Many who criticize Israel claim that there’s no anti-Semitism involved in such a criticism. After all, one can criticize Israel and not hate the Jews, right?
Except that isn’t always true. Anti-Zionism is often a way of masking anti-Semitism as this post from The Spoons Experience points out:
Sure, we think the only country on the earth that must be annihilated is Israel. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
Sure, we think that the only children on earth whose being blown up is okay if it serves a good cause are Jewish children. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
Sure, we think that if Palestinians have legitimate grievances this entitles them to mass murder Jews. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We only denounce racist apartheid in the one country in the Middle East that is not a racist apartheid country. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We think the only country in the Middle East that is a fascist anti-democratic one is the one that has free elections. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We demand that the only country in the Middle East with free speech, free press or free courts be destroyed. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We think that Israel’s having a Jewish majority and a star on its flag makes it a racist apartheid state. We do not think any other country having an ethnic-religious majority or having crosses or crescents or "Allah Akbar" on its flag is racist or needs dismemberment. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
We condemn the "mistreatment" of minorities in the only country in the Middle East in which minorities are not brutally suppressed and mass murdered. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
There’s a point to be made here. The left has seized upon Israel as this horrible racist state, only because it is a Western democracy. In the leftist worldview, a view influenced by the works of Franz Fanon and Antonio Gramsci there are the "oppressed" and the "oppressors". Under such a worldview, it’s not only fine for the "oppressors" to be brutally murdered, it’s the only way in which the "oppressed" can escape their oppression. Not surprisingly Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth was one of the founding documents for the PLO.
While those who espouse anti-Israeli views may not all be anti-Semites, they are certainly supporting those who are.
the one who are being mass-murdered right now are the palestinian. look at the figures of casualties since the beginning of the second intifada.The death tool is twice as high for palestinians.
I totally disagree on the policy of Israel. On the other hand, I never wished the annihilation of the State of Israel.
You’re still in your “you’re anti-me” position which is just supid. You have to accept that when someone makes something bad, the people around don’t support him (especially if they are his friend, because a friend doesn’t let you do something bad without telling you). You’re paranoiac. Everyday you come up with your anti-american or anti-jew complaint. this is screwed up! And the reason you give for is:
“The left has seized upon Israel as this horrible racist state, only because it is a Western democracy”…this group of person believed the sky was red because it was blue.
your analysis is just too twisted. You may not agree with the left. but you cannot deprive them from any intellectual capacity.(or it means you’re unilateral: a fascist!)
“While those who espouse anti-Israeli views may not all be anti-Semites, they are certainly supporting those who are”
I strongly disagree with this sentence. You are trying to intimidate others to prevent people to speak up their mind. I’m not anti-jews, and your threat of being considered like that is not gonna deter me from claiming the murders committed by the government of Mr sharon. I don’t support the State of Israel when it builds a wall in the middle of the country next door, or try to arrest a terrorist by blowing up a village. This strategy doesn’t work. Fighting terrorism with terrorists means is making angry the families of the person killed, and is showing to the rest of the population that the so-called democracy can act like barbarians. This will never work.
Where did you learned all these propaganda technics?
There is no moral excuse for terrorism. What Israel is doing is in response to the most barbaric, the most disgusting, the most inhumane actions a group of people can do.
There is no excuse for suicide bombing.
There is no excuse for the deliberate targeting of schoolchildren.
Yassir Arafat is a terrorist and murderer. Anyone who supports Arafat and gives him aid and comfort is assisting him in his attempts to create a Second Holocaust. One cannot be neutral towards Arafat any more than one can be neutral towards Hitler or Pol Pot.
If the Palestinians were not murdering Israeli children, they could and should have a state. If the Palestinians were following the example of Gandhi and not Fanon the actions of Sharon would not be acceptable.
But they are not, and they are getting the response they deserve for their actions. Until they choose to end the violence the people of Israel should be given every right to self-defense.
Again, by your own logic, if fighting terrorists just creates more terror, I’d better hear you saying that French Resistance and the Maquis were wrong – after all, how many Germans did they kill? By your own logic, fighting against Hitler was wrong, because fighting evil only creates more evil. What of all the angry German families that are plotting their revenge against the sons of DeGaulle, Moulin, and d’Astier?
I suppose the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane is just fine by you as well – after all, the Germans were fighting those Maquis "terrorists" who were using violence against them.
Oh wait, the Nazis were evil and the Maquis were fighting on the side of freedom and democracy against a tyrannical and anti-Semitic force.
Then again, that’s exactly what the IDF is doing every day…
and the nazis used to call resitants terrorists…
the massacre of oradour sur glane was against everyone in the village, as a response to the actions of the terrorists….
if you continue with this analogy, the state of israel can only be assimilated to the nazis.
Admittedly, SOME antisionists are also antisemits.
Yet the reverse is true: some antisemits are more than happy that the Jews have their State to absorb the whole diaspora.
But insinuating that ALL antisionists or even ALL antisharonists are antisemits is gross propaganda.
Israel is a regular UN-member (although its historical acknowledgement by the UN community would deserve a much more thorough digression), even if its foreign policy is adding up to systematic UN-law violation, blatant apartheid against Arabs (Arab Israelis + Arab Palestinians) and typical rogue State behaviour.
In addition to that, the short-run & short-lived policy conducted by Sharon is equating to a collective suicide. Many an Israeli knows that. The Sharon mafia family will soon have to answer the people of Israel. And pay the hard price for it. Just like the nepotist Bush family.
Great commentary, anti-Semitism is often carefully hidden behind the guise of an intellectual anti-Zionism. However, don’t be so hard on Fannon. His book was meant to deal with Colonialism, and in that case it was clear that everyone could be lumped into the category of oppressed and oppressor (regardless of some of the indirect benefits of Colonialism). Fannon was a pyschologist, and one of the first prominent Black Frenchmen in intellectual circles. His experiences deal with the Algerian War in which torture was used to keep down people and a dirty war was fought by France to maintain its presence. In Fannon’s time, a pseudo-facist movement, the French Secret Army (OAS) was murdering Arabs, Leftists, and Gaullists. Hardly a bunch of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” but rather a dangerous quasi-facist terror group based out of the French Army, the group was feared and was able to end many innocent lives with their vicious tactics. Thankfully, De Gaulle was able to defeat the OAS and give Algeria her freedom in one of the greatest acts of statemanship in the 20th century. Fannon’s book must only be understood in this context as that is what he based it off of (as well as the treatment of his native Martinique, currently a French overseas department- similar to the way Hawaii is a state).
not to forget the atrocity of the massacres in Madagascar perpretated by the french army before leaving the island, which has been by far the greatest time of the military history of France.
This long and hoppefully period being over, France, as well as its decrease in status and in influence over the world, has turned into a more diplomatic attitude toward war and ethnocentrism.
The virtues of hospitality, of brotherhood between populations and of mutual respect are now part of the french culture and heritage, and is the reason why people from different horizons, religions and colors decide to live in France. To get a green card in the US, you literaly have to win the lottery!!
I’m not saying everything is perfect in France. Far from that. I’m talking about our internal economic and political “quagmires”, but on the international stage, this long history allow our representatives to speak with experience of colonialism, and of “ingérence”.
FRANCE IS IN NO CASE AN ENNEMY OF THE US.
this comment should have been put in another post with a title almost similar, but the discussion of this one -anti-semitism- is included in this one. France cannot be an ennemy of Israel. It helped and participated in the decision of the creation of this country. We will not support the conduct in which its government is engaged though!
I never said Israel’s current methods of combatting insurgents amongst its conquered people were totally unjustified and unprovoked, I just said that they’re not helping the situation, and if anything are making it worse.
Of course the simpler solution would be to not conquer people but that would be too easy.
Who did Israel conquer? The "Palestinians"? Read history – the concept of Palestine was a manufactured invention of the PLO in the 1970’s. Previously Palestine was the old name for Israel.
The Arabs in the area had a choice: be a part of the UN’s mandate and become Israeli citizens or leave. Many of them stayed, and Israel still has a large population of Israeli Arabs, some of whom serve in the Knesset.
If a bunch of Mexican terrorists snuck into the United States declared that the Southwest was Azatlan and started suicide bombing people in Los Angeles, would you say that’s fair and just? After all, we certainly conquered the Southwest. By the logic of supporting the Palestinians, such actions should be perfectly acceptable.
Of course they’re not, and Israel didn’t conquer their state, they’d been living their for centuries along with the Arabs, and they continue to do so. The ones who left in "al Naqba" were the ones who would never live side by side with the Jews in a Jewish state – the Palestinians cannot have their own state until it will be a state that is not based around the idea of eliminating Israel.
Who did Israel conquer?
Well Israel conquered:
1. the whole of what was to be Palestine:
a.the area covered by current Cisjordan (West Bank)
b. Gaza
c. Jerusalem
2. what eventually turned out to be the State of Israel
3. Syria, a regular UN-member (Golan plateau)
4. Egypt, a regular UN-member (Sinaï desert)
5. Lebanon, a regular UN-member (southern Lebanon).
Not to mention repeated UN-law violations, State-terrorism, Sabra & Chatila, attacks on Iraq & the unhuman detention of the Palestinian people within a territory which is disarticulated & always diminishing.
A very, very bad pedigree indeed. Unless Peres & al. take things over, Israel’s close future is doomed to be the darkest.
If a bunch of Mexican terrorists snuck into the United States declared that the Southwest was Azatlan and started suicide bombing people in Los Angeles, would you say that’s fair and just? After all, we certainly conquered the Southwest. By the logic of supporting the Palestinians, such actions should be perfectly acceptable.
Terrorism, whatever its name, is NOT acceptable & must be fought with utter adamancy.
As for California, be sure the return of this Hispanic State back to Hispanophony has already started. It’s a question of a couple of generations. Numbers will undo what predation has done. No need for terrorism.
Notice that Israel captured these territories after having been attacked by Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt in 1967 and 1972. Note also that Israel gave the Sinai back to Egypt, and have given Gaza and the West Bank to the Palestinians.
When Algerians start randomly killing Franch people, the United States comdemned those actions. However, since France once brutally conquered Algeria, I guess those people just deserved to die. Those French people who were gunned down by Algerian terrorists were oppressors, and France is an outlaw terrorist regime. France violated the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1995, GIGN terrorists sank a Greenpeace ship. I guess that means that the cold-blooded murder of the French is perfectly acceptable – after all, Frantz Fanon (a Frenchman) said in Les damnes sur la terre:
He goes on to say:
Guess what, Fanon was talking about you as a French citizen.
So, I guess it’s okay for you to die, because your people conquered the Algerians. Sure, you allowed Algeria to become free and you give Algerian refugees political asylum and freedom, but that doesn’t matter because you’re colonizers and all colonizers deserve to die – after all, that’s what Fanon and Arafat think.
Of course, while I dislike the politics of the French, I don’t agree with such an ideology. However, if one is going to defend the rights of the Palestinians to murder Jews you have to also admit that you also deserve to die for the actions of your government. Personally, I don’t want to live in a world where children can be murdered in cold blood for the actions of their ancestors. If you choose that path, beware, because while Israel is the target now, you’re on the list as well.
Notice that Israel captured these territories after having been attacked by Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt in 1967 and 1972.
Right. Captured, conquered, same thing. Maybe doing something with it other than letting it stagnate while slowly chipping away at it with settlements when they’ve already been given a land they probably should not of had to begin with already puttin them on thin ice might have been a good idea.
Who did Israel conquer? The “Palestinians”? Read history – the concept of Palestine was a manufactured invention of the PLO in the 1970’s. Previously Palestine was the old name for Israel.
Bullshit. A Palestinian state was a part of the 1948 resolution. Most of the area that was supposed to become it was conquered by Jordan shortly afterwards.
Conquer – (via dictionary.com)
1. To defeat or subdue by force, especially by force of arms. (Well they got the first of those, at least. Now onto the second…)
2. To gain or secure control of by or as if by force of arms: scientists battling to conquer disease; a singer who conquered the operatic world.
…
If a bunch of Mexican terrorists snuck into the United States declared that the Southwest was Azatlan and started suicide bombing people in Los Angeles, would you say that’s fair and just? After all, we certainly conquered the Southwest. By the logic of supporting the Palestinians, such actions should be perfectly acceptable.
Sweet. Let’s start conquering people again. So long as we remember to subdue them its perfectly acceptable!!
Canada here we come!
Notice that Israel captured these territories
Please see comment above by Alex Beverage.
When Algerians start randomly killing Franch people
Your expertise in French history is risible. You simply forget that the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale = the terrorists fighting the French State) slaughtered Arab people in far greater numbers than European people. Just a few exactions: smokers got their noses amputated (European habit), non-radicals got their throats cut from one ear to the other (spreading terror), mixed couples got awfully tortured & killed (Arab men: testicles removed + throat cut + testicles in the mouth – Arab women: lapidation + ignition + dismemberment + rape), popular Arab areas were bombed on a daily base (kill the other or die yourself) etc etc.
GIGN terrorists sank a Greenpeace ship
GIGN is also the only police of the World who were able to successfully thwart a 9/11-like attack. The attack was launched against France in 1995: an Air France plane was meant to hit the Eiffel Tower. The terrorists were armed with guns & bazookas (not like the 19 guys who hit the Pentagon & the Twins with just forks & knives). Unlike the USA, France didn’t have the privilege to be warned about the 1995 attack. She nonetheless succeeded in rerouting the plane to Marseilles where the GIGN freed the passengers & the crew (unfortunately with some casualties). All terrotists were shot dead. A complete success to be compared with the utter US failure that traumatised this blind/deaf/incompetent (to be chosen from) country on 11 September 2001.
And Hamas routinely executes those thought to be Israeli “collaborators”.
While those who espouse anti-Palestine views may not all be anti-Muslims, they are certainly supporting those who are.