Tuesday, February 14, 2023
- Tuesday, February 14, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- blame Israel, blame Jews, denying Jewish history, Israel, rewriting history, settlements, Yasser Arafat
Tuesday, February 07, 2023
- Tuesday, February 07, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- "As-a-Jew", 9/11, antisemitism, blame Jews, conspiracy theories, earthquake, Jews control the world, Maria Dubovikova, Syria, Turkey, Turkiye
Israel was boasting that it has elaborated the system for predicting earthquakes with 80% precision. A week ago, the Western embassies were closed in Turkey, and the Westerners were advised to leave the country ASAP due to the "terrorist attack threat."Today, Turkey and Syria are hit with an extremely strong earthquake.My guess is that Israel has informed its western counterparts about the upcoming earthquakes.The Western supremacists are caring exclusively about their own precious lives, giving a shit about those who are considered inferior to them, those third-rate Arabs and Turks. “There is no need to inform them about the threat. Let them die! Who cares!”How many lives would be saved, if people were aware of the upcoming threat.
If anybody — Israel, Western powers — was aware of the upcoming earthquake and didn’t urge Ankara and Damascus about it — that’s a crime.Bearing in mind “coincidence” of the earthquake in Iran and Israeli drone attack. Then the closure of the Western embassies and a call to Westerners to leave Turkey prior to the earthquake.These are the dots. Connect them your own way.
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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Wednesday, February 01, 2023
- Wednesday, February 01, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- Abraham Accords, antisemitism, Arab media antisemitism, blame Jews, conspiracy theories, Rabbi Levi Duchman, Settlers, Talmudic rituals, twitter, UAE, Watanserb
In the manner of “soft settlement,” Jews residing in the United Arab Emirates continue to buy homes to live in, at a time when Israel is demolishing the homes of Palestinians in the occupied territories and the homes in Gaza.The “Israel in the Gulf” page, the mouthpiece of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, published on its Twitter account a picture of one of these houses.Rabbi Levi Duchman appeared next to a girl carrying a paper scroll, and wrote a comment saying: "Little by little, the number of Jewish homes is growing in the Emirates , the country of tolerance."...In the past two years, since the so-called Abraham Accords that brought an influx of Jewish and Israeli tourists and businessmen to the Emirates, the local community has grown by hundreds of people, Rabbi Levi Duchman, the chief rabbi of the United Arab Emirates, told Yedioth Ahronoth .And the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Arab countries led to the flourishing of Jewish life in the Gulf - according to the newspaper's expression - where it became possible to walk around with the "kippah" - the hat of the Jewish extremists - without fear, celebrate at Jewish weddings, and enjoy Jewish "kosher" food , and a way of life that Israelis did not dream of in the streets and cities of the Gulf before.
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
- Tuesday, January 31, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- blame Jews, ElderToons, ethnic cleansing, humor, indigenous
Friday, January 27, 2023
- Friday, January 27, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- blame Israel, blame Jews, child soldier, Defense of Democracies, double standards, Francesca Albanese, future martyr, glorifying terror, Hypocrisy, Jenin, supporting terror, UN Special Rapporteur
Monday, January 23, 2023
- Monday, January 23, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- anti-Zionist not antisemitic, blame Jews, blame Zionists, ElderToons, humor, ken roth
Tuesday, January 17, 2023
- Tuesday, January 17, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- ADL, antisemitism, blame Jews, conspiracy theories, Harvard, Jonathan Greenblatt, justifying antisemitism, ken roth, op-ed, The Nation
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
[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.
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
Monday, January 16, 2023
- Monday, January 16, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- "pro-Palestinian", anti-Zionist not antisemitic, antisemitism, blame Israel, blame Jews, Jews not Israelis, Jews not Zionists, Leila Khaled, politically correct antisemitism, Rasmea Odeh, Zionists not Jews
Morally sanctioned hate has an almost irresistible attraction. Imagine the psychic rewards of being not only allowed to but encouraged to express and act upon your worst instincts, assured that it is for the greater good!
Sunday, January 08, 2023
- Sunday, January 08, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- 2021, analysis, anti-Israel, antisemitism, Ben & Jerry's, blame Jews, dual loyalty libel, gaza, Harvard, HRW, ken roth, settlements, twitter
This is not "criticism of Israel." This is obsessive, psychotic hate, which is part of a consistent pattern we've seen over years of his tweets. And his 2021 tweets were even more obsessive over Israel than his 2020 tweets were.
Thursday, January 05, 2023
- Thursday, January 05, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- blame Jews, conspiracy theories, HRW, Jews control the world, Kathryn Sikkink, ken roth, Mapping Project, NGO monitor, The Nation
It is curious that a human rights academic cannot fit into her brain that both "HRW criticized other counties" and "HRW, and particularly Roth, exhibited a severe anti-Israel bias" could both be true.Elmendorf informed the Carr Center that Roth’s fellowship would not be approved.The center was stunned. “We thought he would be a terrific fellow,” says Kathryn Sikkink, the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School.Sikkink was even more surprised by the dean’s explanation: Israel. Human Rights Watch, she was told, has an “anti-Israel bias”; Roth’s tweets on Israel were of particular concern. Sikkink was taken aback. In her own research, she had used HRW’s reports “all the time,” and while the organization had indeed been critical of Israel, it had also been critical of China, Saudi Arabia—even the United States.
Roth rejects such claims. Most people knowledgeable about Israel, he says, understand that NGO Monitor “is a profoundly biased source” that “has never found a criticism of Israel’s human rights record to be valid.” Roth thinks that Steinberg was “particularly incensed that I dared to criticize Israel even though I am Jewish and was drawn to the human rights cause by my father’s experience living in Nazi Germany.” His father escaped to New York in 1938 when he was 12, and Roth grew up hearing many “Hitler stories.”
According to people knowledgeable about the school’s programs, its administration is terrified of touching anything related to Palestine, and Palestinian voices have largely been silenced. That’s due not to any particular administrator, they say, but to “the ethos of the place” and the people who fund the Belfer Center.Prominent among those people is Robert Belfer, who has donated more than $20 million to the Kennedy School since the 1980s—money that has come from his family’s fortune.In addition to the Kennedy School, he and his wife, Renée, have given to an array of cultural institutions, medical research centers, private schools, universities, and Jewish and Israeli institutions. In a 2006 interview with the US Holocaust Museum, Belfer observed that most of his extended family (including his paternal grandparents) perished in World War II—a loss that gave him “a sense of identity” of “being Jewish, of being very supportive of Israel.”According to the 990 forms of his family foundation, between 2011 and 2015 Belfer gave more than $300,000 to the American Jewish Committee, on whose board of governors he sits. In 2018, he joined with the Anti-Defamation League to endow a new fellowship at the Belfer Center to study disinformation, hate speech, and toxic content online. Every year, the school hosts three ADL Belfer Fellows. In short, the primary funder of the Belfer Center has been a significant backer of two of the groups—the AJC and the ADL—that Peter Beinart cited as assailing human rights organizations because of their criticism of Israel.
So because Peter Beinart, who accuses Israel of Jewish supremacy and want to see the destruction of the Jewish state, says that the AJC and the ADL are anti-human rights - an absurd claim - that proves that one of their funders hates human rights as well.
[Belfer and his son] sit on the Dean’s Executive Board...The board’s chair, David Rubenstein, is the cofounder and former CEO of the Carlyle Group, the private equity giant.... The 16 members of the Dean’s Executive Board also include Idan Ofer and his wife, Batia. Idan is the son of Sammy Ofer, an Israeli shipping magnate who until his death in 2011 was one of Israel’s richest men. Worth about $10 billion, Idan has come under fire in Israel for moving to London to reduce his tax bill and for a lavish lifestyle highlighted by the €5 million party that he threw on the island of Mykonos for his 10th wedding anniversary.The Kennedy School dean cannot afford to lose the confidence of this board.
The article doesn't say a word about any ties between Ofer or Rubinstein to any Israeli or Jewish causes. It doesn't have to. Their names tell you all you need to know.
Also on the board are people with Muslim names like Hazem Ben-Gacem (apparently Tunisian) and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani (Iranian.) No reason to mention them, though.
And in case you think I'm being paranoid about the antisemitism underlying this article, it says this:
In 2018, the Kennedy School opened a renovated campus, made possible by a capital campaign that raised more than $700 million. Anchoring it were three buildings bearing the names Ofer, Rubenstein, and Wexner. “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us,” Dean Elmendorf said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Oh my God - so many Jewish names - who shape Harvard's Kennedy School!
Rich Jews control Harvard's Kennedy School, and that's why the school opposes human rights.
What other evidence do you need?
(h/t Andrew P)
UPDATE: Stephen Walt, co-author of the widely criticized "The Israel Lobby", is still today the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at the Kennedy School at Harvard University. If Belfer was the nutty Zionist censor The Nation makes him out to be, and if the Kennedy School is so terrified of allowing critics of Israel to be there, why do they allow Belfer's name to be associated with someone whose anti-Israel positions are so well known? (h/t Ian)
Thursday, December 29, 2022
- Thursday, December 29, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
- anti-Israel, antisemitism, blame Jews, conspiracy theories, COVID-19, jew hatred, kill jews, PalArab lies, public health, resistance, settler-colonialist, tsunami of lies, victimhood, z can't make this stuff up
Since 1948 and with the establishment of the state of Israel, Israel has been deploying physical and structural violence against Palestinians in multiple well-documented ways, all aimed at the erasure, subjugation, and oppression of the Palestinians, in line with what Patrick Wolfe has called the “logic of elimination” in settler-colonial states.[1]Israel’s colonial ideology is manifested in the “daily assault on Palestinian life as a result of settler-colonial ideology that renders them killable as a part of and a furthering of their removal from their land.”[2]
In this paper, we examine the social construction of race as a determinant of health inequities in Palestine. Race myths about Palestinians conform to the “logic of elimination” integral to settler colonialism, predicated on the dispossession and removal of the Indigenous people from the land.
It seems necessary and urgent to look at the effects of political and systematic violence on Palestinian mental health in order to strengthen the resilience of communities, instead of individualizing their suffering. This can be achieved by moving away from a mental health framework that regards them as individual victims affected by political violence and toward a human rights framework that sees them as rights holders and survivors of a collective experience of violence within a social and political context...[T]he solution to breaking the cycle of internalization is to be found in resistance and in directing feelings outward, to those who oppress, instead of inward.
Hating Jews - and "resistance," which is understood by Palestinians as physical attacks on Jews - becomes the preferred path to solving Palestinian mental health issues.
Come to think of it, there are numerous papers about the trauma of Palestinians suffering under Israeli oppression, but I don't recall a single [Palestinian] academic paper about mental illness that might prompt Palestinians to want to kill random Jews. Apparently, the mental health professionals in the territories don't regard terrorists as mentally ill to begin with, but rather as role models who are breaking the paradigm of victimhood, as suggested by these authors.
A stronger understanding of the political and social implications of trauma and a more active role in relation to social injustices and human rights violations are essential against the background of the ethical standards of our profession. As mental health professionals, our commitment to advancing human rights can be shown by highlighting the pathogenic context in which trauma develops and by demanding social justice on a political level.
All of the articles in this journal have the usual disclaimer that the authors have no competing interests. But one of the co-authors of this article has a supremely competing interest: Samah Jabr is the head of the Mental Health Unit within the Palestinian Ministry of Health. She has every incentive to demonize Israel and declare it the source of all Palestinian problems.
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
- Tuesday, December 27, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
- antisemitism, Arab antisemitism, blame Israel, blame Jews, conspiracy theories, El Ghad, family values, Hussein al-Samnoudi, jew hatred, Jews control the world, PEZ, psychological projection, The Protocols
I responded that we Arabs in general, and the people of Egypt in particular, do not like Israel. This is because every calamity that happened to us in Egypt was not devoid of their dirty fingers, which are always drawing and plotting to undermine that homeland on whose land we live.And I began with her saying: There is no war waged on the earth since ancient times until today, except that these people have a hand in it. They are people of cunning, deceit, corruption and corruption. They are people who ignite wars, ruin and destruction. They love bloodshed and thirst for it.They tried in the modern era when Adolf Hitler, President of Germany, besieged and killed them everywhere they were, because they sought to ignite wars and corruption that they sought everywhere.Israel covets the land of the Arabs and wants to expand more than that to confirm its plan that its state is from the Nile to the Euphrates. .... Israel covets the occupation of the Sinai Peninsula.
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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Monday, December 26, 2022
- Monday, December 26, 2022
- Ian
- bbc, blame Israel, blame Jews, corruption, Elbit Systems, glorifying terror, Good news, Honest Reporting, IHRA, Ilhan Omar, Leopoldstadt, Linkdump, Morningstar, Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar, Rabbis for Hamas, SJP, WaPo
It’s time for Jews to say, ‘Sorry, not sorry’
There are many Jews out there who blame Israel for antisemitism:The American Jewish left’s endorsement of antisemitism
“If only we didn’t ‘occupy’ the ‘Palestinians,’ there would be no antisemitism.”
“If only those ultra-Orthodox Jews wouldn’t dress like that and stick to their ‘primitive ways,’ people wouldn’t hate us so much.”
But they’ll never accept our apology, so it’s time we stop apologizing.
The new government is too right-wing for you? You must have confused me for someone who cares about your opinion.
Foreign aid? Go ahead, Biden, try to pull it. Try to boycott Israel, BDS. Go for it, let’s see how that goes for you.
We don’t need you any more than you need us.
Allow me to officially declare that the era of the apologetic Jew is dead. It should rest in peace.
Now let me introduce you to a new creature: the proud Jew.
We have a lot to be proud of.
20% of all Nobel prizes have been awarded to Jews. We have the most moral army in the world. We are able to balance our military power with our unwavering need to behave morally and ethically, sometimes too ethically.
We lead the world in life-changing tech: Medicine, food, you name it, we are at the forefront of it all.
We took a desert that Mark Twain famously referred to as “a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land” and transformed it into one of the most flourishing societies in the Middle East and the world, and it only took us 75 years.
So, it’s time we all declared the apologetic Jew dead and introduced the world to a new breed of Jew, the proud Jew.
If we don’t respect ourselves, how can we expect the world to?
Our new government, despite its shortcomings, represents the proud Jew. There has never been more Torah learning than there is right now. We have never been stronger physically or economically. That’s something to be proud of.
This new government will support Torah. It will support the land of Israel—all of it. It will support our needs, not the needs of our enemies.
We have always talked about and prayed for the people of Israel, with the Torah of Israel, in the land of Israel. And now, we have arrived, not yet to the final destination, but we are well on the way.
For that, we, the Jewish people, should be proud, not ashamed and apologetic.
Or, in other words: Sorry, not sorry.
Once upon a time, identifying an antisemite required the proverbial duck test. If it quacked like an antisemite, then it probably was an antisemite.
Back then, antisemites had ways to avoid responsibility, but this has changed in recent years due to the widespread adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Antisemitism, which is now used by 38 countries, including the United States.
The IHRA definition, which includes examples of antisemitism directed against Israel, fits Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) perfectly.
For years, Omar has used the vocabulary of antisemitism delineated in the IHRA definition, such as tweeting “Israel has hypnotized the world” and that U.S. politicians’ support for Israel is “all about the benjamins”—a reference to hundred-dollar bills.
Even the Democratic House leadership, headed by outgoing speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that Omar “engaged in deeply offensive antisemitic tropes.”
One of the IHRA definition’s most important examples of antisemitism is “accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel.”
Omar did precisely that in Feb. 2019, when she angered fellow House Democrats Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey (both of New York) by saying in reference to Israel, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
Omar has also repeatedly applied double standards to Israel and singled out the world’s only Jewish state for her attacks, both of which are also included in the IHRA definition. She even equated Israel and the U.S. with Hamas, Afghanistan and the Taliban.
But despite all that quacking, several left-wing groups that label themselves “Jewish” and “pro-Israel” recently had the audacity to pretend that Omar is not a duck.
Who came to Omar’s defense when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) pledged to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee?
It was J Street, Ameinu, Americans for Peace Now, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Habonim Dror North America, the New Israel Fund, T’ruah and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
Friday, December 09, 2022
- Friday, December 09, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
- Arab antisemitism, Arab media, blame Jews, China, Hypocrisy, jew hatred, media bias, media silence, Muslim antisemitism, Saudi Arabia, Uyghurs
Dolkun Isa, president of the Munich, Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, or WUC, said China is not only committing genocide against the Uyghur Muslims, but also has declared war on Islam.“It is completely unacceptable that the leaders of the Muslim world will sit with China’s dictator on the same stage and just talk about business and cooperation by turning a blind eye to China’s attack on Islam,” he told Radio Free Asia.Gheyyur Qurban, office director of WUC’s Berlin office said countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran not only have remained silent on the Uyghur genocide, but also have supported the Chinese government’s position, even at the U.N. at the expense of their fellow Uyghur Muslims.“It is extremely disappointing to see Saudi leaders who claim to be the Protector of the Two Holy Cities receive Xi Jinping, the main culprit of Uyghur genocide, with pompous ceremonies and allow him to hold summits with Mideast leaders to expand China’s infiltration and influence in the heart of Islamic world,” he told RFA.China is Saudi Arabia's top trading partner, and the kingdom serves as a vital source of crude oil for China.
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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Thursday, December 08, 2022
- Thursday, December 08, 2022
- Ian
- Al Haq, American antisemitism, archaeology, bbc, blame Jews, CAMERA, conspiracy theories, hate crimes, Honest Reporting, Jews from Arab lands, Kanye West, Linkdump, NGO monitor, NYPD, UK, Woke Antisemitism, WSJ
NGO Monitor: Does Europe Support This? Al-Haq Tells the World to Dismantle Israel
On November 29, 2022, the Palestinian NGO Al-Haq published yet another antisemitic screed dedicated to denying the Jewish people sovereign equality, by defining Zionism and the State of Israel as inherently illegitimate. For 200 pages, the Palestinian NGO – designated as a terrorist entity by Israel in October 2021 over its ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization – extorts the international community to dismantle the Jewish State. To achieve this goal, Al-Haq absurdly distorts Israeli policy and practice beyond recognition, and misrepresents international legal standards.John-Paul Pagano: What Is a Conspiracy Theory?
Central to Al-Haq’s publication is the repetition of the claim that Israel’s existence as a Jewish State represents “apartheid.” This assertion was debunked in NGO Monitor’s 2021 and 2022 analyses: “False Knowledge as Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimise the Jewish State” and “Neo-Orientalism: Deconstructing claims of apartheid in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
Al-Haq’s publication is intended to influence the UN Human Rights Council’s permanent Commission of Inquiry’s (the “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel,”) plan to formally declare Israel to be committing “apartheid”; to pressure the International Criminal Court to indict Israeli officials for crimes against humanity; and for third states to apply a wide variety of sanctions against Israel, associated institutions, companies, and individuals.
While broader in scope, this publication echoes the same ideological position expressed by Al-Haq in a formal submission to the COI in May 2022. (For more information, see “Al-Haq’s Antisemitic Submission to the UN’s Permanent COI”)
EU and member states support for Al-Haq
If not for the millions of Euros in support from the EU and its member states Al-Haq has received over several years, the Palestinian NGO would not enjoy nearly the same level of influence and access as it currently does. Despite the organization’s reported ties to the PFLP, and its campaigning to dismantle Israel, Europe has yet to denounce and reject its longtime partner.
While the EU froze financial support to Al-Haq in May 2021 as a result of its links to the PFLP, in June 2022, the organization claimed that this freeze had been lifted – and as yet uncorroborated assertion.
Notably, in May 2022, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra, met with Al-Haq officials in the West Bank – despite the Israeli designation.
Moreover, Al-Haq is listed as an implementing partner on multi-grantee projects funded by the French (€900,000 for the entire project) and Swedish (Al-Haq receives over $2.5 million of the over $8 million project) governments.
When I began studying Antisemitism two decades ago, one of the first things that occurred to me was its essential nature as a conspiracy theory. While mundane anti-Jewish bigotry is always found, the form of Jew-hatred that is historically salient identifies “the Jews” as a preternaturally powerful, secretive, evil elite which enslaves and exploits humankind. Even a surface examination of conspiracy theories shows that while the identity of the elite changes, this narrative outline is common to all of them. Alternately—and with good reason we will explore later—Antisemitism is sometimes singled out as the ultimate conspiracy theory.An open letter to progressives: It’s time to speak out
So we can better understand conspiracy theories if we widen our scope to include insights from the much larger literature on Antisemitism. The history of the “Longest Hatred” is an opportunity to examine more than a thousand years of the consistent social practice of a single conspiracy theory. In this vast and detailed record, we will detect patterns and peculiarities that expose the essence of the thing.
The definition I propose hence will leverage scholarship on conspiracy theories and conspiracism, but be situated in the living context of Antisemitism—the up-punching form of racism that is centrally rooted in the cultural heritage of the West and has done so much to shape its social and physical reality. This approach yields a dense definition, but one that is also—after some clarification of terms—comprehensive and empirically legible.
It is, as follows:
A conspiracy theory is a belief that a circumstance or event is a deliberate, connected, and occulted product of the timeless struggle between the forces of Good and Evil, attributable to the malign influence of a secret elite that supernaturally coordinates to enslave and exploit humankind, fabricates false consciousness to hide its activities, and indulges in pleasures and rites of extreme misanthropy.
In upcoming (though not necessarily contiguous) posts, I will clarify the terms I highlighted above and will also discuss three conceptual domains—Manichean, Epistemic, and Magical—in which many of the features and themes of conspiracy theories should be evaluated. I will explain and justify my definition over posts that I will specially mark for this purpose, so they become a series that readers can revisit and reference.
As a variety of racism, the historian Paul Johnson viewed Antisemitism as “so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in a quite different category.” Defining that peculiarity also helps to reveal what is a conspiracy theory—a mode of thought that is in some ways more corrosive than caste-based racism, but against which we’ve mustered no social movement to stigmatize and diminish it.
I wanted to believe perhaps I’d simply missed something. After all, I have always worked in progressive spaces myself. I know how much this movement cares about the safety, dignity, and flourishing of all communities in this country.
But diving into various digital channels and searching through recent public statements yielded nothing. I saw plenty of commendable statements of solidarity aimed at other groups. Perhaps I wasn’t searching hard enough.
It shouldn’t take this much effort to uncover sentiments of support in a time of need.
The progressive movement should be a seamless, natural ally to the Jewish community. But despite the fact that so many Jews in this country find themselves ideologically aligned with the progressive left, for a long time now that movement has behaved as if we are either inevitable supporters – no matter their approach to our oppression – or unimportant ones.
Throughout my tenure in progressive environments, I encountered deafening silence through the violence in Pittsburgh, Poway, and Colleyville. I was told my identity didn’t qualify me to join workgroups focusing on diversity, solidarity, and inclusion. I was called a Zionist (I am one – they meant it as a slur). Assumptions were freely and unapologetically made about my political leanings, my perspectives, and my general pleasantness based on the fact that I was born in Israel and that I am a Jew. Throughout it all, I was expected to continue supporting the causes that have always meant so much to me – and I still do. (h/t jzaik)
Tuesday, December 06, 2022
- Tuesday, December 06, 2022
- Ian
- Ahnaf Kalam, Al Sharpton, bbc, Ben-Dror Yemini, blame Jews, CAMERA, Caroline Glick, Hadley Freeman, Honest Reporting, John Mellencamp, Jonathan Tobin, Kanye West, Linkdump, self-identity, StopAntisemitism
Jewish Life Is Cheap
For the past five years, the dominant media narrative about race—perhaps the dominant media narrative, period—has built up a hierarchy of racial justice. At the top are the perennially marginalized “BIPOCs,” victim to the lash of the ever-present colonial whip. At the bottom lurks the “white male,” inherently and ineluctably racist, even when (or perhaps especially when) they’re trying hard not to be.Ben-Dror Yemini: How academia omits facts to make Palestinians the perpetual victim
In a manner true to our history, Jews have been sucked into this Manichean whirlpool, cast by radical academics and their media acolytes as an essential, almost distilled element of the global system of racial oppression. We are not just white; we are the plotters and financiers of the entire sysyetm of white supremacy.
Worse still, if Jews are white then they are not, well, Jews. The largely successful effort to assign Jews to the white race means Jews do not have the moral privilege of determining our own identity. The perverse result of dispossessing Jews of their own history is that it grants the mantle of Jewishness to our enemies. Thus Ye, in the same Twitter thread where he threatened to go “death con 3” on Jews, also claimed: “I actually can’t be antisemitic because Black people are actually Jew also.”
When Whoopi Goldberg asserted on The View that the “Holocaust was not about race,” she was advancing a version of the same arguments made by virulent Black Hebrew Israelite hate preachers, professors who insist on the indelible whiteness of Jews, and anti-Zionists who deny the legitimacy of Jewish historical identity. It’s true that only the last two groups tend to have their ideas promoted by the media, but all three share the idea that “Jew” is not a meaningful or legitimate category. Palestinians can be Jews—thus the Democratic political activist and Louis Farrakhan fan Linda Sarsour is invited to participate as an expert in a prominent panel on antisemitism. And by the same logic, Black Hebrews can be Jews. Ye can be a Jew. Only Jews are not allowed to be Jews.
Over and over, Jews have watched this trend play out, and largely we’ve been silent.
In a key scene in the 2014 Oscar-nominated Selma, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leads a group of activists and protesters across a bridge alongside Black civil rights leaders. Not pictured in the scene was a man who walked in that front line of protesters, fighting for civil rights: the great American Jewish rabbi and leader Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Why would Ava Duvernay, the film’s director, compromise the film’s historical integrity to erase one of America’s most prominent Jewish spiritual figures out of the image? The answer is that over the past decade, the anti-racist movement that has been the media’s single most championed social cause has turned a syllogism into a truism: Whites are by definition white supremacists; Jews are the whitest of whites because they falsely hide behind their fake ethnicity; Jews, therefore, are at the top of the white supremacy totem.
The media has actively spread these ideas by turning woke racialism into the defining moral cause of our time, while at the same time ignoring the consequences of this campaign. While Ye was “canceled” for making open threats and affirming his love for Hitler, little more than a week earlier hundreds of Black Hebrew Israelites marched through central Brooklyn, uniformed and in formation, chanting “we are the real Jews.” Save for some coverage in the New York Post and in Tablet’s daily newsletter, The Scroll, the rest of the media was virtually silent. The media is still talking about the alt-right’s 2017 hate march in Charlottesville, treating it as one of the defining events of the modern era, but when hundreds of virulent antisemites march in Brooklyn—the mecca of America’s media establishment—it was crickets. The silence was appalling but also unsurprising given that the same media has largely ignored the routine violent attacks against religious Jews in New York.
Recently, Prof. Shay Hezkani claimed in an article he wrote for “Haaretz” newspaper that I misled my readers when I wrote that the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine faced an existential threat in 1947 and 1948.Hadley Freeman: It sucks to be a Jew on the left
I challenge Hezkani to an intellectual debate. I am even willing to provide him here with some of the arguments at my disposal - shall he answer my call.
“Every week Ben-Dror Yemini tells readers of ‘Yedioth Ahronoth’ about Arab leaders in 1947 who called to throw the Jews into the sea, planning to systematically murder them,” Hezkani wrote in his Haaretz column last week.
“Throughout 15 years of my research, looking into hundreds of propaganda pieces from 1947-1949, I ran into only one case in which Hassan al-Banna - founder of the Muslim Brotherhood – mentions the ‘sea’ and ‘Jews’ in the same sentence - while calling to expel the Jews from Egypt,” Hezkani wrote.
“The quote [used by Yemini and attributed to ex-Secretary General of the Arab League in Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam] is not backed by credible sources in Arabic, and it’s unclear whether or not it was actually ever said.”
I read the Haaretz article and could not believe my eyes. In the book I published titled “Industry of Lies,” I presented a more detailed list of threats made against the Jews, with credible sources, during that time period.
But, Hezkani looked into hundreds of documents and somehow found nothing. It’s a little weird that I did not spent 15 years researching this topic in an academic setting, yet found so much more information. To clear all doubts, prior to publishing the research-backed chapters of my book, they were reviewed by three prominent academics.
It could be that Hezkani has difficulty reading books. So, let’s start with the leader of the Palestinian Arabs, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who in 1941 arrived at Nazi Germany and called to kill every Jew, before returning to lead the Palestinians.
If Hezkani believes that al-Husseini had changed his mind later on, he should refer us to the relevant sources. In an interview to the “Al Sarih” newspaper, al-Husseini said the Arab goal during the 1948 War of Independence wasn’t to undo the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, but to “continue to fight until the Zionists are dead.”
As Hadley Freeman leaves the Guardian for the Sunday Times, she opens up about her Jewish experienceA rock star channels Jewish outrage at antisemitism
Honestly, what a dumpster fire that whole period was, to the point that it’s almost hard to remember what actually happened. But just off the top of my head, here is a list of things I remember lefty non-Jews saying to me back then:
1. “I don’t think you should write about antisemitism because you obviously feel very passionately about it.”
2. “What, exactly, are Jews afraid of here? It’s not like Corbyn is going to bring back pogroms.”
3. “Jews have always voted right so of course, they don’t like Corbyn.”
4. “It’s not that I don’t believe that you think he’s antisemitic. It’s just I think you’re being manipulated by bad-faith actors. So let me explain why you’re wrong…”
5. “Come on, you don’t really think he really hates Jews.”
All of the above were said to me by progressive people, people who would proudly describe themselves as anti-racism campaigners. And yet. When Jews expressed distress at, say, Corbyn describing Hamas as “friends”, or attending a wreath-laying ceremony for the killers at the Munich Olympics, or bemoaning the lack of English irony among Zionists, we were fobbed off with snarky tweets and shrugged shoulders.
What we were seeing, they said, we were not actually seeing. You could not design an exercise more perfectly structured to cause madness. It was, to be blunt, gaslighting.
Anyway, that’s all in the past now, right? Well it is for me, because I’m walking away. A lot of illusions were broken, and I lost a lot of respect for a lot of people I thought I knew, but it turned out I didn’t. Not really. Not at all. So I have left the garden. And it feels bloody great. (h/t messy57)
The antisemitic utterances of Kyrie Irving and Ye (formerly Kanye West) prompted condemnations from many celebrities, both those with Jewish backgrounds and those who weren’t Jewish but who issued solemn pledges of support for their Jewish friends and colleagues. Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon went as far as to tweet, “This is a very scary time,” to which one follower chimed in with an anti-Israel rejoinder.
Solemnity, however, unexpectedly yielded to outrage at the annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Los Angeles. What was no doubt expected to be one of the evening’s least momentous junctures, the honoring of lawyer-agent Allen Grubman, turned into a consciousness-raising session when rock star John Mellencamp took the stage for a profanity-laden introduction speech.
“Allen is Jewish, and I bring that up for one reason,” Mellencamp said. “I’m a gentile, and my life has been enriched by countless Jewish people.”
Mellencamp then turned it up a notch. “I cannot tell you how f***ing important it is to speak out if you’re an artist against antisemitism,” he continued. “Here’s the trick: Silence is complicity. I’m standing here tonight loudly and proudly with Allen, his family and all of my Jewish friends and all of the Jewish people of the world. F*** antisemitism!”
Whoa.
What was surprising about Mellencamp’s speech was not his principled stance, but the sheer indignation and the unbottled emotion that gave voice to it. For millions of Jews who have fearfully observed the growing normalization of antisemitic motifs in today’s popular culture, such a righteous outburst was surely a welcome surprise, but it begged a question for the entertainment industry: “Where have you been until now?”