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Comment by xyst | Hacker News Reader

Has anybody noticed that whenever the protests pop up. Major news outlets tend to spin them as some sort of haven for “anti-Semitism” or cite them as the “violent protests”.

I have yet to see organizations (at least on the ground, in major press releases) cite anything that represents hate against the Jewish population. Only rhetoric I have heard is those protesting the horrific actions of the Israeli government/military and the US governments enabling of those actions.

Horrific actions by the Israeli government so far (at least since the Hamas raid): indiscriminate bombing in Gaza, bombing of hospitals, many civilians impacted and from what I gather most are underage children.

Some American-Israelis at these protests (some even young adults in college) keep repeating the rhetoric by the media as well. Have seen some students say these protests are rampant with anti-Semitic rants and that these protests “want to get rid of them [Jewish students]”

Again, I have been to a few of these protests (especially the ones in TX) and have yet to see anything of this sort. I have unfortunately seen people sitting on lawns not resisting law enforcement get their faces smashed into the ground by state troopers.

Is the Israeli political machine just very effective? Or am I the delusional one ignoring the obvious?

If it’s the latter, please point me to evidence of pro-Palestine organizations supporting the violent actions of Hamas terrorists. I don’t want to see individuals that have no visible ties spouting bullshit. There should be a press release by the orgs or leaders of these orgs stating this as such.

So far I have come up empty as far as credible sources.

View on HN

It seems 99% of the protesters are there because of the 13-to-25,000 dead children and women, but the 1% that condone Hamas’s October attack make the news.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/unicef-says-over-1...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/1/more-than-25000-wome...

the Israeli PR and propaganda machine is very effective. But I think some of the more extreme behavior (as you point out, very quickly citing anti-semitism) is starting to be recognized, and the overton window is shifting towards more skepticism of israeli claims.

I suspect some of the most virulent statements being made by protesters are being made by what I call the professional protestor class- people who like to show up at protests and cause problems (my friend called them the "fuck shit up contingent") for fun.

>the Israeli PR and propaganda machine is very effective.

Vastly less effective than the competing one, IMO.

There are people that still, to this day, think that Al-Ahli hospital was bombed by Israel and that hundreds of people were killed. It seems to be a widespread belief that Israel is primarily European-descended wheras in fact more than half of Israeli jews are Mizrahi - they were refugees from places like Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco. There are people that shout about globalizing the intifada without having any idea what those words mean.

Is there any evidence of the opposite, that it was bombed by Hamas, or do you simply choose the narrative that suits you?

Yes, actually. Lots of it, which has been in the open for more than 6 months. Thank you for demonstrating my point so clearly.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/26/gaza-findings-october-17...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/briefing/gaza-hospital-ex...

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-hos...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/10/24/...

I'd also like to point out that the online narrative in the first 24 hours was that the hospital was "destroyed" with "500 dead" but the pictures we eventually got showed a 6 inch deep dent in the parking lot about 2 feet across and a half dozen burnt cars, plus some blown out windows and shingles. Even setting aside attribution entirely, nearly every other aspect of what was initially reported was demonstratively false or implausible within a matter of hours.

Behold, the "destroyed" hospital where "471" people died, the day after the explosion

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b86e8d6d4133d481c4877d845a149...

Notably, the retractions and actual evidence never went as viral as the unsubstantiated claims.

A lot of people are spreading a false equivalence between being antisemitic and protesting the slaughter of civilians and children.

Does that count?

This is very true.

Still, I’m terribly disappointed how reticent that side is to strongly condemn Hamas and 10/7.

Their message is not clean.

The Onion really isn't satire.

https://www.theonion.com/dying-gazans-criticized-for-not-usi...

Israel doesn't slaughter civilians. In fact, asymmetric tactics and terror attacks against civilians is constantly perpetrated by hamas (as evidenced on 10/7)

Look up settlement activities, with armed settlers activity removing family often with the blessing of the IDF.

> Israel doesn't slaughter civilians

It’s hard to square this statement against the 13-to-25,000 estimated (Assoc Press vs Al Jazeera) dead women and children in the last 6 months though. Just objectively speaking, that is a shocking number of civilian deaths even at the low end.

What? No, it's quite easy to 'square' it actually. Civilian casualties are inevitable when hamas embeds itself into the civilian populace and forces them to stay in the positions they operate from.

Did you have similar outrage when the Russian air force was dropping 1000lb dumb bombs on similarly densely populated cities in Syria from 2015-2017? I guarantee you a lot more civilians died needlessly in places like aleppo and palmyra than Israel has ever 'slaughtered'.

There are confirmed accounts from inside the Israeli army that they select their targets algorithmically without confirmation, wait for their target to enter a residential building, and then bomb the building, accepting up to tens of civilian collateral damage to kill one "suspected Hamas operative".

Remember that Hamas operates most government functions within Gaza, so anyone seen doing organizing work to help Palestinians survive could be categorized as a "Hamas operative" by the IDF.

Over 34000 dead Palestinians, most of whom were women and children, including in the west bank where Hamas doesn't operate disagree with you. Also they're starving Palestinians, and preventing aid from entering, which would be used by starving malnourished children and critically injured people (including children too).

https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/

Does this qualify?

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/ucb-police-seek-...

"The five people were part of a group of about 200 protesters, who on Feb. 26 broke down the door of Zellerbach Playhouse and smashed a window to prevent Israeli lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat from addressing a group of Jewish students. Danielle Sobkin, co-president of Bears for Israel, one of the campus groups who invited Bar-Yoshafat, said after the protest that members of the mob grabbed a student trying to attend the event, called him a “dirty Jew” and spat on him."

5 hateful racist people in a group of 200. That’s not unusual.

5 violent people out of 200 is very unusual. In fact violence in general is quite unusual and isn't widely tolerated, most violent people end up in jail.

"If you're at a rally with Nazi chants and the folks with those chants are not ejected, you're at a Nazi rally."

5 people acting in mob mentality doesn’t exactly fit the bill of a whole organization sponsoring the hate crime. Seems more like smooth brain assholes that want to fuck it up for everyone. Which honestly every protest has at least a few.

Are there are any orgs in UC Berkeley supporting these hateful actions? Are any of the 5 people leaders of the student orgs? Or local orgs in the area? So many unanswered questions. Too much speculation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zazcVU_rNyQ (NSFW: Language)

Mob mentality really brings out the worst in us.

Still seems like mini groups of assholes lashing out on whoever with reckless abandon.

The dog whistles were definitely fucked up.

Although, what’s the deal with “Zionism”? Seems like the exact opposite of the extreme pro-Palestinian groups (ie, PLFP).

The loudest ones in these videos tend to be associated with either extreme and polar opposites. But I don’t believe most Jewish and Palestinian people would fall into either of these groups.

Just as the far right and far left in USA get all the attention on the news networks, social media, vods, your uncle that death scrolls on FB too long. In reality that doesn’t represent the true make up of America.

This is how it always seems to go. A huge segment of Americans still refer to the George Floyd protests as "George Floyd Riots" that "burned down" cities. It's, obviously, a ridiculous characterization of an overwhelmingly peaceful nation-wide set of protests.

The Floyd riots did lead to several deaths and billions of dollars in damage, documentation of that is an internet search away. Completely different from the current round of protests against Israeli brutality (which, unlike "systemic racism", is actually real)

> which, unlike "systemic racism", is actually real

If you truly think the concept of systemic racism does not exist, your warped perspective is probably beyond saving. The term itself dates back to the 60s and has a long history of academic and real-world relevance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism

With where political discourse in developed nations has gotten, I really shouldn't be surprised, but I'm still honestly a bit shocked that somebody with access to a computer and presumably an education compatible with working in technology and posting on HN actually doubts that systemic racism exists in a country that has centuries of slavery in its founding history and numerous statistically proven cases of disproportionate policing of certain races of individuals.

What an asinine comment! I don't think being this willfully ignorant is helping your cause here

> The term itself dates back to the 60s

Systemic racism did exist in the 60s, of course. (One good empirical test: during the era of Jim Crow, many black people tried to pass as white so as to gain access to the opportunities that were denied to black people. Does this still happen today, or is the reverse more likely?)

> statistically proven cases of disproportionate policing of certain races of individuals

Not when you look at the actual data: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1903856116

(Yes, the article is retracted. If you read the correction and rectraction, you will see that the authors stand by their results, and retracted only due to political pressure/politically incorrect people citing the study.)

Fine, I'll bite. Here's the retraction statement, which I read in full. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014148117

Some key quotes (emphasis added via italics)

> Despite this correction, our work has continued to be cited as providing support for the idea that there are no racial biases in fatal shootings, or policing in general. To be clear, our work does not speak to these issues and should not be used to support such statements. We take full responsibility for not being careful enough with the inferences made in our original report, as this directly led to the misunderstanding of our research.

> While our data and statistical approach were appropriate for investigating whether officer characteristics are related to the race of civilians fatally shot by police, they are inadequate to address racial disparities in the probability of being shot. Given these issues and the continued use of our work in the public debate on this topic, we have decided to retract the article.

Here's a random hit I found on Google in less than 30 seconds: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/annual-report-shows-syst.... Note that this is PBS, not CNN or MSNBC or other "liberal" media sources.

Here's two recent-ish studies from Harvard, which were also published: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/population-development/2019/11/...

Care to refute these, or do you just only believe data you've (mis-?)interpreted to match your existing world view?

It seems to me that, at a minimum, your assertion that "systemic racism doesn't exist" is a controversial one in conflict with the retraction statement above from that papers' authors, and by the general public at large. I also find it interesting that you've moved the goal post from "doesn't exist" to "doesn't exist anymore", and seem to have found one study to support your claim, which has been retracted and -- by the authors' own admission, is insufficient evidence for the claim you're asserting from their study.

I really don't agree with your assessment or disingenuous interpretation of the data on this issue. If you have any sort of scientific reason to convince me otherwise beyond "political correctness bad. you gotta read between the lines!", I'm all ears.

> Here's a random hit I found on Google in less than 30 seconds: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/annual-report-shows-syst...

> The index shows not only that median household income for Black people, at $43,862, is 37 precent less than that of white people, at $69,823. Black people also are less likely to benefit from home ownership, the engine of generational wealth in America. Census data shows Black couples are more than twice as likely as whites to be denied a mortgage or a home improvement loan, which leads to just 59 percent of the median home equity white households have, and just 13 percent of their wealth.

These numbers just show that racial disparities exist. Which they obviously do! But disparities are not proof of discrimination, there are many other potential causes.

> Here's two recent-ish studies from Harvard, which were also published: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/population-development/2019/11/...

The two studies measured reported discrimination. Which is not proof of actual systemic discrimination.

Those "overwhelmingly peaceful" protests caused an estimated $1-2B in property damage, making them the most destructive protests (from an insurance perspective) in the last 50 years: https://www.axios.com/2020/09/16/riots-cost-property-damage

"fiery but mostly peaceful"

Don’t you find it weird that one of these “riots” locations is “across 20 states”, and the remainder have an actual… y’know, single location? Why are we comparing things this way to exaggerate damages and undermine the overwhelming majority of people peacefully protesting?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/05/nearly-all-bla...

Add up all the riots of 1965 - 1968 and it is still less damage than 2020. That's not an exaggeration, it is what the numbers say.

If peaceful protestors find that fact undermining, they should take it up with the violent protestors who caused all this damage, rather than shooting the messenger.

There are 8. Vs 20 states. These are not comparable in scale whatsoever.

George Floyd Riots overwhelming peaceful? Not if we stick with facts.

"arson, vandalism, and looting that occurred between May 26 and June 8 caused approximately $1–2 billion in insured damages nationally, the highest recorded damage from civil disorder in U.S. history, and surpassing the record set during the 1992 Los Angeles riots"

You’re comparing a nationwide set of protests against a single city. Is this number adjusted for inflation? Do you have any idea who caused this damage?

I was arrested in Brooklyn during the protests. I was slammed into the glass window of the Junior’s cheesecake in downtown Brooklyn by several police officers, cracking the window. Who do you figure was blamed for that damage?

We’re watching this scenario repeat right now. Some doofus students at Columbia broke a window, and the media’s losing its mind decrying the “violence”. Meanwhile, the NYPD is coming to the building with bulldozers, tanks, sledgehammers, and tear gas.

(I literally did nothing to get arrested. The charges were dropped before my court case. Shocker)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/05/nearly-all-bla...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/nyregion/college-protests...

A fairly credible source discussing just this question. A pretty blatant example is a linked video of protestors intimidating three Jewish students while claiming that they are “zionists” without any evidence except the students’ Jewishness.

Were these protestors the ones that were arrested holding a Passover seder in New York?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/24/not-like-other...

Or were these student protestors at Columbia?

https://zeteo.com/p/i-am-a-jewish-student-at-columbia

> If it’s the latter, please point me to evidence of pro-Palestine organizations supporting the violent actions of Hamas terrorists. I don’t want to see individuals that have no visible ties spouting bullshit. There should be a press release by the orgs or leaders of these orgs stating this as such.

The question is whether this is an unreasonably strong standard. Even Hamas themselves have not issued a clear official statement in support of their actions; their spokespeople variably claim that they did not commit any atrocities on October 7, or that the atrocities against civilians were collateral damage in a legitimate military operation.

These protests aren't about Hamas though. There are other protests about that, and surely those are valid. These protests are about Israel's campaign of what UN officials say is genocide. Most attempts to change the subject to Hamas are bad faith attempts to protect Israel from culpability.

UN officials don't say it's genocide and anyways they're not the arbiters of that claim. Changing the subject to Hamas is not bad faith. Hamas is the ruler of Gaza, was voted into power, and enjoys support of most Palestinians. It's impossible for Israel to "separate" its war on Hamas from the population within it resides. The ignoring of Hamas by the anti-Israel crowd is what's bad faith.

Do you separate the Russians from Putin? Should we boycott Ukraine from attacking Russians and not fighting directly with Putin? Do you have any other realistic examples that support your idea that somehow we can ignore the topic of Hamas here? Are the anti-Israel protesters being clear about their stance on Hamas and terrorism?

> Hamas is the ruler of Gaza, was voted into power, and enjoys support of most Palestinians.

Hamas was voted in 18 years ago with less than 45% of the vote on a platform of clean government and keeping peace with Israel based on the 1967 borders.

Hamas today is not the Hamas that was voted in, very few Palestinians alive today voted for them.

Re: your last point, the median age is around 18 so half the population wasn’t even born the last time there was an election. I cannot imagine what it must be like growing up with so little control over your life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_State_of_P...

Hamas today is exactly the same Hamas that was voted in. If elections were to happen again, Hamas would still get voted in, that's why they haven't happened.

That's the reality which anti-Israelis are determined to ignore.

% of the popular vote doesn't matter. US presidents also get voted with less than 50% of the popular vote.

Their platform isn't and never was peace within the 1967 borders. Again that's the reality anti-Israelis are determined to ignore.

> If elections were to happen again, Hamas would still get voted in, that's why they haven't happened.

If Hamas believed they would win, wouldn't they be more inclined to hold elections in the territory they control?

Netanyahu and his administration actively worked to bolster Hamas and keep them in power: https://original.antiwar.com/connor_freeman/2023/10/26/netan...

So yes, let's go after all supporters of terrorism!

It is more nuanced than this. Netanyahu did take a divide and conquer strategy with Hamas and the PA. That much is true. But the Palestinians have agency here and we shouldn't take that away from them. I don't think saying "actively worked to bolster" is that accurate. It was along the lines of better the devil we know . Like many things in this story, it doesn't yield itself to simplistic observations. I don't have a lot of love for Netanyahu but he's certainly not a supporter of Hamas terrorism.

> It was along the lines of better the devil we know

Israel also "knew" the PA, but worked to marginalize them anyway.

Israelis freely and democratically elected Satanyahu (among other racist and genocidal maniacs who call for the genocide and destruction of all of Palestine), who is literally their longest serving PM, who literally brags about making any efforts about a Palestinian state fail, while Hamas was elected once 18 years ago and half of the population today weren't even alive then.

The reason the Palestinians don't have elections is that Hamas would get voted for again. It enjoys popular support. This 18 year ago and half the population thing is bullshit. Half the population doesn't get to vote anyways when half the population is under 18. That's how democracy works.

On the Israeli side the reason Netanyahu and most Israelis object to a Palestinian state is that it's clearly just going to become a base for launching attacks on Israel, just like Gaza. Palestinians don't want a two state solution, they want to destroy Israel. They say it explicitly in every survey. Go watch videos on YouTube of Palestinians in the west bank interviewed about this question prior to Oct 7th.

> Palestinians don't want a two state solution

This is a pretty generalizing statement about a whole nation that surely has varying opinions on the subject. I would even say a bit racist and dehumanizing.

Can you share the survey’s you claim exists which demonstrates this?

I think the parent meant Palestinian leadership. There were two offers for a Palestinian state which included east Jerusalem as the capitol. One by Barak rejected by Arafat and the other by Olmert rejected by Mahazen.

There were undoubtedly flaws in both offers. But that's how countries start. You form something, build trust and negotiate to improve conditions. Unfortunately, Palestinians have always suffered from bad leadership that keeps dragging them to conflict with Israel. They keep losing these conflicts and their situation in the aftermath is always worse. Unfortunately, this is no exception.

> Half the population doesn't get to vote anyways when half the population is under 18. That's how democracy works.

But the entire population gets to be blown up anyways by 2000-pound bombs. That's how mass murder works.

I’m not sure what you mean by “bad faith” here. I think most defenders of Israel are pretty forthright about their belief that UN officials are wrong and Hamas is solely responsible for the suffering in Gaza. That doesn’t mean you have to agree - I personally am skeptical that trying to parse out who’s most responsible or most at fault makes sense - but most of the opponents you’re seeing genuinely feel that protests against Israel are protecting Hamas from culpability. (International relations in a violent region are hard!)

> Has anybody noticed that whenever the protests pop up. Major news outlets tend to spin them as some sort of haven for “anti-Semitism” or cite them as the “violent protests”.

Yes. The reason for this is that people who oppose the protests, and effectively support what officials at the UN are calling an ongoing genocide, cannot win any argument on its merits. So the only thing they can do is paint the protesters as antisemitic, even though many protesters are Jewish. It's pathetic but effective, for now.

Just one example:

"Eby’s remarks on the encampment came after he and other politicians denounced an earlier demonstration in Vancouver where protesters chanted “long live Oct. 7,” praising that day’s attacks by Hamas on Israel."

https://www.cheknews.ca/eby-deplores-most-hateful-speech-pra...

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/group-banned-in-germany-get...

I think Israel's PR machine is very ineffective. It's swamped by anti-Israeli PR. E.g. where do you get "bombing of hospitals"? How many hospitals in Gaza were bombed? Which hospitals specifically are they, what were the circumstances, what damage did they sustain?

> bombing of hospitals

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/01/middleeast/gaza-hosp...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/4/18/satellite-...

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/jordan-field-hospital-i...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/18/bloodbath-israel-k...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/world/middleeast/gaza-isr...

https://www.who.int/news/item/06-04-2024-six-months-of-war-l...

I briefly scanned through the links but they conflate "damaged", "crater near hospital close enough for fragments to hit hospital" and other unknowns.

the WHO link which we can maybe take as authoritative does not refer to any bombed hospital. We all know there was a huge battle in Al Shifa where the IDF killed an arrested hundreds of Hamas operatives (and has published videos from their interrogations and videos from the battles going on inside the hospital).

"A field hospital in the embattled Gaza Strip run by neighboring Jordan reportedly can no longer provide health care due to Israeli attacks and the disruption of access roads.

The hospital in Gaza is out of service due to damage inflicted by Israeli attacks, as well as Israeli bombing of surrounding areas and the disruption of access roads, as reported on Jordan's official television channel on Saturday."

from one of the articles does not mention the actual hospital was bombed. it says "damage due to attacks" (unclear) and "bombing of the surrounding areas" (which is not bombing a hospital).

From CNN's investigation (first link):

> Satellite imagery showed craters near 11 of the hospitals were consistent with those left behind by 2,000-pound bombs. The munitions were dropped near enough for the hospitals to be within the lethal fragmentation radius, which is up to 365 meters (about 1,198 feet).

> Fourteen hospitals were directly hit. Several, including Al-Shifa and Al-Quds, appeared to have been attacked by Israel.

In the Vancouver demonstration referenced by “Eby”, I see the chants were from a group called “ Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).”

Appears to be a known terrorist organization. Is this organization affiliated with ALL or most of the college campus organizers we see across the USA?

Something I’ll have to ask and bring up. Something smells odd.

In the second article, it references a group or network called “ Samidoun Prisoners Solidarity Network” which again appears to have links to PFLP. Maybe the fundraising and propaganda machine arm.

All sources indicate both orgs with ties to past violence but does that mean that these 2 orgs are tied to every college campus student org as well?

Nothing is quite clear here. Not enough information. Need some real journalists to clear the air.

I agree. These orgs and people are disgusting. But the gatherings and protests I have been to have not chanted anything of this sort. Not even a dog whistle as mentioned in some comments.

I’ll have to do more digging though. Thanks for providing some links though

I would have no problem with protests that clearly decouple themselves from the militant groups and clearly call for peace for everyone (ideally with some idea of how we actually get there). I would join those. My problem is I'm not seeing the decoupling and I'm not seeing calls for peace. I'm seeing calls to punish Israelis (from burn down Tel Aviv to divestment and boycott) which in my opinion does not help peace at all and definitely a militant tone associated with that.

Obviously not all protesters are anti-semitic but you must be willfully ignorant to honestly believe that none of them are. For example, here are some signs that have been found in protests (you can find examples on google):

- "from the river to the sea" -> implies the destruction of Israel

- "keep the world clean" -> seems to imply some sort of "cleansing" of Jews

- "by any means necessary" -> seems to condone violence against Jews

I'm sure you can find other examples very easily.

I will admit that I didn't see anything overtly anti-semitic from the Google protesters specifically. Of course, it seems they were fired for violating workplace rules, not their actual viewpoint.

> "from the river to the sea" -> implies the destruction of Israel

"From the river to the sea" has been used to mean many things. At one point it was a Zionist slogan. Hamas uses it to imply horrible things, and maybe it's not the smartest move for protesters to use the same phrase, but that doesn't mean their intentions are nefarious, no more than Hindus using the swastika makes them Nazi

It’s obviously being used in a very specific way. Your analogy is silly.

Is someone actually claiming that none of them are anti-semitic?

The pro-Hamas antisemites are in the tiny majority of the protesters.

You can read this into anything.

> - "from the river to the sea" -> implies the destruction of Israel

The Israeli vs. Palestinian conflict is, for the Palestinians, about property rights. And both sides claim the full area between the Jordan river to the Sea. Plenty of groups say the same thing, whether it's the Chinese view on Taiwan ("one China!") or the ISIS view on the Middle East (and half of Europe and Asia..) being "one Ummah" and nobody calls it racist.

The funny part with that is that it's literally just a pun on the original Israeli Likud party slogan of "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty"[0]. The other day Netanyahu said the same thing with "West of the Jordan river."[1] Is that whatever the Palestinian equivalent of antisemitism is?

> - "keep the world clean" -> seems to imply some sort of "cleansing" of Jews

All the examples I've seen (as stupid as the phrase is, people seem to copy it as if it's witty) have included the Israeli flag. There are plenty of people that roast Turks and Turkey, but the addition of the crescent moon on their flag doesn't turn into a roast on all of Islam.

Israel has intentionally conflated being anti-Jewish with being anti-Israeli so that you can't target the latter, but somehow also rides the wave of Israeli actions can't be attributed to Jews in general. It's a strange take but if anything has led to a rise in actual antisemitism (as in the anti-Jewish variety) it has been that intentional muddying of the waters.

This also isn't to take away from your main point that there is plenty of real antisemitism out there. I'm sure there is, and it's probably underreported if anything. But the majority of the examples given by pro-Israeli groups (chosen only because they're most visible) are not it.

[0] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/original-party-platform...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgdFOIiRpr0

I wouldn’t say it’s “Israel” doing this, it’s a belief shared by many (of course not all!) Jews. When your entire ethnic group has only a single tiny country in the entire world that it can call home you tend to take threats against it very seriously. Especially since most Jews in Israel are from the Middle East and if Israel didn’t exist they would literally have no other country in the region they could live in.

> When your entire ethnic group has only a single tiny country in the entire world that it can call home

Are you implying that most of the Jews don't call where they live home?

I think this is actually a kind of narrative that actual anti-semite spread about jews in their home countries.

Most of Jews live outside Israel if you don't know that [1]

And no, most jews in Israel are not from Middle East. They are prominently Europeans [2]. And the arab jews lived in their countries for centuries before the zionist project kicked out and poisoned the whole region against them. They had troubles we have to admit but there is a reason why most of them actually migrate to US, Canada and Europe and not Israel.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_population_by_country

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel

Where in the link [2] does it say that most Israeli Jews are of European decent? Just over half are not Ashkenazi (mostly Jews from the Middle East, Western and central Asia and Ethiopia). Additionally about 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinian. Less than 40% of the total population are Ashkenazi.

The comment I was replying to talked about Jewish in israel. They claimed that most of Jews in israel are from Middle East which is wrong and the link shows that. See the table about parental ancestors.

I am talking about Jews in Israel. They are a bit more than half Mizrahi/Sephardi/Beta-Israel (not European) and a bit less than half Ashkenazi (European).

The vast majority of Sephardi and Mezrahi in Israel are from what are now muslim countries in the Middle East. Together with 20% of the population that are Muslim or Christian Palestinians people of middle-eastern descent comprise well over 50% of the population (~60%).

I went digging around for numbers in these wikipedia articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel#Jews

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Jews#Population

These articles agree that Jews of European ancestry comprise around 44.2% vs 44.9% of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) ancestry. The study that gave these numbers admitted on having methodological limitations, so it may be undercounting MENA ancestry.

Another interesting statistic is the paternal ancestral origin of Israeli Jews, with 37% having Israeli paternal origin, 34.6% European, American or Oceanic, and only 27.9% having Asian or African. So at least for the last couple of generations, a plurality of immigrants of of European descent.

I’m sorry, but I’m not finding the well over 50% statistic.

What is also interesting to me is the lack of official statistics from the Israeli government about this ethnic brake down, especially since they make distinctions between Jews and Arabs, which kind of implies—at least to my ears—Arab Jews should not exist. To my ears Israeli culture fancies it self as European (being a member of UEFA, partaking in Eurovision, etc.).

It really looks to me like Israel has made an effort and succeeded in stripping Middle Eastern Jews of their identity[1]. A major tell sign is how Jews of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry speak Hebrew, not Arabic, despite the latter both being a minority language spoken in Israel, and despite the latter being the language of their ancestors. Colonizers often do stunts like these when absorbing the colonized population into their own culture.

1: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/9/20/invention-of-th...

If 44.9% (or more) of Israeli Jews are of Middle Eastern descent, and 20% of Israel’s entire population are Palestinian Arabs (I.e. also of Middle Eastern descent) then more than 50% of the entire population of the country (Jews + non-Jews) are of Middle Eastern descent.

And the biggest ethnic grouping (if you choose to group them that way, as all such groupings are somewhat arbitrary) are Middle Eastern Jews.

And I’m sorry but it just sounds like you’ve never lived in Israel or even visited for an extended period of time. Aside from the relatively recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union (starting from the 90s) Jews of all backgrounds speak primarily Hebrew, whether Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, or whatever. Aside from some ultra orthodox you will also not find anyone under 80 speaking Yiddish.

I see, however I was under the impression that Jews in Arabic countries (including Palestine) spoke primarily Arabic, and it was only after they migrated (or were otherwise absorbed into) Israel when they converted to Hebrew. And that the modern Hebrew language was a Zionist effort (a European colonial enterprise) to convert all immigrants to Israel to Hebrew speakers. So even though today most Israeli Jews speak Hebrew, the only reason for that is the colonial prospects of European settlers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Arabic_dialects#Present_...

It is hard to understand the point you're trying to make here. Israeli Jewish people of Iraqi origin are MENA people, not "colonial Europeans". I don't know that trying to sort out whether Hebrew is European or not is an especially productive enterprise.

Israeli Jewish people of Iraqi origin are MENA people, not "colonial Europeans."

I'd recommend you also start reading more carefully, please.

This (the idea that "MENA are European") is very clearly not what runarberg is saying. Nor are they even remotely suggesting that "Hebrew is European".

You're responding to a comment that opens up "it is hard to understand what point you're making". You can tell me what the point he's making is, if you're confident in it.

In turn, I'll be more careful about using quotation marks. That's an HN tic that I sometimes forget.

While I have both of your attention --- you all get that this is the same group of like 4-6 people talking to themselves, over and over, right? On HN, a 2-day-old threat is necrotic. As I've said elsewhere, I only really have two angles on this issue: (1) that Israelis aren't European and Gazans aren't Hamas, and (2) that none of this is ever going to get settled on HN.

The thing that sparked my interest here is a sidenote in one of the cited Wikipedia articles:

> Not all Jews immigrating to Israel from European countries are of Ashkenazi origin (the majority of French Jews are of Sephardic, and some Jews from the Asian Republics of the USSR are Mizrahi), and the Israeli government does not distinguish between Jewish communities in its census. [1]

That is how the Israeli government doesn’t track European vs. MENA ethnicity, instead leaving it up to studies to guess. And it took me on a rabbit hole of trying to figure out why that is. It feels very odd to separate between Arabs and Jews, but not allow Jews to identify as Arab-Jew in the population statistics.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Jews

What I’m trying to argue is that Israelis of middle east and north African ancestry are also victims of European colonization. That their cultural identity was erased and absorbed into the dominant European identity.

The introduction of Modern Hebrew was unmistakably a Zionist enterprise (which it self is a breed of European colonialism). As I’m reading through the linked sources in the Wikipedia article I cited I see how much of a cultural pressure Arabic speaking immigrants were put into speaking Hebrew, not Arabic, in public. As if their language (and by extension their cultural identity) was dirty somehow:

> “I wanted people to speak Hebrew,” she said. “Kids who had Yiddish in their house felt the same. It was more so for those of us coming from the Islamic world, since Arabic was identified as the language of the enemy.” [1]

Now Yiddish speaker probably experienced something similar, but at least they had other aspects of their culture accepted:

> But the builders of the Israeli state faced a major ideological challenge with the Jewish population of the Middle East, who were encouraged to mass migrate to Palestine and used as cheap labour to build Zionist settlements. What the European colonisers found particularly “disturbing” about the Mizrahi Jews was their “Arab character”.

> As Israel’s first female prime minister, Golda Meir, declared: “Every loyal Jew must speak Yiddish, for he who does not know Yiddish is not a Jew.”

> That is, the only true Jewish identity was the one that the Ashkenazi elite had brought from Europe; the Jewishness of the Mizrahim (or Sephardim) was “impure”. Because of that, they were deemed susceptible to “Arab influence” and their loyalty questioned. Action had to be taken swiftly to control this “suspect” Jewish community which soon became half of the Israeli population. [2]

This kind of reminds me of modern day California, how many Latin American immigrants (first and second generation) don’t feel comfortable speaking Spanish in public, instead speaking the language of the dominant culture, and having a part of their cultural identity erased as a result.

1: https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/recovering-judeo-ar...

2: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/3/21/singing-in-euro...

I took this to #judaism on a Slack I'm on (I'm not Jewish; I'm Irish/Slavic Catholic) and got an earful about how complex the history is here:

* The people of the Old Yishuv spoke Yiddish and Ladino, European languages, as well as Israeli Arabic; European language influence long predates Zionism.

* The European character you're imputing to Modern Hebrew is its pronunciation, but Hebrew itself is the common character of all those languages, Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Arabic.

* Jewish people in the Middle Eastern diaspora generally spoke Hebrew-inflected dialects of the regional languages (as you noted with the Judeo-Arabic page).

* Israel is a melting pot of influences from the Jewish diaspora; for instance, Morrocan Jewish people determined the way Passover is celebrated (with Mimouna). Everything cuts in every direction.

I'm not doing all this stuff justice (in case anyone from that Slack is reading this comment); just to say, all of this stuff is super complicated.

What I'd like to understand better is: the comment you were responding to was defending the proposition that significant numbers (a plurality, I think?) of Israelis are indigenous MENA people. I get that there was probably cultural pressure to adopt Hebrew, and that modern Hebrew is associated with the Zionist cause. The Mizrahim generally arrived in Israel after the Nakba (in a series of counter-Nakbas), and were poorer, more rural, and less privileged than the Israelis who met them there. Sure, that rings true.

But what difference does that make to the point the parent commenter was making? I'm just trying to understand the argument.

(This I guess is a second reason I pop up on these threads: to get an excuse to get my head blown off with historical and linguistic facts from friends on Slacks).

I actually don’t think this is related. I entered this thread by misunderstanding my parent and getting the numbers wrong. Then I stated:

> What is also interesting to me is the lack of official statistics from the Israeli government about this ethnic brake down.

I saw this in one of the cited Wikipedia article (and my anti-colonial bells started ringing) which brought me down this rabbit hole (see other post).

Gotcha. This is like 80% me nerding out at this point.

Aside from the relatively recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union (starting from the 90s) Jews of all backgrounds speak primarily Hebrew.

It sounds like you’ve never ...

You must not be reading the post above yours.

Because very clearly, the commenter wasn't saying that the Mizrahi don't currently speak Hebrew (some 60-70 years post-migration). Rather they were referring to loss of identity, de-facto forced assimilation and other unhappy circumstances they faced as a consequence of that migration.

You may not like where they're going with the "colonial" interpretation, and other ideological implications they're drawing on top of this (e.g. the erasure of Judeo-Arabic identity).

But that's no reason to start putting words into their mouth, and making them out to say something that they're plainly not.

But the Yiddish speaking culture of Ashkenazi Jews was also erased. At the founding of Israel the ideology was "we're all Israelis now, so speak Hebrew and forget your experience in the diaspora (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golah). It was certainly harsh and from modern perspective wrong but it applied to everyone, not just Mizrahi Jews. My grandparents had their last name "Hebrew-ised" and spoke Hebrew at home rather than their native Romanian/Ukranian/Russian.

An excellent point + thanks for the golah/galut reference. I certainly didn't mean to imply that forced assimilation was an issue solely for the Mizrahi.

I'm necroposting here, but this has been stuck in my head for a week:

Israel participates in Eurovision because it's a member of the EBU. Several Arab states are also members of the EBU, including neighbor states Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt, along with Libya and Morocco (which has in fact participated). The Arab states are boycotting Eurovision because of Israel's participation.

It seems pretty clear that whatever other factors you want to weigh here, you can't judge Israel's Europeanness by its inclusion in Eurovision.

The UEFA story is roughly the same, just slightly worse and Israel did not end up there by choice or some self-perception of European-ness.

I just used those of examples of how much Israel fancies it self as a European culture. There are more examples, which together makes a convincing argument that Israel is way more a European culture than it is Middle Eastern.

> Israel participates in Eurovision because it's a member of the EBU

No, that is not the reason, being a member of EBU is neither a necessity nor sufficient reason for entry. Morocco is the only non-European EBU member to ever participate, they did it once in 1980, came in second to last (above Finland) with Italy the only country to give them points. They have not participated since probably because of poor cultural fit.

On the flip side, Australia has participated multiple times without being an EBU member. The only reason Australia participates is because of the shared European culture.

> The Arab states are boycotting Eurovision because of Israel's participation.

The Arab states have not participated even in the years which Israel is not competing, which was the case in 1980. Turkey has participated multiple times along side Israel, even in 2011 a year after the Gaza flotilla raid.

That said the Arab states may be boycotting because of Israel’s participation, but that does not disproof the fact that Israel participates because it fancies it self as European.

> The UEFA story is roughly the same

Perhaps, but Israel applied to and were granted memberships to the UEFA based on their European cultural identity. Greenland was not given the same break and had to apply to CONCACAF (but Kazakhstan was; curiously). When South Africa was kicked out of CAF they did not ask to join UEFA or OFC, instead had to wait until they ended Apartheid and then rejoin CAF.

Israel is way more a European culture than it is Middle Eastern.

This really is not a productive line of thinking, you know. As the Palestinians keep saying -- it make no difference to them where the settlers came from, or what their culture is.

If anything it seems to indicate an unusual fixation on (what you perceive as) the essential traits of Israelis. Which in turn feeds into the right-wing propaganda that all serious criticism of Israeli policy and/or Zionism is fundamentally dishonest and driven by you-know-what. It's like candy to them, in fact.

The only reason Australia participates is because of the shared European culture.

Then start a campaign to have Australia booted out of Eurovision. Go ahead and shout down their performers every time they take the stage, whatever you gotta do. But if that's the only substantive point you have against Israel's participation -- it's an awfully weak one. And again, suggests a weird and lopsided fixation with the topic.

[Morocco has] not participated since probably because of poor cultural fit.

Their music is infinitely better than almost anything that makes it to the perennial Schlockfest that is Eurovision, for starters. But we digress here.

I agree, this is a weird fixation, I regret going down this rabbit hole. I’m personally a little obsessed with European colonialism, and I don’t think people give European colonialism enough credit for the horrors it caused. It really ought to be like slavery is to the US, but rather it is something people think of as inevitable and some people are even proud of.

That said, I don’t care if Australia participates in Eurovision, even though it is yucky to think of it being a product of European settler colonialism (plus their songs usually suck), the current day Australian culture and politics is kind of divorced from that history of horrors now. I do want Israel booted of Eurovision though, not because they are not European enough for me, but because they engage in gross human rights violations. A country doing that has no business participating in international cultural events.

> Their music is infinitely better than almost anything that makes it the perennial Schlockfest that is Eurovision

Ohh, I deffinetly agree. Eurovision would benefit tremendously if Morocco would participate. I advocated for Bashar Murad this year actually (but couldn’t vote since I don’t live in Iceland any more). Even Greenland could help make Eurovision infinity better, regrettably Eurovision is too much of a colonialfest to ever allow Greenland to participate except via Denmark or Iceland.

I did not watch Eurovision this year—the first time in my life—because of Israel’s participation. Despite the songs usually being very bad, I find the whole show to be enjoyable, ironically one of my favorite songs is Israel’s 1987 song. This year however, there was no joy to be found. And it pains me to say it, but I don’t think I will watch Eurovision ever again unless they start taking a firm stance against human rights abuses of participating countries.

It's worse, for sure. For example, when it comes to clubs in illegal settlements by Israel, UEFA and FIFA are not enforcing their own rules : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/25/fifa-kick-isra....

Israel was also allowed to participate in Eurovision a couple of times while KAN was violating EBU rules about publicly funded news broadcasting.

I’m also not sure about the EBU rules, but I find it curious that Russia was prohibited from participating in Eurovision because of their government’s use of state media to spread disinformation, but at the same time, EBU does not issue the same suspension to Israel (especially now when Al Jazeera is banned).

Have you been to New York or Boca?

(asking in jest as a jew)

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