It's offical: Critizising Israel=anti-Semtic

Cpt_pineapple
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It's offical: Critizising Israel=anti-Semtic

So in another topic, somebody posted this article

 

 

Quote:

 

Even those friendly toward Israel have often felt duty bound to point out its mistakes. In more innocent times, I imagined that intellectuals in the West paid careful attention to Israel's faults because they expected it to set a high standard. Who would worry about the moral status of, say, Bolivia? No one except Bolivians. Jews, however, live with the injunction to be (as Isaiah quotes God) "A light unto the nations."

 

This is a common fallacy spread throughout the article. Seriously, just because somebody is concerned about the moral status of Israel, doesn't mean they aren't about Bolivia. The critisisms of Israel are more wide-spread, because information concerning Israel is so wide-spread.

 

 

Quote:

 

But now everything has changed. Opposing Israel has become an institutionalized ritual. It's now a movement across Europe and North America. It has its traditions, like Israel Apartheid Week, celebrated every spring in universities, often the cause of riots and an occasion to intimidate Jewish students. Vehement opposition to Israel appears to be the major interest of thousands of people all over the world. Many are Muslims, sympathizing with the Palestinians, but many are not. This week, attacks on Israel once more appeared on the agenda of the general council meeting of the United Church of Canada, a critic of Israel for generations.

 

 

Maybe it's an interest because they have legitimate concerns with the actions of Israel?

 

 

Quote:

 

Those involved often insist that it's not a matter of anti-Semitism. They like to say, "I'm anti-Israel, not anti-Semitic. A different thing entirely."

 

While true that some critics of Israel are actually anti-Semitic, that in no way means ALL critics are anti-Semitic. Some people rag on Obama because he's black and they're racists, does that mean if I dis-agree with his stance on Social Security I'm racist?

 

Of course not, it's usually rather easy to distinguish between legitimite critisism of Israel and anti-Semitism.

 

 

Quote:

 

After decades of use, this declaration of innocence has ceased to be credible. In my personal observation, enemies of Israel often turn out to be anti-Semites as well. The true agenda of anti-Israel activists often is reflected in their style of propaganda, and in the exclusive attention they give to one particular country.

 

Oh great, so anecdotes and conformation bias.

 

 

Quote:

 

The style of the protests goes far beyond "criticism," that benign noun implying civil disputes. Often, anti-Israel propaganda distributed on campuses and elsewhere borrows the style of Nazi cartoons. As Craig Offman reported in the Post, last winter students at the University of Manitoba found themselves confronted by posters near a campus bookshop depicting, among other things, a hooked-nosed Hasidic Jew with a star of David pointing a bazooka at the nose of an Arab carrying a slingshot; and an Israeli helicopter with a swastika on top, bombing a baby bottle.

 

There goes the bad company fallacy. Just because people take the critisism of Israel too far, doesn't mean that their critisms are any less valid.

 

Does the actions of PETA mean that we should animals with cruelity?

 

 

Quote:

 

The most distressing quality of the attacks, however, is their singularity. They leave us with the impression that Israel deserves more censure than any other country on Earth — in fact, more than all other countries combined. Enemies of Israel may sometimes claim that they have also passed resolutions deploring genocide in Africa or dictatorship in Burma. But these views are expressed in comparative privacy. No widespread, long-running movements accompany them.

Does York University in Toronto, so dedicated to justice for Palestinians, also devote a week every year to the fate of the Falun Gong in China? Do Concordia University students in Montreal demonstrate against the mass rapes in the Congo? Does the Ontario branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which favours boycotting Israeli universities, have anything to say about Tibetan freedom? Have any of them heard of the World Uighur Congress's defence of oppressed Muslims in the Xinjiang province of western China?

 

 

 

Like I said just because people critisise Israel, in no way means that they don't speak out against other things.

 

 

Quote:

And when dealing with the Gaza conflict, not one campus group anywhere (so far as I know) mounted a campaign against Hamas killings of fellow Palestinians. They also avoid mentioning the Hamas policy of using women and children as human shields.

 

I doubt many people would high five Hamas, even Canada, which you say is a haven for Israel critics, declares Hamas a terrorist organization.

 

Like I said, the reason for that is that Israel has done far more damage to Palestinian infastructure than vice-versa. Plus Hamas doesn't have nuclear capabilities.

 

Not that you shouldn't critisise Hamas, or that Hamas is the best organization on the planet [They are terrorists after all].

 

 

 

Quote:

 

Howard Jacobson, a British novelist and journalist, calls this phenomenon "Jew-hating pure and simple, the Jew-hating which many of us have always suspected was the only explanation for the disgust that contorts and disfigures faces when the mere word Israel crops up in conversation."

 

Damn right!  How dare people critise President Bush, those freedom hating Communists!!!!