this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 63 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (18 children)

I realize I'm bringing a bunch of down votes on myself with the following text, that's ok because I'm still trying to form an opinion on this topic for me.

I always was under the impression that Antisemitism is when someone is against Jews because they're Jews, basically like racism but against specifically Jews. But lately I see the word Antisemitism used very lightly basically if someone is dissatisfied with the actions of the state Israel then they are called Antisemitic.

Perhaps I was misunderstanding the word, so I checked the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism and there it's not super clear either, but then I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_antisemitism it appears that I indeed was wrong and that New-Antisemitism seems to be any criticism of the Israeli government.

In this case I'm with the critics which say:

Critics of the concept argue that it is used in practice to silence political debate and freedom of speech regarding the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict and that it trivializes the meaning of antisemitism, by conflating political anti-Zionism and criticism of the Israeli government with racism, condoning violence against Jews, or the Holocaust. Further critical arguments include the inclusion of race within legitimate criticism of Israel to be too narrow.

When it comes to racism it's pretty clear that you can criticize someone for what they do without being racist, but not criticize them for what they are, because then you're racist. On the other hand somehow criticizing a government for their actions which just so happens to be a government which governs a lot of Jews seems to be automatic antisemitism, even though the same criticism applied on other governments seems to not be seen as problematic.

On top of the whole thing I'm also German and in Germany this phenomenon seems to be much more extrem compared to other countries. I understand that this is because of the German guilt.

[–] Theobroma@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been banned from the /de Subreddit for pointing that out as well.

[–] kabukimeow@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I was in germany last week and was quite surprised to see all the israeli flags around. But from a historical perpective i do get it

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