Part 5: Israeli-Palestinian conflict

[AndHarry]

New thread again.

Thread 1 - started when 3 Israeli boys were found murdered.

Thread 2 - in which we mainly discussed Operation Protective Edge.

Thread 3 - in which we continued to discuss Operation Protective Edge, the wider conflict and international involvement.

Thread 4 - in which Operation Protective Edge was examined further and we looked at the different views from inside Israel and the international community.

Another reminder of the Mumsnet Talk Guidelines.

Ye gods - I think you are very very mistaken or deluded if you think the vast majority of Muslims want israel gone and Jewish people dead.

In all my reading, discussions and viewings I have not come across one person who has blamed jews for what israel is doing. Nor gave I come across a single person who has suggested israel is dismantled. Israel has a right to exist but not as an occupier.

It is viewpoints like yours that increase anti semitism by propagating the image of Jews as victims and the wronged party. Many wonderful Jewish people are leaders in the fight to free palestine, and it is these Jewish grandchildren amd great grandchildren of holocaust survivors who are also drawing parallels to the Holocaust.

halfdrunk and others who've been to/lived in Israel, are the terms 'Israeli Arab' etc never used for Jews of Arab descent anymore then?

That quote from the deputy defence minister is disgusting (I know it's from a few years ago now), about the Palestinians 'bringing an even bigger Shoah on themselves'. I don't normally think it's acceptable for Israel/Jews to be held to a higher standard because of the Holocaust, but in this case it does seem appropriate to ask how a Jewish person can possibly justify saying something like that. I think the general point of the article is a good one, though - there's no need to draw inaccurate parallels when the situation in Gaza is already terrible enough.

Good news re the SA school boy - just received an e-mail from the SA Board of Jewish Education which confirms that no further action against Josh Broomberg will be taken.

The details are confirmed in this article which quotes extensively from the statement - see www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/gauteng/teen-in-gaza-facebook-storm-says-sorry-1.1734145#.U-n8ck0cRSM

good news on the schoolboy.

i do agree that statements from jewish people denigrating muslims and arabs are likely to create anti-semitism. especially when they're so all encompassing and claim to speak for every jew on the planet. some people might be stupid enough to believe you and think that all jews are like you. no one on this thread thankfully but there are always lurkers.

very many jews are as horrified by these events as i am. sadly when they speak out about their horror they can pay a high price in terms of abuse, threats, loss of friendships, position etc. in the jewish community, as in all communities, including the muslim community, there is much variety. ergo you cannot speak for the whole jewish community or make declarations about the whole muslim community. it's a strange kind of delusion of grandeur and omniscience that must be in place in order to do so.

I know what you mean honeybadger I think. I don't really get 'identity politics' in general but I was thinking this morning that maybe I have an empathy fail with this. How can there be a voice purporting to be for all Jews, or all any religion, ethnicity etc. I don't get it. What is it that I am missing in my understanding of why people so align themselves so completely with a tribe or identity? Genuinely I am curious. Have had so many surprises and shocks in the last month from Jewish friends who are fab in every way yet we are miles and miles apart on the children of Gaza and the actions of Israel.

i really don't know springheeled - i've never had the tribal thing, never understood nationalism or racism or even supporting a football team. i'm trying to remember a book i read called, "imagined communties" by someone whose name began with a. think i'll have to google.

Anderson!

a quote from wiki,
"Benedict Anderson defined a nation as "an imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign".[1] Members hold in their minds a mental image of their affinity: for example, the nationhood felt with other members of your nation when your "imagined community" participates in a larger event such as the Olympic Games. As Anderson puts it, a nation "is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion".[1] Members of the community probably will never know each of the other members face to face; However, they may have similar interests or identify as part of the same nation. The media also create imagined communities, through usually targeting a mass audience or generalizing and addressing citizens as the public.

These communities are imagined as both limited and sovereign. They are limited in that nations have "finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations".[1] They are sovereign since no dynastic monarchy can claim authority over them, in the modern period:

...[T]he concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Coming to maturity at a stage of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism [incongruence, divide] between each faith's ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state. (pp. 6-7)

Even though we may never see anyone in our imagined community, we still know they are there through communication.

Finally, a nation is an imagined community because "regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings."[1]"

the concept of a huge horizontal us of fraternity is a fascinating power technique really. people will kill and die for it and as we've seen make the epic fail of seeing those outside of it as 'other'. the wonderful power trick in it is it keeps those in power in each nation in total dominion really as they hide their dominion in an 'us' which keeps us from identifying with those we more realistically have things in true common interest with re: all of us little people being betrayed and exploited by the powerful few worldwide.

once again - we are all palestinian.

another book that needs re-reading! university is wasted on the young

I'm pretty sure Mizrahi Jews are never described as Israeli Arabs, alAswad. However, I don't know the equivalent vocabulary in Hebrew or Arabic.

Mizrahi Jews in Israel often tend to be poorer than those of European descent, and have sometimes faced racism and prejudice (I don't know whether this is so much the case now as it was in the past; there was an interesting chapter on this in Ari Shavit's book that I just finished).

I also liked this blog post on ghetto comparisons.

Springheeled "What is it that I am missing in my understanding of why people so align themselves so completely with a tribe or identity? Genuinely I am curious."

In times of threat, people band together, cf the spirit of the Blitz in WW2. British people had views across the political spectrum but were united in knowing that they were targets for Luftwaffe bombers. People of the Jewish faith/nation argue amongst themselves about just about everything but are united in knowing they are a target for certain groups.

Another way of thinking about it is a sense of empathy, along the lines of "that could have been me". We see this in the public reaction to news stories, e.g. the McCanns, who people saw as just another family on holiday "just like us". The more parallels you can see with your own life, the closer the news story feels. So Muslims worldwide are likely to feel closer to the situation of other Muslims under threat. True empathy has no borders, but certain stories will always strike more of a chord than others.

This discussion reminds me Lennon's lyric "Imagine there's no countries".

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. So it's difficult for us to look back at what went on in the Warsaw Ghetto without knowing the final outcome. So IMHO to argue that the scale of that compared to Gaza is disproportionate (or any other point of difference, come to that)is missing the point somewhat. If only ordinary Germans had spoken out in 1933 or 34 or 36 or 39 or 41, then things might not have gone as far as they did.

We must not be distracted by 'semantics' but continue to speak out now. Yes, the comparison is painful, and purposely so, but really i think it's because so many Israel supporters refuse point blank to accede that they might be wrong in their analysis and their justification of abominable, indefensible actions. It's an, admittedly blunt, attempt to shock them into reconsidering. But the comparison should not be further continued if it is only going to be used to deflect discussion/action from the true issues.

"Eyes on the prize" was, I believe, the call to action for Saturday's demo. That prize has to be justice for the Palestinians.

Quick bob in before I read through the recent posts. Wanted to say I'm off to a Palestine Solidarity Group meeting this eve - will report back!

sergentmajor I was talking about Israel and not palestine as they don't have an army. Hence the unjust war against civilians!

I know you were quoting me but you took away from it wasn't what was intended.

What I meant was that I/we am/are not angry at the whole or Israel and everyone that lives there and have ever lived there. I am angry at the government and Army.

But I will boycott Israel as a country. But that doesn't mean I hate all Jews.
Got it?

I'm completely perplexed where Jews have got this Idea that everyone hates them and wants them dead?

Because I have never heard anyone say anything bad a bout Jews ever (until July this year when the news was filled of images of dying and injured children)
Blacks, Asians, Indians etc. many, many times. Lots of horrible steriotypes and open racism.I've heard people bad mouthing Christians, Jehovahs whiteness, Catholics for their extreme views or presence in the community to try and convert you to their religion.

Never, ever Jews. The only thing I over heard about Jews as a kid was that they were really hard workers/good business people.

It is quite common for people who dislike criticism of the acts of the State of Israel, to pretend that the criticism is based on anti-Semitism, and not on the Acts of the State of Israel.

So this noisy chorus exaggerates and invents anti-Semitism.

For example, I have criticised Israel killing and maiming people by the thousand, and for speaking out, I have been accused of being an anti-Semite, and even a Nazi sympathiser.

I heard antisemitic comments at my catholic primary school- on the playground once we were chasing some pennies and an older boy said 'Jews' so I went home and mentioned it to parents who explained that some people believe x, y and z about Jews and that it is wrong. First and last ever time I ever heard it, but I was armed to dispute it if I ever heard it again.

Growing up, racism towards other groups and homophobia were the big things around me. Honestly have never once heard or seen antisemitism and I don't think it's because I'm blind to it, it just hasn't happened. Have used books like Friedrich, Once and boy in striped pjs in the classroom every year for more than 20 years and no child has ever expressed anything other than bafflement and disgust regarding antisemitism, or anything other than interest and curiosity' about Jewish culture. They have masses of times expressed islamophobic, homophobic and anti immigrant views though. Also dislike of 'scroungers' and 'single mothers on benefits'.

If people say it's an issue then I am not in a position to disagree, but in my own experience it just isn't. Maybe in other areas?

never experienced it here either - either in the classroom (and i was an rs teacher so we talked about religions and studied the holocaust - and like springheeled i heard plenty of islamophobia, anti immigration, homophobic, disablist etc language and comments from the teens i taught) or in any walk of life EVER.

i've heard criticism of the treatment of palestinians and criticism of israel's behaviour but i've never heard it framed as an issue with 'jews' or judaism. always at the political and military behaviours of the state of israel.

i'm 38 - never heard it as a child, as a teacher, as an equality and diversity officer or in any personal area of my life. i was raised by a catholic woman who was bigoted about just about everyone and i never even heard her say anything anti-semitic which is truly saying something.

anti-semitism just really isn't a thing here as far as i'm aware.

From what I've seen over the last decade I think there is a great deal of racism in the west towards Muslims. They are vilified in the media and in their daily lives. I work with a muslim and the amount of ignorant and racist comments directed towards her during ramadan is astonishing. When I spoke to her about it she very matter of fact lying told me she experienced some form of racism every single day of her life.

It's something I've noticed too in general life and here on mn. Islamophobia is growing. As a jewish person I can't say I have ever faced racism and until this last month have never had to declare I was Jewish in an argument. I've had to do that on mn as I've been accused of being anti semitic.

However, I do feel that some very ignorant people blame all jews for what is happening in Israel and these are the same people who blames all Muslims after 9/11. Ultimately I stand by my comment that israels brutality affects jews worldwide and increases anti semitism and divisions within Jewish communities. Whilst zionist is very distinct from Judaism it does ultimately have a massive impact on Judaism.

This is sad because the vast majority of Jewish people, just like the vast majority of Muslims, are well integrated in communities across the world and just want to live a peaceful and productive life away from the glare and criticism of the world.

Matter of factly that should say.

I can't recall ever hearing any anti-semitism, but then I'm not Jewish - it's like a bloke not being aware of everyday sexism because it's not happened to him. I've not overheard any anti-semitism, though. A Jewish friend told me it used to happen to him a lot, but I think mostly in the 1950s and 60s when he was growing up.

Another Jewish friend is a Spurs supporter and hates the use of what he refers to as the 'Y' word - even though some Spurs supporters say they are reclaiming it as an insult used against them, he really dislikes it.

However, I do object to people calling entirely justified criticism of the actions of the Israeli state 'anti-semitic'. Criticising a country for the actions of its government and its armed forces is not racist.

(I've been told I look Jewish though, oddly enough. Something to do with curly brown hair, apparently.)

goldvelvet "I'm completely perplexed where Jews have got this Idea that everyone hates them and wants them dead"

was this a joke? have you heard of the holocaust?

The holocaust and the rest.

Sheesh. Centuries of active persecution.

Paranoid? I don't think they are.