Another Lib Dem anti-Semite

[butchersapron]

You mean the zionists have poisoned him? That he can't get away with idiocies such as he offered because of the way that the Israeli state has tried to frame debate? You've picked the wrong horse for this Liam. You need to start with someone who didn't say what this clown did.

 

[ymu]

It is precisely what the state of Israel and its mainstream supporters argue. That Ward is too thick to see through it is neither here nor there.

 

[frogwoman]

Zionist propaganda doesn't need to have been a success when people come out with idiocy like that in the OP which still display assumptions (that "the jews" are all working together as one etc, that "the jews" are collectively responsible for shit) that have been going for hundreds of years before zionism existed.

It's the other way round.

 

[LiamO]

You mean the zionists have poisoned him? That he can't get away with idiocies such as he offered because of the way that the Israeli state has tried to frame debate? You've picked the wrong horse for this Liam.

I haven't picked a horse. I have asked a question.

I think the point I am trying to make is that (not for the first time in history) the interests and language of both Zionism and of (self-serving) anti-Semtism serve each other.

I understand the difference between a Zionist and a Jew. However, for millions of people around the world the two are synonymous/interchangable. The question I posed was whether this is as a result of anti-Semitic propaganda or Zionist propaganda.

This seems a reasonable enough question.

 

[LiamO]

Zionist propaganda doesn't need to have been a success when people come out with idiocy like that in the OP which still display assumptions (that "the jews" are all working together as one etc, that "the jews" are collectively responsible for shit) that have been going for hundreds of years before zionism existed.

It's the other way round.

... and yet... every spokesperson/apologist on TV/Radio defending Israel's actions seems to - quite deliberately - use the terms interchangeably.

 

[frogwoman]

I'm not sure that millions of people do think they're interchangeable, although it's certainly possible for people to have anti-zionist attitudes and anti-semitic attitudes at the same time. It also seems to me that a lot of real anti-semites insist they're just anti-zionists and then go on to define zionism in the way of meaning a jewish conspiracy, saying that they faked the holocaust etc to get sympathy, rather than its actual meaning, and then pointing out Neturei Karta and some other people like that to show that they're not.

 

[butchersapron]

I haven't picked a horse. I have asked a question.

I think the point I am trying to make is that (not for the first time in history) the interests and language of both Zionism and of (self-serving) anti-Semtism serve each other.

I understand the difference between a Zionist and a Jew. However, for millions of people around the world the two are synonymous/interchangable. The question I posed was whether this is as a result of anti-Semitic propaganda or Zionist propaganda.

This seems a reasonable enough question.

Sometimes one , sometimes another, sometimes both - as established a million times.

 

[butchersapron]

Seriously, the idea that we can't judge specific instances because of an attempted general smearing is to accede to the smear.

 

[frogwoman]

I find it very hard to believe that he didn't know what he was doing.

 

[LiamO]

I find it very hard to believe that he didn't know what he was doing.

I agree. He is lazy. He knows his target audience (Musilm voters?) already tend to make this equivalence. Therefore he chooses to use the lowest common denominator... to use terms they 'get' at a gut level rather than an intellectual one. As a safety measure he also dresses it up so that it is something of an appeal to a British snese of 'fair play' too.

But the fact that he can even use such language... language that politicians in the much-more-openly racist 70's would have shied away from... is a measure of the success of Zionist propaganda as well as the historical prevalence of anti-Semitism

 

[butchersapron]

I think being high profile doesn't necessarily mean success though. Pushing it into the foreground doesn't mean that it's accepted - if anything it's highlighted the contested nature of the terrain they wish to occupy (har har)

 

[frogwoman]

I agree. He is lazy. He knows his target audience (Musilm voters?) already tend to make this equivalence. Therefore he chooses to use the lowest common denominator... to use terms they 'get' at a gut level rather than an intellectual one. As a safety measure he also dresses it up so that it is something of an appeal to a British snese of 'fair play' too.

But the fact that he can even use such language... language that politicians in the much-more-openly racist 70's would have shied away from... is a measure of the success of Zionist propaganda as well as the historical prevalence of anti-Semitism

you reckon it's because of zionist propaganda? i think it may be because as we get further away from the second world war and the memory of it starts to fade the lazy use of casual anti-semitism begins to have less of a taboo around it, and that people like him are able to dress this shit up in a justified opposition to israeli atrocities. i don't think he is a nazi or something but he is careless at best and a lot of people do have those sort of soft attitudes - he's one of them

 

[LiamO]

I'm not sure that millions of people do think they're interchangeable, although it's certainly possible for people to have anti-zionist attitudes and anti-semitic attitudes at the same time. It also seems to me that a lot of real anti-semites insist they're just anti-zionists and then go on to define zionism in the way of meaning a jewish conspiracy, saying that they faked the holocaust etc to get sympathy, rather than its actual meaning, and then pointing out Neturei Karta and some other people like that to show that they're not.

I agree with everything you have posted above bar...

I'm not sure that millions of people do think they're interchangeable,...

Really? I hear people (as opposed to politicians or politicval activists) use the term 'The Jews' when they mean 'The state of Israel' all the time... and I live in Europe. I would suspect the proportion who think that way increases exponentially once you get to countries with Arab/Muslim populations.

 

[frogwoman]

that might just be a lazy use of language tho rather than actually thinking jews and the israeli state are the same.

 

[LiamO]

I think being high profile doesn't necessarily mean success though. Pushing it into the foreground doesn't mean that it's accepted - if anything it's highlighted the contested nature of the terrain they wish to occupy (har har)

Fill that out a bit please Butchers. I nearly get your point and I do get your pun.

 

[butchersapron]

By making all talk of the issue being about anti-semitism they allow, no they demand, that the stage be given to those who have the correct argument that it's not. It's a self-disarming logic once it's 'out there'

 

[LiamO]

that might just be a lazy use of language tho rather than actually thinking jews and the israeli state are the same.

agreed. Lazy and unfortunately commonplace.

Look Froggy, it's language I very rarely don't challenge when I hear it.

I challenge it (gently if possible) not so much to try and change the views of the person using it but a) to make the distinction for those listening... and b) to make it that bit harder to dress up anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in 'polite' conversation.

 

[LiamO]

that might just be a lazy use of language tho rather than actually thinking jews and the israeli state are the same.

and over time... through repetition... it becomes accepted 'truth'

 

[frogwoman]

I think most people know that Jews aren't responsible for what Israel does though? At least I hope so?

 

[butchersapron]

Most people don't give two shits either way. It's barely on their radar.

 

[frogwoman]

Well yeah that's what i meant.

 

[LiamO]

I think most people know that Jews aren't responsible for what Israel does though? At least I hope so?

I'm not at all sure that's true, I'm afraid.

I'm not talking about politically aware people... just average Joes and Josephines in Belfast, Brixton, Boston or Beirut.

Most people don't give two shits either way. It's barely on their radar.

True. But IME many of these people (on whose radar Israel/palestine barely registers) are the very people who use 'Jews' and 'Israelis' interchangeably.

My original question - and it was just a question rather than an attempt at any kind of answer - was whether this was as a result of anti-Semitic propaganda or Zionist propaganda.

 

[ymu]

Zionist propaganda doesn't need to have been a success when people come out with idiocy like that in the OP which still display assumptions (that "the jews" are all working together as one etc, that "the jews" are collectively responsible for shit) that have been going for hundreds of years before zionism existed.

It's the other way round.

Which came first, Israel or David Ward?

Anti-semitism has been around since the beginning of recorded history, but Israel has not. The argument against Israel would not be made in this form anything like as much (and especially not by Liberal Democrats, bless their piously hypocritical socks) if Israel did not co-opt the Holocaust for its own political ends and there are passionately vocal Holocaust survivors telling them to quit it.

 

[butchersapron]

Oh god. He wouldn't be dick if Israel hadn't made him be a dick. Yes he would.

Does this only work on unconscious and non anti-semitic anti-semites? Or does it work on open anti-semites too?

 

[ymu]

you reckon it's because of zionist propaganda? i think it may be because as we get further away from the second world war and the memory of it starts to fade the lazy use of casual anti-semitism begins to have less of a taboo around it, and that people like him are able to dress this shit up in a justified opposition to israeli atrocities. i don't think he is a nazi or something but he is careless at best and a lot of people do have those sort of soft attitudes - he's one of them

Israel regularly demonises anti-Zionist Jews whilst welcoming known anti-semites with open arms. That is not to say that anti-semitism wouldn't exist without Israel, it is to say that Israel deliberately obfuscates the difference between Zionism and Jewishness and it doesn't give a shit how many Jewish people, inside or outside Israel, get hurt by it.

 

[frogwoman]

Israel regularly demonises anti-Zionist Jews whilst welcoming known anti-semites with open arms. That is not to say that anti-semitism wouldn't exist without Israel, it is to say that Israel deliberately obfuscates the difference between Zionism and Jewishness and it doesn't give a shit how many Jewish people, inside or outside Israel, get hurt by it.

you think i don't know that?

you think i haven't spend a large part of my life trying to do soemthing about that?

Of course they do but that does not mean other people do not do it too, it does not mean that people such as various ruling classes in the middle east for example do not portray a traditional jewish conspiracy as a "zionist conspiracy" and all the things that jews are supposed to have traditionally done (dual loyalties, the protocols etc) become things that zionists have done with a convenient get out that anti-zionism is not anti-semitism, which it's not. and the israeli state?

this is about an MP talking about "the jews" and then acting like he is jesus on the cross when he gets called out on it. do you think people can't think for themselves?

 

[ymu]

Oh god. He wouldn't be dick if Israel hadn't made him be a dick. Yes he would.

Does this only work on unconscious and non anti-semitic anti-semites? Or does it work on open anti-semites too?

He'd still be a dick, but he would gain no political capital out of this particular form of dickishness because the claim would be outlandishly racist rather than the mirror of what Israel also says.

Very few Muslims blame all Jews for Israel's crimes and it is just as racist to suggest that they do as it is to suggest that the Jewish people are responsible for the crimes of the state that claims to represent them. You don't get to have it both ways.

 

[frogwoman]

I've certainly met some Muslims who do. Just as I've met Jews who hate all arabs.

 

[ymu]

you think i don't know that?

No. That is why I am surprised that you're arguing this line. Anti-semitism is not innate, it is a result of divide-and-rule politics through the ages, with Jewish people being an easy target because they possessed no territory and so were always a minority wherever they lived.

I can't see how it is possible to more or less dismiss the role of Israel in promoting anti-semitism when they employ divide-and-rule politics using precisely the same language as Ward did and are the only media-friendly state (apart from the US, sometimes) that does so.

That doesn't mean he's not a racist, opportunist dick. It doesn't absolve him of personal responsibility. It just means that somehow this kind of language is still utterable by a centrist political figure. It's unimaginable that the same sort of statement might be made in relation to black people. Such statements can only be got away with if they are about Jews or Muslims, and he probably wouldn't be getting this much stick from his party or the press if he'd said something similar about Muslims, it's kinda trendy these days.

 

[ymu]

I've certainly met some Muslims who do. Just as I've met Jews who hate all arabs.

Of course there are some. Denying that there are any is as ridiculous as implying that these views are held by all, or most, or even a substantial minority of either group. They're not and arguing against David Ward does not mean mirroring his argument in reverse. He could have gained as much electorally by telling the truth.