It’s true, we fan’t beat them

Heartbreaking, &c.

Pretty much feel the same looking back on that show as I do looking back on my anarchist phase in general. Cringe, with some real problematic blind spots, but nevertheless kinda good at heart with some cool ideas.

I mean it kinda is under their bed, if they look down at a bit of an angle

holy shit spongebob grew to the size of his whole house

like the cop character. ubuhdeeubuhdeeubuhde that’s all folks

Just to preface, I do think that we can benefit from being more aware of anti-semetic tropes. Many fascist dogwhistles do disguise themselves in language and symbolism that appears harmless or even resembles valid critique, such that even well-meaning people can reference them by mistake. I think of Corbyn for instance, nobody ought to doubt his sincerity but clearly he made a few unforced errors here or there that helped feed Labour antisemitism hysteria.

So I’m all for, here’s some common anti-Semitic tropes, now you know so you can avoid them. And in particular, I would say “Be specific… Name who you’re criticizing” is pretty solid advice. With that said: I do think there’s some here that’s a little problematic, and nobody else has quite articulated what I’m feeling so let me put this out here:

First, many have mentioned the timing of this post at a moment of serious crisis as not feeling right. I want to emphasize the issue isn’t so much that it’s “tone-policing,” but rather, that it plays into colonialist narratives. Personally I’m fine with having to tread carefully around sensitive topics, but I’m decidedly not fine with the pervasiveness of the right-wing narrative that the Palestine liberation movement and even the Left as a whole is somehow intrinsically antisemitic. And when you point vaguely to “a lot of posts … leaning into anti-Semitic tropes” without contextualizing who or what posts or how they were received by the community, that does sound a bit like a repackaging of this “left/Palestine/BDS antisemitic” narrative, which has been used as a major political cudgel to resist change to the status quo.

Now, in another moment, some self-crit in how we approach dismantling this narrative might be warranted, even if outsiders were to take it as a tacit admission of a problem. But at the moment of truth where you’ve got 500 dead in a hospital airstrike and troops lining up for a ground invasion, the “Left antisemitism issue” is really not the discussion we want to be having. (It is worth noting, to OP’s credit, discussions of issues internal to the Left are, regardless of situation, much, much more appropriate on a platform like Hexbear where those discussions will mostly remain internal to the Left, than they would be on a platform where we’re engaging with a broader public to be swayed such as :reddit-logo: .)

That’s really the main issue here, but as to a couple of the more specific gripes:

~“Conflating Jews in Israel…” - More or less agree with OP’s points here, but I do think it is worth recognizing that this is, in a real sense, a religious sectarian conflict. I suppose you could say it’s superstructural, but when Israel legally defines itself as a state for Jews and only Jews, that’s where they (the Israeli state) are looking to draw the lines, and that’s what we have to combat. In other words, no, this is not a problem with Jews or Judaism, but also: Israel cannot be a Jewish state.

~“calling for ethnic cleansing” - OP says “Jews have always lived [there],” but this is imho minimizing just how much of the population is part of or descended from the colonial project. Wikipedia is telling me the Israeli Jewish population went from <100k in 1915, to over a million by 1949, to nearly 5 million at the turn of the century, and over 6.5 million today. That’s not organic population growth, that’s a massive influx of people who came in and took land where there were already other people.

Now, I agree that full-out sending away all the Israeli Jews is not and should not be on the table. Not only do some have claims predating the settler influx, but I imagine even many of the settlers and their descendants don’t have much place else they can go and still ought to be treated humanely. That said, I think we ought to be realistic and recognize that the Palestinians have been forced from their homes, in some cases quite recently, and in the case of Gaza forced into a tiny little area, very densely populated and lacking basic infrastructure. If we’re going to have justice, it’s not going to come without a lot of reparations and frankly probably some degree of land back and right to return. The more recent and more wealthy of the settlers probably should leave.

~“Jewish control of America” - OP says “America controls Israel and not vice-versa”… it’s really more of a two-way street. Israel and AIPAC/Israel lobby just very much do have serious sway over American politicians and honestly Western politicians more generally. Israel is an independent state and functions as one, at times annoying people in Washington who want them to do their ethnic cleansing a little more quietly. That said, it also goes without saying that Israel’s prosperity is dependent on some measure of servitude to American geopolitical interests, and that framing Israeli influence as “Jewish control” is very much :haram: .

That’s all I got. Hadn’t planned for this to be such an effortpost but :shrug-outta-hecks: