No one has ever called me a kike or Christ killer. No one has ever accused me of controlling the media or banks. No one has spray painted a swastika on my house, or my synagogue for that matter.
My nation, the most powerful in the world, puts a menorah in its halls of government every year for Hanukkah. The legislative and judicial branches have Jewish members at the very top level. The head of government has a Jewish son-in-law.
Even online, I see much more pervasive criticism of my nation than yours.
Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
People have criticisms of Israel. They may be fair or unfair. Address them on the merits and leave the rest of us out it. It has nothing to do with Jews qua Jews.
> Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
Yeah this is so detached from reality I have to ask how you arrived at this conclusion and consider reexamining the way you consume information. Both in my own personal impression and according ADL global index USA's antisemitism is a low. Because "Zionists" have pro-Israel bias they will perceive any one who support Israel positively, and no one support Israel more than USA, so they will likely view USA as positive further lessening negtive views.
I have stood up for Jews since I was a kid, often saying "I'm Jewish" when racists/antisemitic jokes were told and I have been called those things. I've heard people say all kinds of horrific stuff about Jews. In this very thread we have:
"This is definitely made easier by the fact that the arrogance, the endless lawyering, the shady dealings, the greediness, the constant switching between attacking and playing the victim, they all match to a tee the most known historical antisemitic tropes."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515906
Comments like yours are what people mean when they say they're switching between attacking and playing the victim. Your response to perceived "antisemitism" is to play the victim, and it is only helping prove what you're complaining about.
The correct way to address this perception is to prove that the attacker (Israel, who is attacking everyone around them) and Jews are not the same. Israel is working very hard to make them seem the same. THAT is what you should be complaining about. Non-Zionist Jews should paint yourselves as the victims of Israel, not the victims of anti-semites. That is the single biggest contribution you can make to this conversation.
Can you acknowledge that this is hyperbole? It’s not helpful for you to present yourself as rational in this debate if you are exaggerating the wrongs of one side.
Hyperbole is a useful tool in presenting an argument. One of its greatest advantages is that someone who is uninterested in engaging in good faith will often nitpick the hyperbole instead of addressing the fundamental argument. This is a great way to tell when someone can't address the argument, or is paid to have a conflicting opinion.
And unfortunately this is our reality--Israel is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on various forms of PR, which means using hyperbole to describe Israel actually helps you filter out the people who are paid to make Israel look good from the people who are paying Israel via taxes.
The best you can come up with is a foreign-agent-ad-hominem?
The only reason to exaggerate the wrongs of one side in a conflict is propaganda - paid or motivated by your own sick agenda. Which means that it’s pointless to argue with you about if you should be telling Jews what antisemitism is.
I put that question forth to assume good faith. This despite all the points in your comment being tropes I have seen repeated many times. You have contributed nothing interesting to the conversation.
You are fortunate to live in a country that’s the world’s friendliest towards Jews after Israel. I’m going to guess that you also don’t usually go around looking obviously Jewish and so have never personally been the victim of antisemitism.
But when someone expresses hatred towards Jews in general, do you not think that includes you? (I can link you to many examples of that on here).
It’s also disingenuous to pretend that Israeli-Arab conflict is not about Jews. The only issue the Arab neighbours have with Israel is that it’s a Jewish state. When people now say “Palestinian” they mean specifically non-Jewish Palestinian.
The banner of the Iran-sponsored Houthis has on it “Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews”.
You think that if you come across Hamas members they will care about your position on Zionism?
When pro-Palestinian terrorists seek out victims in Israel or in other countries they often go for the Haredim, even though they are anti-Zionist. Many of the killed and kidnapped on Oct 7 were far left activists who had previously volunteered to help Gazans.
So sure, you can feel comfortable in America now, but your personal experience does not deny the experience of others globally.
You’ve lost me there, TBH. We’re on a thread where an Israeli, who expresses strong disagreement with the government, says that they are often getting purely antisemitic comments. And your response is that you in America have never been called a kike.
FYI: kike is out of fashion because it gets you banned. The antisemites now use Zio, (a trick already used in Poland in 1968 to ethnically cleanse the last remaining Jews), and HN is open to the whole world. I’ll leave you with links to some recent “anti-Zionist” comments:
It's hard to separate for some people. Unfortunately those people tend to be the worst on both sides
In general, I think (or at least hope) your experience is the more common one. But fwiw I do have a Jewish friend who was personally cussed at and threatened by his own coworker explicitly for being Jewish (well, and probably because they were from Florida if I'm being honest, but there aren't as many slurs for that). The guy who did it was fired (whole thing was recorded iirc), nobody sided with him, he was clearly off his rocker in some way - but it doesn't take much to get shaken up - it sticks with you. And my friend was understandably, shaken up.
I know that because I used to live in Seattle, and unfortunately I had a really scary experience of being threatened (he yelled "I'm going to kill you b****") and chased down by a homeless man for nothing other than being a woman on the same street as him. So I saw my own perspective shift when it happened first hand. I was no longer excited about living downtown in a big city after that experience.
So what I'm saying is, neither me nor my friend took the experience and made it a defining thing. He still lives where he does, didn't blame the community or anything. And I'm back to taking public transit, talking to strangers on the sidewalk, and all the other stuff that comes with spending time downtown in a big city. But this time the city is Charlotte, my home city. It's probably not any safer than Seattle (maybe worse), but experiences shape perception, and I've always had really good experiences on Charlotte, including with homeless people. I could say it's because Charlotte has more police presence lately, or because there's not visible tent camps or open drug usage. But deep down, I know, crazy people are always gonna be out there, and the most trivial thing can make you a target.
So I really get the pull by people who have experienced victimization like that to talk about it. You feel kinda crazy if you don't, because you are surrounded by people who say it never happens because they've never seen it. That was such a big part I think of the Floyd protests - a lot of white people lived in a bubble and didn't know how pervasive overly violent interactions with the police can be (though the ironic part is that a lot of white people still don't realize that they can also be targeted by police with just as much malice). Most American black people already knew first or second-hand that police brutality was real and not uncommon - but until it was undeniable on video, it was treated by others as if it never happened.
So there's some honest middle ground somewhere, but the extremists are the one who have the most to gain from convincing people to believe otherwise.
There’s definitely antisemitism out there. Criticizing Israel is not part of it. The people that run to that ever. single. time. ought to be ashamed of themselves for crying wolf. They have no right to abuse the term and rob it of legitimate meaning because they don’t have a good response on the merits.
My nation, the most powerful in the world, puts a menorah in its halls of government every year for Hanukkah. The legislative and judicial branches have Jewish members at the very top level. The head of government has a Jewish son-in-law.
Even online, I see much more pervasive criticism of my nation than yours.
Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
People have criticisms of Israel. They may be fair or unfair. Address them on the merits and leave the rest of us out it. It has nothing to do with Jews qua Jews.