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| ▲ | thomassmith65 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I dunno. Regardless of the exact words one uses, one can always accuse one's opponent of bias. If the word 'antisemitic' didn't exist, the accusation, phrased in different words, would still carry weight. | | |
| ▲ | newspaper1 5 days ago | parent [-] | | And I would complain about the false accusation if that was the case. As it stands "antisemitism" is what's being used to label people who oppose Zionism. It's just like how "communism" was used during McCarthyism. | | |
| ▲ | thomassmith65 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I think the accusations are sometimes unfair, and other times accurate. I wouldn't like for the world just to dismiss hatred towards Jews, or any other group, out-of-hand. More than anything, I would like to see measured and humane discussion in the media about the Middle East; but sadly I don't expect that will happen. | | |
| ▲ | newspaper1 5 days ago | parent [-] | | The amount of unfair accusations dwarfs any real ones. For instance many in the VC world have accused Paul Graham of being antisemitic for simply showing concern about Palestinians. To be clear no critique of Israel including that you don't think it has a right to exist is "antisemitic". Israel is a state not an ethnicity and it was formed under what most consider to be illegal and unethical circumstances and it grew through ethnic cleansing. It's official religion is of no consequence when judging its actions. | | |
| ▲ | thomassmith65 4 days ago | parent [-] | | One way to address that is to become cynical about 'antisemitism', but I hope that doesn't become prevalent. We've already entered an era in which majority groups resent minority grievances. Seems like that could lead to a lot of backwardness. I alluded to this already, but it's so rare to hear public figures discuss Israel/Palestine without distorting and filtering what they say to promote one or the other side, it makes resolving things impossible. | | |
| ▲ | newspaper1 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I think the only backwardness we're going to see is censorship and accusations of "antisemitism" to quiet criticism of Israel. The US House of Representatives literally passed a bill last night equating criticism of Israel with "antisemitism". If people want that word to mean something, the need to start using it for a purpose other than silencing critics. | | |
| ▲ | thomassmith65 4 days ago | parent [-] | | The fact that people use 'think of the children' as justification to pass terrible bills doesn't mean we should take issues affecting children lightly, right? A bad bill that weaponises 'antisemitism' is a good reason to oppose the bill's authors and supporters. It is a bad reason to minimise actual cases of antisemitism directed at people who had no involvement with the bill. | | |
| ▲ | newspaper1 4 days ago | parent [-] | | No one is minimizing antisemitism though, we're saying that it's being used, often and illegitimately to censor people standing against apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. I'm genuinely curious if you think there's any antisemitism in this thread, because I don't think there is. | | |
| ▲ | thomassmith65 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Apologies if I worded things poorly in my previous comment. What I was driving at is that it's easy for a society, once there are widespread complaints about the weaponisation of some problem to slip into dismissing actual occurrences of the problem. |
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