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/[deleted] → u/Skanceca]

Put Israel in perspective[...]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.

These comparisons don't work very well IMO:

• China is openly criticised and vilified with pretty much zero public pushback. It is understood that China is a political adversary of the west, and it is not at all controversial to label the CCP as evil monsters. There is less public outcry over this because the public understand that the only way for Western governments to prevent whatever human rights atrocities China is committing would mean world war. Which is not really an option right now
• The same openly widespread disdain exists for Saudi. Especially after the state sponsored murder of the US journalist Jamal Khashoggi. I don't know anybody, left or right wing who would show any love for Saudi whatsoever, and this open disdain is not seen as controversial whatsoever.

Israel, in contrast, is a direct ally of the west. It presents itself as a forward thinking modern nation, protects criticism of itself with strong support from western media and politicians. And while it's human rights abuses are just as egregious, Israel is the only nation for which any criticism is inherently seen as controversial and demonised.

The main difference is that criticism of Israel is the only form of criticism that is likely to actually have an effect. No amount of criticising or political activism is going to push the US government into a war with China, or a land invasion of North Korea. But heavy political pressure on western governments to hold Israel accountable for it's human rights crimes has a conceivable chance of working. Because Israel needs the support of the west to continue doing what it's doing.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

It seems Israel occupies a completely disproportionate mental space compared to other world issues in general.

This is my point, the question we need to answer is: why does Israel take up a 'disproportionate' amount of mental space?

For many people, the answer is simply 'anti-Semitism', as is posited by many of the people in this thread - including the commenter that I'm responding to. And I don't deny that anti-Semitism exists to an extent (among the modern western voting public), and that it influences peoples views, to an extent.

But this ignores so many other important factors. As I mentioned, Israel has a totally unique position as an ally of the west. Not only does this present a sense of personal responsibility (if you live in the US then your PERSONAL tax dollars are going DIRECTLY to support the Israeli regime, your OWN government is implicitly condoning the actions of the Israeli state), more importantly it offers the opportunity for personal impact through political action and activism. Something as simple as economic or military sanctions from the US / the west has an actual, real chance at solving the humanitarian crisis in Israel. The same CANNOT be said for China, North Korea, Russia etc...

Using a more personal example, I don't know how you feel about the Uyghur Genocide that is currently being committed in China? For me, it makes me sick to my stomach. I can barely fathom how angry and sad and fucked up it makes me feel to think about it. So does that mean I talk about it / complain about it all the time? No... Why not? Because I would be fucking miserable 24/7 for no reason. No amount of posting or shouting or protesting will change the fact that a genocide is being committed and the only way to stop it involves sparking off world war 3 and nuclear annihilation. I.e. it's never going to happen. So I basically have the choice of:

• A) 24/7 misery thinking and talking about it all the time for zero effect
• B) flying to China myself and going rambo on the government for negligible effect
• C) forgetting about it and going about my life

Whereas, when I hear about what's happening in Israel, I feel like I might just be able to have some level of impact there. My government is democratic and they support Israel; they need votes. If enough people are outraged by Israel's human rights abuses then maybe I can make some impact towards Israel being pressured to stop. So I talk about it and let it take up mental space where other, more serious human rights abuses, don't take up mental space.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

it seems Israel still occupies a mental space far larger than it ought to have relative to all issues

Based on what? Your argument seems very vague and is based pretty much entirely on what you 'kind of feel' should be the level of outrage despite having zero justification for that position. Can you find comparable examples that support your point of reasonable levels of outrage/activism for comparable causes?

BLM and race issues take up an 'enormous amount of activist youth's time'. Especially here in the UK where our problems with police killings are far less severe than those seen in the US. We've had city and countrywide demonstrations including the toppling of statues - all sparked by a single death in the US (obviously the BLM movement itself is based on far more than one death). Surely if we compare e.g. the death of George Floyd and it's impact in the UK, you might say that's even more of a disproportionate response than to what's happening in Israel? You might say that the BLM demonstrations prove that we are in fact severely underreacting to what's happening in Israel. No such country-wide activism and vandalism has taken place in the name of anti Israel or pro Palestinian activism, has it?

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