Is anti-Zionism anti-Semitism?
It’s an old question. I agree with Brendan O’Neill when he writes this in response:
Is it anti-Semitic to criticise Israel? Of course not. No nation on Earth should be shielded from the brickbats or even the ridicule of the world’s citizens.
Is it anti-Semitic to rage day in, day out against Israel? To think of little else? To let this tiny state occupy your every waking thought? To call it uniquely barbarous, borderline demonic, a nation that lusts after blood like no other? To dream of its destruction? To traipse through the streets every week hollering for its obliteration? To call its citizens genocidal freaks and lunatics? To taunt them with memories of their ancestors’ extermination by branding them ‘Nazis’? To devote yourself so singularly to this one nation’s erasure that you come to define your entire political personality by that warped goal and proudly declare yourself an ‘anti-Zionist’?
Yes. Yes, that is anti-Semitic. If you maniacally obsess over the Jewish homeland, and detest Jewish nationalism more than any other nationalism, and gleefully chant for the death of the Jewish nation’s soldiers, and fantasise about the violent excision of the Jewish State ‘from the river to the sea’, then you have a problem with Jews. And more of us need to say so.
“Double standard” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Israel is judged by completely unique standards and subject to completely unique demands, in addition to having to withstand a constant barrage of accusatory lies.
Those who accuse us of being Nazis are themselves Nazis. I speak from my knowledge of history, and if any group in the vicinity of Jerusalem is an ‘invading colonist’ it is the Muslims. Strange, isn’t it, that the Muslims can’t get along with anyone, including themselves.
They can go to hell!
Okay, shall it be termed
IDS = Israel Derangement Syndrome or
JDS = Jew Derangement Syndrome ??
David, as I say about the Syrian Civil War that left hundreds of thousands dead and millions of refugees without much complaint from the usual suspects:
That’s what Israel’s enemies like to do to each other when they don’t have a Jew to gas.
Yes, it’s really all about the double standards. My guess is that many don’t even get that they’re doing it. Cognitive dissonance? The soft bigotry of low expectations? Who knows why.
I would be willing to bet that a vast majority of those protesting Israel’s war on Hammas, have no idea what Zionism is. For them it’s the Jews.
And what other country, except Israel, is told that it “doesn’t have the right to exist”?
I can’t imagine anyone saying that Sweden, or Greece, or India doesn’t have the right to exist.
Speaking generally (although in some cases to specific people), I think we should resist the tendency to pathologize such things as these so-called Derangement Syndromes, and the practice of doing so. They are not sicknesses. They are evil.
“Is anti-Zionism anti-Semitism?”
Yes. Singular and/or specific criticism’s of Israel are not, in and of themselves evidence of anti-Zionism. Denying Israel’s right to exist* IS anti-Zionism and, the motivation that drives the denial of Israel’s right to exist is anti-Semitism.
*proposing conditions that would lead to Israel’s destruction is essentially denying Israel’s right to exist, as if implemented it would result in Israel ceasing to exist. An example is proposals that Israel retreat from the Golan Heights and return to its pre-1967 borders.
We are in a time of value inversions. The planet is pro-Palestinian (“from the river to the sea”) and anti-Jew. That is anti-semitism by definition. It is hard for me to ascertain any rational basis for it. Gazans voted to be ruled by Hamas, so we should feel sorry for them? No.
Charles,
” Multiculturalism” and open borders being forced on the Western Nation State’s population is basically an attempt to erase nations such as Sweden and Greece.
One part of the problem is that anti-Zionism is a slippery, overloaded term.
It would seem to mean being opposed to the Zionist movement which intended to create the state of Israel, but these days it has morphed to mean being critical of Israel in general.
I’m critical of many countries, including my own, but no calls me an anti-Americanist and I don’t either.
In practice anti-Zionism is a dodge often used by true anti-Semites. It’s become a Motte-and-Bailey maneuver:
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The motte-and-bailey fallacy … is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions that share similarities: one modest and easy to defend (the “motte”) and one much more controversial and harder to defend (the “bailey”). The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, insists that only the more modest position is being advanced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
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I wish we could get rid of the term entirely, but of course, that’s not going to happen.
as potter stewart said it, on a different subject’ you know it when you see it,’
Look Israel, if you can control the weather and have space lasers that blow up peaceful humanitarian UN-sponsored aid you’re going to get a little brushback.
I can understand, without agreeing with, arguments that Israel’s government and/or populace have supported policies that violate acceptable standards of behavior towards enemies domestic and foreign. I can object to Germany’s recent shenanigans with its elections without despising German people in general; I can deplore totalitarianism in China without harboring a radial animus against people of Chinese descent.
I can even believe that non-Israeli Jews are hypercritical of what they perceive to be Israel’s failing because they are so tied to Israel by culture and history.
I can’t tolerate people who are so virulently angry with any Jew, or even any Jew who doesn’t bitterly hate Israel, that they can justify contempt, violence, torture, and murder wielded against all Jews wherever encountered. As many noted above, the glaring double standard also is a tell.
Eric Hoffer, author of The True Believer, called out this standard of behavior reserved only for Jews and the Jewish state of Israel decades ago.
“The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese–and no one says a word about refugees.
But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.
Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.”
Israel has an additional load; it is of The West. Thus, its enemies are always justified and even shooting back in self-defense is an atrocity.
Don’t need to be Jewish or Israel to get The Treatment.
You have to love a blog that just casually drops wisdom from Eric Hoffer.
Speaking of wisdom, here’s some from the WSJ. And even somewhat relevant to this post.
The ICC Is a Danger to Americans
https://archive.md/5fREu
Nice.
I think israel has been way too soft with its genocidal adversaries
Turkeys occupation of Cyprus is closer to Smallpox Blankets Island , by the Oxford Union doesn’t boycott Turkey.
Question solved.
Thanks for the vid. Youtube suggested more, which led to info on Helen’s life after Annie’s death.
The movie should be re-released in theaters.
Well said.
What about a position that has been increasingly in the mainstream conservative and classical liberal circles lately, that Israel is controlling our country, that the Epstein thing is an Israeli conspiracy to control the world’s elites, etc?
I’m not sure if I would jump to brand anyone questioning Israel’s role in our politics, or who is calling on Israel to make peace, as antisemitic. When it looks like you’re completely shutting down the conversation, people get even more suspicious.
However, I do think a lot of these people can become antisemitic because they end up falling into a belief that Jews are controlling everything.
@ shadow > ” I do think a lot of these people can become antisemitic because they end up falling into a belief that Jews are controlling everything.”
And, assuming this is sarcasm from sharksauce: “Look Israel, if you can control the weather and have space lasers that blow up peaceful humanitarian UN-sponsored aid you’re going to get a little brushback.”
Israel: Worst. World. Controllers. Ever.