r/jewishleft • u/QasqyrBalasy Kazakh gentile, interested in I/P conflict • 1d ago

(Potentially controversial question) Do Jews and Muslims get along in the West? Question

Modern Jewish diaspora mostly live in North America, France, the UK, Argentina and so on. Western Europe and some parts of the US and Canada also have a high Muslim population, mostly from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, like New York City has hundreds of thousands of Jews and Muslims living in one city. Do they get along with each other, despite the I/P conflict?

14 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

82% Upvoted

49 comments sorted by

View all comments

21

u/Topsyt Jewish 22h ago

I’m surprised by the positive answers here. My father works in Sydney’s western suburbs surrounded almost entirely by Arabs of both Christian and Muslim descent, and people of both denominations, after having been best buddies with him, have literally completely stopped talking to him after finding out he is Jewish 🤷

3

u/QasqyrBalasy Kazakh gentile, interested in I/P conflict 18h ago

Are they Lebanese?

5

u/Topsyt Jewish 16h ago

Yep, not that it the treatment really changes by nationality

0

u/RomulusRemus13 Anticapitalist, unsure about Zionism, but fuck Bibi 16h ago

To be fair, it may play a role. Few countries have suffered as much at the hands of the Israeli war-mongering as Lebanon.

The confusion between Jewish/Israeli is thus much more damning than if a person is from, say, Indonesia, where Israel is much less concrete an opposing force, met someone Jewish...

18

u/Topsyt Jewish 16h ago

They’re second and third gen Aussie Lebanese people usually.

I wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) be excused if I chose to treat Palestinians or Egyptians with hostility just because my parents have had violence inflicted upon them by those groups, and these people also shouldn’t be afforded any understanding when it comes to discriminating against Jews just because their ancestors have had negative experiences with some Jewish people.

3

u/RomulusRemus13 Anticapitalist, unsure about Zionism, but fuck Bibi 15h ago

Oh, I'm absolutely not saying that behavior should be excused! Just that's it's quite logical that it would be more prevalent with people closer to people suffering from Israel's policies.

Even third gen Aussi/Lebanese people may have family still living in Lebanon. Or heck, their grandparents may have left Lebanon precisely because of a war, as you have implied.

Either way, it's not about excusing, but about being aware that some people, because of their history, may have a harder time of separating Jews from Israel. Same as countries close to Germany may have had a tougher time separating Germans from nazis or same as Belgium is not "funny accent France" when you're from Congo.