To say that to criticise the actions of the Israeli state…

[MaggieBsBoat]

Is no more anti-Semitic than being critical of the actions of the Afghanistan state is anti-islam?

They is much evidence of there anti Israeli bias if you care to do a quick search. I wish they were not.

I follow a Gazan peace activist (he was part of the protests against Hamas in Gaza) on twitter and he listed all the islamist inspired groups across africa and the middle east. It was interesting because he didn’t go straight to blaming the west which is often the case. He seems to see it as a failure in MENA and jihadi mindset.

The thing is because the west is primarily secular in governance I think people struggle with the idea that people are genuinely religiously motivated and devout enough to do mad shit.

I was listening to a podcast about hezbollah (one of the presenters is half lebanese) and he talked about how Hezbollah actually visited Iran to seek permission to form a political party in Lebanon. I’m an atheist so I find this fascinating. Interestingly also communism/marxist thought is a regular feature in this area as well. The Amal group that hezbollah grew out of was basically formed because young shiites met a bunch of PLO members who were steeped in marxist thinking. Similar in Iran, where the islamists eventually started murdering the communists who had allied with them. Then you had the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt who were virulently antisemitic (they are the ones who made friends with the Nazis of all people) and who are now banned for good reason in many countries but I don’t think they ever pretended to be communists just pan arab nationalists (I think, can’t remember).

Theres a long complicated interconnected web of history and ideology across MENA. It’s worth reading about and it’s not simple. Ofcourse interactions with the west and russia specifically shaped this, just as much as they have shaped the west. I would hesitate though to suggest they don’t have agency. In many places the Islamists of various stripes actually beat the secularists and the socialists. Fairly sure the ba’at party in Iraq were originally socialists as well (think I read Yemen was communist at one point)

But I’m not an expert. I’d actually say the soviet union had a bigger impact on political thought than the west did in the middle-east.

And i guess you could say Russia, Iran and China are supporting Hamas with weapons and financially. So why can't Israel also be supported in their fight
against terrorism? That Palestinian civilians have been killed lies at the door of Hamas, using their people as human shields. Hamas would think nothing of blowing the entire Western world to bits if they could, whether we sided with them or not. By withdrawing assistance from Israel, we would be giving terrorists our support.

Yes, it's quite a rabbit hole.

Who is this Gazan peace activist? Brave man.

It’s John Aziz @ aziz0nomics
hamza @ howidyhamza

John Aziz was interviewed by Yasmine Mohammed on her podcast about growing up in Gaza. It’s an interesting listen.

You may not agree with everything they say (a lot of Palestinians on twitter who are anti-hamas don’t agree with each other a lot of the time tbf). But I think they are pretty fair. They are deeply concerned about Palestinian rights and they don’t hide their thoughts on Hamas. You will find quite a few Palestinians who loathe Israel but also unequivocally condemn 7th October.

I don’t think we hear enough about the Gazan perspective. There was a demonstration demanding the release of Israeli hostages. Didn’t see that on tv at all. There are Palestinians who condemned Hamas’s actions and we don’t hear about that either. There was some coverage of the poor anti-hamas campaigner who had his arms and legs broken but the bbc didn’t want to say it was Hamas when it clearly was.

I feel that a lot of westerns don’t actually want to see that Palestinians have their own thoughts about what the future should look like. It suits people who would demonise them and it suits people who would claim that they are protesting on their behalf but are actually supporting Hamas NOT the people of Gaza.

I also don’t think they consider that people may not agree with Hamas but also don’t want to get shot so stay quiet. If Hamas were genuinely popular they would have held an election. I genuinely believe that. If Hezbollah were genuinely popular they wouldn’t need a militia, they could have instead laid down their arms and joined the Lebanese army.

I think it’s so important to amplify these voices.

Me too @User37482

Well if hamas and hezbola would stop breaking international law by using civilians as human shields, using hospitals and schools as bases all of which are war crimes and crimes against humanity then I'm sure that very few civilians would have been killed.
If you want to talk about international laws being broken then you have to look at both sides instead of just picking on 1 side ie Israel.

How do you eliminate Hamas and Hezbollah whilst they hide behind civilians and why don't Hamas and Hezbollah warn Israelies when they fire rockets into Israel

Very good question @Notaflippinclue

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/14/israeli-forces-in-gaza-use-civilians-as-human-shields-against-possible-booby-traps

Seems both sides then like using Palestinians as human shields.
Another international law Israel has broken

Also Ihab Hassan @ ihabhassane
ahmed fouad Alkhatib @ afalkhatib

These guys have varying views, one or two seem to deeply dislike each other. Some of it may be uncomfortable reading for Israelis, but they are allowed to be angry at the death of Palestinians and I think thats fair. But they are exactly the kind of people who want to live hamas free. It’s such a fallacy that people love Hamas and approve of it.

It’s similar to the situation in Lebanon, in the west idiots are holding up placards or waving hezb flags in Lebanon people know hezb is destructive and they know that they represent the interests of Iran not theirs.

This is not the same as being pro-israeli but it’s also not “lets destroy Israel” territory either.

Interestingly there was an agreement on movement after the second intifada, it would have definitely improved conditions for Gazans. Hamas refused to recognise it. This, exactly things like this is how Hamas harmed Gaza.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Movement_and_Access

Am not Jewish. I am vehemently against the atrocities of Hamas on 7th Oct last year. I also this the actions of Netanyahu are beyond reprehensible. I am pro peace and freedom including and especially in Palestine but everywhere really. Sadly this conflict has brought out islamaphobia, antisemitism, antipalestinism. I would like to go out and protest the indiscriminate killing and displacement of innocent civilians but cannot for 2 reasons. One of them being the presence of antisemitic people in crowds of justifiable protests. It's all very infuriating and sad.

The difference is Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist groups, no-one is expecting them to uphold International Law, I hear people on this forum speaking about Israel being the only civilised country in the Middle East, so why don't they start acting like it?

I know Hamas are the government of Gaza, they're also a terrorist group are they not? I know right from wrong, Hamas is wrong, they break International Law and Israel is wrong, because they also break International Law, if you want to be seen as a civilised nation stop commiting war crimes. Simple.

It’s really not simple.

Of course you can and should criticise the actions of Israel. However, things I have recently seen couched as criticism of Israel on the site formerly known as Twitter include: saying it's no surprise because "they killed Jesus". Saying this is why 109 countries expelled their Jews. Saying Holocaust victims "probably deserved it because look what they went on to do". Is it any wonder people begin to have suspicions?

But that's not criticism of Israel. It's just out and out racism.

Yesterday a history account posted a photo of the 1941 Lviv pogrom. Someone quote tweeted it saying the Jewish woman in the picture had killed a Gentile baby and that's why she was being chased down the street half-dressed. They then openly admitted they'd completely made it up because they were "sick of Jew-sympathetic posts right now". Absolutely terrifying what people are using Israel's actions to justify.

Yes, but as I said, "couched in criticism of Israel". All the posts I referred to were framed as "I'm just criticising Israel & you can criticise Israel without being antisemitic".

Why not? Because it's OK if Israel break International Law but not OK if anyone else does it? That's not how it works

@pucelleauxblanchesmains if I buy a dog and call it a cat, does it make it a cat? No. Just because they say it's a criticism doesn't mean it actually is.

Clearly that wasn’t what I meant.
If every conflict could be boiled down to countries just learning to behave themselves, as per your post re Israel, we’d have nothing to worry about would we?

Interesting that you drew the inference that you did from my posts.

I'm really confused by what you're trying to get across here. It's meaningless to say "it's not antisemitic to criticise Israel" if you then define criticising Israel as excluding any antisemitic statements. Clearly some people do criticise Israel in ways that are antisemitic. Is criticising Israel inherently antisemitic? No of course not! But it's useless as a blanket statement to say "criticising Israel isn't antisemitic". Mostly it isn't. Sometimes it is. Like many other things in the world, it is complex.