It seems impossible, but David Miller's antisemitism gets even more explicit

Remember David Miller, the disgraced former academic who was fired from his position at Bristol University for his antisemitism?

He was defended by hundreds of academics and Jews as being merely "anti-Zionist."  But Miller keeps on proving them wrong with episode after episode of undeniable antisemitism. 

This week, he did it again. 

Miller got very upset over a tweet by Hen Mazzig,. Mazzig wrote:

If you are not Jewish, just because you don’t understand why something is antisemitic doesn’t mean its not. It means you need to educate yourself of the tropes, conspiracies, and hate Jews face.

Miller responded:

If you are not Jewish, do not be cowed by racial supremacists who want to hector you into political subservience. 

Judeophobia barely exists these days. 

Educate yourself about Zionism and the tactics used by its adherents.

Zionist propagandists like Hen Mazzig rely on 'standpoint theory' to fool naïve liberals and leftists into buying their lies. 

They say only Jews can define Judeophobia, based on their 'lived experience'. 

This is a denial of reality.

Standpoint theory relies on the bizarre notion that people are magically qualified to speak about things via accident of birth, rather than observing material realities. 

Real anti-racism is rooted in looking at the facts.

The facts:

1. Jews are not discriminated against.

2. They are over-represented in Europe, North America and Latin America in positions of cultural, economic and political power.

3. They are therefore, in a position to discriminate against actually marginalised groups.

Miller easily slides between "Jews aren't discriminated against" to "Jews are a monolithic group that oppresses others." 

Amazingly, he is still being defended.

He then followed up with a thread to defend his position where he showed that Jews are not discriminated against in the workplace, and in fact make more money (for example)  than other groups, so therefore there is no antisemitism. He also bizarrely distinguishes between "discrimination" and "hate crimes," defining "discrimination" strictly within the context of the workplace and ignoring that attacking Jews directly as Jews is the worst form of discrimination there is. 

Like all Jew-haters, Miller relies on redefining his terms. In short, he is saying that there cannot be antisemitism since Jews control the world!

The ADL's global survey of antisemitism asks a number of questions whose answers indicate that the respondent has antisemitic attitudes. So, for example, 29% of French people agree that "Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust" and 45% of Spanish people agree that "Jews have too much power in the business world."

David Miller would certainly agree with many of those survey questions - he pretty much says it in his social media.. There is no doubt that Miller agrees with more than half of the ADL's list of antisemitic statements:

Jews are more loyal to Israel than to [this country/to the countries they live in]

Jews have too much power in the business world

Jews have too much power in international financial markets

Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust

Jews don't care what happens to anyone but their own kind

Jews have too much control over global affairs

Jews have too much control over the United States government

Jews think they are better than other people

Jews have too much control over the global media

Jews are responsible for most of the world's wars

People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave

Since Miller's opinions are classically antisemitic, mirroring what the Protocols of the Elders of Zion say, and he also claims to be against all forms of racism, he simply redefines "Judeophobia" in ways that disqualifies his own antisemitism.

Now that he has outed himself even more, I wonder whether his defenders from 2021 are feeling a bit squeamish about signing letters that say he is a "highly regarded scholar" or that insist that he is not antisemitic. 

Given the amount of self-deception that people are capable of, I doubt it. 

I created my own Miller-style power map:

 

______________________________

I just want to add a bit about standpoint theory.

In theory, it should be possible to detect and analyze racism and bigotry without being a member of the victimized group. But in reality, many attacks on groups rely on the same sort of "facts" that Miller uses to defend his own hate.

It is possible that the Confederate flag can be displayed without it being intended to be a racist symbol, just as a swastika can be displayed purely because someone admires its iconography. One can find evidence that some slaves were treated well. Bigots like Miller defend these kinds of things because, objectively, they are not offensive. 

That is because offense is inherently subjective. 

Miller cannot know how offensive it is for someone to say that Jews have no rights to Jerusalem without knowing how central Jerusalem is to Jews. Objectively, it is simply a piece of real estate no different than any other. Subjectively, it is the heart of every Jew.

In fact, this is how bigots always justify their hate. They simply claim they are "asking questions" or "making observations" and there is not a bigoted bone in their bodies, nosiree. They are just asking about whether the Holocaust happened or whether Black people are inherently less intelligent than whites. They are simply observing whether there are more Jews in banking and the media than other groups. Surely, bigots like Miller claim, no one can be offended by objective investigations into these matters, can they? 

In reality, studying racism, bigotry, misogyny and antisemitism must rely on the feelings of the victims, because the attacks are often targeted to hurt those feelings. There is only one reason to compare today's Jews to Nazis - to deliberately hurt Jews. 

To be sure, the ones defining what is offensive must be reasonable members of the group, and the majority of members of the group, not the outliers who find offense under every rock. Most Jews understand that attacking Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is just a new twist on antisemitism, as are dog-whistles about "rootless cosmopolitans" or "New York bankers" or "powerful Zionist media." Non-Jews might not recognize these for what they are, which is why the plurality of victims must be the ones who define what is an attack. 

Insisting that bigotry can be observed objectively is simply a way justify that bigotry.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Book review: "Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership"

I generally abhor divisions in the Jewish community. There are too few of us to be able to afford partisanship and needless hate for our own.

For those reasons I have been reluctant to criticize fellow Jews outside of the fringe who are anti-Zionist or anti-Judaism. And I have been equally reluctant to criticize the leaders of American Jewish organizations, trying and wanting to assume that they do the best they can with the resources they have.

That position is no longer tenable after reading Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership, a new book of damning essays edited by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser.  

Betrayal is a strong indictment of those American Jewish leaders, on both the national and local levels. 

The single biggest issue that should unify American Jews is the fight against antisemitism. But as Betrayal shows, the mostly self-appointed American Jewish leaders have been more interested in maintaining their positions of power than in going toe to toe with today's antisemites.

Worse, in example after example in this book, when grassroots Jewish groups organize to fight a specific threat to American Jews, these pseudo leaders generally try to dissuade and discourage them. They claim that their connections with other powerful people, and their quiet diplomacy, will carry the day. Their message to ordinary Jews who want to defend themselves from specific threats is "sha, shtill" - shut up and be quiet.

We cannot read minds, but the overwhelming impression given is that these so-called leaders enjoy their perks of being considered as such. They love to attend their interfaith breakfasts and to attend meetings and parties with local and national secular leaders. They don't want to make waves, to risk their positions and their perceived prestige, their speaking engagements at Temples, their parades for progressive causes.

Problems which should and could have been attacked early on - mosques with terror links, undermining K-12 and university education with the concepts of "wokeness" that slot Jews as oppressors and supremacists, BDS and campus "apartheid weeks" as well as the other constant attacks on Israel that these leaders prefer to sympathize with instead of battle against - have metastasized into major sources of today's American antisemitism. 

An essay by Jonathan Tobin sets the tone with his analysis of how the Anti Defamation League has turned its back on fighting antisemitism and instead steered the ship to be more progressive and partisan rather than defending Jews.  The organization's hiring of a rabidly anti-Zionist Tema Smith as "director of Jewish Outreach" was particularly risible. 

Richard Landes describes how American Jewish leadership has exhibited cowardice in the face of the jihadist threat, preferring to partner with their Muslim friends rather than to ever confront them. Of course, this peculiarly Jewish tendency to compromise on principles in order to seek approval from others is not mirrored by the openly pro-Hamas Muslim American leadership, who - if anything - feel empowered to more extremism because the Jews are on their side.

Josh Block describes the failure of American Jewish leaders to push back against Ilhan Omar's antisemitic statements, and this led directly to her emerging from the controversy as more influential than ever. 

Caroline Glick observes that the "two state solution" has become a religion of sorts for American Jewish leaders, and instead of defending Israel they are defending cutting Israel in half and abandoning nearly all Jewish holy sites. 

Naya Lekht notes how liberal Jewish groups have replaced Judaism with "social justice," a philosophy that comes from Stalin's Soviet Union and that is ultimately used against Jews.

The ADL, the AJC, the local JCRCs and Federations, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs - all of them are stridently criticized as becoming part of the problem rather than the solution for the one theme that Jews should unite around, fighting antisemitism. Specific examples from grassroots groups who were stymied by their local Jewish "leaders" abound. 

The only national organization that has held on to its principles of unwavering support for Jews and Israel is the Zionist Organization of America, and its president Morton Klein writes an essay as well demonstrating how the eagerness by other Jewish leaders to make nice with the anti-Israel and ultimately antisemitic progressive philosophy hurts the Jewish community and makes everyone lose respect for their leaders.

One of the most interesting essays is by M. Zuhdi Jasser, of the Muslim Reform Movement, who has tried to partner with American Jewish leaders - only to be spurned because they prefer their partnerships with Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations that are actively antisemitic. His frustration of being abandoned by those who should be his natural allies is palpable.

Jacobs and Goldwasser's own essay doesn't only describe the problems, but offers a ten point program towards solutions - the exact thing that the supposed American Jewish leaders avoid. These pro-active ideas are what real leaders should come up with and implement. 

Betrayal describes outrageous examples of failed and counterproductive leadership. It will make you angry, and it should.

American Jews pour millions into these organizations that have little or nothing to show for themselves. It is time to replace those fossils with real leadership, real ideas, and real passion. The authors of these 22 essays are all fine candidates to be true leaders of the North American Jewish community. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Prominent Jews will explain how anti-Zionism is the new antisemitism at Congress today (live video at 11 AM EDT)

Today, the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations will hold hearings on "Responding to Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israel Bias in the UN, Palestinian Authority, and NGO Community."

Prominent leaders in the field of antisemitism and anti-Zionism will be speaking. Most of their testimonies have been published ahead of time. Here are some highlights.

Natan Sharansky, the famous Soviet dissident, describes how the Soviet Union's pretense of using "anti-Zionism" as a proxy for antisemitism has now been widely adopted by much of the world:

In the Soviet Union, where I grew up,...each time when official Soviet propaganda starts a new round of attacks on Israel, every Jew, whether he knows what Zionism means or not, knows that he has a problem. They are all treated as not loyal to the Soviet Union, but loyal to Zionist Israel. Attacks on the Jews have always been a convenient platform for attacks on Israel and vice versa. Assuming that all this is a direct result of the dictatorial regime of the Soviet Union, which needs a convenient scapegoat for accusations, an external and internal enemy, and a more convenient scapegoat than the Jews and Israel cannot be imagined. Therefore, when in 1975 the Soviet Union initiated a resolution that Zionism is racism, it was adopted only thanks to the communist bloc. The Free World voted against it. 

I thought that in the free world, this would not happen. 

It was all the more surprising when at the beginning of 2000 at the first U.N. conference against global racism in Durban - the only result of this conference was the accusation of Israel as an apartheid state. Soon the cartoons published in the international press against Israel surprisingly began to resemble those in the Soviet and Nazi press against the Jews. Israel, which fights against terrorist attacks daily in defense of itself, has been declared to be fighting the Palestinians, as the Nazis fought the Jews, and Palestinian refugee camps were compared to Auschwitz. All this had nothing to do with constructive criticism of the policies of Israel, which deserved this or that criticism like any other democratic country. It was then, 20 years ago, that I proposed my three-D test to distinguish justified criticism of Israel from new antisemitism.

Over the 20 years, I have visited about 100 American campuses, where I have clearly seen how the new antisemitism is creating a very difficult environment for Jewish students who consider themselves Zionists. There is much evidence of how the growing attacks on the Jews are encouraged, developed and reinforced by the attacks on Israel, like colonial white racism. Much like in Soviet times, antisemitic attacks on Israel are weakening the sense of security of Jewish students at American universities. And attacks on Jews are often accompanied by anti-Israeli slogans. It is impossible today to analyze the growth of antisemitism without seeing that these phenomena are very closely linked. 

That is why there must be one explanation linking the demonization of the Jews, the double standard towards the Jews, the denial of the Jews as a nation with the demonization of the State of Israel, the double standard towards the State of Israel and the denial of Israel's right to exist. 

There can be no success in the fight against antisemitism if we do not fight it on all fronts. Therefore, the exact definition of antisemitism is crucial. It is very important that the US administration adheres to this definition of antisemitism in its policy.

Prof. Eugene Kontorovich shows why the IHRA Working Definition is important and how the "Nexus Document" that was welcomed in the Administration's strategy plan against antisemitism is an effort to whitewash modern antisemitism:

Not surprisingly, the IHRA definition is opposed by those who wish to engage in precisely the kind of anti-Israel double standards that it warns of. In an effort to confound or counteract the legitimacy and clarity of the IHRA working definition, a few other groups have offered definitions of antisemitism that greatly minimize the role of Israel-focused antisemitism. One such effort is the Nexus Document, a project hosted by Bard University. The Nexus definition differs from IHRA primarily in its treatment of Israel-focused conduct. Nexus does not regard as presumptively antisemitic either the questioning the basic legitimacy of Israel’s existence or the application of double standards to Israel.  According to Nexus, such views may have legitimate grounds. 

Unlike IHRA’s adoption by a wide range of countries (including many states that are often sharply critical of Israel), not one single country has adopted the Nexus Declaration. The IHRA definition was developed by an international group of scholars not known for their views on Israel or their politics one way or another. The Nexus Advisory Board, by contrast, is overwhelmingly left-wing and includes people, like the head of J-Street, who can only be described as professionals in the field of Israel bashing. Members of Nexus’s advisory board have described Israel as “fascist,” denounced it as an “apartheid state,” and justified those who say it should have never existed. 

While IHRA has become the global benchmark, the narrow Nexus definition has languished in total obscurity—that is, until the White House suddenly announced its “welcome and appreciation” of the Nexus Document last month, while still “embracing” IHRA.  Nexus leaped from the discussions of like-minded academics straight into a White House policy document. While the IHRA definition remains the only one officially used by the government, the White House’s National Strategy harms efforts to respond to antisemitism by referring to two different, and fundamentally contradictory, definitions 

...The obsessive focus on the supposed wrongs of this one tiny group has resurfaced across an amazing array of cultures and epochs. From the Romans to the Crusades. From the Reformation to the Inquisition. From National to International Socialism. The justifications change, the target remains same. Then after two thousand years, the Jewish people reconstituted their nation—and immediately found it the subject of unparalleled international defamation and libel—accompanied by ongoing efforts at physical elimination. Jews have been hated sometimes as adherents of a faith, sometimes as members of a people. Now the extraordinary enmity is aimed at their State. The coin lands on the same side on every toss. The segue from earlier modes of antisemitism to “anti-Zionism” is a remarkable coincidence.

...The accusations leveled against Israel often resemble those made by antisemites throughout history. Instead of the Jews being accused of killing Gentile children,  Israel is accused of deliberately killing Palestinian children;  instead of Jews being accused of causing plague among Gentiles, Israel is accused of causing disease among Palestinians. And the accusation of “apartheid” is a modern blood libel—an absurd “Big Lie,” but inciteful in ways that cannot be rectified by mere refutation. Just as the classic blood libel resonated with the theological preoccupations of earlier ages, today’s claims resonate with the ethnic justice concerns of our times.

Yair Rosenberg of The Atlantic ties all forms of antisemitism, from Left to Right, to conspiracy theory:

For almost as long as there have been Jewish people, there has been anti-Jewish prejudice. This bigotry predates the United States of America and the modern state of Israel. It is older than capitalism and communism, Republicans and Democrats, progressives and conservatives. And it precedes Christianity and Islam. Because of this, while antisemitism is expressed by these communities, it cannot be caused by them. The source is something much more fundamental. 

Consider recent antisemitic incidents that on the surface seem to have little connection to each other. In 2018, a white supremacist massacred 11 congregants in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue. In 2019, assailants tied to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement shot up a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, killing three. And in 2022, an Islamic extremist held an entire congregation hostage in Colleyville, Texas, for much of the Jewish Sabbath. 

To take another odd example: Both the supreme leader of Iran’s Islamic theocracy and Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh shooter who hated Muslims, posted memes on social media alleging Zionist control of American politics. During the 2016 presidential race, supporters at campaign events for both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were captured on tape claiming that “Zionists” run America’s finances.

What unites all of these seemingly disparate antisemitic actors? Not their identity or background, but their adherence to a conspiracy of Jewish control. The Pittsburgh white supremacist believed that Jews were responsible for flooding the country with the brown people he hated, as part of the so-called “great replacement” of the white race. One of the Black Hebrew Israelite sympathizers in Jersey City wrote on social media about how Jews controlled the government. And the British Islamic extremist who targeted the Texas synagogue did so because he thought American rabbis held sway over the U.S. authorities and could free someone from prison. 

...Because people have long been conditioned to conceive of Jews in an underhanded fashion, it doesn’t take much to update the ancient conspiracy theory to persuade contemporary audiences. And thanks to centuries of material blaming the world’s problems on its Jews, conspiracy theorists seeking a scapegoat for their sorrows inevitably discover that the invisible hand of their oppressor belongs to an invisible Jew.

Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch explains how antisemitism forms the core of Palestinian Authority ideology:

PA Antisemitism is not a collection of disconnected hate-speech; it is a systematically disseminated ideology that is by now deeply ingrained in the Palestinian national and political identity. It serves as a primary source of loathing towards Jews and Israelis and is a significant motivator for Palestinian terror. 

The PA’s Political Antisemitism asserts the following:

1. Jews are inherently evil, endangering not only Palestinians but all of humanity. 

2. Accordingly, Jews themselves are responsible for the antisemitism and hatred they have faced throughout history. 

3. The PA turns this demonization of Jews into its political ideology: the Western countries were anxious to get rid of the Jews and solve their "Jewish problem,” so they initiated the establishment of a Jewish state. The Jews would never have come to Palestine on their own because the Jews have no history in the land. Israel is defined as an illegitimate result of "settler-colonialism" with no right to exist. 

This ideology is disseminated by PA leaders, Mahmoud Abbas appointees, and through the structures controlled by the PA.

Other speakers include Hillel Neuer from UN Watch, Yona Schiffmiller from NGO Monitor, and the ADL's Sharon Nazarian, all of whom show how anti-Israel bigotry is a proxy for anti-Jewish bigotry. 

The webcast can be seen here at 11:00 AM EDT.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Is Tucker Carlson a Covert Antisemite? (Judean Rose)

Tucker Carlson is in the news because he just got dumped by Fox News. Some say it’s because of the lawsuit filed by former head of booking for the Tucker Carlson Tonight show, Abby Grossberg, against the network and several individuals at Fox, including Carlson. Grossberg says she “endured an extremely hostile work environment” and was subjected to antisemitic treatment by Alexander McCaskill and Justin Wells, both senior producers for Carlson’s show. 

Carlson is accused of misogyny in Abby Grossberg’s suit—though not antisemitism. That hasn’t stopped the media from suggesting otherwise by seeming to lump him together with McCaskill in blaring headlines about the suit and perhaps with good reason: the scent of antisemitism does seem to cling to Carlson, though there is never anything overt one can point to—no proof that Tucker Carlson hates Israel or the Jews.

In a 2021 piece for Haaretz, “Tucker Carlson Is Now a Big Problem for pro-Israel Conservatives” Jonathan S. Tobin writes, “One of the things that sets Carlson apart from virtually any other prominent conservative figure is his distinct lack of enthusiasm for Israel.”    

On the Carlson show, the barbarous Assad regime in Syria is justified for its supposed defense of Syrian Christians. Worries about Iran or even criticism of President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Tehran — as much of a Republican mantra as opposition to Obamacare — is never heard.

Nor, for that matter, is any direct criticism of Israel. It is, like Sherlock Holmes' "Hound of the Baskervilles," the dog that never barks on Fox at 8pm EST.

Even when he hosts figures from the left who are well-known for their hate for Israel, such as Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, a notorious BDS advocate, the Jewish state never gets mentioned. The same is true for frequent guest journalist Glenn Greenwald, another supporter of the Palestinians. Greenwald discusses his disdain for Big Tech censorship on Carlson’s show, but not the Middle East.

While Carlson never bashed Trump for his historic support for Israel, he seized any chance he could to single out the administration figures most closely associated with the Jewish state for attention and often vicious critique.

Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner was a particular object of Carlson’s vitriol. Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley — a favorite for Republican Jews and a 2024 hopeful who can likely count on the pro-Israel community’s support if she runs — is another Carlson punching bag.        

Tucker Carlson: "No one has more contempt for Donald Trump's voters than Jared Kushner and no one expresses it more frequently." https://t.co/x9PtN3TIry

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 2, 2020

That lack of enthusiasm has expressed itself is through his pooh-poohing of the Iranian nuclear threat and its quest for regional hegemony. More from Jonathan Tobin, this time from his 2021 piece, Why are Tucker Carlson and Peter Beinart trying to help Iran?:

[While] Trump was careful not to get suckered into a war, [his] vigorous approach to Iran, including the killing of its top terrorist—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Gen. Qassem Soleimani—met with Carlson’s disapproval. To his dismay, Trump’s policies on Iran were not much different from the positions of the dreaded neo-conservatives that Carlson despises . . .

Carlson’s reaction to Biden’s attack on the terrorists who killed an American last week was brutal, accusing the administration of “killing strangers” in a “far-away land” and bringing “war back to the Middle East after four years.” He mocked the idea that ISIS was a threat to the West and sees no need for “counter-terrorism” measures. He also defended the brutal Assad regime in Syria. Like Beinart, despite its genocidal threats towards Israel and his aggression towards Arab states in the region, Carlson dismisses the whole idea that the United States needs to do anything about Iran.

Curiously, Carlson is an outlier when it comes to the issue on which nearly all Republicans move in lockstep: Israel . . . In contrast with other Fox shows and other conservative venues, Israel is almost never mentioned on his show. But though liberals and Democrats are the main targets of his scorn, he reserves his greatest disdain for “neoconservatives” and others whom he believes have duped America into fighting “forever wars” in the Mideast instead of taking care of the needs of those at home. He seems particularly angry at Republicans who have become beloved by the pro-Israel community like former U.S. Ambassador the United Nations Nikki Haley.

Carlson is right that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been costly failures. But, like Beinart, he goes further and now claims that Syria and its ally Iran aren’t worth bothering about.

These Iran apologists may start out from different points and have different end goals. But both have little use for the alliance with Israel and bend over backwards to dismiss concerns that Iran, and its Islamist and authoritarian allies, are threats to America’s interests and values.

Many of those accusing Carlson of anti-Israelism and antisemitism, both now and in the past, have pointed to ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt’s call—to the World Federation of Advertisers—to boycott Fox, pointing to Carlson’s “open endorsement of the Great Replacement Theory.”:

Before I pause for Q&A, let me share with you another vivid example of how hate speech and white supremacy is moving from the margins into the mainstream.

Just two weeks ago on his Fox News program, Tucker Carlson openly endorsed the white supremacist “Great Replacement Theory.” If you haven’t heard of it, this is a virulently racist and antisemitic conspiracy theory that holds a secret group of Jewish people are plotting to flood the United States with non-whites and immigrants in order to commit “white genocide.”

Lots of us see the ADL and Greenblatt as irredeemably radical left, among them, this writer. We tend to discredit anything Greenblatt says or does. Some, in fact, point to Greenblatt’s decrial of the former Fox employee as proof that Tucker Carlson is innocent of these accusations and is neither a conspiracy theorist nor an antisemite. But even Greenblatt and the ADL sometimes get it right—just as a broken clock is right, twice a day.

Ben Sales expands on Greenblatt’s assertions:

On Monday, [Tucker Carlson] delivered a 20-minute defense of his “replacement” idea. At the end he took aim at the ADL, saying its defense of Israel’s Jewish majority and opposition to the return of Palestinian refugees contradicts its advocacy for immigrants in the United States.

“In the words of the ADL, why would a government subvert its own sovereign existence?” he wondered, referring to an essay on the ADL’s website. “Good question. Maybe ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt will join ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ some time to explain and tell us whether that same principle applies to the United States.”

Perhaps this sounded simply like Carlson going after a group that has been challenging him.

But for far-right extremists, his question went beyond a debate about immigration policy. Carlson was alluding to a meme that has traversed white supremacist circles for years and is a direct corollary to the “replacement” theory: Jews want to replace white people in the United States through mass immigration, the theory goes, but in Israel they protect their own race by restricting immigration.

White supremacists often refer to this idea by calling for “Open borders for Israel” — trollishly suggesting that American Jews should support similar immigration policy for the US as they do for Israel.

“Open borders for Israel” was a rallying cry at the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where far-right marchers chanted “Jews will not replace us.” A Facebook group called Open Borders for Israel features Pepe the Frog, a cartoon appropriated by the “alt-right.” An “Open Borders for Israel” face mask featuring an anti-Semitic caricature is available for purchase on at least one website, and a white supremacist group distributed flyers with the slogan at Texas Christian University last year, according to TCU360, a campus news website.

The contradiction only works in white supremacists’ imaginations. In reality, while American Jews tend to sympathize with immigrants and refugees, few Jews actually call for “open borders” in the US And many Jews and Jewish groups, including the ADL, are particularly critical of Israel’s restrictive refugee policy, which has been a topic of heated debate there for a decade.

In the “open borders for Israel” meme, white supremacists take substantive debate beyond the pale of legitimacy. Beyond critiquing policy, they suggest (falsely) that Israel’s immigration system is one more piece of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy white society, and that Jews are playing a dishonest double game by advocating separate policies for the United States and Israel.

Responding to Carlson’s salvo, directed at Greenblatt and the ADL, CAMERA Senior Research Analyst Gilead Ini tweeted:

Tucker is wrong because the ADL opposing a "right of return" is about preserving a single, functioning refuge for an oppressed people, slaughtered in the millions *as Jews,* expelled from their countries *as Jews,* whose population today is still below pre-Shoah numbers.

Surely Tucker understands the difference between what's described above and the situation of, say, Americans of English descent. But he doesn't care. He's about dulling rather than sharpening viewers understanding, for the sake of scoring his point.

1/ Tucker is wrong because the ADL opposing a "right of return" is about preserving a single, functioning refuge for an oppressed people, slaughtered in the millions *as Jews,* expelled from their countries *as Jews,* whose population today is still below pre-Shoah numbers. https://t.co/pNK9M9Mcw8

— Gilead Ini (@GileadIni) April 13, 2021

Ini isn’t shy here. He says it very clearly: Tucker “understands the difference” between Israel’s “right of return” and the Biden Administration’s “open borders” policy in the United States. Carlson is being cagey and misleading here, suggesting to his viewers that when Jews make Aliyah to their indigenous territory, it is exactly the same as illegal immigrants flooding the border in Texas.

There is more than a hint of antisemitism here, but only if you’re willing to let go of loyalty to Tucker for the sake of loyalty to Israel and the Jewish people. Tucker knows better—knows exactly what he is doing when he says these things about Israel. The now-terminated Fox News employee is too smart not to understand the import of his own words, and the theory that some conclude lies behind these words. In other words, those who so “reasonably” deduce that Tucker was pointing only to what he sees as the double standard of the ADL, and not really suggesting that Jews have no right to immigrate to the Jewish State, delude themselves. Otherwise, he would not leave the matter fuzzy, unclarified, and open to interpretation.

Where do we draw the line in our understanding of Tucker’s equivocal rant? Did his words mean nothing more than a pointed rebuke of the liberal, two-faced ADL? Or was he couching his words to avoid outing himself as someone who, at the very least, thinks that Jews demand special treatment. At worst, Tucker may be, as Greenblatt asserts—though I am loathe to give the ADL credence or legitimacy in these matters—a firm believer in the Great Replacement Theory.

In January of this year, Tucker insulted Ahinoam Nini, a singer of international renown, known simply as “Noa,” no last name, outside of Israel—her real name is probably too difficult for most non-Hebrew speakers to pronounce. Nini is rabidly far-left, and her political views are anathema to Israelis on the right. Under the cover of Nini’s leftwing politics, Tucker gave himself permission to mock her singing and hand gestures. Then Carlson went further, drawing attention to the fact that Noa is Jewish: “Yeah, and those people run the world? They are so impressive!”

Let's check in on our lizard overlords in Davos, Switzerland. pic.twitter.com/fF9t609dj4

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 21, 2023

Was Tucker making fun of the Great Replacement Theory, leftists, the singer herself, or the Jewish people? All of the above? Who knows? Only those of us who have come to believe that where there’s antisemitic smoke, there’s antisemitic fire, will interpret these words as yet more evidence that Tucker Carlson is, indeed, an antisemite.

On October 6, 2022, Tucker Carlson hosted Kanye (Ye) West on his show. Not long after, Kanye took to Twitter, in his now famous antisemitic rant. You know—the one where he said, “I’m a bit sleepy now, but when I wake up, I’m going death con 3 on the JEWISH PEOPLE.”

The indefatigable Jonathan Tobin once more documented the evidence of and the slippery nature of Tucker Carlson’s probable antisemitism six days later, when he drew a line between the Ye’s appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight, and the “death con 3” tweet:

Carlson became something of a tribune for conservatives for his forthright condemnations of the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020 and willingness to speak out on other issues dear to the hearts of those on the political right. That made him a target for the left, with groups like the Anti-Defamation League seeking to de-platform him for his discussions of so-called “replacement theory” about immigration. This said more about the ADL’s partisanship than Carlson, since the idea that demographic change will alter American politics is one that originated with and continues to be advocated for by Democrats.

Here again, the fact that liberal groups have already “cried wolf’” about Carlson makes it easier for him to dismiss criticisms when he actually does something to mainstream hatred. This is what happened in the wake of the West interview.

Carlson embraced West because some of what he says is in line with conservative views about race-baiting (his endorsement of a “White Lives Matter” shirt) and opposition to abortion. On the program, the rapper/fashion mogul was allowed to claim that Jared Kushner pursued the Abraham Accords for financial profit rather than to advance peace.

Carlson is unique among leading conservative media figures in that he is not a supporter of Israel. He is careful, however, to stay away from discussions about the Jewish state, lest he run afoul of mainstream conservative opinion, which is overwhelmingly Zionist.

The word “Israel,” thus, is a word almost never heard from 8-9 p.m. on Fox News. And it is not surprising that Carlson would allow one of the Trump administration’s greatest triumphs to be denigrated in this particular manner.

While Carlson trumpeted the interview as proof that West was not, as many claim, a disturbed individual or a hatemonger, what was left out of the broadcast was as interesting as what was left in. In outtakes that have subsequently been published, West made numerous allusions to hateful Jewish stereotypes.

He even echoed assertions of the Black Israelite sect that African-Americans were the real Jews—effectually denying the existence of a Jewish people. That Carlson would leave this out of his show demonstrates that he was attempting to hide West’s anti-Semitism.

Days later, West dropped the veil. In a series of tweets, he announced that he was going to “def con 3 against the Jewish people.” Yet conservative talk-show host Candace Owens defended him, in essence instructing Jews on what does or does not constitute anti-Semitism.

Like liberals circling the wagons around left-wing haters of Israel and the Jews, Carlson and Owens are doing the same for West and for the same reason. In each case, legitimizing anti-Semitism is considered justified if it defends a political ally, regardless of the consequences.

Though Carlson censored the interview with Ye, editing out all West’s antisemitic crazy talk, Tucker ended the show by, according to Vice: “declaring that the artist—whose erratic behavior has for years been at the center of discussions about mental health and how Black men with mental health issues are treated— is ‘not crazy’ and ‘worth listening to.’ He also added, approvingly, that Ye was ‘getting bolder’ in what he has to say.”

Listen to Kanye here: "the thing about it being Adidas I can say antisemitic things and Adidas can't drop me ... now what ... now what ..." @adidas pic.twitter.com/Qu5LcZnmJj

— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) October 20, 2022

Was Ye emboldened by the interview with Tucker? Did the fact that Tucker hid Ye’s hateful ravings from the public, encourage the bipolar rapper that Carlson actually approved of these antisemitic sentiments? Why did Tucker tell his audience that Ye is “not crazy,” “worth listening to” and “getting bolder in what he has to say” if not to show admiration and approval for Ye’s virulent dislike of the Jewish people?

The mask is slipping and some of us already see Tucker Carlson for what he is: a covert antisemite. Maybe it's time for Tucker to come out of the closet and put all doubt to rest. Unless, of course, he's afraid to be canceled—a process Fox News appears to have already begun.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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04/03 Links Pt2: World Vision, Prominent U.S. Evangelical Charity, Caught Funding Jihadis; How J Street Turned Democrats Against Israel; Telling a Story Founded the Jewish Nation

From Ian:

World Vision, Prominent U.S. Evangelical Charity, Caught Funding Jihadis

When U.S. officials discovered that World Vision was funding a designated terror group, they ordered WV to stop paying ISRA, but WV maintained its relationship with the organization. In January 2015, WV said it had "discontinued any future collaboration." Yet almost a year later, WV posted a job position working with ISRA in December 2015, apparently indicating it had not ceased collaborating as it claimed.

Around the same time, World Vision partnered with yet another group that "has helped fund the Hamas military wing," the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH).

In 2012, World Vision was exposed using Australian government dollars to fund a terrorist front group operating in the West Bank. World Vision was funding the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), a front group for the U.S. terror designated Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Australian Solicitor Andrew Hamilton, who worked with the Israel Law Center which exposed the funding, told the Jerusalem Post that, "The Union of Agricultural Work Committees is an integral part of the proscribed terror organization, the PFLP, that Australian citizens and corporations are prohibited from providing support to."

In an email to FWI, Hamilton called on the recently elected Australian Government "to initiate a detailed criminal investigation into the Halabi scandal."

"For more than a decade, World Vision Australia has avoided justice in Australia for its criminal activities in funding PFLP terrorism using Australian taxpayer money obtained by deception," Hamilton told FWI.

"It would be reasonable to assume that if a smaller organization, whose CEO [Tim Costello] was not the brother of a former federal Treasurer [Peter Costello], had similarly deceived the Australian Government to obtain taxpayer funds which were then sent to terrorists, then they would have been prosecuted to the full extent of the law." (FWI has attempted to obtain a response from the Costellos and from World Vision Australia, but has been unsuccessful.)

In 2010, World Vision partnered with a group headed by a PFLP operative, Khaled Yamani, who led the Palestinian Children and Youth Foundation in Lebanon. And a few years prior to that, WV signed joint memoranda with the U.S. designated terror group Interpal, a financial supporter of Hamas.

WV responded to FWI's inquiry regarding the claims made by Cliff Smith in an email declaring, "We remain adamant we are committed to a positive relationship with Israel in our humanitarian work and we do not now, and never have, supported terrorism."

World Vision portrays itself as a "global Christian humanitarian organization." McDonnell asks how WV's support of Islamist terrorists is really in line with the Gospel message it presents. "To see this activity from World Vision in Sudan and then continuing in Israel too—it just makes me wonder: 'What kind of Christians are supporting a group that is funding terrorists?'"

Yisrael Medad: Update on Cordoba: "cultural reductionism"

Spanish Church ‘accused of glossing over Muslim identity of Cordoba’s Great Mosque’

February 28 2023,
The Catholic Church has been accused of glossing over the Muslim identity of the Great Mosque of Cordoba with a visitor centre that emphasises its Christian origins.

The Church’s planned centre for the mosque, which has served as a cathedral since the Spanish city’s reconquest by Christian forces in 1236, aims to “correct” what it deems to be an overly Islamic vision of the city’s past.

“The need to redesign the entire space [of the mosque area] derives from the finding that Cordoba is marked with a very powerful cultural label: that of a Muslim city,” said a report by Demetrio Fernandez, the Bishop of Cordoba.

The mosque has served as a cathedral for hundreds of years and is used for traditional processions at Easter

“The cultural reductionism is so strong that it has the capacity to eclipse the brilliant Visigoth, Roman and Christian [periods]..."

So, Muslims are engaged in cultural reductionism of Jerusalem as the capital of Judea, where the Temple stood on Mount Moriah?

Telling a Story Founded the Jewish Nation

Many of the basic fundamentals of the seder—not only eating matzah and bitter herbs, but also relating the story of the liberation from Egyptian bondage to one’s children—can be found in Exodus 12, which is set in Egypt just before the tenth plague. By imagining what this archetypal seder might have been like, Cole Aronson explores the ritual’s meaning for Jewish history:

You don’t tell the children they were once slaves in Egypt, because that’s all they know. But it wasn’t always so, you tell them—long ago, their ancestors enjoyed over a century of freedom under God. God chose to raise the patriarchs up from the idolatry of their native culture and gave them a covenantal life. A famine some generations later compelled the chosen family to live in Egypt, first as guests and then—until now—as slaves. Tonight, God will keep His promise to the patriarchs and restore the Israelites to His service.

What the parents of the Exodus told their children was the very first maggid the first “telling” of Passover night. But the story as originally told didn’t commemorate the founding of the Jewish nation. Telling the story founded the Jewish nation.

Until the Exodus, the before-time of the patriarchs was a rumor whispered by strangers subjugated in a strange land. On the Exodus night, teaching the children about God’s choice of Abraham converted his descendants into his self-conscious heirs. A free nation was created by restoring a memory of itself. The pageantry of the seder is often and correctly said to recreate the Exodus night in order to tell a story. The reverse is also true. Jews recreate the Exodus night in part by telling a story that the Exodus parents must have told their own children 3,500 years ago, and with the same function—initiating youngsters into the chosen people of God.

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01/17 Links Pt2: Even the PLO knows the Jews are indigenous to Israel; The NYTs and the PLO are made for each other; The real reasons Ken Roth was bounced by Harvard’s Kennedy School

From Ian:

A New Study Shows That the U.S. Has More Anti-Semites Than Jews

According to a recent survey conducted by the Antidefamation League (ADL), disturbingly large numbers of Americans answered “yes” when asked if they believe Jews “go out of their way to hire other Jews” or “are more loyal to Israel than to America,” and to other similar questions. Kevin Williamson reflects on these results, and what they say about the persistence of this “strange prejudice.”
About 3 percent of Americans agreed that all of the anti-Semitic tropes in the ADL survey are “mostly or somewhat true,” suggesting that there are millions more anti-Semites in the United States than there are Jews. This is not entirely surprising, given the small size of the Jewish population.

Anti-black racism has of course been the most consequential prejudice in American history, but anti-Semitism remains strangely vital. Like its cousin, anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism is more than a prejudice and more than a visceral hatred—it is, in its most extreme form, a kind of “theory of everything” in politics. Anti-black racism may exist with or without an attendant conspiracy theory, but anti-Semitism is almost without exception rooted in a conspiratorial view of the world. The fact that anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise on college campuses is entirely predictable in that campus culture is as much conspiracy-driven as talk-radio culture or Fox News culture, with different villains and a slightly more refined rhetoric: not “Jews” pulling the strings from the shadows, but “Zionists.”

Williamson also notes the confusion, and the bad faith arguments, that have emerged from the term “anti-Semitism.”
The Semitic languages famously include both Hebrew and Arabic, but also Amharic, Tigrinya, Tigre, Aramaic, and Maltese. But when T. S. Eliot wrote, “But this or such was Bleistein’s way:/ A saggy bending of the knees/ And elbows, with the palms turned out,/ Chicago Semite Viennese,” he wasn’t talking about the Catholics down in sunny Malta.

The real reasons Ken Roth was bounced by Harvard’s Kennedy School

The claim that Jewish influence and money can force non-Jews to serve the selfish interests of the Jews is, of course, a classic antisemitic trope. In the modern context, this trope usually claims that these Jewish conspirators are doing their dirty work to benefit Israel.

Roth also claimed that Elmendorf’s decision was “a shocking violation of academic freedom.” Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), agreed, saying, “If Harvard’s decision was based on HRW’s advocacy under Ken’s leadership, this is profoundly troubling from both a human rights and an academic freedom standpoint.”

It appears that Roth and Romero do not understand the nature of academic freedom. An applicant for a fellowship or faculty position does not enjoy academic freedom at the institution—in this case, Harvard—where they wish to work. They have freedom of speech to express their ideology and beliefs like all other citizens, but Roth would not have enjoyed the protection of academic freedom, which would allow him to express his views, no matter how corrosive or biased, until he became part of the Harvard community. Obviously, this never took place.

Moreover, hiring committees normally vet applicants during the application process. It appears that in the initial stages of Roth’s application, the committee inadvertently, or perhaps purposely, ignored Roth’s hostility to Israel. So, it is very likely that when the choice of Roth was made public, Harvard stakeholders had the opportunity to inform the dean about the darker aspects of Roth’s career. Dean Elmendorf then did what the hiring committee at the Carr Center should have done in the first place: Examine HRW’s and Roth’s defective scholarship and singular focus on Israel, objectively.

One particularly grotesque example of Roth’s shoddy scholarship and tendency toward outright falsehoods was a 2021 HRW report titled, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” the title of which makes its content clear.

No apartheid exists in Israel, but that did not prevent HRW from presenting the 217-page report as fact, effectively redefining apartheid to make their case. The Israel-based watchdog organization NGO Monitor, however, produced a report of its own that eviscerated HRW’s libels. NGO Monitor concluded that “the HRW publication is fundamentally flawed, using lies, distortions, omissions and blatant double standards to construct a fraudulent and libelous narrative demonizing Israel.”

“A careful examination of the text shows that HRW conducted almost no primary research,” NGO Monitor noted. “Rather, the text is bloated with cut-and-paste phrases, and quotes and conclusions taken from third-party sources—notably, other political NGOs participating in the same ‘apartheid’ campaign against Israel.”

“The omissions are even more egregious than the errors and misrepresentations, rendering HRW’s report as nothing more than propaganda,” the watchdog group asserted.

Even the PLO knows the Jews are indigenous to Israel - opinion

To deal with the inconvenient historical fact that Jews are the indigenous population of Israel, the drafters of the PLO charter created an arbitrary dividing line to determine who would be considered a Palestinian. First, the PLO charter deems any Arab who had lived in the entirety of what is now modern Israel prior to the re-establishment of the Jewish homeland to automatically be Palestinian, without regard to whether they were residents in the land. Further, the PLO charter deemed any Arab (but not Jews) born after 1947 to a Palestinian father to be a Palestinian.

Jews, on the other hand, were excised from their own national identity under the PLO charter. Only Jews who had resided in what is now modern Israel prior to “the Zionist invasion” would be considered Palestinian. And what did the PLO even mean when they called it “the Zionist invasion,” 1948 or the 1800s? The latter, of course.

Jews were forcibly removed from Israel after the destruction of the Second Temple and dispersed across the globe, making Palestine, as conceived by the PLO charter, a nearly Jew-free land before the Zionist movement was ever founded.

Imagine if, at the time of the founding of modern Israel, Jews had made a similar declaration with regard to Arabs. To wit, Israel would only recognize those “Arab Palestinians” who resided in the land and identified as “Palestinian” prior to the time of Abraham. This would obviously be an impossibility since the term “Palestinian” was created by the Romans after the Bar Kokhba revolt in around 130 C.E., while Abraham arrived in the Land of Israel approximately 2,000 years before the first use of the term Palestine.

Recently, antisemitic activists have escalated their attacks on Jews, claiming we are “settler-colonists” of a land they call Palestine. In my latest new law review article, I examine the question of colonialism and Israel. Part of my research involved tracing the history of the Jewish presence in Israel and comparing it to the waves of actual settler-colonists, ending with Palestinian Arabs, who displaced the indigenous Jewish population.

The only way that anti-Israel activists can strip Jews of our status as the indigenous people of the land and eliminate Jewish self-determination is to do as the PLO charter did: ignore history and designate a time when Jews had been ethnically cleansed from our own homeland as the point in time when Jewish history in Israel starts.

There are settler-colonists in Israel, and they are Palestinian Arabs. Nonetheless, Israel welcomes these settler-colonists and provides them with rights that no other country would provide to invaders and occupiers. It’s time for Palestinian Arab activists and their supporters to accept history and thank Israel for the gracious hospitality extended to newcomers.

Based on a true story. Israel has never occupied another people’s land in all her 4,000-Year recorded history; Israel is the world’s most accused country of illegally occupying another peoples’ land.
Ten Deceptions: https://t.co/4qiCALoxOJ #israel #palestine

— Joseph Shellim (@PhotoshopTruth) January 17, 2023

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Ken Roth doubles down on "Antisemitism is bad, but Jews provoke it" meme

In 2021, Ken Roth - then head of Human Rights Watch - posted a tweet that was widely derided as justifying antisemitism, as it blamed antisemitism on Israeli government actions:

Antisemitism is always wrong, and it long preceded the creation of Israel, but the surge in UK antisemitic incidents during the recent Gaza conflict gives the lie to those who pretend that the Israeli government's conduct doesn't affect antisemitism.

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 18, 2021

Antisemitism is always wrong - but it is the Jews' fault for defending themselves and trying to stop thousands of rockets from being shot to kill other Jews.

This may be the only tweet Roth ever deleted, even though he never apologized, but only claimed that it was misinterpreted.

Well, he's done it again - blaming antisemitism not on antisemites, but on Jews.

The ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt wrote a good article in the Jerusalem Post that pointed out, as I did, that The Nation trafficked in antisemitic conspiracy theory territory by reporting - without any proof - that the reason Roth was rejected from a fellowship at Harvard was because of pressure by rich Jewish donors. 

Roth doesn't address that antisemitic conspiracy theory, which he has been himself pushing non-stop since he started his campaign of revenge at Harvard.

What he does highlight is a purposeful distortion of Greenblatt's words:

[Peter Beinart], and others, have ignored the long history of many of these groups, including Human Rights Watch, for their disproportionate and almost obsessive focus on Israel. Tellingly, neither Massing nor Beinart bothers to address the upsurge of antisemitism that ADL and others, including longtime HRW supporters, have shown that accompanies these kinds of reports.

They also ignored the weaponization of these reports, which effectively delegitimize Israel’s existence, deeming it a pariah state to be placed in the company of the worst regimes in history. 

Greenblatt notes that antisemites will use HRW and others' obsessive (and provably false) anti-Israel reports as excuses for their hate.

Roth, instead, says that this proves that antisemitism is partially the Jews' fault:

When antisemitism surges around a peak of Israeli government abuses, Israeli partisans howl if anyone points it out, but when rights groups report on Israeli repression, there is an "upsurge of antisemitism that...accompanies these...reports,” says @ADL

Roth gets is exactly wrong - and he knows it. And this tweet proves his antisemitism.

First, one cannot ignore that Roth uses the word "howl" here - essentially calling Zionists animals. Roth has never tweeted that insulting word about any other group in his 95,000 tweets.

Secondly, Greenblatt pointed out how biased reports that attack Israel's very legitimacy contribute to attacks on Jews worldwide. He is saying that Roth's own antisemitism helps incite antisemitic attacks. Roth distorts it to implying that the attacks are a (rational) response to "Israeli repression." 

This is a classic case of blaming the victim - Jews - for antisemitism. It also mirrors Hamas and Islamic Jihad justifying terror attacks as "natural responses to Zionist aggression."

Thirdly, no Zionists "howl" when people point out that antisemitic attacks use Israel as an excuse. That is in fact proof that modern anti-Zionism is indeed a newer flavor of antisemitism. everyone knows that Israel is used as an excuse for attacking Jews. The complaints are when people like Roth blame Jewish actions for antisemitism, as he is doing here. 

This tweet is Roth doubling down on his disgraceful earlier tweet, and attacking those who were offended by it.

Is there any other victim of bigotry that Roth has ever blamed for not only their own persecution - but for calling out those who justify and "contextualize" it?

This tweet in itself proves what Roth has been denying for the past two weeks. He doesn't engage in "criticism of Israel" - he is obsessively biased against Israel in ways that go way beyond criticism of every other nation. 

And his obsession with demonizing and delegitimizing Israel and her supporters, of defending the indefensible, and of blaming antisemitism itself on Jews is unquestionably antisemitic. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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What we can (and cannot) learn about US Leftist antisemitism in the @ADL report

The ADL has released a report, "Antisemitic Attitudes in America," that is making headines today becasue it indicates that antisemitic attitudes in the US are increasing dramatically.

Over three-quarters of Americans (85 percent) believe at least one anti-Jewish trope, as opposed to 61 percent found in 2019. Twenty percent of Americans believe six or more tropes, which is significantly more than the 11 percent that ADL found in 2019 and is the highest level measured in decades.

Many Americans believe in Israel-oriented antisemitic positions – from 40 percent who at least slightly believe that Israel treats Palestinians like Nazis treated the Jews, to 18 percent who are uncomfortable spending time with a person who supports Israel.

There is a nearly 40 percent correlation between belief in anti-Jewish tropes and anti-Israel belief, meaning that a substantial number of people who believe anti-Jewish tropes also have negative attitudes toward Israel.

This is the first of a series of reports by the ADL based on this survey; a future report will compare antisemitic and anti-Israel opinions across the political and ideological spectrum. 

So while the overlap of anti-Israel and antisemitic attitudes would initially appear to show that Leftist anti-Zionism is correlated with antisemitism, we cannot make that conclusion, since traditional antisemites generally also hate Israel (as much as the Left tries to claim that they are Zionist.)  If virtually all far-Right antisemites are also anti-Israel, the 40% correlation could be accurate without any Leftist (traditional) antisemites.

However, even if we assume that the overlap of classic antisemitic and modern anti-Israel opinions occur exclusively on the Right, we can still infer something about Leftist contributions to antisemitic attitudes in the US from the specific questions asked:

Some of these reflect current far-Left antisemitic discourse more than traditional far-Right applying their existing antisemitism to Israel. It may reflect that the far-Left anti-Zionism contributes to far-Right antisemitic rhetoric.

And indeed we have seen that in the past. The most extreme far-Right antisemitic publications enthusiastically and prolifically quote from far-Left sources like Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada and Max Blumenthal.

So while we cannot conclude that the far Left shares antisemitic attitudes with the far Right, there are definitely connections and influences, and this may be one reason the general index of antisemitic attitudes in the US is going up.

But this is in many ways the entire question misses the point.

One reason that my algorithmic  definition of antisemitism is (IMHO) the best out there is that it does not show bias against, even implicitly, the political attitudes of the antisemites. 

The ADL's correlation is important, but it says nothing about causation. 

Since the Left self-defines as anti-racist and socialist, it is emotionally invested in the appearances of treating everyone equally, so certainly their attitudes in any poll will reflect that self-perception. Which means that the ADL methodology, as well-intentioned as it is, has a fatal flaw.

It doesn't take into account the history of antisemitism and how it has changed over the centuries.

It started off as being against a people (this week's Torah portion includes the first expression of antisemitism in history: "“Look, the Israelite people ....may join our enemies in fighting against us....”) Christian antisemitism opposed Jews as a religion and as a people. "Scientific" antisemitism introduced the concept of hating Jews as an inferior race. Conspiracy theory antisemitism groups Jews together as planning to take over the world. And modern antisemitism ascribes all evil to the Jewish state and its supporters.

The commonalities dwarf the differences. For all of them, the "new" antisemites regarded their predecessors with some contempt, as a primitive example of bigotry unlike the newer, enlightened version. 

 For all of them, there were differences in which Jews were included as objects of hate. For all of them, some "good Jews" tried to ingratiate themselves with the new antisemites, and similarly the antisemites would embrace the "good Jews" as a shield to claim that they weren't bigots. For all of them, the Jews represented what the antisemites hated the most in the world. 

And for all of them, the vast majority of Jews in the world by any definition are framed as evil. 

People wouldn't be antisemitic if they didn't get something out of it. Antisemitism is attractive because it is a simple explanation for the ills of the world. It is attractive because the antisemites can use others as scapegoats for their own shortcomings. It is attractive for the simple reason that people want to feel superior to others. For antisemites, modern and classic, Jews represent what they hate most. 

If racism is the biggest evil, then Jews must be the biggest racists - but the new antisemites cannot admit that they are the ones being bigoted. Their hate is different, they want to believe, because it is anchored in ethics. 

But psychically, the hate is the same. It is just as toxic, just as irrational, and just as based on easily provable lies. 

The ADL, by trying to find correlation between the latest flavor of antisemitism and the older versions, does not take into account that the new antisemites specifically define themselves as impervious to bigotry, and will naturally try to avoid appearing to be one of the distasteful types of antisemites that their political enemies embrace. But of one could do a brain scan of their emotional state when they think of Israel, it would be identical to that of the KKK when thinking of Jews. 

The ADL could prove this pretty easily. They could rephrase some of their questions to refer to Zionists, not Jews:

Zionists are not as honest in their business dealings as other businesspeople.

Zionists are not warm and friendly.

Zionists have a lot of irritating faults.

Zionists are more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want.

Zionists have too much power in the United States today.

Zionists don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind.

Zionists have too much power in the business world.

Zionists do not share my values.

Zionists are more loyal to Israel than to America.

Zionists stick together more than other Americans.

And this is only a list of tropes that apply to traditional antisemitism. Like all previous versions, modern antisemites have added new antisemitic tropes. The ADL could add:

Zionists tend to be more racist than other Americans.

Zionists support Jewish supremacy in Israel.

Zionists are sympathetic towards right wing antisemites. 

Zionists accuse all critics of Israel of being antisemitic.

Zionists use antisemitism as a means to control Americans.

If the Leftist attitude towards "Zionists" mirror that of the Rightist attitude towards "Jews," then we would have very convincing evidence that anti-Zionism is just a new form of antisemitism. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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01/12 Links Pt2: ADL: Number of Americans believing antisemitic stereotypes nearly doubled since 2019; Jews who defend antisemites

From Ian:

Karol Markowicz: The New Jew

The New Jew remembers the Taffy Brodesser-Akner piece about how support for Israel is no longer in fashion on the left, how “we whispered to each other that it felt like the anti-Israel sentiment was actually a new way of being openly anti-Semitic, somehow wrapping it up in a Democratic cause” and how that piece made him sad. Today it would make him angry. How dare the mealy-mouthed left question the existence of the only Jewish state? We're done explaining anything to anyone anymore.

When someone is found to be a Jew-hater (a term far preferable to the clunky “antisemite”) he thinks “please, just don’t take them to the Holocaust museum.” Having to prove our humanity to people who hate us is embarrassing and the New Jew refuses to do it. We are not here to beg “please don’t hate us” and show them how much we have been hated by others. We’re here to say we mean “Never Again.” We’re here to boo when you think we won’t have guns to protect ourselves.

Her favorite Jewish organization is Tikvah because they didn’t flinch when the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan demanded they disinvite Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis from their Jewish Leadership Conference. The boldness was appealing. The event went on, the protestors impotently raged outside, and the Jews inside got to say: we invite who we want.

The New Jew furtively discusses admiration for Bari Weiss if she’s at the beginning of her journey away from the left and brazenly Ben Shapiro if she’s exited the building.

Religiously, the New Jew is either Orthodox or shul-less. She noticed that Reform and Conservative synagogues stayed closed for too long during Covid and when they re-emerged they were temples to leftism not G-d. She fills in her worship at Chabad, because they’ll never turn Shabbat into a struggle session, but it’s not an exact fit. The shuls will get there. They’ll have to. Their empty pews will be their signal.

She has broken with Facebook or Instagram friends who said vile things about Israel while Jews hid from bombs in basements in Tel Aviv. He has looked at his family, or dreamed about the one he hopes to have, and said "Not us. Not ever."

He discovers there are many others like him, so many others, and they’re welcoming and accepting as we all navigate together being independent Jews in the freest of countries.

The gun booing was telling because it wasn't about quietly owning a firearm. It was about letting others know that you do. It was about standing up for that right, standing up against the idea that our people will always be sitting ducks. We will not be.

A real political realignment to accompany this shift is coming. It is not here yet. One issue, like support for Israel, often leads to change on other issues, like gun rights. One little time you pull out a thread and where has it led? The whole shawl of Jews-always-being-liberals unravels.

Israel is an imperfect example but it's still instructive. Israel was once a left-leaning country. It is not today. The shift runs parallel to what is happening with Jews in America. Leftism rewards victimhood and the New Jews have decided to be victims no more.

Melanie Phillips: An ancient spoon stirs American mischief against Israel

So why is the U.S., which claims to be Israel’s staunch ally, giving credence to a false Palestinian identity created to write the Jews out of their own history?

The Biden administration’s sympathy with the Palestinians is well documented. It has persistently refused to call them to account for their murderous aggression and incitement. It continues to fund them regardless of their “pay-for-slay” rewards to terrorists’ families. It forces Israel to undermine its own security in pursuit of a “two-state solution” that the Palestinian Arabs have refused for almost a century.

In creating a new role of special envoy to the Palestinians, for which it appointed a man with a record of profound hostility to Israel, Hady Amr, the administration upgraded the Palestinians’ status by giving them direct and public access to the U.S. government. It has also appointed other profound enemies of Israel to several prominent positions within the administration.

But what the Assyrian spoon transfer reveals is that the Palestinian Big Lie is being promoted as truth by none other than the Department of Homeland Security, which was created after 9/11 to protect America against terrorist attacks.

Far from being a key link in the chain of Western security, the DHS has internalized the fiction about Palestinian identity that is promoted as a principal weapon in the war of extermination against Israel—and is in turn the flag behind which march the Islamist foes of the West.

Noll said of the spoon transfer, “This is a historic moment between the American and Palestinian people and a demonstration of our belief in the power of cultural exchanges in building mutual understanding, respect and partnership.”

It was certainly a historic moment. What it demonstrated, however, was that the Biden administration is a far more profound foe of Israel and the Jews than most people have yet realized.

Zionism is more than just a viewpoint and passion - opinion

ZIONISM INSPIRES the Jewish people to this day, through heroes like the Maccabees, who fought for freedom in ancient Israel. It is what triggers mourning for the destruction of the Jewish temples in Jerusalem thousands of years ago.

Zionism is what powers the Jewish people’s ancient connection to the land of Israel, which is constantly reinforced by new archaeological findings. These discoveries date back to the times of King David, whose own Zionism led to him declaring Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish nation, uniting that nation once again.

Zionism is what has accompanied the Jewish people through centuries of exile, crusades, conquerors, pogroms, persecution and the Holocaust.

Zionism is all the above and more. It is such a core element of the Jewish people that it is part of our religion, our oral and written history, our traditions and our national memory. It is an inherent part of our sense of peoplehood. Regardless of whether we live in Israel or not, or agree with the current Israeli government or not, Zionism is part of who we are.

While these clubs and others claim that their only goal is to boycott Zionists, the outcome of their actions is excluding and silencing Jews and Jewish voices on campus. An outcome that, if not confronted, could expand well beyond the halls of UC Berkeley.

These attempts to portray Zionism as merely a viewpoint are a transparent backdoor to excuse antisemitism - a backdoor that must be nailed shut. The way, to do so is to show the OCR and the world that Zionism is an intricate part of the Jewish people, their identity and their shared ancestry. Zionism must be recognized for what it is: an integral part of Jewish Identity not only by the OCR in its investigation but the wider public.

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