The problem is that actual antisemites jump into the debate and work to linguistically push legitimate criticism of Israel into real antisemitism. You can see it right here, all over Lemmy, and presumably this thread. It’s incredibly obvious, and it’s also incredibly obvious that those people want to short circuit this conversation by making the issue black and white.
That’s why many people are very hesitant to engage with this even if they do have real concerns over how Israel operates.
And on the other side of the coin, hard-right Israelis work to paint any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, regardless of legitimacy.
So on the one hand, you have antisemites using this as an opportunity to blame all the world’s ills on tHe (((gLoBALiStS))) (I really hope that came across as sarcastic enough), and on the other, you have ultraconservative Israelis using the first group to lump the people saying “please don’t do a genocide” in with them. And on top of that you also have Hamas doing the goddamn Goofy “and I’ll fuckin do it again” meme, along with a bunch of people in Palestine who are literally taught antisemitism and hatred in the classroom, while Russia, Iran, and the same goddamn Israelis painting everyone as antisemitic pour money into the group that would genocide Israel back in a heartbeat. And caught in the middle of this category 5 shit hurricane are a bunch of innocent people who just want to be treated like human beings with equal rights, and to be able to go to the goddamn grocery store without worrying about getting exploded by a piss rocket / laser-guided cluster bomb made by Lockheed Martin.
I’m so goddamn fucking sick and tired of everything with this. Literally the only “good guys” in this entire fucking 70-year conflict are the noncombatants on either side of the Gaza border wall trying to go about their day and whose entire lives are reduced to a casualty sheet and a propaganda blurb, while both sides just keeps fighting and killing because perverse incentives mean it’s the only way both Netanyahu and Hamas can cling to power, innocent life be damned.
Russia, Iran, and the same goddamn Israelis painting everyone as antisemitic pour money
This is an important thing that many people ignore or don’t know. Most wedge issues are stoked by groups with money on each side. Even if you think something is a moral issue, large issues have money behind them. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be contentious because everyone would support only one side.
Iran and Israel are regional political rivals. Neither one actually wants or is ready for a war, so they support proxies that do dirty work for them. Both countries are run by conservatives and animosity and fear help them with domestic politics. The political parties in power in Iran and Israel both benefit from Hamas being scary, and anti-Semitism existing in the world.
Eh, sure you have antisemites saying Israel’s actions make Jews evil and that’s bad. But most of the antisemites are saying Israel’s actions make Jews evil and that’s good. Because they’re evil, and they like fellow evil as long as they aren’t competing for resources. Or because they’re evil Jews who like being evil and want to use Jewishness as a shield. For example, Netanyahu is an evil antisemite who wants everyone to think Judaism is about doing genocide, so that he can call anyone who objects to genocide an antisemite. But of course, saying Judaism is genocide is the real antisemitism.
