Well you've certainly proven you're number one at dragging culture wars into every unrelated thread and not being able to shut up about gender for five minutes.

If you're so bothered about gender identity and thinking about it this much you might find Twitter to be more to your taste than slashdot.

I think you have very much misunderstood his point. He's not saying that Jews are unique in being able to hide their ethnicity, nor unique in benefiting when we do so. What he's saying that the attitude to that from outside is often different for Jews. If a mixed race person can pass as white and chooses to do so, it's generally acknowledged (especially by the progressive left, which is the point of view the book is written from) that this is a bad thing because they should not have to hide their race in order to be treated decently.

With Jews the attitude has been much more "well what's the problem you can pass as white so you're fine".

Regarding Zionism, two things. First...

Imagine I was taking to someone from a Shia Muslim background. Let's say they mentioned racism and how religion and culture were somewhat intertwined. And I've responded "well black people also have racism. And what about 9/11 that was pretty bad. Did you know about the slavery in Saudi Arabia, also the Taleban are trying to wipe out an other religions in Afghanistan".

None of those things is wrong. Acknowledging them isn't inherently racist. But you'd sure as heck give me the side eye for that response. And that's not all that far from your response.

Think about it. I'm telling your your response was a bit weird and you are essentially pointing out it wasn't factually incorrect. You are arguing a different point.

As for Zionism, I think you are muddled about it. Many consider the state of Israel to be a colossal act of Zionism. Are you arguing that Jews were in more danger from 1948 onwards than before? That seems a stretch to me, frankly. If you want to argue that the settlers are armed thugs who all ought to be in prison, are making life worse for everyone, ought to be in prison and it's deranged they've been supported by the army for decades, you won't find disagreement here, but again, why did you bring it up?

As for religion. Like I said religion ethnicity and culture are not cleanly separable. It's a bad road to go down where done religions get special laws and freedoms not afforded to others and I am against that. But not protecting religion leads to absurdities. Consider the alternative.

Let's say I could be refused service for being an observant Jew, but not an ethnic one. Well how would anyone know? Would it be ok to refuse me service if they say me leaving a shul? But the thing is I am an atheist might well be seen leaving one after, say, a bar mitzvah. Yes that's a religious service, but to not go would be to renounce a large part of my culture and stick a huge middle finger up to my family.

Or if you prefer a non Jewish example, what about a attending a church wedding? That's a religious ceremony too.

If you allow free discrimination based on religious worship or gets utterly absurd and yet people have discriminated so protections are needed.

As always it's a fine line and they're are always edge cases and what you hear about will be 90% arseholes, because basically laws are for arseholes more or less. But just because something is hard and impossible to get right didn't mean that bit doing it is more wrong

Sure, but I'm not currently talking to those people. I know what broadly speaking people are bigoted and I know that people will latch onto events to flaunt their bigotry.

You're the one who jumped from me taking about my ethnicity to *but Zionists*. Would you have done the equivalent for any other group?

Anyway read the book. It'll be better reading than "10 years to save the west".

Hmm I have a house, a garden (not a yard), a bicycle, no car and regularly use public transport.

Not really sure what the problem is.

I'm not particularly angry, but I am pointing out in strong language what you are doing. If you want to understand, read David Baddiel's book on the subject.

Now bear in mind you've taken a very few steps to get from me saying in response to a comment about protecting religions "well ethnicity and religion in Jews is not well separated and racists don't care" to taking about Israel, Zionism (which you still aren't clear over) and the genocide. That's massively extreme, frankly.

Why? Why do you think this is relevant? I have no control over Israel. Any random American had more control than I do because they at least have as chance against voting for a representative who would cut aid. I'm not a citizen. I have no voting rights. I'm British.

This is very little different than all the usual suspects bringing up crime statistics, and cherry picking the worst examples of a very broad category in order to taunt the whole when people are criticising the police over violence against black people. You wouldn't do that, so why drag it in to this discussion?

Like I said get the book and read it. It is not long, it'll take your a few hours.

You would #notallmen if a woman talks about sexism. You wouldn't bring up slave labour in Saudi Arabia if a Muslim talked about Islamophobia. If a black person was talking about experiences of racism you wouldnt "well akshually" and start pointing out others who have worse racism. If a Chinese person did, would you segue nearly into the Uyghur genocide which is also ongoing. All I ask is that your extend the same courtesy to the Jews.

Motor vehicle pollution is still a massive cause of illness and death.

Better than massively totally fucking awful can still be pretty terrible.

As for the worrying about poor people, they have lower car ownership and tend to live in cheaper places which often means closer to pollution. And besides, the average car price is about $48k and there are EVs for under 30.

I think ICE cars should be taxed heavily and the extra tax should be used to offset vehicle pollution related healthcare costs and the knock-on economic costs of having sick workers. Anything less is freeloading!

If you haven't read David Baddil's book "Jews don't count" you should. He puts it better than I can, so if you want to actually understand the perspective of Jews it's worth a read.

I'm sure there has been an increase in abuse, both of Jews and of Muslims, and Arabs

Don't muddy the waters. You'd recognise that tactic if someone said "white lives matter too", but it's basically the same tactic. We're not in the game of oppression Olympics here, so what are you trying to tell me? anti-Semitism isn't so bad because there are other isms too? I should stop complaining and advocate for someone else instead?

And stop falling into broad tropes with "Zionists". Are you taking about just the existence of the state of Israel, the Jews who support it, the Christians and even Muslims in some case who have supported it, or the more extreme versions like the settlers?

And also wtf is it with yelling me how I ought to relate to my ethnicity, cultural heritage and associated religion? Would you do that to any ethnicity other than Jews?

As for the flag good grief. The union flag is a mishmash or 3 different Christian symbols! 64 out of 195 countries have religious symbols in their flags. Why is it only a problem when Jews do it?

You really need to read that book I recommended.

Going to nitpick here a bit because I can.

Smart and dumb phones haven't been different tech for years and years. They are all ARM MCU based things with colour LCD or OLED screens and flash memory. The difference is software and usually smart phones have higher spec parts. Smart phones have more sensors, though that varies within smartphones too. Dumb phones usually have more buttons.

But it hasn't really been one tech replacing another as such. Plus dumb phones are still selling reasonably well to people who want cheaper phones, longer battery life, need buttons, want to reduce screen time but not disconnect completely and so on.

Also I don't think smart watches have replaced watches. Mostly phones have replaced watches. And watches outsell smart ones about 4 to 1. I can't see myself ever owning a smart watch. It's not that I'm a Luddite, but I don't want to be even closer to alerts. My pocket is close enough. They're also expensive and not so rugged and I am hard on watches for some reason.

No free lunch cuts both ways.

There is no free lunch in letting cars pollute freely. There's a huge knock-on cost which is bourne by everyone.

ThinkPad used to put drain holes in the keyboard in case you spilled drinks.

Netanyahu isn't the only one

The GP was quoting him specifically.

Especially today where we are seeing baseless claims of anti-Semitism when people, including people of Jewish ancestry and of the Jewish faith, are protesting against the actions of Zionists. It seems to me that clarity is very much required.

Why is clarity required? That has no effect on the baselessness or otherwise of claims of antisemitism.

Why do you need to distinguish between an ethnic Jew and an ethnic Jew who worships?

And what precisely do you mean by Zionists? It's term encompassing a spectrum with a huge disparity in meanings and doesn't even exclusively cover Jews.

So again what relevance does it have whether I go to shul?

I'm not sure I see your point about the nature of Jewishness.

The kind of people who are bigoted against Jews don't bother to check if you're atheist or not. Why is it anyone's business whether I go to shul or not. I'm Jewish either way.

Especially today where we are seeing baseless claims of anti-Semitism when people, including people of Jewish ancestry and of the Jewish faith, are protesting against the actions of Zionists.

We're also seeing an awful lot of cases where people are using it as an excuse to tip over into antisemitism.

For example:

https://www.theguardian.com/ne...

Tell me you didn't read what I read without saying you didn't read it.

Hate speech can be legal, that doesn't make it not hate speech.

Well, there is that I suppose, but to me it just seems like it is making it harder for people who are ethnically/culturally Jewish to separate that identity from the Jewish religion.

I'm going to quote Jay Rayner to you: "Understand that I am both Jewish and eat pork because there is no God and you understand a few very basic things about me."

There is not much separation between the two. If you know I don't worship the only permitted god, that tells you something about my Saturday morning habits (perhaps) and diet (perhaps), depending on how frum I am.

Why would I care to distinguish more? It's only going to be of interest to someone I'm having a very in depth conversation with or someone with an axe to grind.

The other issue is that we end up protecting religious beliefs that should not be protected, sometimes at the expense of other people's rights.

People's rights are always a tradeoff. Some people want to right to discriminate and oppress others, others want the opposite. There has been a long and storied history of using religion as an excuse for discrimination too, much more so than the opposite.