March against antisemitism on Sunday

[SharonEllis]

1.30 pm Royal Courts of Justice to Parliament Square

@Decemberdaily brilliant post...

WhileMyDishwasherGentlyWeeps ·
"If you think that affinity with Israel is warmongering you are showing your dislike of Jews and Jewish perspectives."

And again you are seeing things and making false assumptions.

I do believe that showing affinity with Israel at present is warmongering. But not because I dislike Jews or Jewish perspective ( some of my best recipes are Jewish) but because I believe Israel to be currently behaving in a vindictive, vengeful and disproportionate manner.
Haven't you realised ? It is possible to criticise Israel without being Antisemitic.

By your logic, the Palestinian flag represents something far more violent than the Muslim faith and that flag brings Islam into disrepute.

The organizers are right though, aren’t they? We have all seen the footage of appalling banners, appalling statements, appalling statements and positions from those who attend and speak. And people who don’t hold these views are prepared to march alongside them.

While these things have certainly happened I don’t know what you expect people to do? Just give up and stop making fuss?
The things you describe are criminal behaviour (hate crimes) and for the police to deal with not the other marchers (whether they actually do do is a whole other argument)

@quiteoldad well an unquantifiable amount of people think your wrong and disagreed with you (in the rain)

By your logic, the Palestinian flag represents something far more violent than the Muslim faith and that flag brings Islam into disrepute
I think Hamas have their own flag.

Hamas slaughtered hundreds of peaceful civilian people without warning and took hundreds hostages.

By your logic:
this is mass slaughter and whether you intend to or not if you choose to wrap yourself in the flag of a foreign country currently engaged in mass slaughter (ie Hasmas and ergo the Palestinian flag by YOUR logic, not mine)people will assume you are making a statement on their current actions.

Yes Hamas may have their own flag but Gaza is is Palestinian so it is in their name.

@FordAnglia did you bring that banner to the organisers attention as is the advice on the pro Palestinian marches? If you were so offended by the petrol pouring?

"My DD (aged 29) has had an ardent argument with me tonight which I am not sure what to make of and was not expecting. We were discussing the anti-antisemitic march. She was very insistent that the word "antisemitic" does not in fact mean anti-Jewish, as the Palestinians are equally as semitic as the Jews. "

@angsty Technically your DD is correct but the common understanding/usage of the word is about bigotry and hatred toward Jewish people. I'd personally argue that trying to broaden the commonly understood definition is anti Semitic in itself, as it is watering down/minimising the meaning, in much the same way that some people tried to turn Holocaust awareness into 'genocide awareness'.

If your DD really wants to get technical you could tell her that the term 'Palestinian' wasn't coined until the 1950s and 'Palestine' isn't actually a country but instead a region which has been inhabited for generations by Arabs and Jews. The idea that Israel is somehow squatting on 'ancestral homeland' belonging to the Palestinians (something I read a lot on MN) is false. So if your dd wants to get technical about ethnicity and people groups, it's worth mentioning this.

Having said all of that, I don't want to be a thread derailer, so just to say I'm glad the March was well attended and peaceful. I'm also glad that Tommy R was quickly sent on his way!

Yes Hamas may have their own flag but Gaza is is Palestinian so it is in their name

Well, no, not really. The use of the Palestinian flag is to represent the Palestinian people not Hamas.

Like I said everyone is entitled to their opinion. There has been 100s of posts with people expressing their opinions on ceasefire marches. If people feel good about what they are doing then good for them but you can't control how other people interpret it.

It is possible to criticise Israel without being antisemitic. It’s also possible, and much more likely, that criticism of Israel is an expression of antisemitism.

And virtually every critic of Israel in this country eventually gives away their underlying prejudices against Jews. It’s nearly always Jew-bashing that motivates anti-Israel sentiment.

The attempt to separate denigration of Israel from denigration of Jews is a smokescreen. In the great majority of cases.

Following 9/11 the UK and USA invaded Iraq and afghanistan to seek out the terrorists and declare a war on terror. That led to £3.4 million deaths. And no one had declared we should not wave British flags or that the UK or USA should have no right to exist.

And there were no children taken hostage in that scenario

It is possible to criticise Israel without being antisemitic. It’s also possible, and much more likely, that criticism of Israel is an expression of antisemitism
Why is it more likely?

And virtually every critic of Israel in this country eventually gives away their underlying prejudices against Jews. It’s nearly always Jew-bashing that motivates anti-Israel sentiment
Again: why do you say that? It’s not as if Israel has done nothing wrong.

@ Decemberdaily
I'm aware that there's a sizable proportion of Israelis that just want to be left alone to get on with business, peacefully. That is reasonable, but it will also have to take into account some realistic nationhood for Palestinians where they can do the same. Unfortunately there is a much larger majority of Israelis that have given rise to a coalition government that make it increasingly difficult to accomplish any of this because of their policies. I'm aware of the Zionist dream, I'm currently on page 450 of Amos Oz's Tale of Love and darkness. It's all gone horribly wrong. The situation between Israel and it's neighbours needs to be dragged out of the pit in which it currently resides. Violence isn't going to achieve that. Netenyahu's methods are wrong, Hamas methods are wrong and the US and Iran are playing their power games.

Following 9/11 the UK and USA invaded Iraq and afghanistan to seek out the terrorists and declare a war on terror. That led to £3.4 million deaths. And no one had declared we should not wave British flags or that the UK or USA should have no right to exist

You don’t remember this then?

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/11/slugs-iraq-war-london-protest-2003-legacy

Yes indeed.

To take your questions together in one go, the most obvious reason is that the anti-Israel/‘pro-Palestinian’ movement is a fixation for many protesters: they spend their time and energy on that one issue to the exclusion of criticism of the many, many awful conflicts and injustices in the world. Why might that be?

And the criticism never goes away. It doesn’t matter what Israel does, the anti-Israel voices never let up. Why might that be?

How many university student activists campaign year after year against Israel, for example, rather than any other nation state cause? Why do people take to the streets against Israel exclusively, for example?

Why do people take to the streets against Israel exclusively, for example?

Oh we all know why.

The thing is for most people they know overtly racist or anti Semitic comments are socially unacceptable. Therefore they can't say what they really want to say. So they dance round it. We saw it with BLM...when they call came out to say shite like "all lives matter". We know what they meant.

Well to answer YOUR questions, how many other nations that are being supported militarily by the US, UK and EU have just bombed and killed 6000 CHILDREN in 6 weeks?
If there are any, I’ll object to that situation too.

I don’t disagree about nationhood for Palestinians- that is my point! A thriving independent peaceful Palestinian state, co-existing peacefully alongside us is literally the ideal scenario for Israelis. That is what so many in the kibbutzim worked towards. That was the whole reason Israel withdrew from Gaza in the first place.
The problem is I don’t see a chance for a thriving Palestinian state while Hamas remain at the helm, and until they are eradicated, there is no chance for peace for either of us.
Regarding the current Israeli government- it isn’t representative of any majority of Israelis - that’s why it is a coalition. There were months and months of disruptive protests here in Israel against the government prior to October 7th.
how do you propose changing the status quo? During the last ceasefire, we still had regular rocket attacks, stabbings, shootings, terror attacks. In January there was the rampage in neve Yaakov, 7 murdered (civilians attending synagogue), 3 killed in an attack in February, including the paley brothers aged 6 and 8, the Dee family (mum, and 2 daughters) in April, I could go through most of the year and name terror attacks. If we have a ceasefire now with Hamas, do we go back to that status quo?
they broke the ceasefire again and again - until Hamas are removed, neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a chance of peace.

To take your questions together in one go, the most obvious reason is that the anti-Israel/‘pro-Palestinian’ movement is a fixation for many protesters: they spend their time and energy on that one issue to the exclusion of criticism of the many, many awful conflicts and injustices in the world. Why might that be?
If you’re talking about people on MN then can I just point out you don’t even know who they are? How do you know which issues they do or don’t care about?

And the criticism never goes away. It doesn’t matter what Israel does, the anti-Israel voices never let up. Why might that be?
It might be because Israel has never taken any criticism on board. That might be because if it’s right wing pro-settler government

Why do people take to the streets against Israel exclusively, for example
Are you saying you don’t think any other government/country/regime has ever been criticised?

Have I really just read "I am not an anti-semite because I eat Jewish food" and "I am not an anti-semite because I told a jewish joke"? What next "I even have friends that are Jewish"

Of course I haven't got any Jewish friends, because I have no friends at all and that's why I spend all day at a computer.