Anti-semitism in the UK

[Lolapusht]

Published yesterday I believe.

Evidence of anti-Semitism in the UK

Not sure if that link will work so…

https://x.com/nicolelampert/status/1944147294917439912?s=61&t=_cKTNp_TyAyzDViEOCJDFQ

I am completely naive to this imagery tbh - West Bank and Gaza as described in your post.

For those who engage with it, the algorithm will keep presenting them with more and more. Which must be extremely distressing.

This is a very good point. I think all of this is also sprinkled with the insane believe that Jews control the media and the elites in general.

Left wing antisemitism, and antisemitism in general, can be traced back to the 19th century "intellectual" discourse on the "inferior" and "degenerate" races - even though all the "science" behind it now seems pompously idiotic a lot of people still guided by this bullshit.

I've just watched a debate on Piers Morgan ( I know, I know).

Daniella Weiss was on. She is certainly not soft round the edges.

She made some points I agreed with. She kept focusing upon the teaching in schools to hate Jews. And then Hamas. Piers was trying to get her to explain her feelings about the dead children of Palestine. I actually understood what she was doing. She was refusing to go there and instead making it clear that this is the consequence of attacking Israel.

I can imagine there's much more to her and maybe it's not good I don't know. I did not see her as the demon she's going to be painted as.

When I hear 20,000 dead Palestine children, I think eh. Is that avoidable. I also believe groups like Hamas would sacrifice their own kids tbh to look like martyrs.

There's a famous New Jersey Rabbi I've seen a few times in interviews. I do like him. He speaks sense. He and others continually bring up Hamas and nobody listens.

What the heck are Israel supposed to do here. Representatives are being undermined regularly.

I don't know how you target Hamas directly and get them out and then hope remaining people will have a different less bastard like Government in and be ok with this. It feels like it won't ever end.

Personally I think she's nuts. I think a lot of the settler behaviour is unconscionable in general, but then I also think Jewish people should be safe and welcome to live there.

She is very much disliked. There's a devoid of any emotion and quite a militant approach which does not serve as a good representation. I'll have to watch more about her. It is so frustrating to me to see that. Positive and strong representation is vital.

I really felt everything the Rabbi guy said. He might be a plonker too. I really hope not.

I grew up in a top university city in the 1970s. ( one of the two top unis in this country) I went to a selective girls school full of girls whose parents taught at the University. When we got a bit older. I met up with one girl. an old friend, whose father taught at a very famous college. She informed me another friend had married " A JEW" ( heavy emphasis on jew..) Another girl said she haf been teaching at summer camp in US but that she hadnt enjoyed it because it was full of " spoilt Jewish kids ". I didnt understand about antisemitism.back then ,but thought about what they'd said years later snd understood what it meant. Like I ssid, these weren't skinheads on a march. These were girls whose parents taught at one of the top 2 unis in UK. So it was definitely around in middle class circles.

All I know about Danielle Weiss is what I saw on that documentary The Settlers and she came across very badly on that. I don’t agree with the Settlers at all.

But I take the point about the reluctance of many to listen when Hamas is mentioned as a root cause of the problems in Gaza and how the dead Palestinian children can be laid at their door just as much as at the IDF. We see it a lot of MN - the pro Pals trying to mock & minimise those who bring up “but Hamas”. But I do agree with Weiss in one regard which is that all these deaths are a consequence of Hamas attacking Israel.

I don’t know how you target Hamas directly either. No one seems to have an answer to this. I’m surprised so many people don’t acknowledge the difficulty that Israel are facing in trying to destroy them or acknowledge why they have to try. Are more people than we realise actually sympathetic to Hamas values but obviously can’t say so? Or just misguided that they aren’t that bad? I don’t know.

It's awful. I do think for some people the line between crazy West Bank settlers etc and ordinary innocent Jewish Britons has become blurred.
I think the settlers are at best bonkers, at worst evil. Netanyahu and the IDF are committing a genocide in Gaza. But, that's them as individuals forming a collective. I don't for a single second implicate all or most Jewish people. Any more than I would blame all Muslims for 9/11 or 7/10. Those individuals were guilty, not ever an entire race or religion.
I'm just so sad about all of this, and all the division it's causing. Sad for the whole of humanity, that we don't seem to have evolved as much as I once hoped. People are people, I try to just take as I find.

I think people project a particularly immature, Western, secular, very current mindset onto it: Oct 7 was horrifying, therefore Israel must have done something really bad to deserve/justify/provoke it. Savagery like that can’t possibly be as a result of a primitive, savage jihadist worldview, there must have been extreme provocation. In that sense I believe they actually are sympathetic to Hamas. I believe they see Hamas on some level as victims of Israel, created by Israel, and therefore Israel had it coming. It’s Israel’s fault these jihadists turned to their violent nihilistic philosophy.

If they don’t believe they are antisemitic and they don’t believe that antisemitism is widespread, it means they think all that antisemitic rhetoric is true, or at least based in truth. Oh look, all these bad things that happen have Jews at the back of them. (The George Floyd police training tweet liked by Rebecca Long-Bailey always springs to mind here).

Anybody who defends Daniella Weiss wants their head looking at. She has almost the same ideology as Hamas but in reverse. The only thing I can say in her favour is that she is very open about her hatred and intentions. That phrase, ‘from the river to the sea’ that Israelis understandably hate? She uses the same but in reverse: ‘Erase Gaza so settlers can see the sea’. She says Gaza should consist entirely of ‘non-Arabs’ and should be ‘a Jewish settlement’. I’m picking out the least unpleasant of her words as I frankly can’t stomach her desire for ethnic cleansing at this time in the morning. There is a reason the UK government has sanctioned her: she is evil. The fact that the Israeli government has proposed she should be given the NPP should let anyone who had any doubts about what scumbags they are be under no illusion anymore.

Education is rife for hard left fanatics.

This. Lots of very privileged children who need a particular cause to make them feel better about their privilege. Long before the present conflict after October 7th people hated 'Jews' it's entrenched hatred and helps drive the current online and pro pal marches etc.

Currently watching Brendan O’Neill on Winston Marshall on YouTube.

Good background and commentary on c anti-Semitism in Ireland plus a general discussion.

Ah I hear you. I don't know enough about this person. I really don't fully understand the breadth of the settler type activity. I might watch the Louis Theroux documentary as understand she's on that.

I am never a ' full in' supporter of anyone. It takes time for me to weigh up once I see more information.

With this about Weiss - it's not helpful at all to Israel to have her interviewed and seen as a voice or representative. People will do that when they watch her. See her as the representative.

I really don't immediately agree with the word genocide. Im still watching and absorbing as I'm not there seeing every thing happening.

I have seen some footage now with Palestinians in. It's very horrible to see. I understand why this is making anyone feel enraged.

I will listen to it.
the perpetrators of Irish antisemitism vary from the fanatical right wing Catholics of the past to the left wing nationalists of today ( IRA showed solidarity with PLO and there was collaboration between the two)

I remember them as the ones flogging the socialist worker at uni.

This sounds believable.

Melanie Philips is an excellent speaker on this imo. She has been interviewed about the ' left' fascination with this cause and why.

I think it is worth pointing out that long before October 7th people didn’t necessarily hate Jews, but did hate Israel. For the Irish there is an obvious identification with Palestinians as being occupied/controlled by a much more powerful neighbour and a personal history of violent resistance there that would lead them to support people they see as being in a similar position. Incidentally when I did History GCSE in the 90s one of the modules was The Irish Question and we had to write an essay comparing it to the what was called Arab-Israeli conflict. The London marchers chant ‘Resistance is justified when you are occupied’ as if October 7th could ever be justified.

The far left hate Israel because they are anti-West, anti-Imperialist, and will take an automatic stand with anyone who they see as also anti-West. This is why Corbyn accepts without hesitation anything put out by his ‘friends’ Hamas, suggested that the Syrians gassed themselves rather than Assad, and said that Novichok needed to be sent for examination to Russia so they could tell us whether they were responsible for the Salisbury attack. It’s why when Russia invaded Ukraine, Stop the War blamed NATO.

So they hate Israel. But Israel is the world’s only Jewish state, so it is very easy for that hatred to spill into antisemitism, particularly when antisemitism is always there and there are lots of people willing to spread it. Antisemitism is an unusual form of racism where instead of seeing the oppressed group as worse than other humans, they are seen as more powerful, and wealthier. This taps into the left’s natural aversion to wealth and power. People start going on about Zionists controlling the media and the Israel Lobby controlling the government as a gateway to the absolutely overt antisemitism which barely needs a surface scratch to find.

If Israel is set in the role of colonising oppressor then firstly it must be full of European Jews and Arab countries had nothing against Jews and no involvement in the Holocaust or their own pogroms. And then you move onto doubting and denying the Holocaust itself.

I have seen all of this on social media, including on Mumsnet.

To add: doubting the Holocaust is important because it demonstrates without doubt that Jews are oppressed and contributes to the foundation of Israel.

That's interesting. David Baddiel's book is very good on all this..

It's all so sad. Difficult to see a positive outcome for all with this level of hatred.

"The London marchers chant ‘Resistance is justified when you are occupied’ as if October 7th could ever be justified." Indeed, how anyone could possibly call rape 'resistance' is impossible to believe and yet they do.

Well, that’s what leads to what you have seen on even this thread - that the rapes and other atrocities were made up by Israel. Similar to Holocaust denial - didn’t happen, over exaggerated, or Jews did it to themselves.

I’ve also seen claims that Israel were responsible for most of the deaths on October 7th. They’ve not quite managed to blame the taking of hostages on Israel but there have been lots of claims that the hostages simply had a lovely holiday in Gaza and came out loving Hamas. The dead ones were all killed by Israel.

Her parents were members of Lehi a Terrorist Organization and took part in underground activities(she obviously took up from where they left off regarding her beliefs) so it's only certain terrorists she has issues with.

Blindness fuelled by hatred.

I get what you're saying but I think the roots of antisemitism are longstanding but shallow enough that everyntime there is an escalation in violence involving Israel they come up to the surface very easily and combine with the oppressor/colonialist narrative far too easily. Antisemitism was widespread and mainstream in the early 20th century, even in progressive circles. The idea that Jewish people are different not properly British (Corbyn's they dont understand English irony etc) stereotypes around particular professions, character traits etc never really went away. its not always active hate but background mood music.