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Freedom of speech for me but not for thee
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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It’s not “Nazi stuff” to call for the abolishment of Israel.
It’s a settler-colonial apartheid state actively involved in the complete extermination of the indigenous population. That’s actual Nazi stuff.
Most “Israelis” have another passport. They can go back to their own countries, or give up the state of Israel then live in the new Palestinian territory. No one’s talking about exterminating Israelis, not even while they actively exterminate Palestinians.
As we’ve seen with the way Israeli hostages were treated by Palestinians - fed, taken care of, birthdays celebrated is a stark contrast to how Palestinian prisoners are treated - starved, beaten, raped, tortured, set upon by dogs, buried alive. Decent Israelis would have nothing to fear if the whole land just transitioned to Palestinian territory.
There’s no issue with Judaism as a religion, or Jewish people. But Zionism is not Judaism, it’s just fascism, and the state of Israel is a fascist, genocidal state.
When the West Bank is being invaded and you have Trump talking about exterminating the remaining population of Gaza and building resorts on top of the land can you really keep telling yourself that Zionism and the state of Israel aren’t pure fascism?
That's not even close to true and is literally a line from Zionist propaganda.
At least in the West Jews are far safer than, for example, Muslims - it is the latter who are the "lesser race" of this age in the US and much or Europe, not the former.
If you exclude those reported claims of anti-semitism that turn out to be just criticism of Israel and it's Genocide (so, of the actions of a nation state and the Zionist regime in charge of it, not of the Jewish people) there is very little anti-semitism going on at least in Europe and way, way, less than anti-Islamism, Racism against people with African ancestry in general or even prejudice against the Roma (Gypsies).
In Europe, even the Far Right is shy of making statements against Jews but they damn well love to make wild claims about Muslims being bad people.
That's quite the massive goalpost moving from "Jews are not safe anywhere else [but Israel]" to "in 2022 in Sweden there were 108 (4% of hate crimes that year) criminally reported cases of anti-semitism" and that's in a country were criticism of Israel is deemed anti-semitism, so the real figure of actual anti-semitism (i.e. words and actions against people for being Jews, not merelly the criticizing of Israel) is likely to be vastly lower.
For example were I live, Portugal, politicians went out of the way to pass a law that gives Portuguese nationality to those who can indicate (outright proof is not needed and seldom possible) descendence from people belonging to a Jewish group (the Sefardites) expelled from the country in the 17th century, with the curious result that the most famous "Portuguese" person is the Russian billionaire Abramovich and there are quite a lot of "Portuguese" in Israel who have zero relation with country beyond paying the Synagoge in Porto to pass them a certification that they are Sefardites so as to easilly get an EU passport and hence Freedom to travel, live and work in all of the EU.
It absolutelly is Racism, just in the very opposite direction of what you claim: there are actual living persons in Africa who were victims of Forced Labour (i.e. Slavery) by the Portuguese regime there in the 1960s, plus even more people who are direct, provable descendants of such victims, but apparently what's far, far more important for a certain rightwing political party in Portugal is to compensate the "descendants" of a group (descendants in quotes because few or none can definitivelly prove direct descendency of victims of those actions) for the actions of Portugal against their ancestors 10 generations ago - by an amazing, trully incredible "coincidence" the distant, possible but almost never definitivelly proven, descendants of people expelled from Portugal 300 years ago deemed deserving of compensation for long past actions of Portugal just happen to White, whilst the actual living victims and direct, provable, descendants of victims of the practice of Slavery of Portugal in Africa a mere 6 decades ago who are not deemed deserving of compensation for it, are Black.
There is definitelly a racist double standard going on, and it's definitelly not anti-semitism.
And don't get me started on what happens to somebody demonstrating in Germany or Britain against the Genocide in Gaza when detained by the police for it if they are Jewish compare to what happens if they're Muslim.
Again, a racist double standard, and it's definitelly not anti-semitism.
"Whites who happen not to be Christian" are the least discriminated against minorities in Europe at the moment except for a handful of places (I believe that Hungary, for example, is pretty anti-semitic).
Interestingly, I lived in the UK for over a decade, so here are some observations:
First the UK legally considers many forms of criticism of Israel to be anti-semitism, which vastly multiplies the official count of "hate crimes" against Jews, especially since the Genocide in Gaza really went from slow burn to full steam ahead, as for example anybody shouting during a Peace In Palestine demonstration "From the land to the sea, Palestine will be free" is per the legislation there deemed to have committed an anti-semitic hate crime.
Second, over there I had friends and acquaintances who were Jewish, Muslim, Black, Indian, British, Asian and non-British European and have never once heard any of my Jewish friends or acquaintances complain of being discriminated against whilst I've heard more than once that from Muslim friends, including a tale were members of the London Transit Police displayed outrageous racism against a Turkish friend of mine and his friends at a train stop because they "dared" to challenge a white girl who cut the queue to the ticket booth - I can't speak for his mates but this guy wasn't at all a violent person and was even married to an English woman, so its extremely unlikely he was being threatening much less violent. However he definitely had stereotypical Turkish looks.
I've also heard reports of being victim of Racism from Black friends and Indian friends, and I myself as a Southern European was a victim of racial prejudice over there.
From Indian friends I even heard a tale of the police outright refusing to accept the report of a crime from one of their friends whose wallet had been stolen. If the police won't accept a crime report it doesn't end up in the crime statistics. Keep this in mind because I'll be back to it later.
Now, keep in mind that London has an entire area with Orthodox Jews, so people dressed in a way which is very visibly according to some Jewish traditions and not merely wearing a kippa (which I've also seen, all over London).
My impression, also from the political speech over there, is that actual discrimination and racial hate crimes (the real deal ones, because of ethnicity, not the "criticism of Israel is a 'hate crime'" bollocks) against Jews in Britain is pretty much just random insults on the street. Meanwhile the ones against Muslims, Indians and Blacks are amongst others done by the actual police, as well as being discriminated against by Public Services and in Courts.
(I have never, not once, heard of a Jewish Person in Britain being a victim of racial discrimination by the Authorities. Meanwhile even members of the police with Southeast Asian ancestry report being victims of discrimination within the force)
Third, and circling back to the story told to me by Indian friends, consider the possibility that most crimes against the people whom the police themselves discriminates against are far less likely to be recorded (and definitely the police themselves will not record their own displays of racial hate) and thus do not appear in the statistics. Further, Jews in Britain are overwhelmingly Middle and Upper-Middle class, which in that country (which is very classist) makes it even more likely that, simply because they dress right, have the right accent and use the right words (and in some cases are even themselves Solicitors, Barristers or even High Court judges) when they do pop up on a police station to report a hate crime it gets treated seriously, whilst if, say, a Working class son of an Arab immigrant pops up on a police station he's not taken seriously, is given the run around and is dissuaded from pushing for it to be investigated.
That idea that in the present day Jews are discriminated against all over the place is ridiculous. Certainly from what I've seen in the European countries I lived in, the actual authorities either treat them exactly the same as non-Jew whites or even discriminate "in their favor". They also tend to benefit from the inequality of treatment based on wealth in present day society in most of Europe because for historical reasons they're more likely to be Middle Class or higher than other minorities (who generally are either people from poorer countries or the direct descendants of such people hence not having had much chance at social mobility away from their class of birth, hence Working Class or even Poor).
This is not to deny that there is real anti-semitism in Europe, mainly committed by individuals with Far-Right ideologies. The difference compared to other minorities is that Jews are not discriminated against by the Authorities and are in fact taken seriously when they report having been a victim of a hate crime (plus in some countries, such as the UK and Germany, have actual political power explicitly backing "The Jewish People" - i.e. politicians openly practicing racial discrimination in favor of their ethnicity).
To wrap this up, from all I've heard from Jewish friends in Britain, you can have a very good life as a Jew over there, same as the locals (better if you're upper-middle class) and to me there being entire areas in London were Orthodox Jews overtly dress according to their tradition (plus beyond that I've often seen people wearing the kippa), is a pretty good indication that they do not fear being victimized by anti-semites.
(Also from what I saw reported on TV back there - and note that this was before the latest Genocide in Gaza - just about all reported cases of "anti-semitism" were "criticism of Israel", including an extraordinary situation were, for the political purpose of damaging the then leader of the center-left party, a Jewish Holocaust Survivor was accused of being an anti-semite for having compared some of the actions of Israel in Palestine to those of the Nazis during a conference for Palestine - in a country were repeatedly on national television it's implied that a Jewish Holocaust Survivor!!! committed a hate crime against the Jewish People, it seems a little naive to trust that the statistics on hate crimes against Jews there are a genuine reflection of reality).
That doom statement you've several posts ago which triggered my initial response, stands in sharp contradiction to what I've observed in the countries of Europe I lived in and what I've been told by Jewish friends there, especially compared to other minorities living there some of which are definitely victims of racial discrimination at all levels including by the Authorities themselves, which are almost certainly severely under-reported due to a phenomenon very similar to how rapes are severely under-counted in the more sexist countries.
Well, my experience abroad really doesn't cover the time since the events in October (as I was back living in Portugal before that) and here in Portugal I have yet to observe or hear about any attacks on Jews or Jewish symbols even since then. Portugal doesn't treat "criticism of Israel" as anti-semitism - so the numbers are not artificially inflated by counting people demonstrating against the Genocide in Palestine as anti-semites - and as I pointed out in an earlier post the country is actually practicing racial discrimination in favour of Jews, though not quite to the level of the UK or Germany (which even have "Friends of Israel" groups in their Parliaments)
Unfortunately, several countries adopted the IHRA definition of anti-semitism which considers criticism of the State of Israel and its actions to be anti-semitism (leading to ridiculous instances such as that Jewish Holocaust Survivor being considered an anti-semite in the UK for the way he criticized the actions of Israel in Palestine) which muddied the waters considerably helping hid the real anti-semitism, and indirectly spreading a perception that there is a lot more anti-semitism than there is in reality, because when those artificially inflated numbers are reported in the media there is no separation between "criticism of Israel" and actual anti-semitic actions so it all sounds much worse than it is, in turn shifting the perceptions (both amongst Jews and gentiles) of the level of anti-semitism in a country, which is the while point of the IHRA definition and adopting it - it's a long standing propaganda technique of Zionism and the State of Israel to spread the notion that Jewish people are only safe in Israel (and the phrase you original used is literally out of it) and the IHRA definition was created and its use in various countries was pushed by their lobbying to boost that story.
That survey you linked is extremely interesting but for reasons you might not be aware of: It was taken right in the middle of a broad political coup in Britain to oust the first left-of-center politician elected as leader of a mainstream political party in Britain since the 80s - Jeremy Corbyn, who was elected Labour Party leader by a majority of its members - and the core of that campaign, which involved the Press, politicians of the opposing party, politicians of the neoliberal faction within his party, and Israel-linked Jewish groups in Britain (since Corbyn had always been against the Occupation Of Palestine) was to spread the idea that he himself and the Labour party under his leadership were deeply anti-semitic.
That's actually how a Jewish Holocaust Survivor ended up accused of making anti-semitic statements - as part of spreading the idea that Corbyn was anti-semitic, to taint him by association it was widely reported was that he had sat on a panel in a conference with a person who made anti-semitic statements when he compared the actions of Israel to those of the Nazis, never mentioning that said person was an actual Jewish Holocaust Survivor but eventually that small detail they forgot to mention in the Press did come out.
That UK survey you linked was both influenced by and later used as a tool in that campaign (I vaguely remember it being mentioned by politicians within Corbyn's party trying to oust him), so not only had some people in Britain for political purposes an incentive to lie about their feelings of safety in Britain as Jews on that survey, but others who responded to it were influenced by the massive, sudden and out of nowhere panic about anti-semitism in Britain that the Press and most of the Political Class created as part of a political coup.
(As I said, I lived there for over a decade, and information from the UK is generally highly manipulated invariably by indirect means, and I don't mean just this - don't get me started on how the ruling class there manipulate Economic and Crime figures)
I have no doubt that many Jewish people perceive themselves as threatened by anti-semitism, especially in countries which artificially inflated the anti-semitism numbers by counting "criticism of Israel" as anti-semitism, but objectively the idea that Jews are not safe anywhere outside Israel because of anti-semitism is wholly out of proportion to reality, especially when their treatment in most of the West is compared to how just about every other minority gets treated over there (whilst not making wild panicky statements that they cannot live there) - I guess that, as you say, "it is difficult to acknowledge that people with other backgrounds are subject to hate" hence many Jews in countries were they are not discriminated against will have difficulty acknowledging what's happening to those of other minorities and thus seeing their own situation in the broader context, leading to them spreading alarmist takes about their situation entirely out proportion to reality, which serves the goals of Zionist propaganda.
That's a curious take when I've repeatedly reiterated that there is anti-semitism and even pointed some of those who tends to to do it.
What I'm disputing is the level of alarmism about it.
Jews in Europe are victims of prejudice, at times even racial hate from people not in positions of authority (almost always in the form of anti-semitic insults, but also as you point out crimes against Jewish Community property). They are however in not in significant more danger for their lives than the locals, are almost never targets of violence and are treated fairly and taken seriously by the local authorities.
(That said, I do vaguely remember in the last couple of years an instance of actual violent attack on Jews in Europe, so Jewish People are in higher danger than the locals, not with high probability but none the less at higher levels)
There absolutely still is a problem, just nowhere at the levels that we have once seen and far less than for other minorities, mainly because nowadays it's only the powerless that might target Jews, not the powerful.
For Historical reasons there seems to definitely and understandably be a higher sensitivity amongst the Jewish Community to displays of prejudice, which partly explains the higher state of alarm when faced with prejudice of any kind (which also translates into more prompt reporting of those instances to the authorities, perversely enhancing the alarmism because what's reported is what gets reflected in the official figures) compared to how other minorities feel and react even when faced with a lot more prejudice (and those will report less, especially since the authorities themselves discriminate against them, hence the official figures for them is lower than reality), and given that Jews, just like everybody else, "find it difficult to acknowledge that people with other backgrounds are subject to hate", many will have a perception of victimhood wholly decontextualized from the broader phenomenon of prejudice and racial hate in the countries they live in.
All of this is of curse actively cultivated by a country ruled by an ethno-Fascist regime which claims to represent that specific ethnicity, since it's pretty standard in the Fascist playbook to claim both strength and being a victim, and specifically ethno-Fascist regimes enhance their claims of representing a ethnicity if the people of that ethnicity gather around that regime.
All this said, I can understand that the rise of the Far-Right in Europe is scary for Jews here, because the Far-Right in Europe have historically tended to be rabid anti-semites. So far the Far-Right being anti-semitic only seems to be the case in some countries (they're mostly against immigrants), but that fear amongst the Jewish Community is none the less justified.
I don't trust British numbers because I lived in the damn place and claims of anti-semitism there have been politically weaponized and heavily so - when the rules are such that a Jewish Holocaust Survivor (!!!) gets deemed an anti-semite for criticizing Israel, you know the whole thing is bollocks.
I've already went through all the reasons why the anti-semitic label has lost much of its meaning and hence the numbers for "anti-semitic" racial hate are muddied beyond salvation and why "perception" numbers (which is what you provided) are even easier to shift with Propaganda, and that what you claim doesn't match what I heard over the years of reported experience of actual Jewish People or even what I see pop up in the small progessive leftwing part I'm involved in which is heavily into fighting against racism (and such things definitely pop-up for some other ethnic groups), so won't go into that (again). In fact I literally just deleted a large block I wrote about it :/
The issue is that you've persisted in using flawed metrics to prove your point that "Jews are not safe to live anywhere else".
How about this: show me proof that the number of violent deaths per capita of Jewish People in any European country are actually higher than for the whole population.
"Violent deaths" is a pretty concrete metric that goes straight to show insecurity. Unlike perception of racial hate, death counts cannot be influenced by propaganda and it's pretty hard to over or under report violent deaths (at least in Europe, were the Authorities keep a tight eye on people suddenly appearing dead). The number of violent deaths is also strongly positively correlated with violence in general so the former count should be a pretty good indicator of broader insecurity.
If Jews are dying to violence in Europe more than other people then there is no doubt whatsoever that they are less safe.
Assuming that "attempted homicide" is determined by an external 3rd party, I expect it not to be skewed by the victim's own perceptions or beliefs so it makes sense to also consider attempted homicide when you can't separate it from homicide.
Also keep in mind that you're not supposed to be looking specifically for murders deemed "anti-semitic killing", just killings in general of any person, per-capita and killings of people who are Jewish in relation to the number of Jewish people in that country, independently of the motive having been determined as being anti-semitism.
Going after murders specifically labelled as anti-semitic would just be getting us back to the problem of the legal classification of anti-semitism - in other words, countries with a broader definition of anti-semitism (such as the ones deeming criticism of Israel as being anti-semitism) having a bias would be more likely to label as "anti-semitic" murders of Jewish people which were not in fact committed due to the ethnicity of the victim, than other countries. Further, only looking at murders for which the motive had been determined would reduce the total of cases considered to just those murders which were successfully prosecuted (which depending on the country can be quite a low fraction of the total), since (I believe) a death can be officially counted as a murder purely based on the autopsy even if the killer has not been found, tried and convicted and his or her motive confirmed during a trial. Also the "how serious are the authorities at investigating a murder depending on the ethnicity of the victim" factor might skew the results if you're limiting your numbers to tried and convicted cases. (Whilst not so in life, we're all equal in death and a corpse is a corpse, so I expect that a coroner's determination after examining a corpse that the person was killed should independent of the ethnicity of the victim).
By just looking at all murders without looking at anything else but the ethnicity of the victim, my expectation is that anti-semitic murders will appear in the numbers as more Jewish people getting murdered as a proportion of all Jewish people than the rate for the overall population - with this method any judgment passed saying the motivation of the murder is not at all examined, hence any possible "inflation" in the use of the "anti-semitic" classification makes no difference whatsoever for the results, and equally any bias the authorities might have in terms of how much resources they dedicate to investigating a murder depending on the victim's ethnicity does not impact the numbers since they're based on the coroner's determination alone.
If in aggregate Jews are getting killed more often than the population in general, the obvious conclusion is that the excess of Jewish people being victims of murder above the general population is because of them being killed due to their ethnicity, which would confirm your point that Jewish people are less safe than the rest (not merely feel less safe, which you already proved and I never disputed, but objectively are less safe).
Were did you get a that list of categories for most murders which doesn't have non-gang-related crime? Because most crime doesn't involve gangs.
Are you classifying all organised crime as being gangs (i.e. classifying the Mafia as a "gang") and all non-gang related but crime related murder under "spontaneous"? Because that's the only way you'll end up with with that list of top categories for murders and in that case since those "gangs" aren't just bands of teenagers from poor backgrounds, I'm pretty sure there are Jewish people in "gangs".
Further, your entire point rests on the assumption that Jews are less likely to be involved in or with violent criminals than other people - in other words that Jews are different from other people in something which is unrelated to one's religion, which is pretty straightforward racial prejudice and easily disproven by there being Jews committing crimes, including murder, in Israel (in fact if there is once thing the Genocide in Gaza proves beyond doubt is that some Jews have the capacity of the most horrific behavior - same as everybody else).
Without that prejudiced assumption, then as Jews are equally involved in crime as everybody else the fraction of Jews that end up dead due to that should be the same as everybody else and thus have equal impact on both the rate of Jews being victims of murder and that of the general population, leaving us once again with only anti-semitic violence to explain any higher rate of Jews being murdered.
Frankly, the only thing that I would expect would impact the number to yield a lower rate of Jewish victims of murder compared to the broader population would be that in Europe Jews tend to be Middle Class or above - mainly because they're well established, compared with for example immigrants from poorer countries - and the probability of being murdered is affected by one's social status (basically poorer people tend to be murdered more than middle-class people) and even then, if Jews in Europe tend to die less than average because they're well established and prosperous, that de facto means they're safe in Europe (certainly safer than the average person), which disproves your original statement - my whole point has always been that Jews can in fact be safe elsewhere than Israel, not that anti-semitism does not exist.
A few points:
All of it is none the less irrelevant because, if Jews in Europe are dying at lesser rates than the rest of the population, no matter what the reason, they are de facto safe to live in Europe which disproves your statement that Jews are not safe to live anywhere [but Israel]. In the big maths of safety what counts is in how much danger one is, not the reason for that danger.
(Large amounts of anti-semitist violence would none the less in those number more than offset the safety enhancing factors for Jews in Europe such as, due to being well established, tending to be Middle class and hence safer than working class and poor people, whilst small amounts of anti-semitist violent would be hidden in the death toll by those other safety enhancing factors. The point is that the levels of anti-semitic violence - which I have no doubt exist in many if not most countries in Europe especially with large mena immigrant communities since those amongst them who are Racists will confuse Jews with Israel and blame the former as a group for the actions of the latter - seem to be very low and hence not enough to make Jews be less safe than the rest of the population).
In your last couple of posts you seem to have been trying to come up with excuses, so I can only conclude that the numbers you managed to gather following my suggestion of a, IMHO, reasonably independent metric do not show a higher rate of Jewish deaths than the rest of the population. None the less, your mind is set, understandable given the story you just shared of your experience as a Jew in Sweden of growing up in a neighborhood of mostly Middle Eastern and Northern African immigrants as my mind is set because I have only ever known Jews from Middle-class backgrounds in the countries I lived in, whose experiences were very different from yours and hence whose safety was far less at risk than yours seems to have been, plus as I said in those same countries I've had friends from many origins whose experiences were worse (in some cases far worse) than the experiences of my Jewish friends.
Lets agree to disagree, and I thank you for engaging with me on this in good faith.
What are you talking about? How are they treated in Sweden?!
Well, I heard exactly that from multiple Lemmy user by now. To be fair, they normally come from certain instances, but it is definitely not no one.
You mean online losers? Me included aren't those being bombed in gaza and the west bank. Palestinan are kinder than Palestinan supporters but also justifying a genocide because of what a Lemmy user said is fucking mental
Who is justifying a genocide? In my opinion justifying any killing is fucking mental 💁🏻 but I consider myself some sort of hippie, so maybe I am a bit extreme in that regard…
America, Israel, American and European media, etc etc
Sorry, I understood that you were talking about me.
I have not much experience in US media other than late shows, like steven and steward
Other than that, in Europe, it depends very much which country’s media, because in my country, I think no media justifies any killing directly, at least not that I know of.