Condemning the deaths of Palestinians is not inherently antisemitic
FTFY
Anti-zionism =/= anti-semitism.
Pro-Palestine =/= pro-Hamas.
Anti-Hamas =/= Pro-Israel.
Since October it’s been a really easy concept to grasp. Hamas is a terrorist group that murdered and kidnapped a bunch (don’t know the exact number something around 200+) of Israeli civilians, the IDF responded in a predictably overzealous way and have now killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 civilians in Palestine. Neither Hamas nor the IDF have a moral high ground here. They both need to stop killing civilians. Super easy.
Neither Hamas nor the IDF have a moral high ground here. They both need to stop killing civilians.
The one thing both have in common is refusal to take peace talks seriously. Hamas refuses to let go of their hostages, and Israel continues their bombing campaign against Hamas.
Its a difficult situation because these are the “adults” in the room. The civilians involved have little power at all.
Your number is dangerously misleading.
According to Hamas, 20,000 Palestinians have been killed. As a matter of methodology, they do not distinguish between Hamas terrorists and civilians. It also does not distinguish between those killed by Israel and those killed by Hamas/Palestinian Islamic Jihad, whether through guns or misfired rockets. The IDF claims to have killed at minimum 8,000 Hamas terrorists, which would immediately bring the total of civilian dead down to 12,000.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza regularly issues statistics on the dead and wounded in the Strip. As of Sunday, the tally stands at 20,424 deaths. The ministry does not differentiate between armed men and civilians, nor does it denote the people killed by Israeli strikes and those felled by errant rockets fired by Hamas and other Palestinian factions.
This time the Israeli reprisal has been far greater. “The fundamental difference in this war is that almost zero organizations in Gaza are reporting on the number of casualties, save for the Palestinian Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas – and the Health Ministry is working with the Media Ministry,” Khoury says.
According to the Israeli military, 10 to 12 percent of the 10,000-plus rockets fired at Israel have actually landed in Gaza. According to Prof. Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, “I would say that there is a significant number of casualties … caused by failed rockets from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.”
**Michael, as well as others relying on the Israeli military numbers, put the number of Hamas members killed at over 8,000. If Hamas’ total numbers are used, this would put the civilian toll at about 60 percent. When asked how it has determined the number of Hamas militants among the dead, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit declined to comment. **
If that’s even close to the correct percentage, then it’s actually a remarkable achievement by the Israeli military to keep the proportion of civilian deaths so low.
According to the United Nations on 25 May 2022, on average 90% of deaths in war are civilians. If the Israeli military has managed to keep it down to 60%, as the analysts above suggest, then actually they’re doing a very good job.
Genuine question, would it be appropriate to say that the respective religions at play are not actually the core of the conflict? It seems like the only religious motivation would be concerning Jerusalem and not the entirety of the contested land.
On broad analysis, it seems similar to how the conflict between Irish Catholics and Protestants isn’t really religious, more just shorthand for idealogical differences between the two groups. Is that an apt comparison, or does religion play a more active role in this conflict?
Israel is a secular democracy with a minority political wing motivated by religious beliefs, so it’s fair to say Jewish belief is not at the core of the conflict for them. Muslim states such as Egypt, Jordan, and UAE have established peaceful relations with Israel, so it’s fair to say that Israel is willing to make peace with Muslim nations and Muslim nations are not motivated to religiously attack Israel.
That’s great until you encounter all the people condemning Israel, then committing hate crimes against the local Jews. The people that are pro Palestinians and cheer on Hamas. There are also plenty of people that condemn Hamas and support Israel in the same breath.
None of those people are the vocal minority. They’re the majority of supporters of these causes.
Zionism = the belief that the Jewish people have the right of self-determination in the form of the state of Israel in which their national aspirations
Anti-zionism = the belief that the Jewish people, uniquely among all the peoples of the world, have no right of self-determination or a state in which their national aspirations can be pursued.
Can you see why that’s antisemitic?
Israel is, besides all that, already established. Zionism was completed. It’s not going anywhere.
Anti-zionism = the belief that the Jewish people, uniquely among all the peoples of the world, have no right of self-determination or a state in which their national aspirations can be pursued.
How is that “unique?” I don’t think white nationalists or Christian nationalists have a right to their own state either. I don’t think Israel has the right to be the apartheid state it currently is.
Anti-zionism = the belief that the Jewish people, uniquely among all the peoples of the world, have no right of self-determination or a state in which their national aspirations can be pursued.
I don’t believe in rights at all. I believe the existence of nation states is an abhorration. but neither of those are why you are wrong.
antizionism is the belief that the Jewish people are part of a diaspora, and the creation of an Israeli state undermines that culture in addition to necessitating mass killing that is indistinguishable from genocide. antizionism simply opposes zionism, and makes no claims about denying rights to anyone.
The problem is that the term ‘Zionism’ has had scope creep.
Now it also includes a political movement in Israel that endorses the idea of Israel’s expansion and sees the Palestinian neighbors as occupying land to be.
So when many people say that they are “anti-Zionist” they aren’t necessarily saying that they don’t think Israel has a right to exist at all, but that they don’t think it has a right to have expanded and to effectively annex its neighbors (a 2023 theme that’s not very favorable to Israel with whom it shares the association). Or additionally that it doesn’t have a right to exist by committing war crimes and human rights violations to make that happen (another association with the same).
Some are saying that it doesn’t have a right to exist at all. And I agree in that instance it is pretty anti-Semetic. But Zionist expansion attitudes are also technically anti-Semetic given that both Israelis and Palestinians are Semetic populations, and both can trace their ancestry to the same exact ancestral indigenous Canaanite populations.
The problem is that telling which attitude of “anti-Zionism” is which just from the term “anti-Zionist” has become impossible because the term Zionism itself now means a spectrum of things.
