[dheavy]

Lobbying?

As a secular Jew in Western Europe, I've distanced myself from my religious community due to its insistence on tying my identity to Israel. Where I live, it's less taboo to critique Israel than in the U.S., but still tricky.

Advocates of Israel's right-wing politics have blurred the line between criticizing Israel and anti-Semitism, an endeavor helped by actual anti-Semites. I've grown up with these supporters, but can't quite call them a "lobby" due to their loose organization and lesser influence here compared to the U.S.

Speaking out brings risks: being labeled a leftist extremist, clashing with fellow Jews, or unwittingly aiding anti-Semites. And that's if you are Jew.

This creates a pervasive, cautious silence that I imagine is even more stifling in countries with highly organized pro-Israel lobbying.

[arp242]

I was once "reported to ADL" for my anti-Semitism.

My horrid crime that made me literally Hitler?

Disagreement if a tag should be named "jews" or "judaism" on the Politics Stack Exchange site. I made an off-hand comment that I renamed the tag from "jews" to "judaism" and the very first response was that I had been "reported to the ADL" (whether they actually did: who knows? Probably not).

That such an incredibly boring, banal, and benign disagreement exploded in accusations of anti-Semitism so quickly has made me rather distrustful of these accusations in general unless I can verify things. Anti-Semitism is real, but so are narcissistic people abusing it to "win the argument". If you need to defend yourself with "but I'm not anti-Semitic!" then you've already kind of lost the argument, right?

[trogdor]

One of my favorite books is “Kindly Inquisitors” by Jonathan Rauch. Highly recommended. Among its core messages is that accusations of bias are often used to stop discourse. The strongest response against a factual claim is that it’s wrong. Not that it’s racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, etc.

“If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

-Justice Louis Brandeis

[myth_drannon]

It's less about your Jewish identity tied to Israel and more about you and your identity not tied to the country you live. It's two sides of the same coin and the argument is much older than Israel. Your loyalty will be always questioned it's just that now it has more "Israeli flavor". Different people, same idea. Things didn't change much since the Dreyfus affair.

[weatherlite]

> Where I live, it's less taboo to critique Israel than in the U.S., but still tricky.

Is it really so hard to "critique" Israel? I see daily calls for Israel to be abolished one way or the other (either violently with the help of Iran or with a Palestinian return). You can hear these opinions from politicians, on the news and social media, campuses and schools.

You might be labeled as a leftist as you said because this is generally a leftist stance, that's fair no? If I held a rightwing view I will probably be labeled as a right winger. Most Israelis I know think twice before they identify as Israelis in certain parts of Europe, they don't want a random cab driver to start lecturing them about apartheid (or do something worse). So I'm really intrigued why you think its such a taboo thing to criticize Israel or even openly call for its destruction.