It's bothering me the way some zionists seem to be intent on publicising, rather than confronting, anti-semitism. I noticed it on
Nick Cohen's site a week or so ago. Two zionists in particular, Linda Grant and David Hirsh were promoting anti-semitism like it was going out of fashion. I rather feel that anti-semitism in the west has gone out of fashion and zionists like this terrible two (from the
ENGAGE site) need to revive it, which I believe is why they promote it.
It's often said that zionism was a response (reaction is probably a better word) to anti-semitism, or
gentile repulsion against Jews but zionism soon lost its defensive character and developed a distinctly chauvinistic character. Actually I'm only making an assumption here. From its inception to now it looks pretty chauvinistic to me. But let's assume it's as we've been told: a reaction to anti-semitism. Then came the challenge of gentile attraction. The idea that gentiles might actually like Jews and vice versa. This is
Finkelstein stuff. I'm nothing if not unoriginal. Now how does the ruling establishment of a free standing community, the Jews, based on matrilinear descent within so-called "host" communities maintain its established position in a free society where the "hosts" are attracted to the Jews and vice versa? Well they might develop an idea to take those people away from the "hosts" so that the Jews can become the "hosts" themselves. But if the Jews are attracted to the hosts (I'm fed up with quotation marks but take it as read, I do not see gentile Brits as mein hosts) why would they want to run off to another place? particularly with a view to colonial conquest, ethnic cleansing and the establishment of a state with an array of racist laws to guarantee the supremacy of the Jews over the natives? I mean that was bound to cause conflict. You could even call zionism itself, a suicide attack on the Middle East.
Well surely not all Jews are going to be panicked by the fact that most gentiles in the west think we're rather nice. I read recently that 89% of French people believe French Jews to be as French as anyone else from France. The zionists will say, "aha! French Jews are as French as anyone else and yet 11% of French people think otherwise.!" Actually a typical zionist would say "see how anti-semitic the French are, they spend 89% of their time obsessing about the Jews." Really, the other 11% may well have been deferring to the zionist idea that Jews worldwide are a nation in themselves. Or they are anti-semitic. Or perhaps they are both. Perhaps they feel that Jews cannot be French but they can have Palestine, or most of it, all to themselves.
This zionist relationship with anti-semitism has always been mutually beneficial. Tnat is of benefit to the zionist cause and to the anti-semitic cause; not, of course to the Jews. The progroms in Eastern Europe and the rise of fascism in western Europe caused a flow of Jews into Palestine. Organisationally, the zionist movement got a boost from the Tsarist authorities' support for zionism to thwart Jewish involvement in revolutionary or reformist movements in Russia. The nomination of Zionists to represent the Jews of nazi Germany is
well documented, but not, surprise surprise, well publicised.
Israel Shahak alludes to Ben Gurion's beneficial dealings with France's anti-semitic generals who found common ground on the "Arab problem". The supply of arms to the Galtieri regime by Israel too is well known, being exposed by
Jacobo Timerman, a prominent Jewish editor in Argentina who fled for Israel, denouncing, though a zionist himself, the Jewish zionist leadership in Argentina as a
judenrat. for covering up the fact that a disproportionately high number of
Jews were "disappearing" during the "dirty war" against the left.
Said Timerman, after his escape:
I saw with my own eyes how Argentinian jailers tortured Jews in prison while the Israeli government requested the Jewish community there to remain silent.
When a few of people had gone to Nick Cohen's site to dispute his ridiculous assertion that "all anti-semites are anti-zionists", David Hirsh, unable to refute our own assertion of nazi-zionist collaboration, denounced our reliance on historical facts and sources thus:
Nick Cohen points out, quite rightly that all contemporary antisemites are anti-Zionist.Comment #86
So all that past collaboration of zionists with anti-semitism is just a footnote now because a zionist academic said so. But wait, there are contemporary anti-semites who support Israel and surely David Hirsh must have known it when he wrote what he did. For all his talk of what goes on in the contemporary world around us, the various anti-semitic neo-nazi and holocaust denier groups and individuals are looked on by most people as a bunch of flat-earthers and wackos. The fascist groups with parliamentary seats in Europe tend to be pro-Israel and anti-Muslim. But the main anti-semitic groupings with high levels of support and the collective ear of the world's most powerful forces are the Christian right in America. I mentioned this on the Cohen site in response to David Hirsh's "contemporary" comment. Needless to say he didn't get back to me on it.
So here we have two zionists, significantly claiming to be left zionists, one of whom, David Hirsh, explicitly states that anti-zionism is anti-semitism, the other, Linda Grant, comes close to it whilst denying actually saying it.
Once again, for the record, I have never stated that anti-Zionism is in and of itself anti-semitic. I have stated that one needs to examine the motives of the anti-Zionist in each instance, and consider carefully, the consequences of their arguments.
"
In each instance" we have to consider the consequences of anti-zionist arguments. That would of course take for ever. And I suppose that's the point. But that's not all we have to do. We have to publicise "each instance" of anti-semitism that masquerades as anti-zionism no matter how obscure and unpopular and then we have to obscure every instance of Christian zionist anti-semitism no matter how prominent or powerful. After all, surely these Christian rightists hate Muslims more than they hate Jews. Let's just see (in some cases revisit)
some statements from the most prominent of Israel's Christian friends in America.
First up the Reverend Bailey Smith, a good friend of Israel from the Bailey Smith Ministries:
I don't know why God chose the Jew. They have such funny noses.
or this
It's interesting at great political rallies how you have a Protestant to pray, a Catholic to pray, and then you have a Jew to pray. With all due respect to those dear people, my friends, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew. For how in the world can God hear the prayer of a man who says that Jesus Christ is not the true Messiah? That is blasphemy.
So where's his zionism? Try this from a New York Times article posted to the zionist
Jewish Agency for Israel site.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin, having previously lost seven straight national elections, had few illusions about the efficacy of Jewish prayer. He did, however, have a keen appreciation for Christians like Smith, who believed that the Bible conferred title to the land of Israel on the Jews. Smith enjoyed being appreciated, and he returned home loudly proclaiming Genesis 12:3: God will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel.
How about Jerry Falwell? Stereotypes are us, well stereotypes are him anyway:
"A few of you don't like the Jews and I know why," said the Rev. Jerry Falwell. "He [sic] can make more money accidently than you can make on purpose."
And here's one of his cohorts from New York, The Rev. Dan C. Fore:
I love the Jewish people deeply. God has given them talents He has not given others. They are His chosen people. Jews have a God-given ability to make money...They control the media, they control this city.
And where is the Moral Majority on Israel? Check out
CBS News:
"It is my belief that the Bible Belt in America is Israel’s only safety belt right now," says Rev. Jerry Falwell, one of the leaders of the Christian Right. That’s the bulk of Evangelical Christians; Falwell claims to speak for all of them.
"There are 70 million of us," he says. "And if there’s one thing that brings us together quickly it’s whenever we begin to detect our government becoming a little anti-Israel."
And Pat Robertson?
In the end times, Robertson believes, Jews will be brought in as "offerings to the Lord." He predicts mass conversions of Jews to Christianity, and toward this end, Robertson built a Christian radio station in Lebanon to beam the Gospel into the Jewish state, which Fundamentalists believe will eventually be inherited by Christians. For the present, Jews occupy the land as caretakers.
It's curious but these guardians of Jewish well-being, David Hirsh and Linda Grant, don't see the implied, indeed expressed, threat here. They say they see it in obscure shunned groups and in principled anti-racists, but not in prominent power-brokers like America's Christian right. Their anti-semitism is almost as famous as their zionism. In fact it is their zionism that causes zionists in the media to largely cover for their anti-semitism. But all Jews know of the statements of this triumverate of Smith, Falwell and Robertson and yet no zionists seem to be troubled by it. It's as if they see past collaborations with anti-semites, sorry but here they are again: the Tsar, the nazis, Galtieri, etc, cost many many Jewish lives but still they persist in the belief that the enemies of the Jews are the friends of zionism. And of course they are right. This is why they publicise obscure and isolated anti-semites as Linda Grant did on Nick Cohen's site. But in so doing they merely show that zionism is an enemy, not just of the Palestinians but of Jews as well. Equally they know that, in spite of their claim that there are anti-semites on every street corner, anti-semitism is actually quite unpopular which is why they smear anti-zionists as being anti-semitic or why, in Linda Grant's case, she has to check the political correctness of
each and every anti-zionist and anti-zionist argument but she doesn't feel any such need to screen zionists for racism or anti-semitism.
The fact is that historically and currently anti-semitism is a vital weapon,
the vital ideological weapon, in the armoury of zionism. It causes Jews to become cannon fodder and apologists for the racist war criminals of the State of Israel, it's useful as a stick with which to beat anti-zionists and it causes those who disparage and despise the Jewish people to support the idea of a colonial settler state with legislation to copperfasten a Jewish majority (80:20), until the "
end-time" and that's when the plight of the Palestinians could become the plight of the whole world.
