FINAL NOTE BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP AT 6:00 AM
I want to thank everybody for keeping their responses to a pretty angry diary very civil and thoughtful--that doesn't usually happen in I/P-related diaries so good on everybody. This diary wasn't easy to write but I felt it had to be said--and I know that for many of you it may not have been easy to comment either. I know I may not change any minds--we're pretty entrenched about these issues--but I've done what I set out to do. Again, thanks.
NOTE: I've toned down the title and first line thanks to Colorado's recommendation. I've change nothing else. Because, frankly, I'm pissed off.
NOTE 2: About this poll. I think I'm starting to understand a lot of why DKos doesn't work at all when it comes to I/P diaries. If 37% think this kind of imagery is fine with no caveats, and 50% say it's never ok, with any caveats--that's a big-ass problem. If any one wants to address that in the comments, it might be a good discussion topic. I'm fine with the free speech aspect of it--but in terms of ethical acceptability? Would the same breakdown hold for blacks, gays, American Indians, women, Filipinos?
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First of all, I'm a bit emboldened by the front page post on anti-Semitism at UCLA....the more this sort of thing gets out the better.
Anyway, about 5 minutes ago this image that could be taken straight out of a Himmler storyboard in 1938 scrolled down my facebook timeline (you can click the link).
http://nonalignedmedia.com/...
This by someone I know and whose posts I always respect. I'm not sure if he knows the import of what he just posted, but for my personal reasons I'd rather vent here than there.
The headline to this Jew-hating visual spree, by "non aligned media" (I'm not familiar with them" is:
"French cartoonist Zeon arrested for anti-Zionist work".
Let's go over the fold as I disembowel the hell out of this claim--much as he would claim that I do to Christian babies because of my heritage.
FIRST OF ALL let's get one thing straight:
I know that French speech laws are substantially different than ours, and the specific "bill of rights" is an American thing--however I DO NOT CONDONE, in any form, his arrest. If I'm going to "Be Charlie", then I have to recognize that if Charlie (may all who died in those and related attacks rest in peace) has the blessing to lampoon Muslims, then it must also have the blessing to lampoon Jews, even if it uses racist/bigoted stereotypes. The complaints I've seen in the far left press in this regard regarding a double standard ARE, in fact, legitimate: if one religion is sacred--all are; if one is not, none are.
But that's not what this is about. This is about this--and let's be honest--bullshit that I've seen here and in some other corners of the left that the lines between anti-Zionism and Jew-hate are always clear, that messaging of the radical anti-Zionist movement is just, fair and humanitarian, that those of us who call out Jew-hate when we see it are...oh...exaggerating much of the time, or trying to quell dissent, or neo-con/Netanyahu apologists.
Yes, this happens at times. Some of us are on hair trigger alerts and yell about or see (or pretend to see) things that sometimes aren't there. Except the numerous times when it actually IS there.
The framing of the article and the response to the cartoon both in the article and in the comments presents these cartoons as "anti-Zionist" and say that this person has been silenced for 'showing the unbalanced weight of historical crimes".
Sure. And the Spanish Inquisition was a game show. That's not "anti-Zionism", folks: it's "the kikes are out to suck the blood of children."
Sadly, and darkly, there's a LOT of this kind of propaganda within several current incarnations of the pro-Palestinian movement, BDS (Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions) being one of them. There's also a lot of wonderful, well-meaning people in there too--but there is both a passive (and active) undercurrent of Jew-hate within these movements. What happened at UCLA, with an upstanding Jewish student interrogated by a few bigots about "allegiances", with her religion questioned outright by one of the interrogators Fabienne Roth, is an example of this climate. Yet in another example of this climate--perhaps even closer to home--some HERE on this so-called democratic site not only didn't see (or pretended not to see) the-Jew hate, but some actually defended it in some sort of "context" or whatever. I'm not going to link to the comments--they're in the diaries. Granted, only a few comments did this--but the fact that flat out bigotry is apparently welcomed in some corners of our liberal world should be cause for serious concern.
And these aren't isolated incidents. This Video documents intimidation, virulently anti-Jewish imagery, and numerous other instances designed to make Jews feel the way they did in ages past: i.e. terrorized, isolated, delegitimized, and scapegoated.
Now, two disclaimers:
first, the video presents things from a Jewish standpoint, not a Muslim or Palestinian one. So there is bias--I readily acknowledge that. And second, some of the material in this video is absolutely fair--impassioned anti-Zionism--but fair and acceptable under our laws of free speech, expression and assembly But a lot of it is pure, seething hate. . The indisputable fact is it shows that the so-called "line" between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is crossed---all the time--and by miles.
Here, a ha-aretz report (a left-leaning Israeli paper) documents the "alarming" rise in anti-Semitic incidents on U.S. campuses (a related report in the NYT is, predictably, 'questioned' by Mondoweiss (of course--we can't acknowledge Jew-hatred, can we now? It weakens their 'case'). To Mondoweiss' (laughable) credit, it does acknowledge that "We are in no position to defend the student council for its conduct..." and...yeah, that's it. The rest of it is a scree about, essentially, how we're probably making this shit up. Oh, and maybe it's because of the political environment and yada yada yada.
You know something? In a way--the opposite way that they intend--they're right about the political environment. I had a (friendly) exchange with someone yesterday on this site who suggested that BDS needs to be included in the context of the UCLA incident. And you know something? I agreed completely. But for diametrically opposed reasons: the poster's point of view--as I gleaned--was that BDS should be mentioned to provide context because it could shed light on political concerns: in other words, while the "are you or have you ever been Jewish" type questions [not a direct quote] were wrong, it was understandable in the light of possible votes against BDS or other pro-Palestian causes. In other words, why on earth should Fabienne Roth ever trust a Jew who associates with the likes of Hillel to be a fair arbiter of anything? This, as I see it, is Mondoweiss' position.
My position is the opposite--that the passive (and, as I've presented, sometimes active) Jew-hate that sometimes shows up in BDS and related movements (Free Gaza is a good example too) is a facilitative environment for latent (or non-latent) personal expressions of anti-Semitism. Stated differently, Mondoweiss would blame this on Israeli policy entirely--claiming that perceived Jew-hate (on the left--perhaps not the right) is borne entirely out of the ill-treatment of Palestinians by Netanyahu government and not a product of inherent prejudice/scapegoating. In my view, the hateful imagery that can be found in some corners of pro-Palestinian social justice advocacy, as can be proven by the images in my original link and many others, are very much drawn from ingrained European anti-Jewish sentiments over many centuries. Fortunately in Europe, this is usually toned down because of its recent history: WWII, the pogroms, and current awareness. This is much less the case in the Middle East, where the existence of a laughable 100 Jews in Egypt, a country of 80 million, and violent Jew-hate that circulates in many schools and public arenas makes the rhetoric 100X worse. Without the history or Jewish populations to foment more humanitarian, interactive awareness and discourse--this can only be expected to continue.
Which brings me to another point: "stochastic terrorism". This is an interesting term that we've seen here--I think I'm familiar with the person who came up with it. The idea, drawn from statistics, is that individual events can't be predicted, but facilitative environments can and do encourage semi-random instances of violent behavior. The concept as we use it here applies to right-wing domestic terrorism--the Clive Bundys, the Oklahoma Citys, the abortion clinic bombings, the open carry movements at starbucks.
But hate speech is hate speech, and violence is violence, and death is death. Jews have been fucking massacred in Europe, and instances of vandalism are increasingly common. And, as recent events have shown, we're seeing some of this stuff (not the murders) in the U.S. too. This didn't happen 10 years ago, but it's happening now. Hate imagery as I've presented in my opening link here, and the vociferous speech that sometimes accompanies it, is NO DIFFERENT than what we may see from the likes of Palin or Limbaugh, except that it hides behind a phony social justice mask. Which in some ways is even more insidious.
We can blame Netanyahu's heinous policies all we want (and I damn well agree with everyone here that he's a hateful person who is a major danger both to Israelis and Palestinians), but Jew-hate is Jew hate, completely separate from Israel or Israeli government policy. We're not assaulting Muslims because of ISIS/Boko Haram--we're not assaulting Christians because of Westboro. And that's a damn good thing. Netanyahu can blab and lie all he wants about speaking for Jews, but he sure as hell doesn't, and anyone who tries to use that sort of rhetoric to attack Jewish institutions is guilty of out and out Jew-hatred.
I said, on another comment thread, that I could conceivably be persuaded to consider something LIKE a BDS type movement if I truly believed that the left was working to address the virulent anti-Semitism within it. But reaction on this site and elsewhere shows me that they aren't, and this article here, which was called to my attention by a very left-wing lecturer (and friend of mine) in London, further supports the assertion. A truly humanitarian BDS type movement would advocate peace, a two states solution, dialogue, commonality and understanding, and would not hold Israel above all other entities as the greatest evil the world has ever seen.
It would also not regularly resort to imagery that invokes the blood libel, or baby killing, or hook-nosed filthy slobbering Haredim wrapped in prayer shawls gloating over their cannibalistic dinners, which brings me back full circle to my opening to this piece.
If the justice for Palestine movements can't promote their (absolutely just) cause without resorting to the demonization scapegoating that gets us killed in droves every so often, then I don't believe they care a lick about justice for Palestine at all.
