Fury as Israel president claims English are 'anti-semitic'

The Telegraph ^ | 7/31/10 | David Harrison and Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem

[Nachum]

Israel's president has accused the English of being anti-semitic and claimed that MPs pander to Muslim voters.

Shimon Peres said England was "deeply pro-Arab ... and anti-Israeli", adding: "They always worked against us."

He added: "There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary."

His remarks, made in an interview on a Jewish website, provoked anger from senior MPs and Jewish leaders who said the 87-year-old president had "got it wrong".

But other groups backed the former Israeli prime minister and said the number of anti-semitic incidents had risen dramatically in the UK in recent years.

[j-damn]

You’re still having a hard time following along. There is no “hate list”. There are only facts to back up the statement that the British cultural elite were/are some of the worst bigots on the planet—they don’t just hate the Jews.

[rmlew]

Peres called the British establishment antisemitic. "And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab, of course, not among all Englishmen, and anti-Israeli, in the establishment. "

It is far worse, it is anti-English.

[propertius]

I think this excellent piece by Daniel Hannan, a man respected by most on FR, addresses the issue very well.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100049324/shimon-peres-was-wrong-if-anything-britain-has-the-strongest-philo-semitic-tradition-in-europe/

[dervish]

“Are we anti-Korean because the USA makes comments about North Korean atrocities? “

Are we anti-US when we compare GITMO to the Gulag? I would say resoundingly YES.

There is something called the New anti-Semitism where instead of Jews, per se, being singled out for hatred, Israel is. Israel is no North Korea just as the US does not torture and is not imperialistic.

Natan Sharansky defines it as the Three ‘D’ Test:

DEMONIZATION

The first D is the test of demonization.

Whether it came in the theological form of a collective accusation of deicide or in the literary depiction of Shakespeare’s Shylock, Jews were demonized for centuries as the embodiment of evil. Therefore, today we must be wary of whether the Jewish state is being demonized by having its actions blown out of all sensible proportion.

For example, the comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and of the Palestinian refugee camps to Auschwitz — comparisons heard practically every day within the “enlightened” quarters of Europe — can only be considered anti-Semitic.

Those who draw such analogies either do not know anything about Nazi Germany or, more plausibly, are deliberately trying to paint modern-day Israel as the embodiment of evil.

DOUBLE STANDARDS

The second D is the test of double standards. For thousands of years a clear sign of anti-Semitism was treating Jews differently than other peoples, from the discriminatory laws many nations enacted against them to the tendency to judge their behavior by a different yardstick.

Similarly, today we must ask whether criticism of Israel is being applied selectively. In other words, do similar policies by other governments engender the same criticism, or is there a double standard at work?

It is anti-Semitism, for instance, when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while tried and true abusers like China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria are ignored.

Likewise, it is anti-Semitism when Israel’s Magen David Adom, alone among the world’s ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross.

DELIGITIMIZATION

The third D is the test of deligitimization. In the past, anti-Semites tried to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish religion, the Jewish people, or both. Today, they are trying to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state, presenting it, among other things, as the last vestige of colonialism.

While criticism of an Israeli policy may not be anti-Semitic, the denial of Israel’s right to exist is always anti-Semitic. If other peoples have a right to live securely in their homelands, then the Jewish people have a right to live securely in their homeland.

To remember the 3D test I suggest we recall those 3D movies we enjoyed as children. Without those special glasses the movie was flat and blurred. But when we put on our glasses the screen came alive, and we saw everything with perfect clarity.

In the same way, if we do not wear the right glasses, the line between legitimate criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism will be blurred and we will not be able to recognize this ancient evil, much less fight it.

But if we wear the special glasses provided by the 3D test — if we check whether Israel is being demonized or deligitimized, or whether a double standard is being applied to it — we will always be able to see anti-Semitism clearly.

http://www.hagalil.com/antisemitismus/europa/sharansky-1.htm