In today's edition of living while Palestinian. Journo interested in IHRA critique asks me if Palestinian protest doesn't risk turning into anti Jewish hate. So here we go #Thread #IHRAFirst off, the fact that young Palestinians who have only known Israeli siege and massacre and aerial bombardment & snipers in Gaza distinguish between Zionists and Jews and rally for a decolonial future for all. THAT is a remarkable example of humanity and what should be the story.Second, since the only thing that has been hateful has been Israel’s racialized violence, its siege, its shoot to kill policies, its home demolitions - the story is about Zionist settler hate. It is THE primary teacher and exemplar of hate.Third, as much as we try to distinguish Zionism and Judaism, our adversaries want to collapse the two and obscure the distinction between a people and a state. We are not responsible for this gross reduction and resist it. No state or ideology is beyond critique.Fourth, the greatest source of antisemitism is white supremacy/ists. Go do interviews with them rather than interrogate Palestinians if they really think they deserve freedom and have the right to condemn the racist ideology that has marked them for removal. #IHRA
Every single one of her four points is a lie, and Erakat knows it.
Young Palestinians don't distinguish between Zionists and Jews. All you need to look at are the numerous terror attacks against Jewish targets in Israel - rabbis while praying in synagogues, children studying in yeshivas, and the 1929 pogroms against religious Jews in Hebron and elsewhere still celebrated by Palestinians. In Arabic, children are taught to hate the Jews - and they proudly say it on TV (even if in this case they say "sons of Zion" itis clear they mean Jews when they say "murderers of Allah's prophets.")
Her second assertion that "the only thing that has been hateful has been Israel’s racialized violence" is nothing short of absurd. Certainly she is aware of Palestinian terrorism that pre-dates Israel's existence. And how many ways can Palestinians glorify stabbing Jews?
Her claim that Palestinians try to distinguish between Jews and Zionists is also a lie. In print, they are more sensitive than they had been years ago because of MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch, so they are a bit more careful about replacing the word "Jew" with "Zionist," but in the end, they don't ask a Jew they are about to stab if they support settlements or not.
And according to the ADL, an astounding 97% of Palestinians hold antisemitic views - the highest in the world. Her assertion that Palestinians are only anti-Zionist and not antisemitic is laughable gaslighting.
Finally, the center of today's antisemitism is not white supremacists but the Arab world. White supremacist websites get only a tiny percentage of the readership as mainstream antisemitic Arab media. The Palestinian Al Quds news site published in Britain includes regular Holocaust inversion and references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as being obviously real, and it is one of the top 4000 websites in the world - compared to the most notorious neo-Nazi website, Stormfront, which doesn't crack the top 200,000.
Actual Holocaust denial is still a regular feature of Arab websites, like this one in Al Mayadeen (ranked #10,131 in Alexa.) This top Egyptian newspaper (#1856) headlines an article with the Nazi claim that Kristallnacht was a response to what a Jew did.
Thankfully, this has been slowly changing, in no small part because of the Abraham Accords. Antisemitism in the UAE and Morocco has been tempered with articles that are sympathetic to Jews and Judaism. Of course, the peace agreements that are prompting this major pushback against antisemitism in the Arab world is opposed by Noura Erakat.
Noura Erakat is not stupid nor is she ignorant. She knows everything I have written is true. Her entire goal is to spread false propaganda. It must be exposed - every time.
