this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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Israel claims that the 27 hospitals and 12 other health facilities they've bombed hid Hamas. Rape, murder, torture, hiding behind civilians, illegally abusing things like medical immunity...every accusation is a confession. What a wretched country. And to be clear: I don't mean all Jews - just the ones perpetrating this ethnic cleansing and their allies whether Jewish or not. Couldn't care less about where they were born or their genetics, just what they're doing in full view.
Ehm, I guess you mean well, but Jewishness has nothing to do with their place of birth or their genetics. It's a religion.
There are ethnic and religious Jewish people, to my best understanding.
And what "ethnicity" is that supposed to be? "White" Jews are for the most part ethnically and largely also genetically indistingishable from central Europeans.
US Americans have a strange obsession with "race", and Zionists played right into that by establishing the false idea that Jewishness is a race or ethnicity.
In Europe this is a very uncommon view by the way, and most people consider Jewishness a purely religious description and the last people that tried to make it an ethnic description were literal Nazis.
There are plenty of Jewish people who consider "Jewish" as being both a religious and ethnic identifier. I used to think of Jewishness as purely a religious description until I actually met some Jews (I moved from a tiny village to a larger town that had a decently sized Jewish community, and one of my close friends was Jewish), who disagreed with my impression. For additional context, I live in the UK, so your blanket statement about Europe does not apply to the level that you state it.
Given that there are many Jews who recognise "Jewishness" as pertaining to both religion and to ethnicity, in the present day, it seems quite inappropriate to make this comparison. I realise that you're seeking to denounce Israel's ethnonationalism, but it's possible to criticise Zionism without having to deny the existence of Jewish ethnic groups. Hell, one of the things I found especially powerful about my local pro-Palestine demonstrations was seeing how much I learned about Judaism by working alongside secular Jews and religious Jews brought together by anti-Zionism.
Funnily enough, middle Eastern Jews have DNA almost identical to Palestinians, Ashkenazi have European DNA.
Indeed. And there are many other distict groups that are Jewish, such as those from Ethiopia and Marroco, that claim some historical relationship to Israel but are otherwise genetically and ethnically entirely different. The only real commonality is their religion and some closely related cultural practises.
It's ironic that nowadays, certain semitic people's semitism has been erased so that noticing their genocide is now called antisemitic.
Nothing is funnier than being both condescending as well as wrong.
So Ethiopian Jews don't exist? It clearly refers to a religion, just like Christian does.
The rest is Zionist propaganda.
Come on now. "Jewish" can of course refer to the religion of Judaism but "Jew" is definitely a term for an ethnicity, both in common usage and more formal realms.
Who is a Jew? "Jewish identity is also commonly defined through ethnicity. Opinion polls have suggested that the majority of modern Jews see being Jewish as predominantly a matter of ancestry and culture, rather than religion." "The term "Jew" lends itself to several definitions beyond simply denoting one who practices Judaism."
If you don't like Wikipedia "Jews are a distinct ethnicity due to a combination of shared cultural, historical, and ancestral ties. Below are some examples of key factors that make Jews an ethnicity..."
University of Michigan, "Religion or Ethnicity? : The Evolution of Jewish Identities". "Jewish identity has been defined as an ethnicity, a nation, a culture, and even a race."
Pew Research "Religion is not central to the lives of most U.S. Jews. Even Jews by religion are much less likely than Christian adults to consider religion to be very important in their lives (28% vs. 57%)."
I have had the same cringe reaction to your original message that have got @poVoq@slrpnk.net. There you speak about genetics, no ethnicity.
Eh, I find that not very convincing, especially when distinct religious groups like the Ethiopian Jews and other such groups exist that have very little other than religion in common with the dominant group that is commonly referred to as Jews.
Confusing Jewishness and Judaism with culture and ethnicity is IMHO a tactic that Zionists (and funnily enough also antisemites) use to push their agenda and it usually comes with discrimination of other Jews like for example those from Ethiopia.
And most Christians in Europe are also not very religious.
Why the fuck did you even bring up Jewishness into this?
Israel is not Jewish people.
Because a ton of bad faith actors are equating the two.
Fucking Jerry Seinfeld.
Do you think appealing to bad faith actors is a good rhetorical strategy?
Generally, no, but in this instance, yes. I don't know who's reading this that genuinely thinks they're the same. A brief disclaimer to not look like a bigot seems worth it.
Heading off predictable counterpoints is often a good rhetorical strategy, especially when those counterpoints are so ubiquitous.
That's exactly what I said, and I said it because it's necessary to remind people of that. Antisemitism is absolutely on the rise, so the distinction matters to me.
According to everything Israel says, they are.