lived anywhere else.

Every Jewish family has generations of stories about antisemitism- my great grandparents fled the pogroms in Russia, my grandmother wasn’t allowed to go to the local school until her parents fought for her, my mother wasn’t spat at, my grandmother’s care home had a mass shootinf, my father’s synagogue had another, my brother’s school has lockdown drills and bomb threats… and my 11 year old daughter was surrounded by teenage boys yelling Free Palestine in the hallway at her high school. This stuff isn’t new, it’s not surprising, and the Jewish community can’t fix it by doing xyz in Israel or being polite or waving a banner around. It’s a frightening time, but we’ve survived worse.

The absolute best thing anyone can do is just believe us when we speak. If we say ‘these hate marches are terrifying and bringing out the worst in people and now my daughter is afraid to go to school’, don’t tell me I’m overreacting or that the intention wasn’t for that to happen. I don’t care about intent, I care about impact. And the impact on my family in the last 2.5 years has been massive.

This argument is about as facetious as those who responded to the BLM movement: don't ALL lives matter?

there doesn’t appear to be another country who has to suffer as part of its existence ideological foes whose objective is the destruction of that country per se!

yes, in so far as all nation-states that have a right to self-determination exist, they have that right to exist. So all nation-states have a “right to exist”. The only reason that anyone ever asserts the Israeli right to exist (as opposed to Spain, or whatever) is because Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and a number of others have sworn to destroy Israel.

Talking about annexation in this context would not be a fact though. It would be political propaganda.

You would have to place it in the context of a time where redrawing of countries boundaries and creation of new countries was happening in many places.

There is a lot of other context here, such as the expulsion of over 800,000 Jews from Arab countries in the 1950s.

Israel is exceptionalised by those who are against Israel. It is held to standards other countries are not held to.

Why would we yea he that Israel has the right to exist without teaching that Spain, Germany, Madagascar etc all have the right to exist?

If you want it added to the national curriculum that Isreal has the right to exist, you also have to teach why there is any question of it not existing, and from there student have to be left to make up their own minds about the rights and wrongs of the creation of Israel.

Teaching blanket statements as fact without evidence and without considering the context or controversy is brainwashing, not teaching.

I think over the last few years brainless racist thickos feel they can be very open with their racism. They don’t have the brain capacity to understand regular people - in this case Jews are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, and/or the IDF. It was the same in covid, people attacking and saying awfully racist things to Chinese people, done by again, absolute thick as shit racists.

As much I don’t agree with a lot of what Israel (the gov) do I do understand this is not Jewish peoples fault, wherever in the world they happen to reside. I really feel for Jews, its awful.

It is silly posts like this that continue to shit stir and incite hatred.

Brainwashing to say that Israel is a legitimate state so has as much right to exist as other legitimate states?

As they say on Mumsnet, give your head a wobble.

Teaching a simple statement as fat without answering the questions that the statement automatically raises such as why are we learning that Isreal has the right to exist when we don’t learn about evey every individual country an their right to exist? Or, Why doesn’t Palestine have as much right to exist as Israel?

We are supposed to teach children critical thinking. Teaching children
that Isreal has the right to exist no matter what they do to other people is brainwashing, not teaching.

My sentence stood on its own and didn't need to be used as a springboard for other issues.

It's a simple enough statement of moral clarity to say that children could be taught that Israel is a legitimate state so has as much right to exist as other legitimate states.

A legitimate state where? Inside the internationally sanctioned borders or anywhere they like?

Because actually, it’s ok to believe that Israel doesn’t have the right to exist in Gaza, or the West Bank, at the expense of Palestinians. because those places were declared as Palestinian territory.

we would do better to teach children that while all countries that do exist have a right to exist, they don’t have the right to invade or oppress others.

Obviously not. Where did I tell the Jewsh people to do anything? The self bit is the giveaway, its a choice. The only people telling the Jews to do anything are the antisemites who apparently dont want them here (or anywhere else) but deny them their right to the land they came from. You are just talking about domestic self determination, within a state but self determination is also principle underpinning the creation of states. Something that often happens when groups of people are denied domestic self determination. The treatment of the Jews in the diaspora rather exemplifies that.

Not true. Self determination per the UN charter is political self determination, ideally by democracy, where the majority government make the laws, but not to the detriment of minorities.

Article 21 of the UN charter on human rights.

1. Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
3. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

A British Jew/Muslim/Christian etc has equal rights to any other group. Self determination is being able to take part in elections. As a voter or candidate.

If someone says that any group is not able to take part in elections, when that group is qualified to do so, then that goes against human rights.

Your post seems to basically be a variation of "go back to where you came from" ?

@SunnyAfternoonToday

Self determination is a really complex thing though. In the UK it is not based on ethnicity or religion, but geographical boundaries, mostly set by history.

Para 2 of the UN charter :

"To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;"

Self determination is a conditional right surely ? And in the context of the UN charter it really means political self determination. The people, as a collective, get to democratically elect a government with the politics they want. In the UK everyone with a vote has an equal part in the election of what government they determine that want. That is the right. The right is not for Jews or Christians or Muslims to have the exact government they want, because demographics.

Self determination along ethnic or religious lines is really problematic, because it can potentially infringe on so many rights of others.

I think with Israel, and happy to be corrected, it was nominally a Jewish state, but officially not. It was secular. Then in 2019, Netanyahu said :

"Israel “is the national state, not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people.”

Netanyahu: Israel is the state of 'Jewish people alone' | AP News

At that point, I think it could be argued that self determination was thrown out the window, because he was deciding to define it in a different way than the UN Charter intended it to mean.

@SunnyAfternoonToday I’d disagree with that fwiw. It’s British people who have self-determination within the UK (let’s leave aside nuances around UK/GB/England, etc. mean). We don’t have it because we are Christians. We have it basically as an ethnic group, or at least as a defined population with enough magic ingredients in common for that to work, whatever those are. We’ve accepted our Jews as part of the British group/population over a long period – it’s well-established that there is no contradiction between being British and being Jewish. I would imagine there is considerable genetic mixture by now also, so this won’t be just conceptual assimilation either. So British jews do have self-determination but it’s on the basis that they are British, not that they are Jewish. Not to recognise that is a big risk to British Jews I would say, and I would be extremely wary of discounting the huge degree of assimilation that has taken place since the 1600s – it is very, very important to Jews’ place in this country.

Whether the above holds true for other religions is something that remains to be seen. That’s one of the reasons why I get so angry at how the last 25 years of mass migration has been conducted with such a lack of care. There’s been an assumption that you can have migration in colossal numbers, and do it fast, and for the new groups too there won’t be such a contradiction – but it hasn’t been stress-tested and it might yet go horribly, horribly wrong and quickly. The rise in anti-semitism might itself be showing us that it just isn’t going to work.

Currently Jewish people in Britain are facing the fears and hatred that our parents and grandparents faced in Germany just prior to Hitler becoming Chancellor, at which point I don't need to repeat the history of the 1930s I'm sure.
Christians have self determination here in the UK as it is a Christian country. Personally I don't feel that Jews can claim a right to self determination here in the UK and that's fine - it's not their country, however assimilated the Jewish community is after making their home here since the mid 1600s. Israel is where they have the right to self determination and boy, is it needed now.
Is it your belief that Jews have no rights at all to call any country their own?

What on earth are you talking about? You can't just make things up.

So you are sticking with your insistance that the UK government denies British Jews living in Britain their basic human right to self determination? That the only place in the entire world that 'the jews' can have self determination is Israel? And people think that antisemitism is the biggest issue facing British Jews when they are being denied the basic right to self determination? Israel is the only place in the world where Jewish people have basic human rights and we are here pretending that antisemitism is the biggest problem facing British jews not the lack of very basic human rights?