Shocked by the racist signs at marches

[Pigeotto]

Maybe I’m just severely naive but I’m honestly just shocked at the levels of racism of some of the signs at these marches. It’s just caught me really, really off guard.

No, the PAMF doesn’t pay out to families of terrorists. It does pay for victims when protests turn violent which often happens as Israel passed a law saying they can use live ammunition and tear gas on peaceful Palestinian protesters, including children.

@RebekaTuwin good on that person for actually taking on board what you said and not letting their pride take over!

I apologise if I have become too heated on here. I did tell myself that I would avoid discussing this on social media as it's so complicated in so many ways. I should restrain myself from posting.

Israel has passed laws discouraging mixed marriages. Any Israeli that marries a Palestinian, their spouse cannot get Israeli residency or naturalise to become an Israeli citizen unlike spouses of any other ethicity nor will any of their children be Israeli citizens.

“Israel’s parliament has renewed a law dating back to 2003 that bans citizenship or even residency for Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens if the spouses come from the occupied West Bank or Gaza.”
Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, a staunch Israeli nationalist, “ and other officials have acknowledged that it is in part aimed at preserving Israel’s Jewish majority.”
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-03-11/israel-renews-law-exclude-palestinian-spouses

Generally you can tell in the first few seconds of discussion if a person is antisemitic or just made a massive blunder.

It's very difficult to see posters try to justify or make excuses for the murder of 11,000 innocent people and not get a bit heated

No it wasn’t. Palestine has never been a sovereign state. ‘Jus sayin’.

Yes, the PAMF does sometimes pay out to the families of terrorists, whilst also paying out to innocent victims. The link provided lots of information with further reading about both of these things and also information about the separate Hamas fund for suicide bombers and prisoners who’ve carried out violent and deadly attacks. I was answering the poster’s question request for evidence, you and I will have to agree to disagree.

This is completely untrue. The land of Canaan was constantly occupied by populations of peoples even after the Babylonian diaspora. The Babylonians carried many of us off into slavery but not all. Jewish peoples were there the entire history even if we did not have our own kingdoms anymore and fell under the rule of a succession of empires. Initially, we lived side by side with pagans. Some of us converted to Christianity during the time of the Romans and when the Byzantium (Eastern Roman Empire) ruled the region. Others converted again or for the first time to Islam during the time of the Islamic empire which lasted through various dynasties until the fall of the Ottomans.

It was never depopulated to the extent you are saying. Nor was there a huge migration of Arabs- the only migration of Arabs were the Bedouins and they are a tiny minority. Most of the people there today- Palestinian and Jewish are descended from the same people who were there before the Babylonians conquered the Jewish kingdoms. Genetic studies on DNA of skeletons from ancient archaeological sites compared to DNA of modern day Jewish people and Palestinian Muslims and Christians have proven this.

It is the right wing Likud ultranationalist narrative that most Palestinians are descended from some sort of mass migration sometimes called invasion of “Arabs” in the recent past.

It is similar to U.K. right wing EDL’s narrative that Black British didn’t arrive until Windrush and are therefore not indigenous English when in fact there were Black British here since Roman times and there were thriving communities of Black British people since medieval times. Black British have been minority indigenous English since before the descendants of the Viking settlers
if we accept the very real archaeological and historical evidence.

No it does not. Your link doesn’t even say they do. We will have to agree to disagree.

@Dulra
The last few comments seem to be slipping into islamaphobia

Here comes the old game. It's like the Musical Chairs - on a shout of "phobia", the music stops and everyone sits down with a pounding heart. Apart from those still standing - they get eliminated.

But I can't get in a huff here - in this case "phobia" seems rather apt. I DO fear Islam. How could a free woman not?
All oppressive religious regimes sound undesirable to me and are something to be feared.
You could also use Scientologio-phobia or Catholicism-o-phobia or ideally a pollitico-religious-fanatacism-o-phobia but it doesn't roll quite as nicely off the tounge.

I can’t believe I would see the day that someone marched through the streets of this country’s capital brazenly bearing a swastika without being challenged.

Surely some on the March must have challenged this? I would hope so, but the fact they felt comfortable doing it would suggest maybe not. Dreadful.

Well someone is challenging it by recording them and reporting them to the police. That’s why the police are asking for information about them. I agree it would be ideal if they hadn’t done that in the first place, but you know antisemitism is real has been for millenia and this is the sort of environment in which antisemites tend to exploit.

You mean Kate Varnfield? It's public knowledge who she is so it should be easy for the police to find her... right?

The people standing next to her don't seem particularly bothered. And we don't know who took the photo, it could have been a friend.

I’m not trying to change the subject, I’m trying to get an understanding of where you are coming from.

I think that you’re trying to frame history in a way that invalidates the plight of the Palestinians, by picking and choosing facts in the way that you write about Palestinians. This could be subconscious or more overt, but that’s up to you to decide.

They were all Palestinians living there prior to the first Aliyah, including the 5% that were Jewish, and the 10% that were Christians. They had lived on the land that is now modern day Israel/OPT for millennia. There would have been some mixing of course, but this is also true for Jewish people.

They were under the rule of various empires, yes, but that is somewhat irrelevant to determining their right to the land. Palestinians used to speak the Semitic language of Aramaic before they all spoke Arabic, which was also spoke by Jewish people (with a very small minority of Jewish people speaking Yiddish).

There was even a Prussian 18th century philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who used to refer to European Jewish people as “Palestinians.” The Muslims, Christians and Jewish people were all viewed as being part of the same people; as the people descended from the Canaanites (which is accurate, and they would have converted from paganism to Judaism to Christianity to Islam over the years, depending on which empire was present in the land).

RE: ceasefire, the power is with Israel.

Hamas is now back in their open-air prison that they cannot escape from. They need to be brought to justice and the hostages of course need saving, but neither of these objectives is being met by what Israel is doing currently (separately, the Israeli govt also need to be brought to justice for their war crimes, just as Hamas do).

Using Mossad, intelligence and organised raids and arrests to take out Hamas (like in the West Bank) would not only be far more effective, but it would stop the abject horror of the denial of water, food, medical aid and power to the Palestinian people, whilst slaughtering them in ways that is causing mass suffering, horror and extreme trauma.

Premature babies having their incubators cut off and being left to die is one of the worst atrocities I’ve ever heard of. The Israeli govt have the power to stop that. They don’t.

What the IDF and the Israeli govt is doing is beyond reprehensible, beyond inexcusable, and absolutely must be stopped. At best it is bloodthirsty revenge against innocent civilians, and at worst it is genocide.

You should absolutely call out messaging that is anti-Semitic, which is not only up to Jewish people but also up to all decent people. This was done at the protest. People cannot do anything beyond reporting marchers to police, or asking for signs not be used.

To tar what must have been £1mil+ protestors (I joined 1.5 hrs into the protest and when I went back to where the protest started, there were still people joining the march hours and hours after it started, so the figure of 300,000 was almost certainly underestimated) with the same brush is detached from reality, and frankly it is cruel considering the vast, vast majority of us are there for the right reasons.

Our government is now blocking the Israeli govt and Hamas from being tried for war crimes. We are appalled. We are horrified. We will continue to march.

So all Muslim women aren’t free? And Islam, rather than being a religion of peace, is a “regime”? And you fear all 1.7bil Muslims?

Islamophobia is a term I personally hate, because it gives validity to the idea that Islam is to be feared, rather than people who spout total nonsense about it just being labelled as what they are: racist.

I also hate the term “Islamist” which is also rooted in anti-Muslim hatred. Let’s call Christian extremists Christianists, Hindu extremists Hinduists and Jewish extremists Judeaists, shall we?

It is deeply offensive as it implies that by adhering to the teachings of that Islam, you are, by definition, an extremist. It therefore suggests that Islam is in and of itself, extreme. 1.7bil people would beg to differ.

Your post is beyond ignorant and smacks of anti-Muslim racism.

This is my last post on the subject so as not continue derailing. From the link. You don’t have to agree with me but I don’t like being called a liar.

‘Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund is a fund operated by the Palestinian Authority (PA) that pays monthly cash stipends to the families of Palestinians killed, injured, or imprisoned while carrying out politically motivated violence against Israel.[1] The fund also makes disbursements to innocent bystanders killed during violent events and Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails for ordinary crimes.’

‘The payments were routinized during the Second Intifada (2000–2005).[12] In 2016, payments were made to 35,000 families, including the families of suicide bombers, from a 2016 annual budget of $170 million.[13][12]The stipend is higher than the average Palestinian wage.[12][14]’

‘For example, Hakim Awad, who perpetrated the 2011 Itamar attack, receives $14,000 per year, and can expect to receive more than $1.9 million over the length of his incarceration if he lived to be 80 years old.[26]’

Think you may have missed the sarcasm in my post

You may have been at the march but unless you’re some omnipresent being you cannot possibly know more than anyone else who has access to social media and the news. Your interpretation of events holds no more weight than anyone else’s, given that you could only have experienced a tiny fraction of what went on. As it happens I live in London and saw quite a bit of the march. I didn’t see any trouble but that doesn’t mean I would claim it didn’t or hardly happened. You may have been there for honourable reasons but many weren’t as evidenced by the 150 who were detained later in the evening for firing fireworks at the police and chanting “Fuck The Pigs!”

The right wing counter protesters were not a contingent of the March. They showed up to protest against the March.

They were there because of the march. Therefore they are a contingent of the event whether you like it or not. They had common purpose for being there - the March.

I see you have nothing to say about former Hamas leaders being behind the march. Quelle surprise.

I am genuinely glad that some Jewish people felt safe at the march. Not sure that those in the synagogue where smoke bombs were set off, or any who were in Pret at Victoria who were ordered out by a Muslim man on a megaphone, or any who overhead the rants about “kill all the Jews” and “Hitler had it right!” felt safe but hopefully they’ll realise that this and the other blatant antisemitism expressed and exhibited at the march was just a very small percentage and that will bring them some comfort.

So any former British colony is up for grabs? Is that what you believe, @ChalkWitch ?

What of what I said won't or doesn't apply to women? Or is it an assumption you've made because Palestine is mainly Muslim? Not sure sweeping generalisations about any group of people is accurate, helpful or wise

Then he can claim unfair dismissal if that was the only reason.

Surely some on the March must have challenged this? I would hope so, but the fact they felt comfortable doing it would suggest maybe not.

Anti Semites are feeling emboldened. Also, I do believe the vast number of people marching are not anti-Semitic and yet almost nobody seems to call out those who parade visibly anti-Semitic signs. it can't be that they are all frightened because they so vastly outnumber the anti-Semites, so what's going on?

At the very least it would appear that people simply don't know what anti-Semitism is, perhaps they just think it means "gas the Jews".

A lot of women in Gaza seem to go to uni, plus they have quite a few female doctors, journalists and other professionals. So, I think there was hope in Gaza for female emancipation.