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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 7h

"is it possible to mock Israel somehow for its essentially parasitic nature without engaging in antisemitism?"

No. Why do you want to?

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 8h

But also they're implicitly saying that the Nova festival goers, like all "libs," had it coming.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 8h

Em Cohen is a gigantic asshole so this tracks.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 8h

It's someone who either a: understands that overt antisemitism is coded as a Bad Person Belief, and/or b: has some ludicrous and patronizing idea that Real Jews are defined as tokens, victims and allies alone, elevated entirely for the good they provide other identities.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 8h

In other words: once you are condemning the essential nature of a population as fundamentally false, parasitic & evil, you have entered Nazi territory, whether you admit to it or not.

Saying "it's not antisemitic, Jews and Israelis are unrelated," is the fig leaf of a coward.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 8h

Israel is a Middle Eastern state whose local politics favor a particular religious demographic, and that has done some horrendous things.

That's not a question of Essential Nature, it's a question of a government policy. If you are condemning nature there's only really two solutions you leave.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 8h

People discovered a taste for an acceptable bigotry, fueled by marinating their brains in visceral atrocity footage. They realized what every antisemite in history has realized: hatred of Jews is an excellent binding agent for social movements.

And they don't want to give it up. It's that simple.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 8h

It genuinely is not actually hard to condemn the actions of the Israeli state without engaging in blatant, naked gutter antisemitism.

The issue isn't that this is some nuanced and complicated topic, the issue is that people want to do antisemitism because they have discovered bigotry feels good.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 8h

Honestly, it's not really that big of an unprecedented problem, because imo the distinguishing factor is simple: condemning a government is different from casting aspersions on the essential nature of a people.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

You can't correct "parasitic nature," you can only destroy it. You don't frame states as fake, or at least as more fake than other states.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

They simply are colonial states. Aspersions of collective falsehood or parasitic nature are about trying to cast the *Israeli collective character* as evil and irreparably false. What's the end goal of that? If a people are Inherently Fake, what is there to do with them?

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

No. Israel is a post-colonial state resulting from sectarian violence. It's honestly not especially atypical in that character (and most of its population are either born there or related to refugees driven from the rest of the Middle East).

But even colonial states are not *intrinsically fake*.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

Go ahead and flounce out. You won't be missed.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

Israel has a sizable non-Jewish minority who have political parties and rights. You do not need to destroy the Israeli state to promote equality for them.

But in any case these memes are about casting aspersions of falsehood on the Israeli collective *character*, not state policy

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

Not even close to the worst humanitarian crisis in living memory. The Yemeni Civil War alone, or the Syrian Civil War, or frankly the Ukrainian war, all have significantly more casualties.

But yes, Israel are our coreligionists, and thus we retain ties to them - not collective blame, but ties.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

No.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

"I know some of the good ones, I can't be bigoted" is not the strong argument you think it is.

Ps: yeah and the Allies didn't say "Germany is inherently corrupt and fake," they said "the Nazi regime needs to be destroyed."

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

Conduct can be changed. People don't say "Israel should change its conduct," though, they say "Israel is fake and corrupt in its core nature, and that cannot be changed, only destroyed."

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

The problem people have is that they really want to get a hit of the bigotry juice and bask in the righteous surge of hateful energy it lends, but they're not willing to admit they're gutter bigots and ethnic nationalists calling entire demographics intrinsically fake and parasitic.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

If your problem with Israel is its actions, you're not necessarily antisemitic.

If your problem with Israel is its existence, its supposedly intrinsic falsehood and parasitism, you are absolutely antisemitic.

Maladroithe @maladroithe.bsky.social · 20h

I’m so frustrated that the people posting dumb memes mocking Israeli culture 99.9% of the time don’t actually know shit about Israeli culture or the overlap between Israeli culture and Jewish culture (there is no clean line! You can’t parse them easily! You are a toddler playing with matches!)

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

"fall for it" implies that they're not gleefully taking part in it

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Reposted by A penitent who is loud

Adam “Bluesky Says I’m Rude” Sessler 🇺🇦 @adamsessler.bsky.social · 19h

This underscores why the casual use of “Zionist” as an epithet was so concerning to me from the get go. It has a pernicious effect that goes by unnoticed until moments like this.

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Reposted by A penitent who is loud

craigk @craigk4.bsky.social · 19h

using the slurs invented and popularized by david duke, but leftishly

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

This is antisemitic bullshit.

The Serfs (youtube.com/theserfstv) @theserfstv.bsky.social · 1d

Israeli food: poutine. Israelis have developed and continue to enjoy a delicious cuisine rooted in the uniqueness of Israeli society itself

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 19h

I'm saying that if a Jew says that people conflate antisemitism and antizionism, then it's pretty offensive arrogance to go "actually YOU are the antisemite for conflating Israel and Judaism!"

Israel contains around 40%ish of the world's Jews. They are inherently intertwined.

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