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Transnational Thursday for December 4, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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As disproportionate as the Irish/Spanish/Dutch response is, I really don't think it's honest to describe it as antisemitism. These people don't hate Jews, they hate Israelis. And not because they think The Eternal Jew is conniving, but because the Israeli settler represents everything evil in the left-wing world view.

The settler is, in their minds; white, rich, patriotic, religious, nationalistic and militarist, and he is colonising the lands of poor browns. Israel is South Africa on steroids, and it's not as if left-wingers boycotted South Africa because of anti-Dutch sentiment. The Israelis are western enough to be held to western standards, but they don't behave like European countries are supposed to.

China and Pakistan get away with it because they're not white, and therefore don't fit so easily into the white oppressor archetype.

but because the Israeli settler represents everything evil in the left-wing world view

Or rather, the Israeli settler's existence is blasphemous by European religion. And while we can dispute the way Europeans came upon this religion, the fact remains that the existence of Israelis speak against it, and by extension the Great Satan (that being the United States) that [in their view, and arguably correctly] is the only reason they can exist.

We compare this to anti-semitism because Jews have been against European religion before, but the god they worshipped was different back then so it was expressed differently. Right now, Europeans worship a pantheon of various unnamed goddesses, so the methods of addressing blasphemy are a lot more "required to self-flagellate and live in terror and continual denial of the capabilities and desires others assume you have" than they used to be with respect to forced but one-time conversions, expulsion, and just straight up death.

China and Pakistan get away with it because they're not white

The European priestesses can rail against China and Pakistan all they like; they can't do shit about what they do, and they know it (compare "fargroup"). It's not so much "not white" as they are "can't possibly convince America to impose European religion on them", but they can do that to Israel due to it being a tiny country that is simply America's favorite vassal state (and to a point are jealous of this).

And in fairness, Europeans believe this worked against South Africa because the American religion adherents imposed American religion on them around the time a sea-change in what that was occurred (i.e. the 60s), and that just happened to rhyme/align with what European religion is now (so obviously, it was their efforts that did it). So naturally, Europeans will try this with Israel, and will hence do things like try to drag Israeli officials into its ecclesiastical court (and the Americans find rhetorically useful to honor when it suits them, like having the Europeans excommunicate the Russian king a few years ago when he declared war on the buffer state between Europe and Russia) and sanction the Great Satan (the US) over its violation of what Europe perceives, in some degree correctly, is American religious law.

But American religion (or at least, the religion native to Americans) remains compatible with Israeli goals; maximally cynically, it draws a distinction between brown and Black. Even European religion adherents in the US have mostly failed to have the American care for Black extend to brown, which is why they're conflated by adherents of that religion.

These people don't hate Jews, they hate Israelis

My feeling is that what they particularly hate is Israeli Jews. If you asked them about their opinion on Israeli Arabs (assuming they know they exist), they'd probably be neutral to positively inclined.

Regardless, I find the arguments about whether or not all of this counts as anti-semitism to be a distraction. The common leftist position that every Israeli Jew deserves to be brutally murdered would be equally horrific in an alternative universe where everyone in Israel was Hindu.

If you asked them about their opinion on Israeli Arabs (assuming they know they exist), they'd probably be neutral to positively inclined.

Well obviously, the Israeli Arabs are just a well-off subset of the oppressed Palestinian people, in the anti-Israeli view. That's not exactly unreasonable, the Israeli Arabs aren't enthusiastic participants in the Zionist project.

The common leftist position that every Israeli Jew deserves to be brutally murdered would be equally horrific in an alternative universe where everyone in Israel was Hindu.

I'm not sure that view is that common. The more common (if naive) view is that once the Israelis take their boot of the Palestinian throat, then everyone can live in peace and harmony in a post-sectarian democracy. The more likely outcome (massive civil war) may be realistic, but I don't think many leftists actually want it. Not least because the Palestinians would lose.

That's not exactly unreasonable, the Israeli Arabs aren't enthusiastic participants in the Zionist project.

Some and some. There's at least one sitting Knesset member who's part of Bibi's Likud party, for example. Likewise, many Israeli Arabs have served in the IDF.

And I know a woman who is really tall, therefore men and women are the same height.

Less flippantly, that IDF unit has 500 men in a force of 169,500. And my bet is that a supermajority of Arabs serving in the IDF are Druze and Christians.

There are also pacificistic or anti-Zionist Israeli Jews, but they are clearly not the people driving current Israeli policy.

I never claimed that the average Arab Israeli is an enthusiastic supporter of the Zionist project, or that the majority of that group are, merely that it's misleading to claim that all of them are opposed.

A survey from a year ago found that 58% of Arab Israelis believe the most recent conflict has "fostered a sense of shared destiny between Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis". An earlier survey found that 55% consider themselves "proud citizens of Israel".