FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Tomorrow the so-called “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” is expected to reach the waters off the Gaza Strip. I am interested in what is in the heads of the ‘progressive activists’ that are on board or that support the goals of this operation.

They claim that it’s  all about ‘humanitarian’ aid to break the ‘siege’ and end the suffering of Gaza residents. It’s remarkably easy to show that there actually is no ‘siege’ and no ‘humanitarian crisis’. A siege is not a siege when the besieger permits 15,000 tons of food, medicine and clothing a week into the besieged area.  And the Hamas rulers of Gaza have options to ameliorate the minimal pressure that is being applied to them. Want the crossings open? Release Gilad Shalit, who’s been held hostage now for almost four years.

Only the very dumb ones believe their own propaganda. The smarter ones would probably admit the above. But they  would say that they are fighting a war against colonialism and racism. They would say that they are fighting on the side of freedom against oppression.

In other words, they are helping Hamas because Hamas represents freedom and opposes racism. Really?

The Western idea of freedom includes such things as freedom of speech, press, and religion. It includes the idea of equality between men and women, fairness to ethnic and religious minorities, gays, etc.

Hamas is violently (and I mean violently) opposed to those freedoms. It also believes that the land of Israel belongs only to Muslims, and that the proper behavior of a Muslim toward a Jew is to kill him (I call that racism, don’t you?)

None of this is hidden; it’s spelled out in the Hamas covenant, which also repeats traditional antisemitic themes.

It’s likely that some of our progressive friends would agree that Hamas is a little primitive, but it’s necessary to work with them in order to stand up for international law, which Israel supposedly violates in multiple ways.

In fact, Hamas  — and the massive anti-Zionist apparatus of delegitimization that’s been constructed over the past few years (financed by Arab money and built by Western ‘progressive’ intellectuals) — are doing their best to abet the violent destruction of a UN member state whose existence is more firmly grounded in international law than many Arab states.

Hamas itself controls Gaza after a violent coup against the Palestinian Authority in which many of its opponents were murdered. Hamas launched murderous suicide bombings to kill Israelis, and fired thousands of rockets into Israel. Insofar as anyone is violating international law, it’s Hamas.

Well, they say, now running out of arguments, “the Jews took the Arabs’ land.” This is a longer story, because you need to talk about the history of the land, the provenance of the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs in it, the various wars and who started them, the opportunities for coexistence and who rejected them, the behavior of the Palestinian and other Arab leadership, and — importantly — the way the Palestinian Arabs express their ‘frustration’ at the presence of Jews in ‘their’ land. But at the end of the day, the simple fact is that a Jewish state in the land of Israel is completely legitimate — and it has a right to defend itself.

What’s left for these ‘progressives’? Just that they really, really hate the Jewish state. They hate the idea that Jews, who are not even proper human beings, would have the audacity to insist on a state, as if they were France or something!

In their confusion they like to make analogies between the Jews of Israel and Nazi Germany, although it was the Palestinian Arabs that collaborated with Hitler. They compare ships that support Hamas to the ships that brought Jewish Holocaust survivors to this same coast before 1948. They like to use the words ‘apartheid’ and  ‘genocide’ to describe Jewish self-defense against murderous terrorism, when it is Hamas that actually advocates apartheid and even genocide. The more absurd the inversion, the more effective it seems to be as a propaganda device.

This mass derangement is caused by hatred. It is an old, old story and the Jews are familiar with it. Our response has finally been to create a Jewish state, like other states. Some may have expected that the simple fact of Israel’s existence would put an end to the hatred, but that was apparently a vain hope. But the state does provide us with a means to defend ourselves against the hate, as it waxes and wanes like a fever from generation to generation.

Today anti-Jewish hate is in a growth phase, and the ‘freedom’ flotilla is another expression of this. But it’s no more an expression of the love of freedom than the Nazi rallies at Nuremberg.

Technorati Tags: Gaza, Freedom Flotilla, Israel, Hamas

News item:

The past year has seen a marked rise of anti-Semitism, increasing over 100 percent throughout the world, the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism of Tel-Aviv University outlined on Sunday, on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day.

According to the institute, violent anti-Semitic attacks, ranging from vandalism and arson against Jewish targets to beatings of Jews, increased in 2009 by a startling percentage. The report underlined the severe increase in anti-Semitic attacks, specifying that 2009 displayed the highest amount of attacks recorded in over 20 years…

The report illustrated that that this year was particularly charged due to international reactions to Operation Cast Lead, which resulted in anti-Jewish demonstrations around the world.

Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress — which sponsored the report — said that the rise of anti-Semitic sentiment in Western Europe can be blamed on forces outside the region.

“This new phenomenon is financed and organized by pro-Islamic, pro-terrorist organizations and states,” Kantor said. [my emphasis]

I was present at a local demonstration at the time of Operation Cast Lead, which illustrated this (on a smaller scale, of course):

• The participants in the demonstration expressed themselves in strongly antisemitic — not just anti-Zionist — ways.
• Although there was no actual violence — it was close at times, but local organizers prevented it — the intent was clearly to frighten and intimidate the small group of counter demonstrators.
• A massive number of demonstrators, who appeared to be mostly high school and college age and of Middle Eastern origin, were brought in from out of town by the organizers.
• This occurred shortly after the start of the operation, and long before the various ‘human rights’ groups and Goldstone produced their tendentious reports.

This demonstration was significantly larger and more confrontational than a similar one held in 2006 during the Second Lebanon War. I expect this trend to continue.

The degree of organization involved in anti-Israel ‘happenings’ of all kinds seems to be increasing. It’s instructive to look at the way the disruption of Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech at UC Irvine was carefully planned and orchestrated by the Muslim Student Union there (and also to note their baldfaced lie that it was ‘spontaneous’). If you haven’t seen the evidence, look at the link above; it’s fascinating.

These organized activities have several purposes:

1. In time of war, to generate immediate pressure on the US administration to step in to protect Israel’s opponents, even if they are terrorist groups like Hamas and Hizballah;
2. In time of peace to erode support for Israel’s self-defense by portraying it as illegitimate;
3. All the time to silence those — like Oren — who can effectively present Israel’s case (absurdly, the Israel-haters insist that it is we who try to silence them!).

I don’t recall where I saw this, but someone recently said that the extreme Left and the extreme Right have actually gotten to the point of coordinating their activities on the one issue that they can agree about — Jews and Israel.

While the more sophisticated Western anti-Zionists have usually been careful to try to express themselves in a way which is not overtly antisemitic — after all, so many of them are Jews — this is not the case among immigrants and students from the Middle East. As a result, antisemites of various stripes are encouraged to join in. As this kind of expression becomes more common, it becomes more mainstream.

Especially in academic environments and among young people, there is a sort of competition for who can express themselves in the most extreme way. This, I think, is because in these cases there are no negative consequences for being an extremist — while it attracts the attention of peers.

There is also the encouragement US anti-Zionists draw from the perception that the US administration is on their side. When the Obama administration treats Israel’s PM like the leader of an enemy, and when suggestions like “Israeli intransigence … was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region” are made by those close to the administration,  the uglier players respond more strongly in their own way.

Here’s my prediction: when the next armed conflict with Hamas or Hizballah occurs — and it is inevitable — we will see a big increase in antisemitism in the US, even outside of traditional hot spots, like universities and cities like San Francisco. I expect that even the local demonstrations here will be more unpleasant.

I expect those American Jews who insist that there is no connection between Jews and Israel — or even blame Israel for antisemitism — to be outraged. I’d like to think that it will be a lesson for them, but probably they’ll draw the wrong conclusions.

Technorati Tags: Israel, antisemitism

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