Thursday, September 27, 2018

I Was Wrong about Anti-Zionists

Michael Lumish
This is a retread of a thing I wrote for Daily Kos in June of 2009 under the nom de blog "Karmafish" which I entitled, I Was Wrong about Anti-Zionists. 
It has been almost ten years, now, and what I was trying to do then was simply alert the American-Left to the fact of antisemitic anti-Zionism within their ranks.
The piece is sarcastic and ironic because I was frustrated at the failure of their ongoing refusal to recognize what was right before their faces.

In truth, the western-left does not care about racism. It is, in fact, the most highly racist movement outside of political Islam in the West today.

It simply uses racism as a political club.

And the thing of it is, these people are not being disingenuous. They sincerely believe what they say that they believe. What they do not seem to understand is that bigotry is not dependent upon the ethnicity of the target.
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For a long time, now, I have been suggesting that left anti-Zionism often serves as a shroud for anti-Semitism and that the constant vilification and demonization of Israel is anti-Semitic when the people doing that vilifying ignore Darfur and Congo and Sri Lanka and the Chinese in Tibet.
I must admit that I was wrong and I hereby issue an apology.
I live in San Francisco and I love my town.  Some months ago there was a protest against Israel’s Gaza incursion and here are a few photos demonstrating just how wrong I was.
Let’s get directly to the matter, shall we?
This nice lady carried a sign reading, "Jews are terroist!"  I am not certain what a "terroist" is, but criticism of Israel is not, I repeat, NOT anti-Semitism.  By the way, aren't her daughters as cute as little anti-Zionist buttons?
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Now, given the overly extreme sensitivities of
Jews "Zionists" you would think that someone carrying such a sign would be asked to leave or put it away.  Did that happen?  Not exactly.
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Smile pretty for the camera!
Some of the pro-Israel, "Zionist" crowd has suggested that the left is often supportive of Hamas despite their Jew Killing agenda as laid out in their charter, which reads, in part:
The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!
But this is clearly false.  No one on the left actually supports Hamas:
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No one on the left would be caught dead supporting a blood-thirsty, gay-hating, woman-oppressing, Jew-killing, theocratic organization like Hamas.  It’s just that Hamas is misunderstood.  They can’t help themselves.  Besides, it’s all Israel’s fault.
And since it is all Israel’s fault, you really cannot blame people for wanting to kill "Zionists."
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Or ZioNazis, anyway.  This fine gentleman of the left has nothing against Jews, just evil ZioNazis who are legitimate military targets.  Kill the ZioNazis!  Of course, since the vast majority of Jewish people happen to favor the existence of the Jewish state (for some dumb reason) this would make them Zionists and, thus, Nazis.  And we all know what to do with Nazis.  Just what this gentleman suggests, eh?  But no reasonable person could possibly consider such a stance, the killing of "Zionists," to be anti-Semitic.  This is merely criticism of Israel and again, criticism of Israel is NOT anti-Semitic and anyone who suggests otherwise is a GIYUS Hasbara troll trying to shut down the discussion.
Here is this man’s criticism of Israel:
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Smash the Jewish state?  That’s a good question.  Should Israel, or should Israel not, be destroyed?  There is something like 13 million Jews in the world, a whopping .2% of the world population, and nearly 40% of them live in Israel.  But the question of whether or not to wipe them out is not anti-Jewish.  It is a merely a question that people of good will can disagree upon.  
Now, the European Union has declared that equating Israel with Nazi Germany is anti-Semitic, but given Europe’s famous love for the Jewish people, it is not surprising that they would suggest this.  The problem is that there is just too much good will toward Jews in Europe and they are far, far too overprotective of their Jewish citizenry.  Just because Jewish schools and synagogues have to be guarded by the police from possible attack means nothing.

And just because anti-Jewish violence is rising there is no cause for concern.  National Socialism, of course, is generally considered the worst, the most vicious, political movement in world history and they had to be destroyed.  But comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is not anti-Semitic.  It is, again, merely criticism of Israel.  There is nothing wrong with criticizing Israel, just as there is nothing wrong with criticizing any other country.  And just because Israel is like Nazi Germany, and Nazi Germany had to be destroyed, Jewish people should not get so head-up about this mild criticism.
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And just because Zionism, the movement for Jewish self-determination and self-defense, is just like Nazism is also no reason for Jews to object to such a characterization.
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Of course, some people consider Jews to actually be worse than Nazis.  The picture below shows a Star of David, the symbol of the Jewish people, with a "greater than" symbol pointing to a Nazi Swastika.  I understand that a tiny percentage of blood-thirsty Jewish neo-cons would object to such a characterization, but the neo-cons gave us the Iraq war and thus should not be listened to.  The suggestion that Jewish people are actually worse than Nazis is nothing but criticism of Israel.  It is not meant to offend Jews and it certainly should not be taken to mean that Jews are evil and must be gotten rid of.
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Never again?  It's a question, really.  Probably never again.  Perhaps.
Nonetheless, as I am sure you will all agree, the Intifada needs to be globablized.
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All this person is suggesting is that people of good will around the globe must take to the streets in violent confrontation with "Zionists" wherever they might be found.  Just because the vast majority of Jews support the Jewish state and are, thus, "Zionists" doesn’t mean that they should object to a global Intifada.  
In fact, Jewish people, as a matter of social justice, should join with their anti-Zionist brothers and sisters calling for violent reprisals against... "Zionists"!
Some of you, btw, may have heard of a recent police shooting of an unarmed man in Oakland in the Oakland City BART station.  One liberal anti-Zionist protester, reasonably enough, blames this on the Jews.
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The suggestion, of course, is that Israel’s recent criminal Zionist genocidal massacre in Gaza is directly connected to that shooting.  But it cannot be said enough that criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic.
Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic.
Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic.
And there was Cindy.
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What a shame.
And, again, I apologize.

17 comments:

  1. Or they're just democrats and progressives.

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  2. Hard-hitting sarcasm. Until we got to Cindy. Cindy who?

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    1. I think it was Cindy Sheehan. She lost her son in the Iraq war so naturally she blames Israel, because, you know, Jews!

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    2. "Victory to the Palestinian People" says the sign.
      Do these people even know what the fuck they're talking about? Of course not.
      I love the pic of Santa Claus with the red Che Guevara hat, red shirt, and signs in red magic marker. Can we assume he's red? Still livin' the dream.

      I saw a guy at Costco one day wearing a hat that said "Noam Chomsky" on the front. I pointed at it and said, "I think the propeller fell off."

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    3. Yeah, Cindy Sheehan. She was pretty huge for awhile there, enough that Viggo Mortenson dropped by "Camp Cindy" outside of W's ranch during Iraq War II.

      We loved her on Daily Kos. She represented the face of the people involved in an unnecessary war and her child had just been killed in that war.

      An interesting bit of info -- for me, at least -- is that Diane Gee hooked up with Sheehan and they almost had a political run together.

      Gee was an administrator on Maryscott O'Connor's My Left Wing Blog and who, at one point, on her own blog, The Wild, Wild Left literally called for the nuking of Israel if it did not comply with her demands around the time of the Mavi Marmara thing.

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  3. The 'Globalize the intifada' guy's other job is standing out in front of Peet's Coffee holding a bran muffin.

    I just love it when middle class white people living on lands stolen from native Americans tell you about 'indigenous palestinians' and 'zionazis'.

    I'm convinced that Bay Area activism is caused by too much direct sunlight. It certainly has nothing to do with facts or anything resembling humility.

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  4. Someone should make a poster showing the walking skeletons from any of the concentration camps and the Palestinians in the refugee camps asking if there's any comparison?

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    1. I have come around to Trudy's view on Gaza and the PA and the PLO and Mahmoud Abbas. They should be entirely persona non grata.

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    2. Let the Arab countries take care of their brothers and sisters. Not that they ever would, but it should not be a Jewish responsibility.

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    3. In other words you believe that we should respond to the Left's smears by making them true.

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  5. I always take people at their word. If you call me a terrorist then that saves me the trouble of denying it when I figure out some way to murder your family and get away with it. I will never worry about the 'don't stoop their level' argument. I want to escalate to their level times a hundred. One of kids was talking about this Senate nonsense yesterday and he asked me, what should the response be. I told him we should exterminate all the democrats in congress and all their families. Kill them all. What's the worst that happens? I had to explain I wasn't really kidding. You asked, I answered. Deal with it. Does that make me a monster? I can live with that.

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    1. The rest of your comment aside, I was stunned by what I saw at that Senate hearing yesterday. That examiner, Ms. Mitchell, the Republicans had question DR!!! Blasey-Ford treated her as if she was some frail little girl who had just been assaulted. And Blasey-Ford spoke in the voice of a 15 year old girl. Did anyone notice this? (I'm dying to see a video of one of her classes to find out if she always speaks like a child who doesn't understand simple questions or the meanings of words.) "The polygraph man put something on me and stood behind me and I was so scared." Every 5 minutes the Democrats got their turn. Not one of them acted with any skepticism at all. Not one of them exposed her or her story to any kind of scrutiny at all, not even for appearance sake. Instead, each had five minutes to tell her how she was a brave 'survivor' and golly gosh oh gee, the bestest possible person who ever sat in their presence and how they all believed her. And the examiner somehow had to tell her that this method wasn't the best for speaking to her about this, and had she ever heard of the desired method to which the good Dr. pleaded ignorance. Are you kidding me? This woman, Blasey-Ford, alleges she was sexually assaulted when she was 15 and she's now a 53 year old psychologist, and she has never taken a professional interest in the behavior of sexual assault victims? Wouldn't one think she has incredible knowledge of the behavior of sexual assault victims and how to sell it? I can't believe no one has thought of this. She's a frigging psychology professor! And she just happens to be accusing Kavanaugh of 2018's designer accusation, i.e., sexual assault. Has anyone, Democrat or Republican entertained the possibility that she actually could be lying? I'm not saying she did, but isn't that a real possibility that should have been entertained?
      The whole thing was a disgusting circus. The Republicans' job was to push the nomination through to prove to their base they have some balls before the election, but they had to bring in Ms. Mitchell to make it all sound soft instead of a skilled lawyer to cross examine for fear of the Dems screaming that they're all bullies who hate women. Whereas the Dems job is to stop another conservative from getting on the court, and getting women to turn out for them in greater numbers. It's politics, but a really sick kind of politics.
      I have no preference for the Supreme Court, and who knows maybe Kavanaugh jumped her bones for all I know, but for now it just does not compute. I don't get how someone is credible simply for telling a good story with nothing to back it up. To me, credible is when you assert something and have evidence to support your claim.
      What I found most disturbing is the intersectional babble now being practiced by US Senators. The all women must be believed nonsense. It begs the question of a future where members of special groups must be believed. Campus intersectionality has now slithered into the public sphere. This is what I find most frightening.

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  6. If Ford had been a black lesbian, Kavanaugh would be hanging from a lamppost today.

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    1. That's an important point but one that I very much disagree with. I think it was important to find a bland infantilized white upper class woman with college degrees because it makes her entirely unimpeachable as a witness. A ghetto homegirl would automatically be discounted by most democrats except the blacks. She would be seen as nothing more than trash looking for a payday. And - FWIW it would have been easy for Kavanaugh to refute every single claim since he's a upper class frat boy who never came across any blacks or gays when he was young. I can guarantee it.

      No it was smart for them to prop up this woman with her college job and her apparently inability to splutter out a sentence unless it had the words "hippocampus" and "norepinephrine" in it. It leant both a sheen of plausibility and the persona of an infantilized victim.

      Of course in a week or two when she makes the I have a book tour she'll be laughing and smiling on The View. Is she starting a foundation to help every Muffy at the country club? Is she going on a speaking tour? Is she running for some public office? Is she going to fund raise for various democrats before the midterms. Will she appear on late night TV? Yes to all of that.

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    2. Oh I agree with all you say here Trudy. My thinking was along the lines of how the testicle free Republicans caved to the left's/media's ridiculous premise that 11 old white guys couldn't credibly question a woman so they hired a woman to do it. Black Lesbian? They probably would have supplied the ladder and rope.

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    3. Keep in mind that every one of the 10 democrats stated they vote against anyone Trump nominated before anyone heard Kavanaugh's name. They are never going to support anyone. They have said this. They are willing to use every trick to leave this seat and any other new open seat open for as long as it takes to appoint whomever they want.

      Don't forget that both houses of Congress have already approved scores of new Federal judges nominated by this administration and those are people who potentially wield even more power than the SC and they too are appointed for life. In fact Brett Kavanaugh is one such judge, appointed and approved by Congress, under the Bush administration in 2006. His views haven't changed and his written opinions, 300+ of them are publicly available.

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  7. If you want the truth about Israel
    and the Middle East, then do not waste
    your time with the FAKE NEWS
    of The New York Times and the
    Israel-bashing mainstream-news-media.

    Instead, visit these web sites:

    www.jns.org

    www.algemeiner.com

    www.memri.org

    www.aish.com

    www.DanielPipes.org

    www.camera.org

    ================================
    Why Israel’s 1967 Borders are Undefendable:

    www.algemeiner.com/2017/10/27/israel-cannot-withdraw-from-the-
    west-bank/

    https://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2017/03/guest-post-why-1967-borders-are-suicide.html

    ReplyDelete