Israel/Palestine

(obviously it was an antisemitic act, as well as a deeply stupid one, and you can assume that everyone here condemns it).

Condemnation of the attack, in and of itself, is condemnation for the worst motives of the attack.

In some ways, Netanyahu is partially responsible for the antisemitic nature of it-due to his demagogic habit of referring to the Israeli government and Israel as "the Jews", a habit that implies(wrongly)that every Jewish person in the world defends Israel on what it does in the West Bank and to Gaza, and a habit that deflects anger that should be directed towards the Israeli government itself towards people who simply happen to be Israeli or simply happen to be Jewish-which is deeply unfair, since "Israel" and "the Jews" are not, and should never be treated as, synonymous terms.

BDS exists because, for too many decades, virtually ALL criticism of Israeli security policy was anathemized in the U.S. , the UK, and much of Europe. It should always have been just as acceptable to oppose the West Bank occupation and the settlement project as it was and is to oppose anything any other government of any other country ever did. No good ever came of the Israeli political leadership getting decades of special deference-all that deference ever did was to encourage intransigence for intransigence's sake among the Israeli leadership. And intransigence is never a positive thing anywhere.