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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • This is ironic because in the opinion piece by Rabbi Hain published in the Columbia student newspaper, he complains that

    For years, Columbia’s Palestinian freedom movement has differentiated between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, affirming that one can be critical of Israel without being anti-Semitic. But by using the October 7 attacks as a rallying point for the movement, attendees of the campus rally can no longer argue that their activism differentiates between the two. They are now saying the quiet part out loud: Dead Jews don’t matter.

    So here he’s trying to accuse pro-Palestine students for conflating Anti-Zionism and antisemitism, when in fact groups like the Anti-Defamation League and American Israel Public Affairs Committee have been doing this exact same thing for years! And now even the US Congress is in on the action.

    This is precisely why conflating to two is wrong: it dilutes the term “antisemitism” so much that people start to roll their eyes when they see it being weaponized to silence criticism of Israel, which then makes it harder to protect Jewish people from actual anti-semitic attacks.




  • The first thing to understand is that Israel’s parliamentary system of government is quite different from the US’. Instead of two main parties dominating the political landscape, i.e. Republicans vs Democrats, Israel has around a dozen main parties which work together to form coalition governments where more than one party is in power at one time. Under this fragmented landscape, if you have a religious or ethnic minority who all tend to vote for the same party, that can lead to a situation where one group in society may hold sway over others politically even though they are not as as large a population numerically.

    And yes, you’re quite right - a lot has changed since 2016, and some Haredi (especially the young) have been increasingly drifting towards the far-right nationalist parties like Likud (Netanyahu’s party) and the Religious Nationalists. However, as this AP article suggests, these recent converts moving away from the traditional Haredi parties are still a minority.

    While the majority of Haredim living outside Israel still do not identify as Zionists (as per this recent, post-Oct 7th survey), I admit I don’t have any hard polling data for the current situation in Israel itself. If anyone else does, I would appreciate the info.





  • aleph@lemm.eetoWorld News@lemmy.worldHow Ukraine shattered Europe's balance of power
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    3 months ago

    How so? I think it’s quite an accurate summary. The German economy has been stagnating for a while, mainly due to its poorly handled transition towards an economy based on renewable energy. Their reliance on cheap Russian gas was shattered by the onset of the war in Ukraine, and their economic and political influence within the EU has been in steep decline ever since.