Anti-Semitism is like a dormant virus, relatively quiet most of the time in respectable society and discourse, but which bursts out into the open now and again, usually in times of economic and psychological crisis. The resulting social rash can be deadly. And there is no vaccine, other than shining the light of truth on ignorance, with which to combat the disease of hate. (In America, overt racism against blacks similarly is a virus that tends to lie dormant until suddenly bursting out in tense times.)
Since the Israel/Palestine situation goes unresolved decade after decade, and since the explosive region there is so much at the heart of U.S. policy and thus of resistance to that policy, it should not surprise anyone that the virus of anti-Semitism is erupting once again, and in so many areas.
Just a few examples:
THE FORGED "PROTOCOLS"
* We get more than the usual number of anti-Semitic letters these days at The Crisis Papers, mostly disguised but more often recently out-and-out Nazi-type screeds directed at “the Jews.” For the most part, we don’t print them, but every so often we do so to reveal to our readers the level of what passes for intelligent debate from some on the Right fringes. (And how far are the incendiary comments about "traitorous" liberals by the likes of Coulter, Horowitz, Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Savage from crossing the line into incitement-speech?)
* In earlier years, world leaders would not speak openly in anti-Semitic terms; but recently, for example, officials from Malaysia and Iran in public speeches have stoked the fires of anti-Jewish suspicion and hatred. And just a few years ago, Egyptian TV broadcast a documentary filled with anti-Jewish propaganda, based largely on the long-discredited forgery called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” about an alleged Jewish plot to rule the world. Schools in many Muslim countries (including states allied with the U.S.) continue to teach their young students to hate Jews, likewise using the phony "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" as their starting point.
* The fact that there are a number of well-known Jews at the heart of the neo-conservative movement in America -- most notably Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith -- has engendered a good many rants about how “the Jews” control U.S. foreign policy and have taken America to war in Iraq for reasons having more to do with protecting Israel than America. (Ignored in these screeds are the majority of non-Jews involved in the neo-con and HardRight movements, and the influence of Christian Zionists and the military/industrial/Big Oil complex on American foreign policy.)
* The Left was somewhat split over last weekend's anti-war demonstrations. Many liberals chose not to participate in the large marches organized by one of the main national anti-war groups, A.N.S.W.E.R. ("Act Now to Stop War & End Racism"), because that outfit's emphasis on Palestinian statehood at the expense of Israel's existence -- thus implying that Jews need to be eliminated from the region -- is both offensive and ill-advised; the group also is much criticized for co-opting rallies organized by other anti-war groups and bringing a whole host of domestic and foreign issues into marches supposedly devoted to getting the U.S. out of Iraq. Those not choosing to march with A.N.S.W.E.R. avoided Saturday's rallies or made other arrangements; many are gearing up for the April 29 nationwide demos being organized by United for Peace, which concentrates less on side issues and mostly on ending the war in Iraq.
Well, one could go on and on with such a listing. The point is that scapegoats are required in any time of crisis. Often those scapegoats are “the Jews,” but at other times and at other places, the focus of hate is directed at “the liberals,” “the blacks,” “the gays,” "the Arabs," and so on.
"KILLING EACH OTHER, OF COURSE"
I recall my travels in Yugoslavia when Tito was holding together that artificially-constructed, multi-ethnic country by force of his charisma and his Communist police-state. I asked all the academics and students I ran into what would happen when their leader died. It didn’t matter whether these reasonable intellectual types were Serbs or Croats, Christian or Muslim, the answer was always the same: “When Tito dies? We’ll go back to killing each other, of course.”
But, I protested, you’ve lived together in peace for decades now, you are often good friends and colleagues, you even intermarry; why would you revert back to such brutal ways of dealing with each other, to a kind of vicious tribalism? The answer I got was heartbreaking in its scapegoat simplicity: “Because you can’t trust the [insert name of ethnic or religious group], they’re all liars and thieves.” When, years later, the Serbs and Croats began slaughtering each other, I was appalled but not surprised. Ancient rivers run deep.
And Jews are, in some ways, as ancient as they come, and therefore throughout history have served as handy scapegoats when an outlet is needed for blame and resentment.
THE NEW "JEWS"
But there are Jews and there are those who might be considered the new "Jews," who take their lumps as well: homosexuals, Chinese in Southeast Asia, Palestinians and other Arabs in Israel and the U.S. (and often also in Arab nations), African-Americans in the South and in the inner cities, Mexican immigrants, whoever. It’s the same process of stereotyping and repression, which often leads to discrimination and violence, even when the group being victimized changes.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
This issue of 'antisemitism' had become a lovely candy for the US pundits on all sides. As mostly the pundits (including the one author of this paper) are profoundly ignorant and also for some strange reason consider themselves as special just either because they are Jewish or because 'my relatives perished', they are unstoppable in their diatribes full of old clishees like ' dormant virus' thing or 'new Jews" etc.
It is all as boring as it is stupid. There are
the simple things though:
1. The website reference listed above belongs to the right- wing demagogues and all their conclusions about 'antisemitism of the left' are to be sent to the toilet.
2. The reference to all those Jugoslavians under Tito who according to the author were bound to kill each other is a racist slander. Most likely the author just heared what he wanted to hear. There are numerous, overwhelming evidences of the excellent coexistence between the nations there and not only because of Tito. The author is ignorant as I said. This time he is even mean.
3. Jews are exactly the same as everyone else. The actual Holocaust did happen to the victims of it. It by no means entitles the people who live now to any special treatment except the acknowledgement that it happened and who did it; thus for instance criticising Israel is perfectly OK: we criticise any government if we consider it a government. Thus Israeli government recently and before behaved as a non-democratic institution and no Jewishness in the world can make it otherwise.
4. There is no 'Jewish conspiracy' but there is a Zionist influence and that movement explicitly defines that 'all Jews' belong to them. If you want to properly treat the Jews as well as anyone else you should distinguish those things and say loud and clear that no one in the world can claim the ownership over the nation and no one in the world can tell a Jew, an Arab, an Indian or a Kentukkian that he /she is obligated by birth to belong to a certain movement. To make claims on the individual by birth is racism.
5. The best to treat the Jews as well as anybody else is to acknowledge the simple thing: that they are no different from anyone else. As such as individuals they can be good and bad, as groups they can have 'conspiracies of interest' and as governments they can be bad governments and good governments. You will find nothing in the actions, say of the government of Israel which was not done before by England, France, USA, Russia, India, Pakistan, Egypt,Germany, etc.
The best thing is to show the facts and make opinions about them. Opinions, whether correct or not are not anti--isms as soon as you treat all the same. As an example we have to acknowledge that there is such thing as AIPAC and it is an Israeli lobby. But it is not the ' Jewish lobby', no matter how they call themselves. An average Jewish person does not benefit from AIPAC activity. So, there is no antisemitism in the exposing of the AIPAC as soon as this exposure is on the same grounds as, say Saudi Lobby influence or powerful Food Business influence ( only do not tell me that US Food works for the US national interests, please). Everyone who deliberately invokes a hammer of antisemitism to brand a label on the 'left' or ' right' for that matter does a bad service of demagoguery to everyone including the Jews. David Irving suffered correctly not because of his antisemitism but because his idiocy was proclaimed and supported as a real science by his peers. As such he decided that he was really a 'historian' of sorts and as such he thought too much about himself. That prompted him to go to Austria where there are laws against his kind of 'views'. He could stay in England with no problem. Idiocy and malice are not really antisemitic- they are anti-human. Truly, the Irving's activity harmed not only Jews, right?
There are no New Jews, Old Jews, etc. There are Jewish people: bad, good, politicians, crooks, murderers, geniuses, fornicators, Zionists, demagogues, rich, poor, stupid, ignorant, mean, nice, perfect, men, women, children. JUST AS EVERYBODY ELSE! TREAT THEM THE SAME OR LEAVE THEM ALONE, PLEASE, ALL OF YOU! FIND ANOTHER CANDY TO SUCK ON!
by
Mark Sashine (42 articles, 19 quicklinks, 226 diaries, 3212 comments)
on Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 7:26:44 AM
Why won't you take a look in the mirror before throwing in
To Ardee
I never said 'Zionist conspiracy'. I said,' Zionist movement'.You can go yourself and find out that there is such thing and Israel has it as its official ideology and according to that ideology every Jew by blood 'belongs' to them eventually, no matter where and no matter who that person is as a personality. Such ideology no matter what its goal is racist because it assumes unequivocally a bondage by blood. But it has nothing to do with Jews; it has everything to do with some people who happens to be Jewish ( and some of them are not) who promote and pursue their own political agenda using all the means at their disposal. As for conspiracies, people do conspire through pursuing their interests all the time and Zionists are not an exception. Far from it.They would be stupid not to be.
By conspiracy I do not mean the covert meetings etc. I mean a natural way of promoting an agenda of a group of people who for whatever reason feel that together they can achieve their goals. Happens all the time. Can be of good and bad consequences but it always involves hypocricy, demagoguery and manipulation. By actually acknowledging a simple truth that among the Jewish people there could be and certainly are the people who will pursue their own special interests through political and power manipulation we acknowledge the equality of the Jewish people to anyone else. On the contrary, by proclaiming them somehow an artificial exception to the rule we become antisemitic. In fact, as soon as we put a label of 'exceptionality' whether good or bad on the nation or a religious group, we preach thus intolerance and malice. The group can pursue its goals and those goals can be unbelievably mean but they are not exceptional: other people have done that before and will do that after. Jewish people are not an exception in the mozaic of the humans; they posess all the good features and all the vices of all other people: no more and no less.
As such they are subject of the same scrutiny as everyone else. No exceptions.
And one more thing: We usually accuse other people of what we ourselves are capable of. So, before you insult someone you better take a good look in the mirror.
by
Mark Sashine (42 articles, 19 quicklinks, 226 diaries, 3212 comments)
on Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 8:00:54 AM
