A new form of anti-Semitism
Here's some more pushback on John Mearsheimer's categorizing Jews into 'righteous Jews,' 'new Afrikaaners' and a middle category last week. This one is particularly poignant because it comes from Yaacov Lozowick, the former director of archives at Yad Vashem, Israel's main Holocaust Memorial. The third disassociation was of course to love the Jews next door, but detest the anachronistic ones who engaged in such outlandish practices such as patriotism, wars of national interest, national particularism in any form, and so on. It's not antisemitism, it's anti-Zionism. See the Guardian. This form has a second strand, in which even the anti-Zionism is played down, with the pretense that one is merely critical of some of Israel's actions; this line of reasoning is the most sophisticated since Israel really does offer quite a bit to be critical about: so long as one is equally critical of everyone else, and recognizes the context, and makes the effort to understand what's really going on...Read the whole thing.
The upshot of all this is that people can engage in activity which for centuries would have been openly recognized as expressing animosity to the Jews, and the Jews and their allies must invest inordinate efforts merely to get to the starting line of rejecting the antisemitism.
Take this long speech by John Mearsheimer, which went online two days ago. It is being cited widely - Noah Pollak, David Bernstein, and of course, Mondoweiss and Juan Cole, to name just a few.
I'm not going to argue with Mearsheimer. The man's lack of access to the subject of internal Israeli politics and how they play out, and his willingness to tell falsehoods about Jews, is beyond embarrassing, though his ability to get away with it speaks volumes to the potency of Jew hatred in our time. The truly significant part of his speech comes about halfway through, when he begins to divide America's Jews into Righteous, Apartheid-Jews, and undecided. This is the ominous part: a man who is lying through his teeth about Israel, and totally disregarding the actions of the Palestinians, is classifying America's Jews and tarnishing them.
Anyone who cares about democracy and a free society in America needs to take note. The reason the antisemitism of the Nazis was so horrific for humanity was that it threatened decency everywhere. It's not yet back, Nazi antisemitism, but its forerunners seem to be.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:45 AM
3 Comments:
Hitler was an honest anti-Semite. He hated all Jews without exception. Anti-Semites today are willing to accept Jews who do agree with them. They just hate the rest. Isn't that the refuge Mearsheimer seeks to avoid being branded an anti-Semite? Its a rather thin and unconvincing one.
Not only does Mearsheimer know nothing about Israeli politics and the State of Israel but he is willfully ignorant about South Africa, apartheid and the Afrikaans people.
I can't describe how angry this has made me feel.
norman,
mearshimer does hate all jews, the same way that old southerners hated all blacks.
but southerners pretended to like the blacks who played stepandfetchit.
mearshimer pretends to like the jews who are self destructive...there is no future for the secular jew...look at the birth rates and intermarriage rates
in 50 years, the secular jew doesnt exist.
mearshimer is the intellectual equivalent of haman
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