Posted on 10/20/2002 1:46:17 AM PDT by MadIvan
An article by a first-year student criticising what he regards as the anti-semitism tolerated at the United Nations appeared in last week’s Yale Daily News, the paper for the elite American university. If the article was typical fare the response to it was not. The author had touched a nerve and a torrent of anger was unleashed.
“I recently attended a forum focusing on the Israeli/Palestinian issue,” wrote one respondent. “Both sides made valid points but there was a heated exchange when the pro-Israel side initiated the ‘anti-semite’ slur. I am sick and tired of Jewish people always smearing those that merely disagree with their views as ‘evil’.
“I never thought I’d say this but a lot of what the so-called ‘white supremacists’ are saying (is) proving more accurate than I feel comfortable admitting.”
Then there was the recent Not In Our Name rally in Central Park, demonstrating against a potential war against Iraq. Around the edges of the rally copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the classic forged document of 19th-century anti-semitism, were being sold. According to the New York Sun, this peddling of anti-semitic tripe was not entirely accidental.
One protester said: “There are interest groups that want Israel to dominate Palestine. If Bush goes with them and is too critical, he might lose their support . . . the international financiers have their hooks in everything.” Ah, those international financiers. Remember them? America’s anti-war movement, still puny and struggling, is showing signs of being hijacked by one of the oldest and darkest prejudices there is. Perhaps it was inevitable. The conflict against Islamo-fascism obviously circles back to the question of Israel. Fanatical anti-semitism, as bad or even worse than Hitler’s, is now a cultural norm across much of the Middle East. It’s the acrid glue that unites Saddam, Arafat, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran and the Saudis.
And if you campaign against a war against that axis, you’re bound to attract people who share these prejudices. That’s not to say the large majority of anti-war campaigners are anti-semitic. But this strain of anti-semitism is worrying and dangerous.
Earlier this year there were calls for America’s universities to withdraw any investments in Israel. A petition at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard attracted hundreds of signatures, prompting Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, to say that “serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-semitic in their effect if not their intent”. He said views that were once the preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists were now supported in “progressive intellectual communities”.
Summers’s argument was simple: why has Israel alone been singled out as worthy of divestment? Critics cite its continued occupation of the West Bank. There’s no question that Israel’s policies there are ripe for criticism and that to equate such criticism with anti-semitism is absurd. Similarly, it’s perfectly possible to argue against Israel’s domestic policies without any hint of anti-semitism. But to argue that Israel is more deserving of sanction than any other regime right now is surely bizarre.
Israel is a multiracial democracy. Arab citizens of Israel proper can vote and freely enter society; there is freedom of religion and a free press. An openly gay man just won election to the Knesset. Compared with China, a ruthless dictatorship brutally occupying Tibet, Israel is a model of democratic governance. And unlike China’s occupation of Tibet, Israel’s annexation was a defensive action against an Arab military attack.
Compare Israel to any other Middle Eastern country — Syria’s satrapy in Lebanon, Mubarak’s police state, Iraq’s barbaric autocracy or Iran’s theocracy — and it’s a beacon of light. To single it out for attack is so self-evidently bizarre that it prompts an obvious question: what are these anti-Israel fanatics really obsessed about?
The answer, I think, lies in the nature of part of today’s left. It is fuelled above all by resentment of the success western countries, and their citizens, have achieved through freedom and hard work. Just look at Israel’s amazing achievements in comparison with its neighbours: a vibrant civil society, economic growth, technological skills, an agricultural miracle.
It is no surprise that the resentful left despises it. So, for obvious reasons, do Israel’s neighbours. The Arab states could have made peace decades ago and enriched themselves through trade and interaction. Instead, rather than emulate the Jewish state, they spent decades trying to destroy it. When they didn’t succeed, Arab dictators resorted to the easy distractions of envy, hatred and obsession.
Al-Qaeda is the most dangerous manifestation of this response; Hezbollah comes a close second. But milder versions are everywhere. And what do people who want to avoid examining their own failures do? They look for scapegoats. Jews are the perennial scapegoat.
This attitude isn’t restricted to the Middle East. In the West the left has seized on Israel as another emblem of what they hate. They’re happy to see Saddam re-elected with 100% of a terrified vote, happy to see him develop nerve gas and nuclear weapons to use against his own population and others. But over Israel’s occasional crimes in self-defence? They march in the streets.
Ask the average leftist what he is for, and you will not get a particularly eloquent response. Ask what he is against and the floodgates open. Similarly, ask the average anti-war activist what she thinks we should do about Iraq and the stammering begins. Do we leave Saddam alone? Send Jimmy Carter to sign the kind of deal he made with North Korea eight years ago?
Will pressurising Israel remove the nerve gas and potential nukes Saddam has? Will ceding the West Bank to people who cheered on September 11 help defang Al-Qaeda? They don’t say and don’t know. But they do know what they are against: American power, Israeli human rights abuses, British neo-imperialism, the “racist” war on Afghanistan and so on. Get them started on their hatreds, and the words pour out. No wonder they are selling the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Central Park.
Such negativism matters. When a movement is based on resentment, when your political style is as bitter as it is angry and your rhetoric focuses not on those murdering party-goers in Bali or workers in Manhattan but on the democratic powers trying to protect them, your fate is cast. A politics of resentment is a poisonous creature that slowly embitters itself. You should not be surprised if the most poisonous form of resentment that the world has ever known springs up, unbidden, in your midst.
At the time, the US was leaning more toward the Arabs than towards Israel, and Tel Aviv suspected that Liberty was passing intercepted communications to the Arabs.
Whatever the case, the incident is now water long under the bridge and has NO RELEVANCE to the present situation in the Middle East.
The only reason someone would bring it up at all in this day and age is to smear some stink on Israel.
Exactly right.
Which makes the frantic re-posting on the subject all the more pathological.
As far as I know, that's untrue. We might not have become full-fledged allies of Israel at that point, but American public opinion was very much in favor of Israel, and I find it very hard to believe that LBJ's administration did not reflect that bias. Think of the extent to which LBJ was beholden to Abe Fortas throughout his political career, for God's sake. Before I accept this claim, I want to see some evidence.
The only reason someone would bring it up at all in this day and age is to smear some stink on Israel.
I know that's untrue, because I know what prompted me to bring the matter up. It was germane to the discussion. Why don't you look at the reply to which I was replying?
I was making the point that people make charges of anti-Semitism for awfully flimsy reasons, just to stop discussions. And I think the further course of this thread has proved my point.
Naval Security Group? Why, they look like a consulting firm. "Advising on crypto solutions", hehe - glorified office supply consultant?
Nope. The Israelis fired the shots, but the NSA made an unknowing crew sitting ducks by disobeying orders to move 20 miles out to sea. Who do you think you are playing with, aristdeides? Your 2 year old kid brother?
That's not defending killing the sailors?
Wasn't that a job for the State Department instead of hte Department of Defense?
They knew the Israelis were lying to them.
About what?
So they ordered the Liberty in, a highly unusual action for any ship, but an unparalleled one for what was really an NSA asset.
Hello! Now it's getting really confusing.
I don't know, dude. Ask their officers in command. As for being in international waters, you aren't paying attention. They were ordered into international waters but never went. They were smack in the middle of a war zone.
That's not defending killing the sailors?
By the way, I may get carried away by an argument, but, if I say what turns out to be incorrect, in general it's because I allowed myself to believe it at the time. I won't say I never lie -- given a strong enough motive, I do occasionally, like most people. But I am reasonably honest. And I am unaware of having committed any lies on this thread.
Can you say the same?
Sure, there was murky bureaucratic politics going on. But that doesn't excuse killing the sailors.
About just about everything having to do with the Middle East war in '67. Read the chapter in Bamford.
The impulse to reply "prove it" to an assertion which counters a point under discussion is one of the trappings of childhood that true adults outgrow.
Public opinion and governmental policy did not swing solidly behind Israel until the 1967 war and a reasonable amount of objective reaearch by you will establish the fact beyond question.
And isn't it funny how the USS LIBERTY incident just happens to be germaine to every thread having to do with Israel or Jews?
Quidnunc should have wrote: Public opinion and governmental policy did not swing solidly behind Israel until after the 1967 war and a reasonable amount of objective reaearch by you will establish the fact beyond question.
I was 20 years old at the time. I remember the state of U.S. opinion.
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