this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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I realize I'm bringing a bunch of down votes on myself with the following text, that's ok because I'm still trying to form an opinion on this topic for me.
I always was under the impression that Antisemitism is when someone is against Jews because they're Jews, basically like racism but against specifically Jews. But lately I see the word Antisemitism used very lightly basically if someone is dissatisfied with the actions of the state Israel then they are called Antisemitic.
Perhaps I was misunderstanding the word, so I checked the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism and there it's not super clear either, but then I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_antisemitism it appears that I indeed was wrong and that New-Antisemitism seems to be any criticism of the Israeli government.
In this case I'm with the critics which say:
When it comes to racism it's pretty clear that you can criticize someone for what they do without being racist, but not criticize them for what they are, because then you're racist. On the other hand somehow criticizing a government for their actions which just so happens to be a government which governs a lot of Jews seems to be automatic antisemitism, even though the same criticism applied on other governments seems to not be seen as problematic.
On top of the whole thing I'm also German and in Germany this phenomenon seems to be much more extrem compared to other countries. I understand that this is because of the German guilt.
Germany is prone to dogmatism. There is a culture of putting things in boxes of right or wrong and then signaling it. Besides, skipping to judgement is easier than trying to unravel complications and risking being questioned in a hot seat. Spirit of being risk-averse.