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506 points imakwana | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.772s | source
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thoroughburro ◴[] No.43750908[source]
They were provided with a quite plausible motivation. What is the plausible motivation in your scenario?
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noduerme ◴[] No.43751133[source]
I appreciate what you're saying, but plausibility is a funny way to put it, since such a motivation would not have been plausible prior to Oct 7. Before that, I was a curious minority, and they liked to congratulate themsleves on welcoming minorities. Since no one had any problem with me before Oct 7th and then within days of seeing a lot of Jews killed, they apparently all got the bloodlust, I can only conclude that what makes this "plausible" is that they innately have some quantum of racism that, having been forced to suppress themselves so long and not criticize anyone, they're overjoyed to find a group of people to unleash it on. Particularly if they can call those people "white" like themselves, as a way to offset the shame they've been taught. Of which external group I'm probably the only one they've ever met. My only other Jewish acquaintance in the area - who is an absolute pacifist - has also been almost equally shunned out of every place. Except again, strangely, the Arabic-owned places. He works at one.

So if by "plausible" you mean that, yes, you can imagine someone doing that, then you're right. If "plausible" means that you think it's justified, then that's another issue.

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throw99841216[dead post] ◴[] No.43753097[source]
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dingnuts[dead post] ◴[] No.43753874[source]
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pcthrowaway ◴[] No.43755349[source]
> if you think it's okay to be rude to a Jewish person at a bar because of literally anything to do with Israel

Look I don't have full context here, but more generally there's recently been a lot of conflating Judaism with "support of Israel". If a person is at a bar and you know they support Israel and you're "rude to them" (a subjective statement which can include telling them to re-calibrate their moral compass), then many people, myself included, think that's perfectly OK, regardless of whether that person is Jewish or not. To suggest it's somehow suddenly not OK if that person happens to be Jewish (but presumably it's fine if they're not Jewish?) is kind of ridiculous.

I say this as a Jewish person with family in Israel also, who is completely over people (many in my family included) reducing criticism of Israel or intense disapproval of Israel to "antisemitism"

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noduerme ◴[] No.43755700[source]
You're talking about a political conversation in which people are discussing ideas. I'm talking about experiencing a situation in which people I've never even met are actively rude to me because someone told them I "support Israel". I'm perfectly willing to have a conversation about its faults and mistakes. That's not what's going on here.

One can be Jewish and not support Israel. One can condemn Israeli policies without being an antisemite. But the reason you're seeing a lot of conflation is that a lot of Jews were murdered, tortured, raped and kidnapped from their homes on 10/7, and the world took that as an opportunity to blame Israel and to discuss whether these Jews should really have a country at all. The singling out of Israel as an illegitimate state, out of all countries in the world, is antisemitic. Taking issue with its policies is one thing; taking issue with its right to exist is quite another. If only because the inescapable reality is this: The destruction of Israel would involve the deaths of millions of Jews who don't have any other country to go to. The world may not care, and you may not care, but they care, so they're not going to lay down and die.

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1. pcthrowaway ◴[] No.43756193[source]
To be clear, I was responding to the insinuation that being rude to someone at a bar due to "literally anything to do with Israel" is antisemitic if they're Jewish. Of course being specifically rude to Jewish people due to their support of Israel is antisemitic, but being rude to people who support Israel is not (we can debate whether it's productive or deserved separately).

But since you've gone out of your way to make your position here clearer, I'll offer my response:

> But the reason you're seeing a lot of conflation is that a lot of Jews were murdered, tortured, raped and kidnapped from their homes on 10/7

A lot of people, Jews and non-Jews were killed on 10/7 (perhaps you're unaware that the majority of casualties that day were not of Jews).

> and the world took that as an opportunity to blame Israel and to discuss whether these Jews should really have a country at all

"the world" really didn't jump to blaming Israel quite so unanimously on 10/7, though I'm sure those who were already fighting for Palestinian liberation, or who had a deeper awareness of the history surrounding the ongoing occupation, or who were already of the opinion that Palestinians were undergoing a genocide (prior to 10/7) likely thought it important to use the opportunity to raise awareness of the injustices Palestinians had faced since long before October 7.

My own opinion at the time was largely "I don't know too much about the history besides what I learned in my Zionist school and from clearly Zionist friends/family, but as someone who appreciated the separation of church and state in the U.S. and Canada growing up, I disagree with religious statehood and ethno-nationalism... but perhaps a lot of the criticism of Israel is driven by antisemitism also and Zionists seem very convinced that it's justified and necessary in this one specific instance because of antisemitism."

Since then, having spent much more time reading various narratives, I've come to entirely disagree with that. While yes, there is antisemitism, including among those who criticize Israel, it doesn't seem to me that it's any more common among anti-Zionists than it is among Zionists (believe it or not, many anti-semites support Israel).

Furthermore, Westerners "singling out" Israel is much more evidently explained by the Western financial and military support of Israel (in addition to tampering in other middle-eastern affairs) which has enabled a litany of horrifying atrocities inflicted upon Palestinians to continue unchecked.

> The destruction of Israel would involve the deaths of millions of Jews who don't have any other country to go to

The end of Zionism does not mean the deaths of millions of Jews, any more than the end of Nazi Germany meant the deaths of millions of Germans (incidentally, it did because so many chose to lay down their lives in its defense, or in some cases were compelled to). Beyond the casualties in the war (which if we're being honest was more about stopping Germany's expansion than about liberating people from concentration camps and death camps), only a few high-ranking Nazi officials were put to death after the fall of the third reich; beyond the executions of those convicted of war crimes, Germany was indeed able to continue existing as a state which didn't brutally oppress marginalized groups; there weren't widespread executions of ethnic Germans as some may have feared, merely an end to the unjust system of supremacy.

And this is exactly what so many who "single out" Israel are calling for; not "another genocide of Jews" as you're claiming, but a free Palestine for all.

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