#anti israel slogans

[lostinsidelostoutside]

[sap-woods]

Can we please stop calling these protestors "anti-war"? If you're yelling "glory to our martyrs," "burn Tel Aviv to the ground," or "Hamas make us proud, kill another soldier now" you're pro-war. You want a change in power through violence.

[themassespress]

"Against Sloganeering, Revisionism, and Gonzaloism" With a Note From the Editorial Board of The Masses

By the Revolutionary Marxist Students Featured Image Artist Statement: The piece [titled “Students Against Revisionism”] focuses on 3 students who are combatting revisionism, wielding the pen as a weapon, uplifting a red book titled ‘Against Revisionism,’ and reading from a small red book titled ‘MLM’. The three students are lit by a red sun, a red horizon, as the namesake of the publication,…

[theghostiedyke]

not me seeing the same discourse the land back movement got being repeated for Palestine. 🤨 y'all aren't even trying to think critically.

[dancedance-resolution]

if any of you guys are wondering if the rnc is as disturbing as you imagine…..yes, and then some!

[spacelazarwolf]

grafiti on a memorial in germany built in honor of non jewish women who protested against the persecution of their jewish family members, primarily their husbands, during the holocaust (german) (english)

The same night as the vandalism, an anti-Israel protest was held in the same borough, according to the Berlin Police. Law enforcement attempted to disperse the unauthorized protest at the Berlin Central Station but reportedly responded with by chanting anti-police and anti-Israel slogans. (X)

[fairuzfan]

AMAZING article about what it means to participate in anti-Zionism work both online and in person.

If your anti-zionism does not in any way acknowledge that it is a way of thought and practice led by and for Palestinians, then you need to reevaluate your "anti-zionism" label.

Some passages that felt especially relevant to tumblr:

If we accept, as those with even the most rudimentary understanding of history do, that zionism is an ongoing process of settler-colonialism, then the undoing of zionism requires anti-zionism, which should be understood as a process of decolonisation. Anti-zionism as a decolonial ideology then becomes rightly situated as an indigenous liberation movement. The resulting implication is two-fold. First, decolonial organising requires that we extract ourselves from the limitations of existing structures of power and knowledge and imagine a new, just world. Second, this understanding clarifies that the caretakers of anti-zionist thought are indigenous communities resisting colonial erasure, and it is from this analysis that the strategies, modes, and goals of decolonial praxis should flow. In simpler terms: Palestinians committed to decolonisation, not Western-based NGOs, are the primary authors of anti-zionist thought. We write this as a Palestinian and a Palestinian-American who live and work in Palestine, and have seen the impact of so-called ‘Western values’ and how the centring of the ‘human rights’ paradigm disrupts real decolonial efforts in Palestine and abroad. This is carried out in favour of maintaining the status quo and gaining proximity to power, using our slogans emptied of Palestinian historical analysis.

Anti-zionist organising is not a new notion, but until now the use of the term in organising circles has been mired with misunderstandings, vague definitions, or minimised outright. Some have incorrectly described anti-zionism as amounting to activities or thought limited to critiques of the present Israeli government – this is a dangerous misrepresentation. Understanding anti-zionism as decolonisation requires the articulation of a political movement with material, articulated goals: the restitution of ancestral territories and upholding the inviolable principle of indigenous repatriation and through the right of return, coupled with the deconstruction of zionist structures and the reconstitution of governing frameworks that are conceived, directed, and implemented by Palestinians.  Anti-zionism illuminates the necessity to return power to the indigenous community and the need for frameworks of justice and accountability for the settler communities that have waged a bloody, unrelenting hundred-year war on the people of Palestine. It means that anti-zionism is much more than a slogan. 

[...]

While our collective imaginations have not fully articulated what a liberated and decolonised Palestine looks like, the rough contours have been laid out repeatedly. Ask any Palestinian refugee displaced from Haifa, the lands of Sheikh Muwannis, or Deir Yassin – they will tell that a decolonised Palestine is, at a minimum, the right of Palestinians’ return to an autonomous political unit from the river to the sea. When self-proclaimed ‘anti-zionists’ use rhetoric like ‘Israel-Palestine’ – or worse, ‘Palestine-Israel’ – we wonder: where do you think ‘Israel’ exists? On which land does it lay, if not Palestine? This is nothing more than an attempt to legitimise a colonial state; the name you are looking for is Palestine – no hyphen required. At a minimum, anti-zionist formations should cut out language that forces upon Palestinians and non-Palestinian allies the violence of colonial theft. 

[...]

The common choice to centre the Oslo Accords, international humanitarian law, and the human rights paradigm over socio-historical Palestinian realities not only limits our analysis and political interventions; it restricts our imagination of what kind of future Palestinians deserve, sidelining questions of decolonization to convince us that it is the new, bad settlers in the West Bank who are the source of violence. Legitimate settlers, who reside within the bounds of Palestinian geographies stolen in 1948 like Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem, are different within this narrative. Like Breaking the Silence, they can be enlightened by learning the error of colonial violence carried out in service of the bad settlers. They can supposedly even be our solidarity partners – all without having to sacrifice a crumb of colonial privilege or denounce pre-1967 zionist violence in any of its cruel manifestations. As a result of this course of thought, solidarity organisations often showcase particular Israelis – those who renounce state violence in service of the bad settlers and their ongoing colonisation of the West Bank – in roles as professionals and peacemakers, positioning them on an equal intellectual, moral, or class footing with Palestinians. There is no recognition of the inherent imbalance of power between these Israelis and the Palestinians they purport to be in solidarity with – stripping away their settler status. The settler is taken out of the historical-political context which afforded them privileged status on stolen land, and is given the power to delineate the Palestinian experience. This is part of the historical occlusion of the zionist narrative, overlooking the context of settler-colonialism to read the settler as an individual, and omitting their class status as a settler. 

It is essential to note that Palestinians have never rejected Jewish indigeneity in Palestine. However, the liberation movement has differentiated between zionist settlers and Jewish natives. Palestinians have established a clear and rational framework for this distinction, like in the Thawabet, the National Charter of Palestine from 1968. Article 6 states, ‘The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.’ When individuals misread ‘decolonisation’ as ‘the mass killing or expulsion of Jews,’ it is often a reflection of their own entanglement in colonialism or a result of zionist propaganda. Perpetuating this rhetoric is a deliberate misinterpretation of Palestinian thought, which has maintained this position over a century of indigenous organising.  Even after 100 years of enduring ethnic cleansing, whole communities bombed and entire family lines erased, Palestinians have never, as a collective, called for the mass killing of Jews or Israelis. Anti-zionism cannot shy away from employing the historical-political definitions of ‘settler’ and ‘indigenous’ in their discourse to confront ahistorical readings of Palestinian decolonial thought and zionist propaganda. 

[...]

In the context of the United States, the most threatening zionist institutions are the entrenched political parties which function to maintain the status quo of the American empire, not Hillel groups on university campuses or even Christian zionist churches. While the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) engage in forms of violence that suppress Palestinian liberation and must not be minimised, it is crucial to recognise that the most consequential institutions in the context of settler-colonialism are not exclusively Jewish in their orientation or representation: the Republican and Democratic Party in the United States do arguably more to manufacture public consent for the slaughtering of Palestinians than the ADL and AIPAC combined. Even the Progressive Caucus and the majority of ‘The Squad’ are guilty of this.

Leila Shomali and Lara Kilani

[thefairfolk]

Hi, Iranian here, a longtime resident of Tehran.

Do not send support to the Iranian government until Israel hasn't attacked. Do not.

Iran used the attack on its embassy as an EXCUSE to send missiles and drones to Israel. Iran is NOT doing this for Palestine's gain, it's for THEMSELVES. The government is full of lazy, uneducated dictators who will do anything to spread propaganda.

Do you know what it's like seeing posters everywhere on the streets of bruised and bleeding children of Gaza with slogans like "DEATH TO AMERICA!" or "ISLAM WILL ALWAYS PREVAIL" on them? every day?

This is not a tactic to support Palestine. It is a tactic to support ITSELF!

And you know what? It'll work.

The protests last year were due to brutal oppressions of women and children in Iran. If a war starts, nobody will have time to focus on how abusive and theocratic this piece of shit government is, because we'll be too busy forcibly uniting in order to stand against a common enemy- Israel.

And we can't do that. We genuinely do not have the firepower.

We could scrape past a scuffle with Israel, but absolutely not with the US.

It isn't a "zionist mindset" to not want your country to attack Israel when you know full well how much chaos and trouble it could cause for yourself.

I am begging people not to support this. Do not send support for the IRI. Iran has enemies inside and out. Nobody will fight for a country that oppresses it so brutally.

Edit: hey, zionists? Stop interpreting this as a pro-Israel post and thinking that gives you permission to reblog. I am fine with Jews. I am fine with Israelis. I am absolutely not fine with pro-Israel and/or pro-zionism people. Especially those "anti zionism is anti semitism !!1!1!1!!" folks.

[notaplaceofhonour]

A reminder that Anti-Israel doesn’t mean “Pro-Palestinian”.

The militant faction referenced here is Ansar Allah (aka The Houthi Movement, commonly known as just “the Houthis”), a totalitarian theocracy that does not mince words about hating not just Israel, but the Jewish people. Their slogan, which they display as the symbol for their movement, is “God is the Greatest; Death to America; Death to Israel; A Curse On the Jews; Victory to Islam”.

Also no, the Houthis didn’t risk jack shit for Palestine. They’re one in a long line of militant factions who are directly responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Abandoning their own people’s humanitarian needs to wage war isn’t a “risk” for them; it’s standard operating procedure.

The people obscuring this fact to position them as heroes for opposing Israel are engaging in dishonest, manipulative, and immensely antisemitic propaganda. (Also, like, “puppets”? Really? That’s not even subtle.) You do not even have to scratch beyond the surface of just “who is this referencing, and what is their slogan that they plaster everywhere on everything?” to know this. The fact that anyone would fall for it demonstrates gross negligence & a deep & unserious lack of curiosity on their part. There’s no excuse.

But what if you did actually spend more than 5 seconds to know more than 2 facts about the government of Yemen? Well, you might find:

There is a long history of antisemitic violence in Yemen. It culminated in 1949, and roughly 47,000 of Yemen’s 50,000+ Jews fled to Israel. A few remained, but the Houthi regime (which formed in the 90’s and is the one that is now attacking Israeli ships) is so openly, explicitly, & genocidally antisemitic that it forced even that remnant to flee.

The last Jew in Yemen, Levi Salem Musa Murhabi, is currently rotting in a Houthi prison where he has been illegally detained & tortured for the last 7+ years. Our last sign of life was in 2022, so we don’t actually know if he’s still alive.

The country that tried to murder all their Jews & continues to torture the only one that remains is now attacking the country where all those Jews went, all the while chanting “death to Israel, a curse on the Jews.” Do the math. They didn’t “show up” for Palestinians. They pulled up on Israel because that’s where all the Jews they’ve been trying to murder for years live.

[kaalbela]

In Solidarity with Palestine

1. People shout slogans during a protest to show solidarity with Palestinians outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, Turkey | Emrah Gure

2. Some protesters try to stop other protesters not to attack the French Embassy in Tehran, Iran during an anti-Israel protest | Vahid Salemi

3. Demonstrators chant during a protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza, at Martyrs' Square in downtown Beirut, Lebanon | Bilal Hussein.

4. A man poses with a Palestinian flag as people gather in Tahrir Square of Baghdad, Iraq to protest | Murtadha Al-Sudani.

5. People clash with anti riot policemen outside the Israeli consulate during a protest to show solidarity with Palestinians, in Istanbul, Turkey | Emrah Gurel.

6. Protesters clash with Lebanese security forces outside the U.S. Embassy during a demonstration in solidarity with the people of Gaza in Awkar, East of Beirut, after Israel's strike on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza | Joseph Eid

7. Protester demonstrates in front of the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey after Israel's strike on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza | Ilker Eray

[eretzyisrael]

by POTKIN AZARMEHR

‘Pro-Palestine’ protests have become a near-weekly occurrence across Britain. Since Hamas’s 7 October massacre, regular marches have been drawing in a growing number of young people, marked by passionate advocacy and fervent slogans. Yet despite their zeal, many of these protesters lack a fundamental understanding of the conflict they are so vociferously decrying.

In the past six months, I have attended many of these marches. Having engaged with numerous protesters, I have noticed a startling disconnect between their strong opinions on the Gaza conflict and their shaky grasp of basic facts about it. Among the most perplexing are the LGBT and feminist groups (the ‘Queers for Palestine’ types) who flirt with justifying Hamas’s atrocities. This is a bewildering alliance, given that Hamas’s Islamist ideology is clearly antithetical to the rights and values these groups claim to champion. Its reactionary agenda is profoundly hostile to women’s rights and LGBT individuals.

Protesters seem eager to make excuses for Hamas, but are conspicuously uninformed about exactly what or who this terrorist group represents. On 18 May, during a protest at Piccadilly Circus in London, I spoke to demonstrators who firmly believed that Hamas represents all Palestinians. When I questioned a well-educated participant about the last Palestinian election, she was unaware that none had occurred since 2006, when Hamas gained power in Gaza.

It wasn’t just young people who were uninformed. An older woman with an American accent, seemingly a veteran protester, admitted she knew that Hamas was linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, but had no deeper knowledge of its ideology or history. Others, such as members of revolutionary socialist groups, displayed similar gaps in understanding, unaware of critical events like the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

That revolution gave birth to the Islamic Republic of Iran, a theocratic regime that brutally oppresses its own citizens. It also sponsors Islamist groups like Hamas. I left Iran for the UK not long after that regime began and have spent years resisting its religious extremism and ruthless political intolerance. Protesters were not only unaware of these facts about the Iranian regime, but also ill-informed about the struggle against it, such as the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests against the government that began in 2022.

One particularly telling conversation involved a man advocating for a ‘Global Intifada’ to replace capitalism with socialism. When asked about successful socialist models, he was unfamiliar with the Israeli kibbutzim, one of history’s few successful egalitarian experiments. His ignorance of these communal settlements in Israel, built by socialist Jewish immigrants, was all too typical.

Perhaps the most telling moment was captured by commentator Konstantin Kisin earlier this year, when he encountered a young man holding a ‘Socialist Intifada’ placard. The protester admitted he had no idea what this meant and that he had taken the sign simply because it was handed to him.

Reflecting on past movements, such as the American anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and the British Anti-Apartheid Movement of the 1980s, one can’t help but note a stark contrast. Protesters then were generally well-informed about their causes. Today’s pro-Palestine protests, however, seem to be driven more by unthinking fervour than by an understanding of the issues at hand.

Throughout all these protests, I am yet to encounter a single participant who condemns Hamas or carries a placard denouncing its terrorism. This not only undermines the protesters’ cause, but also risks aligning them with groups whose values fundamentally oppose the very rights and freedoms they claim to support. It appears that today’s young protesters are high on ideology, but woefully thin on facts.

Potkin Azarmehr is an Iranian activist and journalist who left Iran for the UK after the revolution of 1979.

[pettytiredandjewish]

So uh… to the “pro-Palestine” crowd

- harassing random jews on the streets (and online) isn’t going to help Palestinians

- swarming and blockading college campus buildings (and hospitals) and chanting genocidal slogans at jews isn’t going to help Palestinians

- defacing synagogues and jewish owned stores isn’t going to help Palestinians

- displaying antisemitic signs and waving nazi flags isn’t going to help Palestinians

- chanting for intifada isn’t going to help Palestinians (Hamas would love that though)

- spreading Hamas propaganda isn’t going to help Palestinians

This doesn’t help Palestinians- but it sure does help Hamas who’s goal is to wipe out Israel and all jews. Also Hamas could care less for Palestinians- why do you think they are being used as human shields???

Doing all of these things makes you antisemitic (some of y’all were probably already antisemitic, and is using the I/P conflict to go fully unmasked). You doing this is causing harm to so many people. And to be honest- doing this shit shows that you actually don’t care for Palestine. In fact you are using this conflict to go fully unmask and be raging antisemitic little asshats.

Instead of doing something that could help those who are affected by this war, you are harassing jews, defacing synagogues, and calling for intifadas. Why is that? (I know the answer- but humor me). Why is this acceptable? How does harassing and harming jews help Palestine? And how does supporting Hamas (a terrorist organization) help Palestine?

Also I may get hate for this but I don’t care: anti Zionism is antisemitism. The term anti Zionist was created during the soviet era by one of the soviet leaders. The Soviet Union hated jews and wanted to stamp them all out. One of the ways that they “succeeded” was “persuading” jews that their culture and religion was dirty. That they- the jews should be ashamed of their “Jewishness”. And that was how anti Zionism came to be.

I said what I said. If you don’t like it then maybe you have some thinking to do.

Also as another fucking reminder:

Stop fucking spreading vile antisemitic shit (and stop harassing Israel citizens) !!! This includes:

- blood libels

- organs harvesting

- holocaust denial

- “hitler was right”

- “gas the jews”

- lizard people

- “jews are rats”

- “jews are rich”

- “jews control the media”

- “jews are landlords”

- the majority of conspiracy theories

- Zionist occupied government

- Zionism is racism

- stop fucking reading protocols of the elders of Zion

- “from the river to the sea…” is a genocidal chant.

- stop calling Israel a “terrorist” state and stop saying that all Israelis are terrorist (people are not their fucking government)

(Just to list a few)

I said what I said and if you don’t like it- the doors over there.

Am yisrael chai! ✡️

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

ANTISEMITISM ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES EXPOSED

Committee on Education & the Workforce. U.S. House of Representatives

KEY FINDINGS

Key Finding: Students who established unlawful antisemitic encampments—which violated university polices and created unsafe and hostile learning environments—were given shocking concessions. Universities’ dereliction of leadership and failure to enforce their rules put students and personnel at risk. o Finding: Northwestern put radical anti-Israel faculty in charge of negotiations with the encampment. o Finding: Northwestern’s provost shockingly approved of a proposal to boycott Sabra hummus. o Finding: Northwestern entertained demands to hire an “anti-Zionist” rabbi and Northwestern President Michael Schill may have misled Congress in testimony regarding the matter. o Finding: Columbia’s leaders offered greater concessions to encampment organizers than they publicly acknowledged. o Finding: UCLA officials stood by and failed to act as the illegal encampment violated Jewish students’ civil rights and placed campus at risk.

Key Finding: So-called university leaders intentionally declined to express support for campus Jewish communities. Instead of explicitly condemning antisemitic harassment, universities equivocated out of concern of offending antisemitic students and faculty who rallied in support of foreign terrorist organizations. o Finding: Harvard leaders’ failure to condemn Hamas’ attack in their widely criticized October 9 statement was an intentional decision. o Finding: Harvard President Claudine Gay and then-Provost Alan Garber asked Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker not to label the slogan “from the river to the sea” antisemitic, with Gay fearing doing so would create expectations Harvard would have to impose discipline. o Finding: The Columbia administration failed to correct false narratives of a “chemical attack” that were used to vilify Jewish students, but imposed disproportionate discipline on the Jewish students involved.

Key Finding: Universities utterly failed to impose meaningful discipline for antisemitic behavior that violated school rules and the law. In some cases, radical faculty successfully thwarted meaningful discipline. o Finding: Universities failed to enforce their rules and hold students accountable for antisemitic conduct violations. o Finding: Columbia’s University Senate obstructed plans to discipline students involved in the takeover of Hamilton Hall. o Finding: Harvard’s faculty intervened to prevent meaningful discipline toward antisemitic conduct violations on numerous occasions. o Finding: Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker acknowledged that the university’s disciplinary boards’ enforcement of the rules is “uneven” and called this “unacceptable.”

Key Finding: So-called university leaders expressed hostility to congressional oversight and criticism of their record. The antisemitism engulfing campuses was treated as a public-relations issue and not a serious problem demanding action. o Finding: Harvard president Claudine Gay disparaged Rep. Elise Stefanik’s character to the university’s Board of Overseers. o Finding: Columbia’s leaders expressed contempt for congressional oversight of campus antisemitism. o Finding: Penn’s leaders suggested politicians calling for President Magill’s resignation were “easily purchased” and sought to orchestrate negative media coverage of Members of Congress who scrutinized the University

[beardedmrbean]

I bet the last thing Bernie Sanders expected upon his arrival in Ireland and Britain was to be met by angry protesters—to find himself heckled and damned as a sellout by the kind of radicals who would have been shouting his praises just six months ago. And yet that is what happened: Some of Britain's Bernie Bros have morphed into Bernie bashers.

Why? Because he refuses to describe Israel's war on Hamas as a "genocide" and he doesn't approve of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel.

Quick—cast him out. Unperson him. He has ventured outside the parameters of acceptable Left-wing thought and must be punished.

It all kicked off in Dublin. Senator Sanders, who is on these isles to promote his book, Why It's OK To Be Angry About Capitalism, was speaking at University College Dublin. A group of pro-Palestine protesters assembled at the entrance to the venue, all wearing the uniform of the virtuous: a keffiyeh. "It's OK to be angry about capitalism, what about Zionism?" they chanted.

It got heated inside, too. Sanders was interrupted by audience members. "Resistance is an obligation in the face of occupation!" one shouted. "Occupation is terrorism!" yelled another.

Sanders kept his cool with his reply: "Good slogan, but slogans are not solutions," he said.

It continued at Trinity College the next day. Sanders was in conversation with the Irish journalist Fintan O'Toole. Outside, a small but noisy gaggle of anti-Israel agitators displayed a banner that said: "Boycott Apartheid Israel."

"Free Palestine!" they chanted. (Deliciously, a woman who was queuing for the Sanders event bellowed "from Hamas!" every time they said it.)

Again, Sanders was heckled by hotheads. "Ceasefire now!" they shouted. At one point, in the words of Trinity News, Sanders "threw up his right arm in frustration and looked at O'Toole, as if to ask him what would be done."

It is little wonder he felt frustrated. Sanders was there to talk about capitalism, yet angry youths kept badgering him about Zionism. He is used to a fawning response from Socialist twentysomethings, and yet now some were effectively accusing him of being complicit in a "genocide." It's quite the downfall for one of the West's best-known leftists.

The turn on Bernie is underpinned by a belief that he is too soft on Israel. The radical Left will never forgive him for initially supporting Israel's war on Hamas. Even his more recent position—he now says there should be a ceasefire—is not good enough for these people, who seem to measure an individual's moral worth by how much he hates the Jewish State.

They want Bernie to say the G-word. They want him to damn Israel as uniquely barbarous. They want him to agree with them that it is right and proper to single Israel out for boycotts and sanctions.

In short, they want him to fall into line. They want him to bend the knee to their Israelophobic ideology.

These illiberal demands on Bernie to bow down to correct-think continued when he arrived in the U.K. A group of communists protested against him in Liverpool. Normally, Sanders would have been shown only love in a historically radical city like Liverpool, said the Liverpool Echo, but this time, "the atmosphere was different," for one simple reason: "his refusal to brand Israel's actions in Gaza as 'genocide'."

Sanders' resistance of the G-word haunted him in his media interviews, too. Ash Sarkar of Novara Media, a key outlet of Britain's bourgeois Left, asked him three times if he would call Israel's war on Hamas a "genocide." He refused and it went viral. Armies of ersrtwhile Bernie fans damned him as a "genocide denier."

There is something quite nauseating in this spectacle of an elderly Jewish man being pressured to denounce the world's only Jewish State as genocidal. Millennial Gentiles who want to trend online might be happy to throw around the G-word. But Senator Sanders, who lost family in the Holocaust, clearly has a deeper moral and historical understanding of what genocide is. And it seems he is not willing to sacrifice that understanding at the altar of retweets or an easy ride.

Good for him.

Sanders' father was born in Poland, where most of his family were exterminated by the Nazis. Sanders is a son of the Shoah, a descendant of survivors of the greatest crime in history. To subject him to the modern equivalent of a showtrial in which you demand that he scream "Genocide!" at Israel feels unconscionable. As does branding him a "genocide denier."

Why won't he call Israel's war on Hamas a "genocide"? Maybe, says a writer for the Jewish Chronicle, it's because he lost so much of his family to Hitler's gas chambers and therefore he "knows what a genocide is, what a war crime is." He knows that while the war in Gaza, a war started by Hamas, is "horrible," to use his word, it cannot in any way be compared to the Nazis' conscious efforts to vaporize an entire ethnic group.

There has been a Inquisition vibe to some of the Bernie-bashing in Britain. At times it has felt cruel. The sight of fashionable, privileged Israel-bashers haranguing a man who will have heard stories from his own father about the genocidal mania of the Nazis has come across like Jew-taunting rather than political critique.

More broadly, this unseemly episode gives us a glimpse into the authoritarian impulses behind the Left's obsessive opposition to Israel. Israelophobia, it seems, is less a rational political stance than a borderline religious conviction. There are true believers, who dutifully repeat the G-word like a mantra, and sinful outliers, who refuse to treat Israel as uniquely "problematic."

One's moral fitness for radical society is increasingly judged by one's willingness to treat Israel as the most wicked nation in existence. The dangers of making hostility to the Jewish State a requirement of being a Good Leftist should be clear to everyone.

Sanders is wise to resist this tyrannical zeitgeist, and to say what he believes rather than what he believes will be popular.

Brendan O'Neill is the chief political writer of spiked. His new book, A Heretic's Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable, is available now.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

[girlactionfigure]

"From the River to the Sea"

@Daniel_Sugarman

In this thread, I’m going to go into some detail about what the phrase “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” means to many Jewish people. You may not agree, but I hope that it may enlighten those who simply don't understand the almost visceral reaction to it.

🧵 

2) For the benefit of a number of students at some of America’s most expensive higher education institutions, let’s start by clarifying - the river is the River Jordan, the sea is the Mediterranean.

3) So what do those chanting it mean? When asked, a bunch of them will say they want a single state in this area in which all people can live together in dignity and equality. Sounds great, right? Who would argue with that? 

4) That claim is somewhat muddied when one particular version of that chant is used in Arabic, as has been heard and seen at various protests - من المية للمية / فل��طين عربية “From water to water, Palestine is Arab”. But let's leave that aside for the moment. 

5) Note that the protesters are not calling for Israel to be *changed* into what they see as a free and equal society. For them this can only be achieved by Israel being *ended* and replaced by Palestine. 

6) Objectively, you can say that the reason for this is that the protestors believe that Israel (and Zionism) is fundamentally incompatible with what they see as equality and freedom for all, which is why for them it has to go in its entirety. But... 

7) But there is a significant degree of ambiguity as to what the end result *actually* means. And it’s that question mark which is why so many Jewish people see this slogan the way they do.

8) Because Jewish people have lots of different examples of what happens to Jewish communities who are minorities in countries in the MENA region. They get destroyed. I'll give you some examples. 

9) Egypt. 1948 - 75,000 Jews. 2024 - 30 Jews.

10) Lebanon. 1948 - 9,000 Jews. 2024 - 20 Jews.

11) Syria. 1948 - 15,000 Jews. 2024 - 4 Jews.

12) Yemen. 1948 - 55,000 Jews. 2024 - 1 Jew.

13) Iraq. 1948 - 156,000 Jews. 2024 - 1 Jew.

14) Iran. 1948 - 150,000 Jews. 2024 - 8,750 Jews (under the strict control of the Iranian regime).

15) Libya. 1948 - 40,000 Jews. 2024 - No Jews.

16) Algeria. 1948 - 150,000 Jews. 2024 - 150 Jews,

17) Tunisia. 1948 - 105,000 Jews. 2024 - 1,500 Jews.

18) Morocco. 1948 - 270,000 Jews. 2024 - 2,000 Jews.

19) The anti-Zionist narrative is that this mass Exodus was the fault of the Zionists, who created Israel. No Israel, goes the refrain, and all those communities would still be there.

This ignores a very simple point. 

20) In every single one of these countries, to a greater or lesser extent, Israel’s independence was followed by significant repression of local Jewish populations.

Every one. 

21) Remind me, what’s the way to describe holding members of an ethnic or racial group responsible for what other members of that group may have done elsewhere?

22) By doing so - oppressing the local Jewish population via pogroms, repressive laws, denying Jewish people full citizenship, confiscation of land and property - these MENA countries made a more effective argument for Zionism than Israel ever could have done by itself. 

23) What that said, very clearly, was that Jews as a minority in a MENA country lived there strictly on sufferance. That at any time they could be deprived of everything - including their lives.

This had been clear pre-Zionism too, but the reaction post-'48 put the seal on this.

24) Which brings us back to now. The one-state Palestine being dreamt of is one where, at best, Jews will be allowed to live as a minority. 

25) I put it to you that the experience of more than half of Israel’s Jewish population - descended from those who had to leave MENA countries, means that they *know* what the end result of such a Palestine will be.

A land without Jews. 

26) This, by the way, given most Israeli Jews now are descendants of MENA Jews is also why the “post-colonial” depiction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as some sort of “white vs brown” battle is so utterly brainless. And that’s before we discuss Israel’s many Ethiopian Jews. 

27) I’ve gone on too long, I know, but just one final point. If the anti-Israel protestors really wanted to assure Jews - all Jews - that there would be a real future for Jews in their hoped for future one-state Palestine - they would be doing their best to engage with Zionists. 

28) They would be saying “Zionism is an ideology built on numerous examples - in MENA and in Europe - that Jews are, in the long term, only safe in their own country. Let us show you that this isn’t necessarily the case. Let’s talk. Find common ground. Try for friendships.” 

29) Instead Zionists are told they are Nazis. The same age-old antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control are applied to “Zionists”. “Zionists” are excluded from the Community of the Good. 

30) Congratulations! 

You’ve just proved every single Jewish Zionist’s point for them - and you’ve helped create new ones. In a very similar way to those MENA countries post 1948. 

*Thread ends* 

[determinate-negation]

an example of the debate in left wing jewish circles about zionism in the early 20th century. this is an introduction and translation of articles written in the wake of the 1929 riots in palestine. in response to a popular yiddish anarchist newspaper breaking with their previous anti zionist stance and embracing zionist militancy, a group of polish jewish anarchists wrote a condemnation of zionism as an imperialist project

The Zionist devil, with its criminal, irresponsible demagogic agitation, has convinced the “helpless” Jews, the naïve masses, that it will return them to their national home under the protection of the expansive, powerful wings of that great biblical people, the English. The gullible, naïve masses took this at face value and set upon the conquest of Palestine’s land with cries of “Hurrah!” under the British flag and assisted by English battalions. This pitiful people, agitated by Zionist demagoguery, was not content with just conquering the land, with just becoming the owners of the land, but they also joyfully began a new campaign: the conquest of labor[5] with the slogan “Swój do swego,”[6] under which they themselves suffered in their land of Poland and condemned as an injustice. It was not enough simply to steal the Arab’s land; we needed to then drive him from his land! Jews wanted to consolidate all rights for themselves. When it looked like a certain right would fall into the hands of the Arabs and do them good, the Zionists began an outcry: “The Philistines are upon you, Israel!” The goal is to turn the Arab into a disenfranchised, degraded creature which should never stop shaking in fear at the thought of the Jewish landowner. We had the chance to speak with many ordinary Jews in Palestine who gleefully bragged that the Arabs shake in fear for the Jew; “We hold them in fear!”; “Should an Arab make a peep, he gets a strike in the teeth and learns not to do it again.” This criminal Zionist agitation has brought so much foolish chutzpah against the Arabs into the psychology of the Jewish public, that they regard the Arabs worse than the Black Hundreds[7] in the Czarist period regarded the Jews! Is it such a wonder, then, that the Arab spirit has gathered so much hate of an uncontrollable nature that it was bound to break out sooner or later? The kindling was certainly taken advantage of by both the English imperialists, the Communist schemers, as well as the effendis who all sped up the whole process. But even without them, it was bound to be released. If only the Jews had merely come with their “piece of historic pretension”! As you have written, they have instead come to “drain [Palestine’s] swamps, construct cities and villages, increasing the quality of life of its backwards, half-savage inhabitants.” Without this, there would have been no confrontation! One piece of evidence is the history of the Old Yishuv, as well as the long and quiet Hibbat Zion[8] movement which the Arabs regarded with calm and largely left alone. This was not enough for political Zionism, however, which wanted to exploit its “historic pretensions” to become the sole owners of the land. It is for this reason that the Jewish “historic pretension” was destined to clash with the concrete claim of the Arabs, the actual owners of the land. The Arabs answered the Zionists with an old Jewish saying: Loy meuktsekho veloy miduvshekho, “We don’t want your honey and we don’t want your sting!”