It’s very difficult to characterize this as an isolated incident of anti-semitism by the BBC considering it’s far from their first incident, and considering further that the BBC has spend 20 years and well over £300,000 keeping the 20,000 word Balen Report into their perceived anti-Israel bias buried.
How can we be expected to believe that there is no anti-semitism at play when the BBC claim that they refuse to call Hamas a terrorist organization because ‘Terrorism is a loaded word, which people use about an outfit they disapprove of morally. It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn […] We don’t take sides. We don’t use loaded words like “evil” or “cowardly”. We don’t talk about “terrorists”.’ despite the fact they actually do that constantly, and have for decades?
Rajib Karim: The terrorist inside British Airways
Brussels: Epicentre of the terrorist threat in Europe?
Built at a time when IRA terrorist attacks were a constant threat, High Point was built to be bomb-proof
Securing and maintaining reliable funding is the key to moving from fringe radical group to recognised terrorist organisation
Eighteen years after the Brighton bombing, former IRA terrorist, Patrick Magee, has continued to defend his role in the blast
[Lisa] Smith was, however, found not guilty of financing terrorism by sending money to a man for the benefit the terrorist group.
Sudesh Amman: From troubled schoolboy to terrorist
Between 1969 and 2001 over 3,526 people were killed in terrorist violence in the UK. ↑ this one is from BBC Bitesize, educational material the BBC writes for children. I guess editorializing to children doesn’t count as taking sides.
The BBC clearly has no problem naming and shaming terrorism when Jews aren’t the target. This assertion of “Jewish wealth” isn’t only an obvious Elders of Zion appeal, it’s the latest in a long, long line of Isolated Incidents of the BBC suddenly altering its established reporting standards for only the situations where they address the one country in the world full of Jewish people.
I was reading about new antisemitism the other day and I thought it was interesting.
Most canny antisemites have turned to the old (and formerly totally fine) canard “criticizing Israel is not antisemitic” to shield their actual antisemitic criticism. Not wanting to call Hamas a terrorist organization is a perfect example. They’re only terrorizing Israel, which isn’t inherently antisemitic! /s
But yeah it’s really everywhere now. Sometimes it’s mask off as in this incident. But frequently it’s mask on.
Are you claiming anyone criticising Israel is antisemitic? Despite the fact that many people doing that are jews?
No, they’re not. Antisemites hiding behind “we’re just criticizing Israel” does not mean everyone criticizing Israel is an antisemite.
I also doubt that a statement made by a jew can’t be antisemitic just because it was made by a jew. That’s like saying a statement can’t be misogynistic because it was made by a woman.
And this bullshit argument is exactly why this debate is so absurd.
Every critic of Israel’s policies will be called antisemitic. And you know why? Because it’s an awesome shield, if you don’t want to engage with an argument. And people like you believe it immediately and call everyone an antisemite. That’s not helpful at all.
Israel is measured by double standards. Nothing they do will ever cause the international outrage any other country’s actions would cause.
If we (that is, the West) are truly Israel’s friends, we have to call them out on their errors. That’s what friends are for.
How in the world did this person call anyone an antisemite? Are you responding to the right post?
Israel has 45.9% of all UNHRC condemnations ever passed, passed at it. Do you believe Israel is committing 45.9% of all human rights atrocities on Earth right now?
You are right Israel is measured by double standards, but it’s not that its actions produce less outrage than other countries’ – they produce far more. This is new antisemitism.
It’s not actually necessary to rake Israel over the coals more than other countries. Doing so is a double standard. Sierra Leone has roughly the population of Israel; If you aren’t holding it to task for its human rights abuses as much as you are Israel, you are engaged in that double standard.
The UN are not really a fair comparison, since it’s one country one vote. And there are a lot of not exactly democratic countries.
Sierra Leone is also a bit of a different case, simply because it’s not a liberal democracy as Israel. Of course I’ll have higher expectations.
Higher expectations is reasonable! Would you say two times higher? Ten times higher? A hundred times higher?
As a baseline, how much have you posted about Sierra Leone and the human rights abuses there in the last year?
So you want whataboutism?
Africa is simply assumed to be constantly abusing human rights. That’s the baseline the news is setting. Why haven’t I written anything about Sierra Leone? Because it’s not in the public discussion. Simple as that.
You’re setting unreasonable expectations here. I’m not a news outlet. I’m under no obligation to be “balanced” in my reporting. And if you would be honest to yourself for 5s, you’d notice, that I’m posting here as a reaction, I did not start this discussion.
It’s “whataboutism” in the sense we’re interrogating focus. Why do you think white ethnonationalists spend so much time asserting “white lives matter?” Because there’s only so much air in the room, and they know giving air to one cause deprives another.
I think it’s worth wondering why people spend so much time discussing Israel/Palestine and so little discussing other issues that are at least as large from a “people impacted” perspective. Obviously there’s also an African infantilization (that is to say, racist) double standard here — we simply don’t expect Africa to have human rights. But I would say there is certainly also an Israel double standard, and it is antisemitic in the same way saying “well of course Sierra Leone is a hellhole, there’s no news there” is racist.
You are not a news outlet. But you choose what you’re spending your time and effort on. And it is this. I think many people don’t interrogate why they get so involved and what their opinions actually mean in terms of what their focus accomplished and what it broadcasts.
I apologize for choosing you as the vehicle for this message; I don’t mean to attack you personally. There are a ton of people doing this and your message was as good as any other to demonstrate my point.
The issue is: where’s the line? What can we say about israel that won’t be see as antisemite?
Edit: nvm, i read the article, the answer is very obvious.
Your second point is entirely correct; see also self-hating gays in the Log Cabin Republicans.
I think the shield for your first point is pretty narrow these days. About a decade ago that point held a lot more salience, but as my “new antisemitism” link discusses, the position has been adopted so vigorously by antisemites that I think it is indeed very close to antisemitic unless deployed extremely carefully.
Yes, criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic. But since this canard is so often invoked by idle and ignorant spectators, with no real understanding of Israeli or Palestinian politics, inserting themselves into a fraught and unhappy situation, usually specifically to criticize or delegitimize only Israel… it’s tough to see how that isn’t a special standard applied only to Israel. Or, worse, it’s invoked by real antisemites hoping to get bystanders on-side with actual antisemitism by cloaking it as criticism of Israel.
As a concrete example of this new antisemitism – in 2017, Hamas altered its charter, which was wildly and outright antisemitic, to specifically state that it doesn’t actually want to kill all Jews as previously stated, but only the occupiers of Palestine. Given their actions, the huge amount of specifically anti-Jewish sentiment in Gaza, and even the incredibly virulent language in their old charter, do you think they actually changed their minds about Jews? Or are they simply cloaking their antisemitism in a package that more people might agree with these days? A new kind of antisemitism?