Spectator - The Torment of British Jews. This article almost brought me to tears.

[stelladelmare8]

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-torment-of-british-jews/ Apologies for the pay wall, but if you did want to read it you can get a free trial.

This article broke my heart. Sharing in the hopes of raising some awareness around what British Jews are facing right now in our own country.

I’m disgusted by the recent rise in antisemitism in this country. The UK has much to thank British Jews for; they have made a great contribution to this country over the centuries, despite the hostility they have faced at certain times.

I stand with British Jews who are in no way responsible for the actions of a foreign government. I am horrified by what Jewish people around the world are experiencing

Not seen the antisemitic banners then? Not heard the chants on those marches?

You might not think it’s antisemitic to do that, but it definitely is. It’s no business of yours what individual Jews think of Israel.

I don’t deny that there are some people that use these marches as an excuse to display their racism, but they are the small minority. It does not make everyone that supports the Palestinian cause racist.

Anti semitism is not supported by the organisers or the vast majority of people on those marches. There are always openly Jewish people that march. They too are a minority.

And yet they carry those banners unchallenged. They chant their genocidal ‘from the river to the sea’ filth unchallenged.

It’s a difficult time to be a Jew in the UK ☹️

My dad was Israeli. I was born in the UK but I don’t feel like I belong here anymore.

The article is wrong on this point for the U.K. at least,
”The fact that the pro-Palestinian marches started before Israel actually retaliated was a big tell; these people weren’t marching against Israel defending itself, but in favour of Israel being attacked. Unless they all had access to a big old time-travel machine, of course.”

The first pro-Palestinian march in London was on the 14th of October. Israel began its retaliation for October 7th immediately on October 7th on Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem. At the time of the first march at least 2,215 Palestinian civilians had been killed and 8,714 wounded from Israeli air attacks on Gaza over the preceding week; roughly double the Israeli death and injury toll from October 7th overall.

They don’t go unchallenged, it has been called out plenty. I have shouted that chant but I don’t want to swap one genocide for another, I don’t understand how that mush isn’t obvious. Apart from the minority of crazies that latch onto protests, what leads you to believe that all those people want to destroy Israelis instead of just wanting Palestinians to have the same basic rights as them? They march because they see suffering and injustice and want an end to it. Not because they want to swop it from one group of people to another. Yet they are wrongly called anti semitic.

‘From the river to the sea’ has been widely criticised, but no one analyses the second half of the chant anywhere near as much as they do the first. Palestine will be free.

What’s so wrong with wanting Palestinians to be free on that land? Free like they were when Jews and Arabs lived together in peace before 1948?

I find it difficult to understand why people who are not Jewish think they can tell British Jews what is and is not antisemitic?

Remember the whole debate about lady Susan hussey asking 'where are you from?' Some people could not understand why this was racist and the subtleties needed explaining. They were even telling black people this was not racist.

I think many people do not see the subtleties of racism/antisemitism - that does not mean it is not felt by those on the receiving end. And being told something said to you is not antisemitic/racist when you feel it is - well that's not a great feeling.

The first pro-Palestinian march in London was on the 14th of October.

What year are we talking about here? Palestinians and sympathisers have been marching against Israeli oppression for decades but they were ignored.

October 2023.
The Spectator article states the pro-Palestinian marches started before Israel’s retaliation in response to the October 7th 2023 attack by Hamas.

That is not a fact for the U.K.

Erm. Jews and Arabs didn’t live peacefully together before 1948. Jews were a persecuted minority and living under various colonial oppressors. There were multiple massacres of Jews in the Levant prior to 1948.

What’s so wrong with wanting Palestinians to be free on that land? Free like they were when Jews and Arabs lived together in peace before 1948?

you really need to read some history. Pogroms, Jews chased out of every Arab country so that the Jewish population in any of them is negligible.

This is an excellent point, and what I got from the earlier threads was that Palestinians are not deserving enough to live in their land ("why are they crying over mere land!") and that as it says in the Bible/Torah that this land belongs to Jews, everyone else should just move on and find somewhere else to live 😔

The Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews were both living under the same oppression by various colonial oppressors pre1948.

I thought that particular event happened after 1948? As a result of the Arab-Israeli war? Not pre1948? Because wasn’t there a trickle of Jewish settlers in Palestine the end of the 19th century onwards?

The case for the existence of Israel is not the Torah, nice touch of antisemitism there.

But of course the land is mentioned in the Torah, because that’s where Jews are from 🙃

Israel has internationally recognised borders, citizens, a national identity, an army and air force that are willing to defend it, and you’d have to kill more Jews than the Nazis managed to get rid of it, so you might as well get used. Someone who was born in Gaza, whose parents were born in Gaza, whose grandparents were born in Gaza has no more claim on Israeli land than you do. The conflict would be over already if people could accept that.

My father’s family were Persian Jews expelled from their country of birth. They went to the only country on earth that welcomed Jewish refugees with open arms. The monsters! It strikes me that when you kick out a minority you can’t then moan about where they go…

Just wait until you hear about the Grand Mulfi of Jerusalem before and during WW2. He’d be right up your street. A proper ‘Palestinian’ patriot.

The Jews were persecuted both as a group living under colonialism AND as a minority before the coloniser showed up. A lot of the bigger mistakes the British made were attempts to manage the conflict which already existed between Arabs and Jews (and other minorities)

The Palestinian Arabs only saw themselves as being oppressed when the State of Israel was established.

Until then they were fine with being ruled over by the Ottomans, the British, etc. (There has been no independant State in the land of Israel since 70ce, and that was a Jewish state). But when the Palestinian Arabs were ruled over by horror of horror, JEWS, than they got upset.*

I am not sure if any of you realise quite how much of the conflict in Israel is motivated by very very very deep rooted anti semitism.

*Well, they didn't like the Jewish refugees entering Palestine from Europe and did their best to stop them, even going into cahoots with Nazis to that end.

Any Palestianians who have accepted the State of Israel are living pretty happily in Israel since 1948.

There is NOTHING the Israeli government and people would like more then to see Palestianians living happy, productive lives in Gaza and the West Bank.

But no, Hamas and Hezbollah (encouraged by Iran and Putin) are very busy destroying any chance of that.

As Golda Meir said “When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”

But of course the land is mentioned in the Torah, because that’s where Jews are from

In Torah, it is the promised land, not where we Jews are originally from. In the 12th chapter of Genesis, Yahweh commands Abraham to leave the land of his birth and travel to a new land the Yahweh promises to show him. In the 17th verse, Yahweh tells Abraham that Canaan is the promised land, despite it already having people and cities in it, and promises it to Abraham and all his children.

The Torah does warn in Leviticus that if Yahweh’s laws are not obeyed, “the land will spew you out for defiling it, as it spewed out the nation that came before you,”

“The Palestinian Arabs only saw themselves as being oppressed when the State of Israel was established. Until then they were fine with being ruled over by the Ottomans, the British, etc.”

@SouthDubMum They were not “fine” being ruled by these foreign powers. A quick google would tell you that the British had to fight Arab uprisings, the closest one to 1948 was from 1936-1939 in Palestine.

@SouthDubMum
”Any Palestianians who have accepted the State of Israel are living pretty happily in Israel since 1948.”

Then why is there a case for apartheid currently being heard at the ICJ with 52 nations presenting testimony?