#antisemitism and anti-Judaism are very difficult to argue against not because of their validity but their fundamental lack of it

[slyandthefamilybook]

...And here we come upon a problem as basic as the nature of knowledge itself: all of our prodigious cognitive and computational abilities are inadequate to a full comprehension of our complex world. As humans, we remain heavily dependent on certain tools of perception and conception that our cultural and biological heritages have taught us are useful. These tools–such as language, causal logic, religion, mathematics–are indeed powerful, but they are powerful precisely because they reduce complexity to intelligibility by projecting our mental concepts onto the world. One consequence of this is that our recognition of significance is always what some philosophers call "theory laden," meaning that it is shaped by what our theoretical framework and cognitive tools encourage us to recognize as meaningful. Anti-Judaism, as I have argued throughout this book, is precisely this: a powerful theoretical framework for making sense of the world.

...

After all, no matter how overrepresented the Jews may have been among the European "bourgeoisie," they remained a tiny minority of that class. How could that tiny minority convincingly come to represent for so many the evolving evils of the capitalist world order? More broadly, how could untold millions of Europeans (and not only Germans) come to believe–or act as if they believed–the claims of the Nazis (and not only the Nazis) that Jews and their conspiracies so threatened the security of the world that they needed to be excluded, expelled, or exterminated? According to Horkheimer and Adorno, the liquidation of the Jews of Europe was not grounded in "reality." It took place in the vast gap between and explanatory framework ("anti-Semitism") that made satisfying sense of the world to a significant portion of its citizens, and the complexity of the world itself.

They set out to explore that gap in a philosophical history of modern thought they drafted in 1944 and later published as Dialectics of Enlightenment. Their final chapter, "Elements of Anti-Semitism: Limits of Enlightenment," suggested that what gave anti-Semitic ideas their power was not so much their relation to reality, but rather their exemption from reality checks–that is, from the critical testing to which so many other concepts were subjected. "What is pathological about anti-Semitism is not projective behavior as such, but the absence of reflection in it." In their terms, the problem is a heightened resistance to reflection about the gap between our ideas about Jews, Judaism, or Jewishness, and the complexity of the world. From their point of view, anti-Semitism provides adherents with a cognitive comfort: the fantasy that the gap between our understanding of the cosmos and its fearful complexity does not exist.

...

...[A]cross several thousand years, myriad lands, and many different spheres of human activity, people have used ideas about Jews and Judaism to fashion the tools with which they construct the reality of their world. The goal of my project, like Horkeheimer and Adorno's, is to encourage reflection about our "projective behavior," that is, about the ways in which our deployment of concepts into and onto the world might generate "pathological" fantasies of Judaism. And my choice of method owes something to Auerbach's conviction that the study of a given moment, problem, or even a single word in the distant past can teach us something about a much longer history, extending even to our own.

Selected excerpts from Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (2013 Nirenberg, David)

[limey-opinions]

Israel Palestine venting

Israel-Palestine discourse is a fucking mess partly because all communication seems to be laced with signaling about what side you're on or risking being taken as supporting one side or another, and discussing the nuances is incredibly difficult without coming across as supporting a given side.

But also paradoxically I deeply wish I knew exactly, precisely, and in detail what people are implying when they talk about it, because a lot of anti-Zionist takes absolutely freak me out, and also because I want to know how many friends and family and community members I can actually trust to not support Israel.

A lot of the anti-Zionist side freaks me out because there IS some antisemitism in there no matter how progressive the movement tries to be, and there seems to be a pretty deep undercurrent of people either wanting Israel to be ethnically cleansed or (sometimes, often ambiguously) supporting Hamas and the Oct. 7th attack (which is both morally despicable and the absolute fucking dumbest possible action to defend as a strategic move, like holy shitting fuck what would ANYONE expect the benefits and consequences of an escalation like that to be!)

And posts like this one are the kind where I really, really want to clarify what I'm trying to signal and feel like I have to say, which is frustrating again because I feel like I'd end up misinterpreted and get yelled at by people I mostly agree with. Do I have to put up a bunch of signs that explain that I think Israel is committing genocide, that it's been committing crimes against humanity for decades and was built on awful colonialism?

I was picking apart this document and went from wanting to question and pick apart half the points in good faith to going YIKES when they argued for a misleading and bad-faith definition of antisemitism; and then conjoined statements about not advocating for specifically Jewish genocide and Israel not being specifically Jewish (I can hope they're not implying they're advocating for genocide or ethnic cleansing of Israelis, but they worded it in a really concerning way) to going MEGAYIKES when they say that Judaism is a religion and not an ethnicity, which is (to boil down a complicated explanation) false and extremely antisemitic!

Also, man, the stuff people keep bringing up, about the unequal power dynamic between Israel and Palestine, and using that as a shutdown of the bad-faith silencing tactic of saying it's too complicated for you to have an opinion on, which is a valid argument and partially true with regards to that one specific take, but also is in and of itself a bad-faith shutdown of any discussion of nuance and moral complexity when those things are still incredibly important and consequential, like seriously, those little asterisks and subheadings all have fucking body counts

And if I say all that, will people think I support violence against Israeli civilians, or any form of genocide or ethnic cleansing against them? Will they think I hate Jews?

I think the thing that has emotionally exhausted me since this particular conflict started is that so, so many people supporting both sides of this conflict (obligatory I don't think both sides are equal in power or moral standing) seem to think there's a wrong and a right group of people to massacre, torture, starve, expel, etc. and anyone who thinks that there's no such thing as a right group of people to do those things to is either a wishy-washy both sides moderate or a secret troll who ACTUALLY supports genociding the WRONG side.

(this isn't getting into the horrible sense of mass alienation from both the left who seem to ambiguously maybe support a hypothetical genocide of an ethnic group I'm a part of, and, much more tangibly and heartbreakingly, all of the friends and family and old classmates and people I went to synagogue with, who mostly do seem to be supporting a very real and ongoing and massive and horrifying genocide. And the paradoxical sense of betrayal from the Zionist side, even though I'M the one that changed my values, because the moral weight SHOULD BE ON THEM, on the people I grew up knowing and talking to every day and making friends with and playing games with and learning lessons from and being supported by, to be good people and not be vile, racist scum supporting horrible torment and murder and starvation! Fucking starvation! That should be the line that fills every single one of them with disgust to cross, in the wake of the goddamn Holocaust!)

(and how much of the venting in the last paragraph is something I would have left out or put on another post if I didn't want to strongly signal how anti-Zionist I am, to say please please believe me I don't support this genocide)

[gotta-bail-my-quails]

The poster proceeds to bring up the point of Anti-semitism, which may be one of their very few, if any, valid arguments. They claim hating Zionists is "latent Jew-hatred" and that Zionism itself has no definition [even though the first thing that comes up when you search it up is a definition: noun 1) a movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. It was established as a political organization in 1897 under Theodor Herzl, and was later led by Chaim Weizmann.] Though they acknowledge only a small portion believe that Zionism is equivalent to Judaism, they accuse others of being complicit. They also mention the "equating [of Zionists] with Nazis"

Yes, antisemites will and have tried to use the conflict to encourage hatred of Jews. However, there are Jews everywhere who also argue for a free Palestine (something the poster doesn't agree with—again "one state under Israel") and it would be ridiculous to claim they are antisemitic. Holocaust survivors have even spoken out against Israel's actions. Frankly, Israel's aggression only hurts Jews by appropriating their name for their inhumane and oppressive cause.

We can only continue to speak out against antisemites (which as others have pointed out, also includes those discriminatiing against Arabs!) and responsibly inform ourselves.

On the specific point about comparing Zionists to Nazis, I would like to point to a post here (will try to link later if I can) of a quiz asking whether a phrase was said by Zionists or Nazis. It was so difficult to tell the difference if you did not have prior knowledge of the quotes, that it was basically blind guessing all the way through, with near 50/50 results.

The poster claims that this attitude causes Israelis or Jews to vote for Netanyahu's party—if they do, that says more about them and their priorities and opinions than anyone else's, in my opinion. 

The poster claims that disinformation and propaganda (from all sides*) are pumped out "in order to manipulate uneducated Westerners into supporting their interests". I'm actually uncertain if they mean to include Israeli propaganda in this though they list pro-Israel state USA because they then proceed to only address the issue when it comes to pro-Palestinian news.  I won't address this point much but I do at least agree that critical analysis of any information should be used. For instance, as I was doing (admittedly brief due to time) research for this response, I found that the IOF claimed videos of Palestinians holding white flags being shot were edited (who has the time or technology or resources for that in this war? Obviously the Hamas base under UNRWA or the hospitals they bombed /s). I had also found a post from twitter of an apparently false translation of Zionist chanting to make them seem more aggressive (rather than just celebrating the occupation of Palestine, hah…). I can't translate so I can't verify anything (and I don't even know if the person who apparently falsely translated wasn't some elaborate ploy to discredit pro-Palestinian movements either—see the problem here?) but I would like to emphasize it can go both ways. Remember the calendar claimed to be Hamas names? Yeah… And I recently saw a post of Palestinians apparently condemning Hamas for "rejecting a ceasefire" (not sure what event they are referencing—the first thing I found was that Hamas rejected an Egyptian offer because they wanted a permanent ceasefire; will have to research more later) but the poster was pro-Israel and furthermore the account which apparently translated it was also one that was seemingly pro-Israel so who can say what is true and what is not.

In this section they also speak of how this propaganda is meant to "destabilize Western democracy" (which, as I've already discussed, is ridiculous because Western democracy has already long been a sham. Re: Vietnam, Re: Donald Trump's election despite losing the popular vote, Re: this whole shitshow)

5/6

I would like to preface this post with an acknowledgement that I have blocked the user who originally posted this. The main reason is because nothing would convince them to change their mind (especially because they seem to be intent on "changing minds" but only if it is from a Pro-Palestine to Pro-Israel mindset). That being said, this post I'm making may seem superfluous—why make a response if I don't want the person to see it? Mostly, I want to warn others of the rhetoric used against support for Palestine and—as I will soon address—because these people dared to bring up a subject personal to me and I will not stand to let it to be appropriated for this purpose.

I will be addressing one main post and a few other arguments used against Palestinian resistance.

The main post was posted on Tumblr, and was a respost of a post from Reddit. It is in image form below, but I will add the text if asked in a reblog. My response summarizes the points I address. Also I'm going to have to add my full response in multiple reblogs due to character limits.

The arguments can be summarized as thus:

I would like to preface this post with an acknowledgement that I have blocked the user who originally posted this. The main reason is because nothing would convince them to change their mind (especially because they seem to be intent on "changing minds" but only if it is from a Pro-Palestine to Pro-Israel mindset). That being said, this post I'm making may seem superfluous—why make a response if I don't want the person to see it? Mostly, I want to warn others of the rhetoric used against support for Palestine and—as I will soon address—because these people dared to bring up a subject personal to me and I will not stand to let it to be appropriated for this purpose.

I will be addressing one main post and a few other arguments used against Palestinian resistance.

The main post was posted on Tumblr, and was a respost of a post from Reddit. It is in image form below, but I will add the text if asked in a reblog.

The arguments can be summarized as thus:

The methods Western leftists use are ineffective and/or immoral due to idealism and radical approaches. The suggested solution is to give funds to "the Israeli left" and supporting a "reasonable solution" meaning a two-state or one-state under Israel solution, with a "humanitarian end" with a "unilateral Hamas surrender"

Here, they compare the "dream scenario that will never happen" to the situation in Vietnam. I presume they mean the opposition to the war, while the government continued to bomb the country more than all of Europe in WWII combined despite knowing full well they would lose and that they do not mean to make an analogy using the war as a whole. If they had, then I would like to make a snide comment here about the North winning despite the South having the US's support, but I will refrain. More than that, I would relate this to a later argument the poster makes about the "destabilization of Western democracy". Considering the poster is American, I will address this within a US context (although we should really explore the ways other Western countries are acting). This is a reflection of the failure of the power structures within the US as a whole, and not the ineffectiveness of the protests. The war in Vietnam was vastly unpopular but the executive department has historically used presidential power to push war—evidenced by the war power acts previously and Biden forcing through funding for the conflict now. The US is a republic, not a true democracy, and it is self-evident that the same reason the poster claim protests don't work invalidates their claims of an otherwise functioning Western democracy. I would go so far as to suggest revolution is being implied, but the poster evidently thinks resistance is hardly reasonable.

I am curious as to how the poster thinks positive changes have occurred, if they consider boycotts and the like are ineffective (they only say "it doesn't take a lot of thought" to see their point, but it seems to me they are avoiding the issue under the excuse of "common sense" and "brevity"). Most Americans (and most in general) do not have a direct hand in the government—California excepted, perhaps, given the proposition system—so, we turn to utilizing economic power and force. Unions, for one, have earned better treatment for workers for decades (remember the recent SAG-AFTRA strikes?) through the threat of withholding labor and therefore profits. After all, our world is one based heavily in economic-morality (which I am currently writing a separate essay on and which we may point to the response to Yemen right now).

1/5