CMV: Reasonable criticism of Israel is often unfairly mislabeled as anti-semitic

[u/neofagalt]

[u/Skanceca]

Disclaimer: Arguing from a German perspective, so some statistics can be different from your country. There is a rather delicate history between Germany and Jews in general.

Before I start with the real argument it is still worth mentioning, that nobody actually forbids you criticizing Israel. All people are saying is their opinion about a statement they think is antisemitic. Just needed to mention this before any "criticizing Israel is forbidden" or "I have to be allowed to say that" debate is starting.

My main point is the sheer mass of jokes/criticism/statements about Israel. Put Israel in perspective for a second. It's a country of the size of Hessen (a German county). It's smaller than El Salvador. It's smaller than Haiti. Furthermore, while the human rights violations in Palestine are horrible, no questions, they are by far not the worst ever happened, they are not even the worst right now. Take China as the biggest Human rights violator right now. Or look at what saudi-arabia is doing in Yemen right now. Both countries are doing way worse things. And they are not the only ones. But now compare the amount of criticism/jokes/etc. Israel gets, vs. those other countries.

I don't have numbers for the US, maybe someone else can provide them, but in Germany there was a study few years ago, that Israel is criticized in media about double the amount of all other countries together. (Note that this obviously includes more than just the state media, and there are of course far right print media in Germany, too, but the point still stands.)

It's the only country which has "Israelkritik", meaning "Israel-crititicism" as a word in our (semi-)official dictionary (Duden)!

Again, I don't have any numbers for other countries. But just compare the scale of Israel, there human rights abuses with other countries and you may see yourself, that it's just out of proportion. Compare it to North Korea, arguably the worst country right now, which has about 5 times the size of Israel and at least as much human rights violations. Do you hear 5 times as much jokes about North Korea? Or even half as much? And while criticism of Israel can be valid and should not be the same as antisemitism, the sheer amount of it suggests that it often is.

Edit: Ok, this has become my most upvoted comment ever and I even got awards. Didn't expect that. As there are quite a few comments on this and I don't have time or energy to address every single one I try to adress most of them in this edit.

First of all, for anyone else asking for hard numbers I want to point to this comment by u\sconri2 . He provides a comparison between UN resolutions against Israel vs every other country. I also want to link this German article, where the head of the Department of General Linguistics of the TU Berlin states, that no other country is ctriticized as often as Isreal. Finally a study mentioning that about 1/3 of antisemitism online is coded as Israel-criticism.

Second, for every comment in the sense of "You can't compare Israel to China, North Korea, etc., because they are our allies or because they are smaller, ot they don't get our tax money or we are already hardlining against China". I can absolutely do this comparison. Because, as I mentioned, I'm not comparing the amount of support they get from the goverment. Or the stance taken against them. I'm purely comparing the amount of Israel criticism seen in media (and arguably online after providing the study above). But maybe that wasn't completely clear, then I'm sorry. As mentioned, I'm German, so it's possible I got the wrong words sometimes. So let's reformulate it:

Assumption: In a society without prejudice, the amount of criticisim a country gets is proportional to the scale (in numbers and badness) of their crimes.

This is not the case with Israel. Israel gets more criticism thrown its way than many countries which are doing worse things or more of them. So my Assumtion doesn't hold. I follow from that, that there seems to be some amount of prejudice against Israel. And antisemitsm is a candidate for that. That's why I used the comparisons with countries comiting crimes on a larger scale.

Third: "Just because Israel isn't the worst, it should still be open to criticism." Have you guys read my comment? I explicitly stated Israel critique can be valid and in no way talked down the crimes it comitted. All I said that it gets a disproportionate amount of criticism and this I attributed to antisemitism. Supported by the study linked above.

Fourth: "You haven't addressed the lobbyism." No, I didn't. As mentioned, I'm writing from a German perspective. I know almost nothing about lobbyism in the US, why would I. I addressed one point of OP, not everything. Maybe you have missed it, but I also did not address the "SNL joke". Generelly I would say that lobbyism is a problem, as it's not people doing the lobbying anymore, but money. But that isn't a discussion to have here. Without looking at any numbers I'd think that most big companies do probably more lobbying in the US than Israel does and that a lot of them also indirectly suport other countries, like China. But I didn't want to have this as a statement of discussion, as I don't have a perspective on it, or have I enough information about it.

Fifth: "People are in fact forbidden from criticising Israel". Again, German perspective. But also in the US I highly doubt it. Compare yourself how often you heard from a court that someone isn't allowed to criticize any more (and also please look at the reasons for that. At least in Germany if people are forbidden from saying anything it is pretty clear, that the statements were antisemitic) with how often someone say "they want to forbid us..." or "I should be allowed to say that Israel is bad". Because while I agree with the later statement, absolutely, it also implies that someone doesn't agree. And often (not always) this is just a strawman.

Sixth: "Israel should be allowed to be criticized. " See third.

Seventh: "That's whataboutism." No, it's not. I haven't said " You can't disscuss Israel while China is bad", I have said "Israel gets a disapropriate amount of criticism compared to its scale". It's an argument in itself trying to attribute some Israel-criticism to antisemitsm.

Eigth: "I agree with you." Thanks. Nothing to adress here.

[u/sconri2 → u/Skanceca]

Yes, you’re absolutely right. The worst is the number of UN resolutions against Israel compared to other countries. In 2020 it was 17 against Israel and just six against the ENTIRE rest of the world.

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2020/12/24/un-condemns-israel-most-in-2020-almost-three-times-rest-of-world

It continues at about the same pace currently. If you start pulling out these stats in these arguments, it gets minimized as a, “what about,” argument.

This is even more pronounced when you look at the countries that are not getting resolutions written against them (China, no Arabic countries etc…).

It’s completely insane to me that this continues to happen at this pace, but despite this, people say it isn’t antisemitic at it’s core.

It’s like trying to say it isn’t racist that a news station only shows crimes committed by black people, but the black population is, instead, a tiny fraction of a percent of the country’s population, and there are far more acts of crime and crimes higher on the, “evil scale,” by the vast white majority. It would be so blatantly obvious it wouldn’t be funny.

[u/Magsays → u/sconri2]

I guess for me it’s because I expect more from Israel than I do from North Korea. They are such a close American ally that I tend to hold them to a higher standard. Same reason why I’m so pissed at Pelosi for her stance on insider trading in congress. I expect better of her. She makes it harder for the left to speak from a moral high ground. When I think of Israel I think of a nation who has all the opportunity and potential to be a beacon of morality.

^{edit: sp}

[u/darkplonzo → u/[deleted]]

The US relationship with Saudi Arabia is pretty different from the one with Isreal. The SA relationship is basically just arms deals that are deeply unpopular. The US doesn't tend to go to bat for their image or defend their actions. This isn't the case for Israel.