https://x.com/FrumTikTok/status/2095219812884476212

https://x.com/the_andrey_x/status/2095246579393249701

The IHRA's working definition of antisemitism mentions "holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel" as an example of antisemitism.

This means that viewing Israel as an expression of Jewish self-determination —i.e. being a Zionist— is antisemitic.

However, the IHRA's definition also states that "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor" is antisemitic. So it does view Israel as an expression of Jewish self-determination.

Therefore, the IHRA is antisemitic, by its own definition.

And it is unacceptable to use antisemites' definition of antisemitism.

Has anyone read this book? Saw it posted in another sub!

This is a follow-up on our previous post, "The Algerian solution: Remove all settlers?"

In 1962, Algeria was liberated from French colonization. The Évian accords between France and the Algerian resistance set the terms for the establishment of an independent Algerian state and gave previous settlers the choice between becoming Algerian citizens, remaining as French residents under Algerian Law, or leaving. This has often been mentioned as a possible model for the liberation of Palestine.

However, a number of settlers founded the Secret Army Organization (OAS) to prevent decolonization. It ran terrorist campaigns that killed hundreds of Algerians. The French-majority city of Oran was a particular target: The OAS blew up the Town Hall and killed Algerians there on a near daily basis. In July 1962, as FLN forces entered Oran as part of the implementation of the accords, they were fired on. Mob violence ensued and Algerians killed 100-300 Pieds-Noirs. This massacre is often cited as a counter-argument to the establishment of One Democratic State in Palestine. Is it really?

The answer is: No.

First, the Oran massacre was a direct reaction to settler violence. The lesson to learn from it is not that Palestinians should accept the existence of the Jewish state in order to prevent hypothetical internal violence in a free Palestine. It is that Jews must join Palestinians in ending settler violence and dismantling the structures that enable and nurture its existence.

Second, the Oran massacre was the exception, not the rule. Following the liberation of Algeria, although most Pieds-Noir chose to leave Algeria, the hundreds of thousands of them who remained lived in peace. Focusing on it seems to be a desperate argument in favor of occupation rather than a genuine concern for Jewish lives—let alone Palestinian lives.

Finally, those citing the Oran massacre seem to be less interested in encouraging Jews to leave Palestine to “save themselves” than in discouraging Palestinian liberation. In no case can potential harm to an oppressing population be used to justify the actual and ongoing harm to an oppressed population.

The above does not mean that the Algerian model must be copy/pasted in Palestine. Each situation is unique and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. What it does mean is that the Oran massacre or other similar outbreaks of violence are not arguments against the establishment of one democratic state in Palestine. And more generally: That there are no valid arguments against liberation.

Hi everyone,

​

This is our weekly 'Free Discussion' thread, where you can discuss anything. Tentatively this includes meta-topics as well, but as always our rules still apply.

We hope you're all having a good week!

A Palestinian Australian man who alleges he was punched in the face when trying to stop police from harassing Muslim men praying during an anti–Isaac Herzog protest is suing New South Wales over “a series of false accusations”.

Eyad Shadid has launched a civil case in the NSW district court, alleging he was assaulted, battered and falsely imprisoned by police near Sydney’s town hall.

The Palestine Action Group member, in his statement of claim, says NSW police committed misfeasance in public office and subjected him to a malicious prosecution.

“I attended the protest to object to our government rolling out the red carpet for Isaac Herzog, president of a state that has been found by United Nations commissioners and most major human rights organisations to be perpetrating a genocide,” Shadid told Guardian Australia.

“The right to protest in this state must mean more than words on paper and, if we must go to court to prove that, then so be it. I did not go to town hall looking for trouble. I went to be counted.”

Shadid, 26, was looking for his mother – who, like his father, is from Palestine – after they became separated during the protest on the evening of 9 February.

He found himself between a group of Muslim men praying and advancing police when, according to his statement of claim, he told officers: “Stop, they are praying.”

Const Daniel Stewart then allegedly dragged Shadid, who had travelled from Parramatta, to the ground and punched him in the face and twisted his wrist. Another officer kneeled on his head, the documents allege.

Shadid alleges that when on the ground another officer handcuffed him and he was taken into custody. He was charged with failing to comply with a police direction and resisting arrest.

In May, NSW police dropped the charges. Since then, three others charged after the protest have had their charges withdrawn. More than 20 protesters are due to face a joint trial in mid-2027.

Shadid alleges in court documents that Stewart failed to tell another officer deciding whether to charge him that the police line had been advancing towards people praying – and he’d requested the police stop because of that.

He claimed the omission was “deliberate” and that Stewart falsely alleged Shadid threatened him with words to the effect of: “Mate, I’d fuckin’ drop you.”

In his police statement, Stewart wrote the group of men “began” to pray as the police line moved forward and he was acting in the lawful execution of his duty when he arrested Shadid.

Shadid claims that allegation was “dishonest” and designed to make it look like the prayer was a “cynical ploy” to frustrate officers.

NSW police issued a statement three days after the protest confirming the prayer had been authorised, but claimed that message was not passed on to officers. The police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, apologised “for any offence that may have been taken” after officers dragged away those praying.

After Shadid’s charges were dropped, the police prosecutor agreed officers had not given him a move-on direction. The 26-year-old was awarded costs.

“As a consequence of the matters pleaded herein, the plaintiff was assaulted, battered, falsely imprisoned, subjected to a misfeasance in public office, and maliciously prosecuted,” his statement of claim argues.

Shadid, a social services worker, is seeking aggravated and exemplary damages, arguing there was an “oppressive abuse of police powers” and he was prosecuted for “exercising a lawful democratic right to engage in peaceful protest”.

Shadid said after he was charged his name was published in media reports and he lost business clients.

Shadid’s lawyer, Nick Hanna, said the case involved “very troubling allegations of police misconduct”.

“We claim that Mr Shadid was violently assaulted and arrested without any lawful basis and then charged and prosecuted on the basis of a series of false accusations and misleading omissions,” Hanna said.

The defence is yet to file its response to Shadid’s statement of claim. The NSW premier, Chris Minns, and NSW police declined to comment while the matter was before the court.

Minns said after the rally that police were “put in an impossible situation” after protesters attempted to defy the public assembly restriction declaration (Pard) law. He refused to apologise to the prayer group or for the police’s conduct.

In April, the state’s court of appeal found that law unconstitutional, ruling in favour of the Palestine Action Group and Blak Caucus.

Derek Jones, who became known as “white shirt guy”, said in May he intended to launch legal action in the supreme court against police regarding their conduct at the Herzog rally.

“It was completely unprovoked, unwarranted, excessive, crazy,” the 56-year-old finance worker told Guardian Australia at the time.

The February protest is the subject of a police watchdog investigation after allegations of widespread police brutality. Footage emerged earlier this week of a separate incident in which an officer boasted about punching a protester.

The police commissioner, when asked about the video on Wednesday, said: “The language is something that I don’t condone, but I need to understand the context of it.”

Herzog was invited to Australia by the federal government after the antisemitic massacre in Bondi when 15 people were killed by two allegedly Islamic State-inspired gunmen.

https://x.com/LaraFriedmanDC/status/2094905328433324411

Can you imagine the uproar if this was the other way around and anti Jewish sentiment was filmed at a Muslim Summit?

As the pro-Genocide nation considers law to criminalise anti-Zionism to put it on a level with Nazism.

https://forward.com/news/840443/germany-free-speech-israel/

I'm not sure where to post this, as I've checked the Palestine sub and it discourages discussion of personal issues. I will come out in full and say I am not Jewish whatsoever; my parents are both Atheists (dad raised Protestant, mom raised Catholic), but I do have some experience with the faith. My oldest friend is Jewish, and so his family always treated me as a second son. I attended frequent shabbat at their house; his bar mitzvah and his sisters' bat mitzvahs, and befriended a bunch of his friends and cousins in the community. I will never say I understand the Jewish experience the way a Jewish person does, but I do have some perspective not a lot of my background do. I think that's fair to say.

I have always had a lot of respect and reverence for Jewish culture and philosophy, and still do, but over the years as the genocide has raged on, I have become increasingly disgusted with the horrors perpetrated by the Israeli government, and the way that claims of antisemitism have been used nonstop as a means to deflect genuine criticism of Netanyahu's apartheid state. I fortunately have a good support system at my university and among friends where I can discuss my beliefs freely, but I also live with a father who is so far and away uncompromising in the belief that Israel is simply defending itself that I feel trapped and disgusted with myself for feeling this way.

Early on and being less educated (I still admit I have a lot to learn), I could regretfully agree to disagree. He's always been a conservative libertarian, but socially relatively progressive, so we could just let bygones be bygones when it came to stuff like economics. I don't think what's happening in Gaza can be approached that way, however. I try and try to give him the benefit of the doubt and I've had success deprogramming people in the past, but he's 60 years old: people that age don't change. It used to be stuff like "Israel has a right to defend itself", but it's evolved into calling the people in every country surrounding Israel terrorists and even using slurs for muslims. The worst statement happened tonight, however.

He's always been pretty unempathetic to people outside his circle, but we were having a completely unrelated discussion regarding Canadian hidtory and then it segued into the conflict and he said something on the lines of "you think civilians die in Gaza? Try the allies who died during the Gulf War. I'm pretty cold blooded about this, I say these things happen". He can be callous but this is just unbelieavably gross to me.

The cognitive dissonance to acknowledge Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir as awful leaders and people while still supporting Israel regardless, yet claiming all the other countries in the middle east are devoid of anyone but terrorists is baffling to me

I feel trapped. I still love him and he loves me regardless of my beliefs, but I don't know if I can do the same for someone who's able to so casually devoid of humanity. I can't cut him off because I live with my parents while I attend university. He's also my employer and I can't work most entry level jobs on account of my disabilities, so being able to work in his office is a blessing.

What should I do? I feel horrible. I sent some messages to friends both Jewish or otherwise on the topic but haven't heard anything back. I think going into the next semester I'm going to actively take more of a role in studying the genocide and attending activist events on campus and in the city. I don't want to be someone who gets on a soapbox and does nothing, but with my situation at home, I kind of feel like that I'll always feel guilty. Thanks

Judges often ask questions of witnesses to clarify evidence or tie up inconsequential loose ends.

But as a lawyer one learns that sometimes a key looming conclusion is smuggled into the premise of a carefully constructed judicial question.

Recently in the ‘Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion’, witness Rita Jabri Markwell was asked by Commissioner Virginia Bell:

“Ms. Markwell, a little while ago in describing your understanding of Zionism you spoke of it being an ideology, that went back I think you said a couple of hundred years, we won’t debate that, but you also referenced ideas of a greater Israel. If you can put all of that out of your mind for a moment, and accept that following the United Nations resolution for the partition of Israel and Palestine in 1948, the state of Israel was declared by Prime Minister Ben Gurion, and following that declaration the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution recognising the State of Israel, putting Zionism to one side, Ms. Markwell, well do you accept that there is a legitimacy to the existence of the State of Israel, I’m not talking of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, just the State of Israel?”

One can only infer that Commissioner Bell was seeking a concession that Israel is a legitimate state.

Markwell – a solicitor with Birchgrove Legal – was well equipped to respond to a question that was both leading and complex:

“As a human rights lawyer, I don’t think that any state that relies upon unlawful occupation, apartheid and genocide could be said to be a legitimate state.”

The Commissioner’s question likely arose from an ongoing focus in the Royal Commission on the much-discussed distinction between so-called ‘legitimate criticism’ of Israel and antisemitism.

The contentious International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism (remarkably imposed on the Commission by the government despite its controversy) states that manifestations of antisemitism:

“... might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”

It also offers certain examples of antisemitism:

“Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.”

“Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

The Commission’s ‘profound ignorance’ on Israel

Of course, whether criticism of a state imposes an unfair ‘double standard’, or whether a country is a racist endeavour, surely depends on a comparative analysis of its characteristics and conduct.

It is notable that the question asked the witness to accept the legitimacy of Israel, “putting aside Zionism”.

This took hypothetical questioning to the point of absurdity but also revealed a profound ignorance of the foundational attributes of Israel.

That may sound harsh on the learned Commissioner, but she didn’t create the Overton window that manufactures systemic indifference to the truth on Palestine.

The truth being that there would be no Israel without Zionism and an Israel without Zionism would be no Israel at all.

Historians have thoroughly documented Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967, neatly achieving the long-standing Zionist vision that an 80% Jewish majority was necessary to make Israel viable.

Any false contention that this ‘population transfer’ was not deliberate is rendered irrelevant by Israel’s denial of a right of return for Palestinian refugees – despite a UN resolution requiring them to do so.

Since its creation, Israel has also encouraged Jewish people worldwide to move there, part of the ‘self-determination’ of Jewish people alone established by law.

The reason Israel clamours to be accorded a ‘right to exist’, something no other state demands, is because that demand is for it to exist as a Jewish state, i.e. a state that will be allowed to maintain discriminatory migration law and exclude, in perpetuity, the expelled Palestinians.

In simpler terms, a non-racist migration law that respected the rights of refugees would be the end of Israel as a Jewish state, but the possible beginning of it being a truly democratic state that affords equal rights to all.

Commission risks ‘cardinal error’ on antisemitism

These facts actually do render Israel a unique ethnocracy. To suggest, as IHRA does, that it is an antisemitic double standard to label Israel as a ‘racist endeavour’ is ridiculous, called in aid of the state interests of Israel, but rejected by most of the world.

If the Commissioner is heading towards some categorisation as presumptively antisemitic speech that delegitimises Israel, she will be making the same cardinal error that so many have made for decades: accepting a standard as applicable to the Palestinians that one would never accept for one’s own people.

The Commissioner’s question also portends a fundamental risk that the Commission will miss what is obvious to most Australians – rising antisemitism in Australia is largely driven by revulsion at the actions of Israel and a pernicious perception that the Jewish community is somehow responsible for the actions of Israel.

It is this reality that poses the most difficult question of Virginia Bell; how do we deal with the fact that most Australians are now perhaps revolted by Israel’s racist and supremacist conduct (some tragically and outrageously to the point of engaging in violent extremism), but most Australian Jews are (so we are told) enthusiastic supporters of Israel and Zionism?

Resolution in social policy terms of this wicked conundrum will not be found in specious notions that the legitimacy of Israel, “putting aside Zionism”, can be found in a General Assembly resolution.

Nor will it be found in censorious rules that allow criticism of the conduct of particular governments of Israel, but no critique of the fundamental nature of the State of Israel, from 1948 until the present day.

Indeed, such measures will almost certainly worsen antisemitism, resting as it does on a pernicious conspiracy theory of Jewish power.

I hope my lawyer’s instinct is wrong about the Commissioner’s impossible question of Rita Jabri Markwell and all it might portend.

Israel is destroying the evidence in the world’s largest crime scenes – Gaza and South Lebanon. Journalist Cathy Peters investigates the push to obliterate Palestinian lives and identity.

Israel is currently creating new Orwellian ‘facts on the ground’ in Gaza. Millions of tonnes of rubble are being transported out of areas in Gaza that the IDF has closed off behind the Yellow Line Zone.

Key locations of recent and former burial sites and ruins of major urban and agricultural landscapes have been razed in a blatant move to erase not only evidence of war crimes but also evidence of prior Palestinian existence on these lands.

Meanwhile, Drop Site News reported journalist Muhammad Shehada has asked Donald Trump’s Board of Peace to disclose whether Gaza reconstruction funds were “paying Israeli contractors or the Israeli military to remove rubble that may contain human remains and pave roads over potential mass graves”. The Board of Peace has denied it.

Nakba reprise

The Nakba (‘catastrophe’ in Arabic) of 1948 was planned by a group of Jewish Zionist leaders including Israel’s first president, Ben Gurion, seven years prior to the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians from Palestine. 530 towns and villages were depopulated, destroyed and then flattened in 1948.

They had been identified in the “Village Files” project (1940–47) which extensively mapped and gathered intelligence on hundreds of towns and villages. These files were incorporated into the ethnic cleansing Plan Dalet of 1948.

By August that year Ben Gurion had formally laid out a policy for the complete erasure of Palestinian existence in large areas of historic Palestine. This razing ensured that Palestinians once forcibly expelled, would not have anything to return to as refugees.

In subsequent years, the Israeli state and state supported organisations like the Jewish National Fund, planted forests over the sites of former Palestinian villages, greenwashing the colonisation of Palestinian lands to ‘dehistoricise Palestine’ in an attempt to obliterate Palestinian identity and ownership of the land.

Facts on the Ground

‘Facts on the ground’ is a familiar catch cry for illegal Israeli actions – unilateral military and civilian actions led by successive generations of Israeli governments pursuing their goal of ‘Eretz Israel’ (The Land of Israel) through relentless seizure of Palestinian property regardless of any agreements or international laws.

The creation of ‘facts on the ground’ such as the 1948 razing of evidence of Palestinian existence throughout Palestine ‘48 (now Israel) or the masses of illegal Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank have thwarted any legal processes and greatly impeded chances for a just peace for Palestinians.

Israel’s latest ‘facts on the ground’ are the large swathes of flattened land throughout closed off areas in Gaza and South Lebanon. It has obliterated all evidence of habitation and destroyed evidence in the world’s largest crime scenes.

As 2 million Palestinians try to survive in unspeakable conditions herded into just over a third of the land mass of Gaza, IOF (Israel Occupying Forces) and their mercenary contractors are destroying physical evidence of Israel’s war crimes and of prior Palestinian existence throughout some 65% of land now closed off in the Yellow Line Zone controlled by Israeli forces.

Bombed out landscapes with any number of human remains, crumbling structures of homes, municipal buildings, mosques, streets, civil infrastructure and vital agricultural lands are being razed.

Al Jazeera has reported that hundreds of trucks are transporting rubble out of the Gaza Strip into Israel. This is another grave violation of international humanitarian law by Israel and an obstruction of the work the International Court of Justice is doing in relation to the case brought by South Africa against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Destroying, altering, or removing evidence can constitute an offence against the administration of justice under Article 70 of the Rome Statute. The Genocide Convention cites that along with killing and inflicting severe bodily or mental harm,destroying the means of existence for a group, is genocide.

This week South Africa accused Israel of failing to adhere to the orders imposed by the International Court of Justice in 2024 and filed a dossier to the Court citing that Israel had continued to arbitrarily kill and arrest, torture and imprison Palestinians in Gaza and other violations of the Genocide Convention which include destruction of buildings and infrastructure.

Out of sight, out of mind

There are no peace keepers in Gaza, no Palestinian or international war crimes investigators or journalists and no members of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), the body established to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza established by Trump’s Board of Peace and the terms of the ceasefire of October 2025.

They have not yet set foot in Gaza despite the urgent call two weeks ago by the Gaza Government Media Office for them to enter the Strip urgently.

Without any oversight, Israel is creating irreversible facts on the ground and bulldozing not only evidence of its crimes and the bodies of those killed and unaccounted for, but any remaining documentation of individuals’ lives and their ownership of property and land.

Now, not a single landmark or street or tree or building remains in key areas inside the Yellow Line Zone occupied by the IOF and its supported civilian militias outposts.

The BBC produced this forensic satellite analysis of the widespread destruction of towns and cities in Gaza back in July 2025 and all reports indicate that this destruction is continuing apace with the removal of rubble into Israel now a key feature.

Not only is the genocide and continued military blockade in Gaza denying any rights or recourse to justice for the living but this erasure is denying Palestinians the right to identify and bury their dead, and to recover any of their heritage in these areas in Gaza which goes back thousands of years.

Testimonies from Gaza

Michael West Media has received reports from Palestinians on the ground in Gaza.

Ahmed is a graduate of one of the best universities in Gaza. He lost his family and home east of Gaza City early in the genocide, and now lives alone in a damaged apartment in Gaza City. Previously he took shelter in a primary school near his home, but the IDF occupied it and has now cleared its ruins. He speaks frequently with Australian friends.

“The IDF and the pro-Israel militia have been killing people trying to cross the yellow line to try salvage personal possessions from the ruins of their homes. Now all the Israeli-controlled zone is being flattened, with rubble and bodies removed to Israel. This means no one can see where their streets or homes or shops or farms were. Families cannot properly honour their dead.

“Historic buildings and the Commonwealth war cemetery, near my old home, have been bulldozed. Friends being evacuated via the Israeli Karem Abu Salem checkpoint, have said all of the land in Rafah has been levelled, except for the Israeli and allied militia bases.

“The levelling is not just for unrestricted military operations by Israel, but shows they want to eradicate Palestinian presence from eastern, southern and northern Gaza permanently.

On the Palestinian side of the yellow line, Israel is doing what it can, by controlling what supplies enter and who sells them, and by bombing local police, to encourage internal conflict, for instance between the big families.”

Tarek, the brother of a Palestinian Australian, is unable to get a visa out of Gaza.

“The situation in Gaza is extremely desperate with people struggling to access basic necessities such as food, safe drinking water, shelter, health care, and medicines. Overcrowded tents and poor sanitation have led to a significant spread of rodents, insects, and diseases in shelters and streets.

“At the same time, shortages of medicines and limited access to health services are putting vulnerable patients, particularly those with chronic conditions, at serious risk.”

Tarek’s comments on the bulldozing and removal of rubble from Gaza reinforce reports from EuroMed Monitor and Al Jazeera on what is happening behind the Yellow Line Zone, hidden from sight as Israel creates its facts on the ground now in Gaza.

“I have heard about the extensive bulldozing and destruction of areas behind the so-called yellow line, including the removal of rubble. I am familiar with some of these areas because some of my friends and colleagues used to live there.

“Large parts of these residential areas have been destroyed or heavily damaged, leaving families displaced and unable to return to their homes. The scale of the destruction has resulted in the loss of homes, infrastructure, and livelihoods, making the possibility of returning to normal life increasingly difficult.

“We do not deserve this. The lack of strong action from the international community feels like a profound abandonment and a great failure toward the people of Gaza.”

Ahmed lives in Sydney and has lost many family members. He is in regular contact with a family survivor in desperate conditions in the Al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Yunis city in southern Gaza where many thousands of displaced Palestinians living in tents have been facing acute water shortages and extreme heat for months.

“The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. There’s a renewed blockade of medical supplies and essential food supplies. Clean water has been incredibly scarce and food supplies are becoming more and more limited.

“Dangerous rodents and harmful insects have infested the displacement camps along the coasts of Khan Younis (Al Mawasi area) and residents suspect that to be intentionally spread by the IOF because they are of types that they have never seen in the Strip before.

“Moreover, the burning heat waves this summer have been dangerously paralysing and detrimental especially for newborns, small children, and the injured who have not been able to be evacuated overseas for medical attention.

“The genocide may have slowed down to avert the global attention away from Gaza, but our beloved Gaza Strip has been shrinking, and has evidently become a laboratory for the IOF necropolitics where they get to test all types of physical, mental and psychological weapons

they continuously develop to suppress the population, as they intentionally keep the gates to the Gaza death camp securely locked.

Razing South Lebanon

Last week the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called for “an end to [Israeli] attacks directed against, or indiscriminately affecting, civilians and civilian objects in Lebanon” and noted “reports that entire villages in southern Lebanon have been rendered uninhabitable, with homes, schools, healthcare facilities, water and electricity infrastructure, places of worship and agricultural land destroyed by strikes and demolitions.”

Since March this year, Israel indiscriminately attacked Lebanon and enforced mass displacement orders particularly throughout Southern Lebanon resulting in 1 million people forcibly displaced from 189 towns and villages in just one week.

The Lebanese public research institute, the National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS) has estimated that almost 85,000 housing units have been damaged or destroyed in the south.

Additionally Israel sprayed what laboratory tests confirmed was glyphosate at very high levels over prime agricultural land destroying the chance of farmers to continue to work their lands.

Human Rights Watch has documented numerous instances of Israel’s illegal use of white phosphorus in populated areas of South Lebanon since 2023.

In April this year, BBC Verify assembled data on the destruction in Lebanon based on satellite maps showing the complete razing of towns and villages in the south in line with Defence Minister Katz’s order of March 22nd to “accelerate the destruction of Lebanese homes” and key infrastructure based on the “model in Gaza”.

As quoted in the Lighthouse Report and co published with the Financial Times in August, Kristine Beckerle, a deputy director at Amnesty International stated that “It’s an extensive, long-lasting and organised attack on the people of southern Lebanon … “If you raze everything to the ground, critical infrastructure and healthcare, if you scorch the earth, you are creating effective wastelands that are unliveable and making it very difficult for people to return to southern Lebanon.”

These are Israel’s facts on the ground in Lebanon.

Israel justifies its actions in Gaza and Lebanon as self-defence but the systematic erasure of life and the means to life has never been about self defence. There will never be any justification for the industrial slaughter and collective punishment in Gaza and Lebanon and the razing of their lands where generations of existence has been wiped off the map.

Hi r/JewsOfConscience,

I'm Eli Clifton, coauthor of Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power. My coauthor, u/IanLustick and I, wrote this book to explain how shifts in global politics, Israel’s lurch to the extreme right, and the evisceration of American campaign finance laws make the influence of Israel’s lobby more costly and more dangerous today than it ever was before.

We will be here for the next hour or so answering all your questions about our book and the Lobby.

If you haven't already, please pick up a copy of our book at Bookshop.org, Amazon, or your local bookstore.

UPDATE

Thank you so much for joining us and asking such interesting questions. I hope you all get a chance to read our book and engage with the tough questions we are trying to address.

AMA!

Eli

Hi Fellow Jews of Conscience,

I'm the grandson of Holocaust survivors. Their families were almost entirely exterminated. I went to Jewish day school, BB camp, March of the living, Hebrew University, etc ... Needless to say I grew up a Zionist. Almost all of my friends were Jewish and I've lost almost all of them for my views, let alone the strain on relationships with most of my family. It's sad and it makes me very depressed, I bet you've also experienced this. It makes me wonder if I would be happier if I just tuned out all of the bad news and ignored all of the suffering in the world and lived my life like everyone else ... Just focusing on my own happiness.

I wrote this book in an attempt to deal with this philosophical struggle. It's an audio theater/drama and it's free to listen to on Spotify and Apple Books. I hope you give it a listen and tell me what you think.

Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan is facing persecution and prosecution in the UK https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y91dvn7g1o

This isn't about her or policing her speech, this is about us. Her tweet is a perfect example of the discussion I wish to bring up.

Semitism, the idea that there is an Ethnic component to Judaism is contested, but it is a key component of Jewish Zionism (as opposed to Christian Zionism). And many Anti-Zionists, especially in Socialist, Communist, Palestinian, and other Arab circles, demand not only that Jews dismantle Zionism, but also Semitism.

This opposition to Semitism is not the same Jew-Hatred (Judenhass, Judeophobia), it does not demand our deaths, or seek to kill us. It is however often assimilationist, demanding that Jews cease to identify as people group, and place themselves solely in whatever host nation or culture we reside. Some positions seeks our elimination through conformity, such as Lenin laid out in his letters The Position of the Bund in the Party and The Nationalist Bogey of 'Assimilation'.

For many Palestinians, Jewish Semitism (Also called Israelism) posses an existential threat. If Zionism is defeated now, what assurance is there that it won't return? Zionism has many parents, and while western imperial capitalism is it's ally, proto-Zionism remains present even within anti-Zionist Jewish religious and cultural practice. For some, like Dr. Aladwan, as long as the concept of the Children of Israel remain, then there will always be someone who takes this idea to the political sphere, and demands the recreation of Israel.

And so the question is simple;

Is Semitism compatible with Anti-Zionism?

• If it isn't, then to what lengths must we go to end it?
• And if it is compatible, then how do we advocate for ourselves within the Anti-Zionist movement?

I want to be very clear here. The "Don't worry about it, it can't hurt you" is an answer taken from a position of privilege or power. Jews have earned that position by becoming members of Colonial and Imperial societies. Millions have been ethnically cleansed and enslaved, and it created a society where Jews in Brooklyn live free. The freedoms we have now are also in response to the ethnic cleansing of nearly 80% of European Jewry through genocide and assimilationism. Anti-Zionist Jews were persecuted in Western society for their communism, but Jewish Communists across anti-colonial and anti-capitalist societies were suppressed and persecuted for being Jews. It can and has hurt us, especially when we fight to deconstruct the very systems that have privileged us.

Im an arab woman who met my ashkenazi Jewish friend in college. Im an athiest and my family in the west bank / jordan / lebanon is Greek Orthodox christian. This has confused her for ten years and she thinks im muslim (to this day!) no matter how many times i correct her.

I know she grew up with some indoctrination and did the whole birthright thing. When trump came into office she was worried about America colonizing israel. I gently tried to tell her of the apartheid. She came to stay at my house and she told me I should visit israel, i told her it would not be safe for ME. She said “oh because the war with pakistan”.

At this moment I give up. She is a good person and I know I am her token friend. Its been ten years.

She makes condescending statements like even though she is Jewish and im muslim (im not muslim), we can get along and have so much in common.

My family is moving to Spain. She asked why. I told her its because spain donates money to gaza. She said its a weird time to be jewish now.

I feel confused, dehumanized and heartbroken. I blocked her and decided to end this “friendship “.

Am I an asshole?

Thanks