FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Recent anti-Israel propaganda seems, more and more, to be mixed with traditional antisemitic images and themes.

[Louis] Farrakhan, speaking to a crowd of 20,000 followers at Chicago’s United Center on Sunday, said that Obama’s political problems began when he, according to the Chicago Sun Times report, stood up to the Jewish lobby during a White House meeting. When they left the White House, his problems began,” Farrakhan said, adding that “the Zionists are in control of the Congress.”

Minister Farrakhan also referred to the U.S. president’s chief economical advisors, Timothy Geithner, Henry Paulson and Larry Summers, asking “Who does he have around him? The people from Goldman Sachs.” [Geithner and Paulson are not Jewish -- ed.] The leader of the Nation of Islam added that “bloodsuckers of the poor” were rewarded with a bailout…

Further on in his address, Farrakhan also reiterated his claims that the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was “an inside thing…”

At one point during his address, Farrakhan implied that the validity of Holocaust records should be open to debate. “[You] can’t even engage in constructive argument over the veracity of the figures of the Holocaust. We know something happened, sure, but you can’t talk about [it]. In certain cities in Europe they arrest you and put you in prison for denying such.”

“There’s not a vote that the pro-Israeli lobby wants that doesn’t get bipartisan support,” Farrakhan said. “Why? Because the Israeli lobby controls the government of the United States of America.” — Ha’aretz

There’s more, but you get the idea. He hits all the buttons. Abe Foxman of the ADL criticized Farrakhan harshly, saying

Louis Farrakhan is at it again … After his near-silence on Jews over the last several years, we thought Minister Farrakhan had put his long history of anti-Semitism and racism behind him, or at least had held his views in check. Apparently, that was wishful thinking. Once again he is clearly comfortable with putting his bigotry on display, unfettered and unhidden for his supporters and the world to see.

Farrakhan isn’t the only one who finds himself “comfortable” expressing antisemitic views today:

Israel lodged a formal complaint with Spain on Sunday, charging certain individuals in Spanish schools of promoting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel ideas among young children. The letter comes after Israel’s ambassador to Spain, Rafi Shotz, recently received dozens of anti-Semitic postcards from Spanish elementary school students.

The postcards bore statements including “Jews kill for money,” “Leave the country to the Palestinians” and “Go somewhere where they will accept you.” A Foreign Ministry official said the handwriting appears typical of children six to nine years old. — Ha’aretz

How adorable. “Now children, today we are going to do a special project and write to those bloodthirsty Zionist pigs and tell them to go to Hell.”

Keeping to the program of mixing anti-Zionist sentiments with antisemitic imagery, here’s a picture displayed this week in an anti-Israel exhibition in Cologne, Germany:

Antisemitic imagery in Cologne, Germany

There really does seem to be an increase in antisemitic expression lately. Antisemitic websites are flush with visitors. Here are a pair of examples:

Alexa statistics for stormfront.org

Alexa statistics for rense.com

What’s going on? It’s clear that the economic meltdown and the Gaza war have been seized upon by antisemites as proof of Jewish turpitude, but the sudden jump in the middle of 2009 is strange. Operation Cast Lead seems to have no immediate effect; compare, for example, Al Jazeera:

Alexa statistics for aljazeera.net

The huge peak around January, of course, was the war.  Now look at some anti-Zionist sites:

Alexa statistics for electronicintifada.net

Here we see the same peak at the time of the war; but look also at the strong growth starting around the middle of the year.

“Mondoweiss” is one of my ‘favorite’ sites because it lives on the interface between anti-Zionism and antisemitism (and, of course, its owners are of Jewish extraction):

Alexa statistics for mondoweiss.net

Wow! he didn’t even move the needle until June. What happened?

So what do I conclude from this highly non-rigorous ‘research’? Not a lot:

• There is an increase in antisemitic expression recently, and it is closely associated with anti-Zionism.
• Something seems to have energized the antisemites (yes, I include “mondoweiss” in that category) around June 2008. Suggestions?
• Anti-Zionist sites are becoming more popular.
• If you write a good blog that nobody reads, don’t look at Alexa.

Technorati Tags: antisemitism, anti-Zionism

President Roosevelt meets King Ibn Saud in 1945, on the deck of the USS Quincy. Palestine was the subject of discussion.

Recently while reading “A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel” by Allis and Ronald Radosh (a Hanukah gift from my wife, thank you!) I was struck yet again by the stubborn refusal of the Arab nations during that period — not just the Palestinian Arabs, but Ibn Saud, the Syrians, Iraqis, Egyptians, etc. –  to consider any kind of compromise on Jewish immigration into Palestine (not to mention a Jewish state). This despite the fact that there was clearly enough room and resources in the area to support both Jews and Arabs, and although the Jewish presence had already improved economic conditions greatly, even leading to an increase in the Arab population.

As everyone knows, their refusal to compromise ultimately led to war, and a much worse end result for the Palestinian Arabs. And the cynical use of the Arab refugees as a weapon against Israel by the Arab leadership from 1948 to today constitutes one of the most massive violations of human rights since WWII. What a scandal it would be if it weren’t for the remarkably twisted perceptions of those organizations concerned with human rights!

Arab opposition to Jewish immigration actually began at the beginning of the 20th century. It was usually expressed by saying that the Jews would ‘take over’ although the Arabs themselves had not been in charge for centuries. And  partition proposals which would have limited Jewish sovereignty to small parts of Palestine were violently rejected.

Today, sixty-one years after the founding of the state and (roughly) 120 years since the beginning of the Zionist enterprise, Arab opposition to it is probably stronger than ever. Even the fact that two Arab states have signed peace agreements with Israel does not disprove this — in practice the ‘peace’ is as cold as possible, antisemitic incitement continues, and only massive American bribes keep it in force.

The non-Palestinian Arabs often cite their concern for the condition of the Palestinian Arabs as the reason for their hostility. But Palestinian Arabs — refugees or guest worksers — are treated like dirt in Arab countries. Add to this the perpetuation of the refugees’ misery and the lack of financial support for the Palestinian Authority from Arab sources, and this explanation falls apart.

Sometimes they claim that the problem is due to ‘the occupation’. Since their vicious and violent hostility goes back before 1967, indeed before 1948, this can only mean that Jews are ‘occupying’ space where the Arabs would prefer them not to be.

An argument made by Ibn Saud in 1945 and often heard today is this: the European Jews were mistreated by Germans and other Europeans; why should Arabs pay the price?

Roosevelt and Truman in turn were surprised by his vehemence. Ibn Saud even suggested that he would go to war for Palestine, despite the fact that there was no common border. And the ‘price’ for letting more Jews in would not have been high — actually it could have been mutually beneficial for Jews and Arabs — if the Arabs had not been so hostile.

The argument is worse today. One embarrassing problem is that the hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries who ended up in Israel were mistreated — OK, brutalized, robbed and kicked out — by Arabs. If you ignore the relatively recent Russian immigrants, a majority of Israelis fall into this category.

So what is the explanation?  I propose a thought experiment.

Suppose instead of Zionist Jews, the migrants had been, say, Kurds, or Shiite Muslims. There’s plenty of ethnic-religious  unpleasantness to go around in the Arab world; do you think that the degree of hostility, the persistence of the struggle, the way the whole world has gotten tied up in it — would it be the same?

I don’t think so either.

Ibn Saud expressed his point of view quite clearly to Ambassador William Eddy in 1945, when he said that the Jews were “accursed in the Koran as enemies of the Muslims until the end of the world” [Radosh, p.24]. His descendant, the present King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, is said to have responded with an antisemitic diatribe when President Obama asked that Saudi Arabia make some gesture in response to concessions made by Israel to the Palestinians.

I think that the explanation for the persistence and viciousness of the conflict lies here, in the historic enmity between Muhammad and the Jews. This comes out clearly and explicitly in the founding document of the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas. And it explains why anti-Zionist hatred seems to go along with with devotion to Islam.

This doesn’t bode very well for a solution, does it?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jews, Arabs

All four of my grandparents emigrated from the Ukraine in the beginning of the 20th century. They came to America because they heard that it was a land of opportunity where Jews weren’t restricted to where they could live or what kind of work they could do; but mainly they left the Ukraine because they were sick and tired of periodic murderous pogroms in which Jews were brutalized and murdered while the authorities stood by or even took part. Many of these pogroms were incited by ‘blood libels’, accusations that Jews killed Christians, usually children, for their blood.

Well, guess what. Although there are far fewer Jews living there today than in 1900-1914, the descendants of the antisemitic pogromists are still at it.

Stories appearing on several Ukrainian Web sites claim Israel has brought around some 25,000 Ukrainian children into the country over the past two years in order to harvest their organs.

The claim, which was made by a Ukrainian philosophy professor and author at a pseudo-academic conference in Kiev five days ago, is the latest expression of a wave of anti-Semitism in the country. It comes a few months after a Swedish tabloid ran an article alleging that Israel Defense Forces soldiers have killed Palestinian civilians for their organs.  — Ha’aretz

The organ-harvesting story  — which the Swedish government, like the Ukrainian authorities in 1905, refused to condemn –  has spread around the world.

But this isn’t the first time something like this happened, or even the tenth. According to one list, blood libels against Jews have been propagated since the year 38 CE, and examples can be found up to 2009.

An artist's conception of the death of Simon of Trent at the hands of Jews in 1475

The Swedish story is not the only modern-day blood libel. The Goldstone report is full of them, unsubstantiated (because they are false) stories of crimes committed by Jews against non-Jews for the worst motives. Indeed, the Palestinians have developed a whole industry dedicated to creating them.

It’s interesting that the historical blood libels were usually aimed not at individual Jews, but rather at the Jewish community — which was invariably punished collectively.  In the Simon of Trent case, the entire Jewish community was tortured until seventeen ‘confessed’ to the crime. In the Kishniev pogrom of 1903, also incited by a blood libel, anti-Jewish rioting spanned three days with the entire Jewish quarter destroyed, almost 50 dead and hundreds injured.

Today’s blood libels are also aimed at the Jewish community, but today the world Jewish community has crystallized as the Jewish state, Israel. So the Swedish blood libel and the new Ukrainian version target the IDF and the state of Israel directly.

Now… please explain it to me again: exactly what is the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jews, blood libel, antisemitism, anti-Zionism

News item:

A British diplomat has criticized the appointment of two leading Jewish academics to the UK’s Iraq Inquiry panel, stating it may upset the balance of the inquiry.

Sir Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, told The Independent newspaper this week that the appointment of Sir Martin Gilbert, the renowned Holocaust historian and Winston Churchill biographer, and Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies and vice-principal of King’s College London, would be seen as “ammunition” that could be used to call the inquiry a “whitewash.”

Miles said the two academics were Jewish and that Gilbert was an active Zionist. He also said they were both strong supporters of former prime minister Tony Blair and the Iraq war…

“It is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available,” he added. “Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced.”

There you go. In regard to any issue which even tangentially touches on Israel, Jews are suspect. I recall someone saying, “when I read a letter to the editor about the Middle East, I immediately look to see if the writer has a Jewish name.” Then I presume she discounts whatever was in the letter. As I wrote yesterday in a different context,

Eloquence, logic, and appeal to facts are irrelevant today. Only the point of view [and apparently the religion/ethnicity of the speaker] matters.

The world is tired of hearing the Jews complain, just as they were tired of them before, during and immediately after WWII. I suppose Miles would prefer the panel to be made up entirely of former ambassadors to Arab countries. Then nobody could call it a ‘whitewash’.

I’ve noticed this myself recently. People who can’t respond to my arguments say that we should ‘agree to disagree’, meaning “just be quiet, of course you think the way you do, you’re Jewish.”

For some reason the fact that there are plenty of anti-Zionist Jews around — including famous ones like Noam Chomsky, Tony Judt, et al — doesn’t seem to make a difference. Jewishness only seems to affect the soundness of one’s arguments when one is pro-Israel.

Indeed, when a Jew or Jewish organization attacks Israel, the same people cheer. After all, if even Jews like Philip Weiss,  Norman Finkelstein or Ilan Pappé think that Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide against the Palestinians, then it must be true.

But poor Sir Martin Gilbert just can’t help being biased!

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iraq War, Oliver Miles, Martin Gilbert

Way back in January 2008, I referred to “Barack Obama’s Zbig problem” — Zbigniew Brzezinski, that is. Zbig was never a friend of Israel, and I was more than a little bothered by the suggestion that he would be a key foreign policy adviser for candidate Obama.

After quoting some of Brzezinski’s more egregiously anti-Israel remarks, I wrote,

Brzezinski supports the pernicious, even anti-Semitic Mearsheimer and Walt, he accuses Israel of ignoring collateral damage and in effect committing war crimes in Lebanon, he perpetuates the false and dangerous accusation that Israel is in some sense responsible for the US being in Iraq, and — time and again — he declares a moral equivalence between Israel and her terrorist opponents — Hamas and Arafat…

We don’t need another James A. Baker in a critical position in a future Obama administration. Obama has received criticism from pro-Israel voices like Alan Dershowitz about Brzezinski. The Obama campaign has responded that the criticism is politically motivated and coming from supporters of Hillary Clinton. Regardless, Brzezinski’s slant is clear from his own words.

Well, Zbig does not have an official position in the Obama administration, but there is no question that his voice is taken seriously.

And what he is saying is obscene. This is from an interview in the Daily Beast (thanks to Michael Goldfarb for noticing it and Dan Friedman for bringing it to my attention):

How aggressive can Obama be in insisting to the Israelis that a military strike might be in America’s worst interest?
We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?

What if they fly over anyway?
Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse.

“A Liberty in reverse”?

Just a couple of words about the USS Liberty:

The facts are that Israeli planes attacked the US naval vessel in the Mediterranean in 1967, killing 34 and wounding 171. Israel said it was a mistake caused by a series of errors and that the ship was thought to be Egyptian. The government apologized and paid compensation for the crew members who were killed and injured, as well as for the damage to the ship. The US officially accepted the Israeli explanation of the incident and the apology.

But those are just the facts. The reality is that there is a huge controversy, with survivors of the crew and others firmly convinced that the attack was deliberate, and that the US and Israel conspired to cover up the truth (a good presentation of the case that the attack was a tragic error can be found in “The Liberty Incident” by A. Jay Cristol).

The ugly part is that Jews and conspiracies go together. Every neo-Nazi website gleefully presents the theory as proof that the US really is ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government) territory. The Liberty incident is on every antisemite and anti-Zionist’s list of reasons for hating Israel and the perfidious Jews.

Including Zbiggy’s.

So not only is this mamzer advocating that the United States of America shoot at aircraft of its ally, Israel — in order to protect the nuclear weapons capability of its enemy, Iran — but he is doing so in terms which evoke the darkest impulses in his American audience.

Technorati Tags: Brzezinski, USS Liberty, Israel, Iran