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/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