Anti-semitism hits record high in UK

[angrysoba]

One of the most idiotic over readings I've seen on these forums.

All I'd said was:
Helpless victims = sympathetic
Strong fighters = unsympathetic

Nothing about "wanting genocide".

You said:

once the Jews looked like they would survive they became less sympathetic to the left.

 

[Belz...]

And the irony is that the old left loved Israel when it first came into existence.

Does it have actually anything to do with left-right ideologies ?

 

[Giz]

You said:

Yep. And you read to much into it.

Did it touch a nerve or something?

 

[Belz...]

The six day war. once the Jews looked like they would survive they became less sympathetic to the left.

It's fun and satisfying to speculate about the psychology of people we disagree with but it might not be very useful to the discussion.

 

[trustbutverify]

Who did the other 6.23%? Socialists who never liked Israel very much?

Judeophiles who were adopting George Costanza's "I shall do the opposite" program.

 

[trustbutverify]

That's not the point! It's tremendous fun calling "Liberals" anti-Semites and using Israel as a club to beat them with. "Light" is not the phenomenon desired by the Conservatives who indulge in this stuff.

There are also plenty of self-described leftists who indulge in club using and aren't much interested in light either. Unfortunately.

 

[trustbutverify]

I think this is one of the most idiotic things I have ever read on these forums. I include even the conspiracy theory forums. Of course leftists were not hoping for the extermination of the Jews and anyone who thinks they did is probably not worth listening to.

I don't agree with Giz's conclusion, but I'm pretty sure he didn't mean Jewish extermination. I believe he meant survival of Israel as a Jewish state, expressed in a dramatic way.

 

[dudalb]

I asked for something that isn't gibberish, and is worth responding to. So try again.

This is called, "Dodging The Question" folks.

 

[Belz...]

This is called, "Dodging The Question" folks.

By Craig or WildCat ?

 

[DennyT]

Israel's national motto is effectively
The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.
Good luck with that.

 

[angrysoba]

Yep. And you read to much into it.

Did it touch a nerve or something?

Yes, it annoys me when right-wingers smirkingly play the race card as a calumny against the left. I don't think right-wingers generally care about racism but fortunately we are at the point where antisemitism rightly carries a social stigma so right-wingers have to pretend to be vociferously against it.

 

[angrysoba]

I don't agree with Giz's conclusion, but I'm pretty sure he didn't mean Jewish extermination. I believe he meant survival of Israel as a Jewish state, expressed in a dramatic way.

Yet he put "wanting genocide" in quotes as though he was quoting me. I never used those words so I would think this was indeed one reading he meant to imply.

 

[Giz]

Yet he put "wanting genocide" in quotes as though he was quoting me. I never used those words so I would think this was indeed one reading he meant to imply.

You said "hoping for the extermination of the Jews". I apologize that I paraphrased that as "wanting genocide". It seemed close enough at the time.

 

[Butter!]

The six day war. once the Jews looked like they would survive they became less sympathetic to the left.

Seriously?

 

[jimbob]

And the early part of the 20th century well into the 30s, indeed I would say it took the horror of the Holocaust to dampen anti-Semitism in the UK.

Indeed,

I thought it was an iffy statistic when I heard it first and BBC's More or less came to a similar conclusion

Audio only

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04yk0jf

 

[CapelDodger]

And the irony is that the old left loved Israel when it first came into existence.

Those were the days of the very left-wing Labour Party and sound Marxist-Leninists such as ben Gurion and Golda Meir. The Israel of kibbutzim, the place where the real experiment in socialism was going to take place.

A different country, one which did not survive the Reagan-Thatcher Discontinuity.

 

[trustbutverify]

Israel's national motto is effectively
The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.
Good luck with that.

Sounds more like their enemies national motto's to me.

 

[angrysoba]

You said "hoping for the extermination of the Jews". I apologize that I paraphrased that as "wanting genocide". It seemed close enough at the time.

Which is because you wrote "once the Jews looked like they would survive they became less sympathetic to the left."

The opposite of survive is exterminated, and you said that the left became unsympathetic to the Jews when they "looked like they would survive".

Did you mean something else, perhaps?

 

[a_unique_person]

Yep. And you read to much into it.

Did it touch a nerve or something?

There is nothing to be read into the statement. It is intended to be an offensive strawman.

 

[Brainster]

Does it have actually anything to do with left-right ideologies ?

To a certain degree, yes. One of the reasons the old Left loved Israel was the fairly widespread (at the time) kibbutz system, which was basically small-scale communism. However, a lot of the kibbutzes are gone and many of the ones that remain are operated much more like capitalist corporations.

Another aspect is that much of the intellectual class of the Left was Jewish. Those with family ties to Israel would naturally tend to be more supportive of the tiny state.