WHAT???!

So it’s “free speech” is it, by your definition, to insult Jews/Israelis (and since CiF and many Arab states don’t care to distinguish between the two, neither shall I for these purposes)?

May I take it that you support similar insult to Palestinian and other Muslims, very much in the spirit of equal opportunities and freedom of expression?

Please confirm that this is what you mean, because if it is I’d like to get cracking asap.

All this guff about apartheid means absolutely nothing when (though I doubt it would penetrate the fog you seem content to exist in) you consider what would happen if folk like you got their wish, for Israel to be sufficiently delegitimised so as not to exist. Muslim engendered apartheid and its correlation,dhimmitude would be the least of Israel’s worries.

Israel only roads are a must when you consider what would happen if terrorists and their accoutrements were allowed to move freely between Gaza and the West Bank.

Interesting isn’t it, how during a discussion on Jew hatred your “contributions” consist solely of anti-Israel rhetoric. This supports Mitnaged’s argument above.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/06/secondworldwar.warcrimes?commentid=cf0c5d5f-f78b-4e88-9d06-bfbb78d4f596

Aetrus
Aug 07 08, 2:11pm

Any attempt to paint the US as the perpetrator is just the support and justification of fascism. Sorry John, that is the simple reality. Everything else is casuistry.

Why not? It should make sense and be binding for all civilised people.

“Elements of apartheid?” - Israeli Arabs have the vote and sit as Members of the Knesset. What’s apartheid about that?

And comparisons of the barbed wire around Auschwitz with the closed borders of Gaza are “irony?” I am not even smiling. The clue here lies in the intent, which was to insult Jews/Israelis. When a country is hated so vehemently and insulted using the identical tropes as have been used by Nazis, Arab countries and the benighted on CiF against Jews then it’s hardly too great a leap to deduce that hatred of Israel’s POLICIES is blown out of proportion because of hatred of her PEOPLE because they are Jews.

Arguing against Jew-hatred is not tantamount to suppressing free speech. I would bet that you would be first in the queue for suppressing me if I wrote the same rubbish and filth about Muslims and Islam.

ClaptheHammer - Israel-hatred on CiF is the equivalent of King Charles’ head in “David Copperfield” - it will keep getting into everything.

And of course CiF is anti-Semitic and every anti-Israel thread on it acts as CiF’s whore because it garners more hits.

Some of the anti Israel posters post all day long rants about ‘evil Israel’. I find difficulty seeing this as anti Israel in isolation. It would seem to be based in antisemitism and CI(F) is the vehicle generously provided by the Guardian in its anti Israel crusade.

The moderate swing to the right in some venues may indicate a recognition of the left’s moral bankruptcy.

The Guardian’s anti-Zionism, anti-Judaism, and Islamophilia are simply symptoms of the left’s stinking, diseased soul.

1) I’m in Argentina, and I’m not sure the EUMC Working Definition is binding for me. Also, definitions by international bodies are in many cases debatable. Wasn’t it the UN that once declared that Zionism was a form of racism? The Working Definition is the product of a politically hiper-correct committee that wants to be holier than the Pope and is very fearful of harming certain sensitivities.

2) Israel proper is not an Apartheid state, but it has certain elements of Apartheid. For instance, hate against Arabs is taught in State-subsidized Israeli schools. See:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/997629.html

Be sure to notice the hair-raising racist language used: “exploitative,” “abnormal phenomenon” (i.e. dating an Arab), “sleeping with the enemy,” etc.

3) The situation in the West Bank, however, is one closely resembling Apartheid: Israeli-only roads; Arabs dumped into countless cantons with no contiguity; settlers given total freedom to harass the local population; an absolute segregation of the Jewish and Arab populations; natural resources overwhelmingly allotted to the settler population to the detriment of the native Arabs; etc.

Again, this is antisemitic – see the Definition (‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’).

But RickB is making no such comparison; he’s making a Reductio Ad Absurdum argument.

Much to my astonishment, you were dead serious with your report and actually aim at suppressing free speech in the name of political correctness. That is a dangerous agenda, and needs to be stopped.

Apartheid was systematic racism whereby blacks were separated from whites eg at schools and Universities and hospitals, and blacks were denied basic rights such as voting. The difference with the situation of the Arabs in Israel is obvious. It is absurd of you to claim that the term ’apartheid’ is racist when applied to former South Africa. That was the situation for which the word was coined. When misapplied to Jews, however, it certainly is racist. “Claiming that the Jewish State is a racist endeavour” is antisemitic, see the EUMC Working Definition:

http://eumc.europa.eu/eumc/material/pub/AS/AS-WorkingDefinition-draft.pdf

That is the case – whether you like it or not, it is an internationally agreed definition.

[In the Appendix with examples of antisemitism]
Ziongate: “94.6% of the barrier is actually constructed of metal fence.”
Wall, fence, barrier…..
Aushwitz was surrounded by barbed wire fences. Obviously that meant that those inside the camp were just fine and dandy, didn’t it?
Pathetic.

RickB makes the comparison between the security fence and the fence surrounding Auschwitz. Again, this is antisemitic – see the Definition (‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’).

You may think all the examples in my paper are humorous, that is your right. But you do not have ownership of the Definition of Antisemitism. As I say in the paper, it is a fundamental precept of laws on racism that it is up to the offended to define what is or is not offensive – not up to you.

For Jews antisemitism is no laughing matter.

The Guardian’s Community Standards say “We recognise the difference between criticising a particular government, organisation, community or belief and attacking people on the basis of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation” but then the Moderators do not seem to realise that talking eg about ‘apartheid’ in Israel and ‘ethnic cleansing’ is itself an attack on the basis of race (the Jewish race)

Is this seriously meant? By this standard, talking about apartheid in South Africa would also have been an attack on the basis of race (the Afrikaner race). I.e. critics of apartheid were all racists.

[In the Appendix with examples of antisemitism]
Ziongate: “94.6% of the barrier is actually constructed of metal fence.”
Wall, fence, barrier…..
Aushwitz was surrounded by barbed wire fences. Obviously that meant that those inside the camp were just fine and dandy, didn’t it?
Pathetic.
[The sentences in bold are highlighted as the antisemitic part of the comment]

How can anyone not understand the irony in the Auschwitz comparison? It’s not an analogy between Israel and the Nazis; it’s a Reductio Ad Absurdum argument: Ziongate was defending the Wall on the grounds that it’s not a wall but “just” a metal fence; RickB retorts that Auschwitz was surrounded by “just” barbed wire, so that the problem is not actually the material a barrier is made of, but the pain it helps inflict.

Actually, most of the examples are ironies that only taken literally by someone very lacking in sense of humor can be considered antisemitic.

Also, the report often claims something is antisemitic and uses this claim to prove that it is antisemitic. For instance, a reader is considered antisemitic for quoting Israel Shahak, because Shahak himself was an antisemite. But the latter is the report’s claim, not an established fact.

In short, the report strikes me as a juvenile effort at political essay. It has too many weaknesses to be taken seriously.