Dani Ishai Behan
If you think Israel is a “reason” to be antisemitic, you are the reason I am willing to die for that country.
YOU are the reason Zionism exists in the first place.
If you can’t understand why Israel is important to us, stop calling yourself an opponent of antisemitism.
And if you do not care about Jews, stop calling yourself an anti-racist.
If you can’t be honest with us, at least be honest with yourselves.
But please don’t ask me to consider discarding my connection, emotional, pragmatic, and otherwise, to the idea of Jewish self-determination when other “peoplehoods” are not requested to do the same.
For we, too, are indigenous to a land”
Fred Maroun
How the Israel-Arab moral equivalency works:
The most conservative Israeli politician wants peace with the Arab world and is willing to help any Arab entity that needs it.
The most liberal Arab politician won’t even utter the words peace and Israel in the same sentence and wouldn’t give the time of day to an Israeli.
Conclusion of most world observers: Both sides need to try harder to work towards peace.
The truth is, one side wants peace and the other doesn’t.
The exercise of trying to determine who is more antisemitic, Democrats or Republicans, is totally useless, for two reasons: Right and left typically have different forms of antisemitism, so they’re hard to compare. Second, saying that one is worse than the other inevitability looks like excusing the other. Everyone just ends up claiming that their party is perfect and the other is pure evil, which is of course false.
When we talk about antisemitism, we should check our partisanship at the door. No amount of antisemitism is okay, and every party must be continuously challenged to denounce and uproot antisemitism in its ranks, regardless of what other parties are doing.
“If the narrative of progressive Democrats is to disavow antisemitism while opposing Zionism, the far-right wing of the Republican Party offers strong support for Israel while accommodating a great deal of hostility toward actual Jews.”
Neither side should feel proud of themselves.