Resolved, That the House of Representatives—
(1) strongly condemns and denounces all instances of antisemitism occurring in the United States and globally;
(2) reaffirms and reiterates its strong support for the Jewish community at home and abroad;
(3) calls on elected officials and world leaders to condemn and fight all forms of domestic and global antisemitism;
(4) clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is antisemitism; and
(5) rejects all forms of terror, hate, discrimination, and harassment of members of the Jewish community
While the statement in #4 is absolutely ridiculous, all this is is a resolution. It doesn’t outlaw anti-Israeli statements, it just condemns Hamas and support that isn’t for Israel, while calling for others to follow suit. It’s a strongly worded letter at best.
Statement #4 makes everything else worse. It’s basically linking criticism of Israel as criticism of Judaism in general. Without it, you’d be right, but with it it makes all of it ten times worse.
Yeah without it I’m in full support of it. I stand firmly with the Jewish community at home and abroad. But I also don’t think they have the ancestral right to Palestine. I think the people who live in Palestine are gonna have to learn to share the place but Israel is clearly struggling with that. The two state solution has failed, and I, being someone who thinks unnecessary bloodshed and removing people from land due to their ethnic or religious background are bad, endorse a shared state solution instead.
Also calling anti Zionism antisemitism is appalling considering how many Jewish people are antizionists.
The thing is… everything else is already covered by anti hate-crime legislation. Basically just repetition of already established doctrine. Linking that to a zionism = Judaism rule of law essentially taints all action to prevent hate-crime. Which is one of the many goals of the current conservative power base.
everything else is already covered by anti hate-crime legislation
Not really. Antisemitism is perfectly legal, you can chant anti-Jewish slogans all day long and there’s nothing the state can do. If you chant them while committing a crime, however, IE if you beat someone while chanting anti-Jewish slogans, your assault charge gets upgraded to a hate crime.
I disagree. There’s been increasing antisemitism and antisemitic attacks. There’s a strong need for us as a country to loudly and publicly decry antisemitism. But this is taking that need and trying to fit support for Israel no matter what their government does to that.
Still meaningless unless an explicit equivalence of anti-zionism to antisemitism in the context of hate crime law actually passes the Senate and gets signed by Biden to become law (and then survives the inevitable SCOTUS challenge, which it would not because political speech is incredibly protected by the First Amendment).
This is such a deliberately inflammatory and misleading headline that I wish I could say I was surprised people who claim to be independent critical thinkers are falling for it, but of course it’s not actually that surprising at all.
House Resolutions are practically meaningless, and you could fill books with incredibly moronic examples. Not to mention, priming ourselves to be constantly outraged over things that have no practical effect at all makes it harder to drum up support for criticizing things that are actually worth the outrage. Senator Rubio, for instance, re-introduced a bill this year that would offer support to government agencies that impose sanctions on any association with the BDS movement, just for one example.
If people would take half the outrage they get over stupid shit like this and instead pick up the phone for five minutes to call their Representative and urge greater humanitarian conditions on any Israeli aid package, that would actually accomplish something more useful than a fun little dopamine hit from being angry.
https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hres894/BILLS-118hres894ih.pdf
While the statement in #4 is absolutely ridiculous, all this is is a resolution. It doesn’t outlaw anti-Israeli statements, it just condemns Hamas and support that isn’t for Israel, while calling for others to follow suit. It’s a strongly worded letter at best.
Statement #4 makes everything else worse. It’s basically linking criticism of Israel as criticism of Judaism in general. Without it, you’d be right, but with it it makes all of it ten times worse.
Yeah without it I’m in full support of it. I stand firmly with the Jewish community at home and abroad. But I also don’t think they have the ancestral right to Palestine. I think the people who live in Palestine are gonna have to learn to share the place but Israel is clearly struggling with that. The two state solution has failed, and I, being someone who thinks unnecessary bloodshed and removing people from land due to their ethnic or religious background are bad, endorse a shared state solution instead.
Also calling anti Zionism antisemitism is appalling considering how many Jewish people are antizionists.
The thing is… everything else is already covered by anti hate-crime legislation. Basically just repetition of already established doctrine. Linking that to a zionism = Judaism rule of law essentially taints all action to prevent hate-crime. Which is one of the many goals of the current conservative power base.
Not really. Antisemitism is perfectly legal, you can chant anti-Jewish slogans all day long and there’s nothing the state can do. If you chant them while committing a crime, however, IE if you beat someone while chanting anti-Jewish slogans, your assault charge gets upgraded to a hate crime.
I disagree. There’s been increasing antisemitism and antisemitic attacks. There’s a strong need for us as a country to loudly and publicly decry antisemitism. But this is taking that need and trying to fit support for Israel no matter what their government does to that.
No. You’re missing the very important connection to already existing laws. You know, for hate crimes.
Still meaningless unless an explicit equivalence of anti-zionism to antisemitism in the context of hate crime law actually passes the Senate and gets signed by Biden to become law (and then survives the inevitable SCOTUS challenge, which it would not because political speech is incredibly protected by the First Amendment).
This is such a deliberately inflammatory and misleading headline that I wish I could say I was surprised people who claim to be independent critical thinkers are falling for it, but of course it’s not actually that surprising at all.
House Resolutions are practically meaningless, and you could fill books with incredibly moronic examples. Not to mention, priming ourselves to be constantly outraged over things that have no practical effect at all makes it harder to drum up support for criticizing things that are actually worth the outrage. Senator Rubio, for instance, re-introduced a bill this year that would offer support to government agencies that impose sanctions on any association with the BDS movement, just for one example.
If people would take half the outrage they get over stupid shit like this and instead pick up the phone for five minutes to call their Representative and urge greater humanitarian conditions on any Israeli aid package, that would actually accomplish something more useful than a fun little dopamine hit from being angry.