It's interesting that you find the need to type this out though, as if the UK (and US, and the West) doesn't cultivate many similar ties that absolutely get nowhere near the same level of attention. It's rare to see people with the same level of dislike towards a country like Saudi Arabia or the UAE. With Israel, people viscerally hate it.

The main difference between Israel and worse global players is the wide range of westerners (including self described "liberal" ones) who tolerate or are willing to step up to endorse its vicious racism, its ethnic cleansing and its illegal settlement expansion both with trumped up accusations of antisemitism and whataboutism.

That naturally elicits a bit of a reaction.

By contrast I dont remember anybody calling anybody an Islamophobe because they condemned Mohammed bin Salman's killing of Khashoggi or invasion of Yemen.

There's also an element of what is done in Israel being done in our name, since it was essentially a remnant of European colonialism (a particularly shameful part of our history) and continues thanks to support from our governments.

I can't speak for anyone else; but I feel the same way about any other country which is committing similar crimes against people just for being alive, as I do about Israel.

That includes the US, Russia, China, UAE, SA, Myanmar and whatever other examples you wish.

Why pro-genocide israelis feel (and shout that) they get an inproportionate amount of criticism vs the other dickheads of the world is an exercise I leave to the reader.

>Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously.

This rhetoric is not any different than conservatives arguing Af-Am play the 'race card'. In both cases there's actual bigotry that some people want to sweep under the rug by a mindless counter-accusation.

> there's actual bigotry

as implied by "too much" - your comment is truly rhetoric as it cheaply dismisses this claim as "mindless" and makes a poor tribal comparison - African-Americans aren't currently occupying another state.

The comparison is to the rhetoric used to ignore bigotry (see the absurd defence of Corbyn in the comments). The alleged sins of a country are irrelevant to that issue.

Please show me where Corbyn said anything against Jewish people for being jewish? He, like me, is strongly against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the war crimes it commits against its peoples in exercise of that.

Saying so does not make you a bigot or an anti semite. Israel and it's defenders hide behind these kind of statements and they're nonsense. Labour if elected would not have given Israel such an easy ride and they throw a lot of money around -- thus, Corbyn is an anti-semite and labour has 'issues' around Jews, and surprise surprise; the tories got in and are happy to sell them lots of nice missiles and intelligence.

It's bullshit. They just have ethics. I Would feel the exact same way if it was Christians or Hindus or whatever in charge of Israel and behaving like this; where is the defence then? Criticise us and you're anti-christian? Doesn't have the same ring to it does it?

Nearly all of the statements and actions in issue with Corbyn have nothing whatsoever to do with Israel. 99.9999% politicians manage to avoid antisemitic murals and endorsing antisemitic books just fine.

It's not remotely difficult, and I'm sure 99.999999% of Labour Leftists with nigh-identical positions would not be so compromised. Can't understand why the Labour Left had to (politically) die on that hill.

Corbyn didn't support an anti-Semitic mural, if that's what "managing to avoid" means: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/23/corbyn-crit...

The book was presumably "Imperialism: A Study" - not wholly about Jews, and Corbyn describes the accusation as "mischievous representation".

These are weak examples, basically a degrees-of-separation argument coupled with your own opinion of what is black-and-white anti-Semitic without informed discussion (or even examples since you only provide suggestive anecdotes, not sources). Feel free to demonstrate your "99.9..%" numbers for politicians that are under the same amount of scrutiny.

So the topic you wish to discuss is "rhetoric used to ignore bigotry".

Feel free to demonstrate where this exists in the comment you replied to. I can just as easily decide the more relevant topic is "rhetoric used to ignore ethnic nationalism", which your post could be.

EDIT:

I'd also note the comment you replied to says:

> Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously

your own comment elsewhere (on Noam Chomsky):

> Noted genocide denier (repeatedly) with zero credibility on anything.

Why is dismissive labelling ok in one case, and not another?

>Why is dismissive labelling ok in one case, and not another?

Because the only source given for the quote was Chomsky himself*. In that case, the question of Chomsky's credibility is directly relevant.

* It's possible Chomsky had an actual source etc., but if so, it was not provided in the original comment.

The issue isn't if Chomsky's credibility is relevant, but on the credibility swipe itself: If Chomsky can be dismissed on all topics (zero credibility on anything) for alleged genocide denial, why isn't that "rhetoric that ignores X" for whatever X Chomsky might discuss?

I was dismissing Chomsky's testimony on anything, not anything he might say. If he said '2+2=4' that would be true (if also trivial). I regret not being 100% clear in a forum comment.

It was testimony aka credibility that I'm talking about.

> Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously

They use it in very specific circumstances that relate to criticizing the idea of Israel being a Jewish state. I can understand that people may innocently criticize this, due to missing the historical context of why Israel was created, but I agree that this form of criticism against Israel should be condemned.

P.S. There are very specific actions by the Israeli government that I do condemn. Notably, not stopping settlement expansion in the West Bank. However most comments against Israel are far more gangue and sensationalist.

> the idea of Israel being a Jewish state

That was only very recently codified and was very controversial inside and outside of israel.

> They use it in very specific circumstances

I'm sorry but that's just incorrect, it's been used much more broadly.

for example according to Noam Chomsky:

"Actually, the locus classicus, the best formulation of this, was by an ambassador to the United Nations, Abba Eban, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations.... He advised the American Jewish community that they had two tasks to perform. One task was to show that criticism of the policy, what he called anti-Zionism—that means actually criticisms of the policy of the state of Israel—were anti-Semitism. That's the first task. Second task, if the criticism was made by Jews, their task was to show that it's neurotic self-hatred, needs psychiatric treatment. Then he gave two examples of the latter category. One was I. F. Stone. The other was me. So, we have to be treated for our psychiatric disorders, and non-Jews have to be condemned for anti-Semitism, if they're critical of the state of Israel. That's understandable why Israeli propaganda would take this position. I don’t particularly blame Abba Eban for doing what ambassadors are sometimes supposed to do. But we ought to understand that there is no sensible charge. No sensible charge. There's nothing to respond to. It's not a form of anti-Semitism. It's simply criticism of the criminal actions of a state, period"

>That was only very recently codified and was very controversial inside and outside of israel.

Very recently as in 'in the UN assembly resolution authorizing the creation of Israel' (1947) or the 1985 basic law etc.

>Noam Chomsky

Noted genocide denier (repeatedly) with zero credibility on anything.

> Very recently as in 'in the UN assembly resolution authorizing the creation of Israel' (1947) or the 1985 basic law etc.

You are correct. I'm sorry. I was misremembering the news from when "Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People" [1] was passed in 2018. My bad, I can no longer edit my post though. So apparently "Jewish ethnic homeland in Palestine", "Jewish state" and "Jewish nation-state" mean different things and have different connotations. The latter being the recent and most controversial one.

for people that want to check the resolution referenced is UNGA181.[2]

Turns out the Palestinian opposition to the term is because they see it as giving up on their right of return (given to them by UNGA194 [3] )

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Natio...

[2] - https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/res181.asp

I don't often respond to claims like these, but I think it might be necessary to in this case. I am not sure what sources you used to inform those claims, but I will simply say that in both cases both are misleading.

Noam Chomsky is a lot of things, but 'genocide denier' label is at best inaccurate and, more importantly, does not automatically make him wrong on any other issue. I get that character assassination works well, but this is HN, where stuff like that will be called out.

"That was only very recently codified and was very controversial inside and outside of Israel.

Very recently as in 'in the UN assembly resolution authorizing the creation of Israel' (1947) or the 1985 basic law etc."

I think parent is referring to this piece of legislation[1]. I might be wrong, but if not, that would strike me as recent.

[1]https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/31/17623978/israel-jewish-n...

The quote in question provides no sources beyond that Chomsky said it (no direct sources or anything). So the question of Chomsky's credibility is important, and well, Chomsky's own record in the Balkans and earlier in Cambodia speaks for itself.

>I think parent is referring to this piece of legislation

I believe you are right, but the particular issue parent's objecting to is not new at all [EDIT: Note that parent clarified his position in a later comment].

I will admit that I don't follow him closely enough to know his stance on either Balkans or Cambodia. If you can share any sources, I would not mind learning a little more.

That said, I accept your argument that credibility is relevant. Not to search very far, if we accept him as some sort of authority on geopolitical matters, is he wrong, say, about US-Iraq relationship? My point is that opinions should not be automatically dismissed or automatically accepted. It should be based on the merits of the argument. And Chomsky can present an interesting argument based on what I heard.

That's fair enough. We can discuss arguments to a large extent divorced from who made them. This is often useful.

However, the quote in question goes a bit further, Chomsky says Eban started a specific strategy of using antisemitism to Eban's own ends, almost directly paraphrasing something Eban allegedly said. I think I'm entitled to ask what's Chomsky's source, and if there isn't any, than it rests on Chomsky's credibility which, well, isn't very much IMHO.

[EDIT: On the Balkans, you can see Kraut's video on YouTube. This text has similar arguments though:

https://srebrenicagenocide7111995.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/n... ]

I followed a chain of links to see if I can pinpoint the origin of the quote, but that only resulted in, as you indicated, in Chomsky's own words[1]. As such, you are right, for that reason his credibility is more relevant since I was not able to verify Eban's words.

Separately, I did some basic googling of Eban quotes and his positions[2] do not seem at odds with the gist of Chomsky's quote though:

"One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all. Anti-Zionism is merely the new anti-Semitism….”

I only started reading the link you provided so it may take a while before I respond.

[1]https://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/27/noam_chomsky_at_unit... [2]https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/18/corb-n18.html

>his positions[2] do not seem at odds with the gist of Chomsky's quote though

I would like to differ slightly. Chomsky has it that Eban wants to tar criticism of Israeli policy as antisemitic* - which leads to the 'oh well, they just accused Corbyn of antisemitism because of his Israel position' argument you see in the comments.

Eban wants to argue against a specific ideological position which at least is aimed at completely modifying the Israeli state (not 'policy criticism') and he has his argument for it - an argument we can safely say Israel has lost in the West. People may defend Israel, but they usually do not consider their opponent antisemitic per se.

* There's also the 'neurotic self-hatred' part, where Eban supposedly is naming Chomsky specifically, but I think we can safely discard that.

The problem with Israel being "a Jewish state" is that requires the suppression and occasionally ethnic cleansing of its non-Jewish residents in order to prevent them from ever achieving enough numbers or power to make it not Jewish.

It's a fundamental contradiction embedded from the Israeli declaration of independence (which commits to racial and religious equality) onwards: what does it mean for a state, rather than individuals, to be Jewish?

The underlying argument is that it's necessary for the continued survival and security of Jewish people that there be a Jewish state, and unfortunately the continuous attacks on Israel suggest they might be right.

I think you can point out that any state founded on ethno or religious grounds is a bad idea. Although in this case given when it was formed and why that clearly adds a lot of context.

You can certainly state that the right of self-determination doesn't trump the rights of others. So a Jewish state somewhere is a right, but not if there are already people living in that particular somewhere who object.

You can also state that predominantly European migration to a part of the world where there are other people living has been somewhere between a mistake and a disaster and a tragedy, be that America, Australia or Israel.

I think the last part is the issue that causes much of the problems. Many people in Labour party wanted to protect the right of those directly affected by the migration to call it out in their terms. We wouldn't deny native americans or aborigines using terms like 'racist' to describe what has happened to them. Yet the misuse of the IHRA examples (turning examples into a legal definition) did exactly that. And many people in Labour objected.

I can understand the continuing need for there to always be a place of safety for Jews. Although it's tragic that this is the case, but understandable, not least given the holocaust still being within living memory. The current direction of Israel can't be it though, there has to be some other way.