Howard Jacobson: Let’s see the ‘criticism’ of Israel for what it really is

[IndianaGreen]

Howard Jacobson: Let’s see the ‘criticism’ of Israel for what it really is

Emotions have run high over recent events in Gaza. And in this impassioned and searching essay, our writer argues that just below the surface runs a vicious strain of ancient prejudice

Wednesday, 18 February 2009

I was once in Melbourne when bush fires were raging 20 or 30 miles north of the city. Even from that distance you could smell the burning. Fine fragments of ash, like slivers of charcoal confetti, covered the pavements. The very air was charred. It has been the same here these past couple of months with the fighting in Gaza. Only the air has been charred not with devastation but with hatred. And I don’t mean the hatred of the warring parties for each other. I mean the hatred of Israel expressed in our streets, on our campuses, in our newspapers, on our radios and televisions, and now in our theatres.

A discriminatory, over-and-above hatred, inexplicable in its hysteria and virulence whatever justification is adduced for it; an unreasoning, deranged and as far as I can see irreversible revulsion that is poisoning everything we are supposed to believe in here – the free exchange of opinions, the clear-headedness of thinkers and teachers, the fine tracery of social interdependence we call community relations, modernity of outlook, tolerance, truth. You can taste the toxins on your tongue.

But I am not allowed to ascribe any of this to anti-Semitism. It is, I am assured, “criticism” of Israel, pure and simple. In the matter of Israel and the Palestinians this country has been heading towards a dictatorship of the one-minded for a long time; we seem now to have attained it. Deviate a fraction of a moral millimetre from the prevailing othodoxy and you are either not listened to or you are jeered at and abused, your reading of history trashed, your humanity itself called into question. I don’t say that self-pityingly. As always with dictatorships of the mind, the worst harmed are not the ones not listened to, but the ones not listening. So leave them to it, has essentially been my philosophy. A life spent singing anti-Zionist carols in the company of Ken Livingstone and George Galloway is its own punishment.

But responses to the fighting in Gaza have been such as to drive even the most quiescent of English Jews – whether quiescent because we have learnt to expect nothing else, or because we are desperate to avoid trouble, or because we have our own frustrations with Israel to deal with – out of our usual stoical reserve. Some things cannot any longer go unchallenged.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-let8217s-see-the-8216criticism8217-of-israel-for-what-it-really-is-1624827.html

[rockymountaindem]

1. That was really great. K & R.

[Political Heretic]

2. How am I allowed to express my outrage at the actions of the Israeli government without being called

an anti-Semite?

Someone please just tell me the proper way to do that....

[IndianaGreen]

4. The author makes some excellent points in his long but thoughtful essay

When it comes to Israel we hear no good, see no good, speak no good. We turn our backsides to what we do not want to know about and bury it in distaste, like our own ordure.

I don't think that Howard Jacobson said anywhere that criticism of Israel equated to anti-Semitism, as some on the other side of the issue are prone to accuse us of. Still, Jacobson makes several important points that deserve careful consideration. I myself, have experienced blatant and overt anti-Semitism during an ANSWER demonstration from people that I would have considered my political and labour allies. "It's the Jews!" shouted a labour organizer that I had worked with in the past.

[Political Heretic]

5. I find that quote to be horse shit.

When it comes to Israel all we hear in our media and through our government is unqualified, absolute, unwavering, unquestioning support for Israel.

If I spend more time countering the prevailing narrative, its only because the prevailing narrative is so unabashedly blindly pro-Israel.

I think, my point would be that people have every right to be fucking furious with Israel. And if people on the street aren't being clear enough in their dilleniation between the government of Israel and the Zionists and ordinary jewish individuals and families, then yes we should help them remember that distinction.

But I'm more concerned about trying to water down the mounting chorus of criticism toward Israel and the people all over the world that are fed up with that governments fucking SHIT than I am with individual ignorants who shout dumb things at a labor rally.

[IndianaGreen]

6. You are speaking of the American media, the same media that demonizes Hugo Chavez

The UK is a horse of a different color altogether. As a matter of fact, there has been more criticism of Israel and her policies in the Israeli press than in anywhere outside the Arab press.

Why is America different? It is not an Israel thingy! This same American media is the one that has to stick the "communist-run island" in any sentence having Cuba in it, that constantly refers to Chavez as a dictator, that never challenged any claims of WMD in Iraq, and that now refers to any government intervention in our economic mess as socialism.

[Political Heretic]

7. I'll grant that. I live in the US so my perspective is slanted by that.

Over here though, we might be more likely to spend more time criticizing Israel only to counter to the mass propaganda of our own government and media. :(

[ixion]

3. certainly there are people who are against the jewish religion, just as there are people

against just about anything you can shake a stick at.

My disgust with Israel is because of the way they conduct themselves. It has nothing to do with religion whatsoever.

[Larkspur]

8. I find the pro-Israel fanatics to be racists when they describe the Palestinians

They use the same language that imperialist of old used to describe those they conquered, the same language that the Americans in the 19th century used to justify slaughtering the Native Americans and the same language that American slave owners and slave owner wannabes used to describe Africans and African Americans. That hit close to home for me when I debated the man who owned the barn where my horse had lived. The barn owner is Jewish and he verbatim used the same exact language had been used against other oppressed groups. I pointed that out to him and it silenced him for a bit.

Israel in practice is an apartheid state. Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela see clearly what Israel has become and oddly enough Mahatma Gandhi predicted it years ago. The illegal Jewish settlers showcase this racism when the cameras are on them and the facts about their settlements are brought to light -- land taken illegally from Palestinians, highways built that only Jews can travel on, and settlers attacking Palestinians like the KKK did to African Americans in the South. The illegal Jewish settler is as extremist as the American KKK and Islamic terrorists are, and they do use terrorism against Palestinians, but Israel supports the illegal settlers and punishes the Palestinians as a whole.

Maintaining its Jewish trait forces Israel to use violence and injustice against indigenous non-Jews. The state of Israel is ironically perverting the Jewish soul but that has happened to others in the past. In 313 A.D. when Christianity became the state religion of Rome, the power of the Roman Empire transformed Christians, who were once persecuted, into the next generation of persecutors. Jews in Israel are undergoing the same transformation. The power of the police and military state does that.

[IndianaGreen]

9. There is a Freeper mentality out there

in which people that hold different views, or are just different, are demonized. As the NY Post has shown, racist cartoons are acceptable. Racist views are not only tolerated but encouraged. We don't even need to look at the likes of a Rush Limbaugh or an Avigdor Lieberman, just look around you.

[acmavm]

10. Poor Israel. People are objecting to their land stealing and their lies.

Who'd have thunk it?

[Behind the Aegis]

11. LOL!

:rofl:

[wuvuj]

12. That's a REAL long article...

...trying to explain how Israeli's are not Jews? Or is it that Jews are not Israeli's?

Don't blame the reaction to Gaza on non-Jews? Blame the irresponsibility of Israeli's and Jews for allowing it to happen...with US funding of course.

The Holocaust was one thing...but turning around and doing something similar sort of neutralizes sympathy for the first?

And when the US is more or less emulating and copying Israel...well how just how dumb can it get?

[LeftishBrit]

13. Jews outside Israel are not Israelis...

and should not be blamed or attacked for Israel's actions.