How can we talk about the State of Israel and its Policies without being accused of Antisemitism?
Edie Friedman
17 January 2019
Introduction
I would like to approach this difficult and vexed subject by dividing the talk into three sections:
- Some introductory remarks about being Jewish which affect Jewish attitudes towards Israel and other wider social issues
- What to avoid when talking about Israel and Jewish people
- Some suggestions to help with the debate.
This presentation is not about the Israel-Palestine conflict but about how to talk about it.
But first a word about JCORE, the organisation I work for. JCORE provides a Jewish voice on race and asylum issues. We work in three main areas: Race Equality Education, Refugee and Asylum (both campaigning and practical support) and Black-Asian-Jewish Dialogue.
I will be presenting a Jewish perspective rather than the Jewish perspective. I use the term ‘Jewish’ to include both those who subscribe to the Jewish religion (Judaism) and those who see themselves as Jewish in terms of their ethnicity and their identification with the Jewish people. Many Jews, though by no means all, identify with both the religion and the ethnicity, but secularism is a very significant tendency within the Jewish world.
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