Why people on the far-left are very anti Israel?

We shouldn't single it out for its Jewishness, we should single it out for its ongoing crimes against humanity. We also shouldn't ever forget that our own countries were built on similar crimes, and deserve just as much to be dismantled.

I think that Zionism, in its very nature, is a racist ideology. I also think that there is nothing 'special' about Israel. Lots of states have racist ideologies. I don't think that there is anything exceptional in that.

Why is Israel "far worse than" Turkey, for example? The death toll in Turkish Kurdistan is massively higher (and would still even be higher when factoring in the relative sizes of the populations), and the suppression of culture and identity has certainly been far worse. One could also argue that Kemalism is a racist ideology. What is so special about Israel?

Devrim

Quote:

why does the atrocious policy of the state of Israel produces different reactions than e.g. the massacres and destruction of more than 2000 villages and hamlets in Turkish Kurdistan 1984-1999, the massacres and mass graves in Baluchistan or the occupations of Western Sahara since 1975 or the occupation of East Timor 1975-1999 by Indonesia or the continuing ethnocide/ecocide against indigenous communities in south America? It is not due to a specific quality of the Israeli politics but due to a different perception which is in my opinion partly due to the fact, that a still existing layer of anti-jewish prejudices in Europe and North America makes it easier to mobilize support against colonialist violence in Gaza than e.g. in the Cudi Mountains or in Tskhinvali

That is utter bullshit. Even assuming that the bias you are suggesting existed, why would it be due to "anti-Jewish prejudice"? There is 0 evidence of that.

That is an absolutely accurate position that I 200% agree with. But I'm afraid, whether you see it or not, it contradicts many of the statements and propaganda issued above. I'm concerned that maybe you're not seeing it because there is latent Zionism and Jewish/white privilege on the left -- not latent "anti-Semitism".

can't remember that there were e.g. ever significant demonstrations in support of the suffering East Timorese people outside Portugal and Australia: despite the fact that somewhere between 20-35% of the people there died during the occupation and despite the fact that the whole Chinese community in the Timorese capital was rounded up and murdered during the first days of the occupation in 1975

who both are/were no apologists for the politics of Israel were constantly asked, what they have to say about their government's repression against the Palestinians

everyone but you could interpret it quite easily that it didn't contain a shred of Zionism just a very simple, run of the mill class analysis

Question: 'Incidents of anti-Semitism have come up at the Occupy protests. Why is anti-Semitism starting to rise among the left, and what is your advice to young Jewish activists?"
Chomsky: As far as I know, it's not true. [applause]

If you're out to look for it, you can find things. When you take a big mass of people, you can find a little bit of almost anything.

On the other hand, this claim that there's anti-Semitism on the left, just look at its history. Look at the early 1960s-70s. There was practically an industry of left-liberals, including the Democratic Socialists who were among the worst, trying to show that Dan Berrigan was an anti-Semite, that everyone who opened their mouths were anti-Semites. There were literally efforts -- Seymour Martin Lipset well known sociologist, was running big studies to run through Black Panther newspapers to see if he could find a poem by a twelve-year-old kid which maybe had some anti-Semitic implications. Okay, that shows they're all anti-Semites [sarcastically]. The cry of "anti-Semitism" is a good way to shut people up [applause] because nobody wants to be charged with that. I'd be pretty cautious about those charges. But if it's real, then you respond to it. Whatever it is, anti-Semitism today isn't even a toothpick on a mountain compared to anti-Muslim hysteria [applause].

A lot of the states in the Union here in [the United States] passing constitutional amendments to prevent the courts from using Halakha, Talmudic law [sarcastically]. If they did that, people wouldn't even laugh. But there are states doing something equally laughable and ridiculous -- except that it's dangerous -- which is trying to institute constitutional amendments to prevent the use of Sharia law. This is about as likely as an asteroid hitting the state [laughter]. But this is all over the place. That's real. The FBI is breaking into people's houses and arresting them for what's called "material support to terrorism" -- meaning they said something favorable to Palestinian movements or something. Nothing like that is happening to the Jewish population. If there are any bits and pieces of anti-Semitism, then fine, shout at them or argue against it. But I think it's extremely slight if it's there at all, in comparison to major movements of hatred and repression, hatred of immigrants, blacks, racism, anti-Muslim racism which is an extraordinary and really major phenomenon. [applause]

Scientific anti-Semitism insisted that the Jews were different from Christian Europeans. Indeed that the Jews were not European at all and that their very presence in Europe is what causes anti-Semitism. The reason why Jews caused so many problems for European Christians had to do with their alleged rootlessness, that they lacked a country, and hence country-based loyalty. In the Romantic age of European nationalisms, anti-Semites argued that Jews did not fit in the new national configurations, and disrupted national and racial purity essential to most European nationalisms. This is why if the Jews remained in Europe, the anti-Semites argued, they could only cause hostility among Christian Europeans. The only solution was for the Jews to exit from Europe and have their own country. Needless to say, religious and secular Jews opposed this horrific anti-Semitic line of thinking. Orthodox and Reform Jews, Socialist and Communist Jews, cosmopolitan and Yiddishkeit cultural Jews, all agreed that this was a dangerous ideology of hostility that sought the expulsion of Jews from their European homelands.
The Jewish Haskalah, or Enlightenment, which emerged also in the 19th century, sought to assimilate Jews into European secular gentile culture and have them shed their Jewish culture. It was the Haskalah that sought to break the hegemony of Orthodox Jewish rabbis on the "Ostjuden" of the East European shtetl and to shed what it perceived as a "medieval" Jewish culture in favour of the modern secular culture of European Christians. Reform Judaism, as a Christian- and Protestant-like variant of Judaism, would emerge from the bosom of the Haskalah. This assimilationist programme, however, sought to integrate Jews in European modernity, not to expel them outside Europe's geography.

When Zionism started a decade and a half after Marr's anti-Semitic programme was published, it would espouse all these anti-Jewish ideas, including scientific anti-Semitism as valid. For Zionism, Jews were "Semites", who were descendants of the ancient Hebrews. In his foundational pamphlet Der Judenstaat, Herzl explained that it was Jews, not their Christian enemies, who "cause" anti-Semitism and that "where it does not exist, [anti-Semitism] is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations", indeed that "the unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America"; that Jews were a "nation" that should leave Europe to restore their "nationhood" in Palestine or Argentina; that Jews must emulate European Christians culturally and abandon their living languages and traditions in favour of modern European languages or a restored ancient national language. Herzl preferred that all Jews adopt German, while the East European Zionists wanted Hebrew. Zionists after Herzl even agreed and affirmed that Jews were separate racially from Aryans. As for Yiddish, the living language of most European Jews, all Zionists agreed that it should be abandoned.

The majority of Jews continued to resist Zionism and understood its precepts as those of anti-Semitism and as a continuation of the Haskalah quest to shed Jewish culture and assimilate Jews into European secular gentile culture, except that Zionism sought the latter not inside Europe but at a geographical remove following the expulsion of Jews from Europe. The Bund, or the General Jewish Labor Union in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, which was founded in Vilna in early October 1897, a few weeks after the convening of the first Zionist Congress in Basel in late August 1897, would become Zionism's fiercest enemy. The Bund joined the existing anti-Zionist Jewish coalition of Orthodox and Reform rabbis who had combined forces a few months earlier to prevent Herzl from convening the first Zionist Congress in Munich, which forced him to move it to Basel. Jewish anti-Zionism across Europe and in the United States had the support of the majority of Jews who continued to view Zionism as an anti-Jewish movement well into the 1940s.

For example, when then -- Rep. Bob Dornan (R-Calif.), a strong supporter of Israel, called Soviet journalist Vladimir Posner a “disloyal, betraying little Jew” in 1986, pro-Israel congressmember Steven Solarz (D.-N.Y.) rushed to his defense, saying that the ethnic slur “should not be allowed to overshadow Bob’s long history of support and involvement with Israel.”
The Anti-Defamation League also backed Dornan, with spokesperson David Brodie saying that his attack on Posner was merely “unartful, unfortunate [and] inelegant” (AP, 2/28/86). Brodie added that the group he represented was regarded as “the last word on anti-Semitism. As far as ADL is concerned, this case is closed.”

who both are/were no apologists for the politics of Israel were constantly asked, what they have to say about their government's repression against the Palestinians

When people constantly regurgitate Zionist propaganda equating opposition to Israel with opposition to Jewishness -- which is something you yourself did above -- that alone promotes these kind of anti-Jewish opinions. After all, if excessive criticism of Israel is "anti-Jewish," then the assumption there in is that there is something inherently "Jewish" about Israel and random Jews are somehow representative of it. It is a reflection of the inherent anti-Semitism inside Zionism, not radical anti-Zionism.

If that is what you and other posters are referring to as "structural anti-Semitism," namely, Zionist propaganda, then I agree, but that's not what you're saying. You're saying excessive anti-Zionism is evidence of anti-Semitism, when it's the exact opposite. Please read the essay "The Last of the Semites" by Joseph Massad (posted on the 'left anti-Semitism' thread) for more on this topic.

sorry, but when e.g. Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Central Council of Jewish Congregations was asked by liberal or moderate left-wing journalists a couple of times in 1992 after he critizised racism against refugees in Germany and the inability of the German state to protect refugees and immigrants against racist attacks why he didn't critizise his country's repression against the Palestinians, this shows in my opinion how much elements of an anti-semitic ideology are part (of in this case) the German social mainstream ... and there are a lot of cases where either ignorant or stupid or vile people automatically assume, that the country of a Jew living in e.g. Germany, France, or Switzerland is still Israel which is an expression of the age-old anti-semitic stereotype, that Jews are illoyal or at least potential traitors towards their "host nation"

Dont think Jews have much 'white privilage' in parts of Europe at the moment. Your analysis is poor as well as being thoroughly offensive.

libcom posters said: We are opposed to the state of Isreal, and all other states, we are also opposed to anti-semitism.

Drakula25 said: Zionists!

After reading the other (now locked) thread I have nothing further to add that hasn't been said already. I think this argument can be summed up as:

Quote:

libcom posters said: We are opposed to the state of Isreal, and all other states, we are also opposed to anti-semitism.

Quote:

Drakula25 said: Zionists!

(repeat ad infinitum)

libcom posters said: We are opposed to the state of Israel, provided you only oppose it as much as any other state and do not single it out or suggest it has greater power or any other distinctions. If you do, you are an anti-Semite and there is no other possible reason to single out Israel, and left anti-Semitism is a real thing that we have not exaggerated.

Drakula25 said: This is whitewashing, because it means that we have to hold our tongues about anything that State of Israel does in excess or distinctly. It assumes that any different treatment toward Israel is due to anti-Semitism, an allegation I view as baseless. Doing so effectively whitewashes much, if not all, opposition to Zionism. As such, the statements made above are contradictory. The excessive and exaggerated concern about anti-Semitism is to mask privilege in favor of Jews at the expense of Palestine solidarity within left movements. That is a problem of white privilege and should be taken seriously

libcom posters said:: ANTI-SEMITE, ANTI-SEMITE, ANTI-SEMITE, BAN BAN BAN

has Drakula25 ever condemned PANCASILA in one of her/his statements? I think a proper leftists should do it at least twice in each statement and each left-wing text which does not condemn PANCASILA is completely worthless!!!

Also, for the record, class analysis INCLUDES racism and race privilege. It does not deny it, reduce it to a "conspiracy," etc. It is also not a slogan you can invoke every time you disagree with someone.

According to one of Black Badger's pamphlets, you are now an "anti-Semite". You must also take this accusation of anti-Semitism seriously, because there is totally non-exaggerated campaign of anti-Semitism on the left, even when this accusation is used to defend Zionism from allegations of racism.

I have to go to work but to make it clear, I am not saying Israel is worse (or better) than every other state, obviously there are far worse states (North Korea). I'm rejecting the notion that any suggestion that it is worse is evidence of "anti-Semitism," and I'm rejecting the notion that there a no distinguishing features that make greater criticism of Israel completely understandable and worthy of support. More later.

Also, please stop calling me a "troll" for my disagreements. The same stubbornness which I am being accused of is an accusation I would send back the other way.

Drakula25 wrote:

Also, for the record, class analysis INCLUDES racism and race privilege. It does not deny it, reduce it to a "conspiracy," etc. It is also not a slogan you can invoke every time you disagree with someone.

Outside of North America the idea of privilege theory barely exists. It might find some resonance in the UK, but outside of the Anglo-sphere, it is virtually completely unheard of even.

Devrim

Drakula25 prob a derail to go into details of privelige theory, I think I remeber it being discussed on another thread (or may have just been twitter where it comes up a lot more often), possibly in relation to intersectionality (theory). I can't find it but you might if you search (or just google as it doesn't seem to get as much attention on libcom)

I didn't know it was considered a "theory".

How else is white supremacy explained then? Is it explained at all? Do people recognize that it exists, or is it dismissed as something irrelevant, as Black Badger did in this thread? That is an honest question.

Drakula25 wrote:

Quote:

why does the atrocious policy of the state of Israel produces different reactions than e.g. the massacres and destruction of more than 2000 villages and hamlets in Turkish Kurdistan 1984-1999, the massacres and mass graves in Baluchistan or the occupations of Western Sahara since 1975 or the occupation of East Timor 1975-1999 by Indonesia or the continuing ethnocide/ecocide against indigenous communities in south America? It is not due to a specific quality of the Israeli politics but due to a different perception which is in my opinion partly due to the fact, that a still existing layer of anti-jewish prejudices in Europe and North America makes it easier to mobilize support against colonialist violence in Gaza than e.g. in the Cudi Mountains or in Tskhinvali

That is utter bullshit. Even assuming that the bias you are suggesting existed, why would it be due to "anti-Jewish prejudice"? There is 0 evidence of that.

can't remember that there were e.g. ever significant demonstrations in support of the suffering East Timorese people outside Portugal and Australia: despite the fact that somewhere between 20-35% of the people there died during the occupation and despite the fact that the whole Chinese community in the Timorese capital was rounded up and murdered during the first days of the occupation in 1975

http://uspcn.org/2012/03/13/granting-no-quarter-a-call-for-the-disavowal...

Isn't it funny how people who say they've "been around" for a long time but only registered within the last few days (or hours!) come here to deflect authentically anti-capitalist and anti-state discourse with their decidedly non-radical delusions?

I love Tel Aviv. Unlike most activists around me, I can’t see myself living anywhere else. But I can’t face Tel Aviv. I play along in mainstream Tel Aviv, enjoying my friends, the culture, the weather, and the uncannily beautiful, crumbling (and all the more beautiful for crumbling) architecture. But for my activism I go to the central bus station, which carries me away. I’d rather separate my activism from my daily city life. I act in solidarity with people whose plight has to do with my privilege. Since I am part of their problem, it’s pointless for me to patronize them over how their communities go wrong; my role is to work in solidarity when they fight to make things better. With those who share my privileges though not my politics, with those whose wrongs are so densely interlinked with mine, I feel that I don’t have enough of a common language to talk about what’s wrong.

I mean, America and Britain have been genociding people forever!!!!" and then signing it with the name "Schmuck" or something equally offensive in Yiddish.

Black Badger wrote:

http://uspcn.org/2012/03/13/granting-no-quarter-a-call-for-the-disavowal...

Isn't it funny how people who say they've "been around" for a long time but only registered within the last few days (or hours!) come here to deflect authentically anti-capitalist and anti-state discourse with their decidedly non-radical delusions?

I would wager that all of the people who signed that petition would agree with Drakula25 actually. Like the guy topping the list, Ali Abunimah, writes stuff like this; and so on going down. I don't think they use 'privilege' lingo as they tend to be from an older generation, but the substance is the same nonetheless. I think on the Jewish American Left it's pretty much the same, not just Chomsky. Like the people who run the American Jewish left website Mondoweiss are obsessed with "The Lobby" and it's latest schemes. Or Max Blumenthal, who has a new book attacking Israel out, writes similar stuff.

Even with the Israeli Jewish left. Like look at this "Anarchist Against the Wall":

Quote:

I love Tel Aviv. Unlike most activists around me, I can’t see myself living anywhere else. But I can’t face Tel Aviv. I play along in mainstream Tel Aviv, enjoying my friends, the culture, the weather, and the uncannily beautiful, crumbling (and all the more beautiful for crumbling) architecture. But for my activism I go to the central bus station, which carries me away. I’d rather separate my activism from my daily city life. I act in solidarity with people whose plight has to do with my privilege. Since I am part of their problem, it’s pointless for me to patronize them over how their communities go wrong; my role is to work in solidarity when they fight to make things better. With those who share my privileges though not my politics, with those whose wrongs are so densely interlinked with mine, I feel that I don’t have enough of a common language to talk about what’s wrong.

http://972mag.com/navigating-privilege-solidarity-and-belonging-a-chapte...

Yes its structurally Anti-Semitic, and contributes to actual Antisemitism, but it's no different from the Antisemitism of Zionism and it's a pretty widespread.

'whiteness'

I should not have taken the troll-bait on the other thread. It was marked for deletion. My fault, I guess.

I've re-posted the important content (before the insults) here, for reference:

Virtual Unanimity: The Left has already rejected your Zionist witch-hunt

As I have pointed out before, genuine left figures, including Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Tariq Ali, Jonathan Cook, and virtually every left figure outside of a few crank reactionary outfits like the AWL and the "Anti-Deutsch" have vocally rejected the propagandistic notion of a "new anti-Semitism" in Europe and the United States as little more than a cynical ploy to feign racism where it doesn't exist and conflate anti-racist opposition to Israel with anti-Jewish racism.

In particular, there is virtually no evidence of "anti-Semitism" on the left. I posted a video of Noam Chomsky describing the reactionary history of trying to "find" such anti-Semitism. I would like to ask for some serious responses to the claims he made, as last time, some idiot simply dismissed Chomsky as an "insular bourgeois" (a sad, extreme, and somewhat ironic dismissal that was quite hilarious to hear on an internet forum):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvVlM5RlSe0

Quote:

Question: 'Incidents of anti-Semitism have come up at the Occupy protests. Why is anti-Semitism starting to rise among the left, and what is your advice to young Jewish activists?"
Chomsky: As far as I know, it's not true. [applause]

If you're out to look for it, you can find things. When you take a big mass of people, you can find a little bit of almost anything.

On the other hand, this claim that there's anti-Semitism on the left, just look at its history. Look at the early 1960s-70s. There was practically an industry of left-liberals, including the Democratic Socialists who were among the worst, trying to show that Dan Berrigan was an anti-Semite, that everyone who opened their mouths were anti-Semites. There were literally efforts -- Seymour Martin Lipset well known sociologist, was running big studies to run through Black Panther newspapers to see if he could find a poem by a twelve-year-old kid which maybe had some anti-Semitic implications. Okay, that shows they're all anti-Semites [sarcastically]. The cry of "anti-Semitism" is a good way to shut people up [applause] because nobody wants to be charged with that. I'd be pretty cautious about those charges. But if it's real, then you respond to it. Whatever it is, anti-Semitism today isn't even a toothpick on a mountain compared to anti-Muslim hysteria [applause].

A lot of the states in the Union here in [the United States] passing constitutional amendments to prevent the courts from using Halakha, Talmudic law [sarcastically]. If they did that, people wouldn't even laugh. But there are states doing something equally laughable and ridiculous -- except that it's dangerous -- which is trying to institute constitutional amendments to prevent the use of Sharia law. This is about as likely as an asteroid hitting the state [laughter]. But this is all over the place. That's real. The FBI is breaking into people's houses and arresting them for what's called "material support to terrorism" -- meaning they said something favorable to Palestinian movements or something. Nothing like that is happening to the Jewish population. If there are any bits and pieces of anti-Semitism, then fine, shout at them or argue against it. But I think it's extremely slight if it's there at all, in comparison to major movements of hatred and repression, hatred of immigrants, blacks, racism, anti-Muslim racism which is an extraordinary and really major phenomenon. [applause]

Norman Finkelstein's slightly dated but more or less accurate 2004 book "Beyond Chutzpah" also has a lengthy section describing this reactionary witch-hunt for what it is: an attempt to whitewash Israeli racism, in some cases, explicitly:

http://books.google.com.eg/books?id=qc6Tn-C2B5UC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA67&dq

Actual Statistics

The statistics are quite clear as well. There is virtually no evidence for some kind of massive upsurge in anti-Jewish racism. While some moderate increases in anti-Jewish sentiment took place in Spain in 2008 and should be cause for concern, it was likely a reaction to the vicious and racist Israeli bombardment of Gaza in that year. In contrast, massive spikes against Muslims and Arabs took place in virtually all major European countries that same year:

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2008/09/Pew-2008-Pew-Global-Attitudes-Rep...

It's also important to note, former bastions of anti-Jewish sentiment, including the United States, have dramatically fallen. The notion suggested by some in the most delusional sections of the left, that anti-Jewish sentiment somehow exists outside the bounds of time and space and is some kind of ever-present form of bigotry -- a completely bullshit, a historical, and certainly anti-Marxist view of racism -- is clearly false.

Pinning it on Muslims

Other posters also brought up the recent Toulouse shootings in France, so I want to address that as well. The Toulouse shootings were, for one, not carried out by "leftists". But it is equally important to note who did carry them out: two "radicalized" (that is, Islamist) Muslim immigrants. Some posters suggested this is part of the "structural anti-Semitism" that they completely fabricated. Only if one believes that immigrants, let alone despondent, poorly integrated immigrants, are part of the ruling class and can thusly make their anti-Jewish extremist sentiments part of the general make-up of society, can one take this claim seriously. In reality, it is quite clear that they, like most Muslim immigrants in France, are marginalized. While completely incoherent views of racism would overlook this fairly obvious reality of anti-Muslim racism in France, an ahistorical view of "anti-Semitism" that is described on this forum would allow the crimes of individual marginalized immigrants to be a sign of structural racism.

That is why these kind of xenophobic claims, designed to present Muslims as some kind of new "Nazis," are usually only found on reactionary Islamophobic and Zionist websites -- and why it's so disturbing to see it repeated on an allegedly "leftist" forum. Indeed, as this article indicates, for whatever anti-Semitic feelings exist in Europe, most are also associated with Islamophobia:

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20090804/OPINION09/908040326/1004/...

As such, trying to scapegoat Muslims as part of some kind of "structural anti-Semitism" little more than xenophobic propaganda, in line with most slurs about Muslims as "unintegrateable" and otherwise threatening.

Anti-Semitism as structural, not absolute or always-existing

Some of the posters on this website seem to believe that anti-Semitism exists outside of the structures of capitalism and imperialism, and as such, attribute to it some kind of international, permanent power that exists outside of time and space. It is constantly there. Indeed, a few posters kept insisting that because anti-Semitism existed throughout the 20th century and that it was responsible for heinous crimes decades ago, it is therefore a constant threat. This is, of course, absurd, unless one believes that the international structures in question have remained exactly the same today as they were decades ago.

The reality is, quite obviously, not that. Anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe had always been used the same way anti-immigrant and modern anti-Muslim sentiment is used: as a form of scapegoating and as a reflection of the ethnic and racial biases of the ruling class.

The reality of the last seventy years in Europe has of course, dramatically changed, despite the naivete of some on the left that fall into the trap of the reactionary Zionist witch-hunt described by prominent leftists above.

Anti-Semitism has largely fallen out of favor in much of Europe (with obvious exceptions, including the some parts of the extreme right -- other parts of the extreme right have started adopting nominally pro-Jewish messages while further demonizing Muslims). In the aftermath of the 1967 war, especially, Israel and its attendant colonial narrative, and exploitation of the Holocaust, became key elements in what was previously a hostile environment for the discussion of the Holocaust. For example, Raul Hilberg, renowned Holocaust historian, mentioned that when he submitted his doctoral thesis about the Holocaust, he was told it would be the end of his academic career -- the US at the time still hired a number of Nazi war criminals to work in the West German government, and discussion of the Holocaust at the time was seen as espousing Communist/Stalinist sympathies.

After the 1967 war, on the other hand, the narrative of the Holocaust emphasized in the West -- singling out Jewish victims and portraying them with "Aryan" features in movie after movie -- became key method of integrating Jewish identity and Jewishness into the modern "white" identity, just as other ethnicities in previous contexts have done so (Irish, Italian, etc).

A more in-depth explanation of this process, and what truly rejecting anti-Semitism and its historical outgrowths look like is described in detail here by anti-Zionist Columbia Professor Joseph Massad here:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/2013521184814703958.htm...

Particularly important parts of this essay include the following (the entire essay is worth reading):

Quote:

Scientific anti-Semitism insisted that the Jews were different from Christian Europeans. Indeed that the Jews were not European at all and that their very presence in Europe is what causes anti-Semitism. The reason why Jews caused so many problems for European Christians had to do with their alleged rootlessness, that they lacked a country, and hence country-based loyalty. In the Romantic age of European nationalisms, anti-Semites argued that Jews did not fit in the new national configurations, and disrupted national and racial purity essential to most European nationalisms. This is why if the Jews remained in Europe, the anti-Semites argued, they could only cause hostility among Christian Europeans. The only solution was for the Jews to exit from Europe and have their own country. Needless to say, religious and secular Jews opposed this horrific anti-Semitic line of thinking. Orthodox and Reform Jews, Socialist and Communist Jews, cosmopolitan and Yiddishkeit cultural Jews, all agreed that this was a dangerous ideology of hostility that sought the expulsion of Jews from their European homelands.
The Jewish Haskalah, or Enlightenment, which emerged also in the 19th century, sought to assimilate Jews into European secular gentile culture and have them shed their Jewish culture. It was the Haskalah that sought to break the hegemony of Orthodox Jewish rabbis on the "Ostjuden" of the East European shtetl and to shed what it perceived as a "medieval" Jewish culture in favour of the modern secular culture of European Christians. Reform Judaism, as a Christian- and Protestant-like variant of Judaism, would emerge from the bosom of the Haskalah. This assimilationist programme, however, sought to integrate Jews in European modernity, not to expel them outside Europe's geography.

When Zionism started a decade and a half after Marr's anti-Semitic programme was published, it would espouse all these anti-Jewish ideas, including scientific anti-Semitism as valid. For Zionism, Jews were "Semites", who were descendants of the ancient Hebrews. In his foundational pamphlet Der Judenstaat, Herzl explained that it was Jews, not their Christian enemies, who "cause" anti-Semitism and that "where it does not exist, [anti-Semitism] is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations", indeed that "the unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America"; that Jews were a "nation" that should leave Europe to restore their "nationhood" in Palestine or Argentina; that Jews must emulate European Christians culturally and abandon their living languages and traditions in favour of modern European languages or a restored ancient national language. Herzl preferred that all Jews adopt German, while the East European Zionists wanted Hebrew. Zionists after Herzl even agreed and affirmed that Jews were separate racially from Aryans. As for Yiddish, the living language of most European Jews, all Zionists agreed that it should be abandoned.

The majority of Jews continued to resist Zionism and understood its precepts as those of anti-Semitism and as a continuation of the Haskalah quest to shed Jewish culture and assimilate Jews into European secular gentile culture, except that Zionism sought the latter not inside Europe but at a geographical remove following the expulsion of Jews from Europe. The Bund, or the General Jewish Labor Union in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, which was founded in Vilna in early October 1897, a few weeks after the convening of the first Zionist Congress in Basel in late August 1897, would become Zionism's fiercest enemy. The Bund joined the existing anti-Zionist Jewish coalition of Orthodox and Reform rabbis who had combined forces a few months earlier to prevent Herzl from convening the first Zionist Congress in Munich, which forced him to move it to Basel. Jewish anti-Zionism across Europe and in the United States had the support of the majority of Jews who continued to view Zionism as an anti-Jewish movement well into the 1940s.

Zionism and Anti-Semitism

But the consequence is that rather than completely disappearing, anti-Semitism has been warped into a form of apologism for Zionism. This is the dirty secret for many apologists for Israel, including the ADL, which have found themselves in the trap of defending or covering up grossly anti-Semitic incidents because they were carried out by allies of Israel:

http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/confusing-israel-criticism-and-ant...

Quote:

For example, when then -- Rep. Bob Dornan (R-Calif.), a strong supporter of Israel, called Soviet journalist Vladimir Posner a “disloyal, betraying little Jew” in 1986, pro-Israel congressmember Steven Solarz (D.-N.Y.) rushed to his defense, saying that the ethnic slur “should not be allowed to overshadow Bob’s long history of support and involvement with Israel.”
The Anti-Defamation League also backed Dornan, with spokesperson David Brodie saying that his attack on Posner was merely “unartful, unfortunate [and] inelegant” (AP, 2/28/86). Brodie added that the group he represented was regarded as “the last word on anti-Semitism. As far as ADL is concerned, this case is closed.”

Another obvious example of this is the widespread presence of anti-Jewish theology among right-wing supporters of Israel. Rather than traditional anti-Semitism, this sort of anti-Jewish screed is expressed as a form of Zionism:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/aipac-cheers-an-antisemit_b...

White Privilege

Some posters on this website believe white supremacy and white privilege to be little more than "conspiracy theories" and think that the existence or discussion of racism is somehow a rejection of class analysis. Outside of being a fairly obvious statement of their own white supremacist worldview (i.e. Don't talk about racism, just class!), anyone who hasn't ignored about 500 years of colonialism knows that race and racism are part of the international structures of imperialism and therefore capitalism. White privilege, Jewish privilege in the context of white privilege, or the race privileging of other groups in more localized contexts, are not "conspiracies". They are structural.

In the same way the ruling class depicts its interests as the general interests of society, including the interests of the class it subjugates, racism signifies that this dynamic concurrently presents the interests of dominant ethnic groups in a similar fashion. The production of "white" identity (and therefore white supremacy) is intimately associated with international European colonialism, which is why the modern racial hierarchies that oppress people grew within the last five hundred years.

As various ethnic groups in different context are integrated or expelled from the vague, socially constructed identity of "white people," different ethnic groups and ethnic signifiers can mean different things. The association of Jewish identity with the rest of European identity following Israel's 1967 destruction of Egypt and occupation of Palestine sealed the identification of Jewishness with the "white" identity in most of Europe and the United States. So while some reactionaries in those countries continue to espouse anti-Jewish views, they remain marginal and largely outside of the dominant structures of racism. However, because Zionism was key in perpetuating anti-Semitic myths (the most obvious being that Jews can only find safety and security if they leave Europe), anti-Semitism still exists THROUGH Zionism. That is, however, an obvious and radical departure from the kind of anti-Semitism that some "leftists" invoke ahistorically.

The privilege of white people exists within left-wing groups as well. This is fairly obvious. White names and faces are given greater authority, greater appeal, and are treated as more "presentable". By extension, the identification of Jews as "white" (even if other parts of their ethnicity are not white) against the depiction of Palestinians as the colonized means that Jewish people in the United States and Europe also share this privilege. The continued witch-hunt to find anti-Jewish sentiment on the left, especially where it does not exist, is not only a reactionary one (as described by most people who have slightly more sophisticated views on race than internet nobodies), but also an extension of this privilege. The effect is that any opposition to Israel, colonialism, or anything else deemed 'anti-Jewish" -- even if it isn't -- can be used to silence debate and whitewash racism against Palestinians. It would be akin to trying to find "anti-White" racism in an anti-Apartheid group. Sure, there may be marginal expressions of anti-white sentiment ("Kill the White Man" in South Africa), but to suggest that key elements of the struggle against Apartheid or exaggerated opposition to it are "anti-white" is little more than propaganda designed to ensure that a given space is acceptable to whites -- even when the complaints in question are groundless.

I hope this will spark some slightly more honest discussion than the dumpster-fest in the other thread, but at the very least I'm hoping that others who come across libcom (as I did) will find it to be a fairly thorough description of why this reactionary and extremist tendency found on what appears to be a number of internet left-wing forums is a house of cards.

Wow, now even the people Black Badger is quoting from are anti-Semites. I guess I'm in good company.

For the record, Max Blumenthal's book is an amazing analysis and I would highly recommend it, especially considering it now has the Zio-leftist seal of quality.

Devrim wrote:

'whiteness'

Yeah, that's an important concept for us in the US because white supremacy shapes everything about our society. Here, race is the language class speaks. Ignatiev's book is completely accurate - my great great grandfather was an Irish immigrant who worked as a shipbuilder in the 1880s, and he wasn't allowed to do certain jobs in the shipyard because he wasn't "white". You can even pinpoint the period in the mid-1600s when our ruling class started color-coding its caste system: they changed laws applying to "slaves and indentured servants" to apply to "Negroes". I think this accounts for a communication gap between American leftists and comrades from other parts of the world - to you, it sounds like simple identity politics; to us, it's a key element of the power structure.