Petra Marquardt-Bigman: Why neo-Nazis Love the BDS Movement So Much (click via tweet at the bottom)
It’s been clear for quite some time that "progressive" spaces have a problem with "Zionists"and their "offensive" symbols – including any flags with the most recognizable Jewish symbol, the Star of David, on them.
That must be why, when progressive protesters countered a small Ku Klux Klan demonstration in Dayton, Ohio they tried to burn an Israeli flag. Their passionate "anti-Zionism" must have prompted burning the Jewish state's flag to equate it with KKK white supremacy.
But it's increasingly clear that a similar antipathy for "Zios" energizes the far right. Last weekend, a neo-Nazi, who had come with his buddies to protest the Detroit Pride parade, felt the urge to demonstrate that Jew-haters can also be anti-Zionists when he urinated on an Israeli flag. And the small neo-Nazi German party Die Rechte campaigned for the recent EU elections with the slogan: "Israel is our misfortune."
That’s quite the common denominator. If, as a progressive, you claim to take the fight against the oldest hatred seriously and find yourself on the same side as neo-Nazis, it’s arguably time to reconsider your views.
Which leads to the critical question: what has facilitated this meeting of minds, rhetoric and action? My answer: the tireless efforts of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
BDS supporters on the far left and far right are only too happy to support the claim that anti-Zionism has nothing whatsoever to do with anti-Semitism – and to assert that in fact it is Zionism that equals racism. But if you insist on treating Israel as the Jew of the nations, don’t feign outrage when that is considered anti-Semitic. (h/t IsaacStorm)
"If, as a progressive, you claim to take the fight against the oldest hatred [anti-Semitism] seriously and find yourself on the same side as neo-Nazis, it’s arguably time to reconsider your views."
— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) June 16, 2019
An excellent Haaretz piece by @WarpedMirrorPMB: https://t.co/Gir91ms70b
French Jews face trinity of hate from left, right, and Islamists, says author
If France has no monopoly on anti-Semitism in all its vile, even homicidal, manifestations, it’s haunted by its checkered record involving Jews. In 1791, France became the first country in western Europe to emancipate its Jews. It also has many dark chapters, including the Dreyfus Affair, in which a Jewish captain in the French army was framed and falsely convicted in 1894 of spying for Germany, resulting from and feeding already pervasive anti-Semitic sentiment. More notoriously, during World War II, France’s fascist Vichy regime actively collaborated with the Nazis in deporting 75,000 Jews to death camps in the 1940s.HonestReporting Prompts Improved Guardian Headline on Planned ‘Trump’ Village
Today, given this charged history and the fact that France’s half-million strong Jewish community is the world’s second-largest outside Israel, what happens to French Jews commands interest far beyond its borders. Indeed, foreign media have long reported on anti-Semitism in France.
In fact, Weitzmann’s book sprouted from a series of five 4,000-word reportages he wrote in 2014 for the US-based Jewish online magazine, Tablet.
“The dismissal of anti-Semitic aspects of what was going on in France at the time by both the media and public authorities made me look abroad to publish my series,” says Weitzmann, who’s written for major French newspapers. “I went to Tablet because I felt French media wouldn’t be interested in publishing what I wanted to do. Even outside France, there weren’t many places where I could publish such a lengthy, in-depth look at this subject.”
Weitzmann had long been troubled by anti-Semitism in France, especially two murder cases French authorities initially refused to treat as hate crimes. In 2006, a gang, led by an openly anti-Semitic Muslim, abducted and killed Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old Parisian Jew. In 2012, a jihadist gunman opened fire at a Jewish day school in Toulouse, killing three children and a rabbi. However, it was a demonstration in Paris in early 2014 that prompted Weitzmann’s series.
“The situation for Jews in France had actually been bad since the early 2000s,” says Weitzmann. “Synagogues had been attacked in the suburbs and there were several anti-Semitic murders. But in January 2014, something changed. That month, you had this far-right protest march in Paris called Day of Wrath where you heard for the first time since the 1930s, people crying out anti-Semitic slogans in the streets of Paris. Among them was ‘Jew, France is not yours!’ From then on, you had a dramatic rise in anti-Semitic incidents.”
The following year, French right wing comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, who has been convicted several times for anti-Jewish incitement, popularized an arm gesture widely seen as an inverted Nazi salute and intended as an expression of anti-Semitism. Some Yellow Vests protestors have used it at demonstrations, a few of which Dieudonné has attended with right wing, anti-Semitic writer Alain Soral, who recently was sentenced to a year in prison for Holocaust denial. (h/t IsaacStorm)
With Sunday’s unveiling of a plaque marking the site of a planned village in the Golan to be named after United States President Donald Trump, media coverage was assured, and the vast majority of news outlets managed to keep their comments accurate and fair.
Not The Guardian.
Despite the fact that the plaque unveiling was merely symbolic, the Guardian’s headline informed readers that Israel has in fact already “built” a settlement in Trump’s honor. “Israeli settlement called Trump built on conquered land”
This is, of course, false. With no budget allocated, no planning done, no final location decided for the project, and not even so much as a binding decision to actually oversee the construction of Ramat Trump, (Trump Heights in Hebrew,) no building whatsoever has been undertaken.
HonestReporting swiftly called the Guardian out on social media, including Facebook and Twitter, and the Guardian consequently renamed the article to more accurately reflect the reality: “‘Trump Heights’: Israeli settlement in Golan named after US president.”
Though the revised headline could make clear that Trump Heights is only being planned at this stage, and has not yet received funding or a government mandate, it at least doesn’t claim that it has already been “built”.