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What Exactly is Antisemitism? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-15
nbcnews.com reported today, 3/15, the following under the headline Four boys killed by Israeli drone:
“On Friday, two months since the fragile ceasefire in Gaza was declared, Alerfan, back in Gaza City with her family, was preparing the meal to break the day’s Ramadan fast. Two of her sons, Mahmoud Alerfan, 15, and Yusuf Alerfan, 13, stepped outside — just for a moment, just to find firewood for their evening meal.
, firing the missile that killed the boys and tearing Alerfan’s life apart...Two of their friends, Malik Althatha, 13, and Salim Hasnin, 15, who had joined them to gather firewood, were also killed. But an Israeli drone found them first , firing the missile that killed the boys and tearing Alerfan’s life apart...Two of their friends, Malik Althatha, 13, and Salim Hasnin, 15, who had joined them to gather firewood, were also killed.
NBC News’ crew on the ground captured the moment as Alerfan clutched their bodies, refusing to let go as her wails echoed through the broken streets. Unquote.
Is it “Antisemitic” to object to this sort of warfare?
Are those boys “accidental” collateral damage?
The other day I looked up figures on killings during the current Gaza conflict. Some 800 Israeli combat forces have been killed in the conflict; about 2000 persons total including the terrorist raid of October 7. Around half were civilians.
Gaza has suffered over 40,000 casualties, almost entirely civilians, with over 10,000 children killed according to all estimates.
I can find no estimate regarding what percentage of the civilian population of Gaza would have approved of Hamas’ delusional terrorism. Possibly almost none. Gaza ceased to be a democratic polity following the last “elections” almost 20 years ago.
Whether to count the October 7 massacre of Israeli citizens and military in a hare-brained terrorist attack from Gaza as casualties of the conflict is questionable. It was not in any way a sane attack against an adversary with the hope of prevailing militarily as a result of the attack. It was a terrorist attack launched by a multinational terrorist group from a polity whose population in no discernable way supported such an attack.
The casualty figures, 800 military on one side, to 40,000 civilians including over 10,000 children on the other side, speak for themselves as to the nature of the “conflict”.
The nature of the “conflict” is further defined by the nature of the killings of those four youngsters out gathering firewood as reported by NBC.
Antisemitism must not be conflated with disagreement with a given polity’s foreign policy, but that is at work here. Ironically, the state of mind at play in accusations of antisemitism by the accused might be more properly called “Semitism” by the accuser, i.e. just another perspective by a group or subgroup espousing some form of ethnic superiority, perhaps in defense of atrocity. The world has seen the face of that before, e.g. the KKK, the NSDAP. For whatever reason, it is in fact all about ethnocentricity — racism.
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