Any discourse about the terror state of Israel is going to draw in strange characters, including express antisemites, and I’ve been noticing a sparse but present range of bigoted language and sentiment in response to Israel’s invasion of Gaza. I can’t tell if people are merely erroneously equating the state of Israel with Jews broadly (as Israel itself does), or this is a cynical hijacking of the anti-imperialist movement by right-wingers and other bad actors. Either way, it’s not too uncommon to hear people express inappropriate hatred of Jewish people in general when criticizing Israel specifically.
I want to be absolutely clear that I have not seen a single instance of such behavior on this site, but it does exist elsewhere, even if in small amounts. Obviously, the problem of imperialist genocide goes far beyond, and does not necessarily encompass, Jews or Judaism, and it’s clear that communists understand this far better than most.
With all that in mind, is there a way to educate these folks? When you see antisemitic remarks like I’ve described, what do you say?
I think it’s efficient to draw the line between the Jewish people and Israel, the zionist entity or whatever you want to call it.
I’ve written a few versions of “don’t mistake the Jewish people from the fascist Israeli state”. Didn’t get many responses on it, which means people went to look for trouble somewhere else, in my book.
But there isn’t really “educate” on the online land. It’s most about occupying and disputing the space, as our sanity allows.