Sunday, November 20, 2016

Democrats Rediscover anti-Semitism

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon and Jews Down Under.}

The poster on the left represents a bit of anti-Zionist propaganda that has been around for decades and is among the negative images of Jewish self-determination that today's college kids grew up with.

Although the hard-left generally supports anti-Zionism, American Jews still cling to the Democratic Party despite the fact that so much of the party and the movement believes it has every right to tell Jewish people where we may, or may not, be allowed to live within our own homeland.

About 80 percent of American Jews, including me, voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and about 70 percent, not including me, did so in 2012. In the current cycle, American Jews voted for Hillary Clinton in similar numbers.

Given the fact that the western progressive-left has made a home of itself for malicious anti-Semitic anti-Zionists it becomes rather difficult to understand why American Jews continue to support a political movement, and its adjacent political party, that hold them in contempt.

The Washington Post has a piece from last September entitled, In the safe spaces on campus, no Jews allowed by Anthony Berteaux. Berteaux relates the story of Arielle Mokhtarzadeh, an Iranian-Jew who was made to feel unwelcome by the UCLA progressive community due to her caring for the Jewish people through caring for the Jewish State of Israel. As a student of Jewish-Persian background she therefore attended the annual Students of Color Conference in search of answers.

Mokhtarzadeh tells us:
Over the course of what was probably no longer than an hour, my history was denied, the murder of my people was justified, and a movement whose sole purpose is the destruction of the Jewish homeland was glorified. Statements were made justifying the ruthless murder of innocent Israeli civilians, blatantly denying Jewish indigeneity in the land, and denying the Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered,” she said. “Why anyone in their right mind would accept these slanders as truths baffles me. But they did. These statements, and others, were met with endless snaps and cheers. I was taken aback.
The truth is that many Democrats despise the lone, sole Jewish state as a human rights monstrosity even though it has a far better record on human rights than any other country throughout the Middle East. This little fact, in itself, reveals the anti-Jewish racism within BDS and, therefore, embedded within the Democratic Party.

It is for this reason that progressives often support Hamas and the Palestinian Authority when they call for the murder of Jews in the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. Every time Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) or the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) meet on some campus to call for yet another intifada they are, in fact, calling for the murder of innocent Jews in Israel.

Such calls for anti-Jewish violence tend to be supported not only by other progressive-left students, but also by sympathetic university administrators who could hardly care less that students are calling for violence against Jews on their very own campuses. They even provide thumb-sucking "safe-spaces" where those very same students can rest their heads on university provided pillows without having to deal with the richly deserved ramifications of their own behavior. Since no one is allowed to even question their judgment in these "safe spaces" they need not even consider the possibility that calling for violence against Jewish people - as a matter of social justice, no less - might actually be something other than liberal.

In fact, San Francisco State University president, Leslie Wong, is so enamored of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism that he even praised GUPS as representing "the very purpose of this great university."  He did so despite the fact that, in their cries for intifada, they literally call for the murder of Jews in Israel. Sometimes they even call for bringing the intifada home, by which they mean support for the political murder of Jews in the United States. None of this fazes the progressive-left because offing Jews - particularly of the Israeli variety - is considered a rational and perfectly normal human response to alleged Jewish aggression against the bunny-like "indigenous" population in the Land of Israel.

And this is why Arielle Mokhtarzadeh was treated like filth at UCLA.

Berteaux writes:
The ramifications of ignoring the normalization of anti-Semitism cannot be understated: The most recent FBI hate crime report found that 58.2 percent of hate crimes motivated by religious bias were targeted at Jews. Jews make up 2.2 percent of the American population, so the FBI’s statistics make it clear that Jews are the most disproportionately attacked religious group in America. It should be troubling to everyone that an SJP member at Temple University physically assaulted a pro-Israel Jewish student two years ago, calling him a “Zionist baby killer.” But it should be far more troubling that the SJP chapter at Temple (like all SJP chapters) promotes itself as a progressive organization, claiming solidarity with movements such as Black Lives Matter.
The Democratic Party just got its ass kicked by a crude businessman-entertainer who they accuse of being everything short of the Devil and now they are not only screaming from the rafters about racism and white supremacy, but they even have the chutzpah to suddenly start whining about the alleged anti-Semitism of conservatives and Republicans.

The truth is that the Left and the Democratic Party are enemies of the Jewish people to the extent that they make a homes of themselves for anti-Semitic anti-Zionism. American Jews are, essentially, being told that they may contribute to the progressive movement but the price of admission is sitting across the Democratic Party table from anti-Zionists who have no respect for our history, no respect for the Holocaust, and who think that we are undeserving of self-determination and self-defense within our own homeland.

Requiring that Jews accept anti-Semitic anti-Zionism as part of the larger Democratic Party coalition is no different from asking black people to kindly accept Klansmen as part of that coalition. No self-respecting black person would ever do so and neither should any self-respecting Jew.

The progressive-left and the Democratic Party fling around charges of racism like they're confetti. Throughout the recent American presidential campaign they lambasted Trump and his supporters as Neanderthal fascists representing the very worst of all humanity, which is why some of their devotees are beating the hell out of white people in the streets. But if the Democratic Party has suddenly rediscovered anti-Semitism it is strictly out of political convenience, nothing more.

29 comments:

  1. Zionism has proven itself quite healthy for children and other living things. But of course, that's factual. Anti-zionism has proven itself quite unhealthy for the people of the region as well as people all over the globe. It has poisoned international, national, and local politics, and liberal discourse in the name of the world's absolute worst and lowest political cause. Jew hatred will take the world down with it.
    Our journalism now sounds like something akin to Arab "news reporting." Any semblance of objectivity and neutrality is out the window. Tribalism is in. "Trump is Hitler" is a sort of standard type of charge at political enemies in state controlled and other Arab press. One's politically enemies are either Hitler or Jews or Zionists.

    Suddenly the left is very concerned about antisemitism. I'm scratching my head wondering how many liberal Jews have had absolutely no clue who has been living their own house, raiding the refrigerator.

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    1. Of one thing I have become convinced. Bannon, whatever else he may be, is no anti-Semite. The have yet to produced anything that he has written or verifiably said that would indicate anti-Semitism. Dershowitz says that he's not. Ben Shapiro, was is/was intimate with Breitbart confirms this as does some orthodox kippa-wearing Jew who worked with Bannon for around 4 years.

      One thing that I try not to do is make anti-Semitism charges against specific individuals without some pretty damning evidence and I resent people doing so for political convenience.

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    2. I've written a number of articles for Breitbart and have had e-mail conversations with Bannon. Not only is he not an anti-semite, he is as pro-Israel and philosemitic as you could ask for.

      One of our conversations over several e-mails concerned his puzzlement over why so many Jews vote Left, something I've written about from time to time.

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  2. Just as they obsess over words as violence, compared to the violence that actually takes place, they obsess over antisemitism of the KKK, 3,000 strong, and act as if they don't know about the threat to Jews from elsewhere.

    So wrong about so much. Like with the media, why should anyone believe people that seem agenda driven above all else?

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  3. As the Dems turn further left in their grief at losing, the antisemitism will ramp up like all the Corbyn stuff. It's inevitable.

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    1. And, my dear Doodad, progressive-left charges of anti-Semitism against the right will likewise sky-rocket.

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    2. Since the progressive left hates Israel, and the Dems are seemingly headed that way more so every day it is a pot calling the kettle black situation Mike (though the left will say they don't hate Jews, just their only freaking nation.)

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  4. I do not recall the Nazi party celebrating Obama's win. Like they have with Trump's.

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    1. true, but the Nazi party is a tiny, tiny fringe, rather than a major political movement with tentacles like BDS, SJP, MSA, ISM wrapping itself around the Democrat Party. And those groups, unlike Nazi groups, can cloak their anti-Semitism into academic and intellectual arguments, hence why they're more dangerous.

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    2. Can you think of any hateful groups that perhaps celebrated Obama's win? I could name a few.

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  5. Howard Dean calls Trump strategist Bannon a 'Nazi'

    http://www.newschannel6now.com/story/33755463/howard-dean-calls-trump-strategist-bannon-a-nazi

    “You go look at Breitbart News, you’ll make up your own mind,” Dean said.

    Wonder if Dean, or all the Nazi fearmongers, have ever read Breitbart?

    How can one be taken seriously when this is what they believe? Or maybe it's just an ideological ploy?

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    1. My dogs are Nazis, this bagel is a Nazi, the turkey we're making this week is a Nazi turkey. Everything's a Nazi everyone is a Nazi. etc etc etc etc etc

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    2. We've created a political world of shadows and posturing.

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  6. It has never been my experience in all these long years that the left was ever not antisemitic. They periodically cover it up. But in the modern liberal west, the far right, the George Lincoln Rockwell right had been more than a bizarre side show of a tiny handful of lunatics who have no following and no credence. They never had a plan, they never had a deep game. The left has ALWAYS vacillated between quiet Jew Hate and out and out Jew Hate. They have ALWAYS had a well organized long range plan. That the Jews themselves flocked to the left really just highlights their incurious and gullible nature.

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  7. wonder how the left will call Trump an anti-Semite when one of his two finalists for Treasury Sec, both Jews, Steve Mnuchin and Jonathan Gray, are chosen.

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  8. "A new narrative is forming to claim that Zionism is actually a form of antisemitism. This fulfills a kind of fantasy on parts the Left whereby being pro-Israel will now be seen as a component of being antisemitic, which will mean that the reality of radical-left antisemitism will forever be inured from claims it is antisemitic."

    http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2016/11/1121-links-pt2-everyone-i-hate-is.html

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    1. This nonsense has actually been around for quite some time. It never had much teeth before except on the fringes. The ground has at last been prepared. I heard the late Christopher Hitchen traffic this bs many, many years ago, as well as some unreformed communists I knew in the Bay Area.

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    2. The initial trend was in claiming that Zionism and Judaism are two distinctly separate and disconnected things.

      Now the trend on the hard-left is to equate Zionism with anti-Semitism.

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    3. they've been doing both on Daily Kos for almost as long ago as Mike and some others here were fighting the Israel/"Palestine" wars on Daily Kos. Not fooling anyone.

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  9. On the Keith Ellison question there is this article in Tablet:

    http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/218385/keith-ellison-supports-bds-and-admires-louis-farrakhan-so-why-are-jewish-democrats-supporting-him-for-chairman-of-the-dnc?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=d2a3532597-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_11_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-d2a3532597-207583601

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    1. Excellent piece.

      I almost hope that Ellison takes the DNC Chair.

      That way we'll know where everyone stands.

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    2. I suspect we know already, Mike.

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    3. To make the world better: elect more progressives!

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    4. Is their any known opposition in the Democratic Party to Ellison becoming chairman of the DNC, or are they all to scared to say something?
      What's his futz Greenblatt from the ADL has warned not to immune Ellison's integrity by means of mentioning his race or his faith, which is a shame because I was about to go after him for simply being a black man and ordinary run-of-mill work-a-day muslim. :0)
      You can read about it at Elder's joint.
      http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-adl-has-gone-completely-off-rails.html

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    5. That was supposed to be "impugn," not "immune," which of course wouldn't make sense. Immune isn't even a verb....yet.

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  10. there's some black congressman from SC, Howard Dean, and potentially some others. Ellison is being savaged in Jewish media, conservative media, but almost no Democrat-leaning or Democrat media seems to wanna face his demons, and the progressive media loves him. Some, like CNN, have briefly mentioned opposition to him, but they'd rather talk more about NPI/Spencer all the time (not that that isn't important, but liberals have kind of been doing Jew hatred for 8 years under Hussein Obama).

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    1. What does the "progressive" media love about him, aside from his race and his faith?

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  11. Now that the ADL backs Ellison I call them the Aryan Defense League.

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