The Left: Where anti-Semitism is in style
A good week and a good summer to all of you.
You'd have to be living in a cave not to have heard how the British Labor Party has been overrun by anti-Semitism, and how that's come to a head in the last week or two.
But Britain is not the only place that's happened. Anti-Semitism, politely described as anti-Zionism, has become synonymous with the Left in every Western country.
Two important weekend pieces look at this phenomenon. The first is Stephen Pollard in the London Telegraph. Pollard concentrates on what's going on in his home country, Britain, and says that he's
scared of what he sees. He also sees that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
But on another, more visceral
level, it chills me to the bone. And it’s not the terrorists. They
threaten me, of course, as they threaten us all. Yet to me, the real
chill comes from their fellow travelers – the useful idiots of the
terrorists and Jew-murderers who say they do not have a racist bone in
their body, but when it comes to Jews, a blind spot emerges.
The likes,
to be blunt, of the now suspended Ken Livingstone, who claims never to
have come across a single example of Anti-semitism in the Labour Party.
He clearly has never looked in the mirror. Much has been written – especially by the brilliant Nick Cohen
– on the "Red/Green Alliance"; the phenomenon by which a swathe of the
Left has linked up with radical Islam, leading to the bizarre spectacle
of Leftist feminists supporting Islamists who would cut off the hands of
women who read books.
With "anti-Western-imperialism" as part of the glue binding the
alliance, everything else falls into place. So Hamas and Hezbollah might
have as their defining goal the elimination of an entire people from
the face of the earth, but that unfortunate consequence for Jews is by
the by, because Hamas and Hezbollah are freedom fighters.
And because Israel is part of the
Western imperium, as well as a key target for Islamists, it is also
enemy number one for progressives. So an obsessive preoccupation with
the Jewish state becomes the default position of the Left. China,
Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia – pah! The focus must be on Israel and Israel
alone. From that springs an entire worldview that encompasses "Zionist"
control of the media, of business, of everything. And we can’t be
accused of targeting Jews because we don’t use the word. We say Zionist,
not Jew.
So deep does this warping of what it means to be Left and progressive
now run that it is almost prosaic to assert Zionist control. But now,
to cap it, we have a Labour leader whose entire political career has
been in this milieu – feeding it, growing it and pushing it.
...
Should I admit that I am afraid? Because I am. I don’t go about my
life in fear. I wouldn’t be writing this or doing my job if I did. But
how, quite rationally, can I not be afraid when Jews are being murdered
on the streets of Europe simply for being Jews; when anti-Semitic tropes
and discourse is becoming part of the mainstream of political debate;
and when one of our main political parties is led by a man who does not
merely let this fester, but actually describes representatives of terrorist groups as "friends"?
If this is the level we have reached today, I fear not just for
myself but far more for my children. History shows that when
anti-Semitism takes hold it does not wither; it grows. Yes, Britain is a
wonderful home to Jews, as it is to all minorities. Yes, we have the
full backing of the law and the authorities. But yes, I do look over my
shoulder. Wouldn’t you?
Read the whole thing.
Over at the National Review Online, Kevin Williamson has a
more American and universal perspective.
In the United States, the Harvard Law Record went to some lengths
to conceal the identity of a law student who attacked a visiting Israeli
dignitary as — in the classic anti-Semitic formulation — “smelly.” That
student was Husam El-Qoulaq, a Palestinian leftist. The campus Left
has, to no one’s surprise, rallied to his defense. Among those defending
him were a number of Jewish law students, who insisted that El-Qoulaq
couldn’t possibly have known the anti-Semitic history of “smelly Jew”
rhetoric, in spite of his having been reared at the world center of such
nonsense.
Others insisted that the Harvard case and the Labour cases are — this,
too, will be familiar — not at all about anti-Semitism but about
anti-Zionism.
That argument does not stand up to two seconds’ scrutiny, and never
has. One of the fundamental stories of history is that people move
around and bump into each other. It is true that most of the current
Jewish population of Israel descends from people who were not precisely
sons of the soil they now inhabit. But then, neither are the so-called
Palestinians, who are Arabs. Arabs famously come from Arabia, but they
are located all over the world. No one talks about the need to get the
Arabs out of Egypt or Libya — or Palestine, for that matter — any more
than anybody seriously thinks about returning the Americas to the
descendants of the aboriginal population, which, of course, wasn’t
aboriginal, either, but merely the first to emigrate. The Irish are
descended of people not native to Ireland, as indeed ultimately is every
population in the world, including those in the African cradle of
humanity.
And it isn’t because the establishment of Israel is, relatively
speaking, fresh in the historical memory, and therefore an open wound.
Before the end of World War II, there was no Pakistan, and to the extent
that there was an “India,” it was a geographical rather than a
political term, much like “Palestine.” There was no independent Ireland
until the 1920s and no Republic of Ireland until 1948. There was no
People’s Republic of China until 1949. There was no Zimbabwe until 1980,
no Czech Republic until 1993, and no modern Democratic Republic of the
Congo until 1997. Israel is an ancient state compared with geopolitical
newcomers such as the 30-odd countries created since 1990.
...
For those who learned at the feet of that old fraud Edward Said,
the Jews are the colonialists, the European modernists inflicting
capitalism and technology upon the noble savages of their imaginations.
The Israeli Jews commit the double crime of insisting upon being Jews
and refusing to be sacrificial victims. They were okay, in the Left’s
estimate, for about five minutes, back when Israel’s future was assumed
to be one of low-impact kibbutz socialism. History went in a different
direction, and today Israel has one of the world’s most sophisticated
economies.
For the Jew-hater, this is maddening: Throw the Jews out of Spain,
and they thrive abroad. Send them to the poorest slums in New York, and
those slums stop being slums. Keep them out of the Ivy League and watch
NYU become a world-class institution inspired by men such as Jonas Salk,
son of largely uneducated Polish immigrants. Put the Jewish state in a
desert wasteland and watch it bloom, first with produce and then with
technology. Israel today has more companies listed on NASDAQ than any
other country except the United States and China. The economy under
Palestinian management? Olives and handicrafts, and a GDP per capita
that barely exceeds that of Sudan.
The Arab–Israeli conflict is a bitter and ugly one. My own view of it is
that the Palestinian Arabs have some legitimate grievances, and that I
stopped caring about them when they started blowing up children in pizza
shops. You can thank the courageous heroes of the Battle of Sbarro for
that. Israel isn’t my country, but it is my country’s ally, and it is
impossible for a liberty-loving American to fail to admire what the
Jewish state has done.
And that, of course, is why the Left wants to see the Jewish state
exterminated.
Read the whole thing.
I've written about the Red-Green Alliance many times before. You may want to start
here and
here.
Labels: anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, British anti-Semitism, British Labour party, Edward Said, European anti-Semitism, Leftist anti-Semitism, Leftist Jews, Red-Green alliance
Fired again?
When last we left Steven Salaita, he had been hired by the
American University of Beirut to become the 'Edward Said Professor of American Studies,' after the University of Illinois
revoked his tenure track appointment for being a purveyor of
hate speech. Now, it appears that Salaita
won't even last the year in Beirut. This is really rich.
But Salaita’s views, it seems, are too unpalatable even in Lebanon. A petition
circulated today and signed by students of the university argues that
the official search procedure designed to award Salaita his position was
cancelled on March 30 by university president Fadlo Khuri, citing
“procedural irregularities.” Which, the petitioners argue, is just code
for political persecution. “We fear,” the petition continues, “that AUB
is reproducing the trend of persecuting scholars who condemn the
injustices committed in Palestine.”
Even if you ignore for one minute the rich irony of this
statement—given the absolutely abysmal way Lebanon has treated its
sizable Palestinian population, denied access to basic resources like
housing, education, and employment for the past six decades—you have to
savor the thought of Salaita, who fashioned himself into a martyr
wronged by a shady Zionist cabal for criticizing Israel, being now
slammed a second time by a university few can accuse of abundant love
for the Jewish state.
The university was reached for comment, but provided none as of yet. Updates as they come.
Here's betting that Salaita lands at Bir Zeit on the Hudson... or at the Islamic University of Gaza. Heh.
Labels: Beirut, Edward Said, liberal academia
The most anti-Semitic college campus in the United States is...
The most anti-Semitic college campus in the United States is the home of Edward Said and Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi and the center for 'Palestinian studies.' Yes, you guessed it, it's
Bir Zeit on the Hudson.
According to the [David Horowitz Freedom] Center, Columbia University is listed first because
it is home to the “most well-known antisemitic professors in the
nation such as Rashid Khalidi and Joseph Massad, who has been accused
of harassing Jewish students on multiple occasions. In addition, it is
home to a highly active SJP chapter that has recently brought BDS
founder Omar Barghouti and disgraced antisemitic professor Steven
Salaita to campus.”
The Center also cited a number of offending events held at Columbia
University in 2014, such as Israeli Apartheid Week and a protest with
signs that read “Call to Action: Stand with Gaza.”
My friend
Professor Jacobson's campus, Cornell, comes in second.
Cornell University came in second place followed by George Mason
University, Loyola University Chicago, Portland State University, San
Diego State University and San Francisco State University. Rounding off
the list was Temple University, University of California Los Angeles and
Vassar College.
Kind of surprised not to see
Brandeis or
UC - Irvine on the list.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: American college campuses, Bir Zeit on the Hudson, Brandeis University, Cornell University, Edward Said, Joseph Massad, Muslim anti-Semitism, Rashid Khalidi, University of California at Irvine
How the American Left allowed the Islamic revolution to thrive
Asaf Romirowsky reviews a new book called
Navigating Iran: From Carter to Obama by Ofira Seliktar. For those of you who, like me, thought that the United States' Iran policy was so ineffective because deep down Jimmy Carter sympathized with the revolution,
there's more to it than that.
One of the major phenomena that the author
skillfully dissects is how disciples of the late Palestinian advocate
Edward Said and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) at large
misunderstood and consequently misguided American policy-makers under
the false belief of an "Islamic reformation" or democratization. In
contrast, others, like Bernard Lewis, had serious reservations about
Khomeini especially after finding a printing of the "Welayat el Faqih,"
the theory of the Absolute Guardianship of the Jurist notion, which
included Khomeini's lectures from the 1970s and now forms the basis for
the Iranian constitution.
Lewis alerted the Washington Post of
Khomeini's theocratic aspirations, setting out to change the
conventional wisdom that was coming out of Washington at the time.
Anyone who held views that ran counter to MESA's, including Richard
Perle — then an aide to Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson who supplied
samples of Khomeini's writings to the CIA — and others, was categorized
as "orientalist" (another way of saying conservative or anti-Said).
Moreover, this misreading of Iran was
"ratified" by Columbia University professor Gary Sick, whose "October
Surprise" conspiracy theory alleged that Ronald Reagan made a deal with
the Iranians to delay the release of the hostages to prevent Carter from
winning the 1980 presidential elections. Sick wrote an op-ed — later he
expanded into a book entitled, "October Surprise: America's Hostages in
Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan" — in which he characterized the
1980 election as a "covert political coup." This simplistic reading did
not consider the internal politics of Iran.
Sorry, but that account absolves a bunch of people who ought not to be absolved. Although Said, who lived until 2003, was a Christian, he was so virulently anti-Israel that he likely promoted the Iranian revolution because it was a threat to Israel's continued existence. As to MESA, it may have been similarly motivated. This is from a
2005 piece by Martin Kramer:
For MESAns, the Palestinians are the chosen people, and more so now
than ever. More papers are devoted to Palestine than to any other
country. There are ten times as many Egyptians as there are
Palestinians, but they get less attention; there are ten times as many
Iranians, but Iran gets less than half the attention. Even Iraq,
America’s project in the Middle East, still inspires only half the
papers that Palestine does. Papers dealing with Israel are only half as
numerous as those on Palestine, and only three of these are about Israel
per se, apart from the Arab-Israeli conflict. More than half of the
Israel-related papers actually overlap the Palestine category. MESA’s
Palestine obsession has reached new heights, suggesting this: academe is
gearing up for its next intifada.
To appreciate that, you have to go beyond the numbers, to the content
of this “scholarship.” There you discover that many of the
presentations, if not most of them, are blatant attempts to academize
anti-Israel agitprop.
When you add to that the fact that Carter's instinctive sympathies were with the revolutionaries, there is little doubt that the failure of US policy in Iran was orchestrated by those in power.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Edward Said, Iranian revolution, Jimmy Carter, Middle East Studies Association, Red-Green alliance
Must read: America's pro-'Palestinian' in chief
Stanley Kurtz revisits the issue of President Obama's ties with
pro-'Palestinian' radicals, and concludes that we all should have listened three years ago when we were warned about this (well, I did listen and wrote about it extensively but didn't convince enough people).
During his time in the Illinois state senate, Obama forged close alliances with the most prominent Palestinian political leaders in America. Substantial evidence also indicates that during his pre-Washington years, Obama was both supportive of the Palestinian cause and critical of America’s stance toward Israel. Although Obama began to voice undifferentiated support for Israel around 2004 (as he ran for U.S. Senate and his national visibility rose), critics and even some backers have long suspected that his pro-Palestinian inclinations survive.
The continuing influence of Obama’s pro-Palestinian sentiments is the best way to make sense of the president’s recent tilt away from Israel. This is why supporters of Israel should fear Obama’s reelection. In 2013, with his political vulnerability a thing of the past, Obama’s pro-Palestinian sympathies would be released from hibernation, leaving Israel without support from its indispensable American defender.
...
The record is clear. Obama’s heritage, his largely hidden history of leftist radicalism, and his close friendship with Rashid Khalidi, all bespeak sincerity, as Obama’s other Palestinian associates agree. This is not to mention Reverend Wright — whose rabidly anti-Israel sentiments, I show in Radical-in-Chief, Obama had to know about — or Obama’s longtime foreign-policy adviser Samantha Power, who once apparently recommended imposing a two-state solution on Israel through American military action. Decades of intimate alliances in a hard-Left world are a great deal harder to fake than a few years of speeches at AIPAC conferences.
The real Obama is the first Obama, and depending on how the next presidential election turns out, we’re going to meet him again in 2013.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Ali Abunimah, Barack Hussein Obama, Bernadine Dohrn, Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, William Ayers
