I hate this post so much

It is CATEGORICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for people of color to be racist towards white people in the same way white people are racist to people of color. Yes, people of color can say mean things to or about white people, but that's not the kind of racism we're dealing with. Racism as leftists understand it is a system of oppression, a top-down hierarchy. No amount of calling white people "cracker" is going to reverse that hierarchy. Therefore, accusations of "reverse racism" that pit "calling me white boy" against "Jim Crow" are always frivolous

In a similar vein, it is CATEGORICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for women to oppress men in the same way men have oppressed women for tens of thousands of years. Therefore, accusations of "man hating" that pit "patriarchy sucks" against "women should be seen and not heard" are always frivolous

it is EMINENTLY POSSIBLE to be antisemitic in your Pro-Palestine activism. We see it all the time. And yes, right-wing Zionists and racist Israelis will often accuse people of being antisemitic for supporting Palestine, even when they're not

But that's not what this tweet says. It only identifies a vague "oppressor", which is, by their definition, "someone who is telling you you're being antisemitic". By comparing accusations of antisemitism to accusations of reverse racism or man-hating, this tweet is priming people to categorically dismiss those accusations as unserious and facetious. When Jews tell you you're being antisemitic, we're not "claiming victimhood". Antisemitism as an idea is not "manipulating the language of the oppressed". It is the language of the oppressed (well not entirely because the word itself was invented by a Jew-hater but you know what i mean)

I assume the oppressor they're talking about, the one who "justifies their violence as self-defense" are Israelis. But the people telling feminists that they're man-haters are men. The people accusing people of. color of reverse racism are white people. Unless you live in Israel or Gaza, Israel is not committing violence against you. They're not oppressing you, at least not directly. The people who are telling you your activism is antisemitic are largely, in my experience at least, just regular Jews. Some of us are right-wing, some of us are left-wing. You should take the words of both equally seriously, just like how you would take the word of a Republican woman who said she was assaulted, or take the word of a Black Trump supporter who said they were attacked with racial slurs, or take the word of a conservative trans woman who said she was misgendered.

White people who accuse you of reverse racism are trying to uphold a system of racial dominance and segregation. Jews who accuse you of antisemitism are...what? Trying to uphold a system of Jewish supremacy?

Jews are not your oppressors. We're trying to help you. But we can't do that if you refuse to listen.

German Chancellor Scholz: "Israel has the obligation to defend itself and the accusations made against it are absurd" - Meanwhile Israel's Minister of Finance calls for "voluntary emigration" of all "arab" palestinians in Gaza and denies the existence of the palestinian people

"Scholz: Israel has the obligation to defend itself against Hamas. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has defended Israel's actions. Israel doesn't just have the right but "the obligation" to defend itself against the militant-islamist Hamas in the Gaza strip. It cannot be accepted that Hamas recovers and gathers weapons to attack Israel again. "The accusations that are being made against Israel are absurd" Scholz said in Berlin about for example accusations made by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against Israel. The German Government will always point out that Hamas is a terror organisation and that Israel is a democracy. Scholz meets Erdogan in Berlin on friday."

_

"The accusations [about committing genocide and ethnic cleansing] leveled against Israel are absurd" meanwhile, the israeli Minister of finance: "Yeah the palestinian people doesn't exist and we want to ethnically cleanse the land they're on"

"Israel's Minister of Finance for "voluntary emigration" of Gaza residents. Israel's extreme right wing Minister of Finance has called for a "voluntary emigration" of Palestinians in the Gaza strip into multiple other countries. "The voluntary emigration and taking in of arab Gaza residents by the countries of the world is a humanitarian solution that will end the suffering of Jews and Arabs at the same time." wrote Bezalel Smotrich on the platform X, previously Twitter.

In the past Smotrich has already denied the existence of the palestinian people."

_

The german Government: "It is absurd to accuse Israel of committing a genocide and ethnic cleansing and those who accuse them of doing so are hateful antisemitic terrorist sympathisers and should be put on trial or deported!"

The israeli Government, meanwhile: "Yeah lol we're doing ethnic cleansing"

The operative word in high school and college faculty meetings is fear. If you say anything about Gaza, if you criticize the Israeli military or display any anguish about an ongoing genocide, you risk retribution. For many teachers, there is an even greater fear of raising the issue of Gaza in class, where a student armed with a cell phone camera could brand you as an antisemite to the administration and beyond. So the default choice is usually silence.

…

The first part that must be acknowledged is that this fear is based in the reality of a new McCarthyism. There is a middle school teacher in my liberal community that was suspended for using the Palestinian independence slogan “From the River to the Sea” as a tagline on an e-mail. The redefining of that popular phrase as something antisemitic and even exterminationist has been a propaganda coup for those who defend the shelling of Gaza.

…

College students also feel under a microscope with administrators banning clubs, canceling rallies, and trying to enforce campus placidity rather than inquiry. A few college presidents are now on the unemployment line because they—quite clumsily, one must say—refused to bend the knee before rabid Trumpists in Congress. The resignation of Claudine Gay as president of Harvard has both AIPAC and anti-Black racists crowing. It feels like any statement, any question, any protest of Israel’s military incursion will be met with a fusillade of poisonous accusations. Across all levels of education, heads are down, and mouths are understandably shut. But fears of heavy-handed punishment are not the only factor stifling discussion. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that train faculty in both secondary school and higher ed must be also held to account. DEI is proving to be woefully inadequate as a project to challenge a brutal and, yes, racist war The right wing is trying—and often succeeding—to ban DEI departments and other programs that discuss the realities of oppression in the workplace and beyond. The first act of Governor Ron DeSantis and his baldly racist apparatchik Christopher Rufo in their hostile takeover of the New College of Florida was to abolish the school’s DEI department. These programs should be defended because they strive to create space to discuss societal inequity and are in the crosshairs of the radical right. But defending these liberal DEI programs from statehouse goons should never be the same as endorsing them as a method to fight racism. DEI, as it exists in most institutions, holds sacred, in the words of one teacher, “the idea that all experiences are valid and your personal pain or trauma must be centered and validated.” This fails Gaza on multiple fronts. First, it provides a false equivalency that allows supporters of Israel to speak about feeling attacked whenever so much as a Palestinian flag is displayed on a Trapper Keeper. The DEI process provides space for people to claim that any critique of the Israeli state rises to the level of antisemitism. In many DEI circles, the weaponization of the charge of antisemitism has proven to be effective. An individual’s feelings that a criticism of Israel is antisemitic is often weighed as a view just as valid as those of people distressed by the IDF’s shelling of Palestinian civilians. But it’s not just about process. DEI arises from mainstream liberal politics, a cornerstone of which for decades has been to be progressive except for Palestine. In the face of this, when the choice is silence or being branded an antisemite, it’s understandable why fear would rule the day.

…

The solution lies in something far easier said than done: collectively organized courage. During McCarthyism, it was the small acts of a brave few in education that first punctured its power. Today we don’t just need similar heroes willing to break the silence. We need networks of support and solidarity. The moment demands organization, open speech, and love for the Palestinian people. The alternative is we go about our lives as if everything is normal: haunted with the knowledge that future generations will ask why we did nothing.

I see some anti-Arab people and some nationalists claiming "bruh you dont understand Palestine has Hamas n they indoc the children also n they're the more terror Muslims!!11!!1!1".

First of all, most Palestinians literally have no resources and are UNARMED. Many raids and bombings have taken what they had.

Second, H*mas extremists is not equal to all the Palestinian people! Most Palestinians are "harmless Muslims", as the passively racist Westerners like to term it. Just like Uyghurs. And, just like XinJiang, Palestine is going through a horrific crisis from soldier brutality, war crimes, bombings, and even crazy anti-arab civilians in the streets! What's even crazier is the US, UK, and EU are backing it up for some reason! Don't pin the crimes of a few extreme crazies on the whole Palestinian population, and punish them with genocide for it!

So disclaimer here. I am not Arab, Palestinian or Muslim. I don’t have the lived in experience of being from that region. 

But, coming from a country that has been under the colonial boot of the British, my sympathies are entirely with a people whose land is being stolen from them, who are suffering unimaginable cruelties, who have to live with humiliation, imprisonment, their homes being destroyed,  denied basic human rights, children denied education, schools and hospitals being destroyed.

I can’t imagine the anger and helplessness that the Palestinians are feeling. With no one helping - not just the West, but Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt are also complicit. The military dictatorship in Egypt  helps maintain the blockade on Gaza and the autocratic theocracy of Saudi Arabia just signed new deals with Israel. Not surprising, considering Egypt and Saudi Arabia are not secular democracies and both oppress their own people. They are also both US allies.

I agree with everything you said. A huge reason for why people feel that way about the Israel-Palestine issue is because of the massive disinformation campaign that is waged in the West by media and news organizations like CNN, BBC, NYT, Guardian etc. Palestinians are constantly dehumanized as terrorists and equated to Hamas. I think the IDF is the bigger terrorist organization - literally terrorizing innocent Palestinian children, women and men on a daily basis.

And pretty much all politicians in the US  across the spectrum - democrats and republicans - support Israel. There’s a commonly used phrase - liberal except for Palestine. Hillary Clinton denounced Palestinians as terrorists and pledged her total support and loyalty to Israel before the 2016 elections.

If a principled politician does take a stand, they are accused of being anti-Semitic and kicked out. See Jeremy Corbyn of the UK Labour party. Bernie Sanders has been accused of not being really Jewish because he dared to simply say that Palestinians too are human beings deserving of equal rights. It’s the tactics of the right wing Netanyahu government - equate criticisms of what the Israeli government is doing to antisemitism. Even though a lot of the people who are criticizing the state of Israel are Jewish themselves and consider these actions to be antithetical to Jewish values.

I am actually happy to observe that there is more of a pushback against what is happening in East Jerusalem right now and more US politicians are speaking up about how US tax dollars are being used. The only way what is being done to the Palestinians can be stopped is if the US steps in and demands it be stopped. Every time the UN introduces a resolution to penalize Israel for breaking International Law, it’s the US who vetoes it. It’s the US who funds and supports Israel’s ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

Hopefully American activists, Palestinian Americans,  Jewish Americans can add their voices and push their elected representatives in the senate and congress for action on what is being done to the Palestinians.

From The Warsaw Ghetto- To The Gaza Strip

(Palestinians versus Israel)

By Stephen Jay Morris

May 14, 2021

©Scientific Morality

The bifurcation of metaphysical morality boils down to good and evil.  This is intended for the simple minded who can’t comprehend the complexities of political science.  In the Old Testament, King Solomon is a hero. Two women come to him, each claiming a newborn baby is theirs. King Solomon took a sword and threatened to split the baby in two so as to equally award half of the child to each alleged mother. One of the women, intent on saving her child’s life, surrendered the baby to the other.  Thus, the real mother was revealed and King Solomon awarded the child to her.

We could use that ancient Solomonic wisdom in the Mideast right now!   The only people who give a damn about the plight of the Palestinian people are the international Left, while the supporters of Israel are American Imperialists, “End of Days” Evangelical Christians, and a handful of Conservative American Jews and Orthodox Jews.  Most Jews in the USA are Reformed Jews and Secular Jews.  American Jews consider themselves, simply, American and many marry outside of their religion.  American Secular Jews have no Jewish identity, which satisfies a lot politically conservative Jews.  This is a curious contradiction.

I always thought that Judeo morality was absolute.  How can you have one foot in Israel and another in America?  Is America the greatest country in the world, or is Israel?  Religious dogma dictates that you cannot serve two masters.  Can the Rabbis in a Yeshiva solve this dilemma?  Rabbis arguing about text in the Torah is how Polemics got started.

There is this notion that Jews are all monolithic and all the same.  The revisionist Zionists infer that they speak for the Jewish people.  They don’t!  They tell non-Jewish Right wingers that Anti-Zionism is the same as Anti-Antisemitism.  WRONG!!!!!  Take the case of the ultra Orthodox Jewish sect, Neturei - Karta.  They believe that the Jewish nation of Israel violates Jewish Law and Prophecy.  This sect is against Israel.  What do the rest of the Zionists think of this sect?  They don’t.  They simply ignore it. Are these Jews are self-hating?  Are they Uncle Jake's?  What is an Uncle Jake?  A Jewish version of an Uncle Tom.

Then there is the Jewish Left, and the secular Jewish Left. These secular Jews would never disclose that they are Jewish.  I knew a guy for years who never told me he was Jewish.  Then there are the Jewish Left groups like Hashomer Hatzair, or even the former political party in Israel, the Labor Party.  The Jewish Left in Israel has been suppressed.  They have been taken over by the Likud Party and a coalition of Jewish religious Right groups.  They are financed by Right wing Christians in the USA.  If you’d like to learn about the history of the Jewish Left, click here: The first Zionists were socialists > Sapardanis Kostas

The same problem exists with the Palestinians.  The first group that represented them was the The PLO – Palestinian Liberation Organization, who were Marxist revolutionaries.  Following them, the Islamic religious Right took over.  That was Hamas.  What kills me about Right wing propaganda is how they like to mislabel their enemies; ie: “Islamic Fascists are Leftists.” Holy shit turds!  Leftists? They are absolutely not!

So, what would be a Solomonic solution be to all this? The Palestinians should kick Hamas out and create a secular Leftist revolutionary group.  The Left wing Israelis should destroy the Jewish Right and have a peace treaty and planning conference with Palestinians.  Other then this, I agree with my Anarchist comrades: Have a “No State Solution.”  Fuck it, man!  As a Jew, I can say this shit.

Addendum: Today is May 17, 2021. Israel is bombing the Gaza Strip. It is said that the first casualty of war is the truth. I say the first fatalities of war are women and children.  What is happening in Israel now reminds me of the Vietnam War during the late 60’s and early 70’s.   Innocent women and children, along with elderly Vietnamese, were bombed by the American Air Force, while U.S. ground troops burned down their straw huts.  The women and children were always accused of being in cahoots with the Vietcong, the communist guerrillas of the jungle.

The same lie that I heard back then is now coming from the Right wing government of Israel.  They say that the Islamic guerrilla group, Hamas, is using innocent civilians for human shields.  So the Palestinian women and children have to be sacrificed in order to protect Israel? Excuse me?  Protect? What’s the matter—are Israel’s nuclear bombs at the bomb clinic undergoing repairs?  Maybe the Iron Dome is out of order?  Hamas versus nuclear Israel is, by no measure, a fair match.  When the Polish Jews rose up in World War II, they were in the same position, fighting the invading Nazi army in the Warsaw Ghetto.  Just like the Gaza Strip, no one could leave or enter the occupied city.  Of course, the Nazis called the Jewish resistance, “Terrorists.”

I think Benjamin Netanyahu should be charged with war crimes.  I also think that the Likud Party should be outlawed.  I don’t care if 71% of the Israeli voting population supports Donald Trump.  Shame on all you people! I realize that the Israeli Left is outnumbered, however, if you were true to your convictions, you would protest your government.  The mainstream media will not cover your protest, but social media will.  

All my life, the subject of Israel would come and go. I remember the Six Day War in Israel, back in 1967.  At my junior high school, I saw a Jewish and a Black student debating. The Black Civil Rights movement was supporting the Palestinians at the time.  The Jewish kid wore a Yarmulke, so he was a target of hostilities towards Israel.

When I was 13 years old, I didn’t know better and I supported Israel.   I am older now, so—no dice!  Just because I am Jewish, it doesn’t mean that I am obligated to be a supporter, especially when the Israeli government is corrupt.  This war is morally wrong and should be stopped!

When academics see a problem, many respond by writing a book. Some time ago, concerned by what I perceived as a rising tide of anti-Semitism, I did just that. I devoted the past three years to Antisemitism Here and Now. In September I submitted the manuscript to my publisher. The book went to press. I was done.

Then came Pittsburgh.

I momentarily considered asking my editor if it was possible to rewrite sections of the book. (I knew it was not, but I figured why not ask.) Then, I realized that Pittsburgh, shocking as it was, didn’t really change anything. In fact, it confirmed my two central arguments: a perfect storm of antisemitism is, not just brewing, but is upon us and too many people in the Jewish community are woefully unprepared or unwilling to honestly address it.

...So why is today’s surge in Jew-hatred different – and particularly alarming? Generally, antisemitism has come from either the right or the left. But today, it comes from three different sides at the same time.

From the right, Jews are being singled out by xenophobic populists who are increasingly setting the tenor of politics in many democracies. They also face emboldened white supremacists whose conspiracy theories have been given credence by political leaders and government officials – including in the US – who use barely coded antisemitic language (“cosmopolitan,” “globalist,” obsessive talk of George Soros) that evoke a sinister, greedy, planet-running Jewish cabal.

...On the left, the intensifying attacks are becoming increasingly institutionalized. They often come from those who cannot distinguish legitimate criticism of particular Israeli policies from bigoted attacks on Jews. Some progressives deny Jews their right to a national identity, accuse Jews of being puppet masters controlling governments’ policies, insinuate that American Jews are disloyal to the US, and make such bizarre and evidence-free accusations as the fabrication that Israelis harvest the organs of dead Palestinians.

Some on the left deploy the right to criticize Israel as a cover for overt antisemitism. For example, Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker, in a recent interview, effusively praised a book so laden with antisemitism that the publisher who had contracted to publish it refused to do so. (The book she enthusiastically endorsed describes the Talmud as a racist tract and contends that the world is controlled by lizard people – Jews – who engage in child sacrifice and control the economy.) Under fire, Ms. Walker employed the fallback tactic of many when accused of antisemitism: The attacks on her, she insisted, were attempts to “smear” her to prevent her from “speaking out in support of the people of Palestine.” U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has tried similar deflections after saying that “Zionists” didn’t “understand English irony” – a clear suggestion from a possible future British prime minister that Jews are not full Britons. (Yes he said “Zionists” but if you listen to his speech its clear that he meant any Jew who has any affinity for Israel.)

...To make all this worse, some Jews have politicized the fight against this torrent of hatred. Many are prone to see antisemitism only on the other side of the political transom, even as they fail to see it within their own camp. Such was the case after Pittsburgh, when a number of right-wing media pundits and media outlets took great umbrage over analysts who laid partial responsibility for the slaughter at the door of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric. Partisans asked: Isn’t Mr. Trump an ardent supporter of Israel who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem? Hadn’t he condemned this heinous crime? Doesn’t he have Jewish grandchildren? All that is true. But Mr. Trump has also engaged in constant, vociferous attacks on minorities, immigrants and critics; he has given credence to fringe conspiracy theories and retweeted internet posts that are directly linked to antisemitic groups; he had to be dragged into disavowing the support of KKK leader David Duke; he tweeted an image of a Star of David over a pile of money; and he has described neo-Nazis who march chanting “Jews will not replace us” as “very fine people.” The Pittsburgh shooter, though critical of Trump for not having gone far enough, was clearly motivated by his attacks on immigrants. There is a reason why virtually all white supremacists think he shares their view of the Jews.

Some on the left, however, are easily and rightfully appalled by misdeeds on the right while remaining oblivious to the antisemitism in their midst. They are quick to blame Mr. Trump but silent about progressives whose portrayal of the power and loyalties of the “Jewish lobby” drifts into the brackish waters of prejudice. They excoriate Jews who support Mr. Trump but stay silent on Ms. Walker or excuse the leaders of the Women’s March. (The absence of political power does not excuse the presence of prejudice.)

And when someone calls attention to the fact that Islamists have been responsible for so many violent attacks on Jews and others in Europe, some pundits on the left are quick to condemn that as Islamophobia.

Most sadly of all, Israel’s political leadership has donned blinders of its own as the threat gathers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has praised Hungary’s illiberal Prime Minister Viktor Orban as a “true friend of Israel” committed to “the need to combat antisemitism.” But Mr. Orban has waged an overtly antisemitic campaign against George Soros even as the prime minister has denied Hungary’s role in the decimation of its Jewish community in 1944. Mr. Netanyahu has been similarly misguided and ahistorical in his outreach to Poland’s own xenophobic, right-wing government. After earnestly attacking the 2018 Polish law that rewrote the history of the Holocaust by making it illegal to accuse Poles of collaborating with the Nazis (as many incontestably did), Mr. Netanyahu’s government suddenly reversed course and, after a few cosmetic changes to the bill were made, praised the Poles for their fight against antisemitism.

Israeli officials explain these strange alignments, in part, by pointing to Hungary and Poland’s willingness to support Israel in the European Union and in UN forums, something some other democracies have been unwilling to do. But making a pact with such bedfellows is a dubious act indeed.

It is too dangerous a time to give one’s political compatriots a pass on prejudice. We need not agree with all of our political allies’ positions, but there should be no compromises over bigotry particularly when it comes to the age-old scourge of antisemitism and any other form of hatred.

And if those who are singled out for prejudice cannot recognize that, how can we expect anyone else to?

[Read Deborah Lipstadt’s full piece at The Times of Israel.]

The Problem of "Centering" and the Jews

Note: I wrote this piece quite a few months ago, shopping around to the usual Jewish media outlets. None were interested, and I ended up letting it slide. But it popped back into my mind -- this Sophie Ellman-Golan article helped -- and so I decided to post it here. While I have updated it, some of the references are a bit dated (at least on an internet time scale). Nonetheless, I continue to think a critical look at how the idea of "centering" interacts with and can easily instantiate antisemitic tropes is deeply important. * * * In the early 2000s, Rosa Pegueros, a Salvadoran Jew, was a member of the listserv for contributors to the book This Bridge We Call Home, sequel to the tremendously influential volume This Bridge Called My Back. Another member of the listserv had written to the group with "an almost apologetic post mentioning that she is Jewish, implying that some of the members might not be comfortable with her presence for that reason." She had guessed she was the only Jewish contributor to the volume, so Pegueros wrote back, identifying herself as a Jew as a well and recounting a recent experience she perceived as antisemitic. Almost immediately, Peugeros wrote, another third contributor jumped into the conversation.  "I can no longer sit back," she wrote, "and watch this list turn into another place where Jewishness is reduced to a site of oppression and victimization, rather than a complex site of both oppression and privilege—particularly in relationship to POC." Pegueros was stunned. At the time of this reply, there had been a grand total of two messages referencing Jewishness on the entire listserv. And yet, it seemed, that was too much -- it symbolized yet "another place" where discourse about oppression had become "a forum for Jews." This story has always stuck with me. And I thought of it when reading Jews for Racial and Economic Justice's guidebook to understanding antisemitism from a left-wing perspective. Among their final pieces of advice for Jews participating in anti-racism groups was to make antisemitism and Jewish issues "central, but not centered". It's good advice. Jewish issues are an important and indispensable part of anti-racist work. That said, we are not alone, and it is important to recognize that in many circumstances our discrete problems ought not to take center stage. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be heard. It just means they should not be given disproportionate attention such that they prevent other important questions and campaigns from proceeding. Ideally, "central, but not centered" in the anti-racism community means that Jewish issues should neither overwhelm the conversation nor be shunted aside and ignored outright.

Yet it also overlooks an important caveat. Too often, any discussion of Jewish issues is enough to be considered "centering" it. There is virtually no gap between spaces where Jews are silenced and spaces where Jews are accused of "centering". And so the reasonable request not to "center" Jewish issues easily can, and often does, become yet another tool enforcing Jewish silence. Pegueros' account is one striking example. I'll give another: several years ago, I was invited to a Jewish-run feminist blog to host a series of posts on antisemitism. Midway through the series, the blog's editors were challenged on the grounds that it was taking oxygen away from more pressing matters of racism. At the time, the blog had more posts on "racism" than "antisemitism" by an 8:1 margin (and, in my experience, that is uncommonly attentive to antisemitism on a feminist site -- Feministing, for example, has a grand total of two posts with the "anti-Semitism" tag in its entire history). No matter: the fact that Jewish feminists on a Jewish blog were discussing Jewish issues at all was viewed as excessive and self-centered.

Or consider Raphael Magarik's reply to Yishai Schwartz's essay contending that Cornel West has "a Jewish problem".

Schwartz's column takes issue with West's decision to situate his critique of fellow Black intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates by reference to "the neoliberal establishment that rewards silences on issues such as Wall Street greed or Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people." Magarik's reply accuses Schwartz of making the West/Coates dispute fundamentally "about the Jews", exhibiting the "the moral narcissism in thinking that everything is about you, in reading arguments between Black intellectuals about the future of the American left and asking: How can I make this about the Jews?" Now, Magarik is surely correct that the Jewish angle of West's critique of Coates is a rather small element that should not become the "center of attention" and thereby obscure "the focus [on] Black struggles for liberation." But there is something quite baffling about his suggestion that a single column that was a drop in the bucket of commentary produced in the wake of the West/Coates exchange could suffice to make it the "center of attention". If Magarik believes Schwartz overreacted to some stray mentions of Jewish issues in an otherwise intramural African-American dispute, surely Magarik equally brought a howitzer to a knife fight by claiming that one article in Ha'aretz single-handedly recentered the conversation about the West/Coates feud onto the Jews.

What's going on here? How is it that the "centering" label -- certainly a valid concern in concept -- seems to routinely and pervasively attach itself to Jews at even the slightest intervention in policy debates?

The answer, as you might have guessed, relates to antisemitism.

As a social phenomenon, antisemitism is very frequently the trafficking in tropes about Jewish hyperpower, the sense that we either have or are on the cusp of taking over anything and everything. Frantz Fanon described antisemitism as follows: "Jews are feared because of their potential to appropriate. ‘They’ are everywhere. The banks, the stock exchanges, and the government are infested with them. They control everything. Soon the country will belong to them.” If we have an abstract understanding of Jews as omnipotent and omnipresent, no wonder that specific instances of Jewish social participation -- no matter how narrow the contribution might be -- are understood as a complete and total colonization of the space. What are the Jews, other than those who are already "everywhere"?

Sadly, the JFREJ pamphlet does not address this issue at all. When "central" crosses into "centering" will often be a matter of judgment, but while the JFREJ has much to say about Jews making "demands for attention" or paying heed to "how much oxygen they can suck out of the room", it does not grapple with how the structure of antisemitism mentalities often renders simply being Jewish (without a concurrent vow of monastic silence) enough to trigger these complaints. It doesn't seem to realize how this entire line of discourse itself can be and often is deeply interlaced with antisemitism. JFREJ's omission is particularly unfortunate since Jews have begun to internalize this sensibility. It's not that Jewish issues should predominate, or always be at the center of every conversation. It's the nagging sense that any discussion of Jewish issues -- no matter how it is prefaced, cabined, or hedged -- is an act of "centering", of taking over, of making it "about us." When the baseline of what counts as "centering" is so low, I know from personal experience that even the simplest asks for inclusion are agonizing. As early as 1982, the radical lesbian feminist Irene Klepfisz identified this propensity as a core part of both internalized and externalized antisemitism. She instructed activists -- Jewish and non-Jewish alike -- to ask themselves a series of questions, including whether they feel that dealing with antisemitism "drain[s] the movement of precious energy", whether they believe antisemitism "has been discussed too much already," and whether Jews "draw too much attention to themselves." Contemporary activists, including many Jews, could do worse than asking Klepfisz's questions. For example, when Jews and non-Jews in the queer community rallied against the effort by some activists to expel Jewish and Israeli LGBTQ organizations from LGBT conference "Creating Change", Mordechai Levovitz fretted that they had "promoted the much more nefarious anti-Semitic trope that Jews wield disproportionate power to get what we want." Levovitz didn't support the expulsion campaign. Still, he fretted that even the most basic demand of inclusion -- don't kick queer Jews out of the room -- was potentially flexing too much Jewish muscle. In this way, the distinction between "central" and "centering" collapses -- indeed, even the most tertiary questions are "centering" if Jews are the ones asking them. This is bad enough in a world where, we are told, oppressions are inextricably connected (you can tell whose perspective is and isn't valued in these communities based on whose attempts to speak are taken to be remedying an oversight and whose are viewed as self-centered derailing). But it verges on Kafka-esque when persons demand Jews "show up" and then get mad that they have a voice in the room; or proactively decide to put Jewish issues on their agenda and yet still demand Jews keep silent about them. Magarik says, for example, that Jews "were not the story" when the Movement for Black Lives included in its platform an accusation that Israel was creating genocide; we shouldn't have made it "about us". He's right, in the sense that this language should not have caused Jews to withdraw from the fight against police violence against communities of color. He's wrong in suggesting that Jews therefore needed to stop "wringing our hands" about how issues that cut deep to the core of our existence as a people were treated in the document. Jews didn't demand that the Movement for Black Lives talk about Jews, but once they elected to do so Jews were not obliged to choose between the right's silence of shunning and the left's silence of acquiescence. To say that Jews ought not "center" ourselves is not to say that there is no place for critical commentary at all. We are legitimate contributors to the discourse over our own lives. I'm not particularly interested in the substantive debate regarding whether Cornel West has a "Jewish problem" -- though Magarik's defense of West (that he "has a good reason for focusing on Palestine" because it "demarcates the difference between liberalism and radicalism") seems like it is worthy of some remark (of all the differences between liberals and "radicals", this is the issue that is the line of demarcation? And that doesn't exhibit some sign of centrality that Jews might have valid grounds to comment on, not the least of which could be wondering how it is a small country half a globe away came to occupy such pride of place?). The larger issue is the metadebate about whether it's valid to even ask the question; or more accurately, whether it is possible -- in any context, with any amount of disclaimers about relative prioritization -- to ask the question without it being read as "centering". The cleverest part of the whole play, after all, is that the very act of challenging this deliberative structure whereby any and all Jewish contributions suffice to center is that the challenge itself easily can become proof of our centrality.

But clever as it is, it can't and shouldn't be a satisfactory retort. There needs to be a lot more introspection about whether and how supposed allies of the Jews are willing to acknowledge the possibility that their instincts about when Jews are "centered" and when we're silenced are out-of-whack, without it becoming yet another basis of resentment for how we're making it all about us. And if we can't do that, then there is an antisemitism problem that really does need to be addressed. When discussing their struggles, members of other marginalized communities need not talk about Jews all the time, or most of the time, or even all that frequently. But what cannot stand is a claimed right to talk about Jews without having to talk with Jews. The idea that even the exploration of potential bias or prejudice lurking within our political movements represents a deliberative party foul is flatly incompatible with everything the left claims to believe about how to talk about matters of oppression. West decided to bring up the Jewish state in his Jeremiad against Coates. It was not a central part of his argument, and so it should not be a central part of the ensuing public discussion. But having put it on the table, it cannot be the case that Jews are forbidden entirely from offering critical commentary. One might say that a column or two in a few Jewish-oriented newspapers, lying at the tertiary edges of the overall debate, is precisely the right amount of attention that should have been given. If that's viewed as too much, then maybe the right question isn't about whether Jews are "centering" the discussion, but rather whether our presence really is a "central" part of anti-racism movements at all.

Drawing the line between "central" and "centering" is difficult, and requires work. There are situations where Jews demand too much attention, and there are times we are too self-effacing. But surely it takes more than a single solitary column to move from the latter to the former. More broadly, we're not going to get an accurate picture of how to mediate between "central" and "centering" unless we're willing to discuss how ingrained patterns of antisemitism condition our evaluations of Jewish political participation across the board.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2MjQd84

The Corporate Media Has No Idea What to Do With the Fact That Bernie Sanders Is Jewish

The mainstream press loves attacking Bernie Sanders for either being too Jewish or not Jewish enough. It's a cynical ploy to undermine his unapologetically left-wing campaign.

— By Ari Paul

Sen. Bernie Sanders appears on television screens in the Media Center during the Democratic Presidential Debate at Otterbein University on October 15, 2019 in Westerville, Ohio.

In 2016 Bernie Sanders became the first Jewish American to win a major party presidential primary election (New Hampshire). If he wins the Democratic presidential nomination next year, he will be the first Jew in US history to do so. If he wins the general election — well, you get the idea.

Sanders prefers to run on a message of universality, but his identity is impossible to ignore in the press, so it makes sense that he addressed the issue himself in a recent essay in Jewish Currents entitled “How to Fight Antisemitism.” The press reaction to the piece, however, has been just another example of how Sanders’s Jewishness gets weaponized against him. It’s not that mainstream attacks on Sanders are antisemitic, but rather that whether he is “too Jewish” or “not Jewish enough” are being used as cynical tools against him.

Sanders’s essay starts off by discussing last year’s Tree of Life massacre, the deadliest act of antisemitic terrorism in US history. Then, after reflecting on his experience with collective farming in Israel, Sanders invokes a discomfort some Jewish socialists have felt in left spaces — a sense that antisemitism is seen as separate from other oppressions, when it should be considered part of the white supremacy and racism the Left aims to defeat. As Jewish protesters point out the parallels between ICE’s concentration camps and Nazi roundups of Jews, and we watch Jewish anti-Trump activists form protective circles around their Muslim counterparts, Sanders’s call couldn’t be more timely.

But press commentators in the US Jewish press and the Israeli media have a different idea. At Ha’aretz, Anshel Pfeffer pooh-poohed the essay, largely because Sanders denounced antisemitism as a right-wing form of bigotry that the Left should oppose. Insisting that antisemitism cannot be perceived as a cousin of other oppressions and must stand alone, Pfeffer seemed to want to reposition the struggle against antisemitism as about one thing: protecting Israel. “The fight against anti-Semitism,” he wrote, “is on behalf of all Jews, including those who hate Palestinians, or just fear that giving them even an inch will doom Israel.”

The Forward ran several rebuttals to Sanders’s essay, including one by Izabella Tabarovsky, who claimed that Sanders’s universalist call veered too close to the Soviet failures that inspired many to emigrate. Of course, it’s a truism in US media that it’s the American identity — not Soviet citizenship — that melts away race and ethnicity to unite people. It’s even America’s national motto: E pluribus unum (“From many, one”). But when Sanders invokes the same principle, it’s an opportunity to red-bait him.

Often, the collective complaint from the mainstream is that Sanders doesn’t account for antisemitism from the Left. That’s a loaded critique, too, as it draws a false equivalency between violent right-wing anti-Jewish terrorism and criticisms of Zionism.

And in the non-Jewish press, there’s always been curious phrasings about Sanders’s demeanor that sound like dog whistles. The New Yorker, Washington Post, and the New York Times have all cast him in the role of an angry, “Old Testament” prophet — the last of which described him as being “as wild-eyed, scowling and angry as an Old Testament prophet on the downside of the prediction racket.”

Addressing the anti-Sanders bias in the US press earlier this year, Katie Halper noted: “When MSNBC legal analyst Mimi Rocah said that Bernie Sanders ‘made [her] skin crawl,’ though she ‘can’t even identify for you what exactly it is,’ she was just expressing more overtly the anti-Sanders bias that pervades the network.”

Halper, who has written sharply about the politics of antisemitism, could take this even further. The rhetoric that Sanders is physically creepy or repulsive — divorced from any substantive take on his beliefs — combined with complaints that he’s too loud and assertive, is the kind of personal insult that’s almost exclusively used against an “other”: minorities or immigrants, people whose perceived peculiarities offend the sensibilities of the majority.

In fact, in the last election cycle, I noted at the Forward that press coverage of Sanders had slipped into a variety of anti-Jewish tropes, such as false assertions of dual loyalties and attempts to paint his younger self as dangerously lascivious. If Halper’s reporting is any indication, not much has changed.

To be clear, what’s happening isn’t an anti-Jewish conspiracy against Sanders; it’s more subtle and banal. When Sanders talks about Jewishness or his commitment to fighting antisemitism, he takes heat for being the wrong kind of Jew, as if he isn’t really Jewish — unlike, say, Michael Bloomberg, who is just as nonobservant as Sanders but is “embraced for his unwavering support of Israel and his generous donations to Jewish causes.” When Sanders sticks to his universalist message, the press dips into its goodie bag of accusations in a way that seems intended to discredit or at the very least distract from Sanders’s left-wing campaign. Again, the problem isn’t that the press dislikes or fears his Jewishness, but rather that his identity at any given time can be exploited as a way to undercut his ideas on race, class, or foreign policy.

We should be on the lookout for those opportunistically deploying such tropes as the presidential race continues. After all, these types of tactics are almost exclusively used against candidates promising fundamental political change.

About The Author: Ari Paul is a journalist in New York City who has covered politics for the Nation, VICE News, the Guardian, the Forward, the New York Observer, Al Jazeera America, and the Brooklyn Rail.

— Jacobinmag.Com

I’m going to copy the text below for those who are locked out of NYTimes for various reasons, but if you have the free article space for the month left, please use the above link to give this article the traffic it deserves

This weekend, at a lesbian march in Chicago, three women carrying Jewish pride flags — rainbow flags embossed with a Star of David — were kicked out of the celebration on the grounds that their flags were a “trigger.” An organizer of the Dyke March told the Windy City Times that the fabric “made people feel unsafe” and that she and the other members of the Dyke March collective didn’t want anything “that can inadvertently or advertently express Zionism” at the event.

Laurel Grauer, one of the women who was ejected, said she’d been carrying that Jewish pride flag in the march, held on the Saturday before the city’s official Pride Parade, for more than a decade. It “celebrates my queer, Jewish identity,” she explained. This year, however, she lost track of the number of people who harassed her for carrying it.

I’m sorry for the women, like Ms. Grauer, who found themselves under genuine threat for carrying a colorful cloth falsely accused of being pernicious.

But I am also grateful.

Has there ever been a crisper expression of the consequences of “intersectionality” than a ban on Jewish lesbians from a Dyke March?

Intersectionality is the big idea of today’s progressive left. In theory, it’s the benign notion that every form of social oppression is linked to every other social oppression. This observation — coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw — sounds like just another way of rephrasing a slogan from a poster I had in college: My liberation is bound up with yours. That is, the fight for women’s rights is tied up with the fight for gay rights and civil rights and so forth. Who would dissent from the seductive notion of a global sisterhood?

Well, in practice, intersectionality functions as kind of caste system, in which people are judged according to how much their particular caste has suffered throughout history. Victimhood, in the intersectional way of seeing the world, is akin to sainthood; power and privilege are profane.

By that hierarchy, you might imagine that the Jewish people — enduring yet another wave of anti-Semitism here and abroad — should be registered as victims. Not quite.

Why? Largely because of Israel, the Jewish state, which today’s progressives see only as a vehicle for oppression of the Palestinians — no matter that Israel has repeatedly sought to meet Palestinian claims with peaceful compromise, and no matter that progressives hold no other country to the same standard. China may brutalize Buddhists in Tibet and Muslims in Xinjiang, while denying basic rights to the rest of its 1.3 billion citizens, but “woke” activists pushing intersectionality keep mum on all that.

One of the women who was asked to leave the Dyke March, Eleanor Shoshany Anderson, couldn’t understand why she was kicked out of an event that billed itself as intersectional. “The Dyke March is supposed to be intersectional,” she said. “I don’t know why my identity is excluded from that. I felt that, as a Jew, I am not welcome here.”

She isn’t. Because though intersectionality cloaks itself in the garb of humanism, it takes a Manichaean view of life in which there can only be oppressors and oppressed. To be a Jewish dyke, let alone one who deigns to support Israel, is a categorical impossibility, oppressor and oppressed in the same person.

That’s why the march organizers and their sympathizers are now trying to smear Ms. Grauer as some sort of right-wing provocateur. Their evidence: She works at an organization called A Wider Bridge, which connects the L.G.B.T.Q. Jewish community in America with the L.G.B.T.Q. community in Israel. The organizers are also making the spurious claim that the Jewish star is necessarily a symbol of Zionist oppression — a breathtaking claim to anyone who has ever seen a picture of a Jew forced to wear a yellow one under the Nazis.

No, the truth is that it was no more and no less than anti-Semitism. Just read Ms. Shoshany Anderson’s account of her experience, which she posted on Facebook after being kicked out of the march.“I wanted to be in public as a gay Jew of Persian and German heritage. Nothing more, nothing less. So I made a shirt that said ‘Proud Jewish Dyke’ and hoisted a big Jewish Pride flag — a rainbow flag with a Star of David in the center, the centuries-old symbol of the Jewish people,” she wrote. “During the picnic in the park, organizers in their official t-shirts began whispering and pointing at me and soon, a delegation came over, announcing they’d been sent by the organizers. They told me my choices were to roll up my Jewish Pride flag or leave. The Star of David makes it look too much like the Israeli flag, they said, and it triggers people and makes them feel unsafe. This was their complaint.”

She tried to explain that the star is the “ubiquitous symbol of Judaism,” and that she simply wanted “to be Jewish in public.” Then, she “tried using their language,” explaining “this is my intersection. I’m supposed to be able to celebrate it here.”It didn’t work. Ms. Shoshany Anderson left sobbing. “I was thrown out of Dyke March for being Jewish,” she said. Just so.

For progressive American Jews, intersectionality forces a choice: Which side of your identity do you keep, and which side do you discard and revile? Do you side with the oppressed or with the oppressor?

That kind of choice would have been familiar to previous generations of left-wing Jews, particularly those in Europe, who felt the tug between their ethnic heritage and their “internationalist” ideological sympathies. But this is the United States. Here, progressives are supposed to be comfortable with the idea of hyphenated identities and overlapping ethnic, sexual and political affinities. Since when did a politics that celebrates choice — and choices — devolve into a requirement of being forced to choose?

Jews on the left, particularly in recent years, have attempted to square this growing discomfort by becoming more anti-Israel. But if history has taught the Jews anything it’s that this kind of contortion never ends well.

It may be wrong to read too much into an ugly incident at a single march, but Jews should take what happened in Chicago as a lesson that they might not be as welcome among progressives as they might imagine. That’s a warning for which to be grateful, even as it is a reminder that anti-Semitism remains as much a problem on the far-left as it is on the alt-right.

To clarify: This author has interesting points but is wrong about intersectionality. The Dyke March was a failure of true intersectionality, and rather a glaring example of the failure of the liberal left to recognize its growing antisemitism problem.

EXCLUSIVE: Lovejoy actor and Labour candidate accused of anti-Semitism

A Lovejoy actor who is standing for election as a Labour councillor in May has been accused of peddling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. 

Chris Jury, 62, who played Eric in the legendary Eighties series as well as appearing in Doctor Who and Grange Hill, is running for a position on Stratford-On-Avon council. 

But MailOnline can reveal that he has been expressing provocative views on his blog that have been widely slammed as anti-Semitic.

In a post published in March, Mr Jury wrote: ‘My disgust at the cynical abuse of the memory of the 6 million by the right-wing of the Labour Party, aided and abetted by the Israeli Embassy, grows daily.’ 

In another post, he added: ’70 years after the defeat of the Nazis their racist, colonial, Eurocentric, moral degeneracy is still playing out in the Middle-East.’ 

And in a tweet, the actor said that British politics was being ‘subverted’ and anti-Semitism was being ‘weaponised by the Right of the Labour party.’

Left to right: Chris Jury, Diane Parish, Ian Mcshane and Dudley Sutton in Lovejoy

After ending his career in television, Chris Jury drifted into screenwriting before taking a job at Bath Spa university

Chris Jury’s tweet suggesting that anti-Semitism is being ‘weaponised’ by the Labour Right

Chris Jury, right, and Ian McShane, left, in a classic scene from the legendary series Lovejoy

Chris Jury, left, and Dudley Sutton, right, pose while filming an episode of Lovejoy

When contacted by MailOnline, Mr Jury stood by his comments. In a lengthy statement, he said: 

‘If the Israeli Embassy has played such a role, it is also perfectly legitimate to point that out as it may partly explain how and why this issue has come to such prominence since Corbyn was elected.’

He added: ‘I do not oppose Israel or a Jewish state of Israel, I simply support the Palestinian cause. I believe that just as the Jewish people are entitled to live at peace in their traditional homeland so are the Palestinians.’

Jason Fojtik, a former Labour councillor, resigned over anti-Semitism and was shocked to hear that Chris Jury was a candidate

But Jason Fojtik, a former Labour councillor in the same district who resigned in protest against anti-Semitism last week, said he was ‘shocked and horrified’ that Mr Jury had been put forward for election.

‘Labour is not doing the proper checks on people,’ he said. ‘The party has known about his views for years.

‘I’m glad I resigned because this vindicates what I’ve been saying. I’m sure I’ll get some criticism for saying this but people need to hear the truth. It’s quite important.’

Mr Fojtik, who is not Jewish, is descended from Czechoslovakian refugees who came to Britain to flee Nazism. ‘Chris Jury is not somebody I would care to share a room with,’ he added.

‘I resigned from the Labour party because anti-Semitism is getting worse, not better. It is a tacit endorsement of anti-Semitism in the local Labour party that they selected him as a candidate.’

Euan Philipps, spokesperson for Labour Against Antisemitism, said: ‘Chris Jury has built a political career on the promotion of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in keeping with Moseley’s Blackshirts of the 1930s. 

‘His poisonous attitudes have no place in British society and should have no place in any respectable political party. He needs to be thrown out of Labour.’ 

Chris Jury poses while filming the 1997 programme Noah’s Ark for ITV. He also appeared in Grange Hill

Chris Jury was popular on television in the Eighties and Nineties before entering politics

Chris Jury, left, Warren Mitchell, centre, and Ian McShane, right, pose on the set of Lovejoy

Born in Coventry, Mr Jury’s popularity on Lovejoy made him a contender to play the seventh doctor in Doctor Who in 1987, a role that eventually went to Sylvester McCoy. But he was a guest star on the programme in 1988.

Since ending his career as a television actor, he went on to direct Coronation Street and 40 episodes of Eastenders.

He worked for Bath Spa university but has now retired, while burnishing his Leftwing political credentials on his blog. 

Mr Jury said: ‘I was a teenager in the 1970s when I first learned of the genocidal consequences of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and it had a profound effect on my political beliefs and has motivated me to fight against the abuse of power and for human rights all my life. 

‘Historically the Labour Party was and is a proud supporter of the formation of the Jewish state of Israel and the fight against racism of all kinds is at the core of Labour Party values. 

‘The Labour Party has 500,000 members and I know only a few hundred of them so I obviously cannot claim that there are literally no anti-Semites in the Labour Party, only that I have never seen any substantive evidence that it is a particularly prevalent problem in the Labour Party and certainly not a problem on a scale that could warrant the sustained level of attack on the party over the three years since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader. 

‘As to Israel I believe that just as Israeli Jews are entitled to live at peace in their traditional homeland so are the Palestinians.’

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Expert: Pink Floyd always was, and still is, wildly popular and successful here in Germany. The legendary rock group’s former bass player and singer, Roger Waters, still has quite a following here too as a successful solo artist. That following does not, however, include the German government, nor does it include supporters of the current government of Israel, who last fall successfully petitioned the broadcasting honchos who run Germany’s public television network ARD to drop a planned live concert by Mr Waters from the programming schedule. The grounds: as a supporter of the BDS boycott movement and a passionate advocate of justice for Palestine, Waters was accused of being an “antisemite”. Israel’s interests, whether real or imagined, carry a good bit of weight here in the former stomping grounds of Herr H and his millions of supporters, which included a great many who simply had no idea what was going on in those concentration camps — if they are to be taken at their word — and now there are even more millions of their children and grandchildren who sincerely feel deep shame and revulsion at what was done by their relatives and their country. Understandably, they want the world to know that times have changed in the land where the Holocaust was organized and administered. Jews were not the only group targeted and murdered en masse, which may come as a surprise to some. But thanks to what the courageous academic, author, and crusader for Palestinian rights Dr. Norman Finkelstein calls Israel’s and Judaism’s “Holocaust Industry”, there is no danger that those Jewish victims of Nazi bloodlust will ever be forgotten. This cannot necessarily be said of the many Sinti and Roma, gays, disabled persons and others who shared that horrible fate [Not to mention communists, socialists and other sworn political foes of fascism]. We don’t know how many of those others were wiped out, but we all know how many Jews were murdered: six million. Most people who are not illiterate can tell you that number immediately. Dr. Finkelstein is a Jew, both of whose parents were interned in concentration camps by the Nazis. It should not be possible to tar him as an “antisemite” but the Israeli government does it anyway, as is also the case with members of the group Jewish Voice for Peace and many other Jews now banned from entering the country. Finkelstein’s honesty and passion for justice also cost him a professorship at DePaul University. His new book has just been published. Times have, in fact, changed. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish persons are now living in Germany again, their numbers growing pretty rapidly. A great many of them are young people moving from Israel to live in ultra-hip Berlin. I have never been in Israel, although for years I was related by marriage to a good many orthodox Jews, but I have been in Berlin many times and I can easily imagine that it might be more pleasant for many young Israelis to blend into that multicultural megalopolis than to remain at the eye of the Zionist storm, especially if one does not identify strongly with the religious aspects of Israeli culture (as many of these Israeli immigrants do not). Berlin is surrounded by the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik, communist East Germany as it was then, now once again part of the (dare I say it?) Fatherland. Most East Germans could not be reunified with the Klassenfeind (“class enemy”) fast enough after the “fall of the wall” in 1989, but these days an awful lot of them are very disillusioned and disappointed, as are many others in the former Soviet Bloc. The majority of those Eastern Europeans renounced the official socialist ideology with obvious pleasure, having apparently never taken it terribly seriously except to the extent one had to in order to stay out of trouble. They tried to walk the capitalist walk and they expected to be welcomed as long-lost brothers. And in many newspaper editorials and speeches by politicians, they were. But 28 years after reunification, in practice those in East Germany are still the objects of West German scorn and arrogance. Many of them have repaid that ongoing slight and condescension by adopting the views and politics of the aforementioned Herr H, expressing their hatred of foreigners, immigrants, refugees and Jews at the drop of a hat, and in many cases going a good bit farther. In some recent years the number of attacks on foreigners and refugees by Germans has reached one thousand for a single year, although it is the rare violent crime by a refugee here that the media continues to find much more horrifying and newsworthy. Not all German Neo-Nazis and associated sympathizers are East Germans, not by a long shot, but it is fair and accurate to say that the center of ultra-right-wing evil here is the federal state of Saxony. Where Bach and Wagner once made musical history, a different cultural phenomenon is now growing rapidly, and in Saxony that fact actually made the xenophobic Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Saxony’s biggest political party in the September 2017 parliamentary election (see my article “The German Election: The West’s Nervous Breakdown Continues”). Nationwide, the party hauled in almost 13% of the vote, taking so much support from the ruling Christian Democrats and Social Democrats that, four months later, attempts to form a new governing coalition have not yet succeeded. So in Berlin, we now have a large number of Jews living in a single city surrounded by a population which nourishes quite a lot of Neo-Nazi hatred of Jews and immigrants and refugees. It is no surprise that this causes the German government great anxiety. The government was also mortified and embarrassed when a group of demonstrators, which allegedly included many Muslim immigrants, burned Israeli flags at a recent public demonstration in Berlin. That demonstration was organized in response to US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he had decided to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. This flag-burning so infuriated conservatives in the government – who had already spent much of the last year trying to outdo each other with public displays of anti-refugee zeal, and proposing new measures to deport as many refugees as possible – that they immediately began to demand the deportation of any immigrants unwilling to “accept Israel’s right to exist”, and began as well to propose major new programs and laws against antisemitism. The political dimension of the demonstration was practically never mentioned. As we have seen, the government here brands most criticism of Israel, including virtually everything to do with the BDS boycott movement, as “antisemitism”. While the German government joins the rest of the EU in officially opposing Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, calling them “obstacles to peace”, in practice it demands no changes in that policy in exchange for European weapons sales and other support for the Israeli government and military — exactly like Israel’s Ally Number One, the USA. Last year the German Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel was snubbed and publicly humiliated by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who refused to meet with him as scheduled, after Gabriel visited some groups of pro-Palestinian activists in an embarrassingly pathetic and transparent attempt to show some “balance”. Once again, reference was made to the long-dead “Peace Process” as if it still existed. Even this, however, was too much for Bibi, who had not been informed in advance, and immediately cancelled his own scheduled subsequent meeting with Gabriel in a raging hissy-fit, leaving the latter with egg on his face to stammer mild expressions of surprised concern to the media. Gabriel, in typical obsequious German grovel-before-Israel fashion, insisted that while it was all a bit overdone and unnecessary, it would not harm Germany’s ties with Israel in the slightest. Which really says it all, in a nutshell. In a speech last year, the German Head of State, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier – himself for many years the Foreign Minister under Merkel, and a former failed Social Democratic candidate to replace her as Chancellor – referred darkly to alleged poorly-disguised antisemitism as the true motive behind much left-wing criticism of Israeli policy. As outrageous as I found this assertion, I was even more outraged by the fact that I heard not one word of public criticism of this sneering smear in subsequent media reaction to the speech. Germany has groveled before Israel so habitually for so long that it is hard to imagine what it would take to arouse any real resistance here to Israeli apartheid and war crimes. During last year’s international arts festival “Documenta”, which takes place every year here in part with government support, the performance of a scheduled theatrical production called “Auschwitz On the Beach” — which attempts to draw attention to the disgraceful manner in which Germany and the EU are complicit in the drowning deaths and Libyan captivity, torture and slavery of refugees attempting to reach Europe — was also cancelled. Many Jews and supporters of Israel were furious at the implied comparison between these refugee deaths and the Holocaust, which must in their opinion always be treated as an unparalleled crime unique in history. The festival’s staff quickly capitulated and the only thing most people ever saw of the work was the subsequent controversy, having been denied the opportunity to see it and make their own judgments. In his 2011 address to the Palestine Center in Washington DC on the occasion of the annual Shirabi Lecture, retired US diplomat Chas Freeman stated: … the cruelties of Israelis to their Arab captives and neighbors, especially in the ongoing siege of Gaza and repeated attacks on the people of Lebanon, have cost the Jewish state much of the global sympathy that the Holocaust previously conferred on it.  The racist tyranny of Jewish settlers over West Bank Arabs and the progressive emergence of a version of apartheid in Israel itself are deeply troubling to a growing number of people abroad who have traditionally identified with Israel.  Many – perhaps most of the most disaffected – are Jews.  They are in the process of dissociating themselves from Israel. They know that, to the extent that Judaism comes to be conflated with racist arrogance (as terrorism is now conflated with Islam), Israeli behavior threatens a rebirth of antisemitism in the West.  Ironically, Israel – conceived as a refuge and guarantee against European antisemitism – has become the sole conceivable stimulus to its revival and globalization. Demonstrably, Israel has been bad for the Palestinians. It is turning out also to be bad for the Jews … In the same address Ambassador Freeman stated: Examples of criminal conduct include mass murder, extra-judicial killing, torture, detention without charge, the denial of medical care, the annexation and colonization of occupied territory, the illegal expropriation of land, ethnic cleansing, and the collective punishment of civilians, including the demolition of their homes, the systematic reduction of their infrastructure, and the de-development and impoverishment of entire regions. These crimes have been linked to a concerted effort to rewrite international law to permit actions that it traditionally prohibited, in effect enshrining the principle that might makes right. As the former head of the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) Legal Department has argued: ‘If you do something for long enough the world will accept it.  The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries . . . International law progresses through violations.’ In the seven years since those words were written, the situation has only worsened. It is clear to any open-minded observer that much of what the German and Israeli governments insist on describing as growing “antisemitism” is actually growing international revulsion in response to the policies and war crimes of the Israeli government and military, policies and crimes committed with plenty of support from the USA and the EU. Of course, there are, and always were, bigots and racists and Neo-Nazis who would and will hate all Jews whatever happens in Palestine. Their numbers may be growing somewhat as well, or they may simply be growing more outspoken about views they have always held, in the current epidemic of nationalist hysteria nourished in particular by social media. But to continue to assert that the true antisemites and the rapidly growing number of persons worldwide – including millions of Jews – who vehemently oppose Israeli ethnic cleansing and military occupation are all motivated by antisemitism, is to be willfully blind. It does credit to Germany that its citizens and political elites sincerely wish to atone for the sins of the Nazis. It is a crime, however, to insist that Palestinians should pay the price for that atonement. In fact, many of Germany’s allies have never expressed much regret over their own genocide, massacres, and ethnic cleansing – whether the extermination of 100 million Native Americans in the United States, the murder of an estimated 60 million persons in India under British rule, or the brutal elimination of 10 million in the Congo by Belgium – and Germany itself is refusing demands to pay reparations to Poland and Namibia. But direct reparations to the victims of such historic horrors and their survivors, whether feasible or not, would certainly be a more just means of atonement than support of a colonial racist regime which is itself committing slow genocide against an imprisoned and largely defenseless population. Germany adds insult to injury when it enshrines in government policy the vicious lie, echoing those equally vicious smears from Tel Aviv, that passionate advocates of the Palestinian cause are motivated by racism. http://clubof.info/