FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Barry Rubin published a piece about Jew-hatred in Holland yesterday. He made the point that

Traditionally, the Netherlands was friendly to Israel and while it has always had its anti-Semites and even, historically, fascists, it had far less proportionately than other European countries during the last half-century. In other words, if things are bad in the Netherlands, they’re really bad.

Today they are, he said, and he added,

Last year, the chief rabbi of the Netherlands spoke in a published interview in which he spoke extensively about his love for the country, the good treatment of Jews there, and other such points. Asked at the end, however, whether there was any future for Jews in the country he said, “No,” and advised the community to move to Israel.

A lot has to with the increase in the number of Muslims there, who are strongly anti-Israel and increasingly antisemitic. But it’s not an accident that antisemitism is often compared to a virus, and in Europe the immunity conferred by the Holocaust appears to be wearing off, and it is spreading in the general population.

In a few countries, including some whose Jewish population was almost entirely wiped out, anti-Jewish banners are routinely in evidence at soccer games. In Greece, Golden Dawn party leaders and activists routinely blame Jews for Greece’s economic problems, deny the holocaust, etc. There are only a few thousand Jews left in Greece (from a pre-WW2 population of about 77,000).

The 1,500 Jewish residents of Malmo, Sweden (pop. 300,000) are fleeing because of a combination of violent anti-Jewish acts by Muslims and an official attitude that it is the Jews’ fault. In Norway, with a tiny Jewish contingent of about 1,000 people, ‘Jew’ is a popular insult among high school students.

New figures put the Jewish population of the world at 13,800,000. 6 million of them are in Israel, 5.5 million in the US, 680,000 in Canada, 500,000 in France, and 290,000 in the UK. Jews in Europe are feeling more and more uncomfortable as a result of increasing antisemitism, from Muslim immigrants, the extreme Left, and of course the old-fashioned fascist Right. In France, it has taken a particularly violent form, and many French Jews feel that the authorities are not capable of protecting them.

Although its practitioners are at pains to deny it, the irrational and extreme hatred of Israel evident in many segments of European society has long since become substantially indistinguishable from Jew-hatred. There are similar trends in other places — in South America, where Hugo Chavez exploited anti-Israel and anti-Jewish attitudes in the traditional way, and even to a smaller extent in Australia where there has recently been an influx of  Lebanese Muslims.

All this raises the question, “what about the US?”

On the one hand, in the US there is a very strong taboo against anything perceived as a form of racism — sometimes to the point of silliness. As I’ve written before, the trauma of institutionalized anti-black racism has created a reaction not dissimilar to the European one that followed the Holocaust (which was felt in the US to a lesser extent). Ethnic jokes and stereotypes are not acceptable in polite society or media here — far less so than in the UK, for example — even though our laws about what can be said in public are more permissive.

On the other, extreme anti-Zionism (what one blogger called “misoziony” and Judea Pearl referred to as “Zionophobia“), irrational hatred of the Jewish state, flourishes here on the Left and in academia. It does not trigger the antibodies of the anti-racism taboo, and indeed receives cover as an expression of free speech and academic freedom — the practitioners thereof understand this very well and push it to the limit.

The fact that anti-Zionism has become part of the conventional wisdom in universities is bad, because what happens there is what economists call a ‘leading indicator’ — a measure that has predictive value for the future. Today’s students are tomorrow’s business and political leaders, and we can already see the effects of this in the attitude toward Israel found among officials in the left-leaning Obama Administration (including the President himself).

Although we cannot predict for certain what will happen in the US, the experience of much of the rest of the world is not encouraging. So even American Jews can be excused if they return to the ‘outdated’ idea that the Jewish state exists in part to be a place of refuge for persecuted Jews.

It’s ironic to note that some of the extremists of the Israeli Left might not exist if their parents or grandparents hadn’t found refuge in the ‘Zionist entity’ that they love to revile!

Technorati Tags: Israel, antisemitism

Barry Rubin has a fascinating post (here) about recognizing antisemitism, and how so many otherwise smart people can’t do it.

Almost at the end he makes a significant point in an offhand way. Talking about some Jewish communists who displayed great antipathy to Judaism and were “more loyal than the king” in attacking anticommunists, he suggests that they are motivated by “ideology and selfish self-promoting … interests” rather than self-hatred, which he calls “a major myth.”

Of course. Most of the Jewish Israel-haters, from the ones who are out front about it, like Max Blumenthal, to the ones who claim to be “pro-Israel” while they do their best to subvert it, like Jeremy Ben Ami of J Street, do not have a strong enough connection to Judaism to hate themselves over it.

They are probably quite honest in expressing the bemusement they feel when they are called “self-hating Jews.” In truth, they are barely Jews at all. What’s to hate?

Marcy Winograd, a candidate for Congress in Los Angeles, gives us this perfect example:

Though I identify with persecuted Jews, I grow up longing to be part of the dominant culture. I hang little red and green lights on plastic Christmas trees and rarely visit temple except to hava nagila at the boys’ bar mitzvahs or to pray on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when we never atone for the sin of theft, slaughter, or occupation.

No hate here, just indifference. Rubin’s suggestion is much more straightforward: Jewish anti-Zionists use their Jewish ethnicity to increase their power and importance, to draw attention to themselves and to gain credibility, because in the ceaseless din of the arena of anti-Zionist activism, it’s hard to stand out without a unique shtick.

Technorati Tags: anti-Zionism

Hannah Rosenthal, Obama's Antisemitism Poobah

Barack Obama’s appointment of Hannah Rosenthal — no relation to this writer, thank goodness — to be “Special Envoy for Global Anti-Semitism” (definitely not “Antisemitism Czar”) is emblematic of the way this administration has consistently tried to use Jews to justify its anti-Israel policy.

Hannah Rosenthal is a member of the J Street Advisory board and she writes stuff like this (April 2008):

Six years ago this week, JCPA [she was the director of this group] was one of many organizations that helped bring thousands of Jews, and hundreds of our friends and allies, to Washington to support Israel at a National Israel Solidarity Rally. It was an historic occasion, and I recall much of that day with fondness and pride.

I also recall the many rally attendees who pulled me aside to ask why the word “peace” was so absent from the proceedings. How could we talk security without talking peace? Where were the voices representing the will of the broader American Jewish community? Why were there no speakers giving voice to a pro-Israel vision of a secure Israel living side-by-side in peace with its neighbors?

Throughout this day of speeches and rallying cries, I began to ask myself the same questions: Where was the pro-Israel, pro-peace message? Why was the voice of so many American Jews absent from this rally?

How did we arrive at a place where pro-Israel events had come to be dominated by narrow, ultra-conservative views of what it means to be pro-Israel?

Abe Foxman of the ADL took her to task sharply, quoting many of the speakers who did talk about peace, such as Rep. Richard Gephart, Sen. Harry Reid, Paul Wolfowitz, Natan Sharansky, Rudy Giuliani, etc. Considering that the Solidarity Rally was a response to a series of murderous suicide bombings, including the Passover Seder Massacre in which 30 lost their lives, it’s surprising that ‘peace’ was mentioned at all.

But it was. So why did Rosenthal and friends not hear it?

One reason was that the speakers, representing a range of opinion from the Center to the Right, probably did not use their time to accuse Israel of human rights violations, and they probably called for an end to Palestinian terrorism — there was plenty of it at that time — and not Israeli militarism (for J Street, Israeli self-defense should always be condemned, as they did at the beginning of Operation Cast Lead).

Another was that to the J Street mind, anyone who advocates any other policy than surrender to Palestinian demands is an “ultra-conservative” (they also like “neo-con” and “anti-peace” a lot) — and you don’t have to listen to them.

I’m not going to dump on the Arab and Iranian supported and anti-Israel J Street yet again, nor fulminate about the arrogation of the word ‘peace’ by the extreme Left — don’t they think, for example, that Natan Sharansky wants peace? –  but rather point out why Ms Rosenthal is not qualified to be Antisemitism Poobah (hey, it’s better than ‘Czar’).

This is because the nature and source of antisemitism has undergone a change in recent years. The neo-Nazi skinheads and Pat Buchanan are still around, but much antisemitism today comes from the Left in the guise of “opposition to Israeli policies”. But it goes far beyond reasoned political criticism; what it really is is what I called, for lack of a better word, Zionophobia, the extreme and irrational hatred of the Jewish state.

Although traditional right-wing antisemitism never appealed to many Jews — with some exceptions — the “new antisemitism“, which manifests itself primarily as Israel-hatred, is very popular among ‘progressives’ who happen to be Jewish. Excellent examples of ‘progressive’ Jewish antisemites are video terrorist Max Blumenthal and blogger Philip Weiss — both of whom were present at J Street’s recent conference in DC.

Hannah Rosenthal and other J Streeters are tolerant of anti-Israel extremism like that of Weiss and Blumenthal, because they simply do not understand the connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel — in fact, it seems that they share the view of Mahmoud Abbas that there is no Jewish people.

If that’s true, then no wonder that they don’t understand the equivalence of extreme Israel-hatred to antisemitism!

Choosing a J Streeter for this job is like picking a deaf person to tune a piano.

Technorati Tags: Hannah Rosenthal, Barack Obama, J Street, antisemitism