Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
I think it’s more that in the 1940’s, ethnic cleansing (eg ethnic Germans, Croatian Italians, Turkish Christians and Greek Muslims) was considered a legitimate and prudent policy.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
There is plenty of documentation about this. Israel as is accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs en masse didn't and the day after Israel's independence was declared the Arab nations invaded (or tried to invade) Israel.
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
Why was no Palestinian state created in the 1948 borders assigned to Palestinians? Because the Egyptians and Jordanians took the land for themselves, not Israel. Who had the land that people claim should be Palestine from 1948 to 1967? Hint: Neither Israel nor "Palestine".
You don’t get out much do you?
I’ve been to Israel many times. Fabulous country. Fascinating people. Tending to obesity now but the girls with the uzis used to be ooooh. Increasingly prosperous too, with quite fine food (and good red wine. Often from Golan)
But I have also seen the car parks in Tel Aviv that used to be Arab neighborhoods. The many lovely seaside homes that belonged to Arab families for generations - until 1948
800,000 Arabs were brutally “evicted”
Responsibility for that lies squarely with the Arab states that chose to go to war to genocidally wipe out Israel.
Far more Germans were evicted during and after the war, that tends to be the consequence of war, and if the Arabs hadn't chosen to try to destroy Israel at birth then there'd be a two state solution now and there wouldn't have been the refugees from the war.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
Why was no Palestinian state created in the 1948 borders assigned to Palestinians? Because the Egyptians and Jordanians took the land for themselves, not Israel. Who had the land that people claim should be Palestine from 1948 to 1967? Hint: Neither Israel nor "Palestine".
You don’t get out much do you?
I’ve been to Israel many times. Fabulous country. Fascinating people. Tending to obesity now but the girls with the uzis used to be ooooh. Increasingly prosperous too, with quite fine food (and good red wine. Often from Golan)
But I have also seen the car parks in Tel Aviv that used to be Arab neighborhoods. The many lovely seaside homes that belonged to Arab families for generations - until 1948
800,000 Arabs were brutally “evicted”
Responsibility for that lies squarely with the Arab states that chose to go to war to genocidally wipe out Israel.
Far more Germans were evicted during and after the war, that tends to be the consequence of war, and if the Arabs hadn't chosen to try to destroy Israel at birth then there'd be a two state solution now and there wouldn't have been the refugees from the war.
It’s been AGES since we had a good old PB Israel-Palestine ding dong
I used to rather loathe them, as being pointlessly divisive and prone to induce meltdowns, but in comparison to the Trans-TERF wars, the debate seems positively refreshing and meaningful
That’s a measure of how bad the Trans-TERF wars are
Sky reporting an urgent question to the cabinet office on Sue Gray to be discussed at 3.30pm today
Starmer has less than 3 hours to find an answer.
As I predicted last week, Starmer is shredding his reputation with his needlessly gimmicky appointment.
I said, he is like an away football manager galvanising a home crowd from depression into frenzy, and that’s a huge political no no, and I have been proved right.
The Labour spinners on PB have retreated to wether she is any good for the role or not, wether Starmer can have who he wants or not - it was never about those two questions, she would probably have been perfect in the role, but then so many others perfect too. The issue was always solely about the political gift Starmer’s gimmicky “White Knight” appointment was handing the Tories. And that’s indefensible.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
Why was no Palestinian state created in the 1948 borders assigned to Palestinians? Because the Egyptians and Jordanians took the land for themselves, not Israel. Who had the land that people claim should be Palestine from 1948 to 1967? Hint: Neither Israel nor "Palestine".
You don’t get out much do you?
I’ve been to Israel many times. Fabulous country. Fascinating people. Tending to obesity now but the girls with the uzis used to be ooooh. Increasingly prosperous too, with quite fine food (and good red wine. Often from Golan)
But I have also seen the car parks in Tel Aviv that used to be Arab neighborhoods. The many lovely seaside homes that belonged to Arab families for generations - until 1948
800,000 Arabs were brutally “evicted”
Responsibility for that lies squarely with the Arab states that chose to go to war to genocidally wipe out Israel.
Far more Germans were evicted during and after the war, that tends to be the consequence of war, and if the Arabs hadn't chosen to try to destroy Israel at birth then there'd be a two state solution now and there wouldn't have been the refugees from the war.
Try reading some history.
Which bit?
How Jews were sought to be exterminated by the Germans in the 1940s? Or by the Arabs in the 1940s? Or by the Arabs in the 1960s? Or by the Arabs in the 1970s?
How the two state solution was rejected by the Arabs in the 1940s? Or how the two state solution was rejected by Arafat in 2000?
Israel OTOH has never sought to exterminate Arabs and is literally seeking to defend itself against genocide still to this day.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
There is plenty of documentation about this. Israel as is accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs en masse didn't and the day after Israel's independence was declared the Arab nations invaded (or tried to invade) Israel.
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
And that is what we are all arguing about now.
Or in other words Palestinians had a partition imposed on them that gave most of their land to Israel, despite Palestinians being a two thirds majority of the population and owning the vast majority of the land.
If you think the Palestine cause is anti-Semitic, do you not believe in the existence of a Palestinian state then?
Right, IMV:
The Palestinian 'cause' is not anti-Semitic: if that cause is for them to have a separate homeland.
Many (though by no means all) people supporting the Palestinian 'cause' do drop into anti-Semitism.
The answer is a two-state solution, where each state is viable. But we haven't even got to the 'collecting underpants' stage.
Sadly, the two-state solution is in the rear view mirror. Israeli government policy has - deliberately or not - rendered any such proposal a fantasy. There are too many Israeli settlers and settlements. Israel seems increasingly content to run a quasi-apartheid state for the foreseeable future, with the Palestinians living in a jigsaw puzzle of bantustans
Where the fuck you go from here - in the direction of peace - I do not know. Maybe the Palestinians will become rich enough they do not care about their obviously second class status. That’s probably the long term hope of Israel
Might even ‘work’, however amoral
Do you mean get rich working in other Middle East countries? Israel is never going to allow Palestinians to be rich within Israel.
I suppose pushing through ethnic cleansing to its conclusion could create a more stable future state, but there would be a lot of suffering between here and there.
I think the two-state solution is dead, though you might have something a bit like Bosnia that looks similar, though not sure why Israel would change course. What's to stop them from taking one step at a time towards an Israel that incorporates the occupied territories with all the Palestinians pushed out to neighbouring countries.
Trying to weaken Israel to force them to compromise also runs the risk of making them vulnerable to the other side deciding they aren't interested in compromise any more.
Things are probably only going to get worse as the oil money dries up for the other Middle East states.
It’s been AGES since we had a good old PB Israel-Palestine ding dong
I used to rather loathe them, as being pointlessly divisive and prone to induce meltdowns, but in comparison to the Trans-TERF wars, the debate seems positively refreshing and meaningful
That’s a measure of how bad the Trans-TERF wars are
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
Is that an ironic question?! The answer is No. The Palestinians have an historic, justified grievance against the state of Israel (and the powers that enabled Israel’s creation and ‘overlooked’ the excesses that followed)
Has that grievance often shaded into outright Jew-hatred? Yes, of course. And it is this line that Corbyn has crossed, many times, wittingly or not
I like it when you fervently agree with me.
For any number of reasons the Palestinians are anti-semitic (prize to the first person to point out that they are all semites).
And Jezza enthusiastically supports the Palestinian cause.
Comes back to @JosiasJessop's question as to whether anti-semitism is wrong or evil. Or indeed right.
But the "Palestinian cause" (not every Palestinian I imagine) is anti-semitic.
Are we saying that anti-semitism is actually a worthy sentiment, eh, @Theuniondivvie.
Jesus Christ, what a complete and unredeemable prat you are!
Don't bring him into it ffs. But answer the question - is the Palestinian cause anti-semitic.
About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron.
Ah. So you are equating the Palestinians being anti-semitic with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. So you are equating the actions of Israel with those of Nazi Germany.
Frankly, who gives a toss about your twisted view of the world? I don 't.
Indeed, who gives a toss. I meanwhile am far clearer on your view of the world.
You equate Israel with Nazi Germany and believe as a result that anti-semitism is justified.
I already told you I didn't give a toss what lies you tell - no matter how transparent they are.
The more ludicrous stuff like that you post, the more ridiculous you make yourself look. Probably the best thing to do is to give you an absolutely free rein, just so that people can see how dishonest you are. But more importantly how absurd.
Yeah. This is what you wrote:
"[The Palestinian cause is] About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
You equated any Palestinian anti-semitism with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. And therefore understandable, perhaps justified.
You also thereby equated Israel with Nazi Germany.
Which bit is my lies?
Obviously I "equated" nothing.
But please just try to get it through your thick skull that I don't give a toss what lies you tell about me.
How is
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
not equating? You literally set them up as being equivalent.
It's incredible. You just keep repeating the same crap, as though everyone can't see what nonsense it is. Why?
You claim that the fact that actions of the state of Israel somehow justifies your accusation that Palestinians are guilty of anti-semitism. And that support for Palestinians is therefore anti-semitic?
Are you really so bone-stupid as to be unable to understand the point I'm making? That you might just as well accuse Auschwitz survivors of being anti-German?
And on that basis you accuse me of equating the state of Israel with Auschwitz. How can anyone be so unbelievably crass?
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
I think it’s more that in the 1940’s, ethnic cleansing (eg ethnic Germans, Croatian Italians, Turkish Christians and Greek Muslims) was considered a legitimate and prudent policy.
Perhaps it is. Brutal but arguable
eg if all the Protestants in eire had moved north in the 1920s, and all the catholics in ulster had moved south, Northern Ireland would probably not be a problem today. Certainly plausible
Compare with Greece and turkey, which after their mutual ethnic cleansing have maintained an uneasy peace, of sorts, after centuries of bloody conflict
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
Ukraine never ethnically cleansed people from its territory. The analogy fails.
Neither has Israel.
However Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Arab states, and would have been ethnically cleansed from the land of Israel had Israel not succeeded in defending itself.
The analogy holds.
Plenty of Palestinians have been pushed off their land by the Israelis. It's something that is still happening today with the settlements in the West Bank.
Plenty of Palestinians have been pushed off their land by the Israelis. It's something that is still happening today with the settlements in the West Bank.
Your denial of this is disturbing.
The Israeli Government is on a large scale, committing racist policies against the Palestinian people.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
There is plenty of documentation about this. Israel as is accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs en masse didn't and the day after Israel's independence was declared the Arab nations invaded (or tried to invade) Israel.
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
And that is what we are all arguing about now.
Or in other words Palestinians had a partition imposed on them that gave most of their land to Israel, despite Palestinians being a two thirds majority of the population and owning the vast majority of the land.
I suppose like democracy, the UN is the worst form of supra-national entity. Apart from all the others.
If you think the Palestine cause is anti-Semitic, do you not believe in the existence of a Palestinian state then?
Right, IMV:
The Palestinian 'cause' is not anti-Semitic: if that cause is for them to have a separate homeland.
Many (though by no means all) people supporting the Palestinian 'cause' do drop into anti-Semitism.
The answer is a two-state solution, where each state is viable. But we haven't even got to the 'collecting underpants' stage.
Sadly, the two-state solution is in the rear view mirror. Israeli government policy has - deliberately or not - rendered any such proposal a fantasy. There are too many Israeli settlers and settlements. Israel seems increasingly content to run a quasi-apartheid state for the foreseeable future, with the Palestinians living in a jigsaw puzzle of bantustans
Where the fuck you go from here - in the direction of peace - I do not know. Maybe the Palestinians will become rich enough they do not care about their obviously second class status. That’s probably the long term hope of Israel
Might even ‘work’, however amoral
Do you mean get rich working in other Middle East countries? Israel is never going to allow Palestinians to be rich within Israel.
I suppose pushing through ethnic cleansing to its conclusion could create a more stable future state, but there would be a lot of suffering between here and there.
I think the two-state solution is dead, though you might have something a bit like Bosnia that looks similar, though not sure why Israel would change course. What's to stop them from taking one step at a time towards an Israel that incorporates the occupied territories with all the Palestinians pushed out to neighbouring countries.
Trying to weaken Israel to force them to compromise also runs the risk of making them vulnerable to the other side deciding they aren't interested in compromise any more.
Things are probably only going to get worse as the oil money dries up for the other Middle East states.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
I think it’s more that in the 1940’s, ethnic cleansing (eg ethnic Germans, Croatian Italians, Turkish Christians and Greek Muslims) was considered a legitimate and prudent policy.
Perhaps it is. Brutal but arguable
eg if all the Protestants in eire had moved north in the 1920s, and all the catholics in ulster had moved south, Northern Ireland would probably not be a problem today. Certainly plausible
Compare with Greece and turkey, which after their mutual ethnic cleansing have maintained an uneasy peace, of sorts, after centuries of bloody conflict
A lot of people people expected that to happen, with partition (as with Greece and Turkey at the time). Some Protestants and Catholics even arranged to swap houses, on either side of the border.
If you think the Palestine cause is anti-Semitic, do you not believe in the existence of a Palestinian state then?
Right, IMV:
The Palestinian 'cause' is not anti-Semitic: if that cause is for them to have a separate homeland.
Many (though by no means all) people supporting the Palestinian 'cause' do drop into anti-Semitism.
The answer is a two-state solution, where each state is viable. But we haven't even got to the 'collecting underpants' stage.
Sadly, the two-state solution is in the rear view mirror. Israeli government policy has - deliberately or not - rendered any such proposal a fantasy. There are too many Israeli settlers and settlements. Israel seems increasingly content to run a quasi-apartheid state for the foreseeable future, with the Palestinians living in a jigsaw puzzle of bantustans
Where the fuck you go from here - in the direction of peace - I do not know. Maybe the Palestinians will become rich enough they do not care about their obviously second class status. That’s probably the long term hope of Israel
Might even ‘work’, however amoral
Do you mean get rich working in other Middle East countries? Israel is never going to allow Palestinians to be rich within Israel.
I suppose pushing through ethnic cleansing to its conclusion could create a more stable future state, but there would be a lot of suffering between here and there.
I think the two-state solution is dead, though you might have something a bit like Bosnia that looks similar, though not sure why Israel would change course. What's to stop them from taking one step at a time towards an Israel that incorporates the occupied territories with all the Palestinians pushed out to neighbouring countries.
Trying to weaken Israel to force them to compromise also runs the risk of making them vulnerable to the other side deciding they aren't interested in compromise any more.
Things are probably only going to get worse as the oil money dries up for the other Middle East states.
If a two state solution that ensures Israel's safety can't be negotiated, then if there's only to be one state that one state should be Israel not Palestine. There already are other Arab states, such as Egypt and Jordan, there are no other Jewish ones.
If it weren't for Egypt and Jordan trying to wipe out the Jews from the map then the so-called "occupied territories" would be a part of Egypt and Jordan still until this day, not Palestine.
A two-state solution would be ideal, if that can't be resolved then there should be a three state solution instead: Israel, Egypt and Jordan as the three states.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
There is plenty of documentation about this. Israel as is accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs en masse didn't and the day after Israel's independence was declared the Arab nations invaded (or tried to invade) Israel.
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
And that is what we are all arguing about now.
Or in other words Palestinians had a partition imposed on them that gave most of their land to Israel, despite Palestinians being a two thirds majority of the population and owning the vast majority of the land.
Better 45% of the land than none of it. They gambled on winning 100% of the land, and that gamble failed.
I am just astonished that a sensible and intelligent poster is actually saying that he believes that a two state solution is racist.
A two state solution is not racist.
Hamas proclaim a one-state solution, with Israel to be exterminated. Is that racist?
Yes. But Hamas is not representing the point of view which most of us hold.
"Most of us" on PB? Perhaps not. Plenty of Palestinians, yes. I mean they are the government of Gaza, after all.
Then by your logic Israel as a state is racist because the current Government is and so the Jewish cause is racist.
Yes Toppings logic totally flawed.
LOL we have a Jeremy Corbyn supporter to set us right. A supporter of that well-known anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn.
Welcome the analysis.
Good way to lose an argument.
"Life long anti racists being called racists by racists"
I think Alexei is spot on
“It's absurd to see people who have spent a lifetime standing against racism, being accused of racism, by racists.” ― Alexei Sayle.
This argument basically amounts to "but we're the good guys."
It’s quite farcical. If Fred West points out that doctor Harold Shipman is a mass murderer, I wouldn’t exonerate Harold on the grounds that Harold has spent a lifetime as a doctor, saving lives
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
Ukraine never ethnically cleansed people from its territory. The analogy fails.
Neither has Israel.
However Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Arab states, and would have been ethnically cleansed from the land of Israel had Israel not succeeded in defending itself.
The analogy holds.
Plenty of Palestinians have been pushed off their land by the Israelis. It's something that is still happening today with the settlements in the West Bank.
Your denial of this is disturbing.
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
There is plenty of documentation about this. Israel as is accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs en masse didn't and the day after Israel's independence was declared the Arab nations invaded (or tried to invade) Israel.
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
And that is what we are all arguing about now.
Or in other words Palestinians had a partition imposed on them that gave most of their land to Israel, despite Palestinians being a two thirds majority of the population and owning the vast majority of the land.
Better 45% of the land than none of it. They gambled on winning 100% of the land, and that gamble failed.
That may well be true, but to pretend that the creation of the state of Israel didn't involve any injustice against Palestinians is properly bonkers.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
Is that an ironic question?! The answer is No. The Palestinians have an historic, justified grievance against the state of Israel (and the powers that enabled Israel’s creation and ‘overlooked’ the excesses that followed)
Has that grievance often shaded into outright Jew-hatred? Yes, of course. And it is this line that Corbyn has crossed, many times, wittingly or not
I like it when you fervently agree with me.
For any number of reasons the Palestinians are anti-semitic (prize to the first person to point out that they are all semites).
And Jezza enthusiastically supports the Palestinian cause.
Comes back to @JosiasJessop's question as to whether anti-semitism is wrong or evil. Or indeed right.
But the "Palestinian cause" (not every Palestinian I imagine) is anti-semitic.
Are we saying that anti-semitism is actually a worthy sentiment, eh, @Theuniondivvie.
Jesus Christ, what a complete and unredeemable prat you are!
Don't bring him into it ffs. But answer the question - is the Palestinian cause anti-semitic.
About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron.
Ah. So you are equating the Palestinians being anti-semitic with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. So you are equating the actions of Israel with those of Nazi Germany.
Frankly, who gives a toss about your twisted view of the world? I don 't.
Indeed, who gives a toss. I meanwhile am far clearer on your view of the world.
You equate Israel with Nazi Germany and believe as a result that anti-semitism is justified.
I already told you I didn't give a toss what lies you tell - no matter how transparent they are.
The more ludicrous stuff like that you post, the more ridiculous you make yourself look. Probably the best thing to do is to give you an absolutely free rein, just so that people can see how dishonest you are. But more importantly how absurd.
Yeah. This is what you wrote:
"[The Palestinian cause is] About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
You equated any Palestinian anti-semitism with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. And therefore understandable, perhaps justified.
You also thereby equated Israel with Nazi Germany.
Which bit is my lies?
Obviously I "equated" nothing.
But please just try to get it through your thick skull that I don't give a toss what lies you tell about me.
How is
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
not equating? You literally set them up as being equivalent.
It's incredible. You just keep repeating the same crap, as though everyone can't see what nonsense it is. Why?
You claim that the fact that actions of the state of Israel somehow justifies your accusation that Palestinians are guilty of anti-semitism. And that support for Palestinians is therefore anti-semitic?
Are you really so bone-stupid as to be unable to understand the point I'm making? That you might just as well accuse Auschwitz survivors of being anti-German?
And on that basis you accuse me of equating the state of Israel with Auschwitz. How can anyone be so unbelievably crass?
You are almost literally unbelievable.
I can see you are embarrassed. You literally equated Palestinian anti-semitism with Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling.
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
If you equate the two you need to look at the underlying reasons. Palestinian anti-semitism = Israel's actions; Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling = Nazi Germany's actions.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
There is plenty of documentation about this. Israel as is accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs en masse didn't and the day after Israel's independence was declared the Arab nations invaded (or tried to invade) Israel.
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
And that is what we are all arguing about now.
Or in other words Palestinians had a partition imposed on them that gave most of their land to Israel, despite Palestinians being a two thirds majority of the population and owning the vast majority of the land.
Google tells me you are wrong on your population stats so I see no reason to believe you are right on your land stats.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
Is that an ironic question?! The answer is No. The Palestinians have an historic, justified grievance against the state of Israel (and the powers that enabled Israel’s creation and ‘overlooked’ the excesses that followed)
Has that grievance often shaded into outright Jew-hatred? Yes, of course. And it is this line that Corbyn has crossed, many times, wittingly or not
I like it when you fervently agree with me.
For any number of reasons the Palestinians are anti-semitic (prize to the first person to point out that they are all semites).
And Jezza enthusiastically supports the Palestinian cause.
Comes back to @JosiasJessop's question as to whether anti-semitism is wrong or evil. Or indeed right.
But the "Palestinian cause" (not every Palestinian I imagine) is anti-semitic.
Are we saying that anti-semitism is actually a worthy sentiment, eh, @Theuniondivvie.
Jesus Christ, what a complete and unredeemable prat you are!
Don't bring him into it ffs. But answer the question - is the Palestinian cause anti-semitic.
About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron.
Ah. So you are equating the Palestinians being anti-semitic with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. So you are equating the actions of Israel with those of Nazi Germany.
Frankly, who gives a toss about your twisted view of the world? I don 't.
Indeed, who gives a toss. I meanwhile am far clearer on your view of the world.
You equate Israel with Nazi Germany and believe as a result that anti-semitism is justified.
I already told you I didn't give a toss what lies you tell - no matter how transparent they are.
The more ludicrous stuff like that you post, the more ridiculous you make yourself look. Probably the best thing to do is to give you an absolutely free rein, just so that people can see how dishonest you are. But more importantly how absurd.
Yeah. This is what you wrote:
"[The Palestinian cause is] About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
You equated any Palestinian anti-semitism with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. And therefore understandable, perhaps justified.
You also thereby equated Israel with Nazi Germany.
Which bit is my lies?
Obviously I "equated" nothing.
But please just try to get it through your thick skull that I don't give a toss what lies you tell about me.
How is
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
not equating? You literally set them up as being equivalent.
It's incredible. You just keep repeating the same crap, as though everyone can't see what nonsense it is. Why?
You claim that the fact that actions of the state of Israel somehow justifies your accusation that Palestinians are guilty of anti-semitism. And that support for Palestinians is therefore anti-semitic?
Are you really so bone-stupid as to be unable to understand the point I'm making? That you might just as well accuse Auschwitz survivors of being anti-German?
And on that basis you accuse me of equating the state of Israel with Auschwitz. How can anyone be so unbelievably crass?
You are almost literally unbelievable.
I can see you are embarrassed. You literally equated Palestinian anti-semitism with Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling.
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
That is equating the two. If you equate the two you need to look at the underlying reasons. Palestinian anti-semitism = Israel's actions; Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling = Nazi Germany's actions.
That is you equating the two.
I'm not really sure what you two are trying to prove to each other, but it doesn't look like either of you has much chance of success...
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
Ukraine never ethnically cleansed people from its territory. The analogy fails.
Neither has Israel.
However Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Arab states, and would have been ethnically cleansed from the land of Israel had Israel not succeeded in defending itself.
The analogy holds.
Plenty of Palestinians have been pushed off their land by the Israelis. It's something that is still happening today with the settlements in the West Bank.
Your denial of this is disturbing.
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Genocide is a relatively recent term, in international law. In fact, well into the 1960's, many jurists disputed that it was a crime at all (as distinct from some of the actions, like mass killing, that are associated with it) . As one prominent lawyer put it "if I decide to remove rabbits from my land, and you interfere, you are trespassing."
Ethnic cleansing would certainly not have been regarded as genocide in 1948, but it would be treated as such in 2023.
I have no issue with calling the expulsion of Arabs ethnic cleansing. Nor with noting that even worse would have befallen the Jews, had the fortunes of war gone against them (exactly as happened in Eastern Europe, at the time).
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
Is that an ironic question?! The answer is No. The Palestinians have an historic, justified grievance against the state of Israel (and the powers that enabled Israel’s creation and ‘overlooked’ the excesses that followed)
Has that grievance often shaded into outright Jew-hatred? Yes, of course. And it is this line that Corbyn has crossed, many times, wittingly or not
I like it when you fervently agree with me.
For any number of reasons the Palestinians are anti-semitic (prize to the first person to point out that they are all semites).
And Jezza enthusiastically supports the Palestinian cause.
Comes back to @JosiasJessop's question as to whether anti-semitism is wrong or evil. Or indeed right.
But the "Palestinian cause" (not every Palestinian I imagine) is anti-semitic.
Are we saying that anti-semitism is actually a worthy sentiment, eh, @Theuniondivvie.
Jesus Christ, what a complete and unredeemable prat you are!
Don't bring him into it ffs. But answer the question - is the Palestinian cause anti-semitic.
About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron.
Ah. So you are equating the Palestinians being anti-semitic with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. So you are equating the actions of Israel with those of Nazi Germany.
Frankly, who gives a toss about your twisted view of the world? I don 't.
Indeed, who gives a toss. I meanwhile am far clearer on your view of the world.
You equate Israel with Nazi Germany and believe as a result that anti-semitism is justified.
I already told you I didn't give a toss what lies you tell - no matter how transparent they are.
The more ludicrous stuff like that you post, the more ridiculous you make yourself look. Probably the best thing to do is to give you an absolutely free rein, just so that people can see how dishonest you are. But more importantly how absurd.
Yeah. This is what you wrote:
"[The Palestinian cause is] About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
You equated any Palestinian anti-semitism with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. And therefore understandable, perhaps justified.
You also thereby equated Israel with Nazi Germany.
Which bit is my lies?
Obviously I "equated" nothing.
But please just try to get it through your thick skull that I don't give a toss what lies you tell about me.
How is
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
not equating? You literally set them up as being equivalent.
It's incredible. You just keep repeating the same crap, as though everyone can't see what nonsense it is. Why?
You claim that the fact that actions of the state of Israel somehow justifies your accusation that Palestinians are guilty of anti-semitism. And that support for Palestinians is therefore anti-semitic?
Are you really so bone-stupid as to be unable to understand the point I'm making? That you might just as well accuse Auschwitz survivors of being anti-German?
And on that basis you accuse me of equating the state of Israel with Auschwitz. How can anyone be so unbelievably crass?
You are almost literally unbelievable.
I can see you are embarrassed. You literally equated Palestinian anti-semitism with Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling.
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
That is equating the two. If you equate the two you need to look at the underlying reasons. Palestinian anti-semitism = Israel's actions; Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling = Nazi Germany's actions.
That is you equating the two.
I'm not really sure what you two are trying to prove to each other, but it doesn't look like either of you has much chance of success...
Allow me to help.
The discussion was around Jezza's anti-semitism. He supports the Palestinian cause and I pointed out that the Palestinian cause is anti-semitic.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
There is plenty of documentation about this. Israel as is accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs en masse didn't and the day after Israel's independence was declared the Arab nations invaded (or tried to invade) Israel.
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
And that is what we are all arguing about now.
Or in other words Palestinians had a partition imposed on them that gave most of their land to Israel, despite Palestinians being a two thirds majority of the population and owning the vast majority of the land.
Google tells me you are wrong on your population stats so I see no reason to believe you are right on your land stats.
“The proposed plan is considered to have been pro-Zionist by its detractors, with 62% of the land allocated to the Jewish state despite the Palestinian Arab population numbering twice the Jewish population.[6]”
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
There is plenty of documentation about this. Israel as is accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs en masse didn't and the day after Israel's independence was declared the Arab nations invaded (or tried to invade) Israel.
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
And that is what we are all arguing about now.
Or in other words Palestinians had a partition imposed on them that gave most of their land to Israel, despite Palestinians being a two thirds majority of the population and owning the vast majority of the land.
Google tells me you are wrong on your population stats so I see no reason to believe you are right on your land stats.
I'm not going to read the whole thing, but the 2nd paragraph of your link says:
"The proposed plan is considered to have been pro-Zionist by its detractors, with 62% of the land allocated to the Jewish state despite the Palestinian Arab population numbering twice the Jewish population."
It’s been AGES since we had a good old PB Israel-Palestine ding dong
I used to rather loathe them, as being pointlessly divisive and prone to induce meltdowns, but in comparison to the Trans-TERF wars, the debate seems positively refreshing and meaningful
That’s a measure of how bad the Trans-TERF wars are
‘And now we turn to Hamas’s attitude to trans people..’
No idea what it is but no doubt someone will dig something up.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
Ukraine never ethnically cleansed people from its territory. The analogy fails.
Neither has Israel.
However Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Arab states, and would have been ethnically cleansed from the land of Israel had Israel not succeeded in defending itself.
The analogy holds.
Plenty of Palestinians have been pushed off their land by the Israelis. It's something that is still happening today with the settlements in the West Bank.
Your denial of this is disturbing.
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Genocide is a relatively recent term, in international law. In fact, well into the 1960's, many jurists disputed that it was a crime at all (as distinct from some of the actions, like mass killing, that are associated with it) . As one prominent lawyer put it "if I decide to remove rabbits from my land, and you interfere, you are trespassing."
Ethnic cleansing would certainly not have been regarded as genocide in 1948, but it would be treated as such in 2023.
I have no issue with calling the expulsion of Arabs ethnic cleansing. Nor with noting that even worse would have befallen the Jews, had the fortunes of war gone against them (exactly as happened in Eastern Europe, at the time).
Indeed, but Arabs weren't expelled from Israel, which is why they're still there today. Had they been, as Jews were expelled or worse from Arab lands, then the dispute would be over.
Yes some have lost their land, many Germans lost their land in the war too. Conflicts tend to see people lose land, but Israel has never sought to exterminate or expel Arabs in the same way Jews have been exterminated and expelled elsewhere.
As I said, Israel is far from perfect, but its a shining city on the hill relative to others.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
There is plenty of documentation about this. Israel as is accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs en masse didn't and the day after Israel's independence was declared the Arab nations invaded (or tried to invade) Israel.
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
And that is what we are all arguing about now.
Or in other words Palestinians had a partition imposed on them that gave most of their land to Israel, despite Palestinians being a two thirds majority of the population and owning the vast majority of the land.
Google tells me you are wrong on your population stats so I see no reason to believe you are right on your land stats.
The proposed plan is considered to have been pro-Zionist by its detractors, with 62% of the land allocated to the Jewish state despite the Palestinian Arab population numbering twice the Jewish population.[6]
Ah. I just took the numbers from the table where it shows that the "Jewish State" was 55%, er, Jewish.
As I said, the UN, eh - what can you do with them. As has been pointed out also, however, there was no "Palestinian State" prior to this plan, there were plenty of Palestinians and Jews living in the region. "Palestine" was of course the property of us plucky Brits.
Perhaps we should have hung on to it, like we did the Falklands. And Calais.
It’s been AGES since we had a good old PB Israel-Palestine ding dong
I used to rather loathe them, as being pointlessly divisive and prone to induce meltdowns, but in comparison to the Trans-TERF wars, the debate seems positively refreshing and meaningful
That’s a measure of how bad the Trans-TERF wars are
‘And now we turn to Hamas’s attitude to trans people..’
No idea what it is but no doubt someone will dig something up.
Fundamentalist Muslims are often surprisingly pro-trans. On the grounds that ‘I’d rather my son is a girl, than be gay’. The Quran is quite silent on drag shows
See Iran for proof. I have heard (seen no numbers) that a fair number of parents who took their kids to the Tavistock were Muslim
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
There is plenty of documentation about this. Israel as is accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs en masse didn't and the day after Israel's independence was declared the Arab nations invaded (or tried to invade) Israel.
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
And that is what we are all arguing about now.
Or in other words Palestinians had a partition imposed on them that gave most of their land to Israel, despite Palestinians being a two thirds majority of the population and owning the vast majority of the land.
Google tells me you are wrong on your population stats so I see no reason to believe you are right on your land stats.
“The proposed plan is considered to have been pro-Zionist by its detractors, with 62% of the land allocated to the Jewish state despite the Palestinian Arab population numbering twice the Jewish population.[6]”
Yes @Leon pointed that out. It was a UN plan to deal with the region after the British Mandate ended. I'm sure that if the percentages had been reversed all the Arab nations would have welcomed it as a great idea.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
Is that an ironic question?! The answer is No. The Palestinians have an historic, justified grievance against the state of Israel (and the powers that enabled Israel’s creation and ‘overlooked’ the excesses that followed)
Has that grievance often shaded into outright Jew-hatred? Yes, of course. And it is this line that Corbyn has crossed, many times, wittingly or not
I like it when you fervently agree with me.
For any number of reasons the Palestinians are anti-semitic (prize to the first person to point out that they are all semites).
And Jezza enthusiastically supports the Palestinian cause.
Comes back to @JosiasJessop's question as to whether anti-semitism is wrong or evil. Or indeed right.
But the "Palestinian cause" (not every Palestinian I imagine) is anti-semitic.
Are we saying that anti-semitism is actually a worthy sentiment, eh, @Theuniondivvie.
Jesus Christ, what a complete and unredeemable prat you are!
Don't bring him into it ffs. But answer the question - is the Palestinian cause anti-semitic.
About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron.
Ah. So you are equating the Palestinians being anti-semitic with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. So you are equating the actions of Israel with those of Nazi Germany.
Frankly, who gives a toss about your twisted view of the world? I don 't.
Indeed, who gives a toss. I meanwhile am far clearer on your view of the world.
You equate Israel with Nazi Germany and believe as a result that anti-semitism is justified.
I already told you I didn't give a toss what lies you tell - no matter how transparent they are.
The more ludicrous stuff like that you post, the more ridiculous you make yourself look. Probably the best thing to do is to give you an absolutely free rein, just so that people can see how dishonest you are. But more importantly how absurd.
Yeah. This is what you wrote:
"[The Palestinian cause is] About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
You equated any Palestinian anti-semitism with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. And therefore understandable, perhaps justified.
You also thereby equated Israel with Nazi Germany.
Which bit is my lies?
Obviously I "equated" nothing.
But please just try to get it through your thick skull that I don't give a toss what lies you tell about me.
How is
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
not equating? You literally set them up as being equivalent.
It's incredible. You just keep repeating the same crap, as though everyone can't see what nonsense it is. Why?
You claim that the fact that actions of the state of Israel somehow justifies your accusation that Palestinians are guilty of anti-semitism. And that support for Palestinians is therefore anti-semitic?
Are you really so bone-stupid as to be unable to understand the point I'm making? That you might just as well accuse Auschwitz survivors of being anti-German?
And on that basis you accuse me of equating the state of Israel with Auschwitz. How can anyone be so unbelievably crass?
You are almost literally unbelievable.
I can see you are embarrassed. You literally equated Palestinian anti-semitism with Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling.
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
That is equating the two. If you equate the two you need to look at the underlying reasons. Palestinian anti-semitism = Israel's actions; Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling = Nazi Germany's actions.
That is you equating the two.
I'm not really sure what you two are trying to prove to each other, but it doesn't look like either of you has much chance of success...
Allow me to help.
The discussion was around Jezza's anti-semitism. He supports the Palestinian cause and I pointed out that the Palestinian cause is anti-semitic.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
Is that an ironic question?! The answer is No. The Palestinians have an historic, justified grievance against the state of Israel (and the powers that enabled Israel’s creation and ‘overlooked’ the excesses that followed)
Has that grievance often shaded into outright Jew-hatred? Yes, of course. And it is this line that Corbyn has crossed, many times, wittingly or not
I like it when you fervently agree with me.
For any number of reasons the Palestinians are anti-semitic (prize to the first person to point out that they are all semites).
And Jezza enthusiastically supports the Palestinian cause.
Comes back to @JosiasJessop's question as to whether anti-semitism is wrong or evil. Or indeed right.
But the "Palestinian cause" (not every Palestinian I imagine) is anti-semitic.
Are we saying that anti-semitism is actually a worthy sentiment, eh, @Theuniondivvie.
Jesus Christ, what a complete and unredeemable prat you are!
Don't bring him into it ffs. But answer the question - is the Palestinian cause anti-semitic.
About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron.
Ah. So you are equating the Palestinians being anti-semitic with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. So you are equating the actions of Israel with those of Nazi Germany.
Frankly, who gives a toss about your twisted view of the world? I don 't.
Indeed, who gives a toss. I meanwhile am far clearer on your view of the world.
You equate Israel with Nazi Germany and believe as a result that anti-semitism is justified.
I already told you I didn't give a toss what lies you tell - no matter how transparent they are.
The more ludicrous stuff like that you post, the more ridiculous you make yourself look. Probably the best thing to do is to give you an absolutely free rein, just so that people can see how dishonest you are. But more importantly how absurd.
Yeah. This is what you wrote:
"[The Palestinian cause is] About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
You equated any Palestinian anti-semitism with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. And therefore understandable, perhaps justified.
You also thereby equated Israel with Nazi Germany.
Which bit is my lies?
Obviously I "equated" nothing.
But please just try to get it through your thick skull that I don't give a toss what lies you tell about me.
How is
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
not equating? You literally set them up as being equivalent.
It's incredible. You just keep repeating the same crap, as though everyone can't see what nonsense it is. Why?
You claim that the fact that actions of the state of Israel somehow justifies your accusation that Palestinians are guilty of anti-semitism. And that support for Palestinians is therefore anti-semitic?
Are you really so bone-stupid as to be unable to understand the point I'm making? That you might just as well accuse Auschwitz survivors of being anti-German?
And on that basis you accuse me of equating the state of Israel with Auschwitz. How can anyone be so unbelievably crass?
You are almost literally unbelievable.
I can see you are embarrassed. You literally equated Palestinian anti-semitism with Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling.
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
That is equating the two. If you equate the two you need to look at the underlying reasons. Palestinian anti-semitism = Israel's actions; Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling = Nazi Germany's actions.
That is you equating the two.
I'm not really sure what you two are trying to prove to each other, but it doesn't look like either of you has much chance of success...
Allow me to help.
The discussion was around Jezza's anti-semitism. He supports the Palestinian cause and I pointed out that the Palestinian cause is anti-semitic.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
There is plenty of documentation about this. Israel as is accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs en masse didn't and the day after Israel's independence was declared the Arab nations invaded (or tried to invade) Israel.
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
And that is what we are all arguing about now.
Or in other words Palestinians had a partition imposed on them that gave most of their land to Israel, despite Palestinians being a two thirds majority of the population and owning the vast majority of the land.
Google tells me you are wrong on your population stats so I see no reason to believe you are right on your land stats.
The proposed plan is considered to have been pro-Zionist by its detractors, with 62% of the land allocated to the Jewish state despite the Palestinian Arab population numbering twice the Jewish population.[6]
Ah. I just took the numbers from the table where it shows that the "Jewish State" was 55%, er, Jewish.
As I said, the UN, eh - what can you do with them. As has been pointed out also, however, there was no "Palestinian State" prior to this plan, there were plenty of Palestinians and Jews living in the region. "Palestine" was of course the property of us plucky Brits.
Perhaps we should have hung on to it, like we did the Falklands. And Calais.
This has not been your greatest PB moment. Have a latte
Would be ironic if both Corbyn and Johnson, the 2 main party leaders in 2019, were expelled and suspended by their parties. Corbyn is almost certain to stand as an Independent in Islington North in 2024, the risk for the Tories is Boris would go further and defect to RefUK in the hope of replacing Tice as its leader
Didn't realise Tice's partner is the currently.... in vogue.... Oakeshott..... Wonder if her current vendetta against Hancock has been influenced by him?
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Yes, there's a linguistic point here which keeps causing political misunderstandings. Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group - Nazis vs Jews and Hutus vs Tutsis may be the obvious examples. Trying to kill vast numbers in a targeted group (e.g. Nazis vs Russians) is horrible but not quite genocide. Ethnic cleansing (clearly visible in the Balkans, and arguably in the establishment of Israel) is as you say nasty but not genocide. (Trying to assert one culture over another is also not genocide at all, though still a bad thing.)
In short, it should be possible to condemn something as vile without equating with genocide. If X tries to suppress Y's culture, that's bad, but it does a disservice to genuine victims of genocide to imply that it's the same thing.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
There is plenty of documentation about this. Israel as is accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs en masse didn't and the day after Israel's independence was declared the Arab nations invaded (or tried to invade) Israel.
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
And that is what we are all arguing about now.
Or in other words Palestinians had a partition imposed on them that gave most of their land to Israel, despite Palestinians being a two thirds majority of the population and owning the vast majority of the land.
Google tells me you are wrong on your population stats so I see no reason to believe you are right on your land stats.
“The proposed plan is considered to have been pro-Zionist by its detractors, with 62% of the land allocated to the Jewish state despite the Palestinian Arab population numbering twice the Jewish population.[6]”
Alternatively the Middle East is 7.2 million square km of which Israel forms 22,145 km^2 and Israel was even smaller with the proposed 1948 borders which the Arab states rejected.
So we're talking on a macro viewpoint of the Jewish state being given 0.3% of the land in the Middle East, land to which Jews formed a majority of the population already. While Arab states had 99.7% of the land but started a genocidal war to make it 100%.
Apols if already covered - a New Statesman/Savanta poll of SNP members on their preferred leader:
Unsure 32% Hamza 31% Forbes 25% Regan 11%
No clear winner there.
Unsure is probably the leader they need....
Looking at the raw data, there's a good 11% who also prefer not to say. Including Would Not Votes that gives Ash Regan 10% Humza Yousaf 27% Kate Forbes 22% Don't Know 28% Prefer not to say 11%
Gut instinct says that the prefer not to says lean Regan or Forbes, and the age profile suggests that this is the case. I had a quick mess around with the numbers, allocating votes on the basis of age. This got me: Ash Regan 16% Humza Yousaf 48% Kate Forbes 36%
For fun, I once again reallocated Regan's votes on the basis of age. This ended up with Humza Yousaf 56% Kate Forbes 43%
Allocating votes in this way, however, resulted in a pretty even split in Regan's vote (47-53 in favour of Yousaf), which seems unlikely to me. However, assuming DKs and Would Note Votes vote according to their age (more likely in the former rather than latter case) Kate Forbes would need over 80% of Regan supporters to back her. In the absence of that, she needs to begin to appeal more to younger voters, because that is where she's getting hammered (Yousaf is ahead, by quite a bit, with every age margin save 55-64 and 64+).
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
Ukraine never ethnically cleansed people from its territory. The analogy fails.
Neither has Israel.
However Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Arab states, and would have been ethnically cleansed from the land of Israel had Israel not succeeded in defending itself.
The analogy holds.
Plenty of Palestinians have been pushed off their land by the Israelis. It's something that is still happening today with the settlements in the West Bank.
Your denial of this is disturbing.
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
I didn't use the word genocide. I used the description ethnic cleansing to draw a distinction between Israel and Ukraine.
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Yes, there's a linguistic point here which keeps causing political misunderstandings. Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group - Nazis vs Jews and Hutus vs Tutsis may be the obvious examples. Trying to kill vast numbers in a targeted group (e.g. Nazis vs Russians) is horrible but not quite genocide. Ethnic cleansing (clearly visible in the Balkans, and arguably in the establishment of Israel) is as you say nasty but not genocide. (Trying to assert one culture over another is also not genocide at all, though still a bad thing.)
In short, it should be possible to condemn something as vile without equating with genocide. If X tries to suppress Y's culture, that's bad, but it does a disservice to genuine victims of genocide to imply that it's the same thing.
"Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group "
I think that's a little too strict. For instance, the Germans tried to kill Jews (and Romanies, and disabled...) in territories they conquered, but did not send out hit squads against those groups in other countries.
There are two examples that I think are controversial and are interesting to consider wrt whether they were genocides:
Turkey / Armenia in 1915/6 The Holodomor
IMV both of these were genocides, even if the intention was not trying to kill *everyone* in those groups.
As another example, is what is Russia doing in Ukraine a genocide? Again, I'd argue it is, as Russia is trying to kill out an entre nationality; they are denying the right of Ukrainians to exist.
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Yes, there's a linguistic point here which keeps causing political misunderstandings. Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group - Nazis vs Jews and Hutus vs Tutsis may be the obvious examples. Trying to kill vast numbers in a targeted group (e.g. Nazis vs Russians) is horrible but not quite genocide. Ethnic cleansing (clearly visible in the Balkans, and arguably in the establishment of Israel) is as you say nasty but not genocide. (Trying to assert one culture over another is also not genocide at all, though still a bad thing.)
In short, it should be possible to condemn something as vile without equating with genocide. If X tries to suppress Y's culture, that's bad, but it does a disservice to genuine victims of genocide to imply that it's the same thing.
There probably should be a word for trying to eliminate a state or civilisation by conquest and assimilation. It’s a big driver of what’s happening in Ukraine and has historically been commonplace - sometime bloody and violent, sometimes not - but it’s not the same as genocide.
I am just astonished that a sensible and intelligent poster is actually saying that he believes that a two state solution is racist.
A two state solution is not racist.
Hamas proclaim a one-state solution, with Israel to be exterminated. Is that racist?
Yes. But Hamas is not representing the point of view which most of us hold.
"Most of us" on PB? Perhaps not. Plenty of Palestinians, yes. I mean they are the government of Gaza, after all.
Then by your logic Israel as a state is racist because the current Government is and so the Jewish cause is racist.
Yes Toppings logic totally flawed.
LOL we have a Jeremy Corbyn supporter to set us right. A supporter of that well-known anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn.
Welcome the analysis.
Good way to lose an argument.
"Life long anti racists being called racists by racists"
I think Alexei is spot on
“It's absurd to see people who have spent a lifetime standing against racism, being accused of racism, by racists.” ― Alexei Sayle.
Except that's bollocks if the people standing up have had a blindspot. And its plenty of non racists who make the accusations. Do they think only klansmen have made accusations or something?
These activists appear to think if they label themselves anti racists than makes it impossible to be racist. It ain't. At best some if these terrific anti racists seem very bad at spotting crushingly unsubtle racist tropes.
Apols if already covered - a New Statesman/Savanta poll of SNP members on their preferred leader:
Unsure 32% Hamza 31% Forbes 25% Regan 11%
No clear winner there.
Unsure is probably the leader they need....
Looking at the raw data, there's a good 11% who also prefer not to say. Including Would Not Votes that gives Ash Regan 10% Humza Yousaf 27% Kate Forbes 22% Don't Know 28% Prefer not to say 11%
Gut instinct says that the prefer not to says lean Regan or Forbes, and the age profile suggests that this is the case. I had a quick mess around with the numbers, allocating votes on the basis of age. This got me: Ash Regan 16% Humza Yousaf 48% Kate Forbes 36%
For fun, I once again reallocated Regan's votes on the basis of age. This ended up with Humza Yousaf 56% Kate Forbes 43%
Allocating votes in this way, however, resulted in a pretty even split in Regan's vote (47-53 in favour of Yousaf), which seems unlikely to me. However, assuming DKs and Would Note Votes vote according to their age (more likely in the former rather than latter case) Kate Forbes would need over 80% of Regan supporters to back her. In the absence of that, she needs to begin to appeal more to younger voters, because that is where she's getting hammered (Yousaf is ahead, by quite a bit, with every age margin save 55-64 and 64+).
Still all to play for, though.
Well, up to a point. Stalin's aphorism about who counts the votes rather comes to mind.
I think Wagner's problem there is no one except Wagner cares about Bakhmut - Russia doesn't need it.
Russia (well, Putin) desperately wants a 'win' they can tell the public about. The same's true for the Russian military: they need a win as well after all the embarrassments of the last yeaar. Wagner are butt-hurt that they're doing most of the work (or at least, are claiming to), and they know the main military will just claim the win was theirs.
Would be ironic if both Corbyn and Johnson, the 2 main party leaders in 2019, were expelled and suspended by their parties. Corbyn is almost certain to stand as an Independent in Islington North in 2024, the risk for the Tories is Boris would go further and defect to RefUK in the hope of replacing Tice as its leader
Didn't realise Tice's partner is the currently.... in vogue.... Oakeshott..... Wonder if her current vendetta against Hancock has been influenced by him?
From the little I have seen of them I think it more likely Tice does what he is told by Oakeshott than the other way around....
It’s been AGES since we had a good old PB Israel-Palestine ding dong
I used to rather loathe them, as being pointlessly divisive and prone to induce meltdowns, but in comparison to the Trans-TERF wars, the debate seems positively refreshing and meaningful
That’s a measure of how bad the Trans-TERF wars are
‘And now we turn to Hamas’s attitude to trans people..’
No idea what it is but no doubt someone will dig something up.
Fundamentalist Muslims are often surprisingly pro-trans. On the grounds that ‘I’d rather my son is a girl, than be gay’. The Quran is quite silent on drag shows
See Iran for proof. I have heard (seen no numbers) that a fair number of parents who took their kids to the Tavistock were Muslim
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
Is that an ironic question?! The answer is No. The Palestinians have an historic, justified grievance against the state of Israel (and the powers that enabled Israel’s creation and ‘overlooked’ the excesses that followed)
Has that grievance often shaded into outright Jew-hatred? Yes, of course. And it is this line that Corbyn has crossed, many times, wittingly or not
I like it when you fervently agree with me.
For any number of reasons the Palestinians are anti-semitic (prize to the first person to point out that they are all semites).
And Jezza enthusiastically supports the Palestinian cause.
Comes back to @JosiasJessop's question as to whether anti-semitism is wrong or evil. Or indeed right.
But the "Palestinian cause" (not every Palestinian I imagine) is anti-semitic.
Are we saying that anti-semitism is actually a worthy sentiment, eh, @Theuniondivvie.
Jesus Christ, what a complete and unredeemable prat you are!
Don't bring him into it ffs. But answer the question - is the Palestinian cause anti-semitic.
About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron.
Ah. So you are equating the Palestinians being anti-semitic with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. So you are equating the actions of Israel with those of Nazi Germany.
Frankly, who gives a toss about your twisted view of the world? I don 't.
Indeed, who gives a toss. I meanwhile am far clearer on your view of the world.
You equate Israel with Nazi Germany and believe as a result that anti-semitism is justified.
I already told you I didn't give a toss what lies you tell - no matter how transparent they are.
The more ludicrous stuff like that you post, the more ridiculous you make yourself look. Probably the best thing to do is to give you an absolutely free rein, just so that people can see how dishonest you are. But more importantly how absurd.
Yeah. This is what you wrote:
"[The Palestinian cause is] About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
You equated any Palestinian anti-semitism with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. And therefore understandable, perhaps justified.
You also thereby equated Israel with Nazi Germany.
Which bit is my lies?
Obviously I "equated" nothing.
But please just try to get it through your thick skull that I don't give a toss what lies you tell about me.
How is
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
not equating? You literally set them up as being equivalent.
It's incredible. You just keep repeating the same crap, as though everyone can't see what nonsense it is. Why?
You claim that the fact that actions of the state of Israel somehow justifies your accusation that Palestinians are guilty of anti-semitism. And that support for Palestinians is therefore anti-semitic?
Are you really so bone-stupid as to be unable to understand the point I'm making? That you might just as well accuse Auschwitz survivors of being anti-German?
And on that basis you accuse me of equating the state of Israel with Auschwitz. How can anyone be so unbelievably crass?
You are almost literally unbelievable.
I can see you are embarrassed. You literally equated Palestinian anti-semitism with Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling.
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
That is equating the two. If you equate the two you need to look at the underlying reasons. Palestinian anti-semitism = Israel's actions; Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling = Nazi Germany's actions.
That is you equating the two.
I'm not really sure what you two are trying to prove to each other, but it doesn't look like either of you has much chance of success...
Allow me to help.
The discussion was around Jezza's anti-semitism. He supports the Palestinian cause and I pointed out that the Palestinian cause is anti-semitic.
Well, not really no. There isn't really such a thing as a 'Semitic people', especially considering how diverse the Arabic-speaking world is. Lumping people as diverse as Syrians, Berbers, Omanis etc. into one morass is archaic and unuseful.
There are Semitic *languages*, which do include Arabic and Hebrew - as well as Maltese and Amharic, largely spoken by people who I'd guess you wouldn't consider to be 'Semitic'. And of course there are people in the Middle East and North Africa who speak languages which are not Semitic.
In any case, antisemitism has a broadly accepted meaning specific to Jewish people; this sort of etymological debate is just disingenuous.
I see he's nominated his Dad for a knighthood. This isn't the done thing at all.
Boris has already given his brother a peerage, so what's new?
He has. Although his brother was at least an MP and Minister, so could be argued a political appointment. This kind of grift is why he needs to go.
Johnson senior was an MEP, long long ago.
Maybe that's why Boris turned out Eurosceptic.
Another question- when this comes to a vote, how many Conservative MPs would vote against Boris? It would only need thirtysomething and he's toast.
I think it is easily mustered. There were always a sizeable number of MPs who were anti-Boris, even as he was getting them an 80 seat majority as PM. True, the ranks were significantly thinned by the defectors and unselected and standing downers in 2019, but those who will vote to suspend will be into three figures.
Can we stop this crap about Johnson getting the Tories and 80 majority. He was facing Corbyn which is hardly a big deal. Arguably he should have done better.
Would be ironic if both Corbyn and Johnson, the 2 main party leaders in 2019, were expelled and suspended by their parties. Corbyn is almost certain to stand as an Independent in Islington North in 2024, the risk for the Tories is Boris would go further and defect to RefUK in the hope of replacing Tice as its leader
That is possible, but traditionally such moves don't end well. Roy Jenkins and David Owen spring to mind.
I can't actually think of a former PM who defected to a new party and led it to success. Even Lloyd George couldn't, holding a rump of four MPs after his second defection from the Liberals. Macdonald, maybe, but his party survived with Tory help.
No but Roy Jenkins got 25% of the vote for the SDP, splitting the Labour vote so Foot only got 27% for Labour and helping Thatcher to a landslide in 1983 under FPTP. The same happened to a slightly smaller extent in 1987
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
The establishment of Israel itself was, however, quite a crime against Palestinians
“The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, romanized: an-Nakbah, lit. 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'),[1] also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.[2][3] The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 and the ongoing persecution, displacement, and occupation of the Palestinians, both in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region.[4][5][6][7][8]”
And, no one would dispute that if the Arabs had won, in 1948, 1967, 1973, there would not now be a single Jew living in the place. Arab states responsed to the creation of Israel by ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations.
Sure. But the Naqba happened. And it was really quite evil. Yet the Holocaust came before the Naqba, so the Jews probably thought ‘fuck it’ - and in a way who can blame them?
‘Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself’
There is plenty of documentation about this. Israel as is accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs en masse didn't and the day after Israel's independence was declared the Arab nations invaded (or tried to invade) Israel.
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
And that is what we are all arguing about now.
Or in other words Palestinians had a partition imposed on them that gave most of their land to Israel, despite Palestinians being a two thirds majority of the population and owning the vast majority of the land.
Google tells me you are wrong on your population stats so I see no reason to believe you are right on your land stats.
The proposed plan is considered to have been pro-Zionist by its detractors, with 62% of the land allocated to the Jewish state despite the Palestinian Arab population numbering twice the Jewish population.[6]
Ah. I just took the numbers from the table where it shows that the "Jewish State" was 55%, er, Jewish.
As I said, the UN, eh - what can you do with them. As has been pointed out also, however, there was no "Palestinian State" prior to this plan, there were plenty of Palestinians and Jews living in the region. "Palestine" was of course the property of us plucky Brits.
Perhaps we should have hung on to it, like we did the Falklands. And Calais.
IDEA
Send Foreign offices johnnies over to Calais. Have a word with the refugee types.
Grant them all citizenship - of the Pale of Calais.
They just need to agitate to join the U.K. next… then they’re in!
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
Is that an ironic question?! The answer is No. The Palestinians have an historic, justified grievance against the state of Israel (and the powers that enabled Israel’s creation and ‘overlooked’ the excesses that followed)
Has that grievance often shaded into outright Jew-hatred? Yes, of course. And it is this line that Corbyn has crossed, many times, wittingly or not
I like it when you fervently agree with me.
For any number of reasons the Palestinians are anti-semitic (prize to the first person to point out that they are all semites).
And Jezza enthusiastically supports the Palestinian cause.
Comes back to @JosiasJessop's question as to whether anti-semitism is wrong or evil. Or indeed right.
But the "Palestinian cause" (not every Palestinian I imagine) is anti-semitic.
Are we saying that anti-semitism is actually a worthy sentiment, eh, @Theuniondivvie.
Jesus Christ, what a complete and unredeemable prat you are!
Don't bring him into it ffs. But answer the question - is the Palestinian cause anti-semitic.
About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron.
Ah. So you are equating the Palestinians being anti-semitic with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. So you are equating the actions of Israel with those of Nazi Germany.
Frankly, who gives a toss about your twisted view of the world? I don 't.
Indeed, who gives a toss. I meanwhile am far clearer on your view of the world.
You equate Israel with Nazi Germany and believe as a result that anti-semitism is justified.
I already told you I didn't give a toss what lies you tell - no matter how transparent they are.
The more ludicrous stuff like that you post, the more ridiculous you make yourself look. Probably the best thing to do is to give you an absolutely free rein, just so that people can see how dishonest you are. But more importantly how absurd.
Yeah. This is what you wrote:
"[The Palestinian cause is] About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
You equated any Palestinian anti-semitism with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. And therefore understandable, perhaps justified.
You also thereby equated Israel with Nazi Germany.
Which bit is my lies?
Obviously I "equated" nothing.
But please just try to get it through your thick skull that I don't give a toss what lies you tell about me.
How is
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
not equating? You literally set them up as being equivalent.
It's incredible. You just keep repeating the same crap, as though everyone can't see what nonsense it is. Why?
You claim that the fact that actions of the state of Israel somehow justifies your accusation that Palestinians are guilty of anti-semitism. And that support for Palestinians is therefore anti-semitic?
Are you really so bone-stupid as to be unable to understand the point I'm making? That you might just as well accuse Auschwitz survivors of being anti-German?
And on that basis you accuse me of equating the state of Israel with Auschwitz. How can anyone be so unbelievably crass?
You are almost literally unbelievable.
I can see you are embarrassed. You literally equated Palestinian anti-semitism with Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling.
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
That is equating the two. If you equate the two you need to look at the underlying reasons. Palestinian anti-semitism = Israel's actions; Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling = Nazi Germany's actions.
That is you equating the two.
I'm not really sure what you two are trying to prove to each other, but it doesn't look like either of you has much chance of success...
Allow me to help.
The discussion was around Jezza's anti-semitism. He supports the Palestinian cause and I pointed out that the Palestinian cause is anti-semitic.
Well, not really no. There isn't really such a thing as a 'Semitic people', especially considering how diverse the Arabic-speaking world is. Lumping people as diverse as Syrians, Berbers, Omanis etc. into one morass is archaic and unuseful.
There are Semitic *languages*, which do include Arabic and Hebrew - as well as Maltese and Amharic, largely spoken by people who I'd guess you wouldn't consider to be 'Semitic'. And of course there are people in the Middle East and North Africa who speak languages which are not Semitic.
In any case, antisemitism has a broadly accepted meaning specific to Jewish people; this sort of etymological debate is just disingenuous.
“I can’t be antisemitic, ‘cause I am a Semite” is generally invoked by the kind of demented, fascist, racist loonies who hold conferences on how the Holocaust didn’t happen.
It’s as strong a tell as “Some of my best friends….”
The description “anti-Semitic” was invented by some nut job racists in 19th cent Germany. Surprisingly, the alleged “racial basis” for their shit turns out to be bollocks. Hmmm - racists talking bollocks. Whatever next?
I am just astonished that a sensible and intelligent poster is actually saying that he believes that a two state solution is racist.
A two state solution is not racist.
Hamas proclaim a one-state solution, with Israel to be exterminated. Is that racist?
Yes. But Hamas is not representing the point of view which most of us hold.
"Most of us" on PB? Perhaps not. Plenty of Palestinians, yes. I mean they are the government of Gaza, after all.
Then by your logic Israel as a state is racist because the current Government is and so the Jewish cause is racist.
Yes Toppings logic totally flawed.
LOL we have a Jeremy Corbyn supporter to set us right. A supporter of that well-known anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn.
Welcome the analysis.
Good way to lose an argument.
"Life long anti racists being called racists by racists"
I think Alexei is spot on
“It's absurd to see people who have spent a lifetime standing against racism, being accused of racism, by racists.” ― Alexei Sayle.
Except that's bollocks if the people standing up have had a blindspot. And its plenty of non racists who make the accusations. Do they think only klansmen have made accusations or something?
These activists appear to think if they label themselves anti racists than makes it impossible to be racist. It ain't. At best some if these terrific anti racists seem very bad at spotting crushingly unsubtle racist tropes.
I entirely agree.
Certain sociologists and 'anti-racism' campaigners define racism as 'prejudice plus power'. As far as I can understand it the idea is that it's only racism when it's 'punching down'; the racist has to be in a position of power for it to count.
Israel is the more powerful in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, so attitudes that most of us would probably consider to be racism are instead discounted under the above definition. They are either counted as mere 'prejudice' or not counted at all.
I think this obsession with power differentials plays a significant role in the particular kind of racism that tends only to happen on the left of the political spectrum.
The positive legacy of the Corbyn era is that many more of us are now aware of the fundamental flaws in this worldview, even if Corbyn himself is not and probably never will be.
It’s been AGES since we had a good old PB Israel-Palestine ding dong
I used to rather loathe them, as being pointlessly divisive and prone to induce meltdowns, but in comparison to the Trans-TERF wars, the debate seems positively refreshing and meaningful
That’s a measure of how bad the Trans-TERF wars are
‘And now we turn to Hamas’s attitude to trans people..’
No idea what it is but no doubt someone will dig something up.
Fundamentalist Muslims are often surprisingly pro-trans. On the grounds that ‘I’d rather my son is a girl, than be gay’. The Quran is quite silent on drag shows
See Iran for proof. I have heard (seen no numbers) that a fair number of parents who took their kids to the Tavistock were Muslim
Yes, ISTR there was a period in the 90s/00s that Iran basically led the world in sex change operations. I'm not sure to what extent this was voluntary.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
Is that an ironic question?! The answer is No. The Palestinians have an historic, justified grievance against the state of Israel (and the powers that enabled Israel’s creation and ‘overlooked’ the excesses that followed)
Has that grievance often shaded into outright Jew-hatred? Yes, of course. And it is this line that Corbyn has crossed, many times, wittingly or not
I like it when you fervently agree with me.
For any number of reasons the Palestinians are anti-semitic (prize to the first person to point out that they are all semites).
And Jezza enthusiastically supports the Palestinian cause.
Comes back to @JosiasJessop's question as to whether anti-semitism is wrong or evil. Or indeed right.
But the "Palestinian cause" (not every Palestinian I imagine) is anti-semitic.
Are we saying that anti-semitism is actually a worthy sentiment, eh, @Theuniondivvie.
Jesus Christ, what a complete and unredeemable prat you are!
Don't bring him into it ffs. But answer the question - is the Palestinian cause anti-semitic.
About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron.
Ah. So you are equating the Palestinians being anti-semitic with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. So you are equating the actions of Israel with those of Nazi Germany.
Frankly, who gives a toss about your twisted view of the world? I don 't.
Indeed, who gives a toss. I meanwhile am far clearer on your view of the world.
You equate Israel with Nazi Germany and believe as a result that anti-semitism is justified.
I already told you I didn't give a toss what lies you tell - no matter how transparent they are.
The more ludicrous stuff like that you post, the more ridiculous you make yourself look. Probably the best thing to do is to give you an absolutely free rein, just so that people can see how dishonest you are. But more importantly how absurd.
Yeah. This is what you wrote:
"[The Palestinian cause is] About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
You equated any Palestinian anti-semitism with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. And therefore understandable, perhaps justified.
You also thereby equated Israel with Nazi Germany.
Which bit is my lies?
Obviously I "equated" nothing.
But please just try to get it through your thick skull that I don't give a toss what lies you tell about me.
How is
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
not equating? You literally set them up as being equivalent.
It's incredible. You just keep repeating the same crap, as though everyone can't see what nonsense it is. Why?
You claim that the fact that actions of the state of Israel somehow justifies your accusation that Palestinians are guilty of anti-semitism. And that support for Palestinians is therefore anti-semitic?
Are you really so bone-stupid as to be unable to understand the point I'm making? That you might just as well accuse Auschwitz survivors of being anti-German?
And on that basis you accuse me of equating the state of Israel with Auschwitz. How can anyone be so unbelievably crass?
You are almost literally unbelievable.
I can see you are embarrassed. You literally equated Palestinian anti-semitism with Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling.
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
That is equating the two. If you equate the two you need to look at the underlying reasons. Palestinian anti-semitism = Israel's actions; Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling = Nazi Germany's actions.
That is you equating the two.
I'm not really sure what you two are trying to prove to each other, but it doesn't look like either of you has much chance of success...
Allow me to help.
The discussion was around Jezza's anti-semitism. He supports the Palestinian cause and I pointed out that the Palestinian cause is anti-semitic.
Well, not really no. There isn't really such a thing as a 'Semitic people', especially considering how diverse the Arabic-speaking world is. Lumping people as diverse as Syrians, Berbers, Omanis etc. into one morass is archaic and unuseful.
There are Semitic *languages*, which do include Arabic and Hebrew - as well as Maltese and Amharic, largely spoken by people who I'd guess you wouldn't consider to be 'Semitic'. And of course there are people in the Middle East and North Africa who speak languages which are not Semitic.
In any case, antisemitism has a broadly accepted meaning specific to Jewish people; this sort of etymological debate is just disingenuous.
Yeah all very interesting; I was just referring to a comment in my first post on the subject, when I wondered out loud (in print) which PB-er would be the first to say that Arabs are semitic also.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
Ukraine never ethnically cleansed people from its territory. The analogy fails.
Neither has Israel.
However Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Arab states, and would have been ethnically cleansed from the land of Israel had Israel not succeeded in defending itself.
The analogy holds.
Plenty of Palestinians have been pushed off their land by the Israelis. It's something that is still happening today with the settlements in the West Bank.
Your denial of this is disturbing.
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
I didn't use the word genocide. I used the description ethnic cleansing to draw a distinction between Israel and Ukraine.
Do you accept that distinction exists?
No. Israel has been the victim of attempted ethnic cleansing not its perpetrator.
Suggestions Israel has engaged in ethnic cleansing are as ridiculous as suggesting Ukraine was doing that in the Donbas.
I am just astonished that a sensible and intelligent poster is actually saying that he believes that a two state solution is racist.
A two state solution is not racist.
Hamas proclaim a one-state solution, with Israel to be exterminated. Is that racist?
Yes. But Hamas is not representing the point of view which most of us hold.
"Most of us" on PB? Perhaps not. Plenty of Palestinians, yes. I mean they are the government of Gaza, after all.
Then by your logic Israel as a state is racist because the current Government is and so the Jewish cause is racist.
Yes Toppings logic totally flawed.
LOL we have a Jeremy Corbyn supporter to set us right. A supporter of that well-known anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn.
Welcome the analysis.
Good way to lose an argument.
"Life long anti racists being called racists by racists"
I think Alexei is spot on
“It's absurd to see people who have spent a lifetime standing against racism, being accused of racism, by racists.” ― Alexei Sayle.
Except that's bollocks if the people standing up have had a blindspot. And its plenty of non racists who make the accusations. Do they think only klansmen have made accusations or something?
These activists appear to think if they label themselves anti racists than makes it impossible to be racist. It ain't. At best some if these terrific anti racists seem very bad at spotting crushingly unsubtle racist tropes.
No mate it was all a scam
Panorama now proved to be full of falsehoods and Luciana Berger deliberately conflating far right perps with Labour Party members.
Ruth Smeeth says she is OK with discrimination against Jews (JVL) Because they are only represent a small minority. Cant really get any more AS than that can it!!
EHRC identified 2 instances of AS both were expelled but are taking legal action to defend themselves against the AS tag.
It’s been AGES since we had a good old PB Israel-Palestine ding dong
I used to rather loathe them, as being pointlessly divisive and prone to induce meltdowns, but in comparison to the Trans-TERF wars, the debate seems positively refreshing and meaningful
That’s a measure of how bad the Trans-TERF wars are
‘And now we turn to Hamas’s attitude to trans people..’
No idea what it is but no doubt someone will dig something up.
I asked ChatGPT. Here is the response.
NB This references ChatGPT, LGBTQ+ and Hamas - especially for @Leon.
Hamas is a Palestinian Islamic political organization that controls the Gaza Strip. There is limited information available about Hamas's specific attitude towards transgender people, as the organization has not made any official statements or policies regarding the matter.
However, Hamas's ideology is based on Islamic teachings and principles, which generally hold traditional views on gender and sexuality. Islamic teachings emphasize the importance of maintaining gender norms and roles, and many Islamic scholars consider transgenderism to be a violation of these norms.
As such, it is possible that Hamas may hold negative views towards transgender people, considering them to be deviating from traditional gender roles and possibly immoral. However, it is important to note that these are speculative assumptions and there is no concrete evidence to support them.
It is also worth noting that the situation for LGBTQ+ individuals, including transgender people, in the Gaza Strip is generally challenging. Homosexuality is illegal and punishable by law, and LGBTQ+ individuals often face discrimination, harassment, and violence. Therefore, it is likely that transgender individuals in the Gaza Strip face similar challenges, regardless of Hamas's specific attitudes towards them.
I see he's nominated his Dad for a knighthood. This isn't the done thing at all.
Boris has already given his brother a peerage, so what's new?
He has. Although his brother was at least an MP and Minister, so could be argued a political appointment. This kind of grift is why he needs to go.
Johnson senior was an MEP, long long ago.
Maybe that's why Boris turned out Eurosceptic.
Another question- when this comes to a vote, how many Conservative MPs would vote against Boris? It would only need thirtysomething and he's toast.
I think it is easily mustered. There were always a sizeable number of MPs who were anti-Boris, even as he was getting them an 80 seat majority as PM. True, the ranks were significantly thinned by the defectors and unselected and standing downers in 2019, but those who will vote to suspend will be into three figures.
Can we stop this crap about Johnson getting the Tories and 80 majority. He was facing Corbyn which is hardly a big deal. Arguably he should have done better.
Would be ironic if both Corbyn and Johnson, the 2 main party leaders in 2019, were expelled and suspended by their parties. Corbyn is almost certain to stand as an Independent in Islington North in 2024, the risk for the Tories is Boris would go further and defect to RefUK in the hope of replacing Tice as its leader
That is possible, but traditionally such moves don't end well. Roy Jenkins and David Owen spring to mind.
I can't actually think of a former PM who defected to a new party and led it to success. Even Lloyd George couldn't, holding a rump of four MPs after his second defection from the Liberals. Macdonald, maybe, but his party survived with Tory help.
No but Roy Jenkins got 25% of the vote for the SDP, splitting the Labour vote so Foot only got 27% for Labour and helping Thatcher to a landslide in 1983 under FPTP. The same happened to a slightly smaller extent in 1987
I see he's nominated his Dad for a knighthood. This isn't the done thing at all.
Boris has already given his brother a peerage, so what's new?
He has. Although his brother was at least an MP and Minister, so could be argued a political appointment. This kind of grift is why he needs to go.
Johnson senior was an MEP, long long ago.
Maybe that's why Boris turned out Eurosceptic.
Another question- when this comes to a vote, how many Conservative MPs would vote against Boris? It would only need thirtysomething and he's toast.
I think it is easily mustered. There were always a sizeable number of MPs who were anti-Boris, even as he was getting them an 80 seat majority as PM. True, the ranks were significantly thinned by the defectors and unselected and standing downers in 2019, but those who will vote to suspend will be into three figures.
Can we stop this crap about Johnson getting the Tories and 80 majority. He was facing Corbyn which is hardly a big deal. Arguably he should have done better.
Would be ironic if both Corbyn and Johnson, the 2 main party leaders in 2019, were expelled and suspended by their parties. Corbyn is almost certain to stand as an Independent in Islington North in 2024, the risk for the Tories is Boris would go further and defect to RefUK in the hope of replacing Tice as its leader
That is possible, but traditionally such moves don't end well. Roy Jenkins and David Owen spring to mind.
I can't actually think of a former PM who defected to a new party and led it to success. Even Lloyd George couldn't, holding a rump of four MPs after his second defection from the Liberals. Macdonald, maybe, but his party survived with Tory help.
No but Roy Jenkins got 25% of the vote for the SDP, splitting the Labour vote so Foot only got 27% for Labour and helping Thatcher to a landslide in 1983 under FPTP. The same happened to a slightly smaller extent in 1987
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Yes, there's a linguistic point here which keeps causing political misunderstandings. Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group - Nazis vs Jews and Hutus vs Tutsis may be the obvious examples. Trying to kill vast numbers in a targeted group (e.g. Nazis vs Russians) is horrible but not quite genocide. Ethnic cleansing (clearly visible in the Balkans, and arguably in the establishment of Israel) is as you say nasty but not genocide. (Trying to assert one culture over another is also not genocide at all, though still a bad thing.)
In short, it should be possible to condemn something as vile without equating with genocide. If X tries to suppress Y's culture, that's bad, but it does a disservice to genuine victims of genocide to imply that it's the same thing.
"Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group "
I think that's a little too strict. For instance, the Germans tried to kill Jews (and Romanies, and disabled...) in territories they conquered, but did not send out hit squads against those groups in other countries.
There are two examples that I think are controversial and are interesting to consider wrt whether they were genocides:
Turkey / Armenia in 1915/6 The Holodomor
IMV both of these were genocides, even if the intention was not trying to kill *everyone* in those groups.
As another example, is what is Russia doing in Ukraine a genocide? Again, I'd argue it is, as Russia is trying to kill out an entre nationality; they are denying the right of Ukrainians to exist.
What the Russians are doing is a terrible thing, but it's not genocide in the sense of what the Nazis did to the Jews. As far as I can tell, Putin's aim is not to kill all Ukrainians; it's to make them live as Russians, with the side effect that they will be killed if they resist. The Jews in Nazi Germany didn't have the option of not resisting.
While suppression of a culture is a crime, it's not the same as actually killing people. If it were, one could plausibly argue that the English were guilty of genocide again the Welsh for attempting to suppress the Welsh language.
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Yes, there's a linguistic point here which keeps causing political misunderstandings. Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group - Nazis vs Jews and Hutus vs Tutsis may be the obvious examples. Trying to kill vast numbers in a targeted group (e.g. Nazis vs Russians) is horrible but not quite genocide. Ethnic cleansing (clearly visible in the Balkans, and arguably in the establishment of Israel) is as you say nasty but not genocide. (Trying to assert one culture over another is also not genocide at all, though still a bad thing.)
In short, it should be possible to condemn something as vile without equating with genocide. If X tries to suppress Y's culture, that's bad, but it does a disservice to genuine victims of genocide to imply that it's the same thing.
"Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group "
I think that's a little too strict. For instance, the Germans tried to kill Jews (and Romanies, and disabled...) in territories they conquered, but did not send out hit squads against those groups in other countries.
There are two examples that I think are controversial and are interesting to consider wrt whether they were genocides:
Turkey / Armenia in 1915/6 The Holodomor
IMV both of these were genocides, even if the intention was not trying to kill *everyone* in those groups.
As another example, is what is Russia doing in Ukraine a genocide? Again, I'd argue it is, as Russia is trying to kill out an entre nationality; they are denying the right of Ukrainians to exist.
What the Russians are doing is a terrible thing, but it's not genocide in the sense of what the Nazis did to the Jews. As far as I can tell, Putin's aim is not to kill all Ukrainians; it's to make them live as Russians. While suppression of a culture is a crime, it's not the same as actually killing people. If it were, one could plausibly argue that the English were guilty of genocide again the Welsh for attempting to suppress the Welsh language.
Did the English attempt to suppress the Welsh language?
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
Is that an ironic question?! The answer is No. The Palestinians have an historic, justified grievance against the state of Israel (and the powers that enabled Israel’s creation and ‘overlooked’ the excesses that followed)
Has that grievance often shaded into outright Jew-hatred? Yes, of course. And it is this line that Corbyn has crossed, many times, wittingly or not
I like it when you fervently agree with me.
For any number of reasons the Palestinians are anti-semitic (prize to the first person to point out that they are all semites).
And Jezza enthusiastically supports the Palestinian cause.
Comes back to @JosiasJessop's question as to whether anti-semitism is wrong or evil. Or indeed right.
But the "Palestinian cause" (not every Palestinian I imagine) is anti-semitic.
Are we saying that anti-semitism is actually a worthy sentiment, eh, @Theuniondivvie.
Jesus Christ, what a complete and unredeemable prat you are!
Don't bring him into it ffs. But answer the question - is the Palestinian cause anti-semitic.
About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron.
Ah. So you are equating the Palestinians being anti-semitic with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. So you are equating the actions of Israel with those of Nazi Germany.
Fantastic you have answered the question of whether anti-semitism is wrong or evil. In your mind it is neither; it is wholly understandable.
As someone who is Jewish enough to be on The List(s)…
- Not all Palestinians are anti-Semitic. Most don’t endorse the “drive them into the sea/kill them” thing. - Anti-semitism is very common in the Muslim and Arab worlds. - This is partly because the rulers of the countries in question use Israel as an excuse for all kinds of shit. It is preached by the state. - Netenyahu is a shit. A nasty, nasty shit. - Antisemite was the self given name for some racists in 19th cent Germany. - The “I can’t be an anti-Semite because I am Semitic” excuse tends to be used by extreme racists in the Middle East. The kind of people who tell you the Blood Libel is true. - Being pro Palestinian need have nothing to do with being anti-Semitic. Indeed, there are quite a few moderate politicians (and their parties) in Israel, who would be considered to have a pro-Palestinian outlook (self determination, 67 borders, aid and assistance etc etc)
While Topping is desperately catechising us all, that seems a fair response to me.
I'd add this. “Israel’s security is based partly on a relationship with the United States built on shared values — freedom, equality, democracy — that can only be sustained by a commitment to the rule of law, including an independent judiciary capable of upholding it.” https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1632733585533726724
I see he's nominated his Dad for a knighthood. This isn't the done thing at all.
Boris has already given his brother a peerage, so what's new?
He has. Although his brother was at least an MP and Minister, so could be argued a political appointment. This kind of grift is why he needs to go.
Johnson senior was an MEP, long long ago.
Maybe that's why Boris turned out Eurosceptic.
Another question- when this comes to a vote, how many Conservative MPs would vote against Boris? It would only need thirtysomething and he's toast.
I think it is easily mustered. There were always a sizeable number of MPs who were anti-Boris, even as he was getting them an 80 seat majority as PM. True, the ranks were significantly thinned by the defectors and unselected and standing downers in 2019, but those who will vote to suspend will be into three figures.
Can we stop this crap about Johnson getting the Tories and 80 majority. He was facing Corbyn which is hardly a big deal. Arguably he should have done better.
Would be ironic if both Corbyn and Johnson, the 2 main party leaders in 2019, were expelled and suspended by their parties. Corbyn is almost certain to stand as an Independent in Islington North in 2024, the risk for the Tories is Boris would go further and defect to RefUK in the hope of replacing Tice as its leader
That is possible, but traditionally such moves don't end well. Roy Jenkins and David Owen spring to mind.
I can't actually think of a former PM who defected to a new party and led it to success. Even Lloyd George couldn't, holding a rump of four MPs after his second defection from the Liberals. Macdonald, maybe, but his party survived with Tory help.
No but Roy Jenkins got 25% of the vote for the SDP, splitting the Labour vote so Foot only got 27% for Labour and helping Thatcher to a landslide in 1983 under FPTP. The same happened to a slightly smaller extent in 1987
Wrong on several counts.
Which counts?
Montecristo.
I thought it was Count von Count from Sesame Street.
"One election walkover, ha ha ha... Two election walkovers, ha ha ha..."
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Yes, there's a linguistic point here which keeps causing political misunderstandings. Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group - Nazis vs Jews and Hutus vs Tutsis may be the obvious examples. Trying to kill vast numbers in a targeted group (e.g. Nazis vs Russians) is horrible but not quite genocide. Ethnic cleansing (clearly visible in the Balkans, and arguably in the establishment of Israel) is as you say nasty but not genocide. (Trying to assert one culture over another is also not genocide at all, though still a bad thing.)
In short, it should be possible to condemn something as vile without equating with genocide. If X tries to suppress Y's culture, that's bad, but it does a disservice to genuine victims of genocide to imply that it's the same thing.
"Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group "
I think that's a little too strict. For instance, the Germans tried to kill Jews (and Romanies, and disabled...) in territories they conquered, but did not send out hit squads against those groups in other countries.
There are two examples that I think are controversial and are interesting to consider wrt whether they were genocides:
Turkey / Armenia in 1915/6 The Holodomor
IMV both of these were genocides, even if the intention was not trying to kill *everyone* in those groups.
As another example, is what is Russia doing in Ukraine a genocide? Again, I'd argue it is, as Russia is trying to kill out an entre nationality; they are denying the right of Ukrainians to exist.
What the Russians are doing is a terrible thing, but it's not genocide in the sense of what the Nazis did to the Jews. As far as I can tell, Putin's aim is not to kill all Ukrainians; it's to make them live as Russians. While suppression of a culture is a crime, it's not the same as actually killing people. If it were, one could plausibly argue that the English were guilty of genocide again the Welsh for attempting to suppress the Welsh language.
Did the English attempt to suppress the Welsh language?
Hmm, apparently not, it seems. I'd heard stories from my Welsh relatives about the suppression of the Welsh language, but on reading about it, it seems that the suppression was by the Welsh themselves! It seems I was mistaken.
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Yes, there's a linguistic point here which keeps causing political misunderstandings. Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group - Nazis vs Jews and Hutus vs Tutsis may be the obvious examples. Trying to kill vast numbers in a targeted group (e.g. Nazis vs Russians) is horrible but not quite genocide. Ethnic cleansing (clearly visible in the Balkans, and arguably in the establishment of Israel) is as you say nasty but not genocide. (Trying to assert one culture over another is also not genocide at all, though still a bad thing.)
In short, it should be possible to condemn something as vile without equating with genocide. If X tries to suppress Y's culture, that's bad, but it does a disservice to genuine victims of genocide to imply that it's the same thing.
"Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group "
I think that's a little too strict. For instance, the Germans tried to kill Jews (and Romanies, and disabled...) in territories they conquered, but did not send out hit squads against those groups in other countries.
There are two examples that I think are controversial and are interesting to consider wrt whether they were genocides:
Turkey / Armenia in 1915/6 The Holodomor
IMV both of these were genocides, even if the intention was not trying to kill *everyone* in those groups.
As another example, is what is Russia doing in Ukraine a genocide? Again, I'd argue it is, as Russia is trying to kill out an entre nationality; they are denying the right of Ukrainians to exist.
What the Russians are doing is a terrible thing, but it's not genocide in the sense of what the Nazis did to the Jews. As far as I can tell, Putin's aim is not to kill all Ukrainians; it's to make them live as Russians. While suppression of a culture is a crime, it's not the same as actually killing people. If it were, one could plausibly argue that the English were guilty of genocide again the Welsh for attempting to suppress the Welsh language.
Did the English attempt to suppress the Welsh language?
Hmm, apparently not, it seems. I'd heard stories from my Welsh relatives about the suppression of the Welsh language, but on reading about it, it seems that the suppression was by the Welsh themselves! It seems I was mistaken.
So its not true that they loaded up the language with unnecessary consonants, to put everybody off? Damn.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
What’s your preferred term for the miserable condition that Palestinian people find themselves in?
Miserable.
But that doesn't address my question. Do you think that the "Palestinian cause" is in any way anti-semitic.
The question wasn’t addressed to me, but in a generous effort to contribute to the idea that we’re all here to answer Topping’s questions, no.
So the Palestinian cause, as espoused by the government of, oh I don't know, say Gaza, is not anti-semitic.
Gotit.
Is the Ukrainian cause racist?
No, but Israel are the Ukrainians in this analogy.
Ukraine is occupying Russian territory?
Israel never invaded a country called Palestine and isn't occupying any land formerly owned by a country called Palestine either. Its occupying territory formerly belonging to Egypt and Israel, after those countries tried to genocidally wipe Israel off the map.
The people living there want to be a separate state and their leaders still say they want to wipe Israel off the map now just as in the Donbas the Russian-backed separatists say they want their own state and that Ukraine should be wiped off the map.
Egypt and Jordan were Russia. Israel is like Ukraine fighting for its survival. Hamas are the equivalent of the Donetsk People's Republic.
Ukraine never ethnically cleansed people from its territory. The analogy fails.
Neither has Israel.
However Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Arab states, and would have been ethnically cleansed from the land of Israel had Israel not succeeded in defending itself.
The analogy holds.
Plenty of Palestinians have been pushed off their land by the Israelis. It's something that is still happening today with the settlements in the West Bank.
Your denial of this is disturbing.
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
I didn't use the word genocide. I used the description ethnic cleansing to draw a distinction between Israel and Ukraine.
Do you accept that distinction exists?
No. Israel has been the victim of attempted ethnic cleansing not its perpetrator.
Suggestions Israel has engaged in ethnic cleansing are as ridiculous as suggesting Ukraine was doing that in the Donbas.
Israel certainly hasn't engaged in ethnic cleansing, some Israeli settlers however have expanded next to or even into land held by Palestinian families
I am just astonished that a sensible and intelligent poster is actually saying that he believes that a two state solution is racist.
A two state solution is not racist.
Hamas proclaim a one-state solution, with Israel to be exterminated. Is that racist?
Yes. But Hamas is not representing the point of view which most of us hold.
"Most of us" on PB? Perhaps not. Plenty of Palestinians, yes. I mean they are the government of Gaza, after all.
Then by your logic Israel as a state is racist because the current Government is and so the Jewish cause is racist.
Yes Toppings logic totally flawed.
LOL we have a Jeremy Corbyn supporter to set us right. A supporter of that well-known anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn.
Welcome the analysis.
Good way to lose an argument.
"Life long anti racists being called racists by racists"
I think Alexei is spot on
“It's absurd to see people who have spent a lifetime standing against racism, being accused of racism, by racists.” ― Alexei Sayle.
Except that's bollocks if the people standing up have had a blindspot. And its plenty of non racists who make the accusations. Do they think only klansmen have made accusations or something?
These activists appear to think if they label themselves anti racists than makes it impossible to be racist. It ain't. At best some if these terrific anti racists seem very bad at spotting crushingly unsubtle racist tropes.
I entirely agree.
Certain sociologists and 'anti-racism' campaigners define racism as 'prejudice plus power'. As far as I can understand it the idea is that it's only racism when it's 'punching down'; the racist has to be in a position of power for it to count.
Israel is the more powerful in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, so attitudes that most of us would probably consider to be racism are instead discounted under the above definition. They are either counted as mere 'prejudice' or not counted at all.
I think this obsession with power differentials plays a significant role in the particular kind of racism that tends only to happen on the left of the political spectrum.
The positive legacy of the Corbyn era is that many more of us are now aware of the fundamental flaws in this worldview, even if Corbyn himself is not and probably never will be.
It's bizarre though as Israel is only powerful if you for some bizarre reason draw a distinction between Palestinian Arabs and the rest of the Arab world.
If you look at Ukraine and the Donetsk Peoples Republic alone you'd say Ukraine was more powerful, but the DKR are aligned to Russia also seeking to exterminate Ukraine.
Hamas are seeking the destruction of Israel but they aren't doing so in a vacuum.
Post WWII when the Europeans were withdrawing from the Middle East it was to be partitioned so 99.8% would go to Arab States and 0.2% to a Jewish state in land that was already majority Jewish. The Arabs seeking 100% of land instead, even the land that was already majority Jewish, started this conflict by not accepting that and it has never ended.
Just because the Israelis have been successful at defending themselves doesn't make them the larger party.
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Yes, there's a linguistic point here which keeps causing political misunderstandings. Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group - Nazis vs Jews and Hutus vs Tutsis may be the obvious examples. Trying to kill vast numbers in a targeted group (e.g. Nazis vs Russians) is horrible but not quite genocide. Ethnic cleansing (clearly visible in the Balkans, and arguably in the establishment of Israel) is as you say nasty but not genocide. (Trying to assert one culture over another is also not genocide at all, though still a bad thing.)
In short, it should be possible to condemn something as vile without equating with genocide. If X tries to suppress Y's culture, that's bad, but it does a disservice to genuine victims of genocide to imply that it's the same thing.
While it's fair to make a distinction between exterminatory policies and those which fall some way short of that, that distinction does not apply to genocide according to the treaty definition.
I'd say the invasion of Ukraine, how it is described by the Russian state, and many of the details of actions taken against civilians, can quite possibly support a definition of genocide.
... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. — Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2...
I am just astonished that a sensible and intelligent poster is actually saying that he believes that a two state solution is racist.
A two state solution is not racist.
Hamas proclaim a one-state solution, with Israel to be exterminated. Is that racist?
Yes. But Hamas is not representing the point of view which most of us hold.
"Most of us" on PB? Perhaps not. Plenty of Palestinians, yes. I mean they are the government of Gaza, after all.
Then by your logic Israel as a state is racist because the current Government is and so the Jewish cause is racist.
Yes Toppings logic totally flawed.
LOL we have a Jeremy Corbyn supporter to set us right. A supporter of that well-known anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn.
Welcome the analysis.
Good way to lose an argument.
"Life long anti racists being called racists by racists"
I think Alexei is spot on
“It's absurd to see people who have spent a lifetime standing against racism, being accused of racism, by racists.” ― Alexei Sayle.
Except that's bollocks if the people standing up have had a blindspot. And its plenty of non racists who make the accusations. Do they think only klansmen have made accusations or something?
These activists appear to think if they label themselves anti racists than makes it impossible to be racist. It ain't. At best some if these terrific anti racists seem very bad at spotting crushingly unsubtle racist tropes.
There is (antisemitic) racism on the pro-Palestine Left. It's my 'side' but I know this is true. It's also true that on the pro-Israel Right there is plenty of (white supremacy) racism. The racism on the Left is driven by being pro-Palestine, whereas on the Right their being pro-Israel is driven by their racism. It's all bad news obviously.
Apols if already covered - a New Statesman/Savanta poll of SNP members on their preferred leader:
Unsure 32% Hamza 31% Forbes 25% Regan 11%
No clear winner there.
Unsure is probably the leader they need....
Looking at the raw data, there's a good 11% who also prefer not to say. Including Would Not Votes that gives Ash Regan 10% Humza Yousaf 27% Kate Forbes 22% Don't Know 28% Prefer not to say 11%
Gut instinct says that the prefer not to says lean Regan or Forbes, and the age profile suggests that this is the case. I had a quick mess around with the numbers, allocating votes on the basis of age. This got me: Ash Regan 16% Humza Yousaf 48% Kate Forbes 36%
For fun, I once again reallocated Regan's votes on the basis of age. This ended up with Humza Yousaf 56% Kate Forbes 43%
Allocating votes in this way, however, resulted in a pretty even split in Regan's vote (47-53 in favour of Yousaf), which seems unlikely to me. However, assuming DKs and Would Note Votes vote according to their age (more likely in the former rather than latter case) Kate Forbes would need over 80% of Regan supporters to back her. In the absence of that, she needs to begin to appeal more to younger voters, because that is where she's getting hammered (Yousaf is ahead, by quite a bit, with every age margin save 55-64 and 64+).
Still all to play for, though.
It looks like Yousaf will win most first preferences but not a majority but Regan's second preferences could then edge it for Forbes.
Which means Forbes would become SNP leader and FM despite being neither the preference of most SNP MSPs or the first preference of most SNP members. Which could leave the SNP with their own Liz Truss leading them and Scotland!
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Yes, there's a linguistic point here which keeps causing political misunderstandings. Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group - Nazis vs Jews and Hutus vs Tutsis may be the obvious examples. Trying to kill vast numbers in a targeted group (e.g. Nazis vs Russians) is horrible but not quite genocide. Ethnic cleansing (clearly visible in the Balkans, and arguably in the establishment of Israel) is as you say nasty but not genocide. (Trying to assert one culture over another is also not genocide at all, though still a bad thing.)
In short, it should be possible to condemn something as vile without equating with genocide. If X tries to suppress Y's culture, that's bad, but it does a disservice to genuine victims of genocide to imply that it's the same thing.
"Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group "
I think that's a little too strict. For instance, the Germans tried to kill Jews (and Romanies, and disabled...) in territories they conquered, but did not send out hit squads against those groups in other countries.
There are two examples that I think are controversial and are interesting to consider wrt whether they were genocides:
Turkey / Armenia in 1915/6 The Holodomor
IMV both of these were genocides, even if the intention was not trying to kill *everyone* in those groups.
As another example, is what is Russia doing in Ukraine a genocide? Again, I'd argue it is, as Russia is trying to kill out an entre nationality; they are denying the right of Ukrainians to exist.
What the Russians are doing is a terrible thing, but it's not genocide in the sense of what the Nazis did to the Jews. As far as I can tell, Putin's aim is not to kill all Ukrainians; it's to make them live as Russians. While suppression of a culture is a crime, it's not the same as actually killing people. If it were, one could plausibly argue that the English were guilty of genocide again the Welsh for attempting to suppress the Welsh language.
Did the English attempt to suppress the Welsh language?
Hmm, apparently not, it seems. I'd heard stories from my Welsh relatives about the suppression of the Welsh language, but on reading about it, it seems that the suppression was by the Welsh themselves! It seems I was mistaken.
So its not true that they loaded up the language with unnecessary consonants, to put everybody off? Damn.
I thought that the English bastards stole all the vowels.
I am just astonished that a sensible and intelligent poster is actually saying that he believes that a two state solution is racist.
A two state solution is not racist.
Hamas proclaim a one-state solution, with Israel to be exterminated. Is that racist?
Yes. But Hamas is not representing the point of view which most of us hold.
"Most of us" on PB? Perhaps not. Plenty of Palestinians, yes. I mean they are the government of Gaza, after all.
Then by your logic Israel as a state is racist because the current Government is and so the Jewish cause is racist.
Yes Toppings logic totally flawed.
LOL we have a Jeremy Corbyn supporter to set us right. A supporter of that well-known anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn.
Welcome the analysis.
Good way to lose an argument.
"Life long anti racists being called racists by racists"
I think Alexei is spot on
“It's absurd to see people who have spent a lifetime standing against racism, being accused of racism, by racists.” ― Alexei Sayle.
Except that's bollocks if the people standing up have had a blindspot. And its plenty of non racists who make the accusations. Do they think only klansmen have made accusations or something?
These activists appear to think if they label themselves anti racists than makes it impossible to be racist. It ain't. At best some if these terrific anti racists seem very bad at spotting crushingly unsubtle racist tropes.
There is (antisemitic) racism on the pro-Palestine Left. It's my 'side' but I know this is true. It's also true that on the pro-Israel Right there is plenty of (white supremacy) racism. The racism on the Left is driven by being pro-Palestine, whereas on the Right their being pro-Israel is driven by their racism. It's all bad news obviously.
The racism on the Left is driven by anti Jewish feeling not pro Palestinian.
If the concern was for Palestine, where was that concern when the land was annexed by Jordan and Egypt?
Jordan and Egypt quite literally wiped Palestine off the map, not Israel. But who gets the hatred?
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Yes, there's a linguistic point here which keeps causing political misunderstandings. Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group - Nazis vs Jews and Hutus vs Tutsis may be the obvious examples. Trying to kill vast numbers in a targeted group (e.g. Nazis vs Russians) is horrible but not quite genocide. Ethnic cleansing (clearly visible in the Balkans, and arguably in the establishment of Israel) is as you say nasty but not genocide. (Trying to assert one culture over another is also not genocide at all, though still a bad thing.)
In short, it should be possible to condemn something as vile without equating with genocide. If X tries to suppress Y's culture, that's bad, but it does a disservice to genuine victims of genocide to imply that it's the same thing.
While it's fair to make a distinction between exterminatory policies and those which fall some way short of that, that distinction does not apply to genocide according to the treaty definition.
I'd say the invasion of Ukraine, how it is described by the Russian state, and many of the details of actions taken against civilians, can quite possibly support a definition of genocide.
... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. — Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2...
That's a wider definition of genocide than I'd thought and would appear to cover a wide range of wartime actions. The WWII bombings of Coventry and Dresden, for example.
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Yes, there's a linguistic point here which keeps causing political misunderstandings. Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group - Nazis vs Jews and Hutus vs Tutsis may be the obvious examples. Trying to kill vast numbers in a targeted group (e.g. Nazis vs Russians) is horrible but not quite genocide. Ethnic cleansing (clearly visible in the Balkans, and arguably in the establishment of Israel) is as you say nasty but not genocide. (Trying to assert one culture over another is also not genocide at all, though still a bad thing.)
In short, it should be possible to condemn something as vile without equating with genocide. If X tries to suppress Y's culture, that's bad, but it does a disservice to genuine victims of genocide to imply that it's the same thing.
While it's fair to make a distinction between exterminatory policies and those which fall some way short of that, that distinction does not apply to genocide according to the treaty definition.
I'd say the invasion of Ukraine, how it is described by the Russian state, and many of the details of actions taken against civilians, can quite possibly support a definition of genocide.
... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. — Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2...
Yes - the UN definition of genocide encompasses actions with the “ambition of” - just because the Arkan and chums didn’t have enough infrastructure to actually murder every single Muslim in Bosnia, doesn’t let them off the genocidal actions hook.
Let us be honest about the utterly desperate and embarrassing position the Tory Party is in.
A PM fined for lying and then sacked by his own MPs for lying, is now being defended by the very people that sacked him on the grounds he was "stitched up". This is post truth, it is lies, they are playing the public for absolute fools.
The Tory Party needs to go and re-discover honesty and integrity as clearly right now it is completely bankrupt of it.
The problem is that Labour supporters tend to be the same. Look at all the Labour figures who defended Corbyn whilst he was leader - including Starmer. It's their team, so they'll defend it whatever.
Something needs to change. As I have admitted honestly, I did fall into this trap and intend never to do so again. So I say this as somebody who has come from that place, something has to be done.
IMV there are several aspects to this. I'd like to see a little more compassion. Politicians are people too, and make mistakes. Some mistakes can be forgivable, especially when acted on with limited information (see Covid etc), or in fraught circumstances. Persecuting people who make honest well-meant mistakes just causes people to hide stuff, and that's bad for everyone.
And that means as much for your opponents as your side.
I had been increasingly and vocally unhappy for a while. My naïve 'back the underdog' approach had led me to briefly back Corbyn followed by a rapid "what have I done" and then horror as what appeared to be a tidal wave of trots poured into the party both locally and nationally.
I went to the CLP antisemitism training session - a mandatory meeting imposed on all CLPs by HQ in response to the increasing furore about what Jeremy was saying and who he was associating with. The party training document had a strident definition of AS and why it was wrong signed by Jeremy. And as trots foamed on in anger at some good friends' contributions in the meeting, I read again the AS definition signed by JC, and looked at the photos of JC marching behind a clearly AS banner next to AS signs, which his own document said was AS, felt this cleansing calm, stood up and walked out of the meeting and the Labour Party.
You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. Replace Jeremy as leader and purge the trots. Had he not done so then we'd probably have Wrong-Daily as leader and Boris would be stepping corruption up to ever greater levels. I was a nobody, I could quit. Starmer could not.
"You can't say "ah but Keir Starmer" because for someone in his position the national interest is to stay and fight the cancer. "
That's not a very convincing excuse IMO. Starmer stayed in because he wanted to be leader.
Do you stay to reform an organisation or abandon it?
History says that leaving the Labour Party out of principal lengthened the period, in the 80s when Labour previous made itself unelectable. And didn’t get the leavers (ha!) into power either.
If Starmer & Co. had redone the Gang Of Four, Corbynism would have lasted much longer.
Would you stay in an organisation that had (to take a very extreme example) Hitler as leader, in hope of being able to reform it?
If your are against a wrong, or an evil, you get out. You do not become complicit.
Imagine if Corbyn had won in 2019 - as he might have done, with a few small changes. One of those changes are the brave people in Labour who did make a noise, who did leave, helped Corbyn lose.
Corbyn isn’t evil. Wrong, yes.
Is anti-Semtiism not just wrong, but evil?
Being Jewish enough to be interested in the result, personally.
Corbyn is an example of those in the left who can’t deal with the fact that minority groups can be racist. He can’t criticise or call our people in the Palestinian movement who are hard core antisemitic.
He himself is probably not anti-Semitic. Though several associates are.
This blindspot meant that anti-semitism grew in constrained where Corbyn and his associates were.
Simply abandoning the Labour Party to them would mean that anti-semitism would become “naturalised” there.
Yes, that sounds about right. Corbyn's sympathy for the Palestinian cause made him blind to the antisemitic views of some of those he supported, which was foolhardy and potentially dangerous. But calling him evil is setting rather a low bar for the definition of the word.
Do we think the "Palestinian cause" is in any teensy-weensy way anti-semitic.
Is that an ironic question?! The answer is No. The Palestinians have an historic, justified grievance against the state of Israel (and the powers that enabled Israel’s creation and ‘overlooked’ the excesses that followed)
Has that grievance often shaded into outright Jew-hatred? Yes, of course. And it is this line that Corbyn has crossed, many times, wittingly or not
I like it when you fervently agree with me.
For any number of reasons the Palestinians are anti-semitic (prize to the first person to point out that they are all semites).
And Jezza enthusiastically supports the Palestinian cause.
Comes back to @JosiasJessop's question as to whether anti-semitism is wrong or evil. Or indeed right.
But the "Palestinian cause" (not every Palestinian I imagine) is anti-semitic.
Are we saying that anti-semitism is actually a worthy sentiment, eh, @Theuniondivvie.
Jesus Christ, what a complete and unredeemable prat you are!
Don't bring him into it ffs. But answer the question - is the Palestinian cause anti-semitic.
About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron.
Ah. So you are equating the Palestinians being anti-semitic with the anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor. So you are equating the actions of Israel with those of Nazi Germany.
Fantastic you have answered the question of whether anti-semitism is wrong or evil. In your mind it is neither; it is wholly understandable.
As someone who is Jewish enough to be on The List(s)…
- Not all Palestinians are anti-Semitic. Most don’t endorse the “drive them into the sea/kill them” thing. - Anti-semitism is very common in the Muslim and Arab worlds. - This is partly because the rulers of the countries in question use Israel as an excuse for all kinds of shit. It is preached by the state. - Netenyahu is a shit. A nasty, nasty shit. - Antisemite was the self given name for some racists in 19th cent Germany. - The “I can’t be an anti-Semite because I am Semitic” excuse tends to be used by extreme racists in the Middle East. The kind of people who tell you the Blood Libel is true. - Being pro Palestinian need have nothing to do with being anti-Semitic. Indeed, there are quite a few moderate politicians (and their parties) in Israel, who would be considered to have a pro-Palestinian outlook (self determination, 67 borders, aid and assistance etc etc)
While Topping is desperately catechising us all, that seems a fair response to me.
I'd add this. “Israel’s security is based partly on a relationship with the United States built on shared values — freedom, equality, democracy — that can only be sustained by a commitment to the rule of law, including an independent judiciary capable of upholding it.” https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1632733585533726724
Er. All I did was point out that Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-semite.
I would have thought that was one of the least controversial statements it's possible to make.
I am just astonished that a sensible and intelligent poster is actually saying that he believes that a two state solution is racist.
A two state solution is not racist.
Hamas proclaim a one-state solution, with Israel to be exterminated. Is that racist?
Yes. But Hamas is not representing the point of view which most of us hold.
"Most of us" on PB? Perhaps not. Plenty of Palestinians, yes. I mean they are the government of Gaza, after all.
Then by your logic Israel as a state is racist because the current Government is and so the Jewish cause is racist.
Yes Toppings logic totally flawed.
LOL we have a Jeremy Corbyn supporter to set us right. A supporter of that well-known anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn.
Welcome the analysis.
Good way to lose an argument.
"Life long anti racists being called racists by racists"
I think Alexei is spot on
“It's absurd to see people who have spent a lifetime standing against racism, being accused of racism, by racists.” ― Alexei Sayle.
Except that's bollocks if the people standing up have had a blindspot. And its plenty of non racists who make the accusations. Do they think only klansmen have made accusations or something?
These activists appear to think if they label themselves anti racists than makes it impossible to be racist. It ain't. At best some if these terrific anti racists seem very bad at spotting crushingly unsubtle racist tropes.
There is (antisemitic) racism on the pro-Palestine Left. It's my 'side' but I know this is true. It's also true that on the pro-Israel Right there is plenty of (white supremacy) racism. The racism on the Left is driven by being pro-Palestine, whereas on the Right their being pro-Israel is driven by their racism. It's all bad news obviously.
There are shit heads everywhere.
There are black African admirers of Adolf fucking Hitler.
I’ve met one. Mind you, the other strange one was the racist blind guy.
It’s been AGES since we had a good old PB Israel-Palestine ding dong
I used to rather loathe them, as being pointlessly divisive and prone to induce meltdowns, but in comparison to the Trans-TERF wars, the debate seems positively refreshing and meaningful
That’s a measure of how bad the Trans-TERF wars are
‘And now we turn to Hamas’s attitude to trans people..’
No idea what it is but no doubt someone will dig something up.
Fundamentalist Muslims are often surprisingly pro-trans. On the grounds that ‘I’d rather my son is a girl, than be gay’. The Quran is quite silent on drag shows
See Iran for proof. I have heard (seen no numbers) that a fair number of parents who took their kids to the Tavistock were Muslim
Yes, ISTR there was a period in the 90s/00s that Iran basically led the world in sex change operations. I'm not sure to what extent this was voluntary.
When the alternative is being hung from a crane, how voluntary do you think such a choice is?
Meanwhile girls schools in Iran have been facing chemical attacks for the last 3 months, with barely a peep of protest from the rest of the world.
I am just astonished that a sensible and intelligent poster is actually saying that he believes that a two state solution is racist.
A two state solution is not racist.
Hamas proclaim a one-state solution, with Israel to be exterminated. Is that racist?
Yes. But Hamas is not representing the point of view which most of us hold.
"Most of us" on PB? Perhaps not. Plenty of Palestinians, yes. I mean they are the government of Gaza, after all.
Then by your logic Israel as a state is racist because the current Government is and so the Jewish cause is racist.
Yes Toppings logic totally flawed.
LOL we have a Jeremy Corbyn supporter to set us right. A supporter of that well-known anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn.
Welcome the analysis.
Good way to lose an argument.
"Life long anti racists being called racists by racists"
I think Alexei is spot on
“It's absurd to see people who have spent a lifetime standing against racism, being accused of racism, by racists.” ― Alexei Sayle.
Except that's bollocks if the people standing up have had a blindspot. And its plenty of non racists who make the accusations. Do they think only klansmen have made accusations or something?
These activists appear to think if they label themselves anti racists than makes it impossible to be racist. It ain't. At best some if these terrific anti racists seem very bad at spotting crushingly unsubtle racist tropes.
There is (antisemitic) racism on the pro-Palestine Left. It's my 'side' but I know this is true. It's also true that on the pro-Israel Right there is plenty of (white supremacy) racism. The racism on the Left is driven by being pro-Palestine, whereas on the Right their being pro-Israel is driven by their racism. It's all bad news obviously.
When I went to Palestine there were pictures of Saddam Hussein and some towels including Israel within Palestine on one side. However on the Israeli side we also met with Palestinian families who had Jewish settlements encroaching right next to their farms
People get pushed off land during conflict, it is a shame and a good reason to want the conflict to end but it does not amount to genocide though.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
Yes, there's a linguistic point here which keeps causing political misunderstandings. Genocide traditionally means trying to kill everyone in a targeted group - Nazis vs Jews and Hutus vs Tutsis may be the obvious examples. Trying to kill vast numbers in a targeted group (e.g. Nazis vs Russians) is horrible but not quite genocide. Ethnic cleansing (clearly visible in the Balkans, and arguably in the establishment of Israel) is as you say nasty but not genocide. (Trying to assert one culture over another is also not genocide at all, though still a bad thing.)
In short, it should be possible to condemn something as vile without equating with genocide. If X tries to suppress Y's culture, that's bad, but it does a disservice to genuine victims of genocide to imply that it's the same thing.
While it's fair to make a distinction between exterminatory policies and those which fall some way short of that, that distinction does not apply to genocide according to the treaty definition.
I'd say the invasion of Ukraine, how it is described by the Russian state, and many of the details of actions taken against civilians, can quite possibly support a definition of genocide.
... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. — Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2...
That's a wider definition of genocide than I'd thought and would appear to cover a wide range of wartime actions. The WWII bombings of Coventry and Dresden, for example.
The intent of Coventry wasn’t to eliminate the English. The intent of Dresden wasn’t to eliminate Germans.
I am just astonished that a sensible and intelligent poster is actually saying that he believes that a two state solution is racist.
A two state solution is not racist.
Hamas proclaim a one-state solution, with Israel to be exterminated. Is that racist?
Yes. But Hamas is not representing the point of view which most of us hold.
"Most of us" on PB? Perhaps not. Plenty of Palestinians, yes. I mean they are the government of Gaza, after all.
Then by your logic Israel as a state is racist because the current Government is and so the Jewish cause is racist.
Yes Toppings logic totally flawed.
LOL we have a Jeremy Corbyn supporter to set us right. A supporter of that well-known anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn.
Welcome the analysis.
Good way to lose an argument.
"Life long anti racists being called racists by racists"
I think Alexei is spot on
“It's absurd to see people who have spent a lifetime standing against racism, being accused of racism, by racists.” ― Alexei Sayle.
Except that's bollocks if the people standing up have had a blindspot. And its plenty of non racists who make the accusations. Do they think only klansmen have made accusations or something?
These activists appear to think if they label themselves anti racists than makes it impossible to be racist. It ain't. At best some if these terrific anti racists seem very bad at spotting crushingly unsubtle racist tropes.
There is (antisemitic) racism on the pro-Palestine Left. It's my 'side' but I know this is true. It's also true that on the pro-Israel Right there is plenty of (white supremacy) racism. The racism on the Left is driven by being pro-Palestine, whereas on the Right their being pro-Israel is driven by their racism. It's all bad news obviously.
Don't know is still looking pretty strong. Which is a bit of a dark horse in the Yes party, isn't it?
Comments
After one of the subsequent wars (1967 perhaps?), Israel thought "fuck it" and decided to annexe more land than had been in any of the initial plans. Presumably they were following the general acquisition of territory in war rule. And so they expanded further and made a land grab.
And that is what we are all arguing about now.
Far more Germans were evicted during and after the war, that tends to be the consequence of war, and if the Arabs hadn't chosen to try to destroy Israel at birth then there'd be a two state solution now and there wouldn't have been the refugees from the war.
"Life long anti racists being called racists by racists"
By Middle Eastern Standards? Its a shining city on the hill when it comes to tolerance and equality.
It’s been AGES since we had a good old PB Israel-Palestine ding dong
I used to rather loathe them, as being pointlessly divisive and prone to induce meltdowns, but in comparison to the Trans-TERF wars, the debate seems positively refreshing and meaningful
That’s a measure of how bad the Trans-TERF wars are
As I predicted last week, Starmer is shredding his reputation with his needlessly gimmicky appointment.
I said, he is like an away football manager galvanising a home crowd from depression into frenzy, and that’s a huge political no no, and I have been proved right.
The Labour spinners on PB have retreated to wether she is any good for the role or not, wether Starmer can have who he wants or not - it was never about those two questions, she would probably have been perfect in the role, but then so many others perfect too. The issue was always solely about the political gift Starmer’s gimmicky “White Knight” appointment was handing the Tories. And that’s indefensible.
It definitely won’t happen now.
“It's absurd to see people who have spent a lifetime standing against racism, being accused of racism, by racists.” ― Alexei Sayle.
How Jews were sought to be exterminated by the Germans in the 1940s?
Or by the Arabs in the 1940s?
Or by the Arabs in the 1960s?
Or by the Arabs in the 1970s?
How the two state solution was rejected by the Arabs in the 1940s?
Or how the two state solution was rejected by Arafat in 2000?
Israel OTOH has never sought to exterminate Arabs and is literally seeking to defend itself against genocide still to this day.
I suppose pushing through ethnic cleansing to its conclusion could create a more stable future state, but there would be a lot of suffering between here and there.
I think the two-state solution is dead, though you might have something a bit like Bosnia that looks similar, though not sure why Israel would change course. What's to stop them from taking one step at a time towards an Israel that incorporates the occupied territories with all the Palestinians pushed out to neighbouring countries.
Trying to weaken Israel to force them to compromise also runs the risk of making them vulnerable to the other side deciding they aren't interested in compromise any more.
Things are probably only going to get worse as the oil money dries up for the other Middle East states.
You claim that the fact that actions of the state of Israel somehow justifies your accusation that Palestinians are guilty of anti-semitism. And that support for Palestinians is therefore anti-semitic?
Are you really so bone-stupid as to be unable to understand the point I'm making? That you might just as well accuse Auschwitz survivors of being anti-German?
And on that basis you accuse me of equating the state of Israel with Auschwitz. How can anyone be so unbelievably crass?
You are almost literally unbelievable.
eg if all the Protestants in eire had moved north in the 1920s, and all the catholics in ulster had moved south, Northern Ireland would probably not be a problem today. Certainly plausible
Compare with Greece and turkey, which after their mutual ethnic cleansing have maintained an uneasy peace, of sorts, after centuries of bloody conflict
Your denial of this is disturbing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXKUNc9yI2A
If it weren't for Egypt and Jordan trying to wipe out the Jews from the map then the so-called "occupied territories" would be a part of Egypt and Jordan still until this day, not Palestine.
A two-state solution would be ideal, if that can't be resolved then there should be a three state solution instead: Israel, Egypt and Jordan as the three states.
Genocide is the Jews getting wiped out in Germany and the Arab nations.
Arabs have never been wiped out in either Israel, or the land that was occupied from Egypt and Jordan.
"About as anti-semitic as the "teensy-weensy" anti-German feeling of an Auschwitz survivor is anti-German, you bigoted moron."
If you equate the two you need to look at the underlying reasons. Palestinian anti-semitism = Israel's actions; Auschwitz survivors' anti-German feeling = Nazi Germany's actions.
That is you equating the two.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine
Ethnic cleansing would certainly not have been regarded as genocide in 1948, but it would be treated as such in 2023.
I have no issue with calling the expulsion of Arabs ethnic cleansing. Nor with noting that even worse would have befallen the Jews, had the fortunes of war gone against them (exactly as happened in Eastern Europe, at the time).
The discussion was around Jezza's anti-semitism. He supports the Palestinian cause and I pointed out that the Palestinian cause is anti-semitic.
Some said "no it's not".
@Chris said yes it is and can you blame them.
“The proposed plan is considered to have been pro-Zionist by its detractors, with 62% of the land allocated to the Jewish state despite the Palestinian Arab population numbering twice the Jewish population.[6]”
"The proposed plan is considered to have been pro-Zionist by its detractors, with 62% of the land allocated to the Jewish state despite the Palestinian Arab population numbering twice the Jewish population."
No idea what it is but no doubt someone will dig something up.
Yes some have lost their land, many Germans lost their land in the war too. Conflicts tend to see people lose land, but Israel has never sought to exterminate or expel Arabs in the same way Jews have been exterminated and expelled elsewhere.
As I said, Israel is far from perfect, but its a shining city on the hill relative to others.
As I said, the UN, eh - what can you do with them. As has been pointed out also, however, there was no "Palestinian State" prior to this plan, there were plenty of Palestinians and Jews living in the region. "Palestine" was of course the property of us plucky Brits.
Perhaps we should have hung on to it, like we did the Falklands. And Calais.
See Iran for proof. I have heard (seen no numbers) that a fair number of parents who took their kids to the Tavistock were Muslim
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
Wonder if her current vendetta against Hancock has been influenced by him?
In short, it should be possible to condemn something as vile without equating with genocide. If X tries to suppress Y's culture, that's bad, but it does a disservice to genuine victims of genocide to imply that it's the same thing.
So we're talking on a macro viewpoint of the Jewish state being given 0.3% of the land in the Middle East, land to which Jews formed a majority of the population already. While Arab states had 99.7% of the land but started a genocidal war to make it 100%.
Ash Regan 10%
Humza Yousaf 27%
Kate Forbes 22%
Don't Know 28%
Prefer not to say 11%
Gut instinct says that the prefer not to says lean Regan or Forbes, and the age profile suggests that this is the case. I had a quick mess around with the numbers, allocating votes on the basis of age. This got me:
Ash Regan 16%
Humza Yousaf 48%
Kate Forbes 36%
For fun, I once again reallocated Regan's votes on the basis of age. This ended up with
Humza Yousaf 56%
Kate Forbes 43%
Allocating votes in this way, however, resulted in a pretty even split in Regan's vote (47-53 in favour of Yousaf), which seems unlikely to me. However, assuming DKs and Would Note Votes vote according to their age (more likely in the former rather than latter case) Kate Forbes would need over 80% of Regan supporters to back her. In the absence of that, she needs to begin to appeal more to younger voters, because that is where she's getting hammered (Yousaf is ahead, by quite a bit, with every age margin save 55-64 and 64+).
Still all to play for, though.
Do you accept that distinction exists?
I think that's a little too strict. For instance, the Germans tried to kill Jews (and Romanies, and disabled...) in territories they conquered, but did not send out hit squads against those groups in other countries.
There are two examples that I think are controversial and are interesting to consider wrt whether they were genocides:
Turkey / Armenia in 1915/6
The Holodomor
IMV both of these were genocides, even if the intention was not trying to kill *everyone* in those groups.
As another example, is what is Russia doing in Ukraine a genocide? Again, I'd argue it is, as Russia is trying to kill out an entre nationality; they are denying the right of Ukrainians to exist.
These activists appear to think if they label themselves anti racists than makes it impossible to be racist. It ain't. At best some if these terrific anti racists seem very bad at spotting crushingly unsubtle racist tropes.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind, etc, etc.
There are Semitic *languages*, which do include Arabic and Hebrew - as well as Maltese and Amharic, largely spoken by people who I'd guess you wouldn't consider to be 'Semitic'. And of course there are people in the Middle East and North Africa who speak languages which are not Semitic.
In any case, antisemitism has a broadly accepted meaning specific to Jewish people; this sort of etymological debate is just disingenuous.
Send Foreign offices johnnies over to Calais. Have a word with the refugee types.
Grant them all citizenship - of the Pale of Calais.
They just need to agitate to join the U.K. next… then they’re in!
It’s as strong a tell as “Some of my best friends….”
The description “anti-Semitic” was invented by some nut job racists in 19th cent Germany. Surprisingly, the alleged “racial basis” for their shit turns out to be bollocks. Hmmm - racists talking bollocks. Whatever next?
Certain sociologists and 'anti-racism' campaigners define racism as 'prejudice plus power'. As far as I can understand it the idea is that it's only racism when it's 'punching down'; the racist has to be in a position of power for it to count.
Israel is the more powerful in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, so attitudes that most of us would probably consider to be racism are instead discounted under the above definition. They are either counted as mere 'prejudice' or not counted at all.
I think this obsession with power differentials plays a significant role in the particular kind of racism that tends only to happen on the left of the political spectrum.
The positive legacy of the Corbyn era is that many more of us are now aware of the fundamental flaws in this worldview, even if Corbyn himself is not and probably never will be.
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/majority-of-britons-unfamiliar-with-sunaks-promises-and-starmers-missions/
Suggestions Israel has engaged in ethnic cleansing are as ridiculous as suggesting Ukraine was doing that in the Donbas.
Panorama now proved to be full of falsehoods and Luciana Berger deliberately conflating far right perps with Labour Party members.
Ruth Smeeth says she is OK with discrimination against Jews (JVL) Because they are only represent a small minority. Cant really get any more AS than that can it!!
EHRC identified 2 instances of AS both were expelled but are taking legal action to defend themselves against the AS tag.
NB This references ChatGPT, LGBTQ+ and Hamas - especially for @Leon.
Hamas is a Palestinian Islamic political organization that controls the Gaza Strip. There is limited information available about Hamas's specific attitude towards transgender people, as the organization has not made any official statements or policies regarding the matter.
However, Hamas's ideology is based on Islamic teachings and principles, which generally hold traditional views on gender and sexuality. Islamic teachings emphasize the importance of maintaining gender norms and roles, and many Islamic scholars consider transgenderism to be a violation of these norms.
As such, it is possible that Hamas may hold negative views towards transgender people, considering them to be deviating from traditional gender roles and possibly immoral. However, it is important to note that these are speculative assumptions and there is no concrete evidence to support them.
It is also worth noting that the situation for LGBTQ+ individuals, including transgender people, in the Gaza Strip is generally challenging. Homosexuality is illegal and punishable by law, and LGBTQ+ individuals often face discrimination, harassment, and violence. Therefore, it is likely that transgender individuals in the Gaza Strip face similar challenges, regardless of Hamas's specific attitudes towards them.
While suppression of a culture is a crime, it's not the same as actually killing people. If it were, one could plausibly argue that the English were guilty of genocide again the Welsh for attempting to suppress the Welsh language.
I'd add this.
“Israel’s security is based partly on a relationship with the United States built on shared values — freedom, equality, democracy — that can only be sustained by a commitment to the rule of law, including an independent judiciary capable of upholding it.”
https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1632733585533726724
"One election walkover, ha ha ha... Two election walkovers, ha ha ha..."
If you look at Ukraine and the Donetsk Peoples Republic alone you'd say Ukraine was more powerful, but the DKR are aligned to Russia also seeking to exterminate Ukraine.
Hamas are seeking the destruction of Israel but they aren't doing so in a vacuum.
Post WWII when the Europeans were withdrawing from the Middle East it was to be partitioned so 99.8% would go to Arab States and 0.2% to a Jewish state in land that was already majority Jewish. The Arabs seeking 100% of land instead, even the land that was already majority Jewish, started this conflict by not accepting that and it has never ended.
Just because the Israelis have been successful at defending themselves doesn't make them the larger party.
I'd say the invasion of Ukraine, how it is described by the Russian state, and many of the details of actions taken against civilians, can quite possibly support a definition of genocide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention
...Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as
... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
— Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2...
Which means Forbes would become SNP leader and FM despite being neither the preference of most SNP MSPs or the first preference of most SNP members. Which could leave the SNP with their own Liz Truss leading them and Scotland!
If the concern was for Palestine, where was that concern when the land was annexed by Jordan and Egypt?
Jordan and Egypt quite literally wiped Palestine off the map, not Israel. But who gets the hatred?
Election deniers take aim at group that helps states maintain voter rolls
Defenders say attacks on the system are fed by misinformation and will only make it easier to commit voter fraud
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/06/election-deniers-voter-rolls/
I would have thought that was one of the least controversial statements it's possible to make.
There are black African admirers of Adolf fucking Hitler.
I’ve met one. Mind you, the other strange one was the racist blind guy.
When the alternative is being hung from a crane, how voluntary do you think such a choice is?
Meanwhile girls schools in Iran have been facing chemical attacks for the last 3 months, with barely a peep of protest from the rest of the world.
So no.