Anti-Zionism in Parliament, 1923

On June 21, 1923, Lord Islington, among others, spoke in the British House of Lords to move to reconsider the Mandate over Palestine.

One of his points was to separate "Zionism" from the Jews residing in the area, as if Zionism is not the Jewish national liberation movement, as if Jews do not want an independent polity in their historic homeland and as if Zionism is illegitimate.  And as if only super isolationist insular religious messianic-beleiving Jews are the only 'true' and 'genuine' Jews. As if only non-Jewish anti-Zionists have the right and privilege of telling the vast majority of Jews that they're wrong about the centrality of Israel.

Here is how he phrased it:

The Jewish people in Palestine have lived in the past in harmony with the Arab community. They have enjoyed in largo measure the same privileges as their Ottoman fellow subjects and, I venture to say also as a fact, they never agitated for Zionism. I do not think—I speak subject to correction—that there has ever been a demand from the Jewish Community in Palestine for the introduction of a Zionist Home in that country. The whole agitation has conic from outside, from Jews in other parts of the world. I go further, and say—I think I have said it before; if so, I repeat—that a very large number of the Jewish community in Palestine to-day look with considerable aversion not only upon the Zionist Home but upon the Jews who are being introduced into the country from Eastern Europe.

That claim, as presented, continues to be voiced, by Jews and non-Jews to this day - and we'll ignore his historical untruths and prejudice against East European Jewry.

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Is Anti-Zionism to be Considered Anti-Semitism?

Anti-semitism is the hate of Jews for being Jews.

Being Jewish includes the belief that the Land of Israel is the covenanted homeland of the Jewish nation.

It is the land where the nation, as a federation of the Twelve Tribes, settled in under the leadership of Joshua after Moshe brought the Israelites out of Egypt back into the land of the Forefathers.

It is the land in which the Monarchy ruled.

It is the land which first withstood and then was defeated when the Assyrian Empire invaded.

It is the land which revolted against the Greek-Selecuid occupiers.

The land that stood up to the Roman occupiers.

The land in which the entire ancient religious and cultural heritage of the Jewish People, in its unique Hebrew language, was formulated and fashioned.

The land to which Jews constantly and continually returned over the 18 centuries of foreign rule including the Byzantines, the Persians, the Muslim Arabs, the Crusaders, the Mamlukes, Ottomans, British and Jordanians and the loss of political indendence.

It is the land where the Two Temples stood and served as sacred sites of worship.

It is the land in which special commandments can be exclusively fulfilled and no where else.

It is the land that, ever since Talmudic times of the second Babylonian exile, Jews  felt obligated to support those living in it, especially the scholars, sending charity funds from across 70 countries of the Diaspora.

It is the land towards which Jews pray, no matter wher they may be - north, south, east, west.

It is the land mentioned in our daily prayers, our Shabbat and Festival prayers, in the Passover Haggada, Tisha B'Av elegies and more.

Anyone who seeks to sever the connection between Jews and the Land of Israel, anyone who claims there is no Torah-based directive to return to it and reside in it and make it bloom, who declares him or herself an anti-Zionist, is being anti-Jewish.

They may love Jews but to dislike and disregard the Land of Israel, ideologically, economcially, politically or security-wise, to reject the right of the Jews to establish a state in their historic homeland, is being anti-semitic.

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A Paralleling of Germany's Nazification of Christianity?

Did you know that in Nazi Germany, from 1939 to 1945, a special academy existed, the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life? It resulted from an effort, begun in the 1920s, to Nazify Christianity. It was established with the backing of eleven regional Protestant churches.

According to Prof. Susannah Heschel's research article, among other activities, a committee of the Institute produced a de-Judaized version of the New Testament, which was published by the Institute in 1940 with the title, Die Botschaft Gottes - God's Message. 

As Heschel notes:

"In it, all references to Jesus' Jewishness were eradicated, including his descent from Old Testament figures, mention of Jerusalem and the Temple, and any positive references to  Jews. For example, John 4:22, "Salvation comes from the Jews," was changed to the famous antisemitic slogan, "The Jews are our misfortune." Bethlehem was shifted to Galilee, reflecting Grundmann's claim, discussed below, that Jesus could not have been a racial Jew because the Galilee was populated by non-Jews."

There's an online exhibit informing about the Institute.

It was not a minor episode. Bishop Weidemann of Bremen issued a de-Judaized New Testament. and Reich Bishop Ludwig Miiller issued a "germanized" version of the Sermon on the Mount in 1936 to eliminate what he considered inappropriate Jewish moral teachings. The Die Botschaft Gottes was printed, in its first edition, in 100,000 copies as the demands of pre-publication from parish churches throughout the Reich was significant.

Richard Steigmann-Gall, reviewing the book, "The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945", realizes

"Christianity was part of the cultural framework of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, the interesting point is that some people saw it as grounds to support participation in Nazism, whereas others saw it as grounds to resist. Conformity or resistance; intolerance or tolerance; Inquisition or charity? The religious texts stay the same, but what people have done with them always has varied greatly."

Listening to Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes and others and especially their attacks on Israel, on Christian Zionists and, in cases, on Jews and Judaism, should alert us to previous irregularities of Christians using their form of Christiantiy as a banner to wield politically. 

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Jewish Students, Progressivism and Zionism

I have blogged on several occsions that the collapse of Jewish national identification among the younger generation of Diaspora Jews. I noted the Bund which morphed into Communism, various pacifist groups in the 1920s and 1930s, Reform Judaism before 1937, the rise of the American Council for Judaism and other marginal but loud voices were all in this mold and preceded contemporary reality. Then the push after 1967 from left-wing anti-war groups led to Breirah and others which followed the previous generation in viewing Israel more as a threat to their Dispora identities.

What we see today with IfNotNow, JVP, Bend the Arc and others is reflected, if not totally in purpose, but at least in the process of development that occured with Avukah.

Thanks to Tal Elmaliach's new article, I was able to extract some relevant history that may make clear my position on history repeating itself, if not exactly:

I now located Nathann Glazer's memoirs which shed more light:

I entered City College in February 1940...I was persuaded by a fellow student to attend a meeting of Avukah, the student Zionist organization. I was not a Zionist but was willing to hear what there was to be said for Zionism. It was an accident that had a strong impact on the rest of my life. The speaker was Seymour Melman, a recent graduate of City College who had just spent a year in Palestine and was reporting on his experiences. Had Avukah been simply a Jewish organization, I doubt that it would have made much impact on me. But these were socialist>Zionists. What is more, they were intellectual socialist Zionists and looked down on nonintellectual socialist Zionists...soon I was on the staff of Avukah Student Action (the organization's national newspaper) and had become a Zionist; indeed, before that was settled, I was named editor. No loyalty oaths were required to become a member of Avukah. We had a three-point program, presented in documents portentously titled "theses," and in theoretical pamphlets. The organization may have been Zionist but the culture was in most ways left sectarian. We were generally allied on campus issues with the anti-Stalinist Left – the socialists and the Trotskyites.

The three points of our program were to build a "non-minority Jewish center in Palestine, to fight fascism, and to foster a democratic American Jewish community. This program represented a somewhat off-center Zionism. The term non-minority was meant to leave room to for a binational state of Jews and Arabs. In those days we believed it possible for the two nations to share power, with neither being in the minority in a political or cultural sense. Our notion was that if both nations were guaranteed equal political rights, the Arab majority of Palestine would allow unrestricted Jewish immigration...Avukah was a switching point on the road from socialism to sociology. At first it emphasized the socialism, of which I knew little until 1 became involved. But Avukah, following the pattern of other left sectarian organizations, had "study groups," in which we read not only Zionist classics but also socialist classics: Bukharin's Historical Materialism was particularly favored by some of our elders. But we were not Leninists. Though left, and critical of social democrats, the radical leaders of Avukah who tried to influence us were (Rosa) Luxemburgian – revolutionary but against a directing central party and for education of the working masses.

It was a very congenial bent. The only issues that called for action were Zionist ones; for the rest education was sufficient. The doctrine hardly mattered, I am convinced. It is almost embarrassing to say we believed in revolution. The only way to relieve the embarrassment is to confess that we really did not...

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Palestine Arab Rejectionism

A very early example of the ongoing until this very day the preference of Arabs promoting "Palestine" to adopt rejectionism:

HL Deb 27 March 1923 vol 53 cc639-69

LORD ISLINGTON had placed the following Notice on the Paper:—

Legislative Council just concluded in Palestine it is not a fact that the whole Arab electorate refrained from voting in protest against the new Constitution...

Islington moved to cancel Britain's Mandate over Palestine the following year. He initiated several anti-Zionist debates in the House of Lords. He was one of a group of Lords that included Lamington, Sydenham, Curzon, Northcliffe and Beaverbrook who were unfavorably disposed to Jews and exhibited anti-Zionist positions and opinions.

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The New York Times Goes Cockamamie

Only in the New York Times would one find such a cockamamie* defense of anti-Semitism

...critics have complained that such a policy could be used to stifle free speech and legitimate opposition to Israel’s policies toward Palestinians in the name of fighting anti-Semitism++. The definition of anti-Semitism to be used in the order, which matches the one used by the State Department, has been criticized as too open-ended and sweeping.  For instance, it describes as anti-Semitic “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination,” and offers as an example of such behavior “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

If that isn't wacky enough, this follows:

opponents of the definition fear that it could be used to declare any defense of Palestinian autonomy to be anti-Semitic, with federal education funding as a cudgel.

Autonomy is granted by the sovereign power within its own territory.  By agreement. So campaigning for autonomy cannot be anti-Semitic as all it is is a political arrangement that does not deny Jewish nationality.

I am presuming that radical Jewish anti-Zionists are at work here, supplying the NYT with nonsensical reasoning. I need be careful here as anti-Semitism is actually non-sensical itself which could lead to all sorts of misinterpretations and misrepresentations.

The order, once signed, is to protect Jews and also non-Jews who seek to defend Israel on campuses without being threatened with actual violence, their events shut down, their dorm rooms targeted by fellow students, off-campus activists as well as by their own lecturers and administration officials.


UPDATE

Read Joel Pollock on another NYT cockup in reporting on Donald Trump's Executive Order.

++  What is happening is that free speech and legitimate opposition to Arab terror, incitement, defense of Zionism & Israel, etc. is being stifled by Arabs and their fellow-travelers. That is the horrific situation on campuses and what the EO will combat.

The order, I understand, prohibits discrimination based on "perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics".
In other words, the crime is what the anti-Semite presumes, not necessarily what Jews think of themselves.

SECOND UPDATE

Initial reporting indicated that the order would include language defining Judaism as a “national origin,” setting off a frenzy among major Jewish organizations, activists and lawmakers. The draft text of the order obtained by JI makes no such reference.

Of note: There is no mention of Israel in the text of the executive order draft shared with JI. However, IHRA includes as contemporary examples of antisemitism the accusation of dual loyalty, using symbols associated with antisemitism to characterize Israel or Israelis and “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” IHRA also notes in its working definition that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”

______________


*  cockamamie


^

The Neo-Yevsektsyists

As I have blogged previously, the involvement of American Jews in anti-Zionist and anti-Israel activities preceded claims of an "illegal occupation" by over a half-century.

Many groups were involved. From assimilationists to Reform rabbis. The American Council for Judaism. Bundists and other various socialists and communists. Then Breira. On on to today's IfNotNow, JVP, et al.

One group I left out, mainly because I felt uneasy including them because of the immoral actions they were involved in and the operations they themselves initiated against the their fellow brethren was the Yevsektsyia.  It was founded in 1918 and abolished in 1930, when their appointed task was achieved - the destruction of the traditional framework of Jewish life.

The Tarbuth Hebrew educational system was suppressed while Yiddish was elevated. Zionist activity was prohibited. Immigration to Mandate Palestine was severely restricted. By the way, it was for a Hungarian non-Jewish communist, László Rajk in 1949, that the phrase 'international Zionism' was coined.

At the Yevsektsiya's second conference in July 1919, it demanded that the Zionist organisations be dissolved. After an appeal from the Zionists, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a decree in that the Zionist organisation was not counter-revolutionary and its activities should not be disrupted. The campaign continued, however. In 1920, the first All-Russian Zionist Congress was disrupted by members of the Cheka and a female representative of the Yevsektsiya. At its third conference in July 1921, the Yevsektsiya demanded the "total liquidation" of Zionism.

David Collier has noted the parallels between then and now as regards a renewed Yevsektsyia phenomenon. 

I just hope these neo-Yevsektsiyists remembered that the Communists eradicated the old ones, usually through torture, show trials and hangings.

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The Arab of Palestine Transformed into A Jew

I have become convinced that rational and logical political thought and discourse is nigh useless when engaging the new generation of non- or anti-Zionists who disguise their discomfort and uneasiness at being too overly identified with Israel, Jewish particularism even of a secular cultural character and the responsibilities the Jewish state must assume in order to protect its existence and preserve the security of its citizens which means, foremost of all, the use of power and deadly force, if required.

The frustration at discovering that they do not know history or historical development, the simple facts nor do they care that how those are manipulated and misrepresented is confounding.  They publicize themselves as cerebral and intellectual but it appears they know they cannot truly argue the issues and mostly ignore interaction with opposing viewpoints.

Or, they go off on weird tangents, like baking a Vegan Anti-Zionist Sweet Potato Challah together with a statement of how one is to educate children:

JVP's September 2017 manifesto is quite clear:

As young Jews, we recognize that Israel is not our birthright. 

One could be forgiven for thinking, well, maybe Israel is not their birthright because their Judaism is lacking all its many levels of culture, history, religion and national identity.  Redefine Judaism and it can become anything.  Ask the Bundists, the American Council for Judaism, Satmar or the pre-1930s Reform Movement or the pre-1950s American Jewish Committee.

And so, to free themselves from these encumbrances, to become fashionably "liberated", these youth reverse and twist reality and create the "Arab Palestinian-cum-Jew".

They point an accusing finger at Israel, removing themselves from the matrix, distancing themselves from being seen as an "Israeli" or "Israeli supporter", and apply to the Arabs referred to as "Palestinians" the framework of being the "Jew". Awkwardly, they then can promote themselves as pro-Semites.

Israel is the "Jew-hater". Israel aligns itself with anti-Semites (Hungary; Trump).

It is as simple as it is simplistic.

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Hammerman's Anti-Zionist Terror

Ilana Hammerman has smuggled Arabs-called-Palestinians into Israel illegally from Judea and Samaria as an act of defiance.  With friends*.

Now, she ratchets up the incitement speech.

She has published, in Haaretz, of course, an op-ed:

Israel Is the Terrorist

sub-titled:

Young Palestinians are not carrying out acts of terror- they are leading a desperate struggle against an army

Selected outtakes:

the West Bank – in which not a single dunam belongs to the State of Israel 

the reality there [in Judea & Samaria]...it’s one of state-sponsored terror, [by] the State of Israel. 

All this stems from

the choice of Israeli governments to use terror to impose the “state of the Jewish people” on the entire region between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

Despite the terror of Haj Amin El-Husseini 1920-1948, that of the Fedayeen 1948-1956, that of the PLO founded in 1965, Hammerman writes that it is 

 this policy [of Israel] that gives rise to the acts of resistance against it.

Either she cannot think, cannot read or, like too many in the anti-Zionist camp, simply ignore facts of history, fly in the face of logic and seek to harm Jews and the state's existence.

Anti-Zionist terror.

_________

*
Annelien Kisch, Ramat Hasharon; Daphne Banai, Tel Aviv; Esti Tsal, Jaffa; Irit Gal, Jerusalem; Klil Zisapel, Tel Aviv; Michal Pundak Sagie, Herzlia; Nitza Aminov, Jerusalem; Ofra Yeshua-Lyth, Tel Aviv; Roni Eilat, Kfar Sava; Ronit Marian-Kadishay, Ramat Hasharon; Ruti Kantor, Tel Aviv

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Haaretz Pundit Stokes Anti-Semitism Anti-Zionist Themism

One major theme that hard-core anti-Semitic anti-Zionists employ, from Christians to Muslims to Neturei Karta and from Communists to Progressives and to Conservatives, is that Zionism somehow is either Nazi in character or, at the very least, cooperates with Nazism.  It also fit in with Holocaust Denial.

Like as in Gaza is a Concentration Camp.

Lenni Brenner did it.  Ken Livingston did it recently. Neturei Karta do it. Other weirdos do it.

And now we have Anshel Pfeffer of Haaretz who has published in support of this thesis of his-:

Zionist leaders since Theodor Herzl have known that sometimes community interests mean turning a blind eye to hatred of Jews elsewhere.

that:

The left wing of the Zionist movement negotiated the “Transfer Agreement” with Nazi Germany in the early 1930s, and helped the Third Reich evade a worldwide Jewish boycott. The Revisionists attacked the agreement, but a few years later reached a deal for military training and arms from the anti-Semitic Polish government, which was interested in getting as many Jews as possible to leave Poland. 

Poland, anti-Semitic Poland, was not Nazi Poland even as we know its citizens killed many tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, and from way before. 

Members of Betar fought anti-Semites, most famously at the 1936 pogrom (memorialized in S'brent) in Przytyk (See some testimony here and this: "March 9th 1936 was market day and the Jews set up their stalls in the main square as they did every market day. After a while, Polish hooligans showed up and overturned their stalls – which forced the stall owners to collect their merchandise as quickly as possible and lock up their shops. Members of the Jewish youth movements – the Mizrachi, the communists, Betar, Poaley Zion and the Bund – had been training to defend the Jews in precisely such situations. Chaim's brother Nachum was one of the commanders of Betar and he took his troops to do their duty. Skirmishes quickly developed and at a certain point, one of the Jewish youths, Laski, shot one of the Poles. The hooligans retreated, not before they had murdered the Minkowskis. Several Jewish youth were apprehended and indicted; eventually 7 or 8 were found guilty and sentenced to various terms in prison.") The local Betar leaders who participated in the self-defense action [pgs. 558-559] were Yitzchak Friedman who was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment and Eliezer Kirschenzweig who received jail time of 6 years.

And here is a typical recollection of Betar members in the 1930s in Poland, from Ostrolenska:

These are some pics of Betarim in military training in Poland:

Using one's ability to obtain crucial and sympathetic assistance from a regime, even one anti-Semitic, to further one's national goals, incidentally shared by that regime, to return to the national homeland after years in Exile subject to the whims of Jew-haters, is a worthy political act.

Pfeffer's juxtaposition of that with his other examples and with his overall theme is not only a pitiful attempt to besmirch other Jews but, ironically, providing aid and comfort to anti-Semitic anti-Zionists!!

If he wanted to employ Betar as an example, he should be calling on American Jewry to train and organize in self-defense units, in cooperation with local authorities or independently.

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When Attacked, Defend

These names ring a bell, so to say?

Abner of Burgos. 

Pablo de Santa María. 

Gerónimo de Santa Fé.  

Nicholas Donin.

They are Jews who not only converted out but then turned on Judaism and Jews in a near rabid attack, misrepresenting Jewish texts to bring about the deaths of Jews and destruction of their culture.  More of them here.

Is it only Jews who have the peculiar habit of not only opting out but then turning on their families, their people, their religion, their culture and their national identity to destroy from the roots?

I've blogged about Judah Leib Magnes asking Secretary of State George Marshall and President Truman to halt monetary contributions to the fledgling state of Israel which would virtually assure an Arab military victory (he thought if Israel couldn't fight then the Arabs would stop, too, and make peace).  I've blogged about Peter Beinart.  And about J Street's Jeremy Ben-Ami, son of the Irgun's Mike.

I am not referring to legitimate criticism of errors and faults and even crimes of individual Jews and the state's apparatus which need be highlighted and corrected but to a certain strain an antipathy which rejects or leads to the fundamental undermining of Zionism in the activities of persons and groups.

The dangers that were launched against Jews centuries ago by turncoats are perhaps different but the theme is still the same: 'we're not just leaving but we are coming back to get you'.

In that scenario, Israel, Zionism and Judaism need defend themselves.

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Their Goal: The Undoing of Zionism

In a review article of a book of collected essays on leftist anti-Zionism, Rebels against Zion edited by August Grabski, David Hirsh of Goldsmiths, University of London, makes some reflective points worth repeating:

...all the strategies adopted against antisemitism failed...But Israel became a reality, a nation state, not because Zionism ‘won’ the debates outlined in this book, but because the material basis of Jewish life in Europe was utterly transformed by the ‘Final Solution’ and by Israel’s victory in the war of 1948 against the Palestinians and against the Arab Nationalist states which tried to eradicate it at birth...

I think Hirsh is contradicting himself there but the point needs be repeated: Zionism was victorious. It won out not only against its external enemies, the enemies of Jewish peoplehood as an idea and against Jews as persons, but it bested the competing ideologies from within the Jewish people who sought out other 'escapes' from their Jewishness.

And with Isaac Deutscher admitting in 1954 that

...he had ‘of course’ abandoned his life-long anti-Zionism...the key questions changed. It was no longer relevant to ask whether Zionism was a winning strategy against antisemitism; the question was how would the Jewish state reach a peace with its neighbours and how it would negotiate the contradiction between its Jewishness and its democracy?

a new characterization of antagonism to and opposition of Zionism was established which was: it does not matter what the non-Jewish reality is, the Jews must somehow be different and quite unrealistic.  Their morality must always be 10 degrees higher, their willingness to submit greater, their necessity for accommodating much more.  All of this, of course, will lead Jews and the Jewish state, as it did since then, into more difficult situations where survival is at stake rather than just a set of values and ethics that the Left promotes.

Back in 1917, Lord Montague opposed the Balfour Declaration.  Then Jacob De Hass opposed Zionism.  The ACJ's Elmer Berger opposed Zionism.  Stephen Wise weakened Zionism and Jewry during the Holocaust years.  Judah Leib Magnes weakened Zionism all throughout the Mandate years and almost succeeded in having the Jewish state left totally defenseless in his May 1948 meetings with George Marshall and Harry Truman. They failed but nevertheless, reduced Zionism's comprehensiveness.  There always has to be a Jew to distance himself from Judaism as a religion, as a culture, as a nationalism, as a model for ethical existence within the real world, not the fictitious or purposely blown out of proportion criticism they create.

One of the first books I purchased on the subject of dissent from Zionism was "Zionism Reconsidered: The Rejection of Jewish Normalcy", edited by Michael Selzer, in 1970.  All the "greats" were represented.  Selzer had already published "The Aryanization of the Jewish State", a really evil work that Shlomo Avineri describes so:

An impressive mass of data and facts has been assembled; historical perspectives have been traced; all the right quotations have been adduced; a good deal of the argument even manages to make sense; yet the outcome corresponds to a reality that exists solely in the mind of the author.
...During his student days Selzer was president of the Zionist Society at Oxford University; now he works for the violently anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism. Not unexpectedly, his book has the unmistakable air of having been written by a disillusioned renegade, turning now with venom against the ideals he once so dearly—and naively—cherished. It seems safe to assume that Selzer’s erstwhile Zionism was as uncritical as his present virulent rejection of it.

And there's this:

Selzer argues that Zionism rejected entirely the uniqueness of Judaism and its mission in the world: “The most startling innovation of this new Zionist doctrine lay precisely in the fact that it rejected belief in the unique constitution of the Jewish people...the Zionists would attempt to mold their new society in a manner which would invalidate the accusations of their oppressors … for nothing would more definitely ensure the approval of anti-Semitism for ‘the new Jewish society’ than its success in recreating the Jew in the image of his oppressor … what we might call the ‘Aryanization’ of the Jews.”  

Does all that not sound very familiar to us today?

The detractors of today, just as the forefathers, have not halted Zionism but seek constantly to derail it, to roll back its vindication in the face of irrational anti-Semitism, implaccable hatred and, seemingly, a psychological need to blame Zionsim - and the Jews - for all they see as interfering with their lives, their personal advancement or the promotion of ideologies and policies that may parallel Jewish civilization but are not fully Jewish.

And over the past four decades, following the glorious victory in 1967, those of the Left, radical, progressive and universalist, who follow in their footsteps, employ every method used and new ones to oppose Zionism.  Their goal, I suggest is the undoing of Zionism whether out of jealousy or a need to stand apart.

As Hirsh in the review I quote from at the beginning puts it:

Jewish anti-Zionism which, through a relentless succession of slippages, omissions and unacknowledged assumptions, will make the lasting impression...If ‘the Zionists’ are characterised as essentially ‘racist’ or ‘apartheid’ or ‘Nazi’, then Israeli Jews can be treated, once again, as exceptional to the human community...Jewish anti-Zionists also tend to have a particular Jewish focus on Israel. They often feel particularly concerned by Israeli human rights abuses, by the injustice of the Israeli occupation and by what they feel is the unthinking support offered by Jewish communal bodies around the world to Israeli governments.

As noted elsewhere in discussing the "Rebels Against Zion" book,

[a] most striking post-Holocaust expression of anti-Semitism is the adoption of an “anti-Zionist” standpoint, which is then combined with many of the traditional themes of anti-Semitism (in particular, the notion of behind-the-scenes Jewish rule, which today finds expression in the theme of the power of the Jewish lobby in the USA). 

And he provides for us an analysis of Canadian researcher Todd M. Endelman who lists the circumstances when anti-Zionist criticism slides too easily into expressions of anti-Semitism:

1. When it questions the legitimacy of the Jewish state, but no other state, and the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism, but no other nationalism, either in the Middle East or elsewhere.
2. When it denies to the Jewish state, but no other state, the right to express the character of the majority of its citizens (that is, to be as Jewish as France is French).
3. When it demonizes the Jewish state, turning the Arab-Israeli conflict into a morality play, a problem that Jews, and Jews alone, created and for which Jews, and Jews alone, are responsible.
4. When it expresses an obsessive, exclusive, and disproportionate concern with the shortcomings of the Israelis and the sufferings of the Palestinians – to the point that a conflict between two small peoples is transformed into a cosmic, Manichean struggle between the forces of Good and Evil.

His conclusion:

When criticism of Israel crosses any of these lines and becomes an obsessive narrative of fantasies and fears – that is when we are dealing solely with anti-Semitic notions.

Some post-Zionists, such as the peace activist Uri Avnery, Gideon Levy and Amira Haas, Norman Finkelstein and Ilan Pappé, Abraham Burg, are utopians in their world-view.  They ignore everything and concentrate on Israel and in doing so, they pervert not on what is real but the values to would have us believe they foster.

The Left always seeks to fix the parameters of discussion on "values" which become solely theirs. Rightists cannot be democrats is a mantra they push.  They have no appreciation for human rights. They wish, ipso facto, to harm civil liberties goes the claim.  But what the enemies of the Jews do has nothing to do with this at all for them.  That they downplay becuase what they are concerned with is not the totality but what Jews do (or supposedly do) and what the state of Israel does (or supposedly does).  The Left, not only are they hypocrites, but they are the ultimate double-standard crowd, allowing Israel and the Jews to be opened for attacks, verbal and physical.

And having lost the ideological battle with Israel proving them wrong and more importangtly, Israel's and Jewry's enemies and haters proving the Leftists wrong in their optimism, good will wishing and hopes, they do not accept defeat but seek to undo Zionism's victory.

They are rebels against themselves.

^

Goliath Felled - or Was That A Stone?

Jonathan Tobin has highlighted the Left's anti-Zionism destructive nature here.  Read it, please.  His point of departure is Max Blumenthal's Goliath (defended here) subtitled "Life and Loathing in Greater Israel”.  Oh, hey they loath.

My frame of reference is what I call the retrogressive nature of anti-Zionism.  

The Reform movement denied Jewish nationalism: Frankfort-on-the-Main Conference of Rabbis on July 15-28, 1845, decided to eliminate from the ritual "the prayers for the return to the land of our forefathers and for the restoration of the Jewish state."  The Philadelphia Conference of Nov. 3-6, 1869, adopted  the following among its principles: "The Messianic aim of Israel is not the restoration of the old Jewish state under a descendant of David, involving a second separation from the nations of the earth...".  

Balfour was fought by Montagu.  

Then the Brit Shalom/Ihud.  

Then the American Council for Judaism, Berger, Lilienthal (who I read), etc.  

And every time Zionism won out, and the Arabs shown to be irrational, aggressive and unwilling to tolerate any Jewish presence anywhere in the Jewish homeland (that term itself denied by the anti-Zs), its opponents began arguing from the very beginning, all over again.  They debated the basic principles as if nothing had happened in history, in international law, diplomacy, anti-Semitism, etc.

If Arabs can be justified in their throwing stones at so-called 'occupiers', can throwing a (figurative) stone at Max Blumenthal be seen as justice?

^

Racism Sublime or Retro Anti-Zionism

Here is the lead-in to Amy Teibel's AP reporting, headlined:

Devout Israeli Jews moving to Arab-Jewish cities

ACRE, Israel (AP) — Orthodox Jewish Israelis, the driving force of the West Bank settlement movement, have begun to turn their attention inward to Israel itself, moving into Arab areas of mixed cities in an attempt to cement the Jewish presence there.

Before dealing with a charge of racism, think about this:

When modern Zionism began in earnest, in the mid-1800s, there were only four cities in which Jews lived (of course, in previous centuries, there were more Jewish communities and neighborhoods, but that's for another post). They were Arab. So, based on what the thrust of this article is implying, its subliminal message, is that 'here we go again, those Jews are moving into Arab land'.

Some more details:

Activists say that in recent years, several thousand devout Jews have pushed into rundown Arab areas of Jaffa, Lod, Ramle and Acre, hardscrabble cities divided between Jewish and Arab neighborhoods. Their arrival has threatened to disrupt fragile ethnic relations with construction of religious seminaries and housing developments marketed exclusively to Jews.

And the racism:

"Israel has to act as the state of its citizens," said Mohammad Darawshe, co-executive director of The Abraham Fund Initiatives, a nonprofit group that promotes co-existence between Jews and Arabs in Israel. "Ethnic preference is clearly inappropriate, violating the principles of democracy."

About 20 percent of Israel's citizens are Arabs. Most live in Arab towns and villages, with some notable exceptions, especially Haifa, the port city that is Israel's third-largest.

Am I, and you, to understand that Jews shouldn't move into Arab areas?

And can Jews prevent Arabs from moving into Jewish areas?

What is going on?

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On the Stupidity of Anti-Zionism

From Michael Devolin, on the Fortified Stupidity of Anti-Zionism, the "hatreds that have been directed against the State of Israel and those courageous Jews who dwell therein":

...those who boast of intellect and morality, are more often than not found to be at the forefront of this character assassination of Jews and their Judaism (which, by definition, includes a Jewish state)...[which is an]...odious obsession...

...their demonization of a basic tenet of Judaism, which is Zionism. They present a Zionism tangential from Judaism, which is not a Jewish Zionism at all but rather their invented version...Israel and her Jews must accept the imposition of other peoples' religious expansionism, even when that same religious expansionism obtrudes upon Jewish holy sites.
These academics have no problem with a Muslim mosque being situated--by weight of religious partiality--upon Solomon's Temple Mount, as though Jews have no history whatsoever in the Middle East, but they have a problem with Jews building houses on land allotted them in a Torah that precedes all other conflicting religious bona fides by thousands of years.



...I cannot understand how Western academics, in good conscience, who boast of having attained such high levels of education, can so willfully obfuscate fulgent hallmarks of ancient Jewish history while simultaneously, and with great zeal, propagate an empty and contrived history of a people who never existed before Yasser Arafat invented them.



...it is not the virtue of "fairness" to allow an enemy bent on your destruction to dictate where you shall live and where you shall die, which is the long and short of any Arab Muslim excogitation regarding the future of the Jewish people of Israel. That is not fairness. That is suicide.

...No other democratic government in the Western hemisphere is required to subjugate their very citizens to the hateful whims of an enemy, which is what the world's academia requires of the State of Israel. Israel and her Jews have long ago paid for admission into the pretentious realm of "fairness"...

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Words of Wisdom on Dumb Jews

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Years ago, someone told me that a Jew is a person too fair-minded to take his own side in a fight. Back then, it was meant as a joke. And back then the fight was not as consequential as the 21st century war against the Jews.

Clifford D. May,
President of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies

On the issue of Jews reinforcing anti-semitism as well as anti-Zionism -

In America, it’s still considered impolite to openly disparage Jews, Israelis or Israel. But speaking in a coded way is not unacceptable. So it’s fine to suggest that perhaps some Jews exercise too much power and insinuate themselves into positions where they place Israel’s interests above America’s. Efforts to delegitimize Israel and even dehumanize Israelis are permissible “free speech” rather than impermissible “hate speech.” It also is increasingly considered bold, even brave, to suggest that Israel may have been a mistake.

Anyone with a grasp of history or a grain of common sense should know where this road leads. Yet too many people—not least, too many American Jews—seem untroubled by such rhetoric. Some even reinforce it.

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