This morning, I received an email from a reader informing me that I was "a chicken hawk Jew." For good measure, I was then urged to perform an act with my yarmulke which doesn't bear repeating in polite company.
What roused this person's ire was a short post of mine earlier this week about Oliver Stone. Evidently, my correspondent's opinions about Jews are little different from those expressed by Stone in his interview with the Sunday Times. I therefore concluded that the author of the email deserves the label "antisemite" just as much as Stone does.
Except that unlike my detractor, Stone quickly apologized for his remarks, prompting the question of whether it is fair to call him an antisemite. The answer lies in understanding what antisemitism is - and what it isn't.
Instances of celebrity Jew-baiting, whether Stone sounding off to a journalist or Mel Gibson drunkenly assailing a police officer, encourage the mistaken view that antisemitism is a particularly vicarious type of rudeness that can be overcome through the exercise of self-control. Particularly after the Holocaust, the wisdom goes, ranting about Jews is decidedly inappropriate behavior.
Should one's worst instincts win out, will a subsequent, timely apology annul the offense? If antisemitism is boiled down to a matter of insult, then yes, it probably will. But the problem here, as Marx might have said, is the confusion of appearance with essence.
What makes antisemitism distinctive is that it's a worldview, a means of explaining why there is injustice and unfairness and conflict in our societies. In his recent epic study, the scholar Robert Wistrich cited the French monarchist Charles Maurras' admiration for the succinctness of antisemitism. "It enables everything to be arranged, smoothed over and simplified," Maurras said.
In the nineteenth century, Maurras and his cohorts wore the antisemite's button with pride. So did Wilhelm Marr, the German rabble-rouser widely credited with coining the term antisemitism, who went on to found The League of Antisemites in 1879. For these men and their followers, antisemitism was not so much an attitude as an ideology.
When it comes to Oliver Stone's comments, it's precisely that ideology which is visible. Stone, it's important to recall, diminished the significance of the Holocaust and revived the hoary claim of Jewish media control in order to make his ultimate point: that "Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years."
Such views are increasingly current among the Chavistas with whom he is so starstruck. In keeping with its politically and theologically promiscuous history, antisemitism is again perfectly compatible with what would commonly, if incorrectly, be regarded as a progressive outlook, especially if the focus is upon the State of Israel.
That is why antisemitism remains one of the most furiously contested terms in political debate today. Invariably, those accused of it angrily reject the charge, retorting that they have been unfairly maligned by a crude tactic designed to muzzle what they insist is the horrible reality of Israel.
These are people who would have you believe that the victims of antisemitism today are no longer Jews, but those who are labeled antisemitic. Such sophistry, however, was not available to Oliver Stone, because of his candor in talking about Jews, and not "Zionists" or "The Israel Lobby." In recent memory, only Helen Thomas has displayed an equivalent frankness.
There is a deeper point about those who recycle the favorite themes of antisemitism, yet are careful not to do what Stone and Thomas did, and speak about Jews qua Jews. In Tablet this week, Lee Smith, who has been valiantly grappling with a cast of characters including Stephen Walt, Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan, argued that the matter at hand is not the "indiscernible beliefs of individuals," but the way in which these writers, when they write about Israel, are "complicit in the common work of mainstreaming the kind of antisemitic language, ideas, and discourse that were once confined to extremist hate sites on the far right."
It's unlikely that Lee Smith's opponents will engage in any critical reflection, perhaps because the truth is too painful to bear. For many of the grand myths of our own time - Israel as the ultimate rogue state, U.S. policy as a hostage of the "Israel Lobby," the Palestinians as the iconic symbol of human suffering - draw on a much older tradition that, just twenty years ago, most people regarded as a matter for historians, not chroniclers of the present.
It was these myths which effectively licensed Oliver Stone's remarks. If there is a lesson to be drawn from L'Affaire Stone, it is that he did not - and this is why his apology is really by the by - act alone.
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“What is a Jew?...Let us see what kind of peculiar creature the Jew (Israel) is, which all the rulers and all nations have together and separately abused and molested, oppressed and persecuted, trampled and butchered, burned and hanged-and in spite of all this is yet alive!....The Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source... who has been the first to produce the oracles of God (Leo Tolstoy).
The mere existence of Israel threatens demagogues and some ideologies because Jews, being both a people and a religion, hold fast to traditional beliefs and ideals which contradict any demagogy and many an ideology. Those in history that want to remake society in their own image or ideology, want to oppress others in the name of racial superiority, greed or any other reason often find it necessary to get rid of the ‘eternal witness.’ (Isaiah 43. 10) Such is the anti-Semite.
Criticism of Israels grotesque policies and behavior towards the Palestinian population is a moral obligation. World Jewry is not responsible for those policies.
The only people to be held responsible Israels behavior are a succession of right-wing Israeli governments. Right-wing governments which barely represent the views of their own electorate and certainly not the worlds Jews.
Let me guess, Mexicans are Anti-American because we stole Texas and they want it back?
"But he was driven out. But did he, when driven out, give up his hope of getting back? Jewish history and Jewish literature give the answer to that question. The Jew even has a fast day devoted to the day of destruction of the Jewish homeland. Never throughout history did they give up hope of returning there. I am told that 90 per cent of the Jews to-day are praying for the return of the Jewish people to its own home. The best minds among them believe in the necessity of reestablishing the Jewish land. To my mind there is something prophetic in the fact that during the ages no other nation has taken over Palestine and held it in the sense of a homeland; and there is something providential in the fact that for 1,800 years it has remained in desolation as if waiting for the return of its people."
>End of Quotation
(U.S. Congressional Records 9801 (1922))
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2009/04/us-congress-endorses-jewish-state-in.html
The above quote is for those who claim that Israel (or the Jewish Israeli lobby) has rendered our US government as pawns. The original legislation, signed into law by Pres. Coolidge in 1925, gave the Jewish people FAR more territorial rights then are being debated today. In 1922 /1925, there was no Israel and no holocaust had yet occured either. Only intellectual 'time-travel' can rearrange history to comport to anti-Semitic claims.
It was the British who controlled the area at that time.
Palestine had more than one indigeneous people living there: Jews, Arabs and others all lived there.
However, like it or not, accept it or not, only the Jews were indigenous since the Arabs came as conquerors from Arabia. The Jews had been living there since antiquity.
Guess the source and even better, guess the date of the following quote:
""Palestine of to-day, the land we now know as Palestine, was peopled by the Jews from the dawn of history until the Roman era. It is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. They were driven from it by force by the relentless Roman military machine and for centuries prevented from returning.
"At different periods various alien people succeeded them, but the Jewish race had left an indelible impress upon the land. To-day it is a Jewish country. Every name, every landmark, every monument, and every trace of whatever civilization remaining there is still Jewish. And it has ever since remained a hope, a longing, as expressed in their prayers for these nearly 2,000 years. No other people has ever claimed Palestine as their national home. No other people has ever shown an aptitude or indicated a genuine desire to make it their homeland. The land has been ruled by foreigners. Only since the beginning of the modern Zionist effort may it be said that a creative, cultural, and economic force has entered Palestine . The Jewish Nation was forced from its natural home. It did not go because it wanted to. A perusal of Jewish history, a reading of Josephus, will convince the most skeptical that the grandest fight that was ever put up against an enemy was put up by the Jew. He never thought of leaving Palestine . .".
(Cont'd)
Some Jews were forced or voluntarily left Palestinia in the Roman era. They became the Jews of Europe and portions of the Middle East. Some stayed behind mixed with the latter Arab conquerers and became the modern Palestinians. Nothing in this history gives any rights to those who left millenia ago over those who stayed in the homeland. The religion of the descendents of ancient Palestinia is irrelevent to rights.
Jews is a term for descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah which existed from approximately 980BCE to 539BCE. The Kingdom of Judah was comprised of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and a part of the tribe of Levi who had been in the country from around 1200BCE and before that for a unspecified period after 2000BCE before the "went down into Egypt." Before that the ancestors of Judah had lived in Mesopotamia and been idol worshipping pagans.
When such people do not even bother mentioning this fact then there's something going on besides simple disagreement over Israeli foreign policy.
The predictable reactions only show how right he is.
Btw: antisemitism is Jew hatred and it has nothing to do with "semites" which are merely speakers of a semitic language.
Neither Marr who first used the word nor Hitler the most famous antisemites hated Arabs.
Read the article by Wilhelm Marr in wikipedia.
That's the equivalent of someone claiming that the N word only applies to only to African-Americans, not people who were born in the African continent or in the Caribbean.
Why use such a description?
Especial if it was invented by a Jew hater.
What is most offensive is the writing off of Palestinian suffering as part of a triad of 'grand myths', a remark latent with the type of soft bigotry that is to be found in the remarks of many who defend Israeli goverment policy. This article was only short of using the phrase 'anti-Israel/ anti-Semitism' which seems to becoming more common these days by those who use 'anti-semitism' as an ideological weapon to silence criticism of Israel.
Most informed wasp voters in this country (democrats) do not believe that the real estate of the middle east is the domain of the religious history of the jews, i.e. that the land from the Euphrates to the Nile belongs to them. I think it was Jimmy Carter who had the courage to state what he thought about apartheid and we all witness the ugly torment that he was put through. Who put Carter through that mill of repentence and made him apoligize??? I think if you can grow to understand that Ben, then you will realize that the AIPAC and their interests may have had carte blanche with the American leverage but it is currently in the process of ending. Time for the 67 boundaries and the practice of good neighborhoods, eh?
For starters, support for Israel among American voters is at an all time high. You can attempt to dismiss this by a circular argument that states by definition informed voters are not supporters of Israel, but that does not hold water.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/126155/support-israel-near-record-high.aspx
As for Jimmy Carter, he is the best ex-President Arab money can buy. He has taken many millions of Arab petrodollars, including sources so openly anti-Semitic that Harvard divinity school returned a $2,000,000 donation to that donor.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/hmp49/oliver-stone-jewish-domin_n_659795_55461955.html
I won't go into the specific arguments because of space constraints, but UN 242 does not call for a return to pre 67 borders, it only calls for a return "of territories" made intentionally vague, and then only on the condition of peace and relinquishing future claims.
"a majority also believed that "it’s time for the U.S. to 'get tough' with Israel 'to stop building settlements.'” There was also an overwhelming belief, (81% - 15%) that the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a negative impact on U.S. interests."" http://mondoweiss.net/2010/07/jta-features-five-month-old-poll-to-remind-us-how-much-americans-used-to-support-israel.html
A poll that was done after the flotilla attack show.
1. 56% of Americans agree with the claim that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza;
2. 43% of Americans agree with the claim that people in Gaza are starving;
3. [Only] 34% of Americans support the Israeli operation against the Flotilla;
4. [Only] 20% of Americans “felt support” for Israel following announcement of easing of Gaza closure.
So 63% to 20% in 5 months
http://coteret.com/2010/07/05/hasbarapocalypse-leaked-frank-luntz-memo-israeli-public-diplomacy-in-us-on-flotilla-failed-dismally/
It takes the courage to be the true antisemite
"Especially lucrative have been Carter’s ties to Saudi Arabia. Before his death in 2005, King Fahd was a longtime contributor to the Carter Center who made several million-dollar donations. In 1993 alone, the king presented Carter with a gift of $7.6 million. The king was not the only Saudi royal to commit funds to Carter’s cause. As of 2005, the king’s high-living nephew, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, has donated at least $5 million to the Carter Center."
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=1001
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Recent disclosures of Carter's extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it. How could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source?
And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source.
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=26364
Of course, given the length of that list, he'd be busy for quite a while.
"Of course, given the length of that list, you'd be busy for quite a while."
Look it up in any dictionary.
But keep asking, and look up the joke about "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result"
"Hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious group or "race." Although the term anti-Semitism has wide currency, it is regarded by some as a misnomer, implying discrimination against all Semites, including Arabs and other peoples who are not the targets of anti-Semitism as it is usually understood. In antiquity, hostility to the Jews emerged because of religious differences, a situation worsened as a result of the competition with Christianity. By the 4th century, Christians tended to see Jews as an alien people whose repudiation of Christ had condemned them to perpetual migration. Jews were denied citizenship and its rights in much of Europe in the Middle Ages (though some societies were more tolerant) or were forced to wear distinctive clothing, and there were forced expulsions of Jews from several regions in that period....."
http://www.answers.com/topic/anti-semitism
Actually the results are different depending on who answers. Those who appreciate the truth will acknowledge that the Palestinians are indeed Semites, does who would rather conveniently forget that fact never answer the question and just blurt out something irrelevant followed with an insult which they thought was pretty witty.