Anti-Semitism at Daily Kos

The picture at the top of this post is a screen capture of a Daily Kos page for which one of my own readers was banned from the site. There are certain things that the Leftist blog just won't let you do or say, and questioning the 'Palestinian' narrative is one of them.

Last Thursday (wee hours of Friday morning here in Israel) a diary was posted at Daily Kos that enumerated hundreds of cases of anti-Semitic comments being let through by the moderators at the Left's second most important blog (after HuffPo). Anti-Semitism at DKos has been documented before, but what's different about this post is that (a) it was posted on DKos itself and (b) it is signed by dozens of DKos posters. Here are some of the things they cite.

At times, the community has widespread consensus about a poster. Nonetheless, such posters often remain, despite consensus. One poster has repeatedly spewed bigoted comments, throughout his years at this site. This poster claimed that a "Jewish gene" exists, that Jews control the media and that antisemitism represents a better bigotry because antisemites envy Jews. This poster has also excused a bigot's antisemitic statements because the bigot probably "[felt] threatened by Jewish people." Community members have often presented this poster's history to the community. Despite this record, the poster remains a Daily Kos member with trusted user status.

Another poster who still remains asserted that Jewish law causes antisemitism. He then promoted Jewish antisemite, Israel Shahak. For reference, David Duke dedicated a book to Shahak. The poster also proclaimed that Shahak's antisemitic ideas are, in fact, widely-held notions about Jews (we certainly hope not). This poster graduated to repeated and continual uprates of other posters' antisemitic comments before finally espousing the notion that "justifiable antisemitism" exists.

...

Antisemites regularly claim that Jews control the media in order to achieve their nefarious purposes. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion promoted this false notion. One comment in which a poster stated that the owners of the New York Daily News are Jewish and therefore could not be trusted, presented a straight-forward example. Another commenter contended that "Israel" writes our media's scripts. A third wrote of a media "overly influenced by Jewish interests." A comment, packed with a litany of antisemitic memes, decried the "2% of the population that control the banks, corporate boards and the udeo-fascist, foreign- owned [sic] media." Even with the usual uprates, these show instances of community moderation working. By contrast, even a comment complete with the greatest hits of antisemitism, i.e. "the brooksIsraeli propaganda" media, "Judeo-hitlerian anglo-fascist entity," Israel as "pigland" and a desire to seize property of all "dual citizens," garnered multiple uprates. That this second comment remains visible exemplifies how community moderation of antisemitism often fails. Negative resistance often thwarts Jewish posters' attempts at community moderation of antisemitic comments.

When Oliver Stone stated that "Jewish control of the media is preventing an open discussion of the Holocaust," there was condemnation of his remarks. In addition to the media control meme, Stone also used the language of Holocaust deniers. He said we should allow "open debate" on the Holocaust and ranted about the "Jewish lobby." However, there were plenty of site users who excused, obfuscated, dismissed or flat-out agreed with Stone. Understandably, many Jewish site members were horrified and distressed that the hide ratings seemed to be few and far between.

Read the whole thing. There are dozens of linked comments in the post (I don't have the time to follow all those links), and 1650 comments (at this writing) on the post itself. The post must have taken hours (and days) to write.

But anti-Semitism in the political Left is a known phenomenon. What goes on at DKos also goes on at HuffPo, Salon and other Leftist sites. And since much of the anti-Semitism is stepping over the line from legitimate criticism of Israel to illegitimate criticism, perhaps they ought to consider former Prisoner-of-Conscience Natan Sharansky's 3-D test for anti-Semitism.

The first “D” is the test of demonization — as noted in the State Department report. Jews have been demonized for centuries as the embodiment of evil, whether in the theological form of a collective accusation of deicide or in the generalized depiction of Jews as money-grubbing Shylocks. Today we must take note when the Jewish state or its leaders are being demonized, with their actions being blown out of all rational proportion.

For example, the comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and of the Palestinian refugee camps to Auschwitz — comparisons heard frequently throughout Europe and on North American university campuses — are clearly antisemitic. Those who draw such analogies either are deliberately ignorant regarding Nazi Germany or, more commonly, are deliberately depicting modern-day Israel as the embodiment of evil.

The second “D” is the test of double standards. From discriminatory laws many nations enacted against Jews to the tendency to judge their behavior by a different yardstick, this differential treatment of Jews was always a clear sign of antisemitism. Similarly, today we must ask whether criticism of Israel is being applied selectively. In other words, do similar policies pursued by other governments produce similar criticism?

It is antisemitic discrimination, for instance, when Israel is singled out for condemnation by the United Nations for perceived human rights abuses while proven obliterators of human rights on a massive scale — like China, Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Syria, to name just a few — are not even mentioned. Likewise, it is antisemitism when Israel’s Magen David Adom, alone among the world’s ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross.

The third “D” is the test of delegitimization. Traditionally, antisemites denied the legitimacy of the Jewish religion, the Jewish people, or both. Today, they attempt to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state, presenting it as, among other things, the prime remnant of imperialist colonialism.

While criticism of an Israeli policy may not be antisemitic, the denial of Israel’s right to exist is always antisemitic. If other peoples, including 21 Arab Muslim States — and particularly the many states created in the postcolonial period following World War II — have the right to live securely in their homelands, then the Jewish people has that right as well, particularly given the sanction of the United Nations in setting up and recognizing the country at its founding. Questioning that legitimacy is pure antisemitism.

Sharansky wrote those words in 2005 and I first linked them in 2010. They remain as relevant as ever today. Perhaps the honest elements of the political Left ought to consider adopting them as guidelines.