Love of the Land: The myth of Jewish self-hatred

The myth of Jewish self-hatred

Marcy Winograd

Fresnozionism.org
22 February '10

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?

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: The myth of Jewish self-hatred

Love of the Land: Should Israel's conduct in Gaza have provoked this mad-dog fury?

Should Israel's conduct in Gaza have provoked this mad-dog fury?

Stephanie Gutmann
Telegraph.co.uk
07 February '10

(Good question, good answer. Y.)

Or is there, as the psychologists would say, “something else going on”?
Look, I love Daniel Hannan and would like him to come over and run for president of the United States in 2012 but I was disturbed by something in his recent post about the motivations for anti-Semitism. I don’t want to be confused with one of those nags who’s always ready to find some tiny ideological misstep and consign would-be friends to an enemies list. No, I think what I’m doing here is making a different point. I think Daniel and a number of intelligent, well-informed people are missing an important part of the picture about anti-Semitism in Britain, Europe or wherever and its relationship to the Gaza invasion.

Daniel wrote:

Anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise in Britain and (hat-tip Mark Steyn) in the rest of Europe. Many of the perpetrators are reported as having been provoked by the invasion of Gaza… [But] why should British Jews be held answerable for the actions of the Israeli government? The most bellicose critics of Israel are forever telling us that their quarrel is with Zionism, not with Jews. If so, it seems perverse in the extreme to attack those Jews who have declined to migrate to Zion.

What hangs in the air here is the notion that it is not odd to get so incensed about Israel’s conduct that you would feel moved to do something extreme, and that the odd part is blaming it on British Jews. Reasonable people would ask themselves, as Daniel put it, “why should British Jews be held answerable for the actions of the Israeli government?” and then they would not, say, throw the rock and then we could still call them reasonable people.

And I too would congratulate them for their reasonableness – for not throwing the rock is a big deal – but then I would like them to take the next step on the road to sanity. I would like them to see how the intensity of the reaction, the fact that we can even think of Israel’s conduct in Gaza as understandable provocation, is itself a symptom of the madness. In other words, no, “Israel’s rampage in Gaza” does not “provide a convenient cover story”, to paraphrase Julian Kossoff. The interesting part that so many of you are missing is that the conduct is used to provide a cover story for people who are looking for a convenient cover story.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Should Israel's conduct in Gaza have provoked this mad-dog fury?

Love of the Land: Not all Euro-elites are anti-Israel

Not all Euro-elites are anti-Israel

Clarice Feldman
American Thinker
05 Februray '10

Catalonian journalist Pilar Rahola breaks with the European elites in offering up a strong defense of Israel.

In a speech too full of smart thinking to be summarized, she defends Israel against its foolish and unfair detractors in European governments and the press:

Orphan of a reasonable left, orphan of serious journalism, orphan of a decent UN, and orphan of a tolerant Islam, Israel suffers the paradigm of the 21st Century: the lack of a solid commitment with the values of liberty. Nothing seems strange. Jewish culture represents, as no other does, the metaphor of a concept of civilization which suffers today attacks on all flanks. You are the thermometer of the world's health. Whenever the World has had totalitarian fever, you have suffered. In the Spanish Middle Ages, in Christian persecutions, in Russian pogroms, in European Fascism, in Islamic fundamentalism. Always, the first enemy of totalitarianism has been the Jew. And, in these times of energy dependency and social uncertainty, Israel embodies, in its own flesh, the eternal Jew.

A pariah nation among nations, for a pariah people among peoples. That is why the antisemitism of the 21st Century has dressed itself with the efficient disguise of anti-Israelism, or its synonym, anti-Zionism. All criticism against Israel is antisemitism? NO. But all present-day antisemitism has turned into prejudice and the demonization of the Jewsih State. New clothes for an old hatred.

Full speech in translation on her website can be read here

Love of the Land: Not all Euro-elites are anti-Israel

Love of the Land: Analysis: Hedy Epstein's European media sex appeal: Anti-Zionism and survivor of the Holocaust

Analysis: Hedy Epstein's European media sex appeal: Anti-Zionism and survivor of the Holocaust

Benjamin Weinthal
Berlin/JPost
03 January '10

There is a tried-and-true Jewish method in Europe to garner instant media coverage and awards of recognition: Scream the trendy anti-Israeli slogans equating the Jewish state with Nazi Germany and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, while highlighting one's background as a Holocaust survivor.

According to seasoned media observers in Germany, the formula of Shoah survivor coupled with anti-Israeli activism helps to explain the public relations coup of Hedy Epstein, an anti-Zionist 85-year-old German Jew who fled the Nazis in 1939, and is now promoting her hunger strike in Egypt to advance the so-called "Free Gaza Movement."

Epstein declared her hunger strike on Monday, as part of a campaign involving 1,400 activists from 42 countries in Egypt hoping to enter Gaza, in a bid to compel Israel to end its restrictions on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. She has attracted widespread press coverage in Europe.

Prompting the activists, many of whom are from organizations affiliated with Hamas, to march into Gaza, is the one-year anniversary of the start of Operation Cast Lead to stop Hamas rocket attacks on Israel's southern periphery.

The European laws of supply and demand (similar ones apply on many American college campuses) show an endless demand for Jewish senior citizens willing to invoke anti-Israeli language that meets the definitions of contemporary anti-Semitism. According to a Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs report, Epstein had "compared Israel to a Nazi state and Israeli soldiers to Nazis" during a lecture at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Writing this past week from Beirut, the liberal Huffington Post site reported that Epstein said, "The issue for Israeli Jews and the American Jewish community is the Holocaust, and everything is due to the Holocaust. But Israel is not being persecuted now. Israel is the persecutor."

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Analysis: Hedy Epstein's European media sex appeal: Anti-Zionism and survivor of the Holocaust

Love of the Land: How the Left turned on Israel

How the Left turned on Israel

Colin Shindler
The Jewish Chronicle
23 December 09

Since the beginning of the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000, an important feature in the debate on the Israel-Palestine imbroglio has been a questioning of the legitimacy of Israel as a nation-state by sections of the political Left and the liberal and cultural intelligentsia in Britain.

Such opinion has moved from passionately supporting the right of the Jews to self-determination in 1948 (by figures such as Aneurin Bevan, Bertrand Russell and Tony Benn) to questioning that right over 60 years later.

Today, Israel is often seen as troublesome on a good day and illegitimate on a bad one. Like many Israelis, many wish to roll the borders back to the 1967 boundaries, but there is also a growing number who wish to return to 1948.

This disillusionment with Israel began before the conquests of the Six-Day War and the settlement drive on the West Bank.

Whereas the Old Left had fought Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the East End with the Jews, and lived through the Holocaust and the rise of Israel, the New Left came of age during the era of decolonisation in the 1960s. While Jews disproportionately participated in those anti-colonial struggles, the Shoah and the rise of Israel was not simply another historical event. Even for those born long after the war, it was understood that all Jews are survivors. This level of consciousness separates a majority of the Jewish Left from the broader British Left.

In 2009, a state with a Jewish majority in the Middle East does not sit easily with Marxist doctrine, post-colonial theory and Islamist belief. It is this inability to define Zionism and to classify the Jews which has brought together liberals, social democrats, Trotskyists, Stalinists and the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood front organisations.

(Read full article)

This article was based on Colin Shindler’s inaugural lecture at SOAS as the UK’s first Professor of Israeli Studies. His ‘The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right’ has just been published in paperback by IB Tauris

Love of the Land: How the Left turned on Israel

Love of the Land: Exploting the language of morality and human rights

Exploting the language of morality and human rights

Gerald Steinberg
NGO Monitor
17 December 09

Trends in the Delegitimization of Israel in the International Arena, Global Forum on Antisemitism

Two days ago, a British judge issued a warrant for the arrest of Tzipi Livni, who served as Foreign Minister and is now the Israeli opposition leader, on charges of “war crimes”. Many Israelis responded by stating that “We are all Tzipi Livni” – in our democratic state with a citizens army, we share responsibility for defense. Israeli and British leaders correctly condemned such actions, speaking about the negative impact on the peace process and restating the importance bilateral relations.

These dimensions are significant, the main reason for rejecting such examples of lawfare is moral. This judicial theater exploits the principles, language and institutions, including courts, of international law in promote exactly the opposite -- denying the Jewish people the basic rights of self-defense and sovereign equality. This is grossly immoral.

The new antisemitism – directed at the Jewish collective rather than Jews as individuals –is most virulent precisely where the language of morality is used most frequently and stridently. When university professors and students promote this agenda through “Israeli apartheid week”, and refer to Israel as a “Nazi state” while seeking to dismantle the Jewish nation-state, this is immoral.

When “progressive” journalists and media publish cartoons with Israeli leaders, including Tzipi Livni, and that echo the images of der Sturmer, this is immoral. And when NGOs claiming to promote universal human rights and morality are silent as Gilad Shalit is held for more than three years in Gaza, but they join Libya and Iran in the Durban process and the United Nations Human Rights Council, to lead the campaigns using labels like “war crimes” and apartheid”, this is immoral.

Recently, Robert Bernstein, the founder of Helsinki Watch, now Human Rights Watch – an NGO superpower with a $42 million budget, wrote a very painful oped in the New York Times denouncing his own organization for its contribution in helping turn Israel into a pariah state.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Exploting the language of morality and human rights

Love of the Land: Annoying

Annoying

I spent the past two days in Jerusalem attending the annual 2009 Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism (GFCA). There were more than 500 participants from over 50 countries. Among those taking part was Lithuania’s Foreign Minister, Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, and the Czech Republic’s Minister of Human Rights. There were also legislators, jurists, academics, and heads of many NGO's among the participants... and as near as I could determine, one cartoonist.

You can visit the GFCA website by clicking here.

Love of the Land: Annoying

Love of the Land: But Some of His Best Friends Are Jews (Who Hate Israel)

But Some of His Best Friends Are Jews (Who Hate Israel)

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
06 December 09

Season’s greetings from Stephen Walt, who is thankful for ten things this year. Number six:

Supporters. The controversy over The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy also brought me a legion of new friends, some of whom I would never have met otherwise. My thanks to inspired writers and activists like Phil Weiss, Tony Judt, M.J. Rosenberg, Jerome Slater, Avi Shlaim, Uri Avnery, Sydney Levy, and many, many more.

All of the above, to varying degrees, believe that Israel is a sinister presence in the world. Some, such as Phil Weiss and Tony Judt, are anti-Zionists who wish for Israel to be destroyed. Others have devoted their lives and careers to relentlessly and tendentiously criticizing the Jewish state. There are, of course, great numbers of gentiles who also share these views, have pursued similar careers, and think that The Israel Lobby is first-rate scholarship. But the list of Walt’s new friends consists only of Jews. He seems a little touchy on the matter, wouldn’t you say?

Love of the Land: But Some of His Best Friends Are Jews (Who Hate Israel)

Love of the Land: Blood libels then and now

Blood libels then and now

FresnoZionism.org
03 December 09

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.

(Full article)

Love of the Land: Blood libels then and now

Love of the Land: Europe’s imperialist chutzpah

Europe’s imperialist chutzpah

FresnoZionism.org
02December 09

The Israeli Knesset has belatedly become aware of the huge amount of money that is flowing into Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from European governments and other sources with anti-Israel agendas. Prof. Gerald Steinberg of the organization “NGO Monitor”spoke at the Knesset yesterday, saying in part,

As Israeli citizens, we do not know how much money is involved – it is at least tens of millions of euros – or the names of all the organizations that receive these funds. In most cases, we are also not informed of European government funding behind rallies in support of one policy or in protest to another.

The same is true for academic conferences on human rights, occupation, or international law; large advertisements on the front page of a Friday newspaper (at the cost of tens of thousands of shekels); when the High Court pronounces on a case regarding the location of the separation barrier or security checks at the airport; submissions to the United Nations committees condemning Israeli responses to terror; and in many other crucial issues that affect our lives and the policies of our democratically elected government.

The nature and scale of this manipulation is unprecedented in relations between democratic countries – in no other case does one government (or groups of governments) use taxpayer money to support opposition groups in another democratic country. And there is no precedent for allowing these groups to use foreign government money to influence and manipulate the civil societies, political discourse, legal process and foreign policies.

Imagine the French response [to] an American government program that secretly gave one billion dollars to anti-abortion campaigners in Paris, or to promote human rights in Corsica. Or the Spanish response to funds from foreign governments that promote Basque issues.

Some of the organizations that receive this funding are simply — there’s no other way to describe them — enemies of the Jewish state. For example, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHR-I) worked closely with Human Rights Watch (HRW) to develop the medical ‘evidence’ for Israeli ‘war crimes’ that were supposedly ‘documented’ in a tendentious HRW report that I called a “blood libel”. This report was then used as one of the sources for the Goldstone Commission’s slanderous report, which may be used to prosecute Israelis for ‘war crimes’.

(Continue article)

Related: The Eu Lobby in Israel, Gerald Steinberg on European Funding for Israeli NGOs

Love of the Land: Europe’s imperialist chutzpah

Love of the Land: Joel Beinin Whines about Israeli Airport’s “Harassment”

Joel Beinin Whines about Israeli Airport’s “Harassment”

Steven Plaut
FrontPagemag.com
01 December 09

Being a leftist Anti-Zionist means not only never having to say you are sorry, such as when you get your facts all wrong. It also means that you have an obligation to represent yourself as a victim of harassment. Armchair martyrdom is as fundamental a part of leftist ideology as anti-Americanism and hatred of Israel.

In his now-famous essay from July, 1976, “The Intelligent Co-ed’s Guide to America,” Thomas Wolfe wrote about how desperately American academics wish to feel persecuted. A pretense of being persecuted today seems to do wonders both for their ego and for their web traffic. The entire “Zionist Lobby” is largely an invention by these same people, anxious to show that they are being oppressed by an evil nefarious conspiracy. You just need to wave your stigmata and denounce the “Neo-Conservatives,” the “Rightwing McCarthyists,” and – of course the Jews. Whining about being persecuted seems to be the leading participation sport of today’s far Leftists and the radical armchair postureurs.

As documented recently on this web site, Joel Beinin, the Israel-hating pro-Hamas sometimes-Maoist professor of Middle East Studies at Stanford University is just such a persecution whiner. Here is what we wrote:

‘“McCarthyism” seems to be Beinin’s third favorite “m” word, after Marxism and Mao, and he applies it liberally to anyone who dares to criticize him. Beinin wrote a 2004 article called “The New McCarthyism: Policing Thought about the Middle East.” In it, Beinin denounced the Ford Foundation’s decision to withdraw funding from any university grantee that finances the promotion of “violence, terrorism, or bigotry or the destruction of any state.” What worried Beinin was that such restrictions could potentially hurt a “Palestinian student group [that] called for the replacement of the state of Israel with a secular, democratic state,” meaning one seeking the extermination of Israel.’

Beinin went on to declare that Bay Area Zionists silenced him and prevented him from giving a talk to a school in San Jose. The San Francisco Chronicle checked and reported that no one at all from the local Jewish Community had even spoken with anyone at that school.

Well, the good professor is back. Over the Thanksgiving weekend he widely circulated the following epistle, which we reprint for you here in full, spelling errors and all:

(Continue article)

Love of the Land: Joel Beinin Whines about Israeli Airport’s “Harassment”

Love of the Land: Iran's Nuclear Anti-Zionism is Genocidal, Not Political

Iran's Nuclear Anti-Zionism is Genocidal, Not Political

Kenneth L. Marcus
Jewish Policy Center/inFocus
Winter 2009

Charles Asher Small, director of Yale's Interdisciplinary Initiative for the Study of Anti-Semitism, tells the story of the reception he received from Rwandan activists at this year's Durban II Conference. As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rose to the Geneva stage, the Rwandans asked Small why the Jewish community is not doing more to prevent the obvious consummation of Ahmadinejad's fiery rhetoric. The Rwandans had heard similar propaganda before.

They used this language against your people in the 1940's, they said, and they used it against our people in the 1990's. Why do you not see that Iran's treatment of Israel today is no different?

From bitter experience, the Rwandans recognized genocidal intent in the Iranian leader's invective. They could not understand how a people that had its own state, organizations and resources is not able to understand and combat the growing threat that Iran presents.

The Threats

Broadly speaking, there are three ways Iran's fast-developing nuclear arsenal could be put to use in its confrontation with Israel, the United States, and the West: strategic, political, and geopolitical. Experts often argue that the real danger of an Iranian nuclear weapon has less to do with whether the weapons would be fired, and more to do with how their mere possession would alter the balance of power. This could be true. Yet, if Iran's leadership should use these weapons to annihilate the people of Israel, the surprise will not be that they have done so, but that the world had failed to recognize the unmistakable signs that they would.

Ahmadinejad notoriously declared in 2006 that, "Israel should be wiped off the map." Repeatedly, and in many public venues, the Iranian leader has heaped extraordinary scorn on Israel and its Zionist supporters. Ahmadinejad's aspersions often fall into the two categories that genocide scholars characterize as hallmarks of mass-murderous incitement: dehumanization and demonization.

Denying the personhood of the Israeli people, he lectured in 2006 that Israelis are not human beings: "They are like cattle, nay, more misguided." At the same time, he attributes to Jews a diabolical evil: "Next to them," he stated, "all the criminals of the world seem righteous."

Following a pattern of other world historical figures responsible for genocide, Ahmadinejad predicted in 2008 the consequences for the target people: "Thanks to God, your wish will soon be realized, and this germ of corruption will be wiped off the face of the world."

As if to dispel any ambiguities about his intentions, he paraded a Shahab-3 missile through the streets of Tehran in 2008 with the message, "Israel must be wiped off the map."

The Case for Prosecution

There is a legal significance to Ahmadinejad's murderous charges. Several prominent international human rights lawyers and jurists have urged that Ahmadinejad be prosecuted for incitement to genocide.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Iran's Nuclear Anti-Zionism is Genocidal, Not Political

Love of the Land: United against Britain's 'Israel lobby'

United against Britain's 'Israel lobby'

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror
22 November 09

Lavish praise was heaped on some of Britain's media in the English-language Saudi Arab News, where columnist Neil Berry hailed last week's screening of "a groundbreaking Dispatches documentary for Britain's Channel 4 television, trailed by an article in The Guardian newspaper, [that] investigated the covert influence of Britain's 'Israel lobby.'"

If you take Berry's word for it, Tony Blair was a Zionist stooge, the British Labor party is run by the "Israel lobby," and if the Conservatives come to power in Britain, things will get even worse - if that's at all possible. But Berry assures his readers that not all is lost: he describes the publication of the Mearsheimer/Walt book on "The Israel Lobby" in the US as "an epoch-making event" that has led over the past few years "to a sea change in the climate of Western intellectual, as well as general public opinion, vis-à-vis the boundaries of debate about the Jewish state."

Indeed, relating to another event that caused much debate in Britain last week - namely the publication of the English translation of Shlomo Sand's new book, The Invention of the Jewish People - Berry confidently asserts that this book "is of similarly cardinal significance."

So let's try to get this straight: first the Jews (or maybe the Zionists?) invented the Jewish people, then the Jewish people and/or the Zionists proceeded to invent the Jewish Lobby - no, make this the "Israel lobby" - and then all these inventions went on to control much of the world.

Obviously, the idea that every Jewish achievement, including nowadays the Jewish state, comes at the expense of non-Jews and is somehow due to one big conspiracy that needs to be uncovered and undone, is hardly new. It unmistakably echoes the idea "Die Juden sind unser Unglück," that is: "the Jews are our misfortune," a concept first made popular by the German historian Heinrich von Treitschke in the 1880s and later adopted by the Nazis.

The makers of the British documentary on the "Israel lobby" were clearly well aware of the sordid history of this calumny, and therefore emphasized in an article published before the program aired: "It is important to say what we did not find. There is no conspiracy, and nothing resembling a conspiracy."

Mind you, this statement comes right after a paragraph that includes claims of an "operation" that is supposedly "carried on against media organisations that criticise Israel's foreign policy," and there is also the assertion that "Israel has a long reputation for bullying the BBC." It's a pretty clever formulation, because all it says is that there are people who believe that Israel is bullying the BBC - and no doubt, there are people who believe that.

Criticism of the program's "barely concealed antisemitic undertones" is thus hardly unfair. That this criticism is indeed richly deserved is also illustrated in an excellent post at the CST blog that examines the question "Who liked Dispatches?"

(Full article)

Love of the Land: United against Britain's 'Israel lobby'

Love of the Land: What Does "Pro-Palestinian" Really Mean?

What Does "Pro-Palestinian" Really Mean?

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
17 November 09

In recent years there has been a significant rise in the number of non-Palestinians who describe themselves as “pro-Palestinian” activists. These people can be found mostly on university campuses in North America and Europe.

What is striking is that many of these “pro-Palestinian” activists have never been to the Middle East, let alone the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. In most cases, they are not even Arabs or Muslims.

What makes them “pro-Palestinian”?

In their view, inciting against Israel on a university campus or publishing “anti-Zionist” material on the Internet is sufficient to earn them the title of “pro-Palestinian.” But what these folks have not realized is that their actions and words often do little to advance the interests of the Palestinians. In some instances, these actions and words are even counterproductive.

It is hard to see how organizing events such as “Israel Apartheid Week” on a university campus could help the cause of the Palestinians. Isn’t there already enough anti-Israel incitement that is being spewed out of Arab and Islamic media outlets?

If anyone is entitled to be called “pro-Palestinian,” it is those who are publicly campaigning against financial corruption and abuse of human rights by Fatah and Hamas. Those who are trying to change the system from within belong to the real “pro-Palestinian” camp.

These are the brave people who are standing up to both Fatah and Hamas and calling on them to stop killing each other and start doing something that would improve the living conditions of their constituents.

Instead of investing money and efforts in organizing Israel Apartheid Week, for example, the self-described “pro-Palestinians” could dispatch a delegation of teachers to Palestinian villages and refugee camps to teach young Palestinians English. Or they could send another delegation to the Gaza Strip to monitor human rights violations by the Hamas authorities and help Palestinian women confront Muslim fundamentalists who are trying to limit their role to cooking, raising children and looking after the needs of their husbands.
(Read full article)

Love of the Land: What Does "Pro-Palestinian" Really Mean?

Love of the Land: UK TV documentary alleging Zionist conspiracy brings torrent of anti-Semitic abuse into public view

UK TV documentary alleging Zionist conspiracy brings torrent of anti-Semitic abuse into public view

Robin Shepherd
RobinShepherdOnline.com
17 November 09

The airing last night of a rambling and analytically threadbare documentary alleging a secretive Zionist conspiracy against the British political establishment has immediately had the predictable effect of bringing anti-Semites and assorted Israel-haters right out of the woodwork.

The documentary shown on Channel 4 — the same channel which on Christmas Day last year gave Iran’s Holocaust-denying president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a seven minute, uninterrupted propaganda slot — was preceded by a primer in the Guardian which I wrote about yesterday. It effectively argued that since there is no sane or rational case to be made for Israel, the rare occasions when British politicians offer words of praise for the Jewish state can only be explained by the presence of a vast and wealthy Zionist lobby which is paying them or pressuring them to toe their line.

The Channel 4 website is now awash with adulation for the documentary and its makers — Peter Oborne and James Jones. Since Channel 4 is leaving all of this up on its site for public consumption, it is clear that they see nothing wrong with what is being said. Here is a small selection of the comments, some of which were published before the programme went out:

Read the rest of this entry »

Love of the Land: UK TV documentary alleging Zionist conspiracy brings torrent of anti-Semitic abuse into public view

Love of the Land: Top British documentary makers peddle conspiracy theory about secretive Zionist lobby ahead of landmark TV show

Top British documentary makers peddle conspiracy theory about secretive Zionist lobby ahead of landmark TV show

Journalist Peter Oborne

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
16 November 09

(This article has been updated with links to the full pamphlet explaining the show which airs Monday night. The distortions therein are quite breathtaking. The update also gives a link to Melanie Phillips’ take on the matter. For both, see the links at the end of the article)

You know the old line about the racist who prefaces a torrent of racially charged abuse with the words: “I’m not a racist, but…”? Something similar about conspiracy theories could be said about the makers of a landmark documentary due to be aired this evening on Britain’s Channel 4 Television alleging that a secretive group of Zionists (just “Zionists”, not Jews you understand) has got hold of Britain’s main political parties and is manipulating them to spew pro-Israeli propaganda.

Writing about their documentary in the Guardian (where else?), Peter Oborne, a columnist for the Daily Mail, and television journalist James Jones are, of course, anxious that they should not actually be labelled as conspiracy theorists and seek to pre-empt such charges thus: “It is important to say what we did not find,” they tell us nervously. “There is no conspiracy, and nothing resembling a conspiracy.”

Except that their entire piece makes it quite clear that a conspiracy is precisely what is being alleged.

Read the rest of this entry »

Love of the Land: Top British documentary makers peddle conspiracy theory about secretive Zionist lobby ahead of landmark TV show

Love of the Land: Top BBC presenter hosts eulogy to author who argues that the Jewish people do not exist, as UK anti-Zionist discourse hits another low

Top BBC presenter hosts eulogy to author who argues that the Jewish people do not exist, as UK anti-Zionist discourse hits another low

Robin Shepherd
RobinShepherdonline.com/
12 November 09

Shlomo Sand is a “historian” whose name you are likely to be hearing a lot more of. Following in the footsteps of Ilan Pappe, he is a far-Left, “non-Zionist”, Israeli ideologue who has just published a book –The Invention of the Jewish People — seeking to delegitimise the historical foundations of the State of Israel.

But Sand’s technique is not merely to delegitimise the Israel that was established in 1948, though he refers to that as having been accomplished by the “rape” of the Palestinian people. It is to assert that the notion of the Jewish people as a “nation-race” that was exiled from its historic homeland is pure fabrication. There is no Jewish people in the sense of having a bloodline that can be traced back to Biblical times and, therefore, there is no Jewish homeland for the current imposters to return to.

Needless to say, he has instantly acquired the status in Britain of a hero of the Israel-hating mainstream. This week on BBC Radio Four’s flagship “Start the Week” programme, star presenter Andrew Marr hosted Sand in the most one-sided, uncritical eulogy to an anti-Israeli commentator that I for one have ever heard broadcast on the BBC.

Read the rest of this entry »
Love of the Land: Top BBC presenter hosts eulogy to author who argues that the Jewish people do not exist, as UK anti-Zionist discourse hits another low

Love of the Land: All It Takes

All It Takes

"All it takes . . ." is a reference to the often quoted and more often ignored piece of folk wisdom "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing".

* * *

Below is an editorial from yesterday's (Nov.5, 09) Wall Street Journal about Obama's response to the pro-Democracy protests in Iranian cities:

Obama on Tehran's Democrats:
"We do not interfere in Iran's internal affairs"

Tens of thousands of protesters yesterday braved police batons and tear gas canisters in the streets of Iranian cities to denounce their theocratic rulers and call for a change of regime. In spite of repression by the Basiji thugs and the West's short attention span, the Green Revolution lives on.

On this, the 30th anniversary of the hostage taking at the U.S. Embassy, their message was to a large degree intended for America and President Obama. The opposition hijacked the day, usually an occasion to denounce the Great Satan, to declare their desire to break with that past and build a free Iran. They marched alongside state-sanctioned rallies, before their protests were broken up violently.

For this broad coalition of democrats, America is a beacon of hope and the Iran of the street arguably the most pro-American place in the world. Earlier this year, before the huge demonstrations in the wake of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's brazen theft of the June presidential election, one popular opposition chant was, "O ba ma!"—in Farsi a play on the new American President's last name that translates as, "He with us!"

But the opposition's dreams of American support, moral as much as anything, have been dashed. Mr. Obama was slow and reluctant to speak out on their behalf and eager to engage the Iranian regime in nuclear talks as soon as the summer of protest tapered off. Iran's democrats are now letting their disappointment show. The new chant passed around in Internet chat rooms and heard in the streets yesterday was, "Obama, Obama—either you're with them or with us." -more

Love of the Land: All It Takes

Love of the Land: Palestinian Incitement (1999)

Palestinian Incitement (1999)

Today's Golden Oldie is a Dry Bones cartoon done in 1999.
Ten years ago this month.

Palestinian incitement has never stopped and Hillary's next campaign will probably not be a run for the Senate.

Love of the Land: Palestinian Incitement (1999)

Love of the Land: Meet the Machine

Meet the Machine

Well gang, I'm back from my U.S. tour. I spoke for two important American organizations: the ZOA and CAMERA. I was also able to deliver my first presentation as a Yale Fellow at YIISA (the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism)YIISA is a lone, shinning light on the western Academic scene.

Today's cartoon covers some recent activities of the anti-israel machine.

Love of the Land: Meet the Machine