Posted on 10/20/2002 1:46:17 AM PDT by MadIvan
An article by a first-year student criticising what he regards as the anti-semitism tolerated at the United Nations appeared in last week’s Yale Daily News, the paper for the elite American university. If the article was typical fare the response to it was not. The author had touched a nerve and a torrent of anger was unleashed.
“I recently attended a forum focusing on the Israeli/Palestinian issue,” wrote one respondent. “Both sides made valid points but there was a heated exchange when the pro-Israel side initiated the ‘anti-semite’ slur. I am sick and tired of Jewish people always smearing those that merely disagree with their views as ‘evil’.
“I never thought I’d say this but a lot of what the so-called ‘white supremacists’ are saying (is) proving more accurate than I feel comfortable admitting.”
Then there was the recent Not In Our Name rally in Central Park, demonstrating against a potential war against Iraq. Around the edges of the rally copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the classic forged document of 19th-century anti-semitism, were being sold. According to the New York Sun, this peddling of anti-semitic tripe was not entirely accidental.
One protester said: “There are interest groups that want Israel to dominate Palestine. If Bush goes with them and is too critical, he might lose their support . . . the international financiers have their hooks in everything.” Ah, those international financiers. Remember them? America’s anti-war movement, still puny and struggling, is showing signs of being hijacked by one of the oldest and darkest prejudices there is. Perhaps it was inevitable. The conflict against Islamo-fascism obviously circles back to the question of Israel. Fanatical anti-semitism, as bad or even worse than Hitler’s, is now a cultural norm across much of the Middle East. It’s the acrid glue that unites Saddam, Arafat, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran and the Saudis.
And if you campaign against a war against that axis, you’re bound to attract people who share these prejudices. That’s not to say the large majority of anti-war campaigners are anti-semitic. But this strain of anti-semitism is worrying and dangerous.
Earlier this year there were calls for America’s universities to withdraw any investments in Israel. A petition at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard attracted hundreds of signatures, prompting Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, to say that “serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-semitic in their effect if not their intent”. He said views that were once the preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists were now supported in “progressive intellectual communities”.
Summers’s argument was simple: why has Israel alone been singled out as worthy of divestment? Critics cite its continued occupation of the West Bank. There’s no question that Israel’s policies there are ripe for criticism and that to equate such criticism with anti-semitism is absurd. Similarly, it’s perfectly possible to argue against Israel’s domestic policies without any hint of anti-semitism. But to argue that Israel is more deserving of sanction than any other regime right now is surely bizarre.
Israel is a multiracial democracy. Arab citizens of Israel proper can vote and freely enter society; there is freedom of religion and a free press. An openly gay man just won election to the Knesset. Compared with China, a ruthless dictatorship brutally occupying Tibet, Israel is a model of democratic governance. And unlike China’s occupation of Tibet, Israel’s annexation was a defensive action against an Arab military attack.
Compare Israel to any other Middle Eastern country — Syria’s satrapy in Lebanon, Mubarak’s police state, Iraq’s barbaric autocracy or Iran’s theocracy — and it’s a beacon of light. To single it out for attack is so self-evidently bizarre that it prompts an obvious question: what are these anti-Israel fanatics really obsessed about?
The answer, I think, lies in the nature of part of today’s left. It is fuelled above all by resentment of the success western countries, and their citizens, have achieved through freedom and hard work. Just look at Israel’s amazing achievements in comparison with its neighbours: a vibrant civil society, economic growth, technological skills, an agricultural miracle.
It is no surprise that the resentful left despises it. So, for obvious reasons, do Israel’s neighbours. The Arab states could have made peace decades ago and enriched themselves through trade and interaction. Instead, rather than emulate the Jewish state, they spent decades trying to destroy it. When they didn’t succeed, Arab dictators resorted to the easy distractions of envy, hatred and obsession.
Al-Qaeda is the most dangerous manifestation of this response; Hezbollah comes a close second. But milder versions are everywhere. And what do people who want to avoid examining their own failures do? They look for scapegoats. Jews are the perennial scapegoat.
This attitude isn’t restricted to the Middle East. In the West the left has seized on Israel as another emblem of what they hate. They’re happy to see Saddam re-elected with 100% of a terrified vote, happy to see him develop nerve gas and nuclear weapons to use against his own population and others. But over Israel’s occasional crimes in self-defence? They march in the streets.
Ask the average leftist what he is for, and you will not get a particularly eloquent response. Ask what he is against and the floodgates open. Similarly, ask the average anti-war activist what she thinks we should do about Iraq and the stammering begins. Do we leave Saddam alone? Send Jimmy Carter to sign the kind of deal he made with North Korea eight years ago?
Will pressurising Israel remove the nerve gas and potential nukes Saddam has? Will ceding the West Bank to people who cheered on September 11 help defang Al-Qaeda? They don’t say and don’t know. But they do know what they are against: American power, Israeli human rights abuses, British neo-imperialism, the “racist” war on Afghanistan and so on. Get them started on their hatreds, and the words pour out. No wonder they are selling the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Central Park.
Such negativism matters. When a movement is based on resentment, when your political style is as bitter as it is angry and your rhetoric focuses not on those murdering party-goers in Bali or workers in Manhattan but on the democratic powers trying to protect them, your fate is cast. A politics of resentment is a poisonous creature that slowly embitters itself. You should not be surprised if the most poisonous form of resentment that the world has ever known springs up, unbidden, in your midst.
"I am sick and tired of Jewish people always smearing those that merely disagree with their views as ‘evil’."
For historical reasons, it is a fact of life that the Ashkenazi Jews that have immigrated to America since the late 19th Century have had a love affair with the Left.
Hopefully, when they will finally realize, as David Horowitz did, that the Czar has been dead for 85 years and that the enemy of great-grandfather's enemy is not necessarily your friend, that will change.
However, in the mean time, it is rather enjoyable to see the Jewish and Gentile Left using the same tactics on each other that they used to reserve for us.
I find it amusing that Leftists claim that the embargo on Iraq is "harmful, and killing the chilluns' ", while screaming for economic sanctions against Israel!
Funny, that the Pali-scum are NEVER worthy of ANY sanctions...
I do believe the true god of the left is Janus!
Let's be blunt, if our enemy is poorer and / or browner than we, the left will automatically take their side. It's not their fault that they embrace a radical relgion that calls for the murder of the infidel. After all, like, you know, we haven't given them enough of our money.
In other words, the Leftists are fools.
Regards, Ivan
Absolutely!! Where did this guy catch on? Every freep we had in the last year had opposing elements that were openly anti-Jewish! Especially the Palis in DC, the lefties in Boston...
Once these folks have been ostracized, sober discussion of the issues must continue. Ostracizing them is important in large measure because they want to stop discussion. But the use of inflammatory, highly prejudicial labels such as "racist," "sexist," and "anti-Semite" is itself a major barrier against sober discussion. When Smith calls Jones an anti-Semite, he's saying the following:
This is not argument; it is anathematization. It precludes any discussion of the merits that would include Jones. Moreover, if Smith's charge is true, it is very serious, but if it is false, it's even worse: it can ruin Jones for life.
There's another angle on it. This involves a fairly subtle chain of reasoning, so please bear with me.
Let's imagine that some identifiable group has supplied 100% of all the participants in a campaign of terror bombings, kidnappings, torture-murders and the like. Let's further imagine that the objective evidence strongly indicates that the great majority of the other members of this group -- that is, the ones that weren't hands-on participants in this campaign of horrors -- nevertheless approves of the terrorists' deeds and will support them at least passively, by refusing to aid in any attempt to identify them and bring them to justice. For convenience's sake, let's give this group a name: we'll call them Millennium Summitteers, or for short, Milsums.
Within the conditions described above, a good case could be made that all Milsums should be regarded with suspicion, as potential terrorists or abettors of terrorism. Moreover, if the defining characteristic of a Milsum were that he subscribes to a theology that explicitly encourages violence and fraud against non-Milsums, a good case could be made that to identify oneself as a Milsum is to say, "I am your declared enemy, whether I lift my own hand against you or simply support others who do so in the name of our shared creed."
The best demonstration of this is to replace "Milsum" above with "Nazi" or "Communist," and set the historical context as appropriate.
I'm being a little coy here, of course. But the argument is a serious one; collective characterization must remain available for those rare circumstances where it really would apply. This cannot be the case if we fling it about in cases where it does not apply.
Just so no one gets the wrong idea: I am not saying that the Jews -- a religious and cultural group -- or the Israelis -- a nation-state -- stand indicted for some sort of systemic evil. Hell, no! The Jews are among the best and most longsuffering of all the tribes of Man. They've persevered and thrived under conditions that were intended to eliminate them, while nurturing a culture of life that stands near the pinnacle of civilization. But other groups do stand indicted of such systemic evils, which they practice in a collective fashion that appears inseparable from their group identity. If the Jews -- God Forbid! -- were ever to decide that, as Jews, they have a special moral dispensation that permits them to commit the sorts of atrocities practiced by "Milsums," then it would be right to suspect and oppose them as a group.
So, by all means, if you find a real anti-Semite -- a person who hates Jews simply because they are Jews -- give true coloration to his attitude and his statements. But be very careful about the use of such terms in political discussion. They're too potent to toss about lightly, and are too easily put to unjust use.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
I have no inside information on that. I can only speculate. I think it had to do with concealing Israel's military plans, perhaps the attack on the Golan Heights that was about to occur. Bamford thinks it was to conceal war crimes, atrocities committed by the Israelis against captured Egyptian POW's.
The Holocaust and Pearl Harbor weren't accidents. The Liberty incident was. Having trouble with that distinction?
The actions of the "Liberty" were not the actions of an ally, but those of an enemy.
Your tune sounds a bit like that sung over on "LibertyForum", of which the best thing to be said is that there's perhaps a dozen posters there that I wouldn't rather gutshoot than share a room with.
I have already said on this thread why the subject interests me. I am a former member of the Naval Security Group. Are you folks incapable of understanding that? Does loyalty to comrades mean nothing to you?
And I really would like an explanation of why you say the Liberty was behaving like an enemy.
And that's the truth.
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