What is going on on the left? Gaza/Israel conflict

[Notsuretoputit]

I am left wing, I wouldn’t consider myself anything other. I absolutely support Israel, have no problem understanding and supporting Zionism, and am absolutely horrified by the rising levels of anti-semitism in the UK.

It is to my despair that much of that anti-semitism is being perpetrated by those on the left. People I like, consider friends, who are tolerant and who I would never, ever have considered racist or anti-Semitic are plastering their Facebook walls with pro-Hamas TikTok propaganda. These are not teenagers naively believing propaganda, these are people who’ve spend years active in (left wing) politics.

I’ve read a lot in recent weeks about the far left’s historical problem with anti-semitism, but how can it be that nice, friendly, socially conscious people are indulging in this insane display of anti-semitism? Actively showing support for a terrorist organisation? Refusing to believe Hamas is guilty of any crimes, or that they have an excellent propaganda machine currently in operation. What is going on?

No she said SOAS, but then again Keir Starmer is a Human Rights Lawyer and look at him now. Education doesn't mean anything without insight. Plenty of doctors and psychologists can be sadistic psychopaths or molesters (ofc a tiny percentage but it exists), many academics can use their knowledge to further war. Humans use knowledge in terrible ways.

But to your original point yes the poster is terribly, terribly misinformed

You seem to think antisemitism was only an issue in Europe 🥴 What about the 900 000 forcibly displaced Jews from Arab countries? So maybe Arab countries should also accept some blame?

@Trulywonderful "So you have to ask yourself why the obsession for years with a tiny little state in the middle east."

Well, in Britain's case I assume it's because of Britain's historic c involvement in the politics of the Middle East in general and the formation of the state of Israel in particular....

One particularly egregious form of support for terrorism on the left was reposted by a headteacher(!) on twitter. Some guff about how if you look into the eyes of a Hamas terrorist you will only see compassion for the dispossessed. Even more disturbingly, when she was called out on this, a bunch of other teachers and education professionals rallied in support of her and called the people horrified at her post ‘misogynistic bullies’.

Ah, somehow I'd missed that post.

I reasonable sounding point but we were involved with so many other countries too because we had a bit of a colonialist problem didn't we. Yet the very left don't raise an eyebrow at most of what goes on in other places.

I think your point however would a fairly good argument if the Jewish community in this country had not experienced the fallout of Cobyn's leadership. Had not been attacked by the very left members in quite the way they were. Plus if the very left supporters didn't deliberately spread Jewish tropes and conspiracy theories about Israel whenever they think they can get away with it. Legitimate arguments about the Israeli governments policies or actions is one thing and I welcome. Tropes and conspiracy theories is something else and undermines any true criticism the very left supporters have of the conflict.

@Trulywonderful " Legitimate arguments about the Israeli governments policies or actions is one thing and I welcome. Tropes and conspiracy theories is something else and undermines any true criticism the very left supporters have of the conflict."

Very man people do not welcome discussions about the Israeli government. They say "But Corbyn......"

Well, in Britain's case I assume it's because of Britain's historic c involvement in the politics of the Middle East in general and the formation of the state of Israel in particular....

The seeds were sown way back in the Ottoman Empire, but anyway ...

Added to this, the British, French, Russian and Turkish states all had interests in the Middle East.

It's what Crimea was partly about.

I haven’t seen any of these posts.

I also think that saying you understand what factors may have led to the 7th Oct, is very different from saying that you believe it was the right reaction, or that each person isn’t ultimately responsible for their own actions, or that innocent Israeli citizens deserved what happened.

It is very different.

No-one on the left is justifying terrorism. No-one calling for a ceasefire is justifying terrorism (because again this isn't a left or right wing issue - it's a humanitarian one).

This has pissed me off quite a lot. It’s one thing to say you haven’t seen it, but it’s quite another to say it isn’t happening.

It’s like a form of gaslighting.

True, it can go both ways

It is however relevant to talk about Cobyn reference to the labour party though. So talking about the influence he had as leader and he has now on some people or the behaviour of his fan base towards Jews on a thread like this is important.

If people randomly drop him into conversation without their behaviour clear reason/argument involving him or to change the subject I agree with you

I haven’t seen any of these posts.

Probably because there has been a dedicated core of posters reporting all the antisemitic shit on here and getting it deleted.

Some of it has been horrific. One rape-denial post made me feel physically sick.

ah the supposedly killer Jeremy riposte - supposedly wins any point in some narrow circles.
Feel free do to post any anti-semitic comment from JC - with source/reference if you can manage it.
I need to see evidence before I condemn anyone, let alone use them as ammunition in another campaign.

I did see many threads where posters who wanted to understand the situation were accused of supporting Hamas. Where the word "context" was considered a pro Hamas dog whistle and that any suggestions that the Israeli army might be in involved in war crimes was anti semitic. Is that why you mean?

Well I’m sorry to hear you have been experiencing this. I shall aim to maintain a non-prejudiced stance and not have my heart hardened by people who are abusing the idea of anti-semitism to shut down genuine debate.

I don’t think this is a good time to become even more divided.

No,

Maybe the discussion of Zionism on this thread has passed but there are different types and these different types have different attitudes to the land of Israel and the Arab peoples.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/zionism

As said, I am still thinking through my position (I do agree that the Jewish peoples have a claim to live in Israel and should be self-governing, and also that they have been consistently persecuted and they have never entirely left the land they call Israel) but I do have reservations about some more radical forms of Zionism that call for a solely religious state, posit Judaism as the only true faith (at least as far as the land also known as Palestine is concerned) and justify settler communities on land owned by Palestinian Arabs.

If you search my posting history you will see that I despise Hamas and have consistently called out anti-Semitism.

What you have never seen hos fan base post on social media this statement or similar

Where have you been for all these years. This is standard Jez fan statement. I said it was from a Jez fan and didn't say it was from Cobyn. You need to read posts properly.

This 'tiny little state' has killed more children in conflicts round the world than any other country since 2019.

Not only has it killed the most children. Its a much smaller population, so the proportion of killing for their population is staggering.

Oh I could post about iffyness of Jez but that would stop the current conversation happening and be off topic to much. However go to the Piers Morgan Jez interview thread. A shed load of iffyness from Jez there. Plus my own take on whether Jez himself is antisemitic or not. Enjoy.

This post here is a good example of why this will never be fixed. Israels refusal to accept Palestinian pain as valid. Israeli authorities have tries to ban all mention of Nakba, the use of the word was banned by Israel in 2009 in Palestinian children's textbooks. Commemorative events are banned and any ceremony marking Nakba is seen as inciting terrorism. Imagine? The destruction of 500 villages, the displacing of 750,000 people from their ancestral homes and Israel bans them from even commemorating it. You will be imprisoned as a terrorist if you try to mark your relatives deaths.

Many Palestinians feel that the Nakba has been permanent and ongoing and you can't really blame them, just in Feb of this year Jewish vigilantes carried out an attack so violent in a Palestinian town called Huwara that the Israeli military commander for the West Bank called it a pogrom. It wasn't condenmed though. Instead the Israeli finance minister complained that it should be the state not Israeli citizens carrying out these attacks.

Israel have been denying Palestinian pain for decades, they don't allow them to even express their grief and pain, to commemorate their dead and those forced to flee. They continually remind Palestinians of Nakba by continuing to drive them out of their homes built for decades by them and their families, they show them that they can and will continue to eradicate them all the while denying that it even happened. Like the Israeli citizen I quoted said, Nakba is a propaganda term, it was no big deal, everyone was doing it 🤷🏻‍♀️

History didn’t start in 1948. While millions of Jews were displaced for centuries, Jews have lived continuously on the Levant for thousands of years. Jews were an independent people who were colonised first by Europeans, then the Ottomans, then the Europeans again. We became an oppressed minority in our own homeland for centuries.

Israel also didn’t start the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It’s anachronistic to even think they might have. The odds of them winning were very small, they were the underdog. Israel accepted the offer by the UN (even though it was for less land per person than Palestine). Palestine rejected the deal, the Arab League (including Palestine) started an invasion, then they lost the war that they started, and the victor exacted a price, that is the way all wars go. “Nakba” is a propaganda term for the same thing that happens in every war over land, someone wins it and someone loses it. Serbia is not happy with how much land they ended up with after losing the war, there are countless other examples. To the victor go the spoils, so don’t start wars is the lesson there.

After that same war, Jordan annexed part of Palestine, which people have either conveniently forgotten or miraculously recovered from.

To put it in perspective, 60 million people worldwide were displaced in the 40s - you hear very few requests for land returns from elsewhere, most refugees built lives in their new homes and the next few generations born there consider themselves home. The Palestinian Authorities chose to spend the next 70-odd years in a state of perpetual war, they chose to reject every peace deal, when they could have chosen the same option as all other people displaced at the same time, they could have focused on building Palestine into a functioning state.

Europeans have centuries-old antisemitic tropes to draw on. In the eyes of the left, Jews are supposed to be victims not victors. Much of the world sees us as inferior still. That’s why the narrative has been so successful: the world thinks military defeat by the Jews is the ultimate humiliation from which a people can never recover, because it still sees Jews as so inferior.

Great post!

1000%
There is just a total denial and erasure that Palestine existed or had a right to exist