If you live somewhere, and your neighbours coincidentally are British Jews, and you want to put a Free Palestine poster in your window, that’s perfectly fine.
If you live somewhere, and you put the same poster in your window purely to antagonise your neighbour, then you’re being a dick but it still probably isn’t illegal in and of itself, but could over time be considered harassment.
If you life somewhere and you’re campaigning in your community for a Free Palestine, and you put flyers through everyone’s door, that’s OK.
If you live somewhere, and post the same flyers only through the doors of people you know to be jewish, that’s antisemitic, because you are presuming that just because a British person is Jewish, they support the actions of a different country.
If you don’t live in that place, and you know it to be a predominately Jewish area, and go and spray paint Free Palestine on a wall in that area, you again are presuming that just because a British person is Jewish, they support the actions of a different country.
It’s the presumption that just because your Jewish you support Israel that makes it antisemitic. In the exact same way that presuming that just because someone is a Muslim, they support Hamas. Or that they’re Irish they support the IRA, etc.
How do you know the graffiti isn’t by somebody who lives there? For that matter, how do you know it isn’t by a Jewish resident of the neighbourhood? Why is the assumption automatically that it’s antisemitic?
Because context is important.
If you live somewhere, and your neighbours coincidentally are British Jews, and you want to put a Free Palestine poster in your window, that’s perfectly fine.
If you live somewhere, and you put the same poster in your window purely to antagonise your neighbour, then you’re being a dick but it still probably isn’t illegal in and of itself, but could over time be considered harassment.
If you life somewhere and you’re campaigning in your community for a Free Palestine, and you put flyers through everyone’s door, that’s OK.
If you live somewhere, and post the same flyers only through the doors of people you know to be jewish, that’s antisemitic, because you are presuming that just because a British person is Jewish, they support the actions of a different country.
If you don’t live in that place, and you know it to be a predominately Jewish area, and go and spray paint Free Palestine on a wall in that area, you again are presuming that just because a British person is Jewish, they support the actions of a different country.
It’s the presumption that just because your Jewish you support Israel that makes it antisemitic. In the exact same way that presuming that just because someone is a Muslim, they support Hamas. Or that they’re Irish they support the IRA, etc.
How do you know the graffiti isn’t by somebody who lives there? For that matter, how do you know it isn’t by a Jewish resident of the neighbourhood? Why is the assumption automatically that it’s antisemitic?
I don’t, and that would be another good example of how context changes the impact of speech.
Thank you for adding it.