Sorry but the war in Gaza does not justify anti-semitic abuse or placards with swastikas on!

[YaddaYaddaYadda]

I've just spoken to a friend who went on the march in London today and feel physically sick at what she told me about some of the anti-semitic comments and chants she heard. She also told me about people carrying home made placards with swastikas intertwined with a star of david. I know people feel very strongly but how is this level of racial hatred justified??

My friend emailed me today (he lives in Israel, and is Jewish) with this link:

://103.fm/programs/event.aspx?R8r06VQ=E HHK&c41t4nzVq=JK

It will show you what is really going on just now for those of you (anyone like me who knows very little on this conflict) who are unsure.

Be careful, it is quite disturbing. I found it upsetting. Unfortunately we are only getting this conflict one-sided from the news in the UK, so we aren't given all the facts...this kind of clip brings back to us the real reason we need to come to a resolution. For the kids. The innocent ones...

I'm not a racist; I myself am a semite.

I do not condone the use of swastikas whatever the justification or context, and find the very sight of one obscene and distatsteful. more insulting is the use of the star of david beside the swastika, for it villifies all jews, which is a disrespect to Juddaism, a great world religion, and it is terribly unfair.

I'm not against Jews, but I am against racism of all kinds. I know what it is like to be targeted personally, socially, institutionally, and physically, because of your race/creed, and I refuse to forget this, so I will never become a perpetrator rather than a victim.

Just because I reject the state of Israel, it is absolutely ludicrous and ignorant to call me a 'racist'. Has it occured to you that there are Jewish people who are against the establishment of the state of Israel, who strongly oppose it, and who have built an organisation based on this opposition?

Their belief, according to their website, is the one i share. This is from the mouths of Jewish people, not Hamas/taliban/al qaeda militants:

Jews are not allowed to dominate, kill, harm or demean another people and are not allowed to have anything to do with the Zionist enterprise, their political meddling and their wars.
The true Jews remain faithful to Jewish belief and are not contaminated with Zionism.*

The true Jews are against dispossessing the Arabs of their land and homes. According to the Torah, the land should be returned to them.

The world must know that the Zionists have illegitimately seized the name Israel and have no right to speak in the name of the Jewish people!

Source: www.nkusa.org/aboutus/index.cfm

So these are my views, one that I share with Jews all over the world, for whom I have massive respect, so please stop calling me a racist, and the whole 'anti semitic' thing is starting to bore me an awful lot, considering that I am a true semite, and declare that I have nothing against Jews, but alot against Zionism, which is not a race or religion.

well said sherazade

It is categorically not OK

regardless of which you side you lean towards (and the more I read the more it goes around in circles and appears a humanitarian disaster rather than straight right V. wrong debate) that level of crap is never OK

Unless the swastika is being used by a practising Hindu in a faith based matter (or in a history or similar text obv) then of course its racist and abusive in the modern world

It's as sophisticaed as six-form politics, sherazade. They are your views and your welcome to them, but they aren't going to set the world on fire.

There is no "need" to think of Nazism beyond the "need" of some people who know fuck all about politics to take themselves too seriosuly.

But I asked you what could possibly be achieved by making such an analogy? Its a question everyone seems to be avoiding asking themselves as they reach into the hate bag to throw out another hopefull polemic. It's just pathetic. This is a real, complex war and westerners are picking sides like it's a WWF title fight.

You want the Israeli's to leave? How would you go about doing that?

there are terrified children and mothers being targeted here, that's all that strikes me as wrong. and that's without even going into their religious background....

sherazade that totally flew right past my head, but that's more to do with my ignorance in the conflict than your views.
this is obviously a complex issue that's not going to be easy to resolve (as much as Annie Lennox claims it to be).

Just to correct the record Sherazade, the Neturai Karta are a minority organisation with very little following. Every religion has their nutters. These ones hug people who swear that Hitler didn't finish the job instead of blowing up people in shopping centres and on buses.

"What do i want the Israeli's to do? It is quite simple. Pack their bags and leave. "

Where do you think that most of the Israelis came from in the first place. Over 50% of the current population are from Arab countries who "targeted them personally, socially, institutionally, and physically" by death, torture, theft of business and other pleasant methods to ensure they left. Where do you suggest they go to? Those same countries that treated them that way and continue to do so to the few remnants left as in Iran?

Another large proportion were survivors of the Holocaust who were homeless and no country would accept. Those who returned to where they came were often killed by the local population who didn't want to return land or possessions or just out of simple anti-semitism.

The aim of Zionism is to give the Jews a homeland so that they have somewhere to call their own when the rest of the world persecutes them yet again. Is that so unreasonable?

What do you see as the solution to that problem?

thanks Tigger15, you have also made things clear now as to the background of this conflict.

monkey trousers, nothing poltically can be achieved by talking about nazism, but aren't people allowed to voice anger (peacefully) and how they please without being villified, sworn at,abused, undermined and insulted, as you have been doing in your last couple of posts (idiots, know fuck all about politics , unthinking, rebels etc).

after all, I haven't compared YOU to a nazi, so why taking it so personally? and Israel couldn't care less what the rest of the world (bar US) thought of its image, so....

how i would go about personally to solve this conflict- what do YOU think you can achieve by asking this ? What kind of answer are you looking for? I have expressed an IDEAL. there is nothing, i know, that can be done . but in the meanwhile, the Nazi's who have created a massive concentration camp that is gaza, should stop their holocause.

Did I miss something? Did Israel declare war? Aren't there rules that have to be adhered to when war is declared?

This isn't a war. It's the massacre of civilians by an overwhelmingly powerful neighbouring country.

*holocaust

sherazade there's no need to be nasty towards other posters. sadly we don't all know the conflict like the back of our hands, it's news to some of us. we don't all know it inside out. let's have a bit patience with one another folks.

If Israel cared nothing about world opinion they would carpet bomb Gaza with no thought to what happened. Instead they spend much time and effort trying to pinpoint military locations and leaflet the area, send texts so civilians get out. The fact that Hamas chooses to operate from civilian areas to maximise casualties doesn't help.

So that's exactly what the Nazis did wasn't it? If you look at the record of the British airforce in Dresden they did considerably less than that in avoiding civilian casualties but Sherazade feels that what Israel is doing is comparable to marching people into gas chambers or having them dig their own pits and then shooting them into it.

Go figure.

Of cousre they are allowed. Just who is trying to stop them - or you? Unless what you actually mean by 'allowed' is 'allowed to assert anything and not be challenged' - because that goes against the grain of liberal democracy and freedom of speech. Anyone can say anything, and anyone can challenge them on it, and call any opinion idiotic or ignorant, as long as its directed at the opnion and not the individual. Something I alwasy do.

To say your grasp of politics is juvenile, is not a personal attack. It's a challenge to the opiions you have proudly and vociferously voiced on this thread. That's the rough and tumble of debate. It's what makes liberal democracy work.

Go throw a brick through a butchers window and get it out of your system.

thank goodness for mobile phones then. had no idea they send texts in to civilians to give them warnings to get out and escape. at least they get a chance if anything.

Of cousre they are allowed. Just who is trying to stop them - or you? Unless what you actually mean by 'allowed' is 'allowed to assert anything and not be challenged' - because that goes against the grain of liberal democracy and freedom of speech. Anyone can say anything, and anyone can challenge them on it, and call any opinion idiotic or ignorant, as long as its directed at the opnion and not the individual. Something I alwasy do.

To say your grasp of politics is juvenile, is not a personal attack. It's a challenge to the opiions you have proudly and vociferously voiced on this thread. That's the rough and tumble of debate. It's what makes liberal democracy work.

Go throw a brick through a butchers window and get it out of your system.

oops lol

Sherezade =- and when you say you are " a semite" I think you may be misleading people here. You are of arab origin presumably rather than a Jew?

From the OED: 'Semite, n., a member of a people speaking a Semitic language, in particular the Jews and Arabs'.

Notthing misleading about that.

lots of talk about racism and anti semitism but as yet not one person has commented on the racist quotations attributed to members of the current Israeli government which I cited earlier, and which were reproduced in a letter in yesterday's Guardian from a large group of British Jews opposed to Israel's current actions.

So: I would like people to scroll back and read my post and then check the veracity if they want ( I can't do links, not that techy type, sorry). Then I would like them to answer a clear yes or no as to whether they agree that the said comments are racist or not. Then, consider what that tells us about the Israeli government.

Yes - antisemitism refers only to Jews so the "I am a Semite therefore I cannot be antisemitic" thing is a red herring I'm afraid.

From wikipedia:

While the term's etymology might suggest that antisemitism is directed against all Semitic peoples, since its creation it has been used exclusively to refer to hostility towards Jews.

Donnie - I have not read your post but seriously whether they did or didn't what's the point?

Hamas have called for Israel to be wiped out and attacks on Jews worldwide. As a consequence synagogues have been firebombed in London and one scrawled with swastikas in Manchester. A gang has gone rampaging through a Jewish area of NW London attacking people in restaurants and shops and dragging motorists out of their cars and assaulting them. Young men have been beaten up.

In Norway storefront windows have been broken a the house of the Free Masons was set on fire - inside were a lot of children at an after-Christmas part, Jews or people peacefully demonstrating in support of Israel have been beaten, Jewish children are harassed at schools.

And what has Israel done in response? Called for worldwide attacks on Muslims? No.

Is that anti-semitism or is that anti-zionism and does it really matter?

Donnie which comments - the "put Gazans on a diet" and "their own Shoah" thing?

Or something else?