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I think that any reasonable person can see that there are competing paradigms at work in the student protests: legitimate anger at Israel's violence, and the parallel universe of antisemitic conspiracy narratives.

Organizations such as the ADL, out of a short-sighted desire to protect Israel from criticism, are empowering the antisemites by refusing to draw a clear boundary that still allows people to express their justified anger and demand solutions, without sliding into antisemitism.
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Marc Trius

The thing is, that we can all have disagreements about where this line lies and about the relative influence of the competing paradigms in the protests. But it should not be subject to dispute that:

1. The line between legitimate anger at Israel and antisemitism exists
2. People are going to stay angry at Israel if it doesn't change, that's just a reality.
3. Antisemitism is not a good thing to let fester "for now."
4. The way to fight antisemitism is not by suppressing legitimate speech.
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@alter_kaker

One clear boundary could be something like "Nevertheless, Israel has the right to exist".

@tamasrev in my opinion, the line should be defined not by attitudes towards the State of Israel, but by attitudes towards Jewish people and buy-in to antisemitic tropes, which is a well established category. But that of course is a legitimate disagreement, as is the non-trivial but important question of what exactly does "right to exist" mean

@alter_kaker IMO both of these opinions are valid.

The "right to exist" probably means the same as with other countries. For instance, nobody wants Russians to go back to Norway, just to respect the borders of its neighbors.

@tamasrev ok, so I would call that "the right of Russians to live safely in their homes," which is quite different from "Russia," which is a set of institutions whose continued existence has little to do with whether or not Russians are sent to Norway.

@alter_kaker

My hottest take is that a lot of people are trying their best to thread a complicated line, and a lot of people are trying their best to pull people off of trying to thread a complicated line, and that people focusing on the latter to the exclusion of the former is counterproductive to marginalizing the latter group.

@imstilljeremy can you please explain more specifically what you mean?

@alter_kaker

That within all of these groups, the ADL, the student protests, even people on social media, people feel the push/pull of different and competing influences, and that the vast majority are trying to do their best at walking a fine line of speaking out against what they find horrifying and dangerous without empowering something else horrifying and dangerous.

But that, within both, there are people who are doing their best to get that vast majority to stop trying to walk that fine line, either because they don't believe there is anything dangerous on the other side or because they don't find anything horrifying about the danger.

And whether I agree or disagree with where an individual draws that line on war/civilians/free speech/antisemitism/Islamophobia, I am far more concerned about the people trying to pull others off of walking the fine line.

@alter_kaker What bothers me more is the overabundance of:
* Double standards;
* Ignorance of history; and
* Logical fallacies
In the discourse. And what's most frustrating to me, is that most of those "legitimate criticizers" fall back into full "You Are Bad People" mode the moment you point any of those out.