Originally Posted by
wiggin
On a side note of possible interest to you, Nessus, I do think that concerns about perceptions of Jews does affect posting behavior in general. I'm sure that most posters here long ago figured out that either I'm incredibly well-read or I have a particularly extensive knowledge about Judaism, Israel, etc, with the strong implication that I'm Jewish. For a long time at AtariCC, though, I was very cagey about revealing enough information to lead someone to this conclusion; sure, I participated in a lot of Israel threads, but so do a lot of people. My reasoning was that identifying a poster as Jewish colors the way people read and respond to their posts in a very obvious way (in much the same way that being identified as a fundamentalist Christian or devout Muslim would, though for Jews it rarely matters how observant/religious one is). I don't think this is overt or intentional antisemitism, but it definitely is a noticeable difference in the way people are treated. This is also true in real life; I know many religious Jews who refuse to wear obvious identifying features to work (e.g. skullcaps/kippot/yarmulkas) because they are concerned they will be treated differently; often, American religious Jews traveling abroad will intentionally hide their obvious identifying signs for fear of different treatment, and frankly for their safety (yes, including a number of countries in Western Europe).
It's a good thing that in much of the world, overt antisemitism is strongly frowned upon, largely as an outgrowth of the Holocaust. But there's still a 'soft bigotry', if you will, that's very widespread and very pernicious in how Jews are perceived by much of the world, including the 'civilized' parts. It's harder to identify and much harder to combat without seeming like an oversensitive idiot, but it very much exists. Whether it's a problem in this forum is another issue entirely - personally I don't find it to be a huge issue here compared to some other places I've been to. But it definitely exists.