Early 20th century in Tel Aviv

An article from JPost up at Point of No Return argues that that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict goes back further than "the occupation."

In 1913, to counter already rife judeophobia and incendiary agitation in the Arab press, Yosef-Eliahu, along with other Arabic-speaking Tel Avivians, founded Hamagen (the shield), an organization dedicated to persuading Arabs that they and Jews share economic and cultural interests and can only improve each other's lot.

I'm afraid a lot of the earliest conflicts have been forgotten, buried under the claim that even early antisemitism among Palestinians was a response to Zionism and particularly the 1919 Balfour declaration. Though it's not quite as infuriating as the claim that the conflict goes back thousands of years, I'm amazed at how many people don't know how far back things go.

On Yaacov Lozowick on Paula Fredriksen

Lozowick quotes a small part of Fredriksen that's really illuminating. It's a short post, but I'll shorten the quote so you have some impetus to go there:

Further, all Jewish texts, beginning with Genesis, include warts-and-all presentations of some of their Jewish characters. In this sense, the gospels [if understood as Jewish sectarianism - ME] are no more intrinsically "anti-Jewish" than is the Bible itself. But again like the Bible itself, the gospels, once they drifted out of their communities of origin into a wider gentile world, were read as a standing indictment and perpetual condemnation of Jews and Judaism as such, rather than as a narrative exhortation to change from the wrong kind of Judaism to the right kind of Judaism (that is, to the author's kind of Judaism). Jewish sectarian rhetoric, shorn of its native context, eventually becomes anti-Jewish rhetoric.

And Lozowick responds (in part):

I think you can reasonably say that's a constant dynamic of Jew-hatred from the 2nd century until the Danny Zamir episode of last month, and it's not going to change anytime soon. Jews argue among themselves loudly and stridently, while their haters listen in, indifferent to any context, and choose the choicest quotations with which to damn the Jews.

I'll add in the obvious: that a lot of anti-Zionist discourse is far more blatant than the Zamir matter (which includes a lot of necessary criticism of the Gaza war with a lot of support among Jews in and outside Israel). A lot of it involves promoting Jews who are completely marginal in the Jewish community to become the face of the anti-Zionist movement.

Try to find a set pictures of an anti-Israel rally from New York or San Francisco or London at Indymedia that doesn't prominently feature pictures of Natura Karta. (I haven't checked, but I think anyone looking would get my point.) For anyone who doesn't know, they're basically fundamentalists who see the Holocaust as God's punishment for the sins of Jews disagreeing with their extremist views on religion. They're perfectly willing to commit genocide to bring about the state of Israel - they just don't think I am moral enough to do it yet.

They're somewhat larger, at maybe 5,000 members, but they're pretty much the Westboro Baptist Church of the Jewish community. Despite their having attended Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust Denial conference, I wouldn't say NK are antisemitic -- any more than Fred Phelps is anti-Christian. Hateful and despicable, but just not in quite that way.

On the other hand, a gentile who repeated NK's line that the Holocaust was God's punishment for my sins... That person's definitely an antisemite. When a gentile uses that line, the context is stripped, and the same line becomes blatantly antisemitic. Yet anti-Zionists constantly imply NK's line by saying, "It's not antisemitic if I'm quoting a Jew," as they put up pictures of NK protesters on Indymedia. I've even had gentiles suggest that they're better Jews than I am (because they wear funny hats and look exotic).

But let's leave that aside for the moment. Let's drop the fact that a lot of anti-Zionist rhetoric (not all, but plenty) includes classically antisemitic tropes like the charge of a Jewish conspiracy. Let's ignore for a moment the question of whether the the watered-down conspiracy theory of the Israel Lobby is antisemitic. There's still something that ought to be troubling about gentiles promoting marginal Jewish voices. That in and of itself is an act of asserting power over Jews, declaring which Jewish voices are valid and acceptable -- backed, of course, by a long history of violence to secure that power.

Usually there's either (1) an assertion that "anti-Zionism is not antisemitism" that blows over the fact that some of it is blatantly so or (2) a focus on the specific rhetoric that might include classically antisemitic tropes like that of Jewish conspiracy. But the mode of discourse is also meaningful - it has to take Jews more seriously.

And I gotta get me that Fredriksen book.

Paul McCartney joins One Voice

here

Domestic terrorism motivated by antisemitism, media talk about dog pee

Richard Poplawski killed 3 police officers, believing the US was run by a "Zionist Occupied Government." But several stories in the mainstream media -including NYT and MSNBC- not only ignored his white supremacist activity (and the mainstream news sources like Glen Beck pushing softer versions of conspiracism), they focused on idiotic details like dog pee. Read more at Orcinus.

No wonder it's so hard to talk about antisemitism. And if we can't talk about far-right antisemitism, how the hell are we ever going to talk about far-left antisemitism?

International Roma Day

In recognition of International Roma Day, the European Roma Policy Coalition (ERPC), encourages the European Union and its Member States to tackle the recent wave of racist violence and expand opportunities for Roma across Europe.

On being anti-antisemitic

Here's So You Think You're an Anti-Racist? 6 Critical Paradigm Shifts for Well-Intentioned White Folks (via). These are pretty basic in the anti-racist community. For example, racism is a problem white people have. Unfortunately, the impact is felt more acutely by people of color, but it isn't located in people of color.

Not that many white people really get these things, but I've been often surprised to be in spaces where these things aren't controversial only to find that these attitudes don't apply to antisemitism.

The most anti-racist shift for white people is to understand that confronting racism is going to be uncomfortable, difficult, emotional, and painful. So why do we put so many resources into human relations programming? Who might we be trying to protect?

But talking about antisemitism stifles debate, so we should just be quiet about it? Or so I'm constantly told.

I don't believe color-blindness is possible. I see difference. If I can't be honest about that, I don't have much potential to be an effective anti-racist, do I? And if color-blindness is possible, I don't believe it is desirable. Why would I want to deny what may be a powerful, impactful part of somebody's identity?

But Jews are supposedly well-assimilated and without problems. That whole history of oppression - can't we stop harping on it already? Actually, there's a very deep assumption that goes back a long way that Jews are sort of fossils and Jewish difference is just weird. Even anti-racists can have trouble accepting Jewish difference as legitimate.

I'm not burning any crosses. I don't own slaves. (And neither did my great-grandparents!) So this racism thing isn't my issue, right? Well, not exactly. As long as I can understand racism as individual acts of wacko White people, I can pretend that I have no part in it.

Tops the list for antisemitism. That whole Holocaust thing - wacko White people. There's an incredible refusal to accept that the Shoah actually has moral reverberations. It becomes something we Jews use to blackmail the world.

Venezuelan antisemitism.

The Venezuelan Jewish community traces its roots back more than 200 years and has no history of tension with the local population. Before the rise of Hugo Chavez, the Jews were a welcome part of a society known for its warm temperament and amiable disposition, free from the discrimination and anti-Semitic violence in many other countries. Over the last 10 years conditions have worsened dramatically, and although 15,000 still remain, more than half the Jewish population has already fled.

Previously, I had heard a fifth or a third of Venezuelan Jews had left. I'm not sure if 1/2 here represents uncertainty in numbers or worsening conditions.

Something very interesting about the article, which can be found here, is how such a rabid antisemitic atmosphere is created.