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by mangotree 4677 days ago
What a fantastic way to devalue other people's reasonable opinions. They hate what Israel is doing in Palestine territories because they hate the Jews. Brilliant!
2 comments

It's amazing how often I - as a non-Jew - hear rants about the Palestinian territories eventually drift off into anti-semitic stereotypes with the assumption I'll be sympathetic to the opinion.

Just like yes, most Europeans I know (which is kinda a lot given that I'm British and just happen to live in the US nowadays) who are ballistic about NSA spying give their own countries, often much farther along as surveillance states, a free pass because basically it's just another reason to attack the US (as is European left's recent flirtations with Islam, an ideology which in many ways you'd think is diametrically opposed to much of what the European left professes to believe - but anti-Americanism trumps all).

After seeing the blatant double-standard and after the hostile Palestine grouse-fest I tend to get from people the second they learn I'm Jewish (not Israeli, not anything about my personal politics), yeah - I'm going to call it like I see it.

Sorry, but the vast majority of you are bigoted hypocrites. If it wasn't Israel it'd be how we control the media or some other damn fool thing.

I don't know where you live, but in the USA it has long been normal for pro-Israel jews to claim a sort of ownership of judaism. Ariel Sharon once said, "Israel is not only an Israeli project. Israel is a Jewish, worldwide project."

One of the most destructive stereotypes is the self-hating jew - that any jew who criticizes israel is incapable of making a principled argument, instead he's just internalized anti-semitism. So it isn't necessarily anti-semitism for people who have picked up on that cultural norm to assume that any random jew is in favor of israeli policies.

The younger generations of American jews don't feel that sort of affinity with Israel, and the Israeli government's policies have played a big part in that disconnect. It is such a big deal that the Netanyahu government ran some tv ads a couple of years ago that basically amounted to telling israelis not to marry american jews because they weren't jewish enough. That went over like a lead balloon, even the ADL criticized the ads. All in all, I think that sort of response is important progress in decoupling judaism from zionism.

And, fwiw, I'm a born athiest who married into a mixed family of secular muslims, secular jews and cultural catholics - my grand-niece is a mix of all three, although she's too young to know it.