Response to “The Problem of Anti-Semitism” on Daily Kos

This diary, by Nathan Jaco, dated to Sunday, October 8, 2006, is relatively mild-mannered as far as Israel/Palestine diaries on DKos go, but that may not be to its credit, because soft-spoken anti-Zionism is just a more pleasing package for the hardcore anti-Semitism of old. I’m frustrated at how the media in Israel reports every incendiary remark or violent incident by the Far Right in the West, while ignoring, or at best not giving enough time to, the far more dangerous moves on the Left (and not just the Far Left). It’s high time to realize the mantle of anti-Semitism has passed to the Left, with anti-Zionism its new covering to make it intellectually acceptable.

The address of the diary is:
www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/8/42216/9416

There is a stark differential between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

You mean “difference”. No, there isn’t—Zionism is an inseparable part of being Jewish (take a look at any Jewish prayer book or Passover Haggadah: laced with prayers to return to the land of Israel with Jerusalem, also called Zion, as its capital), so anti-Zionism is inherently a form of Jew-hatred. It’s the same as if you said, “I’m not anti-Semitic, I’m just against kosher slaughter”.

This may be unilaterally appropriate phraseology, as anti-Semitism may be derivative of anti-Zionism but anti-Zionism is not necessarily derivative of anti-Semitism.

If so, then can you tell me why no other state than Israel ever receives such arguments against it? Why is it that Pakistan, a state set up on Hindu lands (including the Indus valley, where the first archeological findings of Indian civilization were found) solely for addressing the demands of Indian Muslims for sovereignty, and involving the dispossession, if not outright butchery, of millions of Hindus in the process, garners nary a peep for the “Rights for Oppressed Peoples” crowd, while Israel is constantly asked, nay, ordered to give up a hefty portion of its diminutive area for an invented nation that hasn’t shown the slightest willingness to uphold permanent peace with the other side?

First you apply your standard toward Pakistan and then we’ll talk about the possibility of anti-Zionism not being necessarily a derivative of anti-Semitism. Until then, I’m going to call you lefties off for that trick every time.

Those of us who oppose Israel's (read: the US's) policies toward the Palestinians are not all racist against the Jewish people […]

That statement is true only if you criticize those policies in context, the context being suicide bombing, launching rockets from areas evacuated for the sake of peace, and a poisonous media and education system. If you just harp on about “occupation” and “IDF brutality” and “the grueling experiences at checkpoints” and “the apartheid wall” without taking the wrongs of the other side into account, then yes, your opposition toward Israel’s policies toward the “Palestinians” does constitute anti-Semitism.

[…] or opposed to the religion to which they adhere.

See above: Zionism is not an accessory to Judaism.

The streams of consciousness that the Jews, in connection with some kind of Masonic conspiracy or the like, are responsible for all significant world events, particularly the events of 9/11, are far from well-founded or even coherently articulated from my experiences.

Then you might want to have a word with your leftist buddies Walt and Mearsheimer, who have given that stream of consciousness a new dressing for our times.

"The Protocols..." was first published in 1905 as an appendix in a Sergei Nilus book "The Great in the Small: The Coming of the Anti-Christ and the Rule of Satan on the Earth." It strikes one as ironic that was is considered to be the central piece of evidence of the Jewish conspiracy by some anti-Zionists was first published in a book about the Christian eschatological beliefs, as those evangelicals who focus on the Christian apocalypse are currently among the most vocal proponents of Zionism.

It doesn’t strike me as ironic at all: the Russians are Eastern Orthodox Christians, and those, to this day, still hold to the belief that G-d’s promises to the Jews were canceled (afra l’fumayhu—dirt to their mouths [of those who say such a thing]) and wholly transfered to the Christians. Whereas the Christian Zionists hold that G-d keeps His promises to the Jews and has the Christians share in them.

I feel this fact serves my personal argument quite well. An argument which goes as follows: the main proponents of Zionism are Anglo imperialists and religious fanatics who wish to use the state of Israel to achieve their own ends, […]

“Anglo imperialists”?! If that isn’t a racist expression, I don’t know what is. I thought racism was the cardinal sin among the Left. Ah, but I forgot: racism against Westerners is A-OK.

Imperialism, by the way, deserves some second thoughts. Read the article Message to Islamists: Don’t Tread on Me on The American Spectator, it’s very thought-provoking, wrenching the reader out of the conventional thinking of imperialism as a sign of moral decline. Imperialism of true oppressors like the Communists and the Muslims is evil; but imperialism, even just cultural imperialism, on the part of the West is something you ought to give a few thoughts, for you might not be so in favor of “cultural diversity” if your play or art gallery were shelved just because a certain group considered it blasphemous. Right?

[…] regardless of the dangers it imposes upon the Jewish people.

Please spare me that false air of caring about the Jewish people. If you really cared about the Jewish people, you wouldn’t be calling their defending themselves a “disproportionate response”. And if you really cared about the Muslims, you’d realize their worst enemy is their own religion, not Israeli or US “oppression”.

It is true that some of the founding fathers of American Anglo imperialist, those of the corporate mercantilist variety, were ardent anti-Semites and anti-Zionists, Henry Ford for example, who like Hitler before him, believed "The Protocols..." to be authentic and the Jewish conspiracy to be a legitimate threat to the world. He actually published a collection of racist essays titled "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem".

It should be obvious to a rational and well-informed student of history that there is very little credible evidence to support the claims that this Zionist conspiracy is real. […]

The whole Muslim world still believes The Protocols are authentic, and takes pride in it. For the majority in the West who don’t, there’s The Israel Lobby, a new version to make it respectable in our day. Walt’s and Mearsheimer’s screed is no more credible than The Protocols. All they can show is that there is a lobby for Israel in the US, but they can’t say why that lobby deserves more attention than all the other political lobbies that influence US policy, both foreign and domestic.

The true Zionist conspiracy has been perpetrated by Anglos who wished to use Israel as a staging ground for offensives in the oil-rich region.

To go back on history a bit, the Anglos had involvement in the Middle East long before the state of Israel was born. In fact, those Anglos were quite reluctant to give the Jews land on expense of their Arab friends, as witnessed by the constant backtracking from Balfour’s declaration of 1917 throughout the 1930’s (the White Book and the rest of the decrees closing British Palestine to Jewish refugees during the most critical period—the Holocaust). The Anglos, and the Francos, had no need of a Jewish state in order to occupy the greater part of the Middle East for 30 years—the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I was good enough a pretext, thank you very much. To consider Israel a tool of Anglo-imperialism is little different from Masonic conspiracy theories.

As an anti-Zionist, I find anti-Semitism to be as distasteful as the hatred for the African-American community, for essentially the same reasons. It is the blaming of the disadvantaged group for the evils they have suffered at the hands of others. Perpetuated by the oppressor ingroup in order to alleviate a sense of guilt or redirect the responsibility of the consequences of exploitation and oppression.

This type of Leftist rhetoric carries the semblance of absolute, objective morality, only to be proved relative and subjective because it’s so easily turned on its head, with the oppressed and oppressor being reversed. For which see:

Though I ardently oppose the oppression and murder of the Palestinians and other Arabic nationals at the hands of these Israelis, […]

Perfect: speak about “the oppression and murder of the Palestinians and other Arabic nationals” without taking the context into account. Ignore their incitement to terrorism, ignore their maintenance of an education system that brings little children on the heritage of suicide bombing, ignore their strenuous efforts to sustain the flames of hatred toward the Jews even after receiving lands on which they could build homes and make the desert bloom. And, of course, keep speaking in nationalistic terms (“Palestinians and other Arabic nationals”), ignoring the religion and its world-imperialistic motives behind it all. Leftist blindness at its rawest form. Quod Erat Dhimminstrandum.

[…] I fully realize that these crimes were done with primarily American weapons.

Yeah, you’d have liked them to be done with non-American weapons, because then the USA would be spared the hatred of Muslims. Just like the Germans and Thais are being spared the hatred of Muslims because they aren’t assisting “Israeli crimes” with their weapons. Right.

Just like the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia during the Carter administration.

It was during the Ford administration, but never mind. It was part of the Capitalism vs. Communism maneuvers of the Cold War, before any awareness of the threat of Islamic imperialism, leading to (from our current point of view) bungling on both sides. It was a different age. That doesn’t excuse things, but it does mean the comparison is anachronistic.

Futhermore, it could be feasible that officials in Washington are making the decisions for those in Tel Aviv.

That they are sometimes, and—contrary to the position of The Israel Lobby—often not the best for Israel. Negotiations with terrorists and land concessions have been the frequent results of persuasion of Israel by the officials in Washington, stemming from the Cold War view that those are always preferable to armed conflict, even when the other side is not tied to constraints of minimal rationality and the desire to live as the Communists, for all their faults, were. So, despite the alleged power of The Israel Lobby, the modern Elders of Zion have been surprisingly unsuccessful in getting their Anglo-imperialist lackeys to support their expansionist dreams. Things that make you go, “Hmmmmm…”

This, in my opinion, places most of the blame back on the Anglo community, under the logic of racist conspiracy theorists, who seem to think that the ethnic group of those who perpetrate conspiratorial offenses is an indictment of that ethnic group.

Yet, how are we to deal with the reality that we are that ethnic group; that we are the monsters? (Emphasis mine —ZY)

Ah, the “Backtracking But” (or “yet”, or “although”, or “however”, or any such conjunction), enabling one to condemn an undesirable stance in one breath, and make that same stance in the next.

“We are the monsters”. Yes, we are: not the ones who are willing to kill on account of cartoons, not the ones who consider stoning schoolgirls for religious transgressions a virtue, not the ones who make videos of beheading their victims for all to see… and the list goes on and on, each item the sound of the judge’s mallet declaring the verdict of the Left as morally bankrupt, calling the good evil and the evil good, excusing the perpetrators their crimes just because they’re the underdogs, and blaming their victims just because they are powerful.

In my view, this is all too appropriate and telling about the reality of world history. That the true evil force behind the suffering of the world community is not the disadvantaged outgroup, but the dominant ingroup - the white imperialists.

Nathan just keeps on giving—laying out Leftism in a raw form that everybody could understand. The “Palestinians” are the disadvantaged group, so they could never be blameworthy of their atrocities. The Jews, even if a Leftist finally grants them their being a disadvantaged group (instead of the usual portrayal of Israel as Goliath and the “Israel Lobby” as nearly omnipotent), are still not innocent, for they willingly let themselves be used as tools in the service of the “white imperialists”. “White imperialists”—now here’s an even more blatant instance of racism than the previous “Anglo imperialists”! Hey, ain’t selective anti-racism great?

How timely my post “Race” Over (written one day before this DKos diary) looks now. “White imperialism”—I feel as if I were watching that scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where the viceroy of the Maharaja of Pankot Palace complains to Indy of the Britons’ imperialistic obsession with India. Images of Somerset Maugham, the sound of the words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”, go into my head.

Nathan: this is the year 2006. Please wake up. And when you do, wake up the rest of your comrades on the Left.

Those with the power to make all of the wildest fantasy of elaborate conspiracies by repressed peoples a reality using their vast material and political resources.

Yet another implication that repressed peoples are always innocent, by their very nature, and incapable of committing heinous crimes.

I don’t hold to the a priori innocence or malice of any group, whether powerful or weak. It is the facts that lead me to judge if a group is innocent or malicious. Soviet Russia was powerful and evil, the USA is powerful and basically good (at any rate, not of malicious intent), the French Resistance of World War II was weak and good (desiring to liberate their country from imperialistic occupation), the “Palestinians” are weak (though becoming less so with the accumulation of weapons through their tunnels) and evil (because they are not fighting for their own national sovereignty, they are fighting against the national sovereignty of the other side, in the framework of worldwide Islamic imperialism). The Left, instead, goes the easy way of declaring the strong wrong and the weak right, with no further probing into matters needed.

One hopes that this is sufficient evidence that those of us who oppose Zionism for legitimate reasons are not all anti-Semites.

Sorry to disappoint you, but there is no such thing as “opposing Zionism for legitimate reasons”. You may oppose the particulars of Israeli policy for legitimate reasons (but then you need to provide evidence that your reasons are really legitimate), but opposing Zionism means opposing the right of Jews to inhabitation of and sovereignty upon their own land, something to which, in any other case, the reaction of the Left would be a hue and cry over the gross injustice. And anti-Zionism, again, is a form of anti-Semitism because G-d’s order for Jews to inhabit the land He gave them and worship Him there (a goodly number of the mitzvot in the Torah can be carried out only in the Land of Israel) is no different from G-d’s order for Jews to keep the Sabbath. Imagine a non-Jewish employer saying, after firing a Jewish worker, “I’m opposed to Jews switching off their mobile phones on Saturday. That doesn’t make me an anti-Semite”. That employer would be on the receiving end of a religious discrimination lawsuit before you could say “jack”, his “it’s not anti-Semitism” ploy winning him derision in the court at best. Opposition to Zionism is the same.

I try to save my most vitriolic criticisms for those who have the power to exert the greatest influence - for they are the ones who should bear the greatest responsibility.

I find that agreeable. The 1960’s kids who are now in positions of power all over the West bear the greatest responsibility for the present calamity of Islamic infiltration and dhimmitude in the face of it, and they should be called on it.

Here the diary ends. But before I close this post, I just want to bring a savory screenshot from the comments on that diary:

Screenshot from the Daily Kos diary. Click image to view full size.

To be fair, the commenter has, as of this writing, already received two negative ratings (as well as four positive ones) and a critical comment in reaction. But this goes to show you how intellectually acceptable (in Europe even fashionable) the sentiments of The Protocols have become in Leftist circles. The ADL and other groups monitoring anti-Semitism worldwide had better turn a less sharp eye toward the Far Right and be much more observant of the Left, which, as Victor David Hanson says in his article The New Anti-Semitism (from October 2, 2006), is working in tandem with the overt, classical anti-Semitism of the Muslims, preparing the West for acceptance of a second Holocaust (G-d forbid) as decolonizational reparations for oppressed indigenous peoples.

With a few exceptions (Christopher Hitchens’ type), the Left is indeed the enemy.