The Rage Against Israel Doesn't Seem To Extend To Anyone Else
Brendan O'Neill writes at Spiked, "There's something very ugly in this rage against Israel. The line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism gets thinner every day":
The double standards were perfectly summed up last week in the response to an Israeli writer who said in the UK Independent that Israel's attack on Gaza and its 'genocidal rhetoric' made her want to burn her Israeli passport. She got a virtual pat on the back from virtually every British activist and commentator who thinks of him or herself as decent. She was hailed as brave. Her article was shared online thousands of times. This was 'common sense from one Jew', people tweeted. No one stopped to wonder if maybe they should have burned their British passports after Yugoslavia in 1999, or Afghanistan in 2001, or Iraq in 2003, where often more civilians were killed in one day than have been killed by Israel over the past week. Why should Israel's bombing of Gaza induce such shame in Israeli citizens (or Jews, as some prefer) that burning their passports is seen as a perfectly sensible and even laudable course of action whereas it's perfectly okay to continue bounding about the world on a British passport despite the mayhem unleashed by our military forces over the past decade? Because Israel is different; it's worse; it's more criminal.Of course, Western double standards on Israel have been around for a while now. They can be seen not only in the fact that Israeli militarism makes people get out of bed and get angry in a way that no other form of militarism does, but also in the ugly boycotting of everything Israeli, whether it's academics or apples, in a way that the people or products of other militaristic or authoritarian regimes are never treated. But during this latest Israeli assault on Gaza, we haven't only seen these double standards come back into play - we have also witnessed anti-Israel sentiment becoming more visceral, more emotional, more unhinged and even more prejudiced than it has ever been, to such an extent that, sadly, it is now becoming very difficult to tell where anti-Zionism ends and anti-Semitism begins.
...Not only is the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism becoming harder to see - so is the line between fact and fiction. As the BBC has reported, the wildly popular hashtag #GazaUnderAttack, which has been used nearly 500,000 times over the past eight days to share shocking photographs of the impact of Israel's assault on Gaza, is extremely unreliable. Some of the photos being tweeted (and then retweeted by thousands of other people) are actually from Gaza in 2009. Others show dead bodies from conflicts in Iraq and Syria. Yet all are posted with comments such as, 'Look at Israel's inhumanity'. It seems the aim here is not to get to the truth of what is happening in Gaza but simply to rage, to yell, to scream, to weep about what Israel is doing (or not doing, as the case may be), and the more publicly you weep, the better, for it allows people to see how sensitive you are to Israeli barbarism. It's about unleashing some visceral emotion, which means such petty things as accuracy and facts count for little: the expression of the emotion is all that matters, and any old photo of a dead child from somewhere in the Middle East - Iraq, Syria, Lebanon - will suffice as a prop for one's public emotionalism.
A commenter under O'Neill's piece:
Leo King
Killing one race? Assad has killed 170,000 in Syria, out of which 2,000 were Palestinians. That is more Palestinians killed than in all of Israel's defensive wars in Gaza. These deaths were deliberate slaughters, not collateral fatalities in a military operation to remove missiles, launchers and command centres that have been pounding Israel since before the start of Operation Protective Edge.And it is not, as you falsely declare below, the Zionists who are claiming that Hamas is responsible for the indiscriminate firing of missiles at Israeli civilians AND the callous use of their own citizens as human shields. The Egyptian Foreign Minister and the Palestinian envoy to the UN Human Rights Commission have publicly gone on record to state that Hamas is guilty of war crimes violating international law on both of those counts. In the words of the Palestinian representative, Ibrahim Kraishi (who, incidentally, is not a Zionist) on July 9th on the Palestinian Authority TV channel: "The missiles that are now being launched against Israel, each and every missile constitutes a crime against humanity, whether it hits or misses, because it is directed at civilian targets..., Many of our people in Gaza appeared on TV and said that the Israelis warned them to evacuate their homes before the bombardment. In such a case, if someone is killed, the law considers it a mistake rather than an intentional killing because [the Israelis] followed the legal procedures....As for the missiles launched from our side, we never warn anyone about where these missiles are about to fall or about the operations we carry out."
The PA is pissed as hell at Hamas because it has undermined their campaign to haul Israel to the International Criminal Court. Of course, none of this will affect your spouting off more ignorance, arrogance and seething hatred, because you, and others like you, are a case in point in for exactly what the writer has described in this article: wolves in sheep's clothing, vicious Jew-haters masquerading as human-rights activists. Hypocrites who, with their dismissal of and silence on the actual, far-more significant human rights abuses across the planet, couldn't give a rat's ass about human rights at all. So just go on brandishing your lies, worn-out slogans and vitriol to your petty heart's desire; fortunately, all that ugliness does very little to alter the truth.
What do Jews do when they aren't ducking death?
> What do Jews do when they aren't
> ducking death?
Welcome tourists.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at July 21, 2014 12:13 AM
Anti-semitism among the British chatterati is pretty much bog standard. Caroline Glick recently participated in a debate and discussion at Oxford and after the event was over she offered that the behavior of the (very academic and bourgeois) audience was such she thought she would never return to the UK again. Supposedly Norway's even worse. You hear about polls of multi-state European respondents which name Israel (population just a shade higher than Switzerland's) as the principal threat to world peace, &c.
Art Deco at July 21, 2014 5:48 AM
Anti-semitism seems to have made a nasty come back in Europe. I was thinking France was worse, but maybe not if Norway (Norway?) is highly ranked?
I R A Darth Aggie at July 21, 2014 6:32 AM
IIRC, the French have particular affections of varying degrees of durability (Poland is one), but as a rule are given to equal-opportunity disdain. IIRC, the severity of it varies over the landscape, with the Occitan much more congenial than Paris.
Since the Jewish population of Argentina has emptied out, France now has the world's 3d highest concentration of Jews, after the U.S. and Israel. If I understand the newspapers correctly, the troubles the Jewish population has in France emanate from the Arab and Berber minority in France.
Art Deco at July 21, 2014 6:42 AM
Yes, anti-Semitism in Europe has returned to pre-WWII levels, and it's also made big gains among the self-congratulating glitterati in the U.S. The world is returning to the state it was in prior to World War I; all of the lessons of the 20th century are eagerly being forgotten. Two points:
(1) "it is now becoming very difficult to tell where anti-Zionism ends and anti-Semitism begins."
There is no line; at this point in history they are one and the same. With the situation in Europe, Asia, and Arabia being what it is (and the U.S. isn't a whole lot better), if Israel falls, the Jews will be nearly wiped out.
(2) There are no civilians in Gaza; it is a fully militarized society. We've all seen the photos of young children there bearing arms. In a free and open election, the Gazans chose Hamas as their government, by a huge margin. I have no sympathy for them.
Cousin Dave at July 21, 2014 6:49 AM
Art,
From the best I can tell the French hate everybody just about equally. They seem to divide the world into 'the French' and 'everybody else'. But if there are no non-French people around they are just as happy to fight each other as anyone else.
I personally have no desire to ever work with a French person again, but I can't call them bigoted. Annoying, aggravating, arrogant, destructive, as well as incredibly charming. But bigoted doesn't really come into it.
Ben at July 21, 2014 8:40 AM
From the late historian & English professor Paul Fussell (interviewed in The Portable Curmudgeon, 1987):
Q: How do you feel about the French?
A: I adore them because they're very honest in their snot. They don't pretend to like anybody but themselves. I love that. I love the French restaurant and the French shop where everyone is addressed as Monsieur or Madame, regardless of their social class. They erect an iron curtain of formality between themselves and other people. I find that I'm happier in an environment like that than in a pseudo-friendly one like the United States. I've never had a French taxi driver try to become my friend.
Q: Whereas here...
A: Sometimes when I'm in a cruel mood and I'm being and I'm in a cab heading back to Philadelphia, the driver will say: "How about those Eagles?" I'll say something like: "What the ---- is this Eagles stuff?" He assumes that because he has me in his cab I have the same interests as he does. I don't demand that he know all about Samson Agonistes, yet he demands that I know all about the Eagles.
lenona at July 21, 2014 8:53 AM
Yes, anti-Semitism in Europe has returned to pre-WWII levels, and it's also made big gains among the self-congratulating glitterati in the U.S. The world is returning to the state it was in prior to World War I; all of the lessons of the 20th century are eagerly being forgotten.
No, public policy in Hungary and party platforms in Poland and Roumania were far more anti-semitic during the inter-war period than is the case today. Of course, the context was different. The Jewish population in these countries was 5-10% of the total and they were very obtrusive in the universities, the professional sector, and among merchants.
Art Deco at July 21, 2014 8:55 AM
A: Sometimes when I'm in a cruel mood and I'm being and I'm in a cab heading back to Philadelphia, the driver will say: "How about those Eagles?" I'll say something like: "What the ---- is this Eagles stuff?" He assumes that because he has me in his cab I have the same interests as he does. I don't demand that he know all about Samson Agonistes, yet he demands that I know all about the Eagles.
Posted by: lenona at July 21, 2014 8:53 AM
He isn't demanding anything. He is trying to be friendly, and make conversation.
For someone to interpret this as a demand, is a sign of elite snobbery, probably why Paul Fussell was so comfortable in France.
Isab at July 21, 2014 9:28 AM
Fussell was always in a cruel mood.
I enjoyed reading his book, Class, but was struck by the fact that Fussell seemed to be consumed by class envy and really wanted the reader to believe he belonged in a higher social class than he actually did.
On the other hand, I sympathized with the young lieutenant who survived the European war and didn't want to die invading Japan in his essay, "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb."
Conan the Grammarian at July 21, 2014 9:30 AM
There's really only one solution to the violence of Hamas, and it's a famous one.
For your consideration.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 21, 2014 9:59 AM
This is from an old column of Charley Reese's... How would you feel about this if Judaism was not also somehow important?
------
Q: What American ally in the Middle East has for years sent assassins into other countries to kill its political enemies (a practice sometimes called exporting terrorism)?
Q: In which country in the Middle East have high-ranking military officers admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war were executed?
Q: In what country in the Middle East did the man who ordered the assassination of a high-ranking U.N. diplomat become prime minister?
Q: What country in the Middle East blew up an American diplomatic facility in Egypt and attacked a U.S. ship in international waters, killing 33 and wounding 177 American sailors?
Q: What country in the Middle East employed a spy, Jonathan Pollard, to steal classified documents and then gave some of them to the Soviet Union?
Q: What country at first denied any official connection to Pollard, then voted to make him a citizen and has continuously demanded that the American president grant Pollard a full pardon?
Radwaste at July 21, 2014 10:17 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/07/21/rage_against_is.html#comment-4865828">comment from IsabHe assumes that because he has me in his cab I have the same interests as he does.
No, he's trying to connect and make conversation and he picked a topic of some local interest.
To get all butthurt about this says, as Isab points out, says a lot about him. And PS I enjoyed "Class," which I read eons ago, too.
Amy Alkon at July 21, 2014 10:29 AM
Yes. Notice the example he gave of a preferred topic was fairly esoteric (even in his field of knowledge) - not the Phillies or even thoughts about the latest Opera Philadelphia season, but an obscure 1671 poem, "Samson Agonistes" (part of Milton's Paradise Regain'd).
Conan the Grammarian at July 21, 2014 11:44 AM
On the other hand, I sympathized with the young lieutenant who survived the European war and didn't want to die invading Japan in his essay, "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb."
Posted by: Conan the Grammarian at July 21, 2014 9:30 AM
As someone whose father waited in the Philippines to invade Japan, I sympathize too.
Excellent essay by the way,which proves the rule, that to be objective human beings, we really need to separate our admiration for authors as people from our admiration for their writing.
Some of them are real bastards.
Isab at July 21, 2014 11:59 AM
"No, public policy in Hungary and party platforms in Poland and Roumania were far more anti-semitic during the inter-war period than is the case today."
Maybe I overstated the case a little. But not my much. In 1985 anti-Semitism was dead, buried, only even thought of among certain deep dark corners of the U.S. far right, and that didn't matter because Reagan had made them politically insiginficant. (If there was an analog in Europe, outside of really insignificant teenage neo-skinheads, I'm not aware of it.) In the last twenty years it has arisen from the grave and now roams the countryside gain. Not only is the general trend going in the wrong direction, but anti-Semitism is becoming fashionable among the people who fancy themselves as being society's leaders.
Cousin Dave at July 21, 2014 12:01 PM
"Q: In what country in the Middle East did the man who ordered the assassination of a high-ranking U.N. diplomat become prime minister?"
Is this a trick question?
The correct answer is probably all of them, except that dictatorships don't actually have real prime ministers.
My father in law used to spout this anti Semitic bullshit too. I think he picked most of it up from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Isab at July 21, 2014 12:04 PM
Breaking News Update!
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at July 21, 2014 12:54 PM
"I think he picked most of it up from the Minneapolis Star Tribune."
Lutherans. Blech.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 21, 2014 1:06 PM
In 1985 anti-Semitism was dead, buried, only even thought of among certain deep dark corners of the U.S. far right, and that didn't matter because Reagan had made them politically insiginficant.
I can find you complaints by Leon Wieseltier about articles in the London Review of Books and public statements by figures like Roald Dahl from that era. Anti semitism among the chattering classes in Britain has been noticeable for a generation. Paul Findlay was already active at that time as well, as was Donald Neff and the "American Educational Trust".
--
Art Deco at July 21, 2014 2:49 PM
This is from an old column of Charley Reese's... How would you feel about this if Judaism was not also somehow important?
Reese's general pose was that he was nobody's sucker. The trouble is, he never knew much about anything, and, no, his motives were not above reproach.
The shizz about the USS Liberty was never very plausible and has been debunked definitively by Michael Oren. If Reese fancies that France and Britain do not employ intelligence agents in Washington, I've a bridge I'm selling. Israel hunted down the members of 'Black September', who had no legitimate existence and had (among other things) massacred Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. USS Liberty fantasists have imagined that a four digit quantum of Egyptian prisoners were massacred during the Six Day War. Israel's response to that has been to identify an incident where Arab irregulars associated with PLO winglets were executed summarily (not a four digit number); keep in mind that Algerian partisans were executed when captured by the French during the early years of the Algerian insurrection (1954-62). Quite bog standard in counter-partisan warfare at that time.
Now why would Charley Reese make such a string of tendentious judgments? Can the rest of us play the non-sucker too?
Art Deco at July 21, 2014 2:57 PM
"Q: In what country in the Middle East did the man who ordered the assassination of a high-ranking U.N. diplomat become prime minister?"
Again, Reese is not telling you that 35 years separated the killing of Count Bernadotte and the day Yitzhak Shamir was sworn into office and that the territory in question was in an anarchic state at the time. There are electoral politicians and cabinet ministers in Central America who have this sort of thing in their past; it's what you see in countries where there has been a comprehensive breakdown in order. You indubitably see it in Lebanon today. So, why does Reese not notice that, eh?
C'mon, don't be a sucker.
Art Deco at July 21, 2014 3:09 PM
For someone to interpret this as a demand, is a sign of elite snobbery, probably why Paul Fussell was so comfortable in France.
I'm sure there are snobs in France. Certainly the guises and poses of characters like Valery Giscard and Edouard Balladur were disgusting.
In my experience, the French on a mundane basis are not notably snobbish on average. There's a certain inner-directedness, a certain perversity, and (in some people) an exasperated rudeness. You see this in service employees in a way you just never do in the States. They're definitely less concerned about what other people think of them than you see elsewhere and this extends to their hygiene, which is often...noticeable.
A French expat living in Livingston County, N.Y. once told me a story of how he was watching television one night and on came Pres. Nixon to request that everyone conserve energy by driving more slowly. He said he was aghast. "If deGualle or Pompidou had tried this, everyone in France would have been out on the road the next day driving 100 miles per hours". (He had this sort of off-hand nuttin' personal rebelliousness himself when he was behind the wheel of a car).
--
As for Fussell, his social criticism was disgusting. At least one of his wives will attest that he was a repellant human being. And have you ever heard a World War II vet speak with such contempt about the military and the war effort? Me neither, and the WW II vet in my proximity was once an aide to Vito Marcantonio.
Art Deco at July 21, 2014 3:20 PM
I recall some of the following, but have not verified much of it. For your consideration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charley_Reese
--
The writer John Derbyshire once recalled that his father saw 'a red under every bed', thought the government should be run by a board of successful businessmen, and always voted for the British Labour Party. You get that vibe from the Wiki portrait.
Art Deco at July 21, 2014 3:29 PM
That would be Betty Fussell, who had her own axe to grind ... and a book to sell.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/10/31/reviews/991031.31bolot.html
Conan the Grammarian at July 21, 2014 3:51 PM
"Is this a trick question?"
Of course, and it has served its purpose.
Equivocation, not rebuttal is the order of the day.
Apparently, if some time elapses between a capital crime and one's election, that is okay. If a person debunks the idea that the attack on USS Liberty was intentional, then the blunder (by one of the most capable Air Forces on the planet), and subsequent actions are also okay.
Throw in a little name-calling, all of these issues just go away.
Because Jews. Right?
Radwaste at July 21, 2014 6:10 PM
If a person debunks the idea that the attack on USS Liberty was intentional, then the blunder (by one of the most capable Air Forces on the planet), and subsequent actions are also okay.
The 'subsequent actions' would be an apology and the payment of compensation. Investigations were conducted by the Navy at the time and the fruits of the investigation were declassified in 1997, which is how Oren and others have pieced together the precise sequence of events. There was never any motive for Israel to attack a Navy ship which is why Donald Neff and others were trading in fantasies regarding the Golan Heights and imaginary prisoner massacres in the Sinai.
Apparently, if some time elapses between a capital crime and one's election, that is okay.
Whether it's OK or not, it is characteristic of political life in places which have seen partisan and counter-partisan warfare that you see politicians with that kind of past. Reese's point is that Israel as a political project is discredited by it (a nine decade history of electoral politics notwithstanding).
Throw in a little name-calling, all of these issues just go away. Because Jews. Right?
What name-calling? Reese's guises and poses were there to see for anyone who read his column.
Art Deco at July 21, 2014 6:25 PM
Okay, okay, but adolescents should have their social media foolishness mocked no less than seniors do, right?
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at July 21, 2014 6:26 PM
I'm gonna guess more people have a personal connection to Israel than they do to Syria, and thus care more. Also, the conflict has been going on longer and more people have had time to get informed on one side or the other. Also, Israel is theoretically a more western nation, and people in the west tend to care more about other western nations and what they are doing than they do other places.
NicoleK at July 22, 2014 8:42 AM
He assumes that because he has me in his cab I have the same interests as he does.
No, he's trying to connect and make conversation and he picked a topic of some local interest.
Posted by: Amy Alkon Author Profile Page at July 21, 2014 10:29 AM
_____________________________________
I agree there was no excuse (in real life) for Fussell to be rude to the driver, but within the context of Jon Winokur's book, it was OK, because it was the sort of thing that the readers wanted to read - spleen-venting reactions to pet peeves, in particular.
And what clearly bothered Fussell was that the cabbie was trying to "connect" in the first place - the pseudo-friendliness, something a French cabbie would never have tried to do, but presumably not because it was some sort of breach of class. (BTW, Quentin Crisp, who was also interviewed as the "Courtly Curmudgeon," would have been the opposite in his reaction - that is, he always loved talking to strangers and said that the social freedom to do that in the U.S. was one thing he liked most.) To Fussell, it didn't matter which subject was chosen; they were strangers and he wanted to keep it that way.
I suspect another thing that bothered Fussell was the idea that all men, regardless of class, are supposed to like sports, when that didn't used to be the assumption in the pre-TV era - before the late 1960s or so, when sports became REALLY big.
lenona at July 22, 2014 3:13 PM
Please explain to me how criticism of the actions of the Israeli government is anti-semitism...
And if it in fact is, then how is it that this is the only government in the world that deserves such protection?
drcos at July 22, 2014 4:19 PM
I suspect another thing that bothered Fussell was the idea that all men, regardless of class, are supposed to like sports, when that didn't used to be the assumption in the pre-TV era - before the late 1960s or so, when sports became REALLY big.
Posted by: lenona at July 22, 2014 3:13 PM
This is untrue. As a historian, before TV, sports, both an a participant, and an observer were way bigger than they are now. Almost all men played a sport or followed one or more avidly.
Thousands of people would show up for college football games, before most people even owned a car, or TV was invented.
Fussell was just being a dick, and trying to prove how aristocratic his tastes were.
Isab at July 22, 2014 4:23 PM
Please explain to me how criticism of the actions of the Israeli government is anti-semitism...
And if it in fact is, then how is it that this is the only government in the world that deserves such protection?
Posted by: drcos at July 22, 2014 4:19 PM
Because Israel is a civilized country which is a constitutional democracy where people have rights, and women and children have rights, and protections.
They are being held to a double standard and compared unfavorably to dictatorships and terrorist medieval states where people have no rights and women and children are cannon fodder, and chattel.
Isab at July 22, 2014 4:31 PM
Palestinians Chose Hamas and the Mass-Murder of Civilians—Including Their Own:
Jim P. at July 22, 2014 7:07 PM
They are being held to a double standard...
Their government (the 'State of Isreal') is being criticized, not the citizenry. This is no more anti-semitic than criticizing the state government of Utah would be anti-Mormon.
drcos at July 23, 2014 3:34 AM
I suspect another thing that bothered Fussell was the idea that all men, regardless of class, are supposed to like sports, when that didn't used to be the assumption in the pre-TV era
'Fraid my father and his contemporaries were all the spawn of the pre-TV era and with an exception here or there mad for TV spectator sports. Fussell was a man with an attitude who thought he was above ordinary pleasantries.
Art Deco at July 23, 2014 5:39 AM
Their government (the 'State of Isreal') is being criticized, not the citizenry. This is no more anti-semitic than criticizing the state government of Utah would be anti-Mormon.
You get advocates of the Arab cause talking and you discover they fall neatly into two categories:
1. Posturing flibberdigibbets who are not following an argument to its logical conclusion.
2. People who fancy that Israel is obligated to immolate itself (by accepting unlimited quantities of Arab immigrants).
If it pleases you, we can all refrain from slapping the label 'anti-semitic' on the latter category (not that that makes it any less ugly).
Art Deco at July 23, 2014 5:42 AM
As a historian, before TV, sports, both an a participant, and an observer were way bigger than they are now. Almost all men played a sport or followed one or more avidly.
Not precisely. My grandfather did not as an adult take an interest in that. Also, 'sports' might be recreational past-times that were tangentially athletic, like hunting and fishing.
Still, it's hard to think of an athlete who was more of a public presence than Joe diMaggio, whose playing career hardly extended into the television era.
Art Deco at July 23, 2014 5:47 AM
You get advocates of the Arab cause...
In what way did I advocate the Arab (or Israeli) cause in my question?
If it pleases you, we can all refrain from slapping the label 'anti-semitic' on the latter category (not that that makes it any less ugly).
Where do you see that I "fancy" anything?
The question still remains...why is any criticism of Israel anti-semitic?? Anti-semitic by definition is prejudice against Jews. Criticism of their government is NOT prejudice against the citizenry.
In case you're wondering, I am advocating people NOT FIRING MISSILES AT EACH OTHER.
DrCos at July 23, 2014 8:50 AM
The question still remains...why is any criticism of Israel anti-semitic??
And the question was answered for you, you just are not listening. Criticism of Israel is not 'anti-semitic'. Residents of Israel undertake robust criticism of Israel as a matter of course.
However, ordinary criticism of Israel does not interest advocates of the Arab cause. The opinions they offer are of the type delineated above.
Art Deco at July 23, 2014 8:55 AM
"Their government (the 'State of Isreal') is being criticized, not the citizenry. This is no more anti-semitic than criticizing the state government of Utah would be anti-Mormon."
Utah and the Mormons are not fighting a hot war with an enemy that denies their right to exist. If you house had termites, you would not spend a lot of time trying to teach the termites that the values of Western civilization prohibit their behavior. Termites cannot be reasoned with. You just call the damn exterminator. Same situation.
Cousin Dave at July 23, 2014 10:42 AM
And the question was answered for you, you just are not listening.
Where has it been answered? By your "Criticism of Israel is not 'anti-semitic'"? That would be the first actual attempt I see at an answer.
Cousin Dave, you miss my point. Israel is somehow 'special' in being above criticism, or one is quickly labeled either anti-semitic, or an "advocate of the Arab cause."
I apologize if you took my metaphor to indicate that the Mormons may march on their neighbors...
The only side I wish to take in this Israel/Gaza argument I have already stated. Any other perceived opinion or position is all in the mind of the reader.
DrCos at July 23, 2014 1:07 PM
why is any criticism of Israel anti-semitic?
Its not, and no one say it is.
How ever it is anti semitic to criticize jews for engaging in controlled, legal, and relatively innocent causality free self defense against an aggressor that wishes to kill them all for no other reason than they are jews.
To say jews should just let themselves be killed because it creul to deny their enemies the opportunity to slaughter them is anti semetic because no one else is ever held to that stanndard
lujlp at July 23, 2014 1:20 PM
"The question still remains...why is any criticism of Israel anti-semitic??"
Dr. Cos, just a quick yes-or-no question for you:
Have you stopped beating your wife?
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 23, 2014 5:33 PM
Are we really going there?
You make this comment based on what, exactly? Or are you just that kind of person?
drcos at July 24, 2014 3:53 AM
drcos, you missed the point of Gog's comment.
And ignored mine entierly
lujlp at July 24, 2014 7:46 AM
lujlp,
Your comment actually answered the original question. Thanks.
But other than the implication I beat my wife (sort of offensive and baseless), I don't get his point.
DrCos at July 24, 2014 9:03 AM
Gog...
Nevermind. I (finally) see what you did there.
Apologies.
DrCos at July 24, 2014 10:00 AM
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