>But as a matter of probability, a lot of people who criticize Israel are also antisemitic.
This is a meaningless statement though. We can expect that nearly anyone that's antisemitic would be critical of a country run and mostly inhabited by Jewish people.
It becomes a problem when people try to extrapolate that fact to dismiss every criticism of Israel as "this guy's probably just antisemitic."
Its only true as a matter of probability throughout the entire world because its true in a particular region that has an enormous population padding those statistics.
There is antisemitism everywhere in some amounts and it is wrong like all forms of bigotry. However, in many countries, such as the US, you are just as likely to run into a person that criticizes Israel for reasons that have nothing to do with the religion of its inhabitants. You are still free to think that they are wrong, but people should stop using accusations of bigotry as a weapon to silence people simply for disagreeing with them. If you want to call someone a bigot, its pretty important to make sure you are right about it.
And for the record when it comes to that Israel/Palestine conflict I think neither side is even close to being innocent. I don't give a shit about their religions I just want families to stop being murdered by the actions of two shitty governments.
This is a meaningless statement though. We can expect that nearly anyone that's antisemitic would be critical of a country run and mostly inhabited by Jewish people.
It becomes a problem when people try to extrapolate that fact to dismiss every criticism of Israel as "this guy's probably just antisemitic."
Its only true as a matter of probability throughout the entire world because its true in a particular region that has an enormous population padding those statistics.
There is antisemitism everywhere in some amounts and it is wrong like all forms of bigotry. However, in many countries, such as the US, you are just as likely to run into a person that criticizes Israel for reasons that have nothing to do with the religion of its inhabitants. You are still free to think that they are wrong, but people should stop using accusations of bigotry as a weapon to silence people simply for disagreeing with them. If you want to call someone a bigot, its pretty important to make sure you are right about it.
And for the record when it comes to that Israel/Palestine conflict I think neither side is even close to being innocent. I don't give a shit about their religions I just want families to stop being murdered by the actions of two shitty governments.