I'm Jewish, and I personally found the post to be offensive and anti-semitic.
Israel is not my "homeland". I've never been to Israel, let alone lived there. My parents have never been to Israel. You'd have to go back over 2000 years to find an ancestor of mine who lived in Israel. I have no connection whatsoever with the actions of the Israeli government. So if you attribute their actions to me, simply because I am Jewish, that is by definition racist and anti-semitic.
Imagine if the non-black head of diversity at a major US corporation wrote a post titled "If I were Black", directly tying the actions of modern-day African governments to all African Americans. Or a post titled "If I were Catholic" doing the same thing to all US Catholics based on actions of the Vatican or even just the Pope. This sort of thing happened in the US decades ago and was acceptable then, but is not even remotely acceptable now, nor was it acceptable when this post was written.
Thanks for the commentary, it's a useful perspective. Perhaps it depends on many things, but i feel like this post is not attributing these actions to you, in any way. My reading of the actual actions being criticised in that there is no way the author could mean anything other than the jewish state of israel. Working backwards from there, it's clear to me that any reference to jew is simply because AIPAC and western media in general have spent the last ~50 years blurring the discourse to the point where Jew ~= Israeli.
Among other blatantly offensive things, he directly said "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself." Certainly sounds to me like he's attributing these actions to me and all other Jewish people.
Stop blaming "the media". If the head of diversity of one of the largest corporations in the world doesn't understand the difference between a Jewish person and an Israeli, they are not qualified for their position.
> Stop blaming "the media". If the head of diversity of one of the largest corporations in the world doesn't understand the difference between a Jewish person and an Israeli, they are not qualified for their position.
Their position is the key aspect to me.
It's possible the commenter above was right and that he didn't mean it that way (it's also possible they very much meant it exactly that way). It's possible their views have changed. But it reads the way you describe, and while one might give some random nobody the benefit of the doubt about a post from 2007 after perhaps having a conversation about it, it's an entirely different situation to have them as head of diversity.
Even if HR at Google have talked to him and are 100% confident his views are ok today and that they understand the issue with the statement, and that it won't impact their actions in the role, the problem still remains that they'll have to interact with people and communities that may never be able to trust someone who once said those things.
Israel is not my "homeland". I've never been to Israel, let alone lived there. My parents have never been to Israel. You'd have to go back over 2000 years to find an ancestor of mine who lived in Israel. I have no connection whatsoever with the actions of the Israeli government. So if you attribute their actions to me, simply because I am Jewish, that is by definition racist and anti-semitic.
Imagine if the non-black head of diversity at a major US corporation wrote a post titled "If I were Black", directly tying the actions of modern-day African governments to all African Americans. Or a post titled "If I were Catholic" doing the same thing to all US Catholics based on actions of the Vatican or even just the Pope. This sort of thing happened in the US decades ago and was acceptable then, but is not even remotely acceptable now, nor was it acceptable when this post was written.