being 100% what I know about Antisemitism would fit 3 fold onto a postage stamp and given what you have just pointed out now it only makes me more determined to double down and really try and stay clear of it. It’s such an emotive subject and in all honesty too much of a hot potato for me.
I have enough trouble reminding you lot what your ancestors did to us in Wales.
Samuels criticism is a bit unfair. Firstly, I don’t think Baddiel sets himself as a guru, and i don’t think other people see him as such.
Secondly, in the thread by Baddiel he is saying the same thing as Samuel does in his second tweet. Given Samuels appears to have written his a day later, I think that looks poor.
There was an interesting discussion between Baddiel and I think Rafael Behr recently where they disagreed a little on some of the positions Baddiel was taking in his book. Can’t remember the details though. His book appears to have generated lots of positive responses by people who have read it. I already bought it and am looking forward to having a read.
That sounds similar to what I’ve heard on the book. By all accounts he highlights hoe anti-Semitism is so ingrained that people that despite having the best intentions don’t actually realise that they are being offensive at times . Which is where my fears that I outline above have come from .
Will you provide some feedback once you’ve read the book?
Yeah, I can do. I certainly no expert on what is like most things a very complicated issue.
For me it simple. Separation of state and faith.
Whilst many counties both are intertwined. At it’s core I believe basically all faiths (Cristians, Jews or Muslims) have values based upon good.
Unfortunately religion is used as a tool, for individuals or government to unite people, use fear, and manipulate for their own gains.
People unable to make the distinction (be it Muslims and terrorist groups, Jews and Israel) tend to stray into racism. My personal perspective is the Israeli government is deplorable. Lacking the ethics of a civilised nation. They are not reflective of the Jewish faith. But they use it as a tool for bigotry and separation. They are not against conflating the two themselves.
The easiest way the Labour party could defuse this is by simply stating we share some values of the Israeli Labour party. We support secularism and peace. We too are critical of the Israeli government and actions.
I agree with that and Samuels is particularly, shall we say, prickly, about these issues. He’s certainly not a majority view of antisemitism within the Jewish community as far as I can tell, but he is A view and as a non-Jew I really don’t feel that it’s my place to tell a Jewish person what they should or should not view as antisemitic. It is correct, however, that Jews differ themselves on what might or might not be antisemitic.
I’ve given my own view, which more or less aligns with the IHRA definition, but the spectrum of views amongst Jews themselves think this definition goes too far/not far enough etc. I don’t know if those range of views differ as to where the individual lives or not, which might be interesting.
I have to say that many of the heated debates I’ve witnessed about antisemitism have been between Jews, rather than between Jews and non-Jewish people. Just goes to support @Noo_Noo view, it can be a hot potato.
I am not a Jew but I guess the argument nowadays for any -ism is that only how the person who receives the message feel is important, rather than the intent of the person saying it. Its like if i say it’s raining cats and dogs and PETA cancels me for painting them in a negative light…then only that matters.
I guess sometimes the criticism of a government whose politics or country history that is very much linked to a race or religion or culture can sometimes be blurred with criticism of the people. An example, in Malaysia sometimes when we criticised the government for corruption, all is fine, most people agree but when they are criticised for race politics in that they gave the dominant race in the country alot more benefits then suddenly the dominant race sees it as a criticism of them.
What makes you think I might be being disingenuous? I was seeking context as I think it is important when discussing these sorts of issues - particularly in a thread aimed at discussing politics in the UK…and do you mean imply rather than infer?
Coming directly after my post about the alleged witch hunt against Corbyn, I did wonder whether CTQ was implying that the accusations of antisemitism within the Labour Party were really people objecting to legitimate criticism of the Israeli government.
Hope I’m wrong about that but that did seem to be the implication.
With the highest (absolute) death toll in Europe by reported covid related deaths, I’m not sure this article is in particularly good taste.
It’s really, really weird.
The Government have done really well on the vaccine, but I think that’s largely because they had to. They had utterly fucked up everything else. The vaccination response was their last throw of the dice.
I’m really worried that we’ll get back to normal as a vaccinated nation, everyone will have a massive blowout, and no-one will have the stomach to revisit the pre vaccination days of the pandemic to look at what went wrong and why we ended up with +100k dead.
There needs to be an independent inquiry into the governments performance. We’re all going to have differences and arguments about economics, policy, priority and the like. But the minimum bar for a government must be basic competence. Too many people have needlessly died for everyone to just forget and move on.
It is
While I certainly want all of the governments failings laid bare for all to see, this feels wrong.
Perhaps they feel they need to do this in response to stuff printed elsewhere? Even that doesn’t make it feel better though.
Maybe that’s where we’re heading now? With stories of extreme failures and past glories pushed with click bait headlines.
That’s extraordinarily disingenuous.
https://mobile.twitter.com/BarbaraRich_law/status/1355106319154425858
The NHS wouldn’t have the number of vaccines to roll out (with the help of the army and pharmacies) without everything that went before. I recommend people read that thread.
Suggesting that the success of the vaccine roll out is exclusively down to the NHS is disingenuous. I agree that the “NHS” test and trace managed by serial failure Dido Harding has been a disaster only until very recently.
Not sure how the NHS is suitable for track and trace to be honest. That doesn’t excuse the appointment of Dildo Hardening though.
To my mind the vaccine was the governments last chance saloon and they poured everything into it. It’s paying off. Before then it was trying to see if a half job would work while feeding their buddies millions from tax payers money.
Well I did not know that. That is today’s lesson.
Ta!