Professor Joseph Massad of Columbia University has written an article for Electronic Intifada where he again tries to make an argument that Zionism is in fact antisemitic, and anti-Zionism is a principled form of anti-colonialism.
We've demolished his arguments and proven that he lies before. Massad's words about Zionism are indistinguishable from those of neo-Nazis. It is most interesting that the leftists seem to embrace Massad because he also lumps another group as anti-colonialist - the gays.
The beginning of the article, however, includes an historical aside that shows again how deceptive this Columbia professor is with the facts.
To establish his bona fides about being against antisemitism, he writes:
No thinking person, for example, is expected to believe that descriptions of Jews as engaging in a “worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization,” as Winston Churchill accused “international Jews” of doing in the Sunday Herald in 1920, are not anti-Semitic.Was Churchill an antisemite?
Here is the article that Massad is referring to, entitled "Zionism vs. Bolshevism."
The very beginning of the article shows that there is no way that Churchill can be characterized as a hater of Jews.
SOME people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.
Disraeli, the Jew Prime Minister of England, and Leader of the Conservative Party, who was always true to his race and proud of his origin, said on a well-known occasion: “The Lord deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews.” Certainly when we look at the miserable state of Russia, where of all countries in the world the Jews were the most cruelly treated, and contrast it with the fortunes of our own country, which seems to have been so providentially preserved amid the awful perils of these times, we must admit that nothing that has since happened in the history of the world has falsified the truth of Disraeli’s confident assertion.
While Churchill's words from nearly a century ago do not conform to political correctness nowadays, he is careful to distinguish between the "international Jews" who supported what was proven to become a genocidal political movement and the majority of Jews.
Good and Bad Jews.Here is the full context for Massad's quote, that proves that he took a single sentence out of context in order to paint Churchill, and all Zionists, as antisemites:
The conflict between good and evil which proceeds unceasingly in the breast of man nowhere reaches such an intensity as in the Jewish race. The dual nature of mankind is nowhere more strongly or more terribly exemplified. We owe to the Jews in the Christian revelation a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all other wisdom and learning put together. On that system and by that faith there has been built out of the wreck of the Roman Empire the whole of our existing civilisation.
And it may well be that this same astounding race may at the present time be in the actual process of producing another system of morals and philosophy, as malevolent as Christianity was benevolent, which, if not arrested, would shatter irretrievably all that Christianity has rendered possible. It would almost seem as if the gospel of Christ and the gospel of Antichrist were destined to originate among the same people; and that this mystic and mysterious race had been chosen for the supreme manifestations, both of the divine and the diabolical.
"National" Jews.If characterizing one of three groups of Jews makes one an antisemite, then Joseph Massad just defined himself as an antisemite - because guess who Churchill's third group of Jews is? Zionist Jews!
There can be no greater mistake than to attribute to each individual a recognisable share in the qualities which make up the national character. There are all sorts of men – good, bad and, for the most part, indifferent – in every country, and in every race. Nothing is more wrong than to deny to an individual, on account of race or origin, his right to be judged on his personal merits and conduct. In a people of peculiar genius like the Jews, contrasts are more vivid, the extremes are more widely separated, the resulting consequences are more decisive.
At the present fateful period there are three main lines of political conception among the Jews, two of which are helpful and hopeful in a very high degree to humanity, and the third absolutely destructive.
First there are the Jews who, dwelling in every country throughout the world, identify themselves with that country, enter into its national life, and, while adhering faithfully to their own religion, regard themselves as citizens in the fullest sense of the State which has received them. Such a Jew living in England would say, “I am an Englishman practising the Jewish faith.” This is a worthy conception, and useful in the highest degree. We in Great Britain well know that during the great struggle the influence of what may be called the “National Jews” in many lands was cast preponderatingly on the side of the Allies; and in our own Army Jewish soldiers have played a most distinguished part, some rising to the command of armies, others winning the Victoria Cross for valour.
The National Russian Jews, in spite of the disabilities under which they have suffered, have managed to play an honourable and useful part in the national life even of Russia. As bankers and industrialists they have strenuously promoted the development of Russia’s economic resources and they were foremost in the creation of those remarkable organisations, the Russian Co-operative Societies. In politics their support has been given, for the most part, to liberal and progressive movements, and they have been among the staunchest upholders of friendship with France and Great Britain.
International Jews.
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing.
Zionism offers the third sphere to the political conceptions of the Jewish race. In violent contrast to international communism, it presents to the Jew a national idea of a commanding character. It has fallen to the British Government, as the result of the conquest of Palestine, to have the opportunity and the responsibility of securing for the Jewish race all over the world a home and a centre of national life. The statesmanship and historic sense of Mr. Balfour were prompt to seize this opportunity. Declarations have been made which have irrevocably decided the policy of Great Britain. The fiery energies of Dr. Weissmann, the leader, for practical purposes, of the Zionist project, backed by many of the most prominent British Jews, and supported by the full authority of Lord Allenby, are all directed to achieving the success of this inspiring movement.Massad's single-minded hate of Zionism is comparable to Churchill's hate of Communism. If Churchill's words against "international Jews" are antisemitic, them Massad's decades-long battle to demonize Zionist Jews is no less.
And indeed it is more, because by denying that Jews have a right to self determination and by labeling all who have that desire as racist and colonialist as opposed to liberal and freedom-seeking, Massad is being directly antisemitic.
Which is why he is so desperate to change the definition of antisemitic to include Zionists.