The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #164798   Message #3947886
Posted By: Steve Shaw
03-Sep-18 - 06:47 PM
Thread Name: BS: The UK Labour Party and Antisemitism.
Subject: RE: BS: The UK Labour Party and Antisemitism.
The first five points and the last one are unarguable. There are serious problems with the other five points, all of which are designed to stall criticism of the actions of the Israeli regime. And we don't need "examples." The more you broaden out and tweak definitions, especially if you inhabit exclusively just one side of the argument, the more useless they become. As far as I'm concerned, it is not legitimate to criticise "Israel" or "the Jewish people" as a collective, ever. It is not legitimate to call for the destruction of Israel. It is always legitimate to be able to criticise the policies enacted by the Israeli regime. It is not antisemitic to say that the state discriminates against non-Jews in Israel, specifically the large Arab minority, because the discrimination is well-documented and self-evident. It can't be antisemitic to rail against Israel calling itself a Jewish state when almost a quarter of its population is non-Jewish. It can't be antisemitic to state unvarnished facts that are stated without tendentious intent. It can't be antisemitic to criticise the usurping of land for settlements for the exclusive use of Jewish citizens. It can't be antisemitic to criticise the building of a wall that robs Palestinians of land and divides their families. It would be outrageously antisemitic to say that these things are done because they're the typical behaviour of Jews. All this is very obvious and very simple. The expansion of an already-flawed definition to protect the Israeli regime's actions against criticism brings the perpetrators of the definition into disrepute and may actually put Jewish people in harm's way. Now that IS antisemitic.

By the way, the Nazis acted like Nazis. It is not beyond the realms of possibility for other regimes to act like Nazis. In that case it would be justifiable to accuse them of acting like Nazis. In my opinion it is still never wise to do that. You will never further the argument by so doing. And successive Israeli regimes, despite all their atrocities, have not acted like Nazis. Call it like it is, fearlessly, but that approach simply doesn't wash.