Tonight I had the privilege of hearing Maya Wind and Eran Efrati give an excellent talk about their activism in Anarchists Against the Wall. I learned from a local JVP leader that the organized Jewish community of Seattle plans an event that betrays the level of hysteria and paranoia to which pro-Israel advocates are subject. The sponsors are calling it: Anti-Israel BDS Campaign: Bad for Israel, A Threat to Jews in Seattle and Beyond.
The notion that BDS has any impact on Jews in Seattle (other than losing the privilege of buying nine Israeli products at the Olympia Food Coop), let alone is a threat to them, is highly debatable. But this is part of the pandering style of the Israel Lobby. Take an issue of marginal importance. Blow it up into monumental significance and tell Jews that their very lives depend on fighting it. Whether its intermarriage, anti-Semitism or BDS, the MO is always the same.
I’m frankly shocked that even J Street and the New Israel Fund, the purported left-wing of the Jewish community have sponsored this shrey-fest. But one should be less and less surprised at the failings of the liberal Zionists. They temporize on every major moral issue concerning Israel.
I found it instructive that the pro-Israel Jewish Council for Public Affairs endorsed J Street’s effort to join the Conference of Presidents of Jewish Organizations with this encomium:
Both Raffel and Gutow cited J Street’s cooperation with JCPA in lobbying left-leaning mainline Protestant churches to reject divestment campaigns targeting Israel. Raffel said the importance of J Street lay in part in building a “firewall” between the anti-Israel left and the left in general. “Who better to do that than the Zionist left?” he asked.
It’s the old divide and conquer technique on which so much of the success of the British empire was staked. In this context, the Israel Lobby divides the left by identifying for us the good and bad left. It’s like the Lobby trying to tell us who the good and bad Muslims are. It’s shameful, but especially for liberal Zionists like J Street, New Israel Fund and many others like them to buy into it.
The keynote speaker will be Ari Shavit, one of Haaretz’s right-wing columnists. Shavit has just written a book with the catchy title, My Promised Land, that is the darling the liberal American media including Charlie Rose and David Remnick’s New Yorker. It’s what I call “shooting and crying” journalism. In the book, Shavit bemoans the moral injustice of Nakba. But in the end he finds it was necessary to ensure the birth and success of Israel.
In Israel, they’re less hoodwinked by his politics. For example, even his publisher, Amos Schocken, grew exasperated with him and penned this critique: The Visible Rejectionism of Ari Shavit. In it, he takes Shavit to task for endorsing the Likudist position that the Palestinians should publicly acknowledge that Israel is a Jewish state.
The flyer for Seattle event adds this largely fictional information about Shavit:
He is a leading voice from Israel’s political left. A frequent critic of Israel’s government, he is also one of Israel’s most vocal defenders.
Outside of Israel, however, Shavit faces increasingly ugly rhetoric, being called a “war criminal” and worse simply because he’s a Jewish Israeli. Shavit believes the BDS campaign vilifies not only Israel, but Jews and the Jewish community in general.
If Shavit was ever on Israel’s left, he hasn’t been for decades. I know he used to be a Peace Now colleague of Avrum Burg, but that goes back to the 1980s. To call someone a “leading voice of the left” because of views he held 35 years ago is preposterous.
As for the “ugly rhetoric” Shavit allegedly faces, the author of this flyer conveniently omits any source so we don’t know whether the claim is true. And if it is, we don’t know whether David Duke, Ali Abunimah or the Dalai Lama called him a war criminal. Further, the claim that he was attacked using these terms because he is a “Jewish Israeli” is nonsense. Shavit ultimately justified Nakba and that is but one of the reasons he’s being excoriated. These are political arguments and categories. They have nothing to do with religion. To confuse the two as the Israel Lobby does, is to play fast and loose with political reality. If they want to fight against what they allege as Muslim hatred of Israel, they ought to stop using the same terms Islamists do.
Also addressing the event will be an African-American minister from Detroit who believes BDS is “anti-Jewish.” Apparently the Israel Lobby cultivate African-Americans like Kenneth Flowers and Chloe Valdary who are experts on the subject of anti-Semitism. They’re so learned that pro-Israel Jews look to them to tell them which Jews are anti-Semitic. Had I not read Chloe Valdary calling distinguished UC Berkeley Prof. Judith Butler a Nazi, I’d never have known of the latter’s perfidy.
It never ceases to amaze me how much validation Israel advocates need from non-Jews for their racist ultra-nationalist views. Because Jews have a liberal reputation, the organizers of this event apparently believe having an African-American minister confirm their prejudices make these views kosher. It should be no surprise that Flowers is a darling of Aipac and spoke at its last national conference. Valdary didn’t get to address the believers, though her pals at CAMERA and StandWithUs likely paid her way to attend. She’s only playing Class A ball. But she’s a promising prospect who can expect a promotion to the ‘Bigs’ if she keeps swinging the bat well against those nasty anti-Semites in the BDS movement.
The last time Seattle’s Jewish community organized one of these alarmist gatherings, they were trying to gin up hysteria about Iran’s threat to Israel. In fact, they held that event in the same place they’re holding this one: Temple De Hirsh Sinai. At that time, I organized an educational program that brought experts on Iran and Israel’s relations with it to discuss the issues with dispassion and moderation. This anti-BDS hysteria calls for a similar response.
As an aside, the Jewish Federation has applied the tag “anti-Semitism” to this page on its website.
BDS does not want the State of Israel to exist. Period.
Therefore, BDS is more a threat to the Jews of France, who are now making aliyah in record numbers. The religious Jews of France are coming to Israel ‘because they cannot live as Jews’ in France.
Eventually, non-religious French Jews will become the targets in France, and they will have to make aliyah too.
Steinberg on the cheap, using a crow?
Jackdaw, your incoherent brain fart claims on the one hand that BDS causes French Jews to immigrate yet at the same time you are implying that it’s a good thing because even non-religious French Jews will immigrate to Israel. Does that mean you support BDS? I have read many retarded comments by Zionists but yours seem to top them all.
@Aaron
I never said that BDS is causing French Jews to leave.
He who smelt it…..
@ Jackdaw: You sure did say BDS is causing French Jews to make aliyah.
@Aaron: Amen to that brother.
@ Jackdaw: Another comment rule: do NOT publish opinions that aren’t supported by evidence. You’ve made an absolutely false claim about BDS. Either you will provide credible support for this claim within 24 hours or you will withdraw it. Here. If you do not provide credible proof or withdraw the claim, you will be banned.
Not only is this a non sequitur since there is no connection between BDS and the Jews of France, this is grossly OFF-TOPIC. Also the claim about aliyah in “record numbers” is misleading. There is an uptick in aliyah from France. The increase is incremental & not as dramatic as you attempt to make it out to be.
This is nothing but a steeping heap of bullshit served up as pro-Israel propaganda. I find you offensive. I don’t mind disagreements, but when arguments lose track of reality and travel into hasbara-bizarro-world, the whole enterprise becomes puerile.
Ari Shavit’s Worldview says it all.
See Finkelstein’s dissection of “My Promised Land” entitled something about “same wine, different bottles”…?
Errata:Please note that the Iran event referenced took place at Town Hall, not Temple De Hirsch Sinai
The event I organized took place at Town Hall. The Jewish communal event took place at De Hirsch.
Indeed you are correct …I misread
I thought that it was perhaps this incident that took place in France in 2004 that inspired the story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3891609.stm
I remember how Muslim-hater Sylvain Ephimenco was all over it for days in the newspaper Trouw, and when it turned out the girl had made the story up, he never apologised for all he had written.
@Richard I do not confuse “Jew” and “Israeli” at all. Israel created a citizenship to ape democratic values — i.e. government exists to serve the people of the geographic state, once those people were largely Jewish. But then Israel goes a step further and creates a “nationality” that exists outside the state’s borders and this nationality is “Jewish.” With the “Law of the Return”, the state was not simply an administrative utility for its citizens but a super entity created and served by “nationals” located anywhere. I do not confuse the two (Israeli and Jew) by conflating them for the purpose of making a point about Zionist enterprise.
@ Davey: You conflate Jews, Judaism, Israel & Zionism regularly. Just because classical Zionists conflate Israel with Judaism does not mean you may assume that their doing so entitles you to do so. It doesn’t. Yet you do it regularly. If you feel you do not, then either you don’t read carefully or are confused.
I conflate Jewish and Israeli as per the actual framework in place in Israel, in order to to demonstrate the contradiction of pursuing a Jewish “nationality” in a “democratic” state. I attempt to show that :Jewish” is not a nationality like “French” for example. Now you say I’m not “entitled” to adopt this conflation for rhetorical purposes.
It is perfectly plausible that some Jews felt relatively comfortable and safe in the ghettos but I cannot say so short of advanced academic work. I’d even go so far as to suggest that ghettos were neither good nor bad, but were an adaptation of the times. So I am not entitled and not credentialed and also borderline “anti-semitic,” the sum of the responses to my comments.
But, I am not careless or stupid and it is beneath you (Richard) to avail yourself of such insults especially as I have never taken such a tact with anyone here, including yourself.
No, it isn’t plausible at all. It’s flies in the face of historical evidence and common sense. This idiotic statement is equivalent to Israelis arguing that Gazans have never had it so good under Israeli siege. This is a careless & stupid statement and that’s being charitable.
You’re done in this thread. No more responses. You’re welcome to join other threads but I strongly urge you to avoid the gross generalizations and ahistorical claims you’ve made here.