17breezes wrote:Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.
In addition, such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong”. It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits. Contemporary examples of anti-Semitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:
* Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
* Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as a collective – such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
* Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
* Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
* Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
* Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
* Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel taking into account the overall context could include:
* Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
* Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
* Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
* Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
* Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.
However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.
I'd say that was as carefully phrased and comprehensive a definition as it's possible to come up with in this uncertain and ambiguous world. Which I appreciate. So thanks for posting it.
I have some comments. These are they:
Oh, man, I totally understand why all groups that author and distribute such things -- and this is true whether they're engaged in consciousness-raising wrt prejudice against Jews, Arabs, women, gay men and lesbians, the disabled, blacks, or any other class of people who are perceived as or actually are "Other" from a culturally hegemonic perspective -- feel they have to include a list of helpful, well-f'r-instance-type examples. Because that kind of outreach does have to be graspable by the least sensitive, dullest-witted and most-in need-of-remedial-education reader.
But it's a shame that consequently, everybody ends up getting the poor pamphlet-copywriter's best effort to produce something that isn't too obvious about its need constantly to bear the needs, comfort and reading-comprehension levels of the most unselfconsciously bigoted non-thinker that's capable of following any piece of writing more complex than
Pat the Bunny in mind.
However, what can you do about that? It's not like the copy desk of
The New York Times doesn't use much the same standard.
Which doesn't mean it's not still a shame. (If anything, the reverse.) Because it does have some serious drawbacks for which there's just no earthly way of compensating. Or even anticipating in any detail.
For example: I'd say -- and for very principled 1rst amendment reasons, among others -- that drawing-comparisons-between-contemporary-Israeli-policy-and-that-of-the-Nazis
is as drawing-comparisons-between-contemporary-Israeli-policy-and-that-of-the-Nazis
does.
Because that simply can't be said to be antisemitic (or pro-semitic) in any blunt-instrument kind of a way. Whether it's one or the other or neither will always be entirely dependent on -- inter alia -- to what end the comparison is being made; how comparable the person making it believes contemporary Israeli policy and that of the Nazis to be; the tone, style, mood and setting in which he or she makes it; and so on. To a much greater extent than that lost little "taking into account the overall context could include" firewall does anything to keep at bay.
I mean, I hold that it's always absolutely wrong for one class of et-cetera to so-on-and-so-forth another class of blah-blah-blah-I've-said-it-at-least-742-times. So strictly within the parameters of that categorical imperative, when I compare contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, I find them both to be absolutely wrong. That really doesn't have anything at all to do with Nazis, Israelis, or Jews. Or, for that matter, human contingencies of any kind. I hold it impartially both for and against a class of Jews because the world happens to have given me occasions for it, and not because they're Jews.
And that principle is a very important one to me. To the point that I wouldn't even fully be me if I didn't hold that it's absolutely impermissible for the governors of any given polity to create, maintain, force or allow a two-tier system wrt personhood. Always. Whether they do it by an inch or a mile. Because that's a very fucking slippery slope. I mean, it's not like it's the only categorical imperative I've got. I'm also absolutely opposed to capital punishment, for example. But it is a categorical imperative and not, like, just some random principle I'm fond of. It's not antisemitic or otherwise bigoted. Yet per the above it should b
And while this may or may not be kinda by the way, it actually had its earliest origins in what I only discovered years later was my mistaken understanding of the lesson my parents had intended to impart when they said "Never again." Because I was (and still am) very literal-minded about some things. And no one ever told me it was just supposed to be about Jews. I was really only trying to be good. I mean, they seemed to want me to take it seriously. So that's what I did.
In any event: Thank you for posting the above. They're very good guidelines, imo. As long as you remain mindfully and judiciously alert to what I imagine would be the completely unintended adverse consequences that would follow from adhering to them as rigidly as you might if they were instead rules.
So, if you actually believe in hegemony, how can antizionism be anything BUT an hegemony designed to deny Jews what ever other human group is allowed. Ergo-prejudice. Ergo antisemtism. Short answer......look for the hate. If it's there, antisemitism is there.
Well....Hegemony is as hegemony does, too. Obviously.
And I'd say that's how antizionism
can be something other than a hegemony designed to deny Jews what every other human group is allowed. Except that there are many persecuted human groups that aren't allowed to have a nation-state. But never mind that for the moment, it's not material to what I'm trying to say right now, which is purely about formal logic.
But you can see my point, right? It's that the first part of your premise is what appellate courts occasionally deem "unconstitutionally vague."
If, for example, the antizionist class was not hegemonic, its antzionism couldn't possibly be a hegemony designed for anything.
Also, insofar as a zionist state (I mean in the abstract, not the real-world state of Israel) would itself be inherently hegemonic, whether it was or wasn't something other than a hegemony designed to deny non-Jews what every other human group is (for the sake of argument) allowed would totally depend on what that state did, not what it was -- ie, a hegemony.
In this instance, a Jewish hegemony, as it happens. But for the purposes of logic, that, too, is immaterial. Because any nation-state with a culturally homogenous majority and ruling class of some sort would have to meet the same conditions as a zionist state would before "ergo prejudice" would be logically justified.
And those conditions would basically be two-fold:
(1) The antipathy toward the hegemony of that state would have to arese from hostility toward what they were rather than what they did; and
(2) The antipathetic group would have to be hegemonier than the hegemony of the state it opposed.
And there just flat-out and unambiguously are some opponents of Israel and/or zionism who'd make the cut on those criteria and others who wouldn't. Those who didn't couldn't be decisively determined to be antisemitic by those criteria. Yet they might still be antisemites. Ergo, you'd need to come up with some other standard by which to judge them in order to know.
http://www.antisemitism.org.il/eng/Working%20Definition%20of%20Antisemitism
It's not rocket science.
No, it's not. It's way more complicated. But also, to me, a much worthier endeavor. So thanks again.
All inferences of snark in the above, express or implied, are strictly prohibited without the written consent of Major League Baseball. Because I didn't intend there to be any.
Yours,
c2w
