Kotatsu
Phthirapterist
I do not argue against this point. However, as I will detail below, I do argue that anti-semites are alone in "push[ing] anti-Israel sentiment to the point it is".
While I agree with much of this, I must say, again, that there is no shortage of condemnation of other cases where one party is perceived to oppress the other. Western Sahara, Kurdistan, and Tibet are just some of the more common examples that I read condemnations and protests about in genuinely left-wing newspapers and journals regularly. Native Americans, Romani, other Chinese minorities, Burmese minorities, Kurds, Basque and other are less frequent, but certainly not absent.
I agree that these issues rarely get covered in "mainstream media", but that can hardly be blamed on the left, as the left rarely sets the agenda in "mainstream media". However, over here there was quite a lot of discussion and news about the Russian actions in Chechnya, and whenever things heat up in the Kashmir, it does get reported on even in "mainstream media", so your examples were poorly chosen. However, I do agree that the scrutiny Israel/Palestine is put under often borders on the over-zealous. I do not necessarily think that that is bad, however. I would rather that the behaviour of oppressors worldwide gained the same amount of media attention as Israel/Palestine, but that rarely happens, at least not in "mainstream media".
I dare say that the pro-Israel people are as guilty of keeping this topic alive to the extent it is as the pro-Palestine people are. In the same way that the media gets in an uproar if two Palestinians are killed by the Israel army, they get as upset every time two Israeli are killed by Palestinian missiles. And in both cases, supporters of either side will hurry to raise the issue on internet forums and blogs. Only confirmation bias would allow you to disagree with this.
I have no definite answer to why this particular conflict gets so much attention and so many threads by supporters of both sides, but were I to guess, I would guess that it had more to do with ingrained politics and the fact that the area is and has been important as a religious focal point for such a long time. Apart from genuine anti-semites (such as neo-nazis) and those Muslims who believe the Israeli should be thrown into the sea, I don't think there is a basis of anti-semitism to this.
"Love" they received by conservatives, you mean? I fully agree that the Jews have been, and continue to be, most atrociously treated throughout history, and to the extent that I at all support the notion of a nation state (which is very little), I think there is hardly a people on Earth that is more deserving of having their own nation than the Jews, and I fully support that if they are to have their own nation, the present location would be ideal (apart from the hostile neighbours), as it is a location that has a special meaning to them, and not just some randomly chosen island or something.
However, the systematic oppression of Jews throughout history cannot in any way be placed solely on the shoulders of communism, as for the vast majority of the time, it was conservatives or pro-conservatives who made the rules, instituted the laws, and prosecuted the Jews (or, at least, allowed it to happen). Certainly this continued under the Soviet era, just as it continues in other parts of Europe even today, but as has been shown by other posters in this thread, at least initially both Stalin and Lenin condemned and tried to abolish persecution of Jews, which shows that at least initially, this was not part of state policy even in the Soviet Union. That Stalin later became paranoid and fell back into the comfort of pre-communist stereotypes cannot be blamed on communism a such. That oppression and perseuction of Jews re-erupted and continued in communist Soviet Union, just as it has in conservative Tsarist Russia, is abominable, and indefensible, but it is not a result of communism, nor should post-Soviet communists be burdened by anti-semitism unless they are, in addition to being communists, actual anti-semites.
I would ask you to expand on this, as I do not understand it. As the left regularly protests against other forms of racism, where their opponents have no other agenda than outright racism, why would this be any different if their opponents suddenly had an additional agenda? Are you suggesting that the same people who organise and participate in manifestations and protests against "normal", broad and undirected racism would not bother with racism that has a specific target in mind, if that target was the Jews? If so, I would ask you to clarify how you come to that conclusion, as that is not my impression, formed from the "inside", of how the left works.
He also does not seem to carry any blatantly anti-semitic signs. Anti-Israel, yes, but not necessarily anti-semitic. If, as some other people in the series of photos linked to before, he had exchanged a swastika for the "s" in "Israel", or in other ways displayed some unambiguous clue that he was an anti-semite (such as a t-shirt saying, "Hitler was right!" or something), then you would have a point.
In any case, I have agreed that there may be individual in the left who are also genuine anti-semites, but the display of one such individual is not evidence that communism as such is inherently anti-semitic.
I disagree. The first article of the UDHR states:
UDHR said:
All the salient points here could easily be interpreted as being in accordance with communism. All humans are born free, as no one is (or should be) born into slavery or drudgery. All humans are equal, which is a foundational pillar of communism. They are endowed with reason and conscience, as people naturally want to help each other and be kind to each other, and only superstition and social constructs, which are necessarily deconstructed by reason, deforms these natural urges. They should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood (though modern leftist would probably say "siblinghood"), as all people are brothers and sisters.
I am not saying that this is how communism has always been in execution, and certainly the Soviet Union, China, and their many satellites have very often broken against many of these, but it is certainly not incompatible with it. And certainly there is very little in the actual articles that speak against how a (theoretical) communist society could be expected to work, absent other mechanisms such as tradition, prejudice, outside interference, or warfare. The same cannot be said for a conservative society.
As I understand it, the same would be true of Polish non-communists at any time before, during, and after the communistic era in Poland, and thus is not symptomatic of communism as such. I have a vague memory from reading a history of Prussia that this was one of the reasons that the Polish noblemen in Prussia protested against the Prussian government (which was, for its time, at times surprisingly allowing in its attitude towards Jews, if I remember the book correctly) during the 19th century.
