Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: justifying antisemitism

Showing posts with label justifying antisemitism. Show all posts

Monday, October 02, 2023

Latest EoZ memes and cartoons

It's been a few weeks since I last posted my latest graphics....

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Palestinian zero sum game: "Israeli embassy in Manama is an attack on Palestinians"

One of the consequences of the Arab honor/shame culture is the zero-sum mentality. If one party is honored, then their rival is considered shamed, even if there is nothing in reality that shames the other party.

This is illustrated by the statement issued today by the PFLP terror group.

The PFLP announced that "the opening of a headquarters for the Zionist embassy in the Bahraini capital, Manama, represents a state of increasing decline of the Bahraini regime" and hat continued normalization between Israel and Bahrain is "an integral part of the aggression against our people."

Has Bahrain turned anti-Palestinian? I don't see any evidence of it. But to Palestinians, if Israel gains something, then they lose - by definition.

It is a very childish way of looking at the world but it is accepted as normal, at least for Palestinians and most Arabs.

A great part of the profound changes happening in the Gulf, and the reason that the Abraham Accords are so important, is that they represent a sea change in the old zero-sum mentality, and towards a win/win culture in the UAE and Bahrain. There is no contradiction between having relations with Israel and supporting Palestinian nationalism, unless you look at everything as zero-sum - or if you view a Palestinian state not as a goal but as a means to destroy Israel.

The PFLP goes on "warn of the dangers of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia embarking on normalization with the Zionist entity, especially since there are channels that have been opened in the sports and media fields, in addition to opening Saudi airspace for the passage of Zionist planes, which paves the way for the possibility of announcing full normalization with this entity. This would represent a major stab wound to the Palestinian cause."

If Israel wins, Palestinians lose - and vice versa. Which partially explains the celebrations and glee that accompany terror attacks that kill Jews. To Palestinians, any dead Jew is a loss for Israel and therefore a gain for Palestinians.

It is a sick mindset. And not enough people are fighting against it. Which is another reason why the Abraham Accords is so important - it introduces a different way of thinking into the Arab world, one that is attractive both because it is more optimistic but also because it is true.

It is worth mentioning that while the West generally adheres to a win/win mentality, socialists like the PFLP and those in the "progressive" Left indeed do believe in a zero-sum game - that the world has a fixed amount of resources and if the rich gain, the rest of the world inevitably loses. Simplistic and ultimately wrong zero-sum thinking is something that the far Right and far Left have in common.

It cannot be a coincidence that the main fans of zero sum thinking also happen to hate Jews. I don't know whether that is a cause or an effect, probably both, but eradicating the zero sum mentality is perhaps the best and most comprehensive way to combat antisemitism.

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!

Palestinian antisemitism, illustrated

Gaza-based cartoonist Bahaa Yaseen published this yesterday, the anniversary of the burning of Al Aqsa Mosque by a mentally ill Christian.

A Muslim woman prays "O Allah, protect our al-Aqsa" on a prayer mat with a pile of stones next to it.

A snake dressed as a Jew, with Stars of David on his skin, wearing a black hat, tallit and tefillin, with a flamethrower shofar, hisses at her.

Another snake, holding a Temple menorah and machine gun, is next to him.

Both of them are dreaming of burning down the mosque.

This is the same artist who, in 2015, published a cartoon showing a religious Jewish man raping a Palestinian woman and shooting a baby while a nearby PA soldier does nothing. Palestinians were scandalized - not by the Jew-hatred, but by the depiction of rape.

Usually the Western Israel haters deny any Palestinian antisemitism. When shown things like these, they often retreat back to "Can you blame the Palestinians for hating Jews?"

And from there is only a small step to "Can you blame us for hating Jews?"

(h/t @MoranT555)

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!

Former European Court of Human Rights judge Boštjan M. Zupančič is an obsessed Jew-hater

Professor Boštjan M. Zupančič is a former judge and former president of the Third Chamber at the European Court of Human Rights. He was previously a judge at the Constitutional Court of Slovenia and vice-chair of the U.N. Committee against Torture (Geneva). He graduated from Harvard Law School and now acts as a legal consultant. In 2020,Zupančič joined the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) as an associate research fellow.

He is also a Jew-hater.

Zupančič's hate isn't subtle. He doesn't hide it behind "anti-Zionism." He doesn't insist that he doesn't hate Jews. His hatred is explicit and continuous.

His former Twitter account, bmz9453, had plenty of antisemitic posts. It was closed down but his replacement account is filled with anti-Jewish tweets - even quoting antisemitic sites like The Daily Stormer and the Holocaust revisionists at the Institute of Historical Review.

Here is a selection of his tweets for just the past few months, often direct quotes from antisemitic websites like Unz.com:

He posted a 37 minute film that accuses Jews of systematically engaging in incest with their children.

Since the Ukraine war started, Zupančič has obsessively blamed the Jews for their supposed role in the war.

And he reposts the most vile antisemitic conspiracy theories he can find every day - here are two from yesterday:

Today's leaders of human rights groups insist that they cannot be antisemitic because their fighting for human rights precludes any prejudice. The truth is that no one is immune from bigoted beliefs, and any philosophy can be twisted into Jew-hatred.

Boštjan M. Zupančič was a human rights judge for 18 years. It hasn't stopped hum from openly engaging in spreading hate for Jews every single day. On the contrary - his biography gives his hatred legitimacy.

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!

This 1939 description of antisemitism could have been written today

Rev. Charles Owen Rice

This article from JTA, published in September 1939, sounds like it could have been written today in regard to "anti-Zionists."

DISCUSSES ANTI-JEWISH ATTITUDE
Priest Assails Those Who Say They Are Not. Opposed to "Good Jews."

PITTSBURGH—Those who mask their anti-Semitism with the assertion that they are not opposed to "good Jews" were assailed by the Rev. Charles Owen Rice in an address he delivered yesterday at St. Joseph House of Hospitality here.

"One of the features connected with the present wave of anti-Semitism that is being stirred up is that some of the leading purveyors of anti-Semitism hotly deny that they are anti-Semites," he said. "They employ a clever sophistry in their attempts to escape the stigma. They define anti-Semitism in a certain restricted sense and then they claim that their teachings and utterances -do not bring them under the term. "

"For instance, these enemies of the Jew will define anti-Semitism as persecution of the Jew because he is a Jew. They will hold that because, to their anti-Jewish attacks, they affix a rider saying that they exempt good Jews, therefore, they are automatically absolved of anti-Semitism. "

"As a matter of fact the unctuous employment of the 'good Jews' qualifier generally intensifies that anti-Semitism of the statements as whole. Also we can have attacks upon Jews, as Jews, without direct statements. The brutal crude, direct anti-Semitic utterances, are far less harmful than the subtle ones.

"Off hand I can give a partial list of some of the more commonly used anti-Semitic statements and inferences.

"It is anti-Semitism to exaggerate the power of Jews, whether it be power in finance, in industry, in newspaper publishing, in radio or anything else.

"It is anti-Semitism to say or hint there is a mysterious central controlling Jewish, national or international. leadership.

"It is anti-Semitism to exaggerate the clannishness of Jews.

"It is anti-Semitism to speak of deliberate controlled Jewish campaigns against Christianity.

"It is anti-Semitic to exaggerate Jewish participation in Communism and similar movements.

"It is anti-Semitism to hint at, or charge, a tie-up between 'International Jewry' and International Masonry. The very term 'International Jewry' has definite ant-Semitic implications.

"You will note that these effective types of anti-Semitism consist of lies. and exaggerations. Their harmfulness consists in their engendering a feeling of mixed fear and anger in the breasts of non-Jews. All of them have been proved false. They are damnably un-American, un -Christian and anti-social."

Then, like now, antisemites denied being antisemitic.

Then, like now, antisemites attempt to re-define "antisemitism" to exclude themselves.

Then, like now, antisemites defend themselves by saying that there are some "good Jews" who agree with them.

Then, like now, the subtle antisemitism that hides as social justice is often more dangerous than the explicit kind.

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!

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.

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!

An epidemic of pseudo-intellectual antisemitism

As my Twitter account gains followers (over 1500 in the past month), it is also attracting a new breed of antisemite - one that many other Zionist social media stars have seen for years.

It is not only that these people cannot stand any posts that are pro-Israel. But they also cannot stand posts that mourn dead Jews - they predictably respond with mentions of dead Arabs or other alleged Israeli atrocities, as a kind of justification for murdering Jews.

But there is another class of people who respond to pro-Israel posts. These are the ones who cite "experts."

They quote UN resolutions, or book authors, or articles that have footnotes, or NGOs, as proof positive that Israel is in the wrong, every time.

These are the people who say that international law allows Palestinians to murder Jews as "resistance."

They quote Shlomo Sand saying there is no such thing as a Jewish people. They quote Amnesty and Human Rights Watch saying Israel is guilty of "apartheid." They love Ilan Pappe's history of 1948. They claim that there was no Arab antisemitism before Zionism. They call Zionism "colonialism." They claim that Zionists tried to stop Jews from being saved in the Holocaust if they weren't going to Israel and they colluded with the Nazis. They toss off terms like "Jewish supremacy" the exact same way Germans used to but it is OK because "human rights" experts say it, too. They claim that Israel has scores of laws that discriminate against Arab citizens. They insist that Israel has "Jewish-only roads" in the territories.

All of these claims have one thing in common: they are easily debunked, as my links here show.

The mindset of the modern antisemite is that Israel and Zionist Jews are evil ab initio. But they don't want to be tarred as antisemites, because antisemitism is bad and something that only the far-Right is guilty of. Therefore, when they see articles that seem to have a sheen of validity that confirm their pre-existing hate, they are happy to accept them and spread them without any skepticism.

We have a small set of intellectual antisemites - many of them Jewish themselves - who craft opinions that carefully choose the facts that support their bigoted positions, and hide the much larger set of facts that shred their arguments. Then there is a much larger set of antisemites who enthusiastically accept this core of intellectual antisemitism as gospel, and shut their ears to any proof that they are fraudulent.

These new antisemites pretend that they are basing their hate on facts when the reality is that they choose their facts to justify their hate.

There is no greater proof than watching how they seethe so much at anyone condemning the murder of Jewish civilians in Israel that they feel they must bury any possible sympathy for the families of the victims with an avalanche of propaganda.

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!

Huwara is a massive chilul Hashem - and a hint towards the biggest danger to Israel and world Jewry today

The riots of religious Jews in Huwara on Sunday night were unforgivable. Nothing justifies targeting innocents, burning down houses, and leaving one dead. The Huwara celebrations for murdering two Jewish brothers are not and cannot be an excuse for such behavior. The Jews were, in this case, terrorists by any definition of the term.

But it's even worse.

Perhaps the most disgusting part was this video showing these religious Jews praying towards the fires they set.

This perversion of Judaism is unbearable.

This is the definition of chilul Hashem - the desecration of G-d's name - making all Jews look bad because of the actions of a few.

We religious Jews cannot fall back on the "no true Scotsman" logical fallacy to say that these aren't real Jews. They are. And their immoral, gleeful actions represent a catastrophic failure on the part of religious Zionism, no matter how tiny a percentage of that community they represent. Not to mention their attacks on the IDF, putting them solidly on the same moral plane as Palestinian terrorists..

While I am not happy with the use of the word "pogrom" to describe the rampage, but it is understandable.

However, there is one word that some Jews (and Arab MKs) are using to describe the violence that is unconscionable. And that is "Kristallnacht."

That is the word used by Nachum Barnea at Yediot Aharonot, and by Yossi Melman of Haaretz.

As immoral and violent as the mass terror attack in Huwara was, calling it Kristallnacht is false, irresponsible and disgusting. Being rightly angry at the rampage cannot excuse using a Holocaust analogy. There is no comparison between this riot, as sickening as it was, and the day that Nazi Germany officially started their policy of genocide. It is not remotely similar in scale, in intent, in effect, nor in the complicity of the government.

And one must wonder if that last point was the real reason that Barnea and Melman used that term.

I do not believe Israel has ever been as divided as it is now, and instead of working towards solutions, both sides are playing political games - and they are not above comparing their political opponents to Nazis. There is almost a glee on the part of the Leftist media that the hated "settlers" finally "proved" how awful they are and now those people who hated them the entire time feel they can finally compare them and their allies in the government to Nazis.

MK Zvika Fogel's support for the rioters is beneath contempt. But Yair Lapid's using them as a weapon against the entire government is not a whole lot better. (And when Bibi led the opposition, he was just as bad and divisive as Lapid is now.)

Much of the objection to the proposed judicial reforms comes from honest concern, whether real or misplaced. There has been far more heat than light in the coverage and reactions to the proposals. A lot of it is the same political opportunism, and the over-the-top rhetoric makes it sound like reforms that most reasonable people agree must happen to some extent are the ultimate evil. And, again, the blame goes on both sides - Netanyahu should have done much more to make these reforms bipartisan, not demonizing the other side.

The political opportunists, like Israel's enemies, don't want solutions. They want to win at any cost, and even more so - they want to see the other side lose at any cost. That cost is very high, indeed - to the point of trying to get Jews in the Diaspora to publicly oppose Israel. This is the zero sum mentality that both sides of the political spectrum are happily borrowing from Israel's enemies.

The people stoking hate for their own selfish purposes are no better than J-Street or Jewish Voice for Peace.

This fragmentation that started in Israel is now normalized throughout the Jewish world. Mainstream non-religious Jewish organizations are now routinely publicly criticizing Israel. These irresponsible Huwara terrorists are even dividing up the religious Jewish community to an extent, although the vast majority of Orthodox organizations have condemned the violence.

These divisions are the biggest danger to Israel's future - more than Iran, more than Palestinian terror, more than the prospect of a US that might turn against it as so many antisemites want. And if anything can turn the US against Israel, it is Huwara-type activities. Antisemitism spreads by playing on unconscious bigotry and the scene of religious Jews on an orgy of destruction has a huge psychological impact. The damage wrought by these Jews is incalculable.

JVP poster

Palestinian and anti-Israel media and organizations are loving all of this. This op-ed from Al Quds (UK) uses Nachum Barnea's use of "Kristallnacht" as carte blanche for Arabs to compare Israel to Nazis without any guilt. The Guardian eagerly reports Barnea's words, which will justify future Holocaust analogies in that paper and other mainstream media.

Make no mistake - just as the antisemitic "apartheid" slur got normalized, the antisemites who have been using the Holocaust analogy just gained several years in their quest to make that normal as well..

All because of the contemptible Jews in Huwara and the Israelis who cannot resist using them to score political points, on both sides.

Even though there is still no comparison between the immorality of Palestinian society and the worst of Israeli society - Israelis raised money to compensate Huwara victims while Palestinians celebrate dead Jews - the rioters have given those who spread incessant anti-Israel propaganda a priceless gift.

Palestinian political cartoon

Israeli extremists and opportunists are doing more damage to Israel and world Jewry than the antisemites could ever dream of doing themselves.

The only winners are the world's antisemites. And they are very, very happy with what they are seeing.

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!

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.

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!

"The Jews are the real antisemites" is not a new argument by antisemites

Modern antisemitic groups like Electronic Intifada, IfNotNow and others like to claim that they aren't antisemitic - the real antisemites are the Jews (they say "Zionists.")

It turns out that even that argument was used by the classic antisemites of history.

This op-ed in The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, October 03, 1941 shows that this argument was used by the antisemitic "America First Committee."

This op-ed shows a methodology of antisemitism that remains popular today.

"That's the trick, the technique and the plan of the anti-Semite. Blame the Jews for everything bad, then deny that it is anti-Semitism, and then blame the Jews themselves for bringing up the subject at all."

Nothing has changed in 80 years.

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!

Times of Israel blog justifies campus antisemitism

Kenneth S. Stern was the lead author of the IHRA's (flawed) Working Definition of Antisemitism, and regarded as an expert on the topic. But his latest blog post at Times of Israel is incomprehensible, and appears to justify modern campus antisemitism.

What should universities do when those Jewish students who are also Zionists are told they are not welcome in progressive spaces? After all, why should any student have to choose between their identity and their desire to be part of a political community? And if that’s the “ask,” pro-Israel Jewish students, whether desiring to join a progressive group or not, get the message, hurtful to them and harmful to the academic vibrancy of the campus: they either have to self-censor what they say about Israel, or risk the ostracism and pain of social shunning.

...But groups also have a right to be selective, to set their own rules for membership. The potential benefits may include allowing members to feel they share something important (such as a women’s group or one based on ethnicity or religion). That applies to politics too. One wouldn’t want to force a Young Republican club to include a Bernie Sanders supporter (or vice versa).

...Groups – including those on campus – have a right of association. Most famously, years ago the organizers of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City refused to include a gay Irish group. As much as I had wished the organizers had made a different decision, they had a right to decide what their march would stand for. Likewise Hillels have the freedom to choose what speech they will allow under their banner.

...Universities must not tell groups what their principles have to be. If Israel/Palestine is a contentious issue on campus, there should be courses and other initiatives to encourage deep discussions of not only the issue, but why it is so divisive, and of how students might maintain their principles while avoiding the too easy temptation to paint classmates with different views as racists or antisemites. But if a group decides that in order to be a member, one has to have a particular view of Israel and Zionism, the right to make that decision must be respected. Those not invited in, even though exclusion hurts, can find other ways to express themselves, including by creating new groups and coalitions.

No.

Stern has a point that campus groups have the right to decide on the rules of membership. It makes sense that a Muslim group or a Black group or a women's group define themselves as spaces where they can feel free to express themselves and feel safe, and not have to self-censor because an outsider might be listening. The same would go for groups for victims of sexual abuse, for example.

But political groups are not the same - there should be no litmus test to join such a group. Bernie Sanders supporters should be allowed to attend the Young Republicans club as long as they are respectful and not disruptive. This is true even if they will report back what they have heard. Group meetings should be public and the speakers and attendees should not say anything that they would be embarrassed to say in public.

Yet even if one accepts the progressive idea of "safe spaces" for political opinions, Stern goes way beyond that. He is saying that a group about climate change or against racism and sexism can exclude Zionists, even though that is not at all what the group is about. He says that any progressive organization, on any issue, can include anti-Zionism as a litmus test for attendance and membership.

That is absurd. If the organization whose purpose has nothing to do with Israel says all members must be anti-Zionist, they are indeed adding an antisemitic dimension to their group. The proof is that they do not have similar litmus tests for other political opinions - they do not exclude those who support the death penalty or Bashar Assad or Vladimir Putin. They don't ask prospective members their opinions on nuclear energy or Uyghurs. The only issue that they consider beyond the pale is Zionism.

That double standard is antisemitism.

Even worse, Stern downplays the pain of Jewish students who feel unwelcome from these spaces where they have so much in common with the group members. He disingenuously says that Zionists can simply create new groups when excluded from progressive spaces.

Really? Is it so trivial to create a competing Zionist group against sexual abuse or against racism, to get funding, to get enough members? That is nonsensical. And it is offensive.

I cannot believe that Stern doesn't realize that. The entire reason Jews created their own hospitals and medical schools and hotels and clubs a century ago is because they were reacting to systemic and endemic antisemitism. Stern is saying that we should accept modern antisemitism and act the same way our Jewish ancestors did in the face of bigotry.

He is saying to accept this bigotry and work around it, rather than expose it and fight it head on.

This doesn't sound like the position that someone who fights antisemitism would take.

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!