Antisemitism in the US

Your post reflects a lack of critical thinking skills.

 

How would you be able to tell?

 

Apologies

 

Which university is he tenured at?

 

I imagine that they know the history of the Holocaust well. That probably makes them opposed to seeing history veer towards repeating it - such as when Israel commits blatant war crimes as a response to terrorism.

They probably also use that knowledge to dislike opposition to the current Israeli government being conflated with antiSemitism by cynical politicians.

 

I really doubt that the opposition is specifically related to the Israeli government. The current government is widely unpopular right now, but not because of its response to Hamas. Most Israelis are united on that issue.

I don’t think most of these protesters are specifically anti semetic per se. But at the same time, they are operating under a flawed set of assumptions. They aren’t particularly outraged at the terrorist acts of Hamas, which were obscene by any human standard. They aren’t demanding that Hamas release Israeli hostages. They are only focusing on their limited and distorted view that Palestinians are brown people and oppresssed, and Israelis are Jews and are effectively “white” and are oppressors. There is no nuance or sophistication in their views.

One really cannot deny that if some group were to commit similar acts of aggression against the US, that we wouldn’t hesitate to respond, regardless of the inevitability of collateral damage. But yet somehow Israel is supposed demonstrate restraint when the governing body of Gaza murders and rapes innocent Israeli civilians. This is a standard we would hold nobody else to. Why is that?

 

Free speech is a two way street, so I would rather we ban supporting terrorist organizations so that we can all understand what's at stake here. Free speech is at risk with all these antisemitism laws. We need to attack the support for terrorism/terrorist groups and make that illegal.

All Americans need protections from terrorist supporters/terrorist groups, not just Jewish people... everyone.

 

Please read Bernie’s note on anti-semitism accusations of Netanyahu. Jews are a common target of hate but aren’t the protests by and large anti-war?

NEWS: Sanders Responds to Netanyahu’s Claim that Criticism of the Israeli Government’s Policies is Antisemitic » Senator Bernie Sanders

No, Mr. Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 – seventy percent of whom are women and children.

It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless – almost half the population.

………………………….:…

It is not antisemitic to agree with virtually every humanitarian organization in saying that your government, in violation of American law, has unreasonably blocked humanitarian aid coming into Gaza, creating the conditions in which hundreds of thousands of children face malnutrition and famine.

Mr. Netanyahu. Antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people. But, please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts. It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your actions.

 

I wonder how many of those who condemn the students lack of knowledge understand what they are protesting and the history of the conflict. I would suspect far fewer than the percentage of students that don’t understand enough about the Holocaust.

In terms of defining antisemitism, I can be labeled uninformed, because I actually agree with Matt Gaetz and MTG.





Because by far the most significant source of antisemitism over the last two thousand years has been straightforward readings of Passion accounts and the charge of Deicide, most notably Matthew 27:25.

It wasn’t until Vatican II that my Church, with it’s particularly ugly history, cleared Jews of the charge and correctly taught that theologically, that is a charge against all humanity, written a certain way due to the contemporaneous prejudices and times of the human writers, which mitigates against sola scriptura/inerrant text hermeneutics, but I digress.

The USCCB’s Good Friday pastoral note


The note on antisemitism, which is available in both English and Spanish, reads:

“The passion narratives are proclaimed in full so that all see vividly the love of Christ for each person. In light of this, the crimes during the Passion of Christ cannot be attributed, in either preaching or catechesis, indiscriminately to all Jews of that time, nor to Jews today. The Jewish people should not be referred to as though rejected or cursed, as if this view followed from Scripture. The Church ever keeps in mind that Jesus, his mother Mary, and the apostles all were Jewish. As the Church has always held, Christ freely suffered his passion and death because of the sins of all, that all might be saved.”

The text is drawn from the Second Vatican Council’s Nostra aetate and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which teaches explicitly that “Jews are not collectively responsible for Jesus’ death.”

“[W]e cannot lay responsibility for the trial on the Jews in Jerusalem as a whole,” it says. “Still less can we extend responsibility to other Jews of different times and places.”

MTG and MG are correct (man that is hard to type). Condemning antisemitism correctly requires condemning a straightforward reading of the Gospels, just like understanding all the origins of the current conflict means understanding that Sacred Scripture is not a Special Warranty Deed. And that’s just the beginning.

But a more modern prophet may have the best take on claims that the issue is simple and complaining about the protesters not knowing enough, thinking you do. It would the late Kurt Cobain, wherever he is in the afterlife, when he noted “I wish I was like you. Easily amused.”

 

Well, a start would be getting those islamists out of Congress. Unfortunately, the terror-supporting islamists have created ghettos where they represent an oppressive majority that elects Islamist radicals to Congress.

So much for diversity in these districts.

 

I just don’t see it as anti-semitism. I see it as anti-Zionism. Which is simply not the same kind of bigotry as people like Matt Gaetz & MTG blaming Jews for killing Jesus.

 

Blatant Islamophobia.

 

It's an interesting idea, but that's not really how it works. The fact that Republicans have essentially turned entire states into government dependent Republican-voting ghettos does not mean we can kick their elected representatives out of Congress.

 

One of the engineers that I hired recently is from Lebanon. He came to the US for graduate school. The first time he had ever heard about The Holocaust was during a nightly news show while in grad school. It is very easy to understand that foreign born students, especially from Muslim countries in the Middle East, would not know European history the same way Americans should.

Meanwhile, here in NC, I interact with a large number of knowledgeable people, but also a minority who either knows nothing of the Holocaust or simply do not believe it happened and is a "Jew perpetuated lie".

I do not underestimate the capacity for ignorance in this country.

 

I enjoyed your post because I found myself disagreeing at first, but upon further reflection I see your points better and agree on some points.

I think that as much as a potential "brown/white people" issue, many of the protesters approach this from a perspective that Israel has generally not treated Palestinians well or fairly. Considering the temporal perspective of college age people, this can make sense. IMO. IMO, Israel has clearly recently elected leaders who are more concerned with their own power and position than solving the issue. And has been antagonistic. Pair that with a terrorist organization and.....

Where I disagree is that the inhumane collateral damage would be acceptable to any other Western nation.

I also dislike the (not from you) current politicization that opposing the Israeli response is "antisemitism." IMO it's clearly not.

 

To get a better perspective.

Yair Lapid Says the World Misunderstands Israel

This is the Israeli opposition leader. They do not like Netanyahu but at the same time they mostly support the response against Hamas.

It is better to hear the podcast

I can’t stand Netanyahu. Never liked him. He has every reason to drag this on for political survival and maybe even keep himself out of prison (remind you of anybody ). He is directly complicit in the attacks as he supported Hamas as a wedge against a 2 state solution and he left Israeli defenseless as resources were redeployed to protect West Bank settlements.

However none of that negates who Hamas is and what they did. It is Hamas who has buried itself and hid in the Gaza population, in schools, hospitals, homes etc. Also they enjoy a non trivial amount of support. In some cases Gaza families were cooperating with Hamas in the holding of the hostages. Between Hamas and its supporters it is impossible to separate them from the Palestinian population.

So you really have a choice - attack Hamas with lots of collateral damage, or you don’t and let them be. Hamas has proven that they can’t be trusted as a neighbor, period.

If this was done to us, in this manner, I guarantee you there would be 90% support for eliminating the perpetrators, whatever the collateral damage.

 

All of this!!!

The fact of the matter is that if Israel put down their weapons and went home, then by the end of May Hamas would attack Israel again. If Hamas put down their weapons and came out of the schools, hospitals, and residences then there would be peace.

 

People forget that Hamas and Hezbollah have been routinely launching rockets into Israel. It’s forgotten because Israel has successfully shot them out of the sky.

I wish some of these students were required to see some of the footage that was recording during and after the attacks on Israel. It sounds horrifically gruesome.

 

While we’re at it, let’s require them to learn about all of the atrocities going all the way back to that POS Arafat and how he became a billionaire without doing anything other than kill people with his terrorist attacks.