Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Antisemitism: The world changes, the world remains the same.

By oldschooltwentysix

At Daily Kos, there is a diary that speaks to the latest occurrences of Jew hatred in Brooklyn, USA.  Details can be found in this news report.  It gave opportunity to write a comment, which became this post. 

The world changes, the world remains the same.

There are around 13 MILLION Jews in the world today, out of a world population of about 7 BILLION people.

Historically, the two major purveyors of hate for Jews are Christians and Muslims, perhaps 3.5 BILLION people.  Thankfully, only a relative smattering hold the Christian variant of genocidal views epitomized by Hitler, mostly neo-Nazis, but not all. Significant numbers of Muslims, however, even some of their leaders, supplement their own hatred for Jews and say they want to finish the genocide that the Christians (Hitler) started.

Sometimes I wonder about a fringe extreme on the Left, too, that conjoins with the other Jew haters while self-proclaiming to be "anti-racist" and "humanitarian." The first Durban NGO Conference in 2001 illustrates:
On the grounds of the U.N. conference itself, the Arab Lawyers Union distributed pamphlets filled with grotesque caricatures of hook-nosed Jews depicted as Nazis, spearing Palestinian children, dripping blood from their fangs, with missiles bulging from their eyes or with pots of money nearby. Attempts to have the group's U.N. accreditation revoked were refused.
Under the tent where the final NGO declaration was approved over the weekend -- a document that indicts Israel as a "racist, apartheid state" guilty of genocide and ethnic cleansing -- fliers were found with a photo of Hitler and the following question: "What if Hitler had won? There would be no Israel, and no Palestinian bloodshed."
In a Palestinian-led march with thousands of participants, a placard was held aloft that read "Hitler Should Have Finished the Job." Nearby, someone was selling the most notorious of anti-Jewish tracts, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

It was a racist anti-racist gathering if there ever was one, perhaps even surpassing the infamous "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination" resolution at the UN Security Council in 1975.

Tom Lantos was a liberal Congressman from California who served as an American delegate at Durban. He was the ranking Democratic Party member on the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives and a founder of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. In a chilling, must read article, The Durban Debacle, he said:
For me, having experienced the horrors of the Holocaust first hand, this was the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I have seen since the Nazi period.

Yes, I am generalizing. The truth is that it matters not the source. The point is that Jews everywhere live with being singled among humans for extinction, solely because they are Jewish. One who receives a threat to kill is a victim. Yet Jews are denied the status of victim despite the threat.

This applies by extension to Israel, the collective Jew among nation states. Overtly and uniquely threatened with extinction, yet denied victim status an international arena. Despite that the UN Charter expressly states:
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force

Of course, antisemitism cannot be eradicated. A survey of the American people released on November 3 by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that that 15 percent of Americans – nearly 35 million adults – hold deeply anti-Semitic views. It is no better most places elsewhere, and likely much worse in many.

It is up to the state to respect this right and protect against violations, by itself and private parties. This is why they undertake obligations to implement domestic legislation through treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).  Even then, from their conduct, too many states could care less. Many of these states use a different interpretation of rights than we in the West. At least in America tends to take the matter of antisemitism seriously. I hope it remains so. It's not all bad here as some like to say.

I mean, when 5,000 people rally at Cairo’s most prominent mosque, the Al-Azhar mosque, chanting over and over passages from the Koran vowing that “one day we shall kill all the Jews,” how can that not put the matter into perspective?  This happened just days ago.

As with defining other victims of discrimination based on minority and/or religious status, the interpretation of antisemitism should be expansive, not narrow.  This is particularly so because there are new forms of antisemitism that may otherwise appear neutral on their face. Why is this so hard to understand, especially for so many that require political correctness in almost all other cases? There is that pesky double standard again!

If one fairly considers the demographics and what has happened to Jews at the hands of the majority - institutional persecution, pogroms, massacres, and genocide - then sees how disparate forces share common ground to stand in solidarity, using the Jew as a foil to incite hatred for an ideological agenda, it shows how we are drifting closer to Orwell's nightmare, as others sleep through helplessly without a peep.

(Cross-posted at oldschooltwentysix)

11 comments:

  1. "Rachid Ghannouchi, the head of Tunisia's Ennahda party,
    "Rachid Ghannouchi, the head of Tunisia's Ennahda party, spent Tuesday on Capitol Hill as a guest of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Both Ghannouchi and his party are being promoted as 'moderate' Muslims. Sadly, they are not moderates.....In a May interview with the Al Arab Qatari website, for example, Ghannouchi called for the destruction of Israel and expressed optimism that the Jewish state would disappear in the very near future.

    The Arab Spring "will achieve positive results on the path to the Palestinian cause and threaten the extinction of Israel," Ghannouchi said. "I give you the good news that the Arab region will get rid of the bacillus of Israel. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas, said that Israel will disappear by the year 2027. I say that this date may be too far away, and Israel may disappear before this."

    Ghannouchi has also blessed the mothers of Palestinian suicide bombers, defended rocket attacks carried out by Hamas against Israeli civilians and "martyrdom operations," and called for Muslims to fund and provide logistical support for Hamas.....So long as the Obama administration is in power and the radical Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State, the likes of Ghannouchi will continue to have a voice and a place in Washington. It's time for a change."

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  2. I think that we need to make a distinction between marginalized forms of anti-Semitism on the political right (such as skinheads, neonazis, Klan) and the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism on the left via "progressive" anti-Zionism.

    I am actually far less concerned about random skinheads that pretty much everyone, left, right, and center, condemns then I am about creeping anti-Semitic anti-Zionism that gains credence in progressive-left venues under the banner of human rights.

    That's where the real battle is, it seems to me.

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  3. Agreed. I think the matter comes down to how to overcome the affects of multiculturalists that equate all cultures, yet do not expect observance of cherished universal norms of behavior no matter the culture.

    It's like the Westphalian structure of states, where each has sovereign equality with the others. How is a state like Kosovo equal to Germany? Yet we treat it so, even in some cases where the difference is most obvious. Maybe things were better when the Great Powers were less hamstrung.

    It's not as if I have an answer to what is so damn complex, but one must start to recognize the problem before it can change to the better.

    Among human rights activists it's sad that so many cannot even see the disconnect between their stated values and the positions they choose to adopt. That is how things like the Durban hatefests evolve. If events do not bring change, then it requires vigilance in exposing the moral bankruptcy without demonization.

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  4. An important part of the process, in our evolving understanding of these problems, is in freeing ourselves of partisan imperatives.

    It makes a huge difference and allows one to see and discuss what might otherwise remain hidden.

    For example, your comment above suggests that you recognize the tension between the multicultural ideal and universal human rights.

    This is a key insight, but it is one that is difficult to come to so long as one remains a partisan ideologue. Part of the function of venues such as Daily Kos is to enforce ideology through social tactics like shaming and shunning.

    By doing so, boundaries of acceptable opinion are created that sometimes place necessary insights beyond what can be reasonably discussed.

    I will never forget Deaniac (I don't know if you remember him or not) posting a video of the Nazi mouse that the Palestinians have put on children's television.

    The Kossacks kept screaming at him that he is a racist and he kept saying things like, "What are you talking about? Here's the evidence! Watch the video! It's right here in front of you!"

    It was actually pretty funny, but the Kossacks refused to acknowledge the obvious because, in this case, the obvious truth as beyond the realm of acceptable thought or discussion.

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  5. In that way, they remind me of the spinmasters that appear on TV. No matter the evidence before them they will spin it according to their role.

    I cannot understand how people are able to compartmentalize to such a drastic effect, that they can see a call to genocide, or the utter abuse occasioned on innocent women and children, yet not be bothered because they are too busy wielding their magnifying glasses on one object only.

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  6. Very good article, oldschooltwentysix.

    The following is off-topic in a specific sense, but on-topic in a general sense:

    Karma,

    I like, which is in the sidebar of your blog, your list of What You Can't Discuss in current Western societies, and especially in Leftist and "Liberal" social circles. Your list is very good.

    I am offering the following additions to the list.

    O The current mainstreaming, in Western societies, of "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" Nazi-legacy genocidal racist libels against the Jewish people (via Walt/Mearsheimer, etc.).

    O The totalitarian censoring and silencing and libeling, by the Left (and, originally, and still, by the members of the "Establishment" governing social classes in Western societies), of Jewish people defending the nation of the Jewish people against libels.

    O The vast millions of dollars spent, and the huge efforts engaged in, to influence the governments and academia and media of Western counties, and to libel and vilify Israel, by Arab and Muslim regimes and political organizations of the modern Islamic supremacist political movement; the Arab lobby and the Islamic lobby - huge racist genocidally anti-Jewish imperialist supremacist political influence operations

    O the covert strategic effort being successfully engaged in, by the Muslim Brotherhood, and by the Islamic supremacist regime in Iran, to influence, and infiltrate, the government of the United States of America

    ----

    Mainstreaming Hate - How media companies are using the Internet to make anti-Semitism respectable, by American political analyst Lee Smith
    http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/40064/mainstreaming-hate/

    Johann von Leers and Walt/Mearsheimer, by German academic scholar Clemens Heni
    http://clemensheni.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/johann-von-leers-and-waltmearsheimer/

    Antisemitism in America – Yale Kills YIISA, by Clemens Heni
    http://clemensheni.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/yale-kills-yiisa/

    The Arab Lobby, by Lee Smith
    http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/44096/the-arab-lobby/

    Civilization Jihad in America: Andy McCarthy"; A talk by former U.S. Federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy; This talk was part of a conference titled "The Muslim Brotherhood in America: Civilization Jihad, Its Targets & Successes"; (Video; length: 26m:25s)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E50Vb0soil0

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  7. Hey Dan,

    thanks for this and no hard feelings about yesterday, I hope.

    You know that I value your contributions.

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  8. Karma,

    No hard feelings at all. :)

    I know that you value my contributions.

    I very much appreciate your work.

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  9. "The new Tunisian government
    is gearing up to ratify a new constitution, and its language includes a section condemning Zionism and ruling out any friendly ties with Israel."

    One by one they fall like dominoes to Islamist governments and vicious antisemitism. And Obama's admin plays cozy with the bastards instead of telling them to come back when they grow up and get civilized. The second largest party there is called.....wait for it.... the "secular and liberal Democratic Progressive Party." Now ain't that a hoot?

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  10. The administration seems entirely unconcerned about the rise of political Islam during its tenure, thus far.

    When Obama took office the Islamists had Iran, Gaza, and much of Lebanon via Hezbollah.

    Now they are also gaining, in different degrees and measures, Libya, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt.

    They voted in Egypt today and the reports that I've seen give the Brotherhood 40 to 50 percent of the vote. This means that the MB will likely have a big role in ruling the country.

    And that is not good.

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  11. Michael Coren with Barry Rubin; An interview with (American-born Israeli Jewish (authentically liberal) political analyst) Barry Rubin, and hosted by Canadian tv journalist Michael Coren; In the interview, Barry Rubin discusses the current U.S. administration's recent public official endorsement of Islamist political parties in states in the Middle East, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; (The following is an article, by Barry Rubin, about this issue: It’s Official: Obama Administration Promotes Islamist Regimes; Insists They are Moderate, by Barry Rubin (http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/11/its-official-obama-administration.html)); (Video length: 15m:59s)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg1FO_k3QB0

    Excerpt:

    Barry Rubin: "People often don't understand that when I explain to them that these are not political issues - they're not "Liberal"/"Conservative"- it doesn't matter what I think - what matters is what I see. If I don't like what I see, it...that's not important. The most important thing is to get an accurate picture to the public and the policy makers [so] that they can make correct decisions - and if things change, you change your opinion."

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