As soon as you blame the genocide on culture rather than authoritarianism, you have definitely stepped over the line from political speech to hate speech.
Can you also see how people who aren’t hateful bigots would interpret the joke? Can’t think of an analogy (although “pardon my French” for swearing and “it’s just sparkling ___” come to mind).
I do see how the joke could be meant to be hateful. Really hope it wasn’t, and just a “you don’t understand [generic language you don’t speak but we do]” joke.
On the topic of hate speech, when it’s thinly veiled and/or coded (which it so often is), it’s sort of like direct communication between the bigot and the minority. How bystanders interpret and feel about a targeted message to a group they don’t belong to is hardly relevant.
As a Jew, I feel no connection to the events in the middle east, yet I’m constantly made to feel responsible. At the very least, everyone expects me to loudly disavow a situation I don’t understand. All I really know is that I don’t feel safe in my city anymore.
People are dumb. A Jew in NYC or Berlin has no to little influence on Israeli politics, and has no more responsibility nor imperative than all the rest of us for what’s happening right now
There exists an extremely vocal subgroup in the Jewish community that aggressively supports Israel and wants to call its every criticism discrimination of the whole Jewish population. Either this subgroup needs to be drowned out, as you find yourself having to do by constantly disavowing them, or forced out to show they do not represent the group. Otherwise those loud voices are winning, and it may be a small sub-sect but they are responsible by purposefully continually attempting to conflate those with interests in Israel, some of them even living in NYC and Berlin, dreaming of genocide with the Jewish Diaspora worldwide to evade criticism of copying techniques from the literal Nazi Party’s phase one of the Final Solution. Bibi might not say exterminate Palestinians publicly but Hitler never said to exterminate Jews either, it just sorta happened under his watch (seriously, find a source where Hitler directly ordered it and I will buy dinner). Him and his cohorts are the ones running around screaming they are Jewish and they are acting just and morally in their promised endless quest for blood, a regular Jewish person enjoying serenity becomes invisible in the backdrop. To someone barely paying attention (aka almost everyone) the crowd of Jewish people starts looking hateful and down right reprehensible to even acknowledge, all thanks to a few hateful people and the silence of others. It shouldn’t be anyone’s cross to bear, but to people who view silence a violence, not “cancelling” / disavowing them at every turn is essentially being complicit in genocide because you are “choosing” to allow this subversive group to exist within your larger group (Jewish people worldwide) and “choosing” to continue using the same identifiers as them (Religion).
OP has made it clear this was a deliberate choice since apparently the original punch line names a place, yet they still changed it to “Hebrew” instead of “Israel”.
None of these dog whistles are accidental, they are designed with plausible deniability in mind (if only OP could help themselves ad keep their mouth shut, that is, instead of admitting the quiet part out loud)
As soon as you blame the genocide on culture rather than authoritarianism, you have definitely stepped over the line from political speech to hate speech.
Suddenly the punchline feels uncomfortable!
Can you also see how people who aren’t hateful bigots would interpret the joke? Can’t think of an analogy (although “pardon my French” for swearing and “it’s just sparkling ___” come to mind).
I do see how the joke could be meant to be hateful. Really hope it wasn’t, and just a “you don’t understand [generic language you don’t speak but we do]” joke.
The original line is “It’s an Albany expression”
On the topic of hate speech, when it’s thinly veiled and/or coded (which it so often is), it’s sort of like direct communication between the bigot and the minority. How bystanders interpret and feel about a targeted message to a group they don’t belong to is hardly relevant.
As a Jew, I feel no connection to the events in the middle east, yet I’m constantly made to feel responsible. At the very least, everyone expects me to loudly disavow a situation I don’t understand. All I really know is that I don’t feel safe in my city anymore.
People are dumb. A Jew in NYC or Berlin has no to little influence on Israeli politics, and has no more responsibility nor imperative than all the rest of us for what’s happening right now
There exists an extremely vocal subgroup in the Jewish community that aggressively supports Israel and wants to call its every criticism discrimination of the whole Jewish population. Either this subgroup needs to be drowned out, as you find yourself having to do by constantly disavowing them, or forced out to show they do not represent the group. Otherwise those loud voices are winning, and it may be a small sub-sect but they are responsible by purposefully continually attempting to conflate those with interests in Israel, some of them even living in NYC and Berlin, dreaming of genocide with the Jewish Diaspora worldwide to evade criticism of copying techniques from the literal Nazi Party’s phase one of the Final Solution. Bibi might not say exterminate Palestinians publicly but Hitler never said to exterminate Jews either, it just sorta happened under his watch (seriously, find a source where Hitler directly ordered it and I will buy dinner). Him and his cohorts are the ones running around screaming they are Jewish and they are acting just and morally in their promised endless quest for blood, a regular Jewish person enjoying serenity becomes invisible in the backdrop. To someone barely paying attention (aka almost everyone) the crowd of Jewish people starts looking hateful and down right reprehensible to even acknowledge, all thanks to a few hateful people and the silence of others. It shouldn’t be anyone’s cross to bear, but to people who view silence a violence, not “cancelling” / disavowing them at every turn is essentially being complicit in genocide because you are “choosing” to allow this subversive group to exist within your larger group (Jewish people worldwide) and “choosing” to continue using the same identifiers as them (Religion).
OP has made it clear this was a deliberate choice since apparently the original punch line names a place, yet they still changed it to “Hebrew” instead of “Israel”.
None of these dog whistles are accidental, they are designed with plausible deniability in mind (if only OP could help themselves ad keep their mouth shut, that is, instead of admitting the quiet part out loud)
Big reach.