History’s Role in the War on Jews - by Jonathan Tobin

...The point here is that those who wish to speak up for Israel need to understand that it is only historical ignorance and willful blindness that can cause us to fail to notice that those who wish to deny Jews the rights to statehood and self-defense — rights that are not denied any other people — are engaging in an act of bias that is indistinguishable from anti-Semitism. While academic anti-Zionists see themselves as promoting a point of view that is distinct from those who are killing Jews in the streets of Paris or Jerusalem, they are, in effect, attempting to provide the killers with a moral legitimacy they don’t deserve.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
29 February '16..

In recent years, a rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe has called into question the long-term viability of Jewish life in Western Europe. Given the involvement of terror groups in some of the spectacular instances of anti-Jewish violence, much of the discussion about the topic has been on the influence oft immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, who have brought with them a mindset that is rooted in the conflict with Israel. But as much as those incidents are eroding the notion that Western capitals are safe places for those who wear items that identify them as Jews or even shop at businesses that cater to Jews, the problem can’t be pinned entirely on immigrants or radical Islam. What has happened in Europe is that at the same time a movement led by cultural elites has stigmatized the Jewish state and Jews that support it as illegitimate. But the notion that we can separate crude violence from the protests of intellectuals is misleading.

As our Jonathan Neumann pointed out last week recent events at Britain’s two leading universities — Oxford and Cambridge — have started to make “the elemental connection between hostility to the Jewish state and hostility to Jews” apparent to observers. Intellectual thought leaders who have been determined to try to preserve the conceit that their support for isolating Israel is a respectable position that has no connection to traditional Jew hatred are now acquiescing to a cultural shift that treats Jews with contempt. As historian Simon Schama noted last week in the Financial Times, this problem is to be found in the left’s beliefs about Europe’s original sins of imperialism and colonialism. The enthusiasm for the war on Israel among intellectuals is, he believes, to be explained in, “the collapse of the Soviet Union and the retreat of Marxist socialism around world,” that means, “militant energies have needed somewhere to go.”

The ability of the left to sell this fraudulent view of history in which the rights of Jews to their ancient homeland is conflated with European colonialism is, the historian thinks, rooted in the ignorance of the history of the Middle East and the Jews on the part of so many otherwise educated people. They have made the jump from criticism of specific Israeli policies to a belief that the creation of Israel was illegitimate and must be rescinded. Schama, who is a critic of the Netanyahu government, points out that such people are not only ignorant of Jewish rights to historic Palestine and the fact that Jewish ties and settlement there has been continuous throughout history but also the facts about anti-Semitism. Schama is correct when he says Zionism is primarily about Jewish self-determination, a concept that is considered sacred when it is exercised by anyone other than Jews.

“History says” anti-Semitism has not been caused by Zionism; it is precisely the other way round. Israel was caused by the centuries-long dehumanization of the Jews.”

If Jews once feared thugs in brown shirts and jackboots, he now points out that the Jew-haters are to be found elsewhere:

Forty Years After Infamous UN Resolution, It’s Clear That Anti-Zionism is Racism

...A few years ago, while writing a piece about Israel and the UN, I asked a European diplomat in New York about the likelihood of abolishing the Division for Palestinian Rights, assuming that the political will could be summoned by the world’s democracies. “Once something exists at the UN,” he guardedly responded, “it’s quite hard to abolish it.” This was another way of saying that without the support of the Arab and Islamic states and their allies, nothing can be created or dismantled at the UN And why, the reasoning would logically proceed, bother picking a fight over a body that 99 percent of the world’s population, including the vast majority of Palestinians, have never even heard of?

Ben Cohen..
Algemeiner..
09 November '15..

JNS.org – This week marks the 40th anniversary of one of the worst instances of antisemitism since the end of the Second World War. On Nov. 10, 1975, the United Nations — a body created out of the ashes of the Holocaust — passed General Assembly Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement, with racism and racial discrimination.

That resolution was the culmination of a lengthy campaign by the Soviet Union to turn Israel into the only state within the UN system to have its legitimacy questioned. Soviet Jews had been persecuted in the name of “anti-Zionism” since the days of Josef Stalin’s dictatorship, and Resolution 3379 represented the globalization of that campaign. To that end, the Soviets enlisted the support of Arab states and developing nations, all of whom, in promoting the slander that Zionism is racism, were engaging in the oldest form of racism themselves.

Only a handful of people at the General Assembly grasped this fundamental fact back in 1975. One of them was Chaim Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the world body. In his magnificent speech — commemorated at a special event hosted by Israel’s UN mission this week — Herzog reminded the delegates of another anniversary, also on Nov. 10: Kristallnacht, that dreadful winter’s night in 1938 when Nazi stormtroopers attacked defenseless Jewish targets across Germany. The pogrom resulted in the incarceration of 30,000 Jews, the murder of around 100, and the burning of thousands of synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses.

“It is indeed befitting,” began Herzog, as he proceeded to eviscerate the assembled delegates, “that this debate, conceived in the desire to deflect the Middle East from its moves towards peace, and born of a deep pervading feeling of antisemitism, should take place on the anniversary of this day. It is indeed befitting, Mr. President, that the United Nations, which began its life as an anti-Nazi alliance, should thirty years later find itself on its way to becoming the world center of antisemitism. Hitler would have felt at home on a number of occasions during the past year, listening to the proceedings in this forum, and above all to the proceedings during the debate on Zionism.”

A similarly eloquent appeal to conscience was expressed by the American ambassador to the UN, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. From the same rostrum as Herzog, Moynihan announced, “The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and before the world, that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.” The joint outrage displayed by Herzog and Moynihan was a moving testament to the values that bind the US and Israel.

Predictably, the resolution passed. Less predictably, it was rescinded in 1991 — appropriately on the eve of the Soviet Union’s collapse — after a US-led campaign that saw President George H.W. Bush personally introduce the resolution of revocation. “Zionism is not a policy; it is the idea that led to the creation of a home for the Jewish people, to the State of Israel,” Bush said. “And to equate Zionism with the intolerable sin of racism is to twist history and forget the terrible plight of Jews in World War II and, indeed, throughout history. To equate Zionism with racism is to reject Israel itself, a member of good standing of the United Nations.”

But as we know only too well, the slander that Zionism is racism survived that revocation, in much the same way that Holocaust denial has persisted even though it’s illegal in many states. In essence, nothing has really changed: in the name of fighting racism, the same lies and deceits are advanced in order to encourage antisemitism.

The Derangement and Delirium of Anti-Zionism

...This malady has an unending appeal because of the way it always promises to liberate mankind, in one way or another, by “solving” the Jews. It was with great optimism that a former minister of the Dutch government recently expressed the opinion that transferring all the Jews from Israel to the United States would herald a new era of world peace. Of course, by the same logic it is the selfish Jews clinging to their state who bear ultimate responsibility for entrapping mankind in the ongoing horrors of war.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
25 January '15..

Last week many were quick to hail the United Nations conference on anti-Semitism as a hopeful step forward. The fact that just 37 of the 193 UN member states even bothered to send delegates should be demonstration enough of just how little many countries care about the modern-day revival of global Jew hatred. There was, however, one moment in the proceedings that particularly stood out. During his address to the conference, French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy identified demonization of Israel as key component of contemporary anti-Semitism, referring to what he termed “the delirium of anti-Zionism.” It was a particularly satisfying irony to hear these words spoken in a chamber that has so often played host to the worst trashing of the Jewish state. And yet the international consensus, as well as the consensus in the West, is largely deaf to that irony. Most still fail to see the extent to which anti-Zionism is the primary expression of hostility against Jews today.

That the United Nations has long provided one of the chief forums for castigating Israel can hardly be in doubt. The current General Assembly session (2014-2015) has so far passed 20 resolutions against Israel, and just three against events elsewhere in the world. The unhinged obsession with condemning the Jewish state is plain enough for all to see. And yet what even those world leaders who do speak out against anti-Semitism still often reuse to see is that those 20 UN resolutions against Israel represent the modern expression of an age-old Jew hatred.

Shortly after the Paris attacks, Natan Sharansky was interviewed by the BBC in his capacity as the head of the Jewish Agency. When asked about the rise of anti-Semitism Sharansky attempted to refer to the liberal circles in Europe where Israel receives almost uniform hostility. At that point the BBC anchor interjected, surely Sharansky did not mean to equate those who are “very critical” of Israel with anti-Semites? That would be a “dangerous” comparison the BBC man asserted. When Sharansky then attempted to clarify the distinction between reasonable criticism and the tendency to treat Israel unfairly the BBC presenter dismissively responded that he didn’t want to get into a discussion about Israel.

But for those who still can’t–or won’t–understand this phenomenon for what it is, and who would subsequently find Henri-Levy’s reference to anti-Zionism during a conference about anti-Semitism puzzling, perhaps they might direct their attention to another event that took place in New York last week. Anyone wishing to see the delirium of anti-Zionism in practice need only refer to Thursday’s storming of a New York City Council session by anti-Israel activists during a commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz.

No, Israel Doesn’t Cause Anti-Semitism

...The Jews can defend themselves against anti-Semites and they can call attention to this ideology in an effort to rally decent people against the haters. But they can’t make it go away by being less aggressive in defending their rights any more than they can do so by other actions. Those who believe that Israel can reduce anti-Semitism by behaving differently are buying into the same myths that tormented previous generations. Both the Israeli government and Diaspora Jewry should ignore their suggestions.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
20 August '14..

Is the rising tide of hatred that is being directed at Jews in Europe and elsewhere the fault of Israel? That’s what many anti-Zionists have been claiming, and now their argument is echoed by the Forward’s J.J. Goldberg who writes in his column that the assumption that only Israelis face the consequences of their government’s policies is now being again proved false. He has a point in that, obviously, Jews everywhere are at risk of attack from those who hate Israel. But the fallacy here is that these anti-Semitic attacks are in any way Israel’s fault.

Goldberg’s main objective in this column is not so much to blame the Jewish state for what is happening to Jews elsewhere—though clearly he intends to wrongly lay some of the responsibility for these outbreaks on the Netanyahu government—as is it is to make a broader point that Israel needs to listen to the Diaspora rather than reject out of hand criticisms of its policies. He believes that Israelis must understand that as the nation state of the Jewish people, what Jerusalem does—whether in terms of war and peace issues or domestic ones that concern the rights of non-Orthodox denominations—has an impact on Jews elsewhere. I think he’s right about that and also right to advocate that Israel must think of its security in global terms that extends to the wellbeing of Jews everywhere.

The problem with this argument does not lie with the effort to wake up Israelis to the need to think more about the ties to Diaspora Jews. Rather, the flaw here is more fundamental. Goldberg’s attempt to draw a clear distinction between what he calls “old anti-Semitism” that was driven by “myths and fantasies disconnected from reality like drinking Christians’ blood or killing God” and what he calls the “new anti-Semitism” is misleading. So, too, is the assumption that anti-Semitism, whether we are talking about the hate directed at Jews during the medieval era, the Nazi-era assault, or today’s “new” variant, is the natural byproduct of Jewish actions rather than the psyches and the dark intentions of the anti-Semites. Goldberg writes about the current wave of hate:

The new anti-Semitism includes some of that, but it starts with something else: an anger at Jews over something that actually happened. Israel was created on land that Muslims, like it or not, considered part of their sacred waqf, the indivisible House of Islam. Many Muslims haven’t gotten over it. Hey, Osama bin Laden wanted Spain back.

While Goldberg acknowledges that it can be asserted that Israel’s existence or anger about its actions are a mere pretext that are used to legitimize expressions of hate that stem from the same beliefs that motivate “old anti-Semitism,” he thinks Hamas and others those who stoke hatred of Jews with traditional calumnies “would have a much smaller audience for their ravings if Israel could find a way to lower the flames of the conflict.”

Let’s draw some distinctions here. There is nothing anti-Semitic about criticizing Israel’s policies. It is a vibrant democracy and people there, like Americans and any other free people, criticize their government all the time. But those who believe that the Jews, unlike every other people on the planet, have no right to their own country and no right to defend themselves are subjecting them to discriminatory treatment. Anti-Zionism is, by definition, an act of prejudice against Jews. Moreover, those who campaign against Israel’s existence are drawing on the same anti-Semitic playbook that “traditional” Jew-haters have always used, including the same irrational myths that Goldberg cites.

Anyone taking a good look at the rhetoric and the signs that are present at anti-Israel demonstrations understands that what is on display is not the function of a political debate but a visceral hatred against Jews that is very much in tune with classic anti-Semitism. That is made abundantly clear by the manner with which these haters target not only Israelis but also everything connected with the Jews for boycott, including kosher food or Jewish ritual practices like circumcision.

It seems that European anti-Zionists have their new poster boy

...Rather than the Israelis becoming modern day Nazis, it is Zanoli who has, sadly fallen under the influence of his relatives and gone over to the cause of Jew hatred championed by the rulers of Gaza and its Palestinian adherents. His past heroism doesn’t give him carte blanche to deny the right to self-determination and self-defense to the descendants of the survivors of the Shoah that is accorded every other people.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
18 August '14..

European anti-Zionists have their new poster boy. In 1943, Henk Zanoli helped save a Jewish boy from the Nazis in Holland, a feat for which he was later honored by the State of Israel as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations.” This past week he returned the medal he got because some of his relatives by marriage were killed in Gaza during the recent fighting. As such, he is the perfect witness for the prosecution against the Jewish state. But though the 91-year-old Zanoli still deserves our respect, he’s lost sight of the truth about the war of his youth as well as the one being waged now against the same Jewish people he once helped.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of Zanoli’s current position as he is grieving the loss of several relatives through marriage of his grand niece, a Dutch diplomat, who lives in Gaza with her Palestinian husband. Nor do his current actions diminish the importance of what he did 70 years ago. But the implicit comparison between his condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the Holocaust is as ill considered, as it is offensive.

Mr. Zanoli claims to have supported the creation of Israel after World War Two but the letter he sent to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial along with his returned medal made clear that he has withdrawn that backing and not just because of what happened to his grandniece’s in-laws. Nor is he, as many of Israel’s critics say they are doing, merely advocating the end of the “occupation” in the West Bank or even that of Gaza which he claims is also “occupied” even though every last soldier, settlement and individual was pulled out of there nine years ago. Instead, he says he opposes the existence a specifically Jewish state, even though Israel grants its Arab minorities full rights. As such, what he is doing is not so much a cri de coeur against oppression as an echo of Hamas’ genocidal program that is similarly aimed at Israel’s extinction.

His characterization of the treatment of Palestinians as “ethnic cleansing” during Israel’s War of Independence is also strangely out of tune for someone claiming to be acting in concert with his support of human rights. While the plight of Palestinian refugees has been terrible, he takes no notice of the fact that these people have been kept stateless specifically in order to perpetuate the war against Israel and the Jews. Nor does he take into account the fact that an equal number of Jews were expelled from Arab and Muslim countries during this period creating a population exchange that closely resembles what happened in much of Europe after World War Two. Does Mr. Zanoli also think the descendants of Germans who were expelled in far greater numbers from parts of their country that were subsequently annexed to Poland and other nations also have a right of return and of sovereignty over their former homes? Or does he think these rules only apply to people displaced by Jews?

More to the point, the obvious analogies to the war during which his heroism happened raises other more pointed questions about Zanoli’s scruples about Israeli actions that are not explored in the New York Times feature that gives him free rein to blast Zionism with no opposing voices heard.

The Irrelevance and End of the Liberal Critique of Israel

...At this moment it is no longer possible to pretend that the conflict can be wished away by Israeli concessions that would, if implemented, create another 20 Gazas in the West Bank. Nor can one rationally argue that more Israeli forbearance toward Hamas in Gaza and a less vigorous effort to take out its vast system of tunnels shielding its rocket arsenal and terror shock troops would bring the region closer to peace when the only way to give that cause a chance is predicated on the elimination of Hamas.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
21 July '14..

After several days of personally observing the people of Israel reacting to rocket attacks and the grim reality of the fight against Hamas in Gaza, the irrelevance of most of the things the country’s American critics say about it has never seemed more obvious to me. After being forced into a war that the overwhelming majority of people here understand is one about their survival and not the political issues that divide Jews, it’s little wonder that most Israelis pay little attention to their country’s foreign detractors who seek to save them from themselves. People who claim to care about the Jewish state need to draw similar conclusions.

The contrast between the support for the efforts of the Israel Defense Forces to attack Hamas’s rocket launchers and terrorist tunnel network in Gaza that is exhibited by most Israelis and the outrage that these efforts at self-defense have generated elsewhere is hard to ignore. Israelis understand the current conflict has nothing to do with arguments about settlements or borders. You don’t have to be a supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or those of pro-settlement critics on the right here to understand that Hamas and its sympathizers don’t care where Israel’s borders should be drawn. Nor is there any real debate about the impact of a Palestinian political culture in which even the supposed moderates applaud terrorism and treat those who slaughter Jews as heroes. The point of the terrorist fortress in Gaza that the Israel Defense Forces is trying to disarm if not dismantle is to serve as the base for an ongoing war against the existence of the Jewish state. The choice of Hamas’s leaders to deliberately sacrifice as many of their own people as possible in order to protect their terrorist infrastructure has not been lost on Israelis. Nor has it escaped their notice that the whole point of the massive investment in rockets and infiltration tunnels by the government of a district mired in poverty is to produce as many Jewish casualties as possible regardless of the impact such actions may have on the safety or the quality of life of Palestinians.

Just as important is the ugly anti-Semitic tone of much of the protests that have been mounted against Israel’s counter-attacks against Hamas in Gaza. Simply put, much of the world seems to think that Hamas has a “right” to shoot thousands of rockets at Israeli cities or to launch cross-border terror raids aimed at kidnapping or killing as many Jews as possible and that the Jewish state has no right to defend itself against these actions–even if they go to great lengths (as the Israel Defense Forces do as a matter of course) to avoid hurting the civilians that the Islamists use as human shields. The general invective against Zionism being heard on the streets of Europe’s cities and even in the U.S. protests against Israel is of a piece with the tone of Hamas’s talking points. The solidarity these demonstrators are expressing for the “resistance” against the “occupation”–a term by which they mean all of Israel and not just the West Bank or the Hamas-run independent Palestinian state in all but name in Gaza–also makes plain the nature of the struggle. Even those who support a two-state solution that would entail an Israeli withdrawal from most or all of the West Bank must now comprehend that their dislike of the settlements or the desire to satisfy the Palestinian ambition for sovereignty can’t ignore the fact that the debate about these ideas is entirely moot while the rockets are flying and terrorists are tunneling beneath the border in hope of emerging inside Israel to slaughter innocents. In this context of hate and violence, the only real points of contention are whether you support the survival of the Jewish state or not.

The Presbyterian Church USA's Continuing Escalation of War on Jews

...But the point here is that it is drawing a line in the sand and labeling anyone who makes common cause with mainstream American Jewish groups as beyond the pale. In return, Jews and all Christians and people of faith who truly care about peace should make it clear that so long as the Presbyterian Church USA is waging war on the Jews, they will treat it as a hate group masquerading as a community of faith.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
07 May '14..

In February of this year I wrote about the latest instance of the Presbyterian Church USA engaging in hostile behavior toward both Israel and the Jewish people. A new study guide and companion CD about the Middle East published by an official Presbyterian group sought to delegitimize Israel and whitewash those who wage war and terrorism against it. Even worse, it compared Zionism to anti-Semitism and said that American Jews who supported Israel were not faithful to their religion. On top of the denomination’s past flirtations with the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement that seeks to wage economic war on Israel, the study guide demonstrated just how deep the hatred for Jews had become among some church officials. But an even more recent incident illustrates that these episodes are not aberrations but reflect a clear desire on the part of church cadres to treat any normal contact with Jews as beyond the pale.

What has happened is that a Virginia Beach pastor who was slated to take a leadership role in a church forum at its annual General Assembly has been pressured to resign by Presbyterian Church USA officials. What was his offense? Taking part in two trips to Israel sponsored by a Jewish group. As Rev. Albert Butzer relates in a piece he wrote about his experience for The Presbyterian Outlook, he had looked forward to being the official moderator of the Committee on Middle East Issues at the denomination’s General Assembly. But he was forced out when it came out that he had gone to Israel on trips organized by the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond, Virginia. Though he had previously been to the region on two trips organized by the Palestinians, the mere fact that he had been exposed to Israel’s side of the story in the conflict was enough to brand him as untrustworthy.

The NY Times, When Man Bites Dog and Why Anti-Zionist Jews Are a Minority

...What the overwhelming majority of Jews know that these five people and their adoring audience at the Times don’t is that opposition to Israel’s existence—as opposed to criticism of it—is taking a stand against the right of the Jewish people to life.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
16 February '14..

It is a principle of journalism that news consists of those events that are out of the ordinary. The old cliché is that when man bites dog, it’s news. A dog biting a man is not. Thus, the conceit of the New York Times Beliefs column feature on Friday met that basic standard for newsworthiness. A story about religious Jews who actively oppose the existence of the State of Israel is one in which it must be conceded that the subjects are unusual.

The Pew Research Center of U.S. Jews published in October reported that 91 percent of Orthodox Jews, 88 percent of Conservative Jews, and even 70 percent of those who identified themselves as Reform Jews are either very or somewhat emotionally attached to Israel. That means any discussion about observant Jews who are anti-Zionists is, by definition, one about a very tiny minority. But considering that three of the five Jews whose views are featured in the piece seem to fall into the category of Modern Orthodox, of whom 99 percent told Pew they were very or somewhat attached to Israel with one percent saying “not very attached” and zero percent “not at all attached,” the trio constitute a sample of a group that is not merely a minority but one so small that it is statistically insignificant.

Once that is understood, it becomes clear that one of the main failings of the article is not only the fact that its author has no interest in challenging their views but that it fails to put that fact in proper perspective. The Orthodox trio and the one Conservative Jew and one Reconstructionist movement rabbi (whose views may not be all that out of the ordinary among that small left-leaning demographic) highlighted are a peculiar minority. But the willingness of the paper to give them such favorable attention illustrates once again the falsity of the notion that it takes courage for Jews to oppose Israel. To the contrary, as was made clear last week by the controversy over two Manhattan rabbis who defied many of the congregants by signing a letter denouncing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), those Jews who publicly denounce Israel can always look forward to the applause of the mainstream media.

While this quintet are entitled to their views about Israel and appear to be none the worse for wear for being so determined to flout the views of their co-religionists, two aspects of the article are particularly objectionable. One is the article’s assumption that there is something remarkable about the fact that they are able to go about their business while living in a Jewish community and attending synagogue without much trouble. The second is the failure of the piece to acknowledge that the views their subjects express are inherently bigoted.

Presbyterian Church USA and Its Declaration of War on the Jews

...Unlike past controversies in which Jewish groups sought to bridge the divide between the two communities, the distribution of a publication that is driven by sheer hatred and a determination to see Israel destroyed requires a more forthright response.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
11 February '14..

In the last decade, several mainstream American Protestant denominations have flirted with resolutions endorsing boycotts of companies doing business with Israel. Most of these efforts have been defeated, albeit narrowly, by strenuous efforts by Jewish groups determined to preserve good interfaith relations as well as by Christians who wanted no part of a movement dedicated to waging economic war on a democratic state. In most cases, these battles have involved a small cadre of left-wing activists involved in church leadership groups that had little support among ministers, and even less among rank-and-file church members. Thus, even the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), a church that has a particularly virulent group of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activists working in positions of influence, failed to pass a divestment resolution in 2012. But despite that defeat, those anti-Israel elements have now regrouped and launched a new initiative that threatens to escalate the battle within the church and to undermine any remnant of good will that still exists between this Presbyterian group (the PCUSA is just one among a number of groups that call themselves Presbyterians) and American Jews.

As the Times of Israel reports, the Presbyterians’ Israel Palestinian Mission Network (IPMN) has issued a “study guide” about the Middle East conflict that will forever change the relationship between the church and the Jewish people. The 74-page illustrated booklet and companion DVD entitled Zionism Unsettled was published last month for use by the church’s 2.4 million members. Unlike other left-wing critiques of Israel, the Presbyterian pamphlet isn’t content to register disapproval of Israeli policies and West Bank settlements or to lament the plight of the Palestinians. The booklet is a full-blown attack against the very concept of Zionism and seeks to compare Zionism to the Christian anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust and other historical atrocities. Its purpose is to brand Israel as an illegitimate entity and to treat its American Jewish supporters as having strayed from the values of their religion. Zionism Unsettled not only swallows the Palestinian narrative about Middle East history whole, it is nothing less than a declaration of war on Israel and American Jewry.

As a work of political science or history, Zionism Unsettled is unworthy of serious discussion. Its argument rests on the prejudiced assumption that the Jews are the one people on earth that are unworthy of self-determination or the same rights to a homeland as any other on the planet. It smears those who sought to create the Jewish homeland and whitewashes those who have waged war and engaged in terrorism to destroy it. Ignoring history and the reality of virulent anti-Jewish prejudice in the Arab and Muslim world, it claims Jewish life would thrive in the region if there were no Israel. If that absurd assertion were not enough to strip it of even a vestige of credibility, it goes so far as to claim that the tiny, intimidated remnant of Jewish life in an Iran ruled by a vicious anti-Semitic regime is a model of coexistence.

Is Anti-Zionism Inherently Anti-Semitic? Absolutely, and Here's Why

...The tragedy of the situation is that Zionism gets routinely denounced as racist by the very states whose racism against Jews generated this demand for Jewish self-determination in the first place. The irony is that in denouncing this ideal as necessarily racist, rather than merely attacking what has been done in its name, these detractors are engaging in racist discourse themselves.

Eylon Aslan-Levy..
The Times of Israel..
08 December '13..

Anti-Zionism is an inherently anti-Semitic doctrine. In calling for the fall of the Jewish state, anti-Zionists are engaged in a racist endeavour. Jews should feel no hesitation whatsoever in calling out those who challenge Israel’s right to exist as anti-Semites, with all the attendant implications.

None of this should be controversial. “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” is part of the EU’s working definition of anti-Semitism (or was, until the EU inexplicably dropped it). This article is concerned with articulating the intellectual foundations for this proposition, rather than somehow presenting a new idea.

Zionism is, at its core, the belief that the Jewish people have a right to self-determine in the Land of Israel.

Zionism does not, strictly speaking, require the belief in a Greater Israel, nor toleration of any degree of civil or political inequality between Jews and others in the Jewish state. Criticism of practical manifestations of Zionism that are not logically entailed by the Zionist ideal (e.g., the Occupation) is not necessarily anti-Semitic, if only because it is not aimed at the principle of Zionism itself as the simple belief in the self-determination of the Jewish people in Israel.

Anti-Zionism is then, strictly speaking, the denial of a right of the Jewish people to self-determine in Israel. This may involve a denial that Jews have a right to self-determine at all, such that a fortiori no such right can exist in Israel, or a denial that this right could apply to political association in Israel specifically: anti-Zionists could maintain that this right should be exercised elsewhere.

The anti-Zionist credo can take two forms. What I term Philosophical Anti-Zionism is the position that Israel should never have been created, but now that it already exists, it has a right to continue existing. Programmatic Anti-Zionism, in contrast, insists that the creation of the State of Israel was a historic injustice, and since injustice must be always be rectified, the illegitimate Israeli state must be dissolved or destroyed forthwith.

Dishonest pieces and noxious fantasies of Israel’s destruction

...Israeli Jews know the fate of non-Muslim minorities in the Arab and Muslim world. If Israel acknowledges that all Jews would be evacuated from a putative Palestinian state it is not because they agree with the Arab vision of a Judenrein entity but because even those on the left know the Jews there would last as long as the greenhouses left behind in Gaza in 2005. Those “Arab Jews” that Lustick thinks will be at home in the Greater Palestine he envisages know exactly what fate awaits them in a world where they are not protected by a Jewish army.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
15 September '13..

Twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords the two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs that was its premise remains unrealized. Indeed, support for the idea that a century-old struggle can be ended merely by the stroke of a pen and a new round of concessions on the part of the Israelis is smaller than ever in Israel, even if some elsewhere (such as Secretary of State John Kerry) cling to such illusions. As I wrote last week, it is clear that while the majority of Israelis seem to have drawn some appropriate conclusions to twenty years of peace processing, there remains a constituency in Washington that is determined to ignore the costly mistakes that were made in 1993 and since in the name of promoting peace. So long as the Palestinians are unable to re-imagine their national identity outside of an effort to extinguish the Zionist project and to therefore recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, negotiations are doomed to fail.

This is frustrating for the vast majority of Israelis who, despite their political divisions, are united in a longing for peace that made projects like Oslo and other such initiatives possible. It also exasperates foreign onlookers who wrongly believe the Arab-Israeli conflict is the root of all trouble in the Middle East (a myth that has been exploded by the Arab Spring and its battles in Egypt and Syria that have nothing to do with Israel).

But it is welcomed by those in the West whose dreams have never centered so much on schemes of a “New Middle East” in which economic cooperation will make everyone happy as they have on simply ending the Zionist dream. One such dreamer is the University of Pennsylvania’s Ian Lustick, a political science professor and sometime State Department consultant who was given the front page of the New York Times Sunday Review today to explain in 2,300 words why the obsession with two states should give way to the project of simply eliminating Israel and replacing it with an Arab-majority nation. Given the persistent and increasingly obvious anti-Israel bias of the paper (especially its editorial and op-ed pages) it is hardly a surprise that it would give such prominent play to a piece with such a goal. But even by the low standards that currently govern that section, the disingenuous nature of Lustick’s rant is stunning.

The core conceit of Lustick’s piece is to put forward the idea that a radical transformation of the conflict is not only possible but also probable. Thus, he claims that “the disappearance of Israel as a Zionist project through war, cultural exhaustion or demographic momentum” is a plausible outcome. Indeed, though his essay occasionally hedges its bets, his enthusiasm for the prospect of the end of the Jewish state is palpable. Indeed, he compares it to the end of British rule over all of Ireland, the French hold on Algeria, or the collapse of the Soviet Union, historical events that he claims were once thought unthinkable but now are seen as inevitable outcomes. These analogies are transparently specious, but they are telling because they put Israel in the category of imperialist projects rather than as the national liberation movement of a small people struggling for survival. That tells us a lot about Lustick’s mindset but little about the reality of the Middle East. Unlike the Brits’ Protestant ascendancy in Ireland or the French pieds noirs of Algeria or even the Soviet nomenklatura, the Jews of Israel have nowhere to go. That he also compares Israel to apartheid South Africa, the Iran of the shah, or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq shows just how skewed his view of the country has become and how little he understands its strength and resiliency.

Making common cause with those who seek the Jewish state’s destruction.

...But what is at stake here is not a dispute about where Israel’s borders should be, the wisdom of settlements or whether you like the people Israeli voters have put in office. It is whether the Jewish community is willing to stand up against those who wish to ostracize Jews, demonize Israel and wage war on it.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
17 April 13..

We don’t normally pay much attention to what is published in Tikkun magazine, let alone what its editor Michael Lerner disseminates through his email list. But occasionally Lerner’s tirades shine a light on the positions of the far left that illustrate exactly where some of Israel’s critics stand in a way that makes clear how they have made common cause with those who seek the Jewish state’s destruction.

In his latest email to readers, Lerner highlights what he claims is the latest instance of pro-Israel activists seeking to suppress free speech in both academia and the Jewish community. The Tikkun guru cites the protest against the decision of San Jose State University to have an Iranian professor who is a bitter opponent of Israel’s existence to teach a seminar on “Israel/Palestine.” According to Lerner, the attempt to stop Professor Persis Karim from being the sole person in charge of teaching on this subject was unfair since he claims her only goal was to help students see both sides of the issue. But even a cursory examination of the record, which Lerner helpfully provided by including the protest letter organized by the Amcha Initiative, shows that Karim is an advocate for Israel’s destruction and supports the exclusion of Israelis from academic forums as well as the boycott of Israel. Lerner’s backing of Karim gives the lie to his effort to pose as merely a liberal supporter of the Jewish state.

It should be conceded that within the ranks of the far left universe in which he travels, Lerner has always been treated as somewhat suspect because of his refusal to join with those who explicitly call for Israel’s destruction and engage in anti-Semitic agitation. This is a point on which he takes great pride and he has often engaged in disputes with comrades who have sought to merge opposition to American foreign policy initiatives or hyper-liberal domestic causes with explicit anti-Zionism, if not open anti-Semitism. But even if we give him a bit of credit for that, the Karim protest exposes just how ridiculous his attempt to differentiate his brand of criticism of Israel from that of its open enemies has become.

Ronnie Fraser was defeated, as well as British justice and fair play

Ben Cohen..
Commentary/Contentions..
29 March '13..

On Monday night, as Jews around the world sat down for the first seder of the Passover holiday, anti-Zionists in the United Kingdom and elsewhere held a very different celebration to mark the comprehensive dismissal of a discrimination case brought by Ronnie Fraser, a Jewish math teacher, to an employment tribunal in London.

As I reported back in November, Fraser’s courageous battle against anti-Semitism in the labor union to which he belongs, the University and College Union (UCU), propelled him into a courtroom showdown with the advocates of an academic boycott of Israeli institutions of higher education. Fraser’s argument rested on the contention that the union’s obsessive pursuit of a boycott negatively impacted its Jewish members. A series of ugly episodes–among them the posting of a claim, on a private listserv run by the UCU, that millions of dollars from the failed Lehman Brothers’ bank were transferred to Israel, as well as the address given by a leading South African anti-Semite, Bongani Masuku, to a UCU conference–convinced both Fraser and his lawyer, the prominent scholar of anti-Semitism Anthony Julius, that the union had become institutionally anti-Semitic and was therefore in violation of British laws protecting religious and ethnic minorities.

The tribunal’s judges, however, didn’t agree, issuing what London’s Jewish Chronicle described as a “blistering rejection” of the entire case. As the news spread, anti-Semites on the far left and extreme right crowed that the verdict was a “crushing defeat” for the “Israel lobby” (in the words of the Electronic Intifada) and the just deserts of a “whiny Jew” (in the inimitable phrase of the neo-Nazi bulletin board, Stormfront). The miniscule Jewish anti-Zionist organization Jews for Justice for Palestinians dutifully lined up behind this chorus, declaring that Fraser’s “mission” to prove himself a “victim” had failed.

Why did the Fraser case collapse in such spectacular fashion? In part, the problems were technical and procedural; several passages in the verdict argued that the UCU’s officers were not themselves responsible for the specific instances of anti-Semitism Fraser’s complaints highlighted, while another lazily bemoaned the “gargantuan scale” of the case, asserting that it was wrong of Julius and Fraser to abuse the “limited resources” of the “hard-pressed public service” that is a British employment tribunal. The verdict also contained extraordinary personal attacks on the integrity of Fraser’s witnesses, among them Jewish communal leader Jeremy Newmark and Labor Party parliamentarian John Mann, and even insinuated that the plain-speaking Fraser was unwittingly being used as a vassal by the articulate and florid Julius!

Ultimately, though, highly partisan political considerations decided the outcome. After dismissing all 10 of Fraser’s complaints as an “impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litiginous means,” the honorable judges then leveled some acutely politicized accusations of their own. Fraser and his supporters were accused of showing a “worrying disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression.” Their broader conclusion, that it “would be very unfortunate if an exercise of this sort were ever repeated,” is clearly designed to discourage other potential plaintiffs from pursuing complaints against the UCU.

Most disturbing of all is paragraph 150 of the verdict, which will doubtless become shorthand for one of the most insidious attempts to redefine anti-Semitism ever devised. After accepting that British law does protect “Jewishness” as a characteristic of individuals, the judges went on to say that “a belief in the Zionist project or an attachment to Israel … cannot amount to a protected characteristic.”

Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Illustrating the Link

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
27 January '13..

The Commentator draws our attention today to the fact that Britain’s Sunday Times celebrated the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz—the date that is observed outside of Israel and the United States as Holocaust Memorial Day—by publishing a cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a hook-nosed thug cementing helpless Arab victims into a wall whose bricks are lined with blood rather than mortar. This is an apt reminder of just how low Europe’s intellectual elites have sunk and how deep the taint of anti-Semitism is baked into the political culture of the West these days. As the Commentator’s Raheem Kassam points out, in Britain as in many other places, the Holocaust is not a historical lesson of the product of 2,000 years of anti-Semitism and Jewish powerlessness as it is an excuse to depict Israel as a Nazi-like entity.

The cartoon will be defended as fair comment about Israel’s security fence that the Palestinians and their foreign cheerleaders depict as a war crime. That this strictly defensive measure was made necessary by the Palestinians’ campaign of suicide bombings that cost the lives of a thousand Jews in the last decade goes unmentioned. The willingness of Israel-bashers to appropriate the Holocaust to promote a new generation of anti-Semitic imagery is rooted in a worldview in which the actions of the Palestinians, or their consistent refusal to make peace, are irrelevant. If even a fence to keep out suicide bombers can be seen as criminal then it is obvious that no terrorist outrage or act of hateful incitement (such as the Egyptian president’s belief that Israelis are the “descendants of apes and pigs”) is worthy of censure so long as Israelis are standing up for themselves and refusing to be slaughtered as the Jews of Europe were 70 years ago.

(+Videos) Not Newsworthy News from Israel’s Islamist neighborhood

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
05 January '13..

If it was a western president or prime minister – let alone an Israeli one – who had made utterly bigoted and hate-filled remarks about Muslims not long before he took office, it sure would be a top news item all over the world. But when it turns out that some two years ago, the man who is now Egypt’s president called “the Zionists” “blood-suckers,” “warmongers,” and “the descendants of apes and pigs,” most of the mainstream media (MSM) seem to think it should be politely ignored.

In a way one could actually argue that this really isn’t newsworthy, because if the MSM accurately reported on Islamist ideology, everyone would already know that implacable Jew-hatred is an integral part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s views and agenda. After all, Morsi’s statements from 2010, which were recently translated by MEMRI, faithfully echo themes that are all too familiar from the Hamas Charter, and similar views are regularly propagated by well-respected Muslim scholars.



The question why this torrent of loathsome statements by influential and widely respected figures who clearly shape and represent mainstream views is studiously ignored in the MSM was recently addressed by Pat Condell, who focused on the Palestinians and argued that this kind of “political correctness” reflected a patronizing and ultimately racist attitude.

Toulouse: The Future of Europe?

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
06 July '12..

In March, an Islamist gunman in Toulouse, France, murdered three Jewish children as well as one of their fathers in a shooting spree outside of a school. The crime was widely condemned (especially when at first it was thought to be the work of a neo-Nazi rather than a Muslim), but the link between this outbreak of deadly violence and the rising tide of anti-Semitic incitement throughout Europe was clear. Yet, rather than the murders signaling a turning point in the battle against Jew-hatred in France and Western Europe, it may have been just an indication that anti-Semitic incidents are becoming commonplace, a conclusion that has been reinforced by a shocking increase in attacks on French Jews since March.

Nevertheless, the latest indication of the dark climate in France is all the more painful because it involves the same school that was targeted by the Toulouse shooter. As the European Jewish Press reports, on Wednesday night, a 17-year-old student from the same Ozar HaTorah school that was the site of the March murders was attacked in a Lyon train station. The student, who was wearing “identifiable religious symbols” was set upon and beaten and subjected to insults. The teenager reported the attack and the assailants were caught, but the message from the incident is clear: it is open season in France on Jews who publicly identify themselves in this manner. If even after the shock over what happened in Toulouse violence against Jews is going up, it is no longer possible to put it down to the actions of isolated individuals. The incessant drumbeat of anti-Semitism— often rooted in anti-Zionist prejudice against Israel and all who publicly identify with the Jewish state and Jewish identity — throughout Europe is inciting violence that can no longer be ignored.

Marquadt-Bigman - Quote of the day

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
01 June '12..

“We can tell that this hostility to Israel is as artificially constructed as any antisemitism by looking at the list of theatre groups [performing at the Globe Theatre World Shakespeare Festival in London] against which the enlightened ones organized no boycott. Antizionists have created a whole new ‘-ism’, a worldview, around their campaign against Israel. Within it, a caricature of Israel is endowed with huge symbolic significance which relates only here and there to the actual state, to the complex conflict and to the diversity of existing Israelis. If the Palestinians stand, in the antizionist imagination, as symbolic of all the victims of ‘the west’ or ‘imperialism’ then Israel is thrust into the centre of the world as being symbolic of oppression everywhere. Like antisemitism, antizionism imagines Jews as being central to all that is bad in the world.”

From the truly brilliant reflections by David Hirsh on the Habima Theatre’s performance of “The Merchant of Venice” in London. David prefaces his post with the often debated question: “Is the Merchant of Venice an antisemitic play or is it a play which intimately depicts the anatomy of persecution, exclusion and bullying?” The way David tackles this question is particularly powerful because he combines his impressions from the play with his thoughts about the BDS protesters who tried to disrupt the performance.

Link: http://warped-mirror.com/2012/06/01/quote-of-the-day-22/

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Devolin - Anti-Zionism: A Fortified Stupidity

Michael Devolin..
Magic City Morning Star..
15 April '12..
H/T Yisrael Medad..



Stephen Vizinczey wrote, "Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it."

When I first read this quotation, I was at once reminded of the sophisticated --and by now commonplace-- hatreds that have been directed against the State of Israel and those courageous Jews who dwell therein. These hatreds, once seized upon, can fester fast, and be disseminated as truth even faster. And believe it or not, those who should know better, those who boast of intellect and morality, are more often than not found to be at the forefront of this character assassination of Jews and their Judaism (which, by definition, includes a Jewish state). And no amount of placation, not even the weight of truth, can dissuade these anti-Zionists from their odious obsession.

One problem I have with these academics is their demonization of a basic tenet of Judaism, which is Zionism. They present a Zionism tangential from Judaism, which is not a Jewish Zionism at all but rather their invented version--an ersatz version they propagate to the world as being an evil and illegitimate political ideology. All other peoples of the world may win or lose territory as a result of winning wars, but Israel, or so these academics propound, is to exist below and outside of these universal practices of law; all other religions may demand as sacrosanct their holy sites, regardless the manner by which these sites were acquired. But Israel and her Jews must accept the imposition of other peoples' religious expansionism, even when that same religious expansionism obtrudes upon Jewish holy sites.

Swanson - Judea Pearl: Anti-Zionism is Racism

Lillian Swanson..
Forward..
14 February '12..
H/T Israel Matzav..

Those who came to hear Judea Pearl speak last night at an event sponsored by the Simon Wiesenthal Center‘s Museum of Tolerance might have expected to be offered an array of numbers, shown detailed charts or even be given a sense of whether anti-Semitism was getting better or worse. Instead, he handed them something else entirely.

Pearl, father of slain reporter Daniel Pearl, used the annual lecture on the “state of anti-Semitism” to upend conventional thinking, and argue that anti-Zionism is a strain of hate that is far more dangerous to Jews than anti-Semitism.

He called anti-Zionism, which he defined as the denial of Israel’s right to exist in the family of nations, as “the worst form of racism.” Unlike anti-Semitism, he said, it carries a measure of social acceptance, and it “hides itself in the cloak of political debate.”

Those who think anti-Semitism, especially as it colors debate about Israel in the United States, is the greater danger are mistaken, Pearl told the crowd in his opening address on Monday night. Jews, he said, have become experts at fighting anti-Semitism, likening it to a disease in which “the antibodies are known.”

“Anti-Zionism is worse. It is harder to fight. It comes in a camouflage that allows it to penetrate vital tissue undetected,” he said. Then he paused briefly and added, “Like at our universities.”

(video) Daphne Anson - When Anti-Zionism Becomes Anti-Semitism

Daphne Anson
02 September '11

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/09/when-anti-zionism-becomes-anti-semitism.html

Racist antisemites including Hitler described Jews as a "bacillus" that must be extirpated...

At the Al Quds Day rally in Toronto (complete with a female speaker from the Uniting Church, a "useful idiot" if ever there was one!) on 28 August the Jewish State was described as a "cancer" that must be removed ...

In the words of the uploader:

'This video is an alarming reminder of how anti-Semitism frequently emerges in the form of "criticism" of Israel.

At this rally, Israel is called "a cancer", Israel is accused of "sucking resources and blood", and Hezbollah flags were flown (a banned terrorist organization). The video also shows how those who genuinely believe in human rights often share a podium with hate-filled extremists. Activists should be accountable for the company they keep.'

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