Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal are in Gaza and they report that Israeli soldiers carved Stars of David in homes in the decimated neighborhood of Shujaiya. “Soldiers carved Stars of David into homes in Shujaiya,” Dan Cohen writes, with this photograph:
Max Blumenthal posts the photo below, which has been retweeted nearly 600 times, and writes: “Soldiers vandalized the homes they occupied with this symbol. What sort of attitude might this encourage?”
I don’t doubt that soldiers did this, though the reporters surely don’t have direct evidence. I saw similar graffiti during a visit to Gaza in 2009, after Cast Lead ground invasion. On that occasion, too, Israeli soldiers carved a star of David in fields in the south of Gaza. Richard Goldstone documented it and said that it was one of the most upsetting things he’d encountered there.
That Star of David was said to be 60 meters in diameter, per the UN Institute for Training and Research.
Blumenthal asks what attitude this encourages. When I was in Gaza in 2009, I saw Star of David graffiti on garbage cans, evidently put there by Palestinians:
(Whether this is anti-Semitic brings up the usual convoluted philosophical discussion. You could say that the Israeli soldiers’ graffiti is anti-Semitic. My concern is that we hold Americans to account on Islamophobia when they conflate murderous ideas of radical Islamists with Islam. We expect them to make a distinction between the religion and extremists who cite that religion.)
Message to the untermenschen.
We, your superiors were here and we will come back again and again and destroy you unless you knuckle under and bow to our will.
Those are the rules.Resistance is not tolerated.
Signed, Your Master.
Since the star has been taken over as a state symbol I don’t think it can be anti-semitic in I/P. Whether one is for or against, it’s used to denote the state of Israel, not the faith (or lack of it) of Jews.
Iow, it represents zionists/zionism, the zionist state, not Jews. Ie, consign the zionist state to the dustbin of history?
And soldiers graffiti, aside from a we woz here, uses it as a symbol of state power, not as anything to do with religion.
I wonder how European Jews must have felt when invading armies carved their political symbols into the property and homes of the invaded.
My concern is that we hold Americans to account on Islamophobia when they conflate murderous ideas of radical Islamists with Islam. We expect them to make a distinction between the religion and extremists who cite that religion.
This is not comparable because the circumstances are totally different:
Most Muslims are not terrorists, whereas most Jews are Zionists.
The major Muslim organisations in Western countries distance themselves from Muslim terrorist groups, whereas the major Jewish organisations in Western countries defend the Jewish terrorist state.
Western governments do not recognise Muslim terrorist groups as representatives of “the Muslim people”. However, Western governments recognise Israel, refer to Israel as “the Jewish state”, and frequently conflate Jews with Israel by claiming that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic.
So, the difference between Muslims and terrorists is MUCH more obvious than the difference between Jews and Zionists. Therefore, I expect people to understand the difference between Muslims and terrorists. However, I am not willing to blame people for failing to see the difference between Jews and Zionists.
Some German dude has a political show on YouTube and he just did an interview with Max Blumenthal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28512uOjeRM