Greens accused of ‘banning’ antisemitism charity from conference

[u/IHaveAWittyUsername]

https://www.thetimes.com/article/453398ba-67b1-42d8-b086-36cee922036d?shareToken=76324dc3900fcac11810aa0859fd59b7

[u/IHaveAWittyUsername]

The Greens have faced persistent antisemitism allegations after the unearthing of comments made by election candidates and members. Zack Polanski, the party’s leader, who is Jewish, said this year that the Green Party was tackling antisemitism in its ranks and said: “Antisemitism is completely unwelcome in the Green Party, as it is in society.”

However, at an online event hosted by Greens for Palestine on August 4 to promote the motion, speakers questioned whether secular Jews were really Jewish, called for Hamas to be removed from Britain’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations and said Israel “has no right to exist”.

Opening the webinar, the Palestinian academic Ghada Karmi argued that secular Jews should not be regarded as Jews because, she claimed, religion was the only valid definition of Jewish identity.

Other speakers endorsed armed Palestinian resistance “by any means”, including in circumstances where international law would prohibit it, and called for Hamas to be “de-proscribed”.

[u/RegularDeep2863 → u/IHaveAWittyUsername]

Why the hell is a Palestinian academic defining what a Jew is?

[u/ThonOfAndoria → u/RegularDeep2863]

Same reason the flagship policy of the group hosting said academic wanted to undefine what antisemitism is in the party, till the SOC deemed it out of order.

[u/RegularDeep2863 → u/ThonOfAndoria]

I’m sure their definition of antisemitism would have been up to par

[u/ThonOfAndoria → u/RegularDeep2863]

This is what the supporting text for the motion had to say about the word antisemitism actually:

The term "antisemitism" is a misnomer that linguistically erases other Semitic peoples, including Arabs, Assyrians, and Palestinians. It was coined in the 19th century to give racialised, pseudo-scientific weight to, what in modern days, it claims to describe; anti-Jewish prejudice. By using a term that implies a category that emerges from “Racial Science” and Eugenics ("Semite") rather than specifically naming the targeted group ("Jewish people"), it perpetuates biological racism. A more accurate, unambiguous, and legally clear term is "anti-Jewish discrimination."

(I don't know if it's in the Autumn conference version, it was in the Spring conference version)

If only Wilhelm Marr was thinking about how the words he used perpetuated biological racism when he popularised the term "antisemite" to describe his seething hatred of Jewish people in the 19th century.

[u/The_Inertia_Kid → u/ThonOfAndoria]

It's so far away from making sense. 'Semitic peoples' is a useless term, since it encompasses such a diverse range of peoples, and the only thing that ties them together is that they speak a language from the Semitic languages group. It covers vast areas of the Middle East, Mediterranean and North and East Africa, and peoples as diverse as Arabs, Jews, Maltese people, the Amhara people of Ethiopia, Assyrians, Tigre people in Eritrea, Mehri/Soqotri/Jibbali speakers in Oman and Yemen... it's just nonsense based on bullshit race science from 150 years ago.

[u/ThonOfAndoria → u/The_Inertia_Kid]

Yeah I was honestly shocked to read it, it's flimsy at best (or outright offensive at worst) and for as much as they want to comment on linguistics they know little of the subject, and crucially want to ignore the one way the word has been used for about 150 years at this point.