The Warped Mirror/JPost..
31 May '14..
Under the title “Netanyahu playing into anti-Semites’ hands,” Ha’aretz opinion writer Carolina Landsmann makes a convincing case that the paper she works for is determined to compete with the often antisemitic websites that cater to anti-Israel activists and outright Jew-haters. Landsmann begins her not particularly coherent column by mocking the Israeli prime minister’s efforts to have good relations with countries in Asia and Africa. Miss Landsmann’s comment on this diplomatically and economically sound approach: “The West repudiates us? Let’s recreate ourselves in the East (at least until they realize who we are).”
Right, Miss Landsmann: maybe Jews can pretend for a while to be different than they really are, but truly, who would want anything to do with them once it becomes clear who the Jews really are?
For Carolina Landsmann, Israel’s prime minister is really “Emperor Netanyahu, head of the Jewish empire with its capital the State of Israel,” and one of the most frightening developments under his reign is what she calls “the ‘Jewish identity’ bill.” Presumably, she refers to the much debated initiatives to define Israel as a Jewish state, though according to her there is something even more sinister afoot:
“We are witnessing a move to nationalize the Diaspora Jews. The bill aims to identify Jewish with Israeli and convert all Diaspora Jews into Israelis de facto. It’s only a matter of time until Jews, wherever they are, get the right to vote. […] Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman are on a dangerous course. They want to harness the struggle against anti-Semitism to the struggle against moves against Israel’s policy. But they don’t realize, or do realize and turn a blind eye, that the move will backfire. It will merely inflame the rage and anger further, because it portrays Israel and the Jews as a body without borders that wants to expand beyond its state. In this sense, Netanyahu is playing into the anti-Semites’ hands by implementing their wildest fantasy about the Jews.”
For good measure, Landsmann also suggests that perhaps “such a situation is not against Israel’s interests. Zionism in its current incarnation has created a distorted dependency on anti-Semitism.”
So let’s summarize all the antisemitic tropes Miss Landsmann manages to pack into her column:
1) Jews want to deceive others who will rightly recoil once they realize who the Jews really are
2) Jews can be seen as “a body without borders” bent on expansion and control everywhere
3) Jews cause antisemitism by behaving in ways that can only confirm antisemitic fantasies about the Jews
4) Jews ultimately benefit from antisemitism
Little wonder that the Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah was excitedly tweeting Landsmann’s column as a confirmation of his views:
This is a well-deserved compliment for Carolina Landsmann given Abunimah’s Orwellian definition of antisemitism which is based on his view that Zionism is “one of the worst forms of anti-Semitism in existence today” and that it is comparable to Nazism. Unsurprisingly, Abunimah’s stance has been warmly endorsed on David Duke’s website – where they are currently working hard on “The Illustrated Protocols of Zion.” Landsmann’s article would certainly qualify as useful source material for this project.
Unsurprisingly, neither Abunimah nor Ha’aretz were impressed by the findings of the recently published ADL survey on antisemitism. A few days after Abunimah mocked the survey as merely showing that “the most Israeli-occupied places on Earth have the most ‘anti-Semitic’ views,” veteran Ha’aretz reporter Amira Hass complained that the ADL had failed to ask Palestinians “How many times have you been beaten by a Jew? How many people do you know whose land was stolen by Jews – people whom the Jews removed from their homes?”
Israel-haters like Max Blumenthal – who is popular wherever there are Jew-haters – were clearly pleased:
A Ha’aretz editorial on the same day argued:
“Netanyahu, the last of the demagogues, seized on one of the survey’s findings, which states that the place with the highest level of anti-Semitism is the Palestinian Authority areas, where 93 percent of adults allegedly hold anti-Semitic views. Of course that finding can, and should, be explained in the context of the Israeli occupation that’s going on for 47 years; an occupation in which hundreds of thousands of Jews settled on lands that are not part of the State of Israel; an occupation under which thousands of Palestinians were killed and hundreds of thousands jailed; an occupation that prevents the Palestinians from living comfortably and with dignity.”
In their eagerness to justify antisemitism, the Ha’aretz writers inevitably provided a general justification for bigotry: Have you or anyone you know ever been harmed in any way by a Muslim/Arab/immigrant? If so, it’s fine to hate Muslims/Arabs/immigrants – and if anyone calls you a racist, tell them that the political correctness of your bigotry has been certified by Israel’s famously progressive paper Ha’aretz.
Click here to return to Blog home page
Link: http://blogs.jpost.com/content/ha%E2%80%99aretz-playing-anti-semites%E2%80%99-hands
Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.
.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment