Shorter version: if you criticize Israel for actions that you do not criticize when done by other countries, then you are anti-Semitic even if your criticisms are valid.
No, that is not what he wrote. It's simpler: People who do not give one flying fuck about anyone but themselves, who pass homeless mothers and children in the street on the way to a 2-star Michelin restaurant and who could not cite a single current conflict anywhere else in the world, rant about the Fakestinians because these losers hate Jews. That is what he wrote. I an only assume a professor at an Ivy League school is 95% likely to be a Jew Hating fuckwit Leftist.
Which brings me to, what criticisms of Israel are "valid?" Humans are imperfect, governments doubly so. What are you criticizing a foreign government FOR? How it conducts a defensive war against terrorist scum who strangle babies with their bare hands, then throw rocks at their corpses to pretend that IAF bombing "really" killed them, then to hold their little bodies hostage until those little bodies could buy the freedom of 200 convicted terrorist murderers, and then parade their little coffins on TV for the world to see and then no even provide the actual keys to the coffin to the Israeli medical examiners could perform autopsies?
WHAT criticisms do you fucking have of Israel, Andrew Samwick?
Jews were made into slaves in Egypt but did not become Egyptians.
They were taking into captivity into Babylon but did not become Babylonians
They were defeated by Romans and scattered about the Empire, most of them as slaves, but did not become Romans
Christianity tried to force them to convert but they did not become Christians
Muslims tried to force them to convert but they did not become Muslims
Jews have retained their identity for almost 4000 years. You have never said to any of us, "Oh, your ideas are better, we will change to be like you." Never. Instead our world has changed to incorporate your ideas, morality, innovations, advancement. Parts of the world that did not adopt your values are now international pariahs.
We thought we had something good but you would not abandon your "better" to adopt our "good." Unable to attain to you, we hated you.
Now we try to defeat you with your own virtue, holding your standards of decency against you, slandering you at every turn, accusing you of our own sins. Instead of honoring you we despise you. Instead of learning from you we lecture you.
Our most peaceful international relationships are based on trade. I bring you Georgia peaches and trade them for your cranberries. If I rammed my peaches down your throat and refused to even taste your cranberries you would rightly feel offended. So we rammed our New Testament and Quran down your throat and called your Torah wisdom worthless, and by extension called your very lives worthless. Naturally you are offended and defensive - and rightly so.
But if I buy some of your Torah wisdom, take it home with me, understand my own problems and struggles much better in the light of your Torah wisdom I am enriched and you are honored. Neither of us loses our identity, but we re-value each other in such a bargain. You might even find a peach you might like to go with your excellent cranberries - a Christian meditative technique, an Islamic mystical poem.
There is tremendous potential for healing here. I've been hanging around on Chabad.com for a couple of years now and learned a lot. I'm still a Christian, but I'm a different sort of Christian than I was, richer, wiser, and far more relaxed.
The road to peace?—-“ if I buy some of your Torah wisdom, take it home with me, understand my own problems and struggles much better in the light of your Torah wisdom I am enriched and you are honored. Neither of us loses our identity, but we re-value each other in such a bargain.”
Thank you for writing this. There have been many articles making overlapping points but not capturing the angry mob emotion. I think it could reach some people who seem unreachable.
Ha! You should check out my Facebook. Full of mouth-frothers! But you are not wrong, for the right people to read it, it should be in The Guardian or something. Amazing that I didn't get one angry reply in this forum, not one person saying "anti-Zionism is not at all antisemitism"!
I’m an old man now, and the antisemitism I am witnessing is shocking, coming as it does from North America and Western Europe, let alone the rest of the world. Ignorance is a pale excuse because it is willful and pernicious, especially coming from anyone calling themselves Christian. It is an ancient hatred that, I believe, is only truly understood in spiritual terms. It is a monstrous evil.
I am an enemy of antisemitism wherever I find it, and friend and family to Jewish people everywhere. I stand by you!!! Shalom.
Thanks, this was great. One thing I learned from it was that the idea that the Jews, not the Romans, killed Jesus was from the Gospel of Mark. I never read it. The whole idea that the Jews must be collectively punished forever for something the Romans did sounded to me like a loophole they introduced when they got government sponsorship from Constantine. It's interesting you can cite a text that actually says, "Don't even think about blaming the Romans, it's the JOOS, FOREVER." Last year when so many people were saying "too many Gazans are dying" and "you can't confuse regular Gazans with Hamas" and most importantly, "you can't collectively punish a people," I thought hey wait a minute, regardless of whether or not Israel is doing collective punishment (it isn't), we Jews have been collectively punished as long as Christianity has existed, and we have been collectively punished as long as Islam has existed, and guaranteed the people saying collective punishment is vile are descended not more than a generation or two from people who thought collective punishment was just peachy when it came to Jews. As usual, another double standard.
BTW, since apparently you're not a Jew, I *am* curious to know how you know so much about antisemitism and how you came to think it's a Bad Thing. I'm sure I'll learn something.
Thank you so much. Yes you are so right. Collective punishment is just another one of these things that the accuser is guilty of and pushes on the Jews. Like colonialism.
I was an anti-Israel goy Swedish leftist. I thought I knew all about the conflict and the oppressed Palestinians.
Then I fell in love with an Israeli woman and eventually moved to Tel Aviv.
Little by little my worldview unraveled. I did a masters in Middle Eastern studies at Stockholm Uni. October 7th finally shattered all the lies.
So I decided to try and work it all out. Including my own previous feelings about this country.
The champagne cork metaphor comes from Haviv Rettig Gur. But it is so powerful. This is it. The feeling that if just the Jews did something different, or disappeared, all the problems would dissapear. Its all lies. Its all nonsense.
I am still not a Jew. But a patriot. I believe Israel has been built into extraordinary success in amazingly difficult circumstances.
And the most amusing thing is that all of Christian theology depends on Jesus (a Jew) dying. If he hadn't been killed,there would be no salvation. I am not a Jew but I am a student of English literature and history and European art. Anyone in these fields has to be wilfully blind not to know what happened to the Jews in Europe for over 1500 years, from the pogroms to the Dreyfus affair and beyond. Unfortunately, English departments are overrun by such blind people .
Yes you may have read that, but the surviving writings of the New Testament were full of mistranslation and political twists over the centuries by the non-Jewish scribes who were not professionals and not paid or had political slants that distorted truths of history.
As a non believer, I don't think that "truth" is what concerns me. What concerns me is how the narrative developed. One strand of thinking blamed the Jews.
Pretty damned much. As I wrote in my essay, "I am not here to debate Jew Haters," there is no debating with these losers. All one can do is call them out, so that OTHER people will see I have not let their lies go unchallenged, then move on.
Any mouth-breating onanist living in Mommy's basement can hate me all day long. I do not care in the least. What is unacceptable is for these losers to commit violence against Jews.
YOU ARE WRONG. JEWS ARE CRITICIZED BECAUSE ACCORDING TO CATHOLICISM AND ISLAM, THEY MUST BE CONVERTED. AT THE LEAST. THAT IS WHY YOU CAN GO BACK IN HISTORY AND LOOK AT IT OVER TIME
No he's right; according to both Catholicism and Islam, Jews must be converted in order for the world to be perfected. We're the obstacle to world domination. We are the obstacle to whatever you value.
Because printing evolved for the most useful form. If it were more effective to convey information IN ALL CAPS, then most books and newspapers would not bother with lower case letters. THAT IS WHY.
In the time it took you to rant about your misreading of my comment, you could have clicked on my name and seen my comments elsewhere on Substack. You could also have Googled me and had access to a lot of other information. In either case, you would have figured out how off base your assumptions are. What you choose to do with that information is up to you, but I would hope for something better than what you wrote above.
My apologies — the comment was intended as a reply to something elsewhere in the thread, but it got appended here instead. Your writing is on point. Please keep up the good work.
Political Correctness can be used as a weapon of antisemitism in this way. PC language rules lead to child-butchering terrorists who could choose to live off international aid peacefully instead of engaging in persistent unprovoked violence being viewed as oppressed victims.
Shorter version: if you criticize Israel for actions that you do not criticize when done by other countries, then you are anti-Semitic even if your criticisms are valid.
No, that is not what he wrote. It's simpler: People who do not give one flying fuck about anyone but themselves, who pass homeless mothers and children in the street on the way to a 2-star Michelin restaurant and who could not cite a single current conflict anywhere else in the world, rant about the Fakestinians because these losers hate Jews. That is what he wrote. I an only assume a professor at an Ivy League school is 95% likely to be a Jew Hating fuckwit Leftist.
Which brings me to, what criticisms of Israel are "valid?" Humans are imperfect, governments doubly so. What are you criticizing a foreign government FOR? How it conducts a defensive war against terrorist scum who strangle babies with their bare hands, then throw rocks at their corpses to pretend that IAF bombing "really" killed them, then to hold their little bodies hostage until those little bodies could buy the freedom of 200 convicted terrorist murderers, and then parade their little coffins on TV for the world to see and then no even provide the actual keys to the coffin to the Israeli medical examiners could perform autopsies?
WHAT criticisms do you fucking have of Israel, Andrew Samwick?
Jews were made into slaves in Egypt but did not become Egyptians.
They were taking into captivity into Babylon but did not become Babylonians
They were defeated by Romans and scattered about the Empire, most of them as slaves, but did not become Romans
Christianity tried to force them to convert but they did not become Christians
Muslims tried to force them to convert but they did not become Muslims
Jews have retained their identity for almost 4000 years. You have never said to any of us, "Oh, your ideas are better, we will change to be like you." Never. Instead our world has changed to incorporate your ideas, morality, innovations, advancement. Parts of the world that did not adopt your values are now international pariahs.
We thought we had something good but you would not abandon your "better" to adopt our "good." Unable to attain to you, we hated you.
Now we try to defeat you with your own virtue, holding your standards of decency against you, slandering you at every turn, accusing you of our own sins. Instead of honoring you we despise you. Instead of learning from you we lecture you.
Our most peaceful international relationships are based on trade. I bring you Georgia peaches and trade them for your cranberries. If I rammed my peaches down your throat and refused to even taste your cranberries you would rightly feel offended. So we rammed our New Testament and Quran down your throat and called your Torah wisdom worthless, and by extension called your very lives worthless. Naturally you are offended and defensive - and rightly so.
But if I buy some of your Torah wisdom, take it home with me, understand my own problems and struggles much better in the light of your Torah wisdom I am enriched and you are honored. Neither of us loses our identity, but we re-value each other in such a bargain. You might even find a peach you might like to go with your excellent cranberries - a Christian meditative technique, an Islamic mystical poem.
There is tremendous potential for healing here. I've been hanging around on Chabad.com for a couple of years now and learned a lot. I'm still a Christian, but I'm a different sort of Christian than I was, richer, wiser, and far more relaxed.
The road to peace?—-“ if I buy some of your Torah wisdom, take it home with me, understand my own problems and struggles much better in the light of your Torah wisdom I am enriched and you are honored. Neither of us loses our identity, but we re-value each other in such a bargain.”
Thank you for writing this. There have been many articles making overlapping points but not capturing the angry mob emotion. I think it could reach some people who seem unreachable.
Thank you. I really think this is the heart of it.
It will reach no one who needs to be cured of their Jew Hatred. But it's a good essay.
Ha! You should check out my Facebook. Full of mouth-frothers! But you are not wrong, for the right people to read it, it should be in The Guardian or something. Amazing that I didn't get one angry reply in this forum, not one person saying "anti-Zionism is not at all antisemitism"!
Thanks for the compliment though.
I’m an old man now, and the antisemitism I am witnessing is shocking, coming as it does from North America and Western Europe, let alone the rest of the world. Ignorance is a pale excuse because it is willful and pernicious, especially coming from anyone calling themselves Christian. It is an ancient hatred that, I believe, is only truly understood in spiritual terms. It is a monstrous evil.
I am an enemy of antisemitism wherever I find it, and friend and family to Jewish people everywhere. I stand by you!!! Shalom.
Shalom to you too friend. Yes it is awful. But there are many people pushing back too!
As we should, Tobias.
MEGAdittos.
Anti-Zionism is the new anti-semitism. This is what G-d showed this Gentile.
Thanks, this was great. One thing I learned from it was that the idea that the Jews, not the Romans, killed Jesus was from the Gospel of Mark. I never read it. The whole idea that the Jews must be collectively punished forever for something the Romans did sounded to me like a loophole they introduced when they got government sponsorship from Constantine. It's interesting you can cite a text that actually says, "Don't even think about blaming the Romans, it's the JOOS, FOREVER." Last year when so many people were saying "too many Gazans are dying" and "you can't confuse regular Gazans with Hamas" and most importantly, "you can't collectively punish a people," I thought hey wait a minute, regardless of whether or not Israel is doing collective punishment (it isn't), we Jews have been collectively punished as long as Christianity has existed, and we have been collectively punished as long as Islam has existed, and guaranteed the people saying collective punishment is vile are descended not more than a generation or two from people who thought collective punishment was just peachy when it came to Jews. As usual, another double standard.
BTW, since apparently you're not a Jew, I *am* curious to know how you know so much about antisemitism and how you came to think it's a Bad Thing. I'm sure I'll learn something.
Thank you so much. Yes you are so right. Collective punishment is just another one of these things that the accuser is guilty of and pushes on the Jews. Like colonialism.
I was an anti-Israel goy Swedish leftist. I thought I knew all about the conflict and the oppressed Palestinians.
Then I fell in love with an Israeli woman and eventually moved to Tel Aviv.
Little by little my worldview unraveled. I did a masters in Middle Eastern studies at Stockholm Uni. October 7th finally shattered all the lies.
So I decided to try and work it all out. Including my own previous feelings about this country.
The champagne cork metaphor comes from Haviv Rettig Gur. But it is so powerful. This is it. The feeling that if just the Jews did something different, or disappeared, all the problems would dissapear. Its all lies. Its all nonsense.
I am still not a Jew. But a patriot. I believe Israel has been built into extraordinary success in amazingly difficult circumstances.
So. Am Israel Hai!
And the most amusing thing is that all of Christian theology depends on Jesus (a Jew) dying. If he hadn't been killed,there would be no salvation. I am not a Jew but I am a student of English literature and history and European art. Anyone in these fields has to be wilfully blind not to know what happened to the Jews in Europe for over 1500 years, from the pogroms to the Dreyfus affair and beyond. Unfortunately, English departments are overrun by such blind people .
Yes you may have read that, but the surviving writings of the New Testament were full of mistranslation and political twists over the centuries by the non-Jewish scribes who were not professionals and not paid or had political slants that distorted truths of history.
As a non believer, I don't think that "truth" is what concerns me. What concerns me is how the narrative developed. One strand of thinking blamed the Jews.
very clear explanation of modern antisemitism.
Thank you.
Pretty damned much. As I wrote in my essay, "I am not here to debate Jew Haters," there is no debating with these losers. All one can do is call them out, so that OTHER people will see I have not let their lies go unchallenged, then move on.
https://christophermessina.substack.com/p/six-month-reminder-i-am-not-here?r=erlb4
Any mouth-breating onanist living in Mommy's basement can hate me all day long. I do not care in the least. What is unacceptable is for these losers to commit violence against Jews.
There is something to this. But most people are more or less on the fence, so being too angry can sometimes lose you the "others", the onlookers.
YOU ARE WRONG. JEWS ARE CRITICIZED BECAUSE ACCORDING TO CATHOLICISM AND ISLAM, THEY MUST BE CONVERTED. AT THE LEAST. THAT IS WHY YOU CAN GO BACK IN HISTORY AND LOOK AT IT OVER TIME
No he's right; according to both Catholicism and Islam, Jews must be converted in order for the world to be perfected. We're the obstacle to world domination. We are the obstacle to whatever you value.
Stop writing in all caps.
WHY DO YOU IMAGINE I DO THAT? THINK ON IT. MAYBE THERE IS A REASON. THANK YOU
Fewer people will read it.
Because printing evolved for the most useful form. If it were more effective to convey information IN ALL CAPS, then most books and newspapers would not bother with lower case letters. THAT IS WHY.
Not Catholicism: the Pope a few decades ago instructed not to convert Jews.
In the time it took you to rant about your misreading of my comment, you could have clicked on my name and seen my comments elsewhere on Substack. You could also have Googled me and had access to a lot of other information. In either case, you would have figured out how off base your assumptions are. What you choose to do with that information is up to you, but I would hope for something better than what you wrote above.
I'm sorry I don't know who you are talking to. Does this have something to do with the piece?
My apologies — the comment was intended as a reply to something elsewhere in the thread, but it got appended here instead. Your writing is on point. Please keep up the good work.
Thank you!
This ‘rage’, is as old as time itself. It began in Genesis, in The Garden where the first prophesy was uttered by G-d Himself, concerning Messiah.
Thus began the war between mankind and satan, women and children of Jewish descendant, in particular.
Political Correctness can be used as a weapon of antisemitism in this way. PC language rules lead to child-butchering terrorists who could choose to live off international aid peacefully instead of engaging in persistent unprovoked violence being viewed as oppressed victims.