J’Accuse!
The Jerusalem Post is known for perpetrating hoaxes based on fake reports of anti-Semitism. It published a story purporting that Norway was riddled with anti-Semitism. Turns out the report was written by someone who made almost all of it up. He mistook his own personal fear of anti-Semitism with the real thing and made things up so people would be forewarned.
On a slightly different note, Caroline Glick wrote an atrocious account blaming multi-culturalism and Norwegian criticism of Israel for the Breivik mass murder. This too is a perfect example of the Post’s desperate need to twist major news events to suit their ideological biases.
Now, it’s the paper’s Ireland correspondent, Sarah Honig, who has regaled us with a dramatic episode of rabid anti-Semitism in a cozy village in the famed Ring of Kerry. In the village of Cahersiveen, a sleeping giant of Jew-hatred laid in wait for her. When she walked down the street encountering seemingly innocent Irish schoolchildren, and scratched beneath the surface, she found mad-dog Jew haters.
I thank God there’s someone like Honig around to alert us to this scurvy villain lurking in the hearts of Man (Irish man at least). Here are some of the more choice bits from Honig’s account:
There were no hints of affection there for us. On the town’s main thoroughfare, Church Street, I was buttonholed by three boisterous teenagers in Santa hats, carrying a collection box and big signs reading “Free Palestine.” They solicited my contribution.
I asked: “Free Palestine from whom?” The cheery trio’s swift answer was unambiguous: “The Jews.”
I pressed on: “Do you know where your money would go? “The boys: “To plant olive trees.”
“Are you sure,” I continued, as kindly-looking little old ladies generously opened their purses and dropped coins and bills in the collection box, “that this money wouldn’t fund terrorists and murderers?” Their retort threw me for a loop: “What do you have against Palestinians? What have they done to you? They are only against Jews. Jews are evil.”
I am right here and now challenging Honig and the Post’s editor to provide any proof of this encounter: a tape recording would be definitive, but even contemporaneous notes would help.
Short of that I’m going to call this account fiction embellished by the feverish ideological imagination of a wannabe reporter. The Irish Times has interviewed the main principles in her story, who deny they said anything approaching what she claims.
There are several reasons why I am certain this account is a hoax. I lived in Ireland for a year. I taught in a Dublin Jewish day school and knew the chief rabbi at the time, David Rosen. I had a wide array of Irish friends, most of them non-Jews. I know the village where this story allegedly took place.
Contrary to Sarah Honig’s fictional portrayal of an Ireland teeming with anti-Semites, the Irish are among the most tolerant people I’ve ever met. Their own history of colonial oppression and suffering has made them deeply sensitive to all injustice whether suffered by Jews or Palestinians.
While she regales us with alleged acts of anti-Semitism in Irish history the only one that involved harm to Jews occurred in 1904 when there was what Honig calls a “pogrom” in Limerick. She doesn’t mention that no one was killed and the priest who fomented the violence was later banished from town. She ventures several incidents during WWII in which PM Devalera spoke favorably of the Nazis without noting the historical context in which many Irish Republicans believe England to be their worst enemy, which allowed them to believe falsely that the enemy of their enemy was their friend.
Honig neglects to tell her readers that pre-State Yishuv leaders like Yitzhak Shamir and others had the same idea and believed they could negotiate with the Nazis for favorable status for Palestine in case Germany won the war. It was largely the Jewish far-right of the day which harbored such beliefs. Precisely the sort of individuals whom Honig and the Post politically idolize.
I pried more. I asked what they know about the conflict. It was nothing except that Israel is the horrid ogre and the oppressed Palestinians are unquestionably worthy of compassion. Indeed the boys never stopped to question any of this.
…I asked if they knew of the Palestinian Authority’s and Hamastan’s persecutions of Christians, but my youthful interlocutors had never heard of the Palestinian Authority and didn’t know that Palestinians are overwhelmingly Muslim.
…The teacher, who unsuspectingly volunteered his name to me, said he took out his pupils, all from the town’s single secondary school, as part of a class project “to further a humanitarian goal.” The goal was to collect money to enable the Palestinians to replace olive trees because “Jews stole their lands.”
Here again I charge Honig with perpetrating a hoax. No Irish that I have ever known would say such a thing. If we keep in mind Honig’s clear pre-conceived ideological notions and her deep need to find anti-Semitism, then it isn’t hard to believe that she has fictionalized this encounter in order to fit with her own political narrative. Further, I didn’t know words like “Hamastan” could be published in an article purporting to be news reporting. In the fictive world of the Post, Hamastan exists as a real place, I suppose.
…The teacher remained remarkably unperturbed when I repeated to him what the three boys said earlier about Jews “always being villains,” along with one youngster’s aside that “they crucified our Lord.” In fact, the teacher nodded in agreement, without a word of objection.
While it’s certainly possible there are still some Irish Catholics whose theological beliefs are caught up in the 1950s or 1850s and hold views that have long gone out of favor (like the Jews killing Jesus or the Jews being evil), that is no longer the case in today’s Ireland and certainly not among Irish youth, who are if anything turning away from the Church and its traditional theology in droves.
This passage is unbelievably pathetic and a shock to see even in a gutter journal like the Post. Again, if Honig can’t offer any real evidence that such a statement was made she’s a liar. Reporters own tape recorders. If she was reporting for the Post she would’ve had one. Produce the tape, contemporaneous notes or admit this story is a freaking sham.
Honig and her story illustrate the age-old problem of pro-Israel ultra-nationalists who conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. There are certainly Irish who embrace the Palestinian cause. There are Irish who believe Israel is oppressing the Palestinians. But there are very, very few anti-Semites in Ireland and Honig didn’t meet any that day. She invented an anti-Semitic incident and put words in the mouths of characters who never uttered them. The Post and Honig have some explaining to do. But they won’t. They’ll just float along till they come to the next fraud or hoax they perpetrate in the name of Israel and the Jewish people. What a sad excuse for a newspaper.
I’ve e mailed Honig and the Posts’ top editors to ask them for proof of the statements she claims were made in her story.
Neither you, Richard, nor I were present when the alleged exchanges took place. Though you might well be right about Honig’s fabricating all or parts of it (“It’s OK to lie for Eretz Israel” said then Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir), there’s a reasonable chance such words were uttered.
Remnants of old-style antisemitism still exist and there’s nothing more effective in rekindling the ancient mythological lies about Jews’ evil-doing in posterity than truthful evidence of Israeli present day evil-doing.
Yankel writes: “old-style antisemitism still exist” and “truthful evidence of Israeli present day evil-doing.”
I contend that there is no reason whatever to suppose that “old-style anti-Semitism” (o-s-a-S) has anything to do with it. Nothing in the texts supplied above suggests it. No “Jews murdered Christ” or the like.
Far more likely, based on the texts, these young kids merely harbor newly learned anti-Zionism, but being a bit confused (as Israel seems maniacally determined to do, to mislead and confuse) as to who the Israelis are and as to who the Zionists are, think that the folks who oppress the Palestinians are “the Jews” (instead of “the Israeli Jews” or “the Israeli Zionists” or “the right-wing Israeli Zionists” or whatever other formulation would be both closer to the truth, less confusable with o-s-a-S, and MUCH HARDER TO SAY.
I respectfully suggest (as lawyers say to judges) that Israel and its friends PROPOSE A FORMULATION OF A GROUP-NAME by which principled anti-Zionists can express the name of the people they wish to castigate for the crimes of the state of Israel. And they should state right out that no allegation of crimes against that group-name will ever again be treated as an expression of anti-Semitism.
I agree entirely. I think that perhaps a real religious schism is in the making for Judaism because of Zionism. Jewish life worldwide is increasingly polarized mostly because of Israel’s atrocious illegality and brutality not because of “anti-semitism.”
We should recognize that “anti-semitism” is intrinsic to contemporary Zionism and today it (old time anti-semitism) issues from Zionists not from anti-semites as there are few real wacko anti-semites, you know, who caricature “the Jew.” The allegation of anti-semitism, its alleged existence in the world is a projection of Zionism, an important part of the Zionist game plan. We all know this. The real rogue is not the anti-semite but the Zionist bully and accomplices worldwide who have built a terrorist state without boundaries and without a constitution for the purpose of expropriating Palestine from another group. “Anti-semitism” is a projection which reinforces separateness, even “chosen-ness.” The wall is a perfected vision of Zionism.
Yankel makes sense. Suppose, the exchange took place exactly as reported – what would that prove? 3 or 4 people in an Irish village who didn’t know much about Israel-Palestine conflict and maybe even did have some anti-Semitic ideas – but had (correctly in my view) identified that the native inhabitants of the land where the Christmas story takes place are being oppressed by having land stolen and olive trees destroyed. That’s fact see e.g. http://mondoweiss.net/2012/10/un-in-2012-over-7500-olive-trees-belonging-to-west-bank-palestinians-have-been-damaged-or-destroyed-by-israeli-settlers.html
The ‘sin’ of the JP is in extrapolating one encounter into a ridiculous stereotype of ‘the Irish’ being anti-semites, and using it to bolster the “world is against ‘us’, so everything ‘we’ do is justified”, Israeli Zionist narrative.
Placing a group of people beyond criticism for their actions solely because of their race / religion is discrimination at its most fundamental level.
My question is this: Would those children have been incorrect if they had indeed said what Glick claims? I’m playing devil’s advocate here. I rather doubt that the kids said “Jews,” but if so, they would be correct if they are talking about Israelis.
I don’t think identifying Israeli Jews as such when talking about what they are doing and have done to the Palestinian people is anti-Semitism. This is one of the biggest falsehoods spread by Zionists – that identifying the ethnic cleansing, occupation and land theft committed against the Palestinian people as anti-Semitism.
Just as one would be correct in saying that radical Muslims are rampaging through Mali – identifying them as such doesn’t make me an Islamophobe, does it?
Yeah, so what if they said “Jews.” Children don’t split hairs and are not sensitive to adult apprehensions. I don’t really see anything “anti-semitic” in the exchange, but rather a lack of depth and knowledge as expected of children. Is it tiresome walking on eggshells around these issues: “Jews” is close enough for that particular exchange. It is the reporter herself who invents a substrate of racial hatred. “Jews” are, after all and in a certain sense, responsible for Zionism and its impacts in the ME.
Sorry, but saying Jews are Christ-killers is anti-Semitic, full stop. Any reasonable person should be able to understand this.
But frankly, as I said, I don’t believe the children said this. Irish youth if anything are totally alienated from the Church and its old fashioned theology. Besides, this hasn’t been an official Catholic belief in decades. Which makes Honig’s claims perverse and preposterous.
But if you want to pursue the strange argument that even if the children said what Honig claims they said it’s OK with you, you’re going into bizarre territory & I’m not going to follow.
If the children said “Jews” they would not be talking only about Israeli Jews. They’d be talking about all Jews. That would be false, defamatory & anti-Semitic.
If they’d said Israeli Jews it would be closer to the truth though there are Israelis who are not Jewish who uphold and participate in the Occupation.
The proper usage should be “Israelis.”
@ Richard
You’re absolutely right, but the first ones to use the word ‘Jews’ instead of Israelis are the Zionists. Israel is according to former High Court president Shimon Agranot (1970) not only NOT the state of all its citizens, but also NOT the state of its Jewish citizens, but the state of all Jews worldwide (whether these Jews agree or not). Cf the distinction between le’um and ezrahut (did I transcribe that more or less correctly,). When Bibi made his speech in Toulouse a couple of months ago, he spoke about ‘the Jews’ (and asked French Jews to come ‘home’ to Israel) etc etc.
So if Zionists – of course deliberately – speak about Jews instead of Israelis or Zionists, we can’t be astonished that people fall into their trap. In fact, it’s weird, I’ve often been into discussions on the net with right-wing Zionists who claim that Israel represent ALL Jews (or at least that anti-zionists Jews are not really Jews), and I’m the one to point out that’s not true. In fact those people are anti-semitic in a way.
@Deir Yassin: Yes, I agree with you. THis is a noxious aspect of classical Zionist ideology which conflates Jews and Israel & turns Israel into a religion in itself. We should point this fallacy out every time it happens. But I don’t think we should make the same mistake or that we should excuse or justify non-Jews who do.
Again, I really don’t believe Irish youth said this & feel uncomfortable taking anything Honig said as true.
I don’t believe that JPost-story at all as well. I remember the story from Norway – still a hasbara talking point when it comes to Norwegian stances on Israeli issues – and how it was totally invented.
Also- most Christians are taught a religious narrative that says the Jews were complicit in the betrayal of Jesus before his death. This is not anti-semitism but is in the New Testament.
Regardless of whether the biblical narrative, from Jews’ complicity to attested resurrection is fact-based or whether it’s antisemitic – are you suggesting that just because some text happened to be canonised into scripture makes it impossible for it be antisemitic (or racist, xenophobic and misogynistic for that matter)?
RE: ANTI-SEMITISM
the stupidity of conversations and arguments using the term “anti-semitism” and its derivatives is that at their core they all rely on a ridiculous, dubious, fictional, and semantically-void (like zero in mathematics) or semantically-all-encompassing (like infinity in mathematics) concept that can and is systematically manipulated for all kinds of hasbara-propaganda and/or thought-muddling purposes.
if i used the word “zingabar” as a concept to denote something undefined and said of those i want to denigrate and ridicule that they are zingabarists (or anti-zingabarists for that matter) and that no one should trust them, i expect that rational people will ask: what the hell does “zingabar” or “zingabarist” mean? yet no one ever dare ask: what the hell do the terms “semitism” or “anti-semitic” really mean? if they mean “judaism” and “anti-jew” so be it and say it. if they mean “arab” and “anti-arab” so be it and say it. (arabs are the original semites after all and we can discuss that at another time.)
what i contend is that any person who refuses to banish from his vocabulary the term “semitism” as a synonym to “judaism” and “jew” is one who, afraid to lose his whole basis of argumentation, prefers to continue using those terms that only help muddle the issues into purely propaganda and hasbara blabber.
i don’t care that since 1870, i.e.for more than 140 years, the racist anti-jew european christians chose to call anti-judaism by the term anti-semitism. it served their despicable racism against the jew by giving it a milder name. as an arab i have always rejected in toto the concept of anti-semitism except to refer to the european (and now western) inherent christian prejudice against the european jews.
as an arab i have always considered myself the original semite (assuming there is such a thing) … so to all you christians and jews who want to call us arabs by what you should call yourselves, remember that throughout your bloody european history we arabs gave your persecuted european jews who “killed your christ” … we gave them protection and refuge. so don’t lay your guilt on me, the guilt lies with you.
as for those european jews to whom we arabs gave protection, they should not bite the hand that fed them through the years of european christian pogroms, persecution, property confiscation, and ultimate expulsion … to a land you europeans gave them to steal from its rightful owners … to a land other than your christian lands you have always wanted to keep free of those “christ-killing” jews.
in summary: if you want to have a rational dialogue, stop using the term anti-semitism. if you can’t make an argument without using the term “anti-semitism” and its derivatives, you don’t have a valid argument at all.
@Mary: This has not been official Catholic dogma since 1968.
@ Richard
Maybe this was directed to Mary ?
@Deir Yassin: Woops, corrected. Sorry for my error.
That’s about the time when I started skipping Catechism class.
Hello Richard,
An distinct analysis.
I rarely comment twice on one post, but I have to answer Mary (actually, my earlier post doesn’t seem to have appeared yet). As a child, i was attacked on more than one occasion – verbally and sometimes physically – by kids shouting ‘you killed Jesus’ or something similar. That *is* anti-semitism, pure and simple, blaming all members of an ethnic group for something some of the same group might have done 2000 years ago. It helped facilitate many historical attacks on Jews, culminating in the Holocaust.
In the UK, no Christian education in school or church today would include such logic. What country are you in, that you can claim ‘most Christians’ are taught that narrative, that ‘the Jews’ as a group were complicit? My partner is a practising Christian, she doesn’t find such an interpretation from the NT.
The Jewish Jesus, was betrayed by one of his 12 Jewish disciples. The High Priest, a Roman appointee, and the Roman Governor condemned Jesus to death,a s they did for anyone claiming to be a King or Leader in opposition to Rome. Apart from the Romans, everyone involved in the story were Jews. Jesus’s mother, his father, his followers, his opponents….
Paul.
From what I know this ‘the Jews killed Jesus’-crap has been a widespread attitude in Catholic countries, and I think in Ireland too. I live in France, and though I’ve never heard such a thing even from the most reactionnary Catholics, I’ve seen it mentionned and heard older people speak about it.
If my memory is correct, Louis Malle in his autobiographical “Au Revoir, les Enfants” [Goodbye, children] – about his own upbringing in a Catholic boarding school during WWII where a little Jewish boy was hidden – puts these words into the mouth of some of the children. That was a long time ago but this generation of kids is still alive today.
I was in the US at the time, and I was raised a Catholic. I was taught that back in the early 1960’s. I don’t need lessons on Christian narrative, thank you. The point is, why would those kids say it unless someone taught it to them? Do you think everyone who learns religion is taught the most up to date version that is politically correct and doesn’t offend anyone?
Charges of anti-Semitism are an enormous rolling Ponzi-scheme that Israelis have parlayed into creation of their Apartheid state.
Israelis are like Idi Amin claiming that it was racist and ‘anti-Black-itic’ for people to try to stop him – it’s not just that it is culturaly misconstrued and anachronisticly out of time and place – only the stupidest people on earth (no matter how many) don’t see straight thru this Israeli Ponzi scheme at this point.
It’s entirely OK to hate Israelis for what they are doing in Palestine – if Jews choose to label that ‘Anti-semitic’ then fine and dandy – the world needs more of ‘it being entirely OK to hate Israelis for what they are doing to Palestinians’ – because THAT is what is going to stop these Israeli Jews from doing that
This is not rocket science
If Israelis make it politically incorrect, Anti-semitic, or even illegal to speak out against their atrocities – that is a cute little game but shouldn’t stop us from stopping them.
If Israelis make it illegal or have to get past their patented kneejerk smears to stop them – well isn’t that a sweet little game? – good work if you can get it – it sure makes it easy to get away with setting up and running Apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
There are two groups of Zionists – those who laugh at the game they’re running on us – what luck it is for them to have ‘such fools for enemies’ – and those suffering from their culturally taught-child abuse to make sure every Israeli child feels like a Holocaust victim himself (in lieu of and a substitute for their own abusive parents), such that he will brainwashed-ly support each and ever Israeli atrocity that comes down the type.
Or most typical of all – like Carolyn Glick – the Zionist who is a splendid toxic cocktail of both.
I don’t think it’s OK to hate Israelis at all, any more than it’s OK to hate Americans for Obama’s drone targeted killings. That’s a completely overstated generalization.
Interestingly enough, as Nima Shirazi noted last year at the time of Yitzhak Shamir’s death, Zionists have at times not been averse to (quite mistakenly) seeing themselves as holding an position analogous with that of the Irish people — as, yes, the OPPRESSED [!] :
[W]hen he was leading terror campaigns during the British Mandate, Shamir nicknamed himself “Michael” after Michael Collins, the Irish revolutionary and Director of Intelligence and ostensible Commander-in-Chief of the IRA, which fought a war of independence against the British between 1919 and 1921. . . . What is perhaps ironic, however, is that, while Shamir and his cohorts considered Zionist opposition to the British Mandate to be analogous to the Irish fight against British domination, this comparison totally ignores the fact that the indigenous Palestinians were actually analogous to the native Irish in this situation, not the Zionist immigrants from Europe.
Read more at:
http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2012/06/death-of-proud-self-avowed-terrorist.html
“Zionist immigrants from Europe.” Disgusting, Richard how can you let this comment stand?
I would’ve preferred he’d written “Jewish immigrants.” But are you arguing that those who immigrated from Europe to Israel weren’t Zionists? THat’d be a tough argument to defend I think.
Nah, Richard, what BruceT means is probably that these people weren’t immigrants but just returning home after….let’s see…. 2000 years abroad.
And how do you contrast this attitude to your stance on African migrants??
It just seems like you guys have a clearly anti-Semitic attitude, a special animosity to specifically Jewish immigrants fleeing oppression. We’re talking holocaust survivors here too, and yet you just see them as “Zionists” instead of human beings
What ever are you talking about? No one including Deir Yassin is saying they aren’t human beings. Since when are Zionists not human? Anti-Semitism has nothing to do with it and throwing such accusation around in the comment threads violates my comment rules. Use such terms exceedingly carefully. Not as you have here.
Not sure how it happend buy your comment/reply to someone else is after my comment and notice even the time of each.
What’s “disgusting?” Is the history of Zionism?
Jews are indigenous to Palestine-Eretz Israel. Jews have been living pretty much continuously there for 4000 years. Theiy have longer cultural and religious ties to the country than do the Arab residents, because the Jews have been speaking the same language, participating in the same culture and practicing the same religion for longer than the indigenous Arab population has.
This is more of the same nonsense you regularly publish here. I’m so damn tired of the “we were here before you” mantra. It’s so boring, old & irrelevant. If we used your criteria to determine who had rights to various territory half the extinct tribes would have to be brought back from the dead.
Our claim to the land is no better or more authentic than the Palestinian claim. If you want to pursue this line of argument do it elsewhere.
Thank you for this post. I saw the Jerusalem Post story via a link from the website of the Daily Telegraph, which is lamentably allied with the Post, and instantly disbelieved it. To anyone who knows the Irish and their courtesy to foreign visitors (I am English) it is utterly implausible that the remarks placed in direct quotes could possibly be accurate.
TRhere’s no such thing as anti-semitism in my opinion.
There’s only racism.
Why should one group brand racism against it, as though it were a worse form of racsim. It reeks of race supremacism to claim otherwise.
There’s been racism against a multitude of ethnic & religious minorities through recorded history…all as bad as the next.
Since 1948 we’ve all been conned by the US MSM to think racism against Jews is a ‘superior’ form of racism.
RE: “The Jerusalem Post is known for perpetrating hoaxes based on fake reports of anti-Semitism. It published a story purporting that Norway was riddled with anti-Semitism. . . On a slightly different note, Caroline Glick wrote an atrocious account blaming multi-culturalism and Norwegian criticism of Israel for the Breivik mass murder. This too is a perfect example of the Post’s desperate need to twist major news events to suit their ideological biases. . .” ~ R.S.
MY COMMENT: One way of discouraging Israelis from moving to other countries (i.e. the “brain drain”) is to convince them that the world outside of Israel is full of anti-Semites.
URI AVNERY ON THE SORRY STATE OF THE ISRAELI MEDIA/PRESS: “Israel’s Weird Elections”, by Uri Avnery, Counterpunch, 1/04/13:
ENTIRE COMMENTARY – http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/04/israels-weird-elections/
As far as printing anti-semitic lies as truth are concerned, the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, sought to intensify hatred of the Jew in order to enhance the cause of political Zionism. Here are some of his “pearls”: “It is essential that the sufferings of Jews. . . become worse. . . this will assist in realization of our plans. . .My idea is to induce anti-semites to liquidate Jewish wealth. . . The anti-semites will assist us thereby in that they will strengthen the persecution and oppression of Jews. The anti-semites shall be our best friends”. (From his Diary, Part I, pp. 16)
This is the ZIONIST philosophy that the news media is still following.
This is not an accurate quotation of Herzl’s actual diaries. It is a fraud and hoax as shown by this website. I find your views deplorable and you are moderated.
Thanks for this comment Richard. Maybe you are more even-handed than some paint you to be…
@BruceT: I appreciate your comment. I don’t like conspiracy theories of the right or left & don’t like those who attribute diabolical motives to an entire religion or nation whether it be Judaism, Islam, Israel or Palestine.
For another perspective on Irish views of Israel:
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/nicky-larkin-israel-is-a-refuge-but-a-refuge-under-siege-3046227.html
Thanks very much for that link.
Interesting link. One would have the same kind of experience in any politically divided area, I would guess. I’ve seen a lot of “f*ck America” sloganeering here where I live, but I understand where it comes from and why it’s there. Of course, going into an area under a 65 year occupation isn’t going to show you a lot of bouquets and valentines for the occupier.
And about the Irish – yes, the Palestinians hate them so much that regular delegations from Derry visit the Gaza Strip. I know this for a fact because I have two friends who are chairs of the delegation. Many Irish visit Palestine, but the only one I know of who has “binned his scarf” is the writer of this nice piece of hasbara.
“65 year occupation.”
Actually, we Jews have been occupying Palestine for over 3000 years.
But the question here is how many politically aware Irish long for the destruction of Israel?
“mary’s” comment goes along to refuting the original blog post.
‘But the question here is how many politically aware Irish long for the destruction of Israel?”
Why is that the question?
Who on earth gave the Jews,or most of them anyway,the right to monopolize the use of the name “Semitism”? By the very definition of “Anti-Semitism”, the Israeli Jews and the Jews who support them for what they are doing and have done against the Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis,……are Anti-Semitic. Yes, Israel is the BIGGEST Anti-Semitic ENTITY that is existing right now in the whole world. The accusation of Anti-Semtitism is a ploy to scare people away from expressing ANY opinion about Israel that is not to the liking of its supporters. It is time to change the NARRATIVE and call Israel and its supporters Anti-Semitic…….
I completely agree with Dr. Ibrahim Soudy when he asks in his comment above “Who on earth gave the Jews,or most of them anyway,the right to monopolize the use of the name “Semitism”?”
I have long since lost trust in anyone who still insist in using the murky term “anti-semitism” in spite of the overwhelming public evidence that this term has no meaning at all which could allow rational interchange.
My following comment is especially directed at Richard Silverstein in the hope that at least this time he does not throw “it’s against my comment rules” mantra against what i say and that he takes the effort to answer the point at issue about the term “anti-semitism” and my recommendation that he himself should stop using it and encourage others on his blog to refrain from using the term “anti-semitism”.
RE: ANTI-SEMITISM
The stupidity of conversations and arguments using the term “anti-semitism” and its derivatives is that at their core they all rely on a ridiculous, dubious, fictional, and semantically-void (like zero in mathematics) or semantically-all-encompassing (like infinity in mathematics) concept that can and is systematically manipulated for all kinds of hasbara-propaganda and/or thought-muddling purposes.
if i used the word “zingabar” as a concept to denote something undefined and said of those i want to denigrate and ridicule that they are zingabarists (or anti-zingabarists for that matter) and that no one should trust them, i expect that rational people will ask: what the hell does “zingabar” or “zingabarist” mean? yet no one ever dare ask: what the hell do the terms “semitism” or “anti-semitic” really mean? if they mean “judaism” and “anti-jew” so be it and say it. if they mean “arab” and “anti-arab” so be it and say it. (arabs are the original semites after all and we can discuss that at another time.)
what i contend is that any person who refuses to banish from his vocabulary the term “semitism” as a synonym to “judaism” and “jew” is one who, afraid to lose his whole basis of argumentation, prefers to continue using those terms that only help muddle the issues into purely propaganda and hasbara blabber.
i don’t care that since 1870, i.e.for more than 140 years, the racist anti-jew european christians chose to call anti-judaism by the term anti-semitism. it served their despicable racism against the jew by giving it a milder name. as an arab i have always rejected in toto the concept of anti-semitism except to refer to the european (and now western) inherent christian prejudice against the european jews.
as an arab i have always considered myself the original semite (assuming there is such a thing) … so to all you christians and jews who want to call us arabs by what you should call yourselves, remember that throughout your bloody european history we arabs gave your persecuted european jews who “killed your christ” … we gave them protection and refuge. so don’t lay your guilt on me, the guilt lies with you.
as for those european jews to whom we arabs gave protection, they should not bite the hand that fed them through the years of european christian pogroms, persecution, property confiscation, and ultimate expulsion … to a land you europeans gave them to steal from its rightful owners … to a land other than your christian lands you have always wanted to keep free of those “christ-killing” jews.
in summary: if you want to have a rational dialogue, stop using the term anti-semitism. if you can’t make an argument without using the term “anti-semitism” and its derivatives, you don’t have a valid argument at all.
It is worthwhile to read the report of Sarah Honig more carefully. She was not a reporter but a provocateur: “Are you sure,” I continued, as kindly-looking little old ladies generously opened their purses and dropped coins and bills in the collection box, “that this money wouldn’t fund terrorists and murderers?”
I am pretty sure that the replies were not kind. As to what exactly the replies were, Sarah Honig was not an impartial observer. A reader of JP may find her question an objective statement, but of course it is racist and offensive, so the conversation immediately went downhill.
Excellent analysis, Richard, in particular for the way in which you understand the Irish nuances. Please excuse the crude summary that follows! Journalistic precision: Silverstein blog post: 100%; JP article: fail.
Richard -speaking as a Kerryman thank you for your decency and clarity.
It looks Ms Honig would have been quite happy for the Kerry schoolchildren to be collecting for illegal settlers.
(This reference is from an article by the Rev. Stephen Sizer who is himself at present being viliified and called an anti-Semite -unfortunately iI cannot retrieve it at present).
Sarah Honig, ‘Adopt-a-Settlement Program’ The Jerusalem Post, 2nd October 1995.
In the past she has pulled the same trick on the Swiss and the Swedes – see sarahhonig.com. And she has then followed up by guess what?- claiming she received tons of hate-mail from the Swiss. Also on her blog she does not like “Arabs” sharing the roads in the Occuppied Territories with Israelis”.
Interesting also how she has never commented on racism in EIlat where black children are banned from local schools and she has never commented on the book by Nurit Elhanan of the Hebrew University on the anti-Palestinian narrative in Israeli school textbooks
You’re more than welcome. I have a warm place in my heart for the Irish, lived there for nearly a year in 1983 in Dublin. Visited Kerry as well.
While not calling out her statements as lies, I did challenge them in a post I wrote myself and the linkings of Ruth Dudley Edwards ridiculous blog in the Telegraph. I welcome your challenging of the claims though. Anti-semitism is thrown around far too easily today forgetting what it ultimately is – hatred of a people and not questioning a nations policies or actions