[noir_lord]

One of the things that annoys me about this debate is that anti-semetic !== Anti Israel

I've no issue with the Jews (I don't actually know any) but specific things the Israeli government does sure I do.

Of course it's useful for people to conflate the two as they do with Corbyn or anyone who condemns Israel.

Frankly I've no dog in the fight, I think Israel and the Palestinian's are frequently in the wrong.

It's quite possible for there to be no 'good guy'.

[isostatic]

The problem with criticism of Israel is that it tends to be disproportionate compared with their criticism of other countries. While some call to boycott Israel due to it's illegal settlements in the west bank - an area it invaded in 1967, few also call for boycotts of Turkey (invaded Cyprus in 1975), China (invaded Tibet in 1950), Russia (annexed Crimea in 2014 and parts of Georgia a few years earleir), UAE (occupied Socotra last year)

[JadeNB]

> few also call for boycotts of Turkey (invaded Cyprus in 1975), China (invaded Tibet in 1950), Russia (annexed Crimea in 2014 and parts of Georgia a few years earleir), UAE (occupied Socotra last year)

I think that this statement is false in almost every case. (I hadn't heard about UAE, so don't have any perspective there.)

[isostatic]

"boycott x", number of google results

  x = israel -- 616k
  x = china -- 57k
  x = saudi -- 50k
  x = russia -- 28k
  x = turkey -- 15k
  x = america -- 15k
  x = iran -- 11k
  x = korea -- 11k
  x = uae -- 10k
  x = britain -- 6k
  x = sudan -- 4k
  x = venezuela -- 2k

[JadeNB]

Sure, and this may be regarded as good first-approximation evidence of your initial claim, that criticism of Israel is disproportionate to criticism of other countries; but I don't think it is good evidence of the claim that few people call for boycotts of China, Russia, and Turkey, which was the specific claim to which I was responding.

Anyway, as far as using Google results to measure societal trends goes, "boycott Microsoft" yields 3.83m results, and I don't think it's fair to conclude that criticism of Microsoft is disproportionate compared to that of all the countries you listed.

[isostatic]

"boycott microsoft" is 11,200 [0]. apple 27k, google 20k, facebook 30k, twitter 15k, uber 13k.

Amazon is the only one that comes "close" - 98k -- 15% that of "boycott israel".

Boycotting Israel is an order of magnitude more than China, and 40 times that of Turkey, despite China doing far worse things over a constant period, and Russia and Turkey actually occupying developed countries

"Few" is obviously a relative term, and given that even China is less than 10% of Israel shows that Israel receives a disproportionate amount.

[0] http://imgur.com/s7wC8yTl.png

[interfixus]

> the west bank - an area it invaded in 1967

Or more specifically: an area it occupied in 1967 during a defensive war against an attacking coalition of neighbour states.

[isostatic]

Sure, it's not the first time Israel was attacked either.

[dsfyu404ed]

>One of the things that annoys me about this debate is that anti-semetic !== Anti Israel

That's the point. People on the pro-Israel side of things know that being antisemitic is very much not acceptable for anyone in a position of power in the 1st world to be in this day any age so they try their hardest to conflate the two.

It's much more obvious when the conflation is much more of a stretch, e.g. "how dare you not support gun control, don't you care about children" or "how dare you not support corporate tax cuts, are you some sort of communist." Conflating Israel as a nation with all Jewish people is subtle enough that you can get away with it most of the time.

It's basically a reverse straw-man where you conflate your position with something that nobody can tear down in a sufficiently politically correct manner (like a race of people) or the opposing position with something so politically incorrect that nobody will stand behind it.

If you're looking for it you'll see this behavior a lot on HN though people are typically slightly more tactful about it.

[gowld]

It works in reverse too, where you can dog-whistle any anti-Semitic statements by saying that you were refering to "Israeli government" or "globalists" or "bankers", not Jews.

[Bartweiss]

This is a significant point; it's definitely not a one-way thing.

At the simplest, there's genuine confusion over symbolism, like people mistaking the Magen David for the Israeli flag. A lot of other times, there's way less excuse; I think the infamous example here is (ex London Mayor) Ken Livingstone comparing a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard. His justification was that people are afraid to criticize Israel - despite having been speaking to a British reporter covering a domestic beat.

Honestly, I think that's part of what makes the conflation so enduring. If it stemmed from one side, people would get used to dismissing it as a partisan move. But depending on who you're appealing to and what you're justifying, it can be run from all different political starting points, so no one is putting it in political cartoons as "that thing the other guys do".

[Gibbon1]

My experience is out and out anti-Semites aren't into making subtle distinctions.

[gadders]

Well, this is the widely accepted definition of anti-semitism [1]. As long as you don't do anything on the list you should be OK.

[1] https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/working-definition-anti...

[pault]

Is "the jews" considered offensive? If someone were to say "the blacks" I would automatically suspect them of racist tendencies.

[pault]

I can't edit the original comment because it triggered the flame war filters, but I'm curious why this is such a controversial question and garnered so many downvotes. I sincerely wanted to know what popular the consensus is.

[bendoernberg]

You're right, when someone who isn't Jewish says "the Jews" it sounds weird and is followed by "control the banks" often enough that it sets me on edge.

[PavlovsCat]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews

ctrl+f "the Jews". I wouldn't make your opinion of what is "offensive" depend on an ad-hoc poll in times where even the most rudimentary looking into things for oneself seems to be getting rare. (or where people think clicking a button constitutes an argument, for that matter)

In this case, the comment also said "the Palestinians", and if you hear someone say "the blacks", as well as "the whites", yet you only retain the one and discard the other, that says more about the absurd climate than that person.

[jonnydubowsky]

You're grammar rules here are inconsistent. The comment said "The Palestinians" not "the Muslims" because they were talking about Palestinians, people who live in Palestine. There are Muslims, Jews, Christians and agnostics living there. Israel's, people who live in Israel, include all varieties of religious groups. When you critique Israel's government policies but say "the Jews" you are incorrectly describing an entire religion when you claim to be talking about a group of people that live in Israel. Any "mistakes" with this logic are suspicious, but maybe they just skipped that part of the grammer?

[PavlovsCat]

> When you critique Israel's government policies but say "the Jews" you are incorrectly describing an entire religion when you claim to be talking about a group of people that live in Israel.

I totally agree, but they wondered if saying "the Jews" is offensive as such. It's not, as such.

When someone who cares a lot about the issue constantly mixes that up, that's very different from not getting it perfectly right on the first attempt because they're not familiar with the subject. And hey, even confusing Jews and Israel doesn't necessarily mean a person as an anti-semite, they could also belong to one of several schools of right-wing Israeli thought. But your point stands regardless.

[noir_lord]

Pretty much this, the only time I’ve interacted with Jewish people was my ex-partners family been Jewish (she wasn’t religious but her family where).

I didn’t feel the need to defend myself since a charitable reader wouldn’t assume malice and an uncharitable reader.. what would be the point.

[noir_lord]

No idea, the Jewish people, judaists insert whatever works for you.

[tuesdayrain]

I've noticed people can be offended when you refer to them by their adjectives. E.g. "blacks" instead of "black people", "autists" vs "autistic people".

[wgerard]

One term encourages the idea that they're people first-and-foremost, with the adjective used to describe a particular subset of people.

The other removes the emphasis on them being people and is pretty depersonalizing.

As you can imagine, it's much worse when it's a historically marginalized group--as an example, fewer people will care if you say "blondes" vs. "blonde-haired people".

[crockstar]

My understanding is that people object to this as it is a means of defining them rather than describing them. In fact, I know people who would be insulted with the use of "autistic people" as opposed to "people with autism"

[noir_lord]

I don’t deliberately go out my way to offend anyone but nor can I be responsible for offending someone looking to be offended, it’s a fine line.

Though this thread has been fascinating.

[nkrisc]

You can just say, "Jews." The article isn't necessary.

[PavlovsCat]

Yeah, but it's also perfectly fine to use it. Jews use it, Wikipedia uses it. The commenter also said "the Palestinians" in the very same comment in which they said "the Jews", making this whole subthread slightly silly. Not that dragging conversation into accusing others of "sentiments" they cannot disprove and one cannot prove them to have, before or even instead of dealing with the factual stuff that all parties can examine and elobarate on, is ever not silly.

[lr4444lr]

What's offensive is that the OP (or generally people like him - not clear of his exact point) thinks he knows Jewish identity well enough that he can divorce it by whatever line he thinks it is (artificially) separate from Israel. Only a tiny minority of very unrepresentative Jews object to the modern state, and they do so only under an even more extreme ideology of what that country should be and who should live in it.

[gbrown]

> a tiny minority of very unrepresentative Jews object to the modern state

[Citation Needed]

I think your comment is far more offensive than someone claiming they take issue with the actions of a nation state.

[lr4444lr]

All denominations of Judaism aside from a few Haredi sects and maybe extreme secularists recognize the modern state of Israel as a legitimate country. Many adherents may not like how certain aspects of it are run, but they hold not anything remotely like what the totality of a position would entail to be "anti-Israel". The general acceptance of the country is about as common knowledge in Judaic studies as anything, and is uncontentious. I challenge you to find otherwise.

[gbrown]

> denominations of Judaism

Which is mostly irrelevant, given the large and diverse groups of secular Jews worldwide. More importantly, you've moved the goalposts from having to defend a fairly extreme statement to trying to defend something like "Jews are more likely than average to support the modern state of Israel", which is just kind of obvious.

[komali2]

The majority religion of a Nation can be irrelevant when criticizing the nation's actions.

I find it surprising more Jewish people don't get angry at the use of their religion to justify/cast smoke clouds around human rights violations by the Israeli government. What a shield to put up - someone's religion! A history of Holocaust! It seems dirty to me, but I don't practice Judaism so I can only comment from the outside looking in.