Sarsby Winnipeg

likeboom:

sorry dudes but every time it comes up on the dash it bears repeating:

the constant and often anti-semitic insistence that The Jews take a neverending public stance against the actions of the israeli state only serves to perpetuate the notion that there is some legitimacy to the idea that the latter is representative of the former, that there is a connection implicit in their very existence.  OF COURSE jews should be against israel, EVERYBODY should be, but if we actually reject the idea that a government and an entire ethnic group are interchangeable, it’s hypocritical and counter-productive to demand that that ethnic group be at the forefront, always, having to prove over and over what “progressives” supposedly already know, reassuring ourselves and everyone else that we are the exception to a rule which doesn’t actually exist, feeling somehow especially complicit if we don’t, as though other americans/europeans are less so.  not only that, but it CENTRALIZES the issue around jewish identity, which is - again, if we actually believe what we say we do - completely beside the goddamn point.

pretty much unless you think everyone should stand around with signs that say things like “i am half-chinese and i want israel to stop killing palestinians”, endorsing this = doing it wrong

I like this analysis.

BUT I feel like there’s something missing, which is the conflation of anti-semitism and criticism of Israel. It’s a neat tactic that supporters of Israeli policies can deploy to sidestep condemnation.

BUT same supporters can also just call any Jewish critics “self-hating Jews”, so anyone trying to transitive-property such photos gets nowhere and maybe even amounts to “but some of my best friends are Jews!”. (One of my best friends is on the Shit list!)

(Source: politics-war)