To think this was antisemitic and I should have said something?

[Koelaid]

NC in case outing. A colleague at work started a conversation about media coverage of Israel / Palestine after seeing an article in the paper.

He said that in his view media coverage is quite biased towards Israel and what did I think. I didn’t particularly want to have the conversation, tricky subject, not quite right for work etc. so I just said that while I didn’t agree with some of the Israeli government’s actions, I didn’t feel like I knew enough about the reality of the situation on the ground to know if the reporting of xx event was biased in favour of Israel or not. But that I did think the amount of coverage the conflict got was disproportionate compared to things like Kashmir or South Sudan, which were fairly similar in nature but got much less media time, and that there was something a bit strange in the big focus on Israel / Palestine and how invested people that were neither Israelis not Palestinians or had relatives there got in it, vs other conflicts.

He replied and said that he supposed that I was right (about other conflicts not getting attention) and then said that he supposed the conflict got so much pro Israel coverage because the majority of the senior people that worked at the BBC were Jewish.

I was a bit shocked / frozen that he’d said this in such a nonchalant way and mumbled something vague in response like, I’m not sure that’s the case. But it’s stuck with me since and I wish I’d said something a bit stronger. I mentioned it to a couple of people (not at work) afterwards. One was quite shocked and thought it was really AS and the other was like, what are you on about that’s a valid point to make.

Im not Jewish btw, not that it matters.

Views?

Yes, "globalists" is another . Trump dog whistled away in his final election campaign video despite his daughter being married to a Jew and a great friend of Israel in the end.

You don't think he might have just actually meant globalists?

What’s really depressing is that the majority of voters in this thread think you’re unreasonable, and that believing and voicing the idea that Jews control the media can somehow not be anti semitic.

Oh well. Just got to try and keep truckin’ I suppose.

Am I living on a different plant? You have a difference of opinion. How the hell is that "anti=semitic". I can't see anything in your opening post that suggests that.

@Redup you don’t think someone saying Jews control the BBC is anti semitic?

@FlamingoSocks No I don't. I think it might be an interesting thing to say/think but really can't understand the outrage.

I first saw this cartoon 15 (?) years ago. It was entered into a competition FOR Jewish artists to take the piss out of all the ludicrous anti-Semitic tropes we ensure.

david baddiel had it right when he said “Jews don’t matter”.

Oh dear - even my damned auto-carrot is in on the game. ENDURE, not ensure.

Despite what many would try to have you believe criticism of Israel is not antisemitic, however the stuff about the BBC being run by Jews is, yes.

It's not interesting, it's disgusting.

The whole 'Jews control the government/banks/media' thing is an antisemetic trope thats as old as the hills. You're being very disingenuous.

Pro Palestine is not anti semitic.

Criticism of Israel IS anti-Semitic… unless you believe Jews don’t deserve their homeland. Knock yourself out about criticising Israeli government policy much as you would about Westminster - but don’t for one minute think your criticism of Israeli government policies is anything LESS than thinly veiled anti-semitism… that is unless you’re prepared to rant at length about policies of Mauritania, zim, Ecuador, Malta or any other country with questionable policies.

In several decades of adult life, in London, I don't remember hearing anything negative said about Catholics. I don't remember hearing any generalisation about Catholics at all.

(I'm aware of goings on in Northern Ireland, and football-hooliganism-related stuff in Scotland. There is also the priest paedophile issue in several countries. Nothing I've heard on any of those issues could be construed as an attack on all Catholics though. )

This^

No reason to report this to HR, what a waste of time. You feel like you should have said something in the moment, but you didn't. That's on you. If anything was said again, you will no doubt react and explain why you disgree on the spot. However, I can't see the purpose of reporting this to HR at all.

Some people seem to be incorrectly inferring the OP was saying criticism of Israel was antisemitic, which is not what they saying and,as a Jew, I agree criticism of Israel is not automatically antisemitic.

What is antisemitic, however, is to suggest that Jews are somehow controlling an agenda at the BBC. It's also bullshit as I think the BBC coverage of Israel is actually fairly good and not uncritical.

The fact that this discussion has veered into Israel/ Palestine and away from the initial comments about Jews being overrepresented at the BBC is pretty telling tbh.

Well that isn’t true is it. It’s perfectly possibly to criticise the policies and actions of any state without that making you anti the major religious / ethnic group in that state.

You can criticise American policies without being anti Christian or anti white. Or criticise Saudi policies without being islamaphobic.

It’s important to keep a clear distinction between someone criticising the policies of a state (totally legitimate, and an important freedom and something that people living in and outside that state often do) and someone being racist or anti-Semitic (not legitimate and something that should be condemned).

The two can and do get blurred by some people, but the actions of those people, do not mean that nobody else has the freedom to criticise the actions of the Israeli state without being accused of anti-semitism.

I agree with @MangyInseam though, and don't run to accuse people of being antisemitic.

I do see people online sharing 'Rothschilds' type conspiracies or other antisemitic dogwhistles, and sometimes people pile on them to accuse them of being bigots. My approach, unless I can see evidence that they are committed to being antisemitic (most aren't), is to explain to them that supporting these conspiracies isn't 'Sticking it to The Man', it's doing the work of bad faith actors who want to blame Jews for problems with the world and distract from the real issues. And it causes real problems for Jews who are real people, even if you haven't met one. And saying 'Oh, I don't mean Jews, just Rothschilds', that doesn't help.

You are of course right. But I wasn’t implying my colleague was being anti-Semitic for being pro-Palestine. (Side point, I do think it should be possible to be critical of or positive about aspects of both countries, and not just entirely pro one and anti the other. I don’t agree with some of the policies of the current Israeli government, but I also don’t agree with some of the policies of the PLO and Hamas).

I was saying I thought he was being anti-Semitic for saying that most of the senior people at the BBC were Jewish and that this was why the BBC’s coverage of Israel / Palestine was biased in favour of Israel.

If he’d said most of the senior people at the BBC are Israelis, that would have been a different matter. Equally unlikely to be true but different.

But he was implying that being a British Jew automatically makes you pro Israel and likely to ignore the principles of good journalism in order to present biased coverage of Israel. That’s no more true than saying someone being a British Muslim or ethnically Arab automatically makes them pro the policies of Saudi Arabia or Egypt. It also echoes a very old racist trope that has been used to justify a lot of violence and hatred towards Jews from all nations (Spain, Iran, Britain, Russia, Germany etc)

Bollocks, there is criticism of Israel's actions and criticism of Israel's right to exist as a state. There are many Jews that criticize the actions of Israel are they all anti-semites as well? And yes I'm prepared to rant about a long list of other countries as well including my own.

www.jewdas.org/

Bollocks, there is criticism of Israel's actions and criticism of Israel's right to exist as a state.

... and even the latter is not necessarily and always anti-semitic: any anarchist will, pretty much by definition, deny Israel's right to exist as a state. That's not due to anti-semitism but a function of the fact that anarchists aren't really into the idea of states as a matter of principle. In fact, quite a few leading anarchist theorists were both Jewish and strongly anti-zionist. But they're not anti-semitic because anarchists feel the same way about Peru, Malta, ane Nepal, too.

That said, singling out Israel for being "a state that shouldn't exist" does tend to suggest anti-semitic tendencies. Again, unless you happen to be an anarchist or otherwise equally as willing to argue Australia or Switzerland shouldn't exist (the latter of which was argued in earnest by the late Ghaddafi, that doesn't mean he wasn't also a rabid anti-semite, which he was ... he was just also specifically anti-Swiss because they arrested his son).

There are people who argue that places like Australia shouldn't exist because they are colonies, that argue about whether certain countries ought to be, or ought not to have been, partitioned, who think that that ethnic/religious nationalism in general is in some way bad, or that a particular political arrangement is inherently unstable or in fact never going to work for concrete reasons.

All of these kinds of arguments are common and some could be made about Israel without having anything to do with the idea of a homeland for Jews as such. And for that matter, there have historically been Jewish people who for religious reasons oppose the idea of Israel as a political state, which really is about that.

There are all kinds of political discussions that happen about various nations and peoples that encompass similar ideas.

You have put this very well, thankyou.

Donald Trump was prob the most pro Israel President in US history.

I think you are right, based on your last post @Koelaid