Crushing defeat for Israel lobby as anti-boycott litigation fails in UK

[frogwoman]

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/85906/teenage-shul-burglars-get-four-months

 

[coley]

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/85906/teenage-shul-burglars-get-four-months

Bit harsh for a first offence?

 

[frogwoman]

Bit harsh for a first offence?

that's what i thought. suppose its cos they attacked a place of worship though, dunno.

 

[DrRingDing]

I'm no zionist, and I've been involved in the pro-Palestine movement on-and-off for a long time. In the last few years I've moved away from it because I seemed to be encountering more and more really nasty anti-semitism dressed up as anti-zionism.

I've been doing a fair bit of Palestinian related stuff and we've managed to nip loons in the bud when they've popped their heads up.

What has happened your end?

 

[frogwoman]

yeah my experiences are the majority of people in PSC are sound. it's just that this stuff doesn't get challenged often enough, or if it does people aren't taken seriously when they do challenge it

also, sometimes the people saying this stuff (i'm thinking of one particular individual) have positions within the branch or are respected for what they've done outside it so it becomes difficult to challenge them

i know there is a fair amount of independence between the groups though and as they don't really have a political ideology it's hard to stop people joining, they really should have some sort of policy though, and especially on large demos they should kick people off if they're being cunts or if they turn up with a load of racist shit. it should be quite clear that that shit isn't on

 

[Nylock]

Steven Hawking should perhaps boycott the Israeli technology which keeps him alive.

 

[frogwoman]

a few years ago there was this whole "campaign" on the internet by zionist groups to show what products were made by Israel, and changing the slogan of for example Intel so it said "israel inside"

in a weird way, they do have a point, not the one they're trying to make though (which is "BDS IS TEH STUPID LOOK AT ALL THE STUF DAT CUMS 4M ISRAEL! lol lol!!!!11111111") But that because of globalisation "boycotting" any country is difficult, leaving aside the rights and wrongs of it, because even somewhere like North Korea someone will be doing financial transactions etc that eventually end up there, or are used there.

 

[mojo pixy]

I've been doing a fair bit of Palestinian related stuff and we've managed to nip loons in the bud when they've popped their heads up.

What has happened your end?

To be fair, the worst of it is in the more fringe areas. The mainstream PSC is pretty cool, I think more than anything else I got burned out. I'm the person who ends up in a corner being told that the fact I see how complex the situation is, makes me an apologist. I was never very good at explaining that my presence in the room or in the crowd meant I wasn't the enemy...

How can I say this .. everyone seems to be getting angrier, more militant, and less inclined to listen to something they don't already think. That's just an impression, though.

I'm in the process of seeing if there's anything I can still offer beyond being an extra face in the crowd - though I'm good at that and i might stick at it for a while yet.

 

[frogwoman]

good post.

i was lucky enough when i was a zionist to have people to talk to with different views, so even if i didn't agree with them at all at the time i was able to consider what they said, i had positive experiences of some people (mostly on here, IIRC ymu was one of them actually so that's why i was so surprised at her responses to me) who were involved in palestinian solidarity work etc. so even when i thought they were completely wrong i was able to come back later and be like "hold on, what were they actually saying here" especially when i realised that a lot of what i was believing and had previously thought was a load of shit. like having muslim mates doesnt really tally with reading on some pro israeli website that all muslims are the enemy for example, i was able to dismiss some of it as bollocks and so eventually ...

if you don't have any positive experiences of things like that and instead get liberal finger wagging, people making excuses for bullshit and unexamined prejudice (of any type) by people with no idea about your life, it becomes ... rather different i think (and the same goes for anything, whether it's that, or something like the EDL)

that's why i really worry about the sort of toxic effect things like some of what happened in the occupy movement etc have had tbh