{"id":279174,"date":"2023-12-31T09:23:47","date_gmt":"2023-12-31T09:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=279174"},"modified":"2024-01-01T08:55:59","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T08:55:59","slug":"israel-says-its-anti-semitic-to-invoke-the-genocide-convention-over-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=279174","title":{"rendered":"Israel Says It&#8217;s Anti-Semitic To Invoke The Genocide Convention Over Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Caitlin Johnson \u2013 Caitlin\u2019s Newsletter Dec 29, 2023<\/h1>\n<p>South Africa has <a href=\"https:\/\/electronicintifada.net\/blogs\/maureen-clare-murphy\/south-africa-invokes-genocide-convention-world-court\">invoked the Genocide Convention<\/a>, formally launching a case at the UN\u2019s international court of justice accusing Israel of genocide for its mass atrocities in the Gaza Strip. Israel immediately responded by (deep sigh) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/blood-libel-israel-slams-south-africa-for-filing-icj-genocide-motion-over-gaza-war\/\">accusing South Africa of \u201cblood libel\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Blood_libel\">Blood libel<\/a>, for those who don\u2019t know, refers to the way medieval Europeans would falsely accuse Jews of murdering Christians in blood sacrifices in order to justify persecuting them. Which is to say, Israel has responded to South Africa\u2019s accusations by accusing South Africa of anti-semitism.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">South Africa is formally accusing Israel of genocide. Responding with \u201cthat\u2019s antisemitic\u201d is not gonna cut it. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/YPYR7VLo6K\">pic.twitter.com\/YPYR7VLo6K<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Read Let This Radicalize You (@JoshuaPHilll) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JoshuaPHilll\/status\/1740805317061988391?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 29, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>False accusations of anti-semitism are all Israel and its defenders have left. It\u2019s the only tool left in their toolbox. Once you\u2019ve exhausted the \u201cBut Hamas!\u201d and \u201cBut October 7!\u201d excuses they make for Israel\u2019s deliberate butchery of civilians via airstrikes and siege warfare, false accusations of hating Jews is all that remains.<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s so sick, because it exploits a healthy impulse in those of us who oppose racism and genocide, and does so <strong><em>in order to defend racist acts of genocide<\/em><\/strong>. It causes people who care deeply about human rights to take a step back and say \u201cHold on, am I guilty of embodying the same hateful prejudices which led to the Holocaust?\u201d and shuts us down and shuts us up, even as Israel rolls out its own holocaust against Palestinians.<\/p>\n<p>It exploits a noble, healthy inclination we cultivate in ourselves in good faith in order to support the horrific genocidal nightmare in Gaza in entirely bad faith. It exploits our good nature to advance a profoundly evil cause. It\u2019s despicable. It\u2019s depraved.<\/p>\n<p>Israel apologists always speak as though all critics of Israel are constantly obsessing over Jews, when nothing remotely like that is happening. It\u2019s a fantasy. The only reason people like me ever make any mention of Jewishness is because 90 percent of the arguments made by Israel\u2019s defenders rely on babbling about Jews and antisemitism, and those arguments need to be addressed.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">This is a significant move, particularly because the action is being brought by South Africa, a nation that fought for its own liberation against an apartheid regime supported for decades by the US. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/m0VBm0uofY\">https:\/\/t.co\/m0VBm0uofY<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jeremyscahill\/status\/1740802377970843831?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 29, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If Israel\u2019s defenders weren\u2019t constantly babbling about Jews and antisemitism, it would never even occur to me to think about those things in relation to what\u2019s happening in Gaza, and I\u2019m quite sure the vast majority of people on my side of this issue are the same. When you see mass atrocities of unfathomable horror unfolding in real time in a nonstop deluge of video and photo evidence, the very last thing on your mind is what religious faith the perpetrators espouse. It\u2019s not something normal people think about.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout my life I\u2019ve had a positive view of Jews and Jewish culture because so many of the people I\u2019ve admired and been influenced by have been Jewish, but other than that it\u2019s not something that I\u2019ve really thought about much. This notion that opposition to the criminality of the Israeli government is driven by a demented hatred of Jewish people is a complete work of fiction. People in our society simply do not feel that way about Jews. Real antisemitism does exist, but it\u2019s a small fringe view. Normal people just want the mass slaughter of children and the ethnic cleansing to stop.<\/p>\n<p>If I saw someone murdering a child, there are many things I might say and do, but the very last thing that would ever occur to me would be to wonder what religion he is. It\u2019s the silliest, most nonsensical narrative in mainstream politics and media today.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s why fewer and fewer people are buying it. There\u2019s only so many times the boy can falsely cry wolf before the villagers stop running to his defense. Hopefully this desensitization that Israel and its apologists have created doesn\u2019t have dark consequences in the future. It\u2019s just one more ugly thing they have birthed into the world that the rest of us will have to bring consciousness to.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">_______________<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Caitlin\u2019s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.caitlinjohnst.one\/subscribe\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>consider becoming a free or paid subscriber<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.caitlinjohnst.one\/p\/israel-says-its-anti-semitic-to-invoke\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a major shift unfolding in the way the world views Israeli crimes and allegations of \u2018anti-Semitism are not going to change that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":279176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279175,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279174\/revisions\/279175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/279176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}