'Throughout the greater Middle East, opposition to the concept and existence of a Jewish state is an idée fixe for hundreds of millions of Arab and non-Arab Muslims. A hatred of Jewish political sovereignty that frequently dovetails with more traditional anti-Semitism animates café discussions and street protests as surely as it prohibits regional political progress. Yet the strand of anti-Zionism that has lately come to attract the most attention in the West is the one articulated by a tiny minority of left-wing Jews at a handful of websites....' writes New Yorker Ben Cohen in a searing indictment of prominent leftwing Jews whose stock-in-trade is persistently to attack Israel.
'Dissident voices? Properly understood, the word dissident describes intellectuals and activists operating in oppressive societies. What they do frequently results in imprisonment, torture, and even death. The dissidents ... are not silenced, but rather celebrated, by media establishments ranging from the Huffington Post to the BBC.
The persistent inclusion of these "dissident voices" in discussions of America, Jews, and Israel has proven very useful indeed, since their membership in the tribe is deemed to give them special standing in presenting their indictment of Israel—and, somewhat more subtly, inoculates Gentile critics of the Jewish state against the charge that their attacks on Israel might be anti-Semitic. How can they be if they are merely echoing the arguments made by such passionate, such moral, such fearless, such dissident Jews?
In an Internet age characterized by instant, rolling comment, they have helped to reactivate a set of ideas that many thought had perished with the grubby pamphlets published in the old Soviet Union, screeds that bore titles such as "Zionism: A Tool of Reaction". Whereas the true dissidents of the Cold War era introduced words such as samizdat into the vocabulary of the West, the ersatz dissidents of the Jewish left have popularized a host of expressions—Judaization, Israel-firster, Zionist apartheid, and so forth—that were once relegated almost entirely to the openly anti-Semitic fringe....
Mass-movement anti-Zionism will be happy to incorporate Jewish anti-Zionists and march onward. Hatred of Israel is a malleable doctrine of false justice that welcomes all comers and provides for unlikely bedfellows. These days, the burden of proof is increasingly, and perversely, placed on those arguing in Zionism’s behalf. But, ironically, charting both the writings and the career trajectories of devoted anti-Zionists makes a uniquely strong case for the continued existence and protection of the Jewish state.'
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There's a weird dynamic where people aspire to be a Jewish anti-Zionist - even people who are not actually Jewish. See this recent story in the Jerusalem Post about an anti-Israel advocate who had a whole backstory about serving in the IDF and being descended from Holocaust survivors. She didn't actually want to be Jewish per se; she wanted to be a counter-current martyr to virtue, a performance in which she would not only be anti-Israel but the most perfectly penitent anti-Zionist: a former soldier, the child of Holocaust victims, a sort of Hollywood stereotype of the sort of person whose world would change dramatically when she renounced her support for Israel. But it was all a lie; even if her political position wasn't adopted as part of her persona she was merely another European hater of the Jewish state.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Joe.
DeleteI've noticed that included in the ranks of Israel-demonising Jewish organisations are people with the most tenuous of links to Judaism - and whose only identification, to all intents and purposes, as "Jews" is for the purpose of slamming Israel. There are several public figures of this kind in the UK.
There have always been psychopaths who'd rather be hated than ignored. Today many of them write for Huffington Post, the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC and Salon. Because it's become an incestuous little love pile freak show, they all talk to and quote another congratulating one another on agreeing with one another about how brilliant they all are. As if anyone need wonder how, in the 1930's the most educated, advanced, philosophical, technologically innovative country in the world managed not only to create the Third Reich, but that so many people who would ultimately be incinerated by it found a way to happily support it or arrogantly laugh at it. I suppose even white upper middle class degree holding liberals want to be part of an angry mob. It doesn't much matter what the mob is saying or wants as long as they can be part of it. And if others in the mob look to them for guidance, all's the better.
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