Does anti-semitism exist? Absolutely and should be called out. The difference in your analogy about black people is that there is not a separate nation and government tied to their expressing that something is racist. The American right has gone pretty far into pressing the notion that any criticism of Israel or not wanting American funds to go to Israel is antisemitism. That is what I am pushing back against. Why the fuck are we funding a better way of life in Israel than we are for American citizens? That is not antisemitism. Not wanting to help Netanyahu slaughter his way through the Middle East is not antisemitism.
I pointed out the comment in the article you shared specifically because it was intellectually dishonest to equate the comments about American politicians being beholden to AIPAC with tropes about rich Jews.
I dunno. I'm old enough to remember when Idi Amin ran Uganda. He complained that British criticism of his regime was racist and colonialist, as some of it certainly was. Didn't alter the fact that he was a murderous, megalomaniac tyrant but equally some of it was certainly very racist.
Similarly, Narendra Modi and his Hindu-nationalist goons frequently try to deflect criticism of the BJP's treatment of Muslims as colonialist. That's clearly in bad faith much of the time, but some of it certainly does come across as suggesting that the Indians can't really govern themselves properly and were much better off when the British were there to keep order and mediate between the two religions.
You ask,
Why the fuck are we funding a better way of life in Israel than we are for American citizens? That is not antisemitism. Not wanting to help Netanyahu slaughter his way through the Middle East is not antisemitism.
I would suggest that the reason is that the US sees the Middle East and Iran as major areas of geopolitical interest, because of their oil and gas resources and their position on a major supply route (the Suez canal) and, during the cold war, on the USSR's southern border. Furthermore, Trump and his family have major business interests in both the area and in the former Soviet Central Asian republics, to whom Iran and its proxies are a major potential threat.
Israel has long been seen by the US as a very important military proxy in the region, just as Saddam Hussein's Iraq once was, as was the Shah's Iran, which is why it enjoys so much support from the US, as once did both Iran and Iraq. The US supports them, that is, because the US sees them as useful agents who can be used to benefit the US.
The question isn't why does the US fund a better way of life in Israel than for US citizens but why doesn't the US use the economic benefits its foreign policy is intended to support in a way that benefits US citizens as a whole rather than US big business and the very rich.
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