Antisemitism online

[serenada]

Isn't there something we can do? I remember a post on here, years ago, by a mum who was very frightened and her post stood out to me.

It isn't right that the Jewish community have to defend themselves alone here - can't we do something to show support and let people know they are not alone in this?

For some reason anti Semitism seems an acceptable part of society, today and historically.

The violence, and sheer hatred prevalent in anti Semitism always seems to be just under the surface of society and people will do almost anything to excuse it.

Examine the manner in which the subject of Israel is discussed. It is not the same as other injustices around the world, it is THE injustice. Commentators become obsessed with it.

It has been called out - a lot.

I said in my first post: I know there have been threads about anti-semitism in the Labour Party but I can't recall any anti-semitic threads on MN - can you link to some?

None have been provided so I am going to assume that there are none?

If you are not talking about MN surely you would best be confronting those online or on other forms of social media?

My parents are Irish republicans & some people just assumed that meant they supported the IRA. My aunt manned the switchboard at an Irish company (in London) & used to get horrific death threats.

It's not acceptable to ask muslims to be accountable for Isis etc but Jewish people have to have a stance on Israel.

I don't understand the insistence of some people that anti-semitism doesn't really exist. Or the defence of it. And also how quickly Israel comes up in a discussion about anti-semitism as if private citizens who live in the U.K. have absolutely anything to do with Israeli government policy.

It's perfectly possible to talk about the Netanyahu led government and be critical of its policies and not be an anti-Semite but this just completely evades some people's capabilities it seems. But I honestly don't think people see Israel as anything other than occupations = bad, all criticism is now valid.

Agree with everyone who says that Jews are conflated with Israel by anti-Semites.

Anti-Semitism is different from other forms of racism / prejudice but it is so hard to put your finger on exactly how it is different. All I know is that, as someone with a Jewish father, my life has been blighted by bigots making "big nose Jew, bet you're tight with money" jokes about me.

People who don't consider themselves racist at all will happily bang on about Jews having loads of money. I'm looking at you, BIL. Don't these dimwits realise that Jews got into money-lending centuries ago when they came to Europe because so many other professions were closed to them? Life was weighted against them even then.

Anti-Semitism is everywhere and I'm so sick of people with no Jewish affiliation denying it.

Racism in any form is entirely unacceptable. I think all we can do is commit to challenge when we see it, learn to be comfortable with differences and celebrate the wonderful gifts and benefits a diverse culture offers.

I do applaud those here saying we need to commit to challenge it, but I think that truly knowing what anti-semitism looks like is a challenge for a lot of people and they don't recognise it when they hear/see it.

Why do you think every Jewish person should have a view on Israel? That is like saying every British person should have a view on Northern Ireland. I can tell you many don't. On more than one occasion I have had to explain to people that Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom. Obviously some do and an interesting debate can be had. I have one friend that comes from a unionist background and we have very interesting discussions 😊.

I have never spoken to my Jewish friends about Israel but one of them was born in Israel. If they are happy to discuss it then so am I. I expect I would learn a lot but I will be driven by them.

Re. Israel. During lockdown, a lovely lady (I can't remember her username unfortunately) did a really fab AMA on here about being Jewish. As someone with Jewish family but not Jewish myself, I learned absolutely loads. One of the things she said was that not all Jews actually recognise the state of Israel as a valid state at all. They believe that the Jewish land will be restored to them by God, not by an act or acts of man, or in this case, governments.

This one, @MrsSpenserGregson?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/AMA/3900350-I-am-Jewish-AMA?pg=1

Part of today's prevalent anti-Semitism is the belief that Jews are controlling the world in some kind of secretive cabal / Illuminati-type organisation .... You don't have to dig very far to see it; I've seen it multiple times in comments on the Times and Guardian websites in the past couple of days alone. The historic link with banking and money-lending is something that really, really pisses people off, and it's very hard to tackle that sort of visceral hatred

Anti Semitism is deemed “acceptable” because it’s presented is such a way that lots of ignorant people would think is flattery.
Whereas the racist rhetoric towards black people is “black boys are gang members” “black people are violent”....etc
For Jews it’s “Jews are rich” “Jews run the media” etc.....

I’m Jewish my husband is black, I’m very conscious that my daughter knows the struggles on both sides of her heritage and what racism is on both fronts.

@AnnaJKing yes! Thank you

@serenada, I think that it goes beyond the UK to the whole of Christendom and in later times to the start of the Islamic caliph.

The emerging Christian religions in the first millenia of the common era were diverse and clamouring for precedence, at first there was quite an overlap between Judaism and some of these Christian cults. There was a number of cults that we now group under the term Gnostics (who Generally believed in two Gods) that drew a deep distinction between the God of the Old Testament (Symbolised by covenant between God and the Jews) as being evil and of the material world and the New Testament who was spiritual and Good. Other Christians sought to make the distinction between the old and new covenant to basically say yes Jews, you used to be the chosen people but now followers of the new covenant (Christians are now the favourite sons of God). To claim more people for their own they employed the age old divide and conquer principles culminating in accusations of deicide, ie the Jews were God killers responsible for Jesus’s death. With the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire this religion slowly became the religion/spiritual control mechanism of choice by European States. The distrust of Jews as God Killers, their wealth, lack of home state and accusations of secrecy (possibly linked to Jewish mysticism/Kabbalah) led to their constant persecution esp during the crusades (which were not just fought between Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem - but also include genocide/ethnic cleansing in Europe of heretics). This persecution of Jews, legitimised by Christian states as rightful treatment of God Killers happens repeatedly throughout the centuries whenever money needs to be raised, with no state to protect them Jews were easy cash cows with confiscation of goods, unfair taxation and exile.

When Islam came along, the death of Muhammad was quickly pinned on a Jewish woman serving him poisoned lamb (of God????). Immediately this justified the prediction of Jews and removal of their lands (basically to extend the caliph).

Christians blamed Jews for killing Jesus, Muslims blamed them for the death of Mohammed. I’m an era where the spiritual and the material world were indistinguishable religious crimes justified material punishments.

This view became imbedded in the consciousness of society, everytime a state faced economic issues (eg Germany in the 20sand30s) the Jews are seen as logical and justifiable targets to hand over their wealth (its why so many people are against Jews having their own state to protect them).

So yes sorry a very long answer )could have been a lot longer as missed out quite a few important points) the persecution of Jews is undoubtedly linked to Europe’s Christian heritage and even in an era of so called secularisation the persecution of Jews has become so historically normalised that it’s not seen as a problem in many parts of society.

@Lifeisgenerallyfun

Yes, I remember reading that those who owed money would just dismiss the debts as it was to Jewish people and I imagine that it was the idea of individuals having individual money rather than a sense of needing the crown or a landlord that threatened some in power. Easier to just denigrate them then - also I remember watching an old black and white film about the Rothschilds that left me uneasy and I think there is a view from some people that these portrayals are true rather than fictionalised.

There is a general lack of awareness as to the history of Jewish people in Europe (other than the Holocaust) I agree. This idea of deicide was unknown to me as someone raised RC - it just wouldn't have been tolerated particularly as we associate Jesus = Jew but it is clear that the idea fermented under Christianity in Europe and paved the way for pogroms and latter events.

I don't like this idea that we took that foundation from Judaism and then a world was built on it that treated Jews that way. I can't sit comfortably with it - Christian origins are Jewish so we owe it to the Jewish world. We have to fully reconcile that and in part that means greater acknowledgement, I think of the consequences.

When Islam came along, the death of Muhammad was quickly pinned on a Jewish woman serving him poisoned lamb (of God????). Immediately this justified the prediction of Jews and removal of their lands (basically to extend the caliph).

I didn't know this.

In an era where the spiritual and the material world were indistinguishable religious crimes justified material punishments.

How convenient.

Ironically I think muhammad forgave her, Muhammad’s death had been fortold after the first hajj if I recall correctly. Like most religions it just echoes what went before Muhammad =Jesus, first hajj =first Eucharist Jewish woman betraying trust by seeming to offer food to sustain the prophet in an act of kindness = judas betraying Jesus with a kiss. Both religions deciding Jews were to blame for it all.

If people studied religions properly they would see the similarities and continuities throughout thousands of years, all giving very similar straight forward unifying messages, instead they ignore the underlying messages and use the stories surrounding these messages to excuse division and murder. Any religious text should be read in its historical context To understand it’s differences to what goes before and after. Religions are evolutionary, evolving what was established before.

We need to start teaching Medieval history properly in schools. We’re told the “dark ages” were a period nothing much happened as a hang over from a time of empires to warn against bringing them down )ie just look at the world when the Roman Empire fell -we don’t want that to happen again do we), when in actual fact it laid the foundations for many of the issues we still face in the world today.

We need to start teaching Medieval history properly in schools. We’re told the “dark ages” were a period nothing much happened as a hang over from a time of empires to warn against bringing them down )ie just look at the world when the Roman Empire fell -we don’t want that to happen again do we), when in actual fact it laid the foundations for many of the issues we still face in the world today.

That's interesting. I was taught (in a Convent) that the middle ages were a time when scholars, usually religious men, across all 3 Abrahamic faiths met and exchanged knowledge in Jerusalem. The Islamic world worked on maths and Chemistry (building on the vague notions the Ancient Greeks considered in Chem.) and tried to consolidate their inherited knowledge of plants, etc into something tangible - they passed that knowledge on to Irish monks who brought the information back to Ireland. Like wise for the Jewish Rabbis who considered medicine, astronomy, etc - wasn't it Maimonides who taught lots about astronomy? (might be wrong).

I was also taught a very different history about the monasteries (!) and the relationship between them and local people. The men in them were tasked with coming up with solutions to help local people and the land (building irrigation tunnels, early education in the form of stories and script).

My point is these men were interested in ideas and freely exchanged what we would consider academic knowledge - that within the framework of organised religion there existed another reality - that which allowed intellectual endeavour that was shared across the world.

These men knew that their leaders realised that politically there was value in creating division, but they strove for something better.

I am also amazed at the lack of knowledge about scholarship in the religious communities - I follow various people online who work with manuscripts and old documents and I know that there exists a whole body of scholarship around certain texts - it is great that we study them in a secular way but they do need , as you say, to be considered in context and that context clearly needs to be established for some people who don't know or understand it. There is no respect for the legacy left by Rabbis, monks, etc who contextualised the material.

@coronabeer23

You only have to go back to some of the corbyn threads on here where debates became heated as to whether or not corbyn is anti Semitic. Jewish posters who felt he was were shouted down by other posters who told them they were wrong. Is it acceptable to tell a black or BAME person something isn’t racist when they say it is? No it’s not, so why is it ok to tell a Jewish person they are wrong?

I'm Jewish and support Jeremy. Does that make me anti-Semitic; a self-hating Jew? Like all other social minority groups, we are not a homogeneous blob with one opinion.

There is a distinction between criticising the Israeli state's actions (which I also do), and questioning the legitimacy of the nation Israel itself (the latter of which he has also been accused of, but out of context) or Jews in general (ditto).

Absolutely (also a convent school girl here😁) the Middle Ages we’re so much more advanced than today in the unfettered sharing of knowledge, monks travelling between counties, orders and monasteries for that very purpose. Unfortunately nowadays it seems like we don’t want to recognise that past, least of all in education the Church housed some of the greatest thinkers of the age, but we seem to be in a period of the denial of any benefit, even historically of religion. If Nietzsche was correct and God is dead and we have killed him, it’s in our society’s interests to make out that there was nothing good in him in the first place to justify our actions!

It’s interesting that the first manifesto of the Rosicrucians that emerged around the time of the biggest splits in the church focussed very firmly on this tradition of travelling and sharing ideas amongst religious men and it seems like this concept received the backing of many of the intellectuals of the time.

I'm absolutely horrified with the rise in antisemitism, but don't know what (new) to do about it. I carry on doing the things I've long been doing.

Over the centuries conspiracy theories have been a major vehicle for antisemitism. And now conspiracy theories of every kind are very profitable to the "keep them clicking and sharing and clicking" business model of much of social media, so there's a horrible synergy.

That's on top of ideologically antisemitic groups actively using social media, of course.

@tabernacles

That distinction isn't being made by some people, though, is it? Wasn't that the problem? My housemate was a Corbyn supporter and Jewish, my Jewish relative is, too. The problem is the unquestioned assumption that if you are Jewish you must support all of Israel's activities, no? and lots of Jewish people have said, no, they don't agree with Netanyahu/settlements/policies, etc.

And I've definitely seen threads on MN in the past that have taken an antisemitic turn. Nothing to do discussing antisemitism in the Labour Party – long before that.

I was shocked that posters were in so much denial about of antisemitism. Although how much it was posters saying "Lalalala, don't disturb my cosy bubble with bad news," and how much it appeared to originate in pre-existing antisemitism, I can't remember.