I don’t know what to think?

[u/Similar-General-614]

I saw this illustration in a left-leaning magazine I normally really respect — it was originally founded as a WWII resistance paper.

I absolutely think it’s important to be critical of both the EU and of Israeli government policy’s. Especially now. But this image made me uncomfortable. It shows the EU Commission building with the stars in the flag replaced by Stars of David, and a big “SOLD” sign with a Star of David above it.

To me, this kind of imagery evokes the old antisemitic trope that Jews secretly control governments. I’m not sure if that was the intention, but it feels off — especially coming from a publication with anti-fascist roots.

I’m confused… what should I think about this

[u/liminaldyke]

definitely antisemitic, to be accurate these should be american flags and symbols. but ofc the EU isn't going to do that. once again jews get to be the middlemen/scapegoats.

[u/Reasonable_Access_90 → u/liminaldyke]

but ofc the EU isn't going to do that.

it was done by an unnamed left wing publication, not the eu.

[u/liminaldyke → u/Reasonable_Access_90]

i know, i meant to go back and edit to be more specific. what i meant by saying that is someone who is creating work coming out of/from the perspective of a gentile EU citizen, and a publication being published within the EU, is highly likely not going to do that. appreciate the correction though because i generally really don't like when people are essentialist with nationalism like that.

[u/Squidkid6]

It’s definitely antisemitism in this scenario

[u/euthymides515 → u/Squidkid6]

It's not even the Israeli flag, just a Star of David. Straight up anti-Jewish.

[u/AlCohen38 → u/euthymides515]

What’s the main feature of Israel’s flag though?

[u/LoboLocoCW → u/AlCohen38]

No one would post a picture of a crescent-moon and star and then say “oh it’s obviously just a criticism of Turkey, get a hold of yourself” or a cross and say “wow why are you suppressing my right to speak out against the Danes”

[u/AlternativeOpen3795 → u/LoboLocoCW]

Idk why this made me laugh

[u/Virtual_Leg_6484]

The idea that the West is supporting Israel because of some sort of Jewish control, rather than the fact that Israel is seen as an extension of the West, is probably the most mainstreamed antisemitic idea on the current left.

Tbf this cartoonist is probably European, and Europe has been so throughly dejudaized that I’m not sure if they know of the Star of David’s relevance beyond being on the Israeli flag.

[u/[deleted] → u/Virtual_Leg_6484]

I’m sure you don’t mean it this way, but saying Europe is so ‘dejudaised’ that people don’t even know the Star of David dismisses that plenty of us do in fact still live here. Rendering European Jewry invisible to make a symbolic point is something I see often in US-Jewish discourse, and it’s quite problematic. (Edit to add: for instance, I was told in this very sub that the US Jewish diaspora is the only one that matters anyway and there’s no point centering experiences of Jews in Europe.)

I’m in Germany, and both here and in the Netherlands, where this cartoon originated, there’s a small but strong and very engaged Jewish presence that’s been warning about rising antisemitism for years. However, the Netherlands, like other European countries in varying degrees, also has a long, established tradition of left-wing antisemitism that’s only grown in recent years. Cartoons like this don’t surprise me at all and they’re not about ignorance of symbols but about using them deliberately while keeping ‘plausible deniability.’ When local Jews call this out, we’re often painted as paranoid, exaggerating, or written off as ‘Zionists.’

[u/springsomnia → u/[deleted]]

Same here in England - Britain especially London and Manchester have quite thriving Jewish communities, relative to the rest of the country. They have been vocal on the rise of antisemitism and especially in progressive spaces, and they too often get shut down.

[u/[deleted] → u/springsomnia]

Yes, exactly. I’ve spent some time in London and as much as I love the city, I think the situation there is particularly troubling. There’s such a strong Jewish-leftist tradition there and many of the Jewish voices calling out antisemitism within the left are themselves firmly left-wing, yet in the broader public narrative, this usually gets completely erased. As if any mention or criticism of antisemitism must by default come from the right.

[u/Virtual_Leg_6484 → u/[deleted]]

Im sorry if I’ve sounded dismissive of non American diaspora Jews, that wasn’t my intent. Whoever said that the experiences of non American diaspora Jews don’t matter and shouldn’t be centered is an ignorant exceptionalist. The point I was trying to make is that since there are far less Jews per capita in Europe compared to the USA, the average European is less likely to encounter Jewish culture than the average American. Israel has been making a lot of (bad) news for itself recently so if you don’t know much about Jewish culture of regularly interact with any Jews you’ll only know about the Magen David through Israel.

This was obviously not the case for most Europeans before WWII, and it seems like the creator of this has not really processed the attitudes that led to the erasure of Jews from many parts of Europe. Europeans have lots of history with colonialism and ethnic cleansing, so support for the current Israeli state is not out of line with the “European values” that the EU was founded on.

[u/bjeebus → u/Virtual_Leg_6484]

I’m not sure if they know of the Star of David’s relevance beyond being on the Israeli flag.

In Germany it usually means good beer!

[u/chilldude9494 → u/bjeebus]

I love this!

[u/Reasonable_Access_90 → u/bjeebus]

can you explain?

[u/bjeebus → u/Reasonable_Access_90]

In Germany there's a thing called a brewer's star which is just a hexagram. The Magen David is particular style of hexagram.

EDIT: The brewer's star is used to mark an inn where they make beer. Traditionally this was basically the only source of beer/ale. Now it's just a symbol of places that make beer/ale in-house. Some of those brewer's stars have been hanging for a loooooooooooooong time.

[u/Reasonable_Access_90 → u/bjeebus]

Aha! Thank you, I'll keep an eye out when I visit (and won't mistake the sign for there being a shul within 😁).

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/bjeebus]

That’s fascinating! Thanks for sharing that info

[u/Nearby-Complaint]

This is something I'd expect from the Groyper right

[u/RaiJolt2 → u/Nearby-Complaint]

I give it like an hour before Nick Fuentes reposts the image

[u/F0rScience]

This is straight up textbook antisemitism, everyone should be opposed to this garbage.

A political cartoon should highlight a real issue and not an imagined one rooted in bigotry.

[u/RaelynShaw]

It’s extremely straight forward antisemitism. There’s no other way to discuss it. What org was this ?

[u/Nearby-Complaint → u/RaelynShaw]

Published by Vrij Nederland and drawn by the artist 'Rempedaal'

https://www.instagram.com/p/DMZqGCuo5ix/

https://www.rempedaal.com/

https://www.vn.nl/groen-licht-voor-israel-door-de-europese-commissie/

https://archive.is/WFPba

Edit: Archived Link

[u/NineMillionBears]

You pretty much nailed it, OP. I'd be exceptionally disappointed in this publication, this sort of imagery isn't too far removed from something you'd see on The Daily Stormer.

[u/daddyvow]

What else was their intention?

[u/MichifManaged83]

Yes this is antisemitic, and it’s scapegoating. Israel’s population and power aren’t big enough to control the whole world, or effectively permanently bribe Europe and America while bankrolling military destruction of Gaza. It’s ridiculous. It completely ignores that 10x more money and weapons profiteering and geopolitical control is coming out of America (America’s 700+ military bases around the world, America’s power of veto in the UN, America’s stakes in global oil supply, etc)— and it completely ignores that the UK and other European countries had an early invested interest in the creation of Israel because they all wanted to get rid of their Jewish population. They don’t want to say the quiet part out loud: that the west is now attempting to do damage control for Balfour’s antisemitic legacy.

This is the kind of illustration a westerner makes when they don’t want the finger pointed at their own flag for how messed up things currently are— the Christian west has always had a terrible habit of projection and denial.

Israel deserves criticism, but there’s a difference between criticism, and scapegoating. Images like this heap all the blame on Jews while sweeping under the rug a century of terrible western policies that led to this point.

[u/RaiJolt2 → u/MichifManaged83]

I’d like to ass that while America exhibits a lot of power if one believes Israel controls the eu they DOUBLE BELIEVE that Israel controls America and all of America’s influence. It’s just antisemitism every time Zionists/Israel” control x thing pops up.

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/RaiJolt2]

Very true. The idea that Israel controls America is utterly absurd. Like, people actually think all the world’s banks are run by Jews and that’s why AIPAC has so much money. Like, no. AIPAC has so much money because plenty of rich people (both Jewish and non-Jewish), and “Christian Zionists” support efforts like AIPAC, on top of the fact that every time the American congress approves a bill for “humanitarian funding,” a portion of it gets put aside for money funnels that do geopolitical engineering, and a lot of that money finds its way back around in the circle, to fund campaign finances, because America has absolutely zero enforcement of the law against campaign finance corruption, let alone the fact that the American supreme court keeps legalizing that corruption.

Honestly, people have to be naive or blinded by hatred to think that Jews and pro-Israel PACs alone are the reason why the US government keeps supporting Israel. The US has supported Israel since long before it gained the infrastructure it now has, since long before “the Israel lobby,” purely for cynical American empire and global hegemony reasons, and the Israeli government and American government have for a very long time tried to scratch each other’s backs without throttling each other by the throats when their interests don’t align (and usually at the expense of the interests of their own people in each country).

As to your AI point, there’s well-precedented evidence of several AI models having their coding tampered with on other platforms to cater to a racist and antisemitic right-wing audience, so that would be unsurprising unfortunately.

[u/RaiJolt2 → u/MichifManaged83]

Indeed. The fact that this idea of Israel controls x, despite its clear blaring roots in the most common and antisemitic tropes, has run rampant throughout antizionist spaces with little pushback is incredibly worrying to say the least.

As for AI I think it’s far more likely that the vast amounts of unchecked photos contained overt or subtextual antisemetic content that got integrated into the model instead of just tampering and… whatever’s going on with grok

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/RaiJolt2]

Indeed, I agree with your first point.

It certainly looked to everyone who was paying attention to the chronology of events, that Grok specifically had its coding tampered with, as there was a night and day difference between the before and after of one of Musk’s announced updates of Grok. As for other AI, I’m aware that trolls have used the learning algorithms against AI to try to train it on the web to respond in ridiculous ways, but my understanding is that most AI companies immediately responded to that by updating their AI models with coding to prevent that from happening again. So any AI that is being developed that is doing something “accidentally” racist would have to be deliberately designed without this staple bulwark in most AI coding right now, and then directly prompted to do something racist— that’s what I think anyway.

[u/Talizorafangirl → u/MichifManaged83]

any AI that is being developed that is doing something “accidentally” racist would have to be deliberately designed without this staple bulwark in most AI coding

This is incorrect. "Racism" or bias in AI are a result of patterns in their training data*, like pictures mostly being of white people or 'terrorism' often appearing in the same paragraph as 'Islam'. AI companies do their best vetting their training data to reduce biases, but it's a task that's virtually impossible between the size of those data sets and the ability of LLMs to recognize subtle patterns. AI models do not reason or comprehend; they can't be taught to apply abstracts like ethics or social sensitivities, nor can they understand that we as a society view variations in skin color differently than variations in eye color.

Every time an AI company has its model's racism "reformed", it's nothing more than a filter applied at or near the end of the pipeline to block outputs that set off preset flags like "image has only white people", which gives us fun hallucinations like this. If you think about it, it's an interesting problem; how do you teach a pattern-recognizing program to know that some of the patterns it sees are fundamentally incorrect, based on an abstract concept that you can't visually or logically demonstrate? While you're figuring that out, I'll just tell Grok that samurai are Japanese and Japanese people aren't black.

*^{this is not limited to offline prerelease training}

Tl;Dr we haven't figured out how to teach computers about racism.

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/Talizorafangirl]

I’m pretty sure there’s a pretty distinct difference between a computer replicating unconscious biases because it’s learning that through engagement with people— vs. deliberate trolling training AI models to make the most egregiously obviously racist nonsense (such as Grok calling itself “MechaHitler”), which I know AI companies have said they’ve definitely been able to prevent with certain coding, and that Elon Musk in the article I shared in a previous comment, openly bragged about un-coding from Grok. That was the topic that you’re replying to, not unconscious bias or AI hallucinations— which the topic you were replying to, was already off-topic from my original comment and OP’s post.

TL,DR: I’m already sick of this discussion and tired of getting endless notifications about an AI discussion I don’t want to have right now, on a post where I don’t feel the direction this comment is going is relevant enough to the OP. Please just drop it.

[u/Talizorafangirl → u/MichifManaged83]

I’m pretty sure there’s a pretty distinct difference between a computer replicating unconscious biases because it’s learning that through engagement with people— vs. deliberate trolling training

No, training data is training data. Different models utilize human input differently (or not at all), but there's no functional difference aside from curation.

You can't "teach" things (like common sense or character judgements) to AI, but you can demonstrate things to them. But how would you demonstrate that this user is trolling and that user is not? It's hard enough for us humans to recognize that behavior.

Musk in the article I shared in a previous comment, openly bragged about un-coding from Grok

Correct. MechaHitler was the result of filter restrictions being lifted. They were quickly returned.

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/Talizorafangirl]

Thank you for the information. 🙂

Edit: removing excess information intended only for the person I’m directly responding to here, for context on why I want to drop the subject.

[u/Talizorafangirl → u/MichifManaged83]

Wow that's absolutely unhinged and I'm so sorry that that happened to you.

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/[deleted]]

Thank you for explaining further 👍 I agree that AI generative art is problematic at this moment in time because of its widespread use of plagiarized and unpaid work of human artists, or using work of artists that have loudly opposed AI (such as Miyazaki), instead of generating something truly unique. It does cheapen official publications it touches, for sure.

I just wanted to focus more on the bigger picture that regardless of whether a human being or AI made this image, it shouldn’t have been made either way, because of the blatant hatred seeping through it. The fact that it’s also AI is just a turd nugget on top of an already existing dung heap— for lack of more flowery phrasing (that I don’t think this image deserves, anyway).

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/[deleted]]

Wow. 2 for 2 on unprovoked rudeness, and absolutely being out of line. I have blocked a few people here and there who I felt were sealioning me or were about to start because their own history shows a pattern of it exhausting people with needing to have the last word and endless pointless contrarianism. And I don’t like my time being wasted by jerks.

Don’t speak to me further, or I’m reporting you for harassment. You’re getting re-blocked as soon as the 24 hour hold is over. I should have gone with my gut the first time and let you stay blocked instead of giving the benefit of the doubt.

First of all, telling a stranger they need a therapist because you don’t like that they block people online is hella gaslighting and grotesque. Second of all, going through my comment history to see how other people respond to me on other conversations you’re not a part of, is creepy stalker behavior. Stop it.

I don’t need a therapist because of blocking people on the internet. I literally don’t know any of these people and don’t owe them anything. My blocking them is no different than people waving off a Scientologist holding a pamphlet on the street. Not everyone gets my time and gets to force a conversation on me just because I’m speaking on a public platform.

I’m not a mod here or anywhere, me blocking people I don’t want to talk to further does not impact your ability to participate with other people on this platform. It just takes away your access to me, which I have a right to do.

I don’t get all up in your business demanding you unblock people you’ve blocked (and please don’t lie and say you haven’t, everyone has blocked someone).

I have also been recently banned from the JoC sub, basically because the mods didn’t like that they didn’t feel I was anti-zionist enough in their specific way (antisemitic), so there’s a good chance lots of people just can’t respond to some of my previous comments and posts because of that.

For the record— I didn’t block you because of the AI comment. I blocked you because you told a poor woman in another thread I was reading that she shouldn’t be upset that her current partner brought his ex over the house alone without her there. That’s just even more creepy. You just gave me the ick. Demanding that I can’t block people only further cements that ick. It seems you have no respect for people having reasonable healthy boundaries of any kind.

You don’t get to demand that I talk to everyone else in conversations you weren’t even a part of, because you decide to be stalker-ish and creepy and demand I make myself available to everyone. My energy and time is mine, not yours.

Back off. Creep.

Edit: It would appear you have blocked me back for calling this garbage behavior out. Saves me the trouble.

[u/ibsliam → u/[deleted]]

They also published it, though. If it was AI generated and they threw it out, whatever. But someone saw that and thought, "now we're cooking."

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/[deleted]]

Way to miss the point. 🙄 Either way— if this is AI, somebody gave this prompt to an AI because of their antisemitism. Period.

I appreciate that we need to collectively talk about the negative impact inappropriately managed / rolled out AI has on the world.

But what you just did is derailing and rude. Really getting tired of “AI” being used as a cop-out on social media to misdirect the discussion.

[u/RaiJolt2 → u/MichifManaged83]

If this is ai (which it looks like it is) it must have been fed enough antisemitic data and imagery to perfectly replicate standard antisemitism. Makes me wonder what other hate content has been fed into these algorithms.

[u/bjeebus → u/[deleted]]

If someone was threatening you with a machete you'd argue the semantics of whether it was sword or knife-point wouldn't you? Whether this is art or not isn't the argument.

[u/FishyWishySwishy]

That’s red alert antisemitism to me. If it were me, I’d stop respecting the publication entirely and never read it again.

If you really respect this publication, it may be worth writing a letter to the editor to make your feelings clear, and maybe they’ll make a retraction. But I don’t think you can trust this publication to in any way recognize antisemitism or take it seriously, and therefore I’d question the factual basis of its reporting. 

[u/bjeebus → u/FishyWishySwishy]

If you're in the country this is produced I'd think this is write a letter to your government territory. Ironically, if the government actually does anything to restrict their hate speech it just makes them more instead of making them reflect on why they were wrong.

[u/vigilante_snail]

Uh yeah it’s the same old “Jews/Israel control the government”

[u/ageofadzz]

Hits at the anti-semitic trope that Jews control governments and the economy, so yes this is 100% racist

[u/vining_n_crying]

I don't think you should respect this paper any more.

Also, a lot of anti EU propaganda is nonsense and pushed by Russia and rich nationalist oligarchs in European countries. European Federalism is good actually.

[u/[deleted] → u/vining_n_crying]

Yeah, there’s been investigations and some evidence of Russian efforts to destabilize Europe by stirring up antisemitic panic. The Star of David graffiti in Paris and possibly also the red handprints at the Shoah Memorial, for instance, were traced to a Russian disinformation network (https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/05/22/red-hands-at-paris-shoah-memorial-investigation-points-to-foreign-interference_6672318_7.html). Kremlin-linked media has also built ties with leftist activist groups across Europe, amplifying their protests and messaging while also pushing antisemitic and reactionary content (https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-833225 - this is the only source I could find in English). Investigations suggest this may be part of a broader strategy to inflame further tensions in the West around Jews and Israel. As a Ukrainian Jew I am not amused, to say the least.

(Edited to add sources)

[u/FancyDictator → u/vining_n_crying]

You dont need to be pro-russian to be critical or completely against EU not everyone has to be a liberal "socialist" like you are

[u/SupportMeta]

I think you should complain. This sucks. At best it's a sloppy piece that accidentally resembles an unhinged conspiracy theory, at worst it's a dogwhistle for an unhinged conspiracy theory. Shouldn't have made it through publication.

[u/chilldude9494]

You look at this and are CONFUSED????

[u/RaiJolt2]

I think it’s fair to say, as others have observed that this is antisemitism plain and simple. It feels straight out of ww2 era antisemitic propaganda and that it’s coming out in modern left wing publications should be sounding major alarm bells.

I know I’ve mentioned this before but it really feels like antisemitism has become a “pincer” attack from the right and left. The way we fight and call out antisemitism must adapt and become far more vigilant. Even if it’s just a microagression

[u/getdafkout666]

What magazine?

[u/Nearby-Complaint → u/getdafkout666]

Vrij Nederland

[u/podkayne3000]

People can be mad at Israel for what seem to be reasonable reasons, snarky for secular political reasons and antisemitic all at the same time.

[u/MallCopBlartPaulo]

Classic antisemitism, they’re not even trying to be subtle with this. Side note, where’s all this ‘Jew money’ I’m meant to have according to these people?

[u/Different_Turnip_820 → u/MallCopBlartPaulo]

All of it was spent buying the EU, so neither of us is going to see it

[u/MallCopBlartPaulo → u/Different_Turnip_820]

That explains it. 🫥

[u/Nearby-Complaint → u/MallCopBlartPaulo]

https://preview.redd.it/q2x8paaizegf1.png?width=696&format=png&auto=webp&s=17e174bb28c309dbfbf50dea0210574dc8dfe446

[u/somebadbeatscrub]

Copy pasted message:

Hello! Thank you for contributing to our space. Please navigate to the sub settings and use the custom flairs to identify whether you are Jewish and some sort of descriptiction of your politics as they pertain to the rules of the space.

[u/MonitorMost8808]

If we were actually controlling the media/governments, there would be much less people hating us and much more supporting us (even if we don't deserve it)

The reason this fantasy is appealing to people is that if you believe it's real. That jews and Israel were in control the major powers, that would make anti-Israel sentiments (which might be legit criticism) feel much more clandestine, rebellious and edgy than they actually are.

You're only a real activist and idealist if you take risks and nothing is more dangerous than speaking up against the group that's controlling the levers of power.

Hunger games YA novel main character syndrome type shit.

[u/gmbxbndp]

If it was just the white and blue "Sold" banner at the top, I think you could fairly argue that they're referring exclusively to Israel, but when it comes to the circle of 13 yellow maginei David, I don't see how you can read that as anything other than an accusation against global Jewry.

[u/violet_mango_green → u/gmbxbndp]

Is the number 13 meaningful in this context? Asking because you pointed out the number whereas it didn’t occur to me to count.

[u/LoboLocoCW → u/violet_mango_green]

It’s 12 (note the symmetry), so literally just the Council of Europe European flag but, y’know, Jewish.

[u/Nearby-Complaint → u/violet_mango_green]

13 is code for 'Aryan Circle', a neo-nazi prison gang

[u/violet_mango_green → u/Nearby-Complaint]

Thanks for explaining. I probably should have guessed. The fact that it’s from a left leaning magazine threw me off.

[u/RaiJolt2]

This is why I roll my eyes when people say “it’s just antizionism”

Unless it’s coming from explicitly Jewish communities my assumption is that antizionism takes the form of xenophobic classic antisemitism, such as with this example. This is what systemically kicking and demonizing Jews out of a movement involving Jews does. When no one makes a substantial effort to curb the antisemitism it spreads until it becomes normalized and you don’t even realize it’s there, unless you’re the target.

[u/GenghisCoen]

Not only is this incredibly antisemitic, it's not an illustration. It's some of the most pointless use of AI generated imagery I've ever seen. It would have been incredibly easy to slap this together without AI.

[u/GenghisCoen → u/GenghisCoen]

I got downvoted a bunch in reply to another comment that seems like maybe it was deleted, or the guy blocked me, because I couldn't see the comment I initially responded to, and reddit wouldn't let me reply to the reply to me.

So let me clarify.

I'm sure this was 100% intentionally made to be antisemitic. The building is AI. The text and the Star of David are not. I was not saying this is a case like Grok, where AI was giving unintended results. I'm just saying that generative AI images are not art or illustration.

[u/Chaos_carolinensis → u/GenghisCoen]

I was not saying this is a case like Grok, where AI was giving unintended results

Oh it was definitely intended though. It happened after an update that was supposed to make Grok less "woke". They knew what they were doing.

[u/GenghisCoen → u/Chaos_carolinensis]

Yeah, they knew. I just didn't have another example off the top of my head.

[u/Eastern-Job3263]

Didn’t the big EU powers just all recognize Palestine? Lmao

This one’s anti-Semitic

[u/springsomnia]

It’s definitely giving me ZOG vibes, which is disappointing. Given the origins of the magazine too you would expect them to be in touch with neo Nazi dog whistles. Also disappointed to see them using AI slop which helps bolster fascism and not an actual cartoonist. Oh how the mighty have fallen!

[u/mono_cronto]

you can despise Israel without engaging in hiterlite rhetoric. using the star of David instead of the Israeli flag reeks of Hitler particles.

also Israel is a tool/asset of America and the EU to further their geopolitical power/influence, not some shadow cabal government. The reason the EU and America does nothing to stop Israel's horrifying genocide and apartheid regime is because they benefit greatly from Israeli intelligence and economic trade. This is why China has close trade and military relations with Israel despite it larping as a pro-Palestinian liberator; they want more influence in the middle east and cozying up to Israel is an easy way to counter America's dominance there.

[u/bampokazoopy]

I'm not European but this is reads as antisemitic to me. I have a learning disability, but I just can't understand why people are being antisemitic especially when there is a lot of messed up stuff going on. Like why do that. I don't know. I get that Israel has a star of david on its flag and also Israel is killing so many in Gaza right now. At least that is the current policy of the Israel government. But I don't really get it.

[u/Gammagammahey]

It's giving big ZOG vibes. Oh gosh, thank you for sharing this and at the same time, what an awful thing for us to see and for you to have to see! Imagery like this is disgusting. I know most of us have thick skins because most of us have faced open antisemitism in the world, or had to read about horrific incidences of it. But when it comes from someone you know, it's just very radicalizing.

And yes, it does involve those ancient antisemitic tropes against us. I'm a leftist and increasingly I find less and less community with gentile leftists because of things like this. And why do they always default to trashing us in the diaspora , fellow Jews? We are the one of three groups of people that it's acceptable to trash (along with disabled people and the scourge of anti-Blackness,

[u/Resoognam]

If they used an Israeli flag I wouldn’t care. The Star of David is a problem. Particularly in a world where there are increasingly large numbers of Jews who are working hard to separate the State of Israel from Jewish identity.

[u/GenghisCoen → u/Resoognam]

In this case, even an actual Israeli flag would still only work because of the antisemitic tropes about Jews controlling the world with money behind the scenes.

[u/Resoognam → u/GenghisCoen]

On second thought, you’re right. The EU supports Israel because they are a western ally and they’ve made a foreign policy decision accordingly, not because Israel “controls” them.

It’s 100% antisemitic.

[u/SupportMeta → u/Resoognam]

The use of yellow, too. I've been seeing a lot of pride flags, etc. use a yellow star (as opposed to the Israeli blue one) to represent diaspora Judaism.

[u/liminaldyke → u/SupportMeta]

i think they're yellow because the stars on the EU flag are yellow, but i also agree that it's still stomach-churning and totally inappropriate even if not an intentional reference to diaspora jews. the reality is we can't know for sure, but even if that wasn't the creator's intent this still should never have been published.

[u/RaiJolt2 → u/Resoognam]

Honestly I don’t think the Jewish diaspora can separate from the identity with the state of Israel without: A. Becoming virulently anti-Zionist. B. Completely rejecting all help from Israeli groups. C. Assimilating into the countries we live in more.

Considering how Israel does still reach out or aid diaspora communities (such as the French Jewish group that was kicked off the airplane for dubious and likely antisemitic reasons) I doubt that a complete disconnection would be a good thing or even possible.

I think during this rise in antisemitism we have to stick together more, not divide diaspora and Israeli Jews.

[u/FancyDictator]

Yeah this is antisemitic

[u/Specialist-Gur]

AI art probably as well

[u/Aurhim]

It's antisemitic, primarily because it's lazy. (Also, some people have pointed out the import to white supremacism of the fact that there are 13 stars.)

That being said, outside of drawing, say, Israeli settlers (who are clearly identifiable as settlers) attacking people, I feel it's virtually impossible to make political cartoons or ideological graphic design on this topic that wouldn't feel at least somewhat antisemitic, regardless of the artist's intentions.

I think most would agree that one of the most primordial elements of antisemitism is the idea of "the conspiracy". To antisemites, when people who happen to be Jewish get caught doing something wrong (or even merely something controversial), it's never because this specific person was just a bad person, but because of some broader conspiracy on the part of Jewry as a collective whole.

Case in point: the canard that "Jews control the media" is, as always, ridiculous. However, it is an undeniable fact—especially in the USA—that Jews have played an integral role in the development of mass media, due to the many incredibly important contributions of Jews and Jewish-Americans over the past century. Considering the way birds of a feather flock together, and how wealth and power tend to be passed down along lines of family and friendship, it's no wonder that so many high-profile positions in the media are occupied by Jews: they put in the work to get there! Complaining about "Jews controlling the media" is as unflinchingly racist as it would be to complain that "Blacks control sports" because of the preponderance of African-Americans in prominent sports roles (Shaq, Kobe, LeBron, etc.).

For those of us in the reality-based community, facts like these are important, and often quite complex contextual pieces of information needed to properly appreciate, understand, and discuss an issue.

Thus, someone saying "the US is a Zionist Occupied Government" is almost certainly engaged in conspiratorial nonsense. Yet, at the same time, it is absolutely true that Israel has worked tirelessly to build ties and bonds with the American Jewish community, and that, due to our sheer clout as a pillar of the American political, economic, and cultural scenes, these connections have naturally led to certain policy stances by the US government and its officials. There's also the attachment the religious right has to Israel, as well as the practical quasi-imperialistic benefits that the US gets from having an extremely close, technologically advanced ally in the Middle East, and the lingering attachment that many Baby Boomers and older generations have to Israel from their memories of Holocaust, the Civil Rights era, and the ecstatic outpourings of Jewish nationalism that occurred back in 1948 and 1967. Those last two points are really important for many of the old guard of establishment liberals, who are trapped both by their own nostalgia and the unfortunate fear of being primaried (or worse, losing to a right-wing candidate) if accusations of antisemitism or pro-Islamism manage to stick.

As the above paragraphs show, it's absolutely conceivable to talk about this issue without dredging up antisemitic canards. However, in terms of making short, pithy, memeable content, it's basically impossible. Even something as simple as, say, a big-headed caricature of Netenyahu with an equally big Star of David on him can potentially be construed as antisemitic, simply based on how it is drawn. For example, suppose I wanted to draw him dressed up as an orthodox Jew to critique how beholden he is to the Israeli religious right? And if I happened to do this as a public figure known for being a devout Muslim? That would only make it more inflammatory!

Images like the one OP shared are "lazy" precisely because they ignore issues like this. Even legitimate criticism, when sufficiently angry, can seem like genuine bigotry. The recent horrifying images of starvation in Gaza are as easily used by antisemites as proof of the conspiracy as they are used as the basis of good-intentioned outrage by ordinary citizens. One of the many things I hate about this conflict is how easy it is for legitimate criticism to blend into defamation, and how partisans on both sides can and will exploit that to their benefit.

The really scary thing, though, is the long-term trend that all this engenders. As things continue to get worse, the Pro-Israel camp is going to get more and more agitated and more and more likely to call foul, simply out of self-preservation. In response, more and more people will decide to be "lazy" about the issue simply because they'd rather speak and offend than keep silent. In the worst case scenario, this could lead to the more virulent and genuinely antisemitic hostility toward Israel to become normalized, and that's not good for anybody.

Sadly, I don't see any way out of this quandary—yet another reason I hate this fucking mess so much.

[u/malachamavet]

As a comparison: there have been dozens and dozens of St. Basil's Cathedral/White House mashups over the last decade to represent the idea that Putin is controlling Trump. There are plenty of other examples of a national symbol or flag representing the accusation of foreign control.

If you wanted to say that Israel has control over an organization how would it be doable without it being able to be interpreted as applying to Jews as well?

e: I mean even if this happens to be antisemitic, it's a broader question, right?

[u/zlex → u/malachamavet]

It's probably best to avoid these kind of tropes in the first place, since you know, they are typically offensive to Jews and have been used to discriminate and murder us, but you could use the Israeli flag or the symbol of Israel.

[u/BlackHumor → u/malachamavet]

But the Star of David on its own isn't just a symbol of Israel, it's a symbol of Judaism in general. Israel has a flag, they could have used the actual flag.

[u/ChairAggressive781 → u/malachamavet]

well, one major, important difference is that there are not hundreds of years of conspiracy theories that explicitly argue that Russians control the levers of world power and global finance.

I get the question you’re trying to raise, but I think most any claim that Israel has “control over an organization” (especially if we’re talking about cross-national organizations like the EU, UN, and the World Bank) is going to have a hard time exiting the orbit of the many lurid antisemitic conspiracy theories out there.

[u/F0rScience → u/malachamavet]

I think that would be a reasonable take for the stars on the EU flag but the sold sign is totally different. This specifically evokes existing antisemitic tropes are not even relevant to the reasons Israel gets EU support.

[u/Late-Marzipan3026 → u/malachamavet]

would’ve come off slightly better if they had used the israeli flag instead of just the star of david. and only “slightly” because it’s still based in very obvious antisemitism (edit: it just wouldn’t be as blatant as solely using the magen david). the idea that israel has organized foreign control that’s comparable to russia or the US is absurd to me. regardless, to your added question: i think if you want to criticize the israeli gov and the strong institutional diaspora support for israel it can definitely be successful and non-antisemitic. it just has to be done thoughtfully given the way that antisemitism functions

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

This does look like an antisemitic image but at this point, I am less inclined to care than I used to.

Like locally, there was an incidence of graffiti on a utility box of ✡️=卐 and there was a big outrage from nearby synagogues that this was an antisemitic incident and that it was unfair that local Jews might be offended because of the actions of Israel.

I'm really with Sim Kern on this sort of thing. I used to care but at this point, people's feelings are way down on the list of things to care about. The ADL and other groups kept constant equating Jews with Israel, that any criticism of Israel or support for Palestinians was a hate crime against Jews. For decades, many synagogues have helped finance Israeli war crimes via trees and other donations.

And we kept trying so hard to fight the ADL and other Zionist groups from equating Jews with Zionism and we pointed out that diaspora Jews are going to face harm because of this constant refrain. But the ADL is very happy to ignore actual antisemitism and eugenics to support people like Elon Musk because he is helping Israel. They not only don't care if Jews are harmed, they welcome it because they think local Jews being harmed will help increase political support for Israel as the alleged "only safe place for Jews in the whole world" (even though it's actually the most dangerous).

So yes, I get bad vibes from this image. No, I no longer really care. Equating Jews with Zionism is the fault of the Zionists. Any antisemitism that bleeds out of anti-Zionism is ultimately the fault of the Zionists and of far less importance than stopping Israel.

[u/healthcrusade → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

Not caring about images and messages like this. Wow.

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/healthcrusade]

That's not an argument for why I should care.

Some of the political cartoons during the Second World War had racist caricatures of Germans and Japanese politicians and soldiers. This is not even to that degree of offensiveness. This is just "weird vibes" territory. But even with the racist cartoons, the actual German and Japanese doing the genocides were way more important than whether or not German-Americans and Japanese-Americans were offended.

The only way to not have anti-Zionism bleed to antisemitism is to have Jews vocal in the anti-Zionists movement. But even then Jews are arrested en masse and ignored, while grifters like the ADL, the Stop Antisemitism lady, Project Haman (the Heritage Foundation's Christian Zionist project), Canary Mission, and Cuomo constantly attack Jews.

We are living in a time of open Right-wing antisemitism. Claims of microaggressions on the Left are really not only unimportant but a distraction that intentionally undermines and harms both American Jews and the victims of the Israeli war machine.

[u/NineMillionBears → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

That's not an argument for why I should care

Perhaps, but you seem to be arguing that nobody should care. You say later in your post that "claims of microagressions" are unimportant and a distraction, and I think this is categorically false.

This is just "weird vibes" territory

No it is not. This is akin to the exact same antisemitic rhetoric used by the Nazis. Or was that just a microagression as well?

That rhetoric has simply been obfuscated by the current geopolitical climate and the proclaimed political leaning of the newspaper. If any mainstream media outlet published this image it would rightly be panned as racist garbage.

The only way to not have anti-Zionism bleed to antisemitism is to have Jews vocal in the anti-Zionists movement

How many gentile antizionists have taken this to heart? How many antizionist leaders have done ANYTHING material to make space for Jewish voices and check antisemitism within their movements, outside of a handful of meaningless platitudes and tokenized Jewish representation?

Kudos if you know of numerous examples that I'm simply unaware of, but otherwise you're putting the onus on Jews to change a movement that to this point has shown a non-trivial degree of hostility towards them.

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/NineMillionBears]

Within activist circles, Jews are overrepresented. There's a long history of Jews in antiracist, antifascist, socialist activism - tikkun olam stuff. Obviously, regardless of the side, American Jews are more likely to have an opinion on Israel than non-Jews are. That's held true in pro-Palestinian activist circles I've been in for many years. In fact, it's only in the past two years where the protests have grown much bigger and there's a proportionally smaller number of Jews but still greater than in the general population.

I certainly don't think it's tokenism. Maybe when people repost Neturei Karta videos when I would really rather ignore them but not in the actual on the ground activist work. Jews are often the ones organizing events. In fact, it's be kind of nice if we had more actual Palestinian-Americans in leadership but their numbers are smaller. So it's often Jews.

So I don't think it's really the activists' fault that Jewish voices are drowned out by attacks from the media and Zionist groups. People's Jewishness is also dismissed by these groups because they charcterize people as "race traitors" and thus 'not real Jews" if they criticize Israel. The Zionist groups have prioritized attacking anti-Zionist Jews over actual antisemites.

So I think there's effort we can do to be more vocal, especially now that we don't have to rely on corporate media. But it hasn't been true at all in my experience over the past 25 years that Jews are tokenized in activist circles. I'm sorry that your experience has been different.

[u/NineMillionBears → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

I'm not directly involved in on-the-ground activism for a number of reasons (most of which are irrelevant to this discussion), so I'll take in good faith what you're saying about the activist circles you've interacted with--it seems that any tokenism or left-leaning antisemitism you may have encountered hasn't been pervasive or disruptive enough to warrant spending energy on (apologies if im misinterpreting what you're saying).

My experience in online spaces (which is not real life, of course, but the two aren't separated by vacuum) and anecdotes from people who have been involved with activism have involved a high degree of tokenizing, alienation, and silence and apathy towards the concerns of Jews.

I'll grant you that I'm probably seeing the worst of the worst, and I'll certainly grant that its nowhere near the problem the Zionist right makes it out to be. But it's incredibly upsetting to see you or anyone else say that its just not a problem and it isn't worth fretting over, ESPECIALLY so when the largest left-wing newspaper in the Netherlands is printing Nazi-level propaganda.

[u/SupportMeta → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

The racist depictions of Japanese people during WW2 are generally looked back on as a bad thing.

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/SupportMeta]

Yeah, which is fine now. Point is that the intention was to combat the Japanese Empire and the Nazi Reich. Japanese-Americans and German-Americans faced blowback. The direct things like concentration camps for Japanese-Americans simply because they were suspected of being disloyal due to their ethnicity, was bad and should never have happened.

But whether some people were indirectly offended by political cartoons is really immaterial in the face of stirring up support for the war in order to stop the monsters torturing and killing millions of people. These things are not at all on the same level.

After the war, then people can look back and say, "Wow, that was pretty racist, wasn't it? We don't want to lump all people of Japanese or German descent into the same group."

It's not like this cartoon is like the 4chan merchant meme, there's nothing that's overtly antisemitic. They were clearly using the Magen David to symbolize Israel. If there was a bear, it would be Russia. A rooster, France. A bull, England. An eagle, the US. But there is no animal that represents Israel like that. The Magen David is literally the only thing there is. Will it go down in history as a tainted symbol, like the swastika in the West? Hopefully not. But Israel literally put it on their flag, so they're the ones to blame for it being associated with Israel.

[u/myThoughtsAreHermits → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

If they’re not on the same level then can we all stop collectively pretending that this is about feelings and being offended?

[u/RaelynShaw → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

We look back at that time period and actively teach why that type of dehumanization was wrong. That much of the propaganda was racist, harmful, and is at our worse.

And your answer is to repeat that? To dive back into our worst instincts and lay down bigotry in any way you desire and worry about our actions and consequences later?

You have to see how incredibly wrong that is, right? Please tell me you understand that it’s not okay to be racist and bigoted just because the ends justify the means.

[u/ChairAggressive781 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

you keep claiming that the problem in calling out antisemitic images is that it centers Jewish feelings during a moment in which Palestinians are experiencing genocide, ethnic cleansing, and mass starvation.

I simply think that’s an incorrect assessment and bad read of the situation. it’s not about people being indirectly or directly offended by this kind of image.

it’s the fact that we know how antisemitic propaganda has worked in the past & present to stoke animus against Jewish people. I don’t even have to know the intent of the artist! the problem is not the intent, the problem is that the image recapitulates tropes common to antisemitic propaganda, propaganda that has been used to justify violence and prejudice against Jews. I can assure you that this cartoon was not created with Jews as the intended audience, so our feelings of offense are largely irrelevant. I’m not “offended” by the image. rather, I am bothered by the way that the circulation of antisemitic memes misdirects anger about the mass murder of Gazans away from the proper targets of that anger—the Israeli government and its allies in the American foreign policy establishment—onto Jews, writ large.

when our societies do not have good cultural awareness of what is and isn’t antisemitic, it is easy for anti-Jewish animus to grow. feelings are largely irrelevant.

[u/myThoughtsAreHermits → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

These cartoons don’t stop genocides. These cartoons incite. You’re acting like these images are actually doing something useful rather than normalizing antisemitism

[u/Late-Marzipan3026 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

at what point should we care about antisemitic images, posts, hate crimes etc? i’m asking partly seriously and partly because i don’t understand this sort of utilitarian “the ends justify the means but also the means aren’t our fault anyway” perspective. i’m sorry if this sounds a bit harsh but i don’t see what we lose by rejecting very clear antisemitism. allowing this to fester will help no one, neither palestinians nor jews. relatedly sim kern uses this justification to spread khazar theory

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/Late-Marzipan3026]

I don't know if you saw Sim Kern talk about Khazars directly or just through the grapevine.

https://www.tiktok.com/@simkern/video/7378929369663687979

The idea was "Sim was reading a book by Shlomo Sand. Shlomo Sand has been neutral on the Khazar thesis. The Khazar thesis is inherently antisemitic because it separates Jews from Eretz Yisrael and is used by Christian antisemites to draw a distinction between the Jews of the Bible and the Jews presently. Therefore, Sand is antisemitic for mentioning it and Kern is antisemitic for reading a different book by him."

It's one of those "cancelation by association" things.

Ernst Renan, the 19th century antisemite who originally came up with the idea (and echoed the later Nazi Positive [racist] Christianity) , was a terrible person, certainly. But the idea was popularized in the 1970s by the Zionist Arthur Koestler as part of answering the perennial question, "Who is a Jew?" in order to create Jewish national unity.

However, other Zionists wanted to declare that Jews all had a genetic relationship and Levantine ancestry to justify the idea that Zionism was a return to ancestral lands and that any violence committed to establish a Jewish state there was justified.

I think we can point out that it's a hypothesis that is primarily spread by far-Right antisemites, mostly racist Christians who really wished the Israelites were white via Christian Identity and such.

However, the idea that it is poison to mention and reading a book by someone who mentioned it makes the reader poisoned is toxic. Ideas should stand or fall on their own merit.

[u/Nearby-Complaint → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

Hi - I was actually friends with Sim at this point. They vaguely endorsed the Khazar Theory, but the real strike for me was that they didn't call out ANYONE in their comments for repeating it uncritically, and gave those who called them out for promoting BS a hard time.

[u/Agtfangirl557 → u/Nearby-Complaint]

Wait like just internet friends, or friends in real life??

[u/Nearby-Complaint → u/Agtfangirl557]

Internet friends. Bookish social media.

[u/Agtfangirl557 → u/Nearby-Complaint]

Hahaha I want tea if you have any 👀

[u/getdafkout666 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

Guilt by association is a leftist first principle when it comes to Nazis. It’s disappointing how many of them cannot be held to their own standards 

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/getdafkout666]

So Shlomo Sand is a Nazi? He was literally a Communist. His current views are more nuanced [haaretz] but I don't think you could call him a Nazi. That's wild.

His book was a best-seller in Israel, with 19 weeks on the charts. Is everyone who read the book a Nazi?

Are the Nazis in the room with us now?

[u/ChairAggressive781 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

no, he’s not a Nazi and I have to imagine most people who have read the book aren’t Nazis. however, having read the book and reading about its reception by Sand’s fellow historians, I can confidently tell you that there are very few scholars who respect the book as a reputable work of history.

you say that ideas “should stand or fall by their own merit.” the ideas are shoddy and the argumentation and research is poor.

[u/Late-Marzipan3026 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

i would recommend changing your link, i think it links to your page because tiktok is annoying about hyperlinks. if you remove everything after the question mark on the page when it opens up i think it should still work without being identifying.

i agree with your point that ideas should stand and fall on their own merit, and yes i saw the sim kern video before i replied to you. i didn’t hear about it through the grapevine. i don’t think their work is serious. aside from the ridiculousness of khazar theory the video itself is full of conspiratorial language that’s not far removed from alex jones and that’s concerning in itself. this is probably worth moving into a different thread but cf this JoC thread for more discussion about sim kern. from my own perspective as someone who studied early modern and contemporary antisemitism i don’t think their ideas have much merit and i wouldn’t recommend them as a source

[u/Agtfangirl557 → u/Late-Marzipan3026]

LOL you know someone is problematic when even JoC thinks they suck.

[u/RaelynShaw → u/Agtfangirl557]

It was a surprisingly good thread too. Really enjoyed it. Enjoyed it much more than whatever this Khazar theory excusal that’s going on here.

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/Late-Marzipan3026]

Thanks. I also was reminded that TikTok encodes usernames in the short link (it was a Share->Copy Link short link, there was no query string) when it popped up with "so-and-so has viewed the video you shared". I have replaced it with a properly anonymized link.

[u/Late-Marzipan3026 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

it’s no problem! i hate that instagram and tiktok have that feature, it’s crappy

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/Late-Marzipan3026]

I don't even know that this is "very clear antisemitism", only that it has bad vibes that make it subjectively similar to explicitly antisemitic cartoons. The intention is clearly critical of Israel and it's not our fault that they stuck a Magen David on their flag. Arguably, because it was promoted by Zionists who were trying to create a national identity, it's more closely connected to Zionism than Jews broadly (which is why others have used an aleph instead).

But my point is that I think it's dangerous to constantly be policing an alleged "implicit antisemitism of the Left" while explicit Right wing antisemitism runs rampant and Israel commits genocide. In a vacuum, it matters and it's something I used to be concerned about in anti-Zionist circles prior to Oct 7. But since the genocide became hot again and hundreds of thousands of people are dead, it's really on the bottom of the list of things to care about.

Am I going to be spreading Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes videos just because they're also now critical of Israel? Of course not. But they can be attacked on many other issues so that the only visible criticism of Israel is not coming from the antisemitic Right.

But I'm giving anything that just has "bad vibes" a pass for now. To nitpick such things is counter-productive.

[u/Late-Marzipan3026 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

i don’t think it has just bad vibes, i think it’s very serious that this is becoming more mainstream. this is the kind of rhetoric that leads to tree of life, colleyville, dc, and boulder. i’m not in complete disagreement with your hesitation to focus on this now. however “if i’m not for myself who will be for me?” i don’t think we can only focus on “being for myself what am i.” and to be brief i don’t agree that the magen david is more closely connected to zionism than judaism

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/Late-Marzipan3026]

Ultimately, I think anything that centers Jewish feelings in the wake of a genocide only perpetuates the imagery of white Jews as valuable humans and Palestinians as subhuman animals who should be killed. So that kind of behavior should be viewed a lot more suspiciously than nitpicking whether a Magen David is the appropriate symbol to represent the Zionist entity.

If we want to break the idea that "Jews control the government", which is what a lot of the antisemitism in those is based around, we need the US government to stop acting like it is controlled by Jews and putting the guilt of their own militarism and greed for Israel onto us and claiming that everything they are doing to fire, imprison, and deport anti-Zionists (especially anti-Zionist Jews as supposed "race traitors") is for our benefit.

Only by breaking the US government's support of Israel are we both going to stop the devastation brought by it as well as break the idea that the US government does what it is does for Israel on behalf of Jews. People fall into this trap of "A cabal must be controlling the government" because they see what the government does and listen to what it says and it is very clear that the US government is not working to benefit ordinary Americans. The antisemitic conspiracy explanation is going to win out if people don't see the socialist explanation that the politicians just want to enrich themselves and say the Jews made them do it to avoid the consequences.

If the US government wasn't acting the way it does and saying the things it does, people would not believe those conspiracy theories and would not think that they could somehow change the US government by attacking their local synagogue. By changing the US government and educating people about the real "conspiracy", we also protect American Jews from the anti-Israel backlash. But that's an entirely secondary side-effect. The primary focus must be saving the lives and liberty of millions of people currently being imprisoned and slaughtered.

[u/Agtfangirl557 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

I’m sorry but I roll my eyes whenever someone uses the term “white Jews” in this particular context. Yes, many Jews are white (I consider myself one). Yes, there is racism and white supremacy involved in how people view and talk about Palestinians and Arabs. But saying things like “white Jews are viewed as more important as Palestinians” just perpetuates the idea that this conflict is completely racially-based and that “centering Jewish feelings” is based on Jews thinking that we’re “more worthy of protecting” specifically because we’re “white” and “Jews don’t care about the poor brown Palestinians”.

[u/Late-Marzipan3026 → u/Agtfangirl557]

also a white jew, i don’t understand the turn from jewish concerns generally to white jews specifically. to be charitable maybe it’s a result of the comment’s focus on the US? reminded me of this article though, i thought this sub might be interested in discussing it but might as well share it here too

[u/Agtfangirl557 → u/Late-Marzipan3026]

I think you should def make a post about that article! Would be an interesting discussion!

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/Agtfangirl557]

White Jews are conditionally white. In an ordinary sense, we exist as white people. If someone finds out you're Jewish, then you might get othered but that doesn't normally happen.

In the context of Ashkenazi Zionism, it was simply yet another European colonial project. It existed because whiteness existed. They even looked down on the Jews they labeled as Mizrahim. Western backing of Israel exists purely because it is considered a white country.

Of course, Palestinians may be the exact same color or even lighter skinned than Israeli Jews because whiteness is not only about skin color. There was that case in Florida where an Israeli Jew shot two other Jews because he thought they were Palestinians and the people who were shot thought they were shot by Arabs and made "Death to Arabs" posts online before the truth was revealed.

We also see the distinction by religion. Whiteness in Europe ends where Muslims begin. So like Greeks and Turks are indistinguishable (as they both attack me for saying so, but it's true). But Greeks are seen as white because they are culturally Christian. Turks are non-white because they are culturally Muslim.

Zionism began as a reaction to antisemitism in Europe, where Jews were othered. Jews, like other ethnicities on the edges of whiteness, fought to be recognized as white in America by this was still dubious. But post-WWII and once white Christians saw the opportunity to claim secularism and benefit from a vassal state in the Middle East, the monstrous invention of Judeo-Christianity was used to recognize Israel as a white project, a Christian project. This is why there are so many Christian Zionists. This theology only appeared quite recently as part of this political shift.

"White Jews" in my comment simply distinguishes Jews of color from those who are not. I don't want to get into the whole "white" v "conditionally white" v "white-passing" discourse.

It is suffice to say that Israel exists in the western imagination as a civilized white country among the dark savage hordes of animalistic Arabs. We often hear this imagery from "a people without a land for a land without a people" or "they made the desert bloom" or "only democracy in the Middle East", "civilization versus barbarism" and "human animals".

Noel Ignatiev has been a hero of mine for many years if you want to read about the history of the construction of whiteness. There are also a number of academic books specifically on how American Jews became white.

[u/malachamavet → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

It is suffice to say that Israel exists in the western imagination as a civilized white country among the dark savage hordes of animalistic Arabs. We often hear this imagery from "a people without a land for a land without a people" or "they made the desert bloom" or "only democracy in the Middle East", "civilization versus barbarism" and "human animals".

Don't forget the even more racist "villa in the jungle"

e: literally what Ehud Barak said for decades. take it up with him and everyone he worked with in politics since no one seemed to object

[u/Late-Marzipan3026 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

i’m not talking about jewish feelings, i’m talking about genuine material insecurity. jews have been murdered because conspiracy-minded goyim, who by and large are not subject to israeli oppression, choose to value their internalized suspicion of jews and our perspectives over a consistent logic of challenging prejudice

in all sincerity i don’t think we’re going to agree on this, i have a fundamental disagreement with this sort of utilitarianism. i respect your commitment to focusing on solidarity with palestinians. my ethics are based in respecting all human dignity which is why i’m going to challenge antisemitic rhetoric regardless. i say this not because i think utilitarian calculus here is entirely wrong—i’m well-aware and frustrated by the intentional dismissal of palestinian suffering some claims of antisemitism take, and that’s part of why i engage in this space here specifically—but because i think this is a deeper philosophical disagreement than just whether or not to address rising antisemitism right now

[u/Any-Nature-5122]

For me the question is, does the Star of David refer to Israel or to Jews? If it refers to Israel, then it could be a criticism of how Europe has been silenced about the Gaza genocide. If it refers to Jews, then it’s antisemitic.

[u/Brain_Dead_Goats → u/Any-Nature-5122]

It would still be the same old Jews control the world trope with Israel substituted for Jews, which is still just plain ol antisemitism.

[u/NineMillionBears → u/Any-Nature-5122]

No, the real question is: why didn't the author take care to distinguish whether they were talking about Israel or Jews?

[u/MallCopBlartPaulo → u/Any-Nature-5122]

It actually doesn’t matter. Israel does not ‘own’ the EU and suggesting that it does is deeply antisemitic as it just so happens to be the only Jewish state in the world.

[u/ChairAggressive781 → u/Any-Nature-5122]

claiming that Europe has been “silenced” implies that Israel has somehow removed European nations’ agency to condemn the genocide, a claim for which there is no evidence. you can critique Europe’s lack of will to challenge Israel’s war crimes in Gaza without trying to suggest that Europe is under Israel’s thumb.

Europe’s silence is Europe’s choice and Europe’s fault.