Alarm bells are going off among rigid pro-Israel circles about "the new anti-Semitism" – which means the increasing criticism of Israeli policies, particularly its occupation of Palestinian lands. At Stanford, where I teach, students organized Students Confronting Apartheid in Israel (SCAI), calling for divestment from selected companies that sustain the occupation of the West Bank, not a general boycott of Israel. They announced their campaign on the same day that President Jimmy Carter's recent book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid appeared. Both used the hot-button term of "apartheid" as an analogy to describe Israel's policies of separation walls, Jews-only by-pass roads, passbook checkpoints and segregated settlements on confiscated land. It's not an exact fit, but a good enough analogy, as Carter and the students explained. The students, while raising the issues of discrimination against Palestinians who are Israeli citizens, took great care, as Carter did, to focus just on the occupation and not attack Israel as a country.
No matter. SCAI, like Carter, has been virulently attacked as anti-Semites, and in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Anti-Defamation League has held a conference to fight "the new anti-Semitism" represented by such criticism.
Such a charge is actually not so new. From the beginning of the occupation in 1967 through decades, critics have been castigated as anti-Semites. When Jesse Jackson called for negotiations with the PLO and for a two-state solution, when Americans spoke out against the policy of "breaking bones" during the first intifada – every time there have been criticisms of Israel, charges are leveled of the "new anti-Semitism" or "Black anti-Semitism" or the "real anti-Semitism." It's tiresome.
But now there is a difference. While Carter has been denounced as an anti-Semite, he was able to gain a standing ovation from students at the predominately Jewish campus of Brandeis University, and he will be heard no matter what kind of names he is called. Students at Stanford have responded to attacks with cool reason, measured words and quiet fortitude, and they are gaining an audience. Presbyterian and other churches have been attacked for their decisions about divestment but they have not faltered.
Increasingly, prominent Jewish critics of Israel have been targeted. Now the American Jewish Committee is distributing an essay by Alvin H. Rosenfeld entitled " 'Progressive' Jewish Thought and [yes] the New Anti-Semitism" attacking Tony Judt, Tony Kushner, Adrienne Rich, the late Arthur Miller and more. This attack has only accelerated the widespread dismay that continues to run through Jewish intellectual circles. Even Jews sensitive to Jewish concerns are being slandered in defense of Israel's self-destructive policies, and more and more Jews are alienated to such "your with us or you're against us" mindsets.
Usually, those leveling charges of the new "new anti-Semitism" harp on a few themes. According to them, critics employ double standards, focusing on Israel while ignoring failings of other countries, particularly Arab and Muslim countries. One of the key organizers of SCAI was also one of the leaders in (successfully) calling for Stanford to divest from companies that do business with Sudan despite the dismal situation in Darfur. Still, he was attacked for double standards, and in fact there is virtually nothing he could do to shield himself from castigation.
No matter how single your standard, you will be attacked by many supporters of Israel. Nor is this the first time "double standards" have been used as a smokescreen. I've been around long enough and been on the receiving end of these charges, so I'd like to remind people of certain realities these attackers ignore.
In the eighties I worked for a newspaper which called for Palestinian rights, and we wrote editorials denouncing the atrocities committed by both sides of teh Iran-Iraq war. We wondered why the US was actually backing Iraq (although after Iran-Contra broke, we learned that the US was actually supplying both sides with the aim of helping each to destroy the other). Not too many pro-Israel supporters cried out about the one million people killed in that stupid war – nor did they complain about America's complicity in egging on both sides.
For decades Middle East peace advocates criticized reactionary anti-democratic regimes throughout the Middle East, noting how the US funded the repressive apparatus of many of these regimes in order to destroy any indigenous movement for democracy. Activists in the Middle East peace movement denounced the murderous regime of the Shah of Iran – and when Ayatollah Khomeni took over and jailed and executed secular democrats and socialists, we denounced the Islamic regime as well.
When I and others spoke out about Israel's alliance with apartheid South Africa, we were met with howls by supporters of Israel – until representatives of the ANC addressed the same audiences, and the attackers were too embarrassed to speak. Along those lines, it was no accident in the eighties that the Bay Area ADL was caught spying not only on Middle East activists but on such "radical" civil rights organizations as the NAACP and anti-apartheid organizations – and then turned over their intelligence to the South African as well as Israeli governments.
Actually, all throughout this time the "double standard" operated more in the other direction: no one was allowed to criticize Israel without being ostracized or attacked. The most odious example of that was the huge disarmament demonstration in 1982 in New York during which even the peace march organizers banned any posters calling for the end of Israel's invasion of Lebanon then going on.
None of the critics targeted as the new "new anti-Semites" condone terrorism, and they have condemned such actions as suicide bombings against civilians. Most of these critics acknowledge that both sides have blood on their hands. But this has not stopped the cadres of Israel's holier-than-thou defenders from attacking these critics.
Israel is a vital, strategic component of American policy in the Middle East. It serves as a reliable military outpost and partner, fulfilling joint goals, such as last summer's unsuccessful attack on Lebanon or the possible upcoming attack on Iran, and the Bush administration has allowed the Israelis to build settlements and do as it wishes, just so long as the big picture of American domination of the region is kept clearly in focus. Yet Israel's continuing dispossession and abuse of the Palestinian people is a festering sore in the region; it is a major source of instability. Consequently, anyone who wants to end the American occupation of Iraq and the growing hatred for Americans in the region has to address Israel's role, as well. The Iraq Study Group stated this obvious truth – it's not a terribly radical insight – and this is why in great part the campaign against the new "new anti-Semitism" has been launched.
I think the time has long passed for these slanders to come to an end. The tragedy is that these tactics obscure dealing with real problems and real hatred. Many people in the Middle East do hate Israelis – they bomb their homes, confiscate their land, and more in the name of all Jews. At the same time too many Americans entertain half-baked ideas about purported Jewish power. So, it's not as if everything will become a love fest. And it's not as if opportunists like the president of Iran who trot out denials of the holocaust are not fanning anti-Semitism. But if the real abuses of Israel are not confronted in a free and open debate in the United States, then it only means more hatred, directed not only against Jews but also against Americans.
Hilton Obenzinger is the author of "American Palestine: Melville, Twain and the Holy Land Mania," among many other books of criticism, poetry and fiction, and the recipient of the American Book Award. He is a long-time Jewish American advocate of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Hilton Obenzinger teaches writing and American literature at Stanford University.
When I saw Jimmy Carter(Remember that's PRESIDENT Jimmy Carter) more or less forced to apologise on the Today Show last week I realized we weren't dealing with some ordinary power block. I just wish ordinary Americans would understand just what Jimmy Carter is sticking his neck out to show us.
Judging from the lack of comments on this straight forward and yet stepping on egg shells article of yours, it seems that even people here on this site are afraid of this buzz saw too. Frankly I would expect more. But watching Jimmy Carter on TV, I won't presume to judge.
I can't tell a Jew from a Baptist walking down the street. I simply don't hate anyone. And more important, neither does Jimmy Carter. It's time to consider that this Zionist regiem is using the Jewish race or religion as a smoke screen. A place to hide. Who's going to step up and name names here? Clear up what's really going on? Who knows what's going on? Jimmy Carter? ISG? GW or GHW Bush? The Clintons?
Israel, UK, USA all seem subsets in some larger game we just can't quite put a label on. Can't quite get a handle on it. I think many people "feel" it, But just can't seem to define it. And those that can, if anyone, are unwilling to speak out. Or at least speak out clearly. Simply. And perhaps with good reason.
by
"Hoss" David P. (51 articles, 5 quicklinks, 14 diaries, 338 comments)
on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 9:40:51 PM
The Zionist doctrine according to which the Jews are chosen people and God designated for them to live on the land of Israel prevents automatically from having any peace in the region for the simple reason that other Gods will never agree. No people in the world would agree to the 'designated land' and no people in the world have to agree to such irrational statement. That irrationality, done deliberately by the Zionist elite is harming all, both Jews and Arabs alike as well as the premise that only those Jews are Jews who are Zionists. That is hijacking, extortion, a lie and as such cannot hold. Thus the key is in transformation of the govt of Israel into the true democratic one and abandonement of the premise of the ' chosen'. Jews are not chosen. They are the same as everyone else. Israel should not be a ' Jewish state'. It should be a 'state of Israel' with Israelis living there.
Now, as for reactionary Arab regimes, they are truly our doings, many of them.
by
Mark Sashine (51 articles, 19 quicklinks, 244 diaries, 3462 comments)
on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 8:10:34 AM
The claim that one is anti-Semitic for denouncing injustice and hypocricy in the democracy known as Israel:
Is akin to attacking anyone who speaks out against the Bush Administration as unpatriotic!
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official."~Theodore Roosevelt
USA blind allegience to Israel's defiance of International Law and the UN Declaration of Human Rights which were contingent upon its becoming a state in 1948,
plus USA Tax payers over 100 billion dollars that have gone to support the Occupation of Palestine
and the sale of billions more in weapons of destruction at bargain basement prices to continue the occupation
Have brought us to this place in time.
What we need is honesty, desire to right the wrongs of the past and common sense:
"Soon after I had published the pamphlet "Common Sense" [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion... The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."-Tom Paine
A very strange irony has been brewing in the "middle-east" for centuries. The birthplace of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity (not to mention a variety of other religions)has also been the location of many of histories most offensive, violent chapters. The Irony is that these religions all worship the same deity (one would think that the people who live there would have something in common).
Curiously enough, they do: the cultures of this area of the world all share a desire to supplant competeing religions and "win" first prize as the single "true" children of "God". I find this mind boggling since I thought we were all children of God.
This bent toward religious competetion reaches beyond people of different faiths; even subdivisions of the same religion seem to have hateful and violent behaviors. The different denominations in Islam are killing their own brothers and sisters in faith. The ongoing violent clashes between catholics and protestants in Ireland are another example.
The teachings of Jesus clearly promote love for each other and your enemies. The Bible clearly instructs that "judgement" is the business of God not man. The new testament explains what love is and is not (words often spoken at christian weddings). Sadly, the religious zealots of the past and currently have rejected the simple instructions about love and tolerance.
Paul told Timothy that he should "study the scriptures to show himself approved". I believe that Paul's advice was to study the texts of many different religions; and that practice would help to see the truth about mans relationship with God. Unfortunately, I have found few "religious" people who have read the entire text of their own faith, let alone others.
If there is one God....and if that God is just and merciful.....Judgement day will be a bitch for a lot of "righteous" souls.
Thanks for your attention.......Mr. Brian Mathes
by
Brian Mathes (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 41 comments)
on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 11:26:04 AM
4 comments
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