Legitimate criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism

[Little Tich]

21. "Holocaust Inversion" - that's a real fancy name for a limited instance of a very common mistake in

in reasoning...

The thing is, that I can't really define his statement as unequivocally anti-Semitic, as this kind of flawed reasoning is very common under other circumstances not connected to Jews. Politicians and other people too, often use historical events to motivate current policies towards people who weren't involved in those historical events. It amounts to flawed reasoning to transpose the circumstances of a historical event to a current situation, and it's also a common way to motivate prejudice.

Netanyahu said something very similar about the Mufti and Hitler, implying that the Palestinians were the "real" Nazis, but I would hardly define that as "Holocaust Inversion". I'm more interested in the fact that both Livingstone and Netanyahu both are unable to separate the historical event from a political argument. They're really completely unable to do it.

So for me, it's not necessary to use a cumbersome mechanism with a fancy name to explain a relatively common flaw in reasoning.

It's also quite possible that Livingstone is an actual anti-Semite - he's made some other bizarre statements, but until that's proven, accusations of "Holocaust Inversion" are premature.