The Anti-Semitism We Never Talk About

[shira]

When a large number of foreign-policy experts—both Republicans and Democrats—falsely attribute many of the world’s ills to the Jewish state, they are channeling an ancient hatred. The time has come to say so.

Schizophrenia is a much-abused metaphor. Those of us who have ever cared about someone who suffers from the illness have a hard time with all those pundits who get it wrong, confusing it with split-personality disorder, and then applying it metaphorically to anybody who carries two contradictory thoughts. But knowing about the disease can still be helpful in talking about politics—giving us a much better metaphor to describe the conversation about Israel taking place in Washington today.

Schizophrenics suffer not from multiple personalities, but from an inability to tell the difference between things they encounter or imagine on the one hand and reality on the other. It’s been described as a kind of filtering problem: If they overhear someone on television saying, “the court awarded me $5 million,” a schizophrenic may easily believe she is owed that money and say so repeatedly for years. Schizophrenics also suffer from all manner of delusions, believing things happened that never did. And if they are also paranoid, they will try to convince you that secretive people and forces are conspiring to hurt them.

I can’t tell you how often I have been made to feel like many of Israel’s critics suffer from this disease—or at least are eager to imitate it with shocking fidelity. The use of words like “apartheid,” “genocide,” or “ethnic cleansing” to describe a country that I and millions of other educated, sensitive human beings have visited and lived in without noticing anything resembling South Africa, Rwanda, or Kosovo—a regular Western democratic country I have traveled through, including in the very territories and checkpoints and settlements some are insisting I am in denial about—is on the face of it silly, and remains so no matter how many people repeat it.

Except that schizophrenia is not silly. It is tragically debilitating in countless ways, not the least of which is that the patient rarely admits anything is wrong, and therefore lacks the means of getting help. A political discourse that cannot distinguish reality from fantasy is forever at a loss, taken aback by tragedies that follow one another like blinding winter storms—and ultimately will find themselves at the mercy of those who control the fantasies, spelling the end of anything resembling responsible self-rule. Building your worldview on facts, not just feelings, is deadly important.

And for Israelis, in particular, the fact that fantastical claims about their country run rampant around the world is especially damaging. You may say what you will about the decline of anti-Semitism after the Holocaust, but today Israelis remain the only sovereign people whose very existence continues to be a delicate question, the greatest target of enlightened venom in polite Western circles, and the only country the hatred of which crosses civilizational and economic and cultural and class lines. Anti-Semitism may have morphed and modernized, but it continues to menace.

MUCH MORE:
http://www.thetower.org/article/the-anti-semitism-we-never-talk-about/

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. Best article I've seen on anti-semitism in a long time.

I've forwarded this to may friends.

[shira]

2. Reminds me of a Walter Russell Mead post, which has stuck with me ever since....

...Jew haters don’t understand how the world works; anti-Semitism is both a cause and a consequence of a basic failure to comprehend the way pluralistic and liberal societies behave. As a result, nations and political establishments warped by this hatred tend to make one dumb decision after another — staring at shadows, warding off imaginary dangers, misunderstanding the nature of the problems they face.

Via Meadia‘s fight against anti-Semitism isn’t just about solidarity with threatened or scapegoated Jews. It is also about the fight for lucidity, liberalism and sound social and international policy. Where Jew hatred flourishes, no freedom is safe and no country is strong.

Anti-Semitism is not just a moral obscenity; it is the road to intellectual and political ruin. At Via Meadia we will do what we can to dissuade people from venturing down this blindest of alleys.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/05/13/the-bbc-and-the-jews/

[Ken Burch]

4. Everyone in the I/P group is against antisemitism, shira. Nobody here has to prove that to you.

Mere criticism of the actions of the Israel government does not equate to antisemitism-and, as far as that goes, a lot of those gentiles who worked to help create the State of Israel (such as Arthur Balfour and Lloyd George)did so precisely because the were antisemites-they wanted to create a "Jewish homeland" so that their countries would be Jew-free.

And if you aren't aware of the fact that most of the U.S. Republicans who make a pompous display of being "pro-Israel" would gladly prohibit Jews from living in their neighborhoods (and are sometimes members of private clubs who still bar Jewish people from membership)you're delusional. Clearly, Boehner would love it Cincinnati became Judenrein(and Lindsay Graham would want the same for South Carolina)).

It's the people of the left, the people who oppose ALL forms of oppression, that are the true foes of antisemitism. The way to fight antisemitism is to fight against all forms of hatred and bigotry-not to give unquestioning support to any one state-especially a state who's current government's policies are doing more to endanger Israelis and Diaspora Jews than anybody else on the planet). Israel has a right to exist, but it would do the people of Israel no favors for the rest of the world to say "we'll back anything your government says it has to do in the name of 'security'". Israel HAD that kind of global support from 1948 to the Six Day War, and nothing positive came as a result of it. Nor would anythingn positive come of the world uniting in opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state. There's nothing positive whatsoever in the status quo between Israel and Palestine-it's all a total disaster for all concerned.

It has never been as simple as "only those who unquestioningly defend the West Bank occupation and the settlements can claim to not be antisemites".

[shira]

6. One can't be both against antisemitism while also pro-Hamas. n/t

[aranthus]

8. Do you agree that rejecting the legitimacy of the one Jewish state is antisemitic? n/t

[Ken Burch]

12. While I don't reject that state's legitimacy...and don't think a single state is currently feasible-

no, I don't equate being a non-Zionist to being a hater of Jews.

If you really want to silence calls for a unitary state, you need to be calling on the right-wing Israeli government to stop opposing the creation of a Palestinian state.

It's not a morally legitimate position to say that Jews have a right to a Jewish state, but Palestinian Arabs should have to earn the privelege of having a state for themselves.

Netanyahu needs to stop delegitimizing the state he's currently governing-it's his bellicosity, arrogance and repeated acts of West Bank land confiscation that are building support for the single state idea-he's treating the Palestinians like the Romans treated the ancient Israelites-a group that had its own militants, the Zealots...and leaders of its own armed resistance, like Bar Kochba.

The only way to guarantee the security of the people of Israel is to stop oppressing the people of Palestine.

[Ken Burch]

3. Nobody is attributing "most of the world's ills" to Israel.

And once again, criticism of the Israeli government is not the same thing as hatred of the Jews.

What good does it to, what purpose does it serve, to equate criticism of the actions of the Israeli government with antisemitism?
How does doing that lead to anything positive at all?

[shira]

7. Sure they are. It's called linkage...

Once Israel is "solved", so much more around the region and world will just "fall into place".

Everything will be so much better...

[LeftishBrit]

32. I'm afraid some people do say it

I've seen sources quoted on DU - and elsewhere - which say that Israel plunders America's treasury and is thus responsible for the lack of universal healthcare; that it caused America and Britain to start the Iraq war, and more generally that 'wars are fought for Israel'; that if Israel didn't exist there would be no conflicts in the Middle East; even that Israel instigated 9-11.

I do NOT think that criticizing the Israeli government's actions is anti-Semitic or even unjustified. I think they have bad governments much of the time, and a dreadful government right now! But there are people who seem to think that Israel controls everywhere else, and is responsible for many of the world's evils; and I think that is what's being referred to here.

[guillaumeb]

5. my mistake about the post

I thought it was about the real anti-Semitism that is never acknowledged.

The anti-Semitism that is directed against the Arabs. You know, the other Semitic peoples.

Here is some information that might help when talking about anti-Semitism.


Semite, person speaking one of a group of related languages, presumably derived from a common language, Semitic (see Semitic languages). The term came to include Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, some Ethiopians, and Aramaean tribes including Hebrews.Oct 20, 2014



Semite | people | Encyclopedia Britannica

[aranthus]

9. This is a prime example of the dishonest thinking of the anti-Israel crowd.

You don't get to play games with the definition of words. Antisemitism means hatred of Jews, not hatred of semites. But then you had to have already known that, since it is such an obvious definition. And even if you didn't, all you had to do was look it up.

[guillaumeb]

10. then what does one call prejudice against Arabs?

They are both semitic peoples. Can only one of the semitic peoples be discriminated against?

My point, and you are correct that I do know the definition of the term, is that there is a blatant prejudice against Arabs in general, and Muslims in particular. Arab=terrorist. Muslim= terrorist. Islam=terror religion. It is everywhere and many on the right and left make no apologies for it.

How do we understand what is happening around the world and in this country when we cannot talk honestly about it?

As to your heading, I am neither pro-Israeli nor pro-Palestinian. I feel that the simplistic viewpoint of Israel=good and Palestine=bad might be an easy way to categorize things but it is no way to understand things.

There is a saying: If you do not know history everything is a mystery. My feeling is that there is more mythstory than history in the discussion.

[aranthus]

11. Anti-Arab. Anti-Arabism.

Islamophobia. The words exist. However, one of the memes that has been coming from the anti-Israel side for decades is that Arabs can't be antisemitic for wanting to destroy the Jewish state because they are Semites.

[guillaumeb]

13. a common meme from the support Israel side

is that the Palestinians want to destroy Israel and the Israelis do not reciprocate.

Many Israeli politicians are on record as being opposed to any form of Palestinian state. This is rarely reported in the US corporate media. This lack of reporting translates into lack of knowledge. Even when Israeli politicians claim to support a two state solution, their actions give the lie to their words. At the same time as they claim to desire peace, the Israelis are stealing ever more Palestinian land.

Until and unless the world is willing to address the Israeli violations of International Law as far as stealing Palestinian land and incorporating the land into Israel, until and unless the World Court addresses Israeli war crimes against civilians, until and unless Israel withdraws from all lands stolen in 1967, there will probably be no peace.

[LeftishBrit]

31. Anti-Arabism; or if specific to Muslim Arabs, a form of Islamophobia

Both anti-Arabism and Islamophobia are pretty common; and yes, there is some RW media encouragement of it. But anti-Semitism is a term devised by 19th-century Europaean anti-Semites to refer to anti-Jewish hostility, specifically that which is based on ethnicity rather than just religion.

It may not be a particularly good term, but it is the term that we have.

I don't mind saying 'anti-Jewish prejudice' or 'Judeophobia' or whatever if you prefer that to 'anti-Semitism'; but no linguistic quibbling can abolish the fact that some people are prejudiced against Jews!


'I feel that the simplistic viewpoint of Israel=good and Palestine=bad might be an easy way to categorize things but it is no way to understand things.'

I fully agree with you on that; but this still doesn't justify blaming Israel (or Palestine if it comes to that) for everything that goes wrong elsewhere in the world; and that is what the article is about.

[Bonobo]

14. If there is any SINGLE way to identify an anti-Semite...

it is to look for people that say:

"Arabs are Semites too111!!!"

[Israeli]

15. Really !! ???

Absolute nonsense Bonobo.

Ever heard of Uri Avnery and/or Gush Shalom ??

Read and learn :

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1424446157/

In theory, Arab anti-Semitism is an oxymoron, since Arabs are Semites. Indeed, Arabs may be more Semitic then Jews, because Jews have mingled for many centuries with Gentiles.
But, of course, the German publicist Wilhelm Marr, who probably invented the term Antisemitismus in 1880 (after inventing the term Semitismus seven years earlier) never met an Arab in his life. For him the only Semites were Jews, and his crusade was solely against them.

[Bonobo]

17. The term "Anti-Semitism" is used (common usage) as a reference to Jew-Hating.

Read and learn yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism

Antisemitism (also spelled Anti-Semitism or anti-semitism) is prejudice against, hatred of, or discrimination against Jews as a national, ethnic, religious or racial group.[1][2] A person who holds such positions is called an "antisemite". As Jews are an ethnoreligious group, antisemitism is generally considered a form of racism.[3]

While the conjunction of the units anti, Semite and ism indicates antisemitism as being directed against all Semitic people, the term was popularized in Germany in 1873 as a scientific-sounding term for Judenhass ("Jew-hatred&quot ,[4] although it had been used for at least two decades prior,[5] and that has been its normal use since then.[6] For the purposes of a 2005 U.S. governmental report, antisemitism was considered "hatred toward Jews—individually and as a group—that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity."[7]

[Israeli]

18. Really !!! ???....once again Bonobo...

.....are you calling Uri Avnery an anti-Semite ?

[Bonobo]

19. Just telling you what "anti-Semite" means.

"Israeli".

[Israeli]

20. No Bonobo ...

you are " just telling " me what you think anti-Semite means .

[Bonobo]

21. Yeah me and Wikipedia.

As opposed to you.

[Israeli]

22. Not just me Bonobo.....

........

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1424446157/

" In theory, Arab anti-Semitism is an oxymoron, since Arabs are Semites. Indeed, Arabs may be more Semitic then Jews, because Jews have mingled for many centuries with Gentiles.
But, of course, the German publicist Wilhelm Marr, who probably invented the term Antisemitismus in 1880 (after inventing the term Semitismus seven years earlier) never met an Arab in his life. For him the only Semites were Jews, and his crusade was solely against them. "

[Bonobo]

23. LOL. Israeli, your own quote shows you are mistaken

"the German publicist Wilhelm Marr, who probably invented the term Antisemitismus in 1880 (after inventing the term Semitismus seven years earlier) never met an Arab in his life. "

Quite right. Because the term was invented to describe Jew-hating.

I hope you realized you just stepped in it.

[Israeli]

24. No Bonobo....

It was you that stepped in it with your post # 14.

" In theory, Arab anti-Semitism is an oxymoron, since Arabs are Semites. Indeed, .. "

Anti-What?

21/02/15

ANTI-SEMITISM is on the rise. All over Europe it is raising its ugly head. Jews are in danger everywhere. They must make haste and come home to Israel before it is too late.

True? Untrue?

Nonsense.

Source : http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1424446157/

[sabbat hunter]

37. look in any dictionary

Anti-semite means anti-jew.

[King_David]

28. No I think you don't understand what it means

It means hatred and bigotry against Jews and only Jews.

[guillaumeb]

25. So any criticism of the Israeli state is evidence that the critic hates

Jews? Ridiculous. If I criticize Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, does that make me a Canadian hater, or a self hater. Please. When I criticize the policies of the State of Israel, I am criticizing the genocidal, land stealing actions of the leaders of that state. Nothing more. Any attempt to equate criticism with anti-Semitism, as you define it, is both intellectually dishonest and is a crude attempt to put your opponent on the defensive.

Attempting to rewrite the history of Israel and Palestine is yet another example of how the "support Israel no matter what" crowd will ignore any facts that conflict with the simplistic Israel=good/Palestine=bad theme.

[King_David]

29. Uri Avnery clearly is clueless about Antisemitism in the Golah

That's what living in a Jewish country does.

He knows about Jewish affairs within Israel but when it comes to Golah Jewish affairs its best left to us who live there.

[King_David]

26. Bonobo is 100% correct there

Why on earth would you defend that?

Another post here in DU demonstrating why official Democratic Party officials will never ever link to these pages.

[shaayecanaan]

16. Apparently the author thinks that passages such as the following

are evidence of antisemitism:-

The United States must recognize that success in Iraq depends on significant parallel progress toward peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the single most combustible and galvanizing issue in the Arab world. If the United States disengages from Iraq before making significant headway toward settling that dispute, it could face a sovereign Iraqi government that is militantly hostile to both Israel and the United States.

[Takashi Zara]

27. I find it hard to believe that there is any aspect of "anti-Semitism" that is not talked about..

...endlessly, with or without adequate provocation.

[LeftishBrit]

30. Some good points - but I would disagree that we 'never talk about it'

It's certainly a point I've made a few times: that it is not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel, even to do so very strongly; in disagreement with some here, I don't even consider that it's necessarily anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist; but it IS anti-Semitic to blame Israel or its supporters for everything that goes wrong elsewhere in the world. If Israel had never existed, there would still be wars all over the place, including the Middle East. Israel does not cause all or most of the conflicts that ever existed!

[arcane1]

34. Maybe because Merkle isn't going to give a foreign policy speech before congress this week?

[arcane1]

36. What is the origin of this alleged attitude?

[arcane1]

39. Oh, I get it. You're not a liberal, but instead fall for conservative fantasies about the left.

And now the left is anti-Semitic too?

You're on the wrong site.

[GP6971]

40. Keep in mind the

Scandinavian countries have never had large standing armies. UK, France and Germany......another story.

[FarrenH]

41. Ah memories

Last edited Wed Mar 4, 2015, 10:54 AM - Edit history (2)

I remember growing up under South African Apartheid and how racist, nationalist whites used to say that anti-Apartheid activists abroad didn't know what they were talking about, and how good we really were to "the bleks". Most of them, of course, had never been to a black township and seen the security police beating up children. They only saw the black gardeners and nannies who got up at 4am and spent hours trekking from the township every day to get to work on time, the single mothers who had to leave their small children at home and could only care for them after 8 or 9pm when they got home (they were "untrustworthy" and "lazy&quot before catching a few hours sleep. Some did their military service doing township duty in the more restless townships, where "barbaric", "ungrateful" blacks were rioting. But the cognitive dissonance was so strong that the very justifiable rage of those township dwellers was seen as evidence of their savagery and ingratitude. After all "we" built those rows and rows of tiny houses for them, and the packed dormitories where male "migrant labour" (because they were officially residents of broken up fragments of shitty land called "homelands&quot lived, in huge, treeless, dusty townships with only one road in and one road out for greater control. Of course "we" didn't build those tiny houses or dorms, they did, under white direction.

But so many of my white fellow South Africans were always ready to lecture foreigners about how they knew nothing about the situation, about how communism was an ever present threat and how the ANC and the PAC wanted to kill all the white people. How it wasn't discrimination it was "separate development" and they had their own territories, the aforementioned fragmented bantustans. How "the bleks" had it better than anywhere else in "Efrica" and the savage ingratitude of those who dared protest was evidence of the wisdom of this state of affairs. White children were encouraged to go on fun trips to "veldskool" where they camped out in the bush and were inculcated with fear of the black horde overrunning us and rationalizations for the state of affairs, that they dutifully repeated as adults.

They couldn't see the brutality and barbarism of Apartheid even though it was all around them. All they could see was the "barbarism" of the oppressed, and the civilizing project and civilized manner of the white man in Africa. The beauty and development we'd created on this continent. Even when they participated in it's brutal excesses, they blamed the victims and as the disinvestment campaign against Apartheid SA began to grow teeth, they were shocked and confused by the world's condemnation. "If only they knew the *real* story they would tell each other, not this *propaganda*." And look over there! "Efrica's a mess". Why don't "people" (meaning foreign whites of course - "people" meant white by default unless used in the form "those people&quot protest Zimbabwe or Zambia or Angola instead? Can't they *see* that if you hand "these people" the reins, all they'll do is kill each other, and us, and fuck things up?

And they were wrong. Not just wrong but morally culpable in racism and savagery. At best, the ones that genuinely abhored violence and didn't participate directly were guilty of telling each other convenient fictions their entire lives, at a remove from the violence in their safe, expansive, leafy white suburbs, because seeing reality, the full horror of what they were complicit in was too ghastly an alternative. And the worst of them were savage participants in all of the brutality, and blamed their victims for their own sins.

I know, from experience, how people can live their whole lives in a self-serving, protective, cognitive bubble and know less about the reality of their own situation than concerned outsiders with a clear conscience and egalitarian values, because in the immediate aftermath of the end of Apartheid I met many, many foreign rights campaigners who'd fought to end it and came to South Africa, and knew more about the nasty side of our history than most of the people I grew up with who were *still* saying "they're don't know what they're talking about" while filling up their garages with canned foods and other supplies in preparation for the apocalypse that was certain to follow Apartheid's end.

So fuck you, David Hazony, I've known people like you my whole life. Your personal testimony of how the Israel you hear others describe does not resemble the wonderful land you know so well is not convincing to this child of Apartheid. Your tired deployment of the anti-semitism trope sounds like the rationalizing of the Civilized and Civilizing White Man in Africa.