Yad Vashem, Power, and the Politics of History

Via Tony Greenstein: http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/a-member-of-international-solidarity.html

By David Langstaff

"I was like other men, I fed on bread, and on dreams, and on despair. I too loved, I cried, I hated, I suffered… But when you dry this bouquet of nettles, that once was me, in a future time when my story seems dated to you remember that I was innocent that like you, the bodied of your own day, I too had a face defined in anger, in pity, in joy I had a man’s face." – Benjamin Fondane, who perished in the Nazi gas chambers (displayed inside Yad Vashem) (1)

"In the hymns that we sing, there’s a flute In the flute that shelters us fire In the fire that we feed a green phoenix In its elegy I couldn’t tell my ashes from your dus." – Mahmoud Darwish, who was exiled from his homeland by Zionist settler-colonialism (2)

As my friend and I made our way to Yad Vashem, the world-renowned Holocaust memorial museum in West Jerusalem, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of trepidation. I was nearing the end of a two-month stint working with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the West Bank, and the experience had left me understandably sensitive to the eminently political character of all history-making. After nearly two months of being exposed time and again to the ways in which Zionism wields a particular version of history like a bludgeon against Palestinians, the questions running through my mind were somewhat less than hopeful: What kind of politic should I expect to undergird this museum’s framing of one of the twentieth century’s greatest tragedies? Would this framing be a worthy tribute to those millions whose lives were extinguished, or would it disgrace their memory by cynically exploiting it for political ends? Would its representation of history help us to deepen our understanding of the forces which generated the Nazi genocide (forces which can hardly be regarded as safely relegated to some fossilized past, but rather which are alive and well in the relations which constitute our present world) or would it instead turn history against us, constructing a portrait of the past which blinds us to the cruelties and perils of the present?

The answers to these questions, as it turned out, were ambiguous, but perhaps not as ambiguous as I might have wished. In fairness, the museum certainly had redeeming qualities. Yad Vashem did manage to capture the humanity –by which I mean the sensuousness and affective texture of human experience which often reveals itself only in the most mundane and idiosyncratic of stories – of those millions of Jews who were slaughtered with the kind of dispassionate calculation that only modernity could have produced, (3) while still giving one some sense of the larger historical forces that were at work. I will grant it that. But, sadly, in many other respects the museum lived up to my worst expectations.

First, while Yad Vashem’s exhibits were not entirely devoid of historicity, the museum largely conformed to an understanding of antisemitism and the Nazi genocide which sees them not merely as unique but as exceptional historical phenomena. From this perspective, antisemitism is regarded as a transhistorical and essentially inexplicable product of some inherent Gentile hatred; it may have had distinct iterations, but has always been and will remain the irrational axis upon which the relations between Jews and non-Jews turn. Similarly, the Nazi genocide is treated as the face of evil itself, an event so (quantitatively) colossal and so (qualitatively) monstrous that no other episode in history can reasonably be compared to it. Second, the museum gave one the impression that the victims of the Nazi genocide were almost exclusively Jewish, in spite of the fact that millions of others perished in the Nazi death machinery.

The third concern with Yad Vashem is, in some regards, the gravitational center around which the museum’s other problematic dimensions revolve: namely its teleological representation of the relationships between the long history of antisemitism, the Nazi genocide, and the formation of the Israeli nation-state, whereby the Nazi genocide appears the inevitable culmination of Gentile hatred towards an allegedly "stateless" Jewry, just as the creation of Israel appears the exclusive means of Jewish redemption. The museum goes so far as to literally walk visitors through this historical sequence step by step, each exhibition of a particular place and time winding in a snake-like movement towards the next, culminating in the creation of Israel and the putative restoration of Jewish dignity. The experience reaches its climax in an unquestionably powerful display: the photos of victims peer down from the center of a circular room, suspended above a dark conical abyss that feels like a pit of despair. Along the walls of the room one can see folder after folder full of the names of those who have been killed (names which are being collected still). Consolation is to be found only upon exiting the museum, when one steps outside to find a scenic viewpoint showcasing a picturesque Jerusalem in all its grandeur, a not-so-subtle symbol of Jewish salvation on Earth.

In these ways, Yad Vashem proved a quintessential example of what the Jewish social critic Norman Finkelstein has called "the Holocaust Industry," a characterization of the agents and institutions which have produced a hegemonic ideological representation of the Nazi genocide in the service of their narrow interests. For Finkelstein, the development of this industry is essentially a post-1967 phenomenon, one that is closely tied to the US geopolitical alliance with Israel which developed in force after Israel quickly emerged victorious in the 1967 war (and in which Israel plays the role of a crucial, yet subordinate, US partner). The coincident interests were essentially three fold. First, US state and capitalist agencies recognized Israel as a vital outpost for the projection and reproduction of US political-economic power in Southwest Asia and North Africa (particularly as a bulwark against secular Arab nationalism), and came to rely upon the representation of the Nazi genocide as a symbol of the ever-present dangers of antisemitism in an effort to reduce virtually unwavering support for the Israeli state to some kind of absolute moral obligation. Second, in the US, Jewish elites (every ethnic group has its elites, and we Jews are no exception to the rule) saw an opportunity to advance their aspirations of assimilation and upward mobility by embracing Israel and Zionism with renewed vigor, now rationalized by depicting Israel as the only means of escaping an unparalleled and eternal victimhood (even if few had plans to actually emigrate). Finally, Israel was able to repeatedly invoke the Nazi genocide as the justification for the violent constitution of its settler-colonial state, for its original and ongoing ethnic cleansing and subordination of the Palestinian people. (4)

The Holocaust Industry has produced a seductive historical narrative, but it is one which, in my view, both degrades the memory of those who perished in the Nazi Genocide and leaves us incapable of drawing meaningful ethical, analytical, and political lessons from this momentous tragedy. Truly doing justice to all those who lost their lives in the Nazi genocide would mean remembering all of the victims (not only Jews) – and in a manner which does not cynically instrumentalize their suffering – as well as constructing a historical analysis which serves to illuminate the pitfalls and opportunities for advancing the struggle for collective liberation in the present. In order to be ethically viable, then, a Holocaust memorial museum would have to, at a minimum, differ from Yad Vashem in the following respects:

(1) Rather than representing the Nazi genocide as entirely exceptional, as an historical aberration which defies comparison, such a musuem would search out the Nazi holocaust’s commonalities with and differences from other historical events and processes. Incensed at just such exceptionalism in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, and especially the ways in which it ignored comparable European crimes in the colonial world, the Martiniquean poet and social critic Aimé Césaire exclaimed:

"People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: ‘How strange! But never mind-it’s Nazism, it will. pass!’ And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack."(5)

And, as Finkelstein points out, the US is hardly exempt from the kind of historical parallels upon which Césaire’s moral indictment of Europe is founded:

"In fact, Hitler modeled his conquest of the East on the American conquest of the West…During the first half of this century, a majority of American states enacted sterilization laws and tens of thousands of Americans were involuntarily sterilized. The Nazis explicitly invoked this US precedent when they enacted their own sterilization laws…The notorious 1935 Nuremburg Laws stripped Jews of the franchise and forbade miscegenation between Jews and non-Jews. Blacks in the American South suffered the same legal disabilities and were the object of much greater spontaneous and sanctioned popular violence than the Jews in prewar Germany."(6)

Furthermore, the Nazi legacy of racially delineated forced labor and systematic elimination ought to immediately recall the US history of slavery and the genocide of the Native American population. And while Israel’s sympathizers are quick to dismiss any comparison of the Israeli state with Nazi Germany as antisemitic ranting, it takes considerable intellectual acrobatics to avoid drawing any parallels whatsoever: as Nazi Germany directly and indirectly forced Jews to emigrate from or flee their countries, so too has the Israeli state been founded on the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians from their homeland; as Nazi Germany herded Jews into ghettos, so too has the Israeli state constructed militarized spatial enclaves in which Palestinians are confined (relatively or absolutely), exploited, and controlled; and just as Nazi Germany constructed a racist state which formally subordinated Jews, so too has Israel relegated its Palestinian citizens to third-class status and deemed the indigenous population of Palestine a "demographic threat,"going so far as to pass legislation banning thousands of Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens from living in Israel proper, a political move which in some ways resembles the Nazi introduction of miscegenation laws.(7) It is not by any means my intention to equate the Nazi and Israeli states, which would merely be an exercise in intellectual dishonesty, but rather to say that they have some disturbing resemblances– such as the militarized geographical segregation of populations, the massive dispossession of communities from their homes, and the racist subordination of certain groups not only by way of the military and police but through the politico-juridical apparatus – which are in turn specific outgrowths of processes inherent in the modern world. We ought to take stock of such comparisons and ensure that our indignation over the Nazi genocide does not pass over present-day crimes just as worthy of condemnation. Such a comparative approach would also work to de-exceptionalize the history of antisemitism, and thereby ground the particular struggle against anti-Jewish racism in the more general struggle against racism in all its forms.

(2) Rather than emphasizing the victimization of Jews during the Nazi holocaust to the exclusion of all other communities, such a museum would identify the Nazi violence towards myriad groups, and refrain from situating each group’s suffering in some arbitrary hierarchy of worthiness. There were countless non-Jewish victims of Nazism, from communists to queers. As Finkelstein notes, both Romanis ("Gypsies") and those who were differently-abled were targeted for systematic elimination. Romani communities suffered causalities which were proportionately comparable to those suffered by European Jews, and there is evidence that the Nazi machinery of genocide was designed first with the differently-abled, rather than the Jews, in mind.(8) In addition to honoring the memory of these communities which similarly suffered a profound tragedy, this more holistic approach serves, like the de-exceptionalization of antisemitism, to open up greater possibilities for using the history of the Nazi holocaust to advance the cause of collective liberation.

(3) Finally, rather than situating the Nazi holocaust within a teleology which leads from the victimization of the European Jewish diaspora under antisemitism to national Jewish redemption within the Land of Israel, such a museum would be attuned to the role of historical contingency in both the development of Nazism and Israeli settler-colonialism. Such a museum would also recognize that Zionism was but one of many Jewish responses to antisemitism. The Nazi genocide was no more a historical inevitability than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and if we treat it as such, we are left unable to determine its actual roots and dynamics. Meanwhile, Zionism has by no means had the fealty of Jews since its inception. Zionism was and remains contested. In fact, when Zionism first emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century, few Jews identified with its obsession with national consciousness building and its aspirations for building a territorial nation-state as a "Jewish homeland." Alternative Jewish responses to antisemitism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries included that of the Bund, a Jewish socialist organization which recognized the particularity of the Jewish struggle against racism and the need for some degree of Jewish autonomy and self-determination, but which simultaneously grounded this struggle in more universal aspirations for collective liberation. Even today, though Zionism is admittedly hegemonic within most Jewish communities, there are also those, such as myself, who regard Zionism as a deplorable and irredeemable enterprise, which shares more in common with Nazism (from its antisemitic precepts to its wider embrace of racism, militarism, authoritarianism, and colonialist expansionism) than it does with any genuine liberation struggle. By bringing contingency and contestation back into the analysis of the relations between antisemitism, Nazism, and the founding of Israel, it becomes possible to fundamentally question the Israeli project of state-building – to ask whether Israel has in fact provided an ethically viable answer to the so-called "Jewish question," or whether it has merely displaced this question, along with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

The moral weight of the Nazi genocide cannot be overstated, but let us work to ensure that our engagement with its memory advances the cause of collective liberation, rather than an illusory liberation for some gained only through the imposition of violence, indignities, and suffering upon others.

"The unspoken terror permeating our collective memory of the Holocaust (and more than contingently related to the overwhelming desire not to look the memory in its face) is the gnawing suspicion that the Holocaust could be more than an aberration, more than a deviation from an otherwise straight path of progress, more than a cancerous growth on the otherwise healthy body of the civilized society; that, in short, the Holocaust was not an antithesis of modern civilization and everything (or so we like to think) it stands for. We suspect (even if we refuse to admit it); that the Holocaust could merely have uncovered another face of the same modern society whose other, more familiar, face we so admire. And that the two faces are perfectly comfortably attached to the same body. What we perhaps fear most, is that each of the two faces can no more exist without the other than can the two sides of a coin." – Zygmunt Bauman(9) "

Although it is so often taught that Israel became a historical and ethical necessity for the Jews during and after the Nazi genocide, [Hannah] Arendt and others thought that the lesson we must learn from that genocide is that nation-states should never be able to found themselves through the dispossession of whole populations who fail to fit the purified idea of the nation. And for refugees who never again wished to see the dispossession of populations in the name of national or religious purity, Zionism and its forms of state violence were not the legitimate answer to the pressing needs of Jewish refugees. For those who extrapolated principles of justice from the historical experience of internment and dispossession, the political aim is to extend equality regardless of cultural background or formation, across languages and religions, to those none of us ever chose (or did not recognize that we chose) and with whom we have an enduring obligation to find a way to live. For whoever"we" are, we are also those who were never chosen, who emerge on this earth without everyone’s consent, and who belong, from the start, to a wider population and a sustainable earth. And this condition, paradoxically, yields the radical potential for new modes of sociality and politics beyond the avid and wretched bonds of a pernicious colonialism that calls itself democracy. We are all, in this sense, the unchosen, but we are nevertheless unchosen together. On this basis one might begin to think the social bond anew." – Judith Butler (10)Politics of Power: Burying Truth through Resolutions
 

- David Langstaff is a Jewish-American radical organizer from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He recently graduated from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, where he studied political economy and global history. He is passionately committed to building a more just, equal, and democratic world, and has been a participant in movements for liberatory social transformation for a number of years, most recently in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) and Occupy movements. In late 2012 he spent two months working with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the West Bank. This article was contributed to the PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: Notes: (1) Benjamin Fondane, "Preface in Prose," Exodus [1942-43]. (2) Mahmoud Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). (3) On the relationship between modern beaucratic organization and the Nazi genocide, See Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). (4) Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London: Verso, 2003). (5) Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1972), 3. (6) Finkelstein (2003), 145. (7) Israel has also recently admitted to injecting migrants of Ethiopian origin with long-acting birth control, according to many Ethiopian women who received this treatment, against their will. See, e.g., Talila Nesher, "Israel admits Ethiopian women were given birth control shots," Haaretz (27 January 2013). (8) Finkelstein (2003), 75, 76. (9) Bauman (1991), 7. (10) Judith Butler, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 24-25.

Says the President of one Settler Nation to the President of another Settler Nation…

http://mondoweiss.net/2013/03/american-unbreakable-alliance.html

“I want to begin right now, by answering a question that is sometimes asked about our relationship -- why? Why does the United States stand so strongly, so firmly with the State of Israel?” said Obama. “The answer is simple. We stand together because we share a common story -- patriots determined to be a free people in our land, pioneers who forged a nation.”

It’s a shame how an undoubtedly talented person is so willing to turn himself into a really vaccous imbecile, in the name of the ‘Mostest Specialest Relationship’. Another Emperor with no clothes on…

The Breaking of Chuck Hagel

A small excerpt from Larry Derfner’s 972mag piece, on Hagel’s forced recantation:

What an embarrassing thing to watch. What a blood-chilling, Orwellian bunch, these interrogators, especially Lindsey Graham. Feeding them is the most virulent branch of the pro-war/anti-Muslim lobby: Sheldon Adelson, the Emergency Committee for Israel and Weekly Standard magazine, led by their hit men William Kristol, Michael Goldfarb and Noah Pollak.

Hagel needs five Republican votes to get confirmed as secretary of defense; reports are that it’s touch and go. At this point, I don’t think it matters; he’s been so compromised, so smacked around by Israel’s enforcers, that he’d probably be afraid to say anything but “yes” to Netanyahu once he got to the Pentagon.

This was a spectacle of America and Israel at their worst. It was the worst of the Obama administration, too, a reminder of why this president’s second term is unlikely to be any better than his first as far as the Middle East is concerned.

Oh well. So much for Chuck Hagel. Another great white hope vanquished.

 

Galileo’s inquisitors would have been green with envy at this particularly unedifying spectacle!

 

Recapitulating: The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict and the Zionist Solution

Source: http://ainfos.ca/13/jan/ainfos00059.html

By Yisrael Puterman

(Via Tony Greenstein)

It is becoming increasingly evident that governance of the Occupied Territories is assuming permanent form. Israel’s regime is becoming established as apartheid: one legal system for Israeli citizens, based on the ‘Jewish and democratic’ version of Knesset legislation (incorporating discriminatory one, not even Abu-Mazen.

The US supports in general terms this solution (whielays in approvi above, implies integration of the Palestinian state in the regional imperialist order), but dare not impose it on Israel, so as not to antagonize and destabilize its main protof democratic ruher hand, the Netanyahu government not only rejetion of 1967 it solution but kethought that theante by demanding fresh conditions that make it e settlements weto start negotiations. It must b groups of the old a left-Zionist led government be formed – which is in any case an unrealistic prospect in the foreseeable future – it wou intensive constd most probably Ts, building of plement such a sinfrastructure, of the reality that has been cre population into these territoriecause of the mass enormous multi-billion government expenditure – all this indicates clearly that Israel aims at permanent colonization of the OTs and creating there an irreversible state of affairs that will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and will preclude any solution other than continued Israeli rule.

The establishment of Ma‘ale Adumim, the disengagement from the Gaza Strip instigated by Sharon, as well as the construction of the Separation Barrier – all these are clues to the solution that Sharon and others have intended for the Palestinian population: concentration in autonomous Bantustan-style pockets. This setup has actually been implemented in Gaza, with well-known results.

Israel is not the only player in the arena. Resistance of the Palestinians to any solution that would not satisfy their minimal demands cannot be ignored. However, the Palestinians are divided between Fatah and Hamas regarding conditions for ending the conflict. Fatah, a movement representing the Palestinian bourgeoisie, seeks to resolve the conflict by establishing an independent Palestinian national state supported by the US and integrated in its regional order. A pre-condition for this is recognition of Israel, which Fatah (the leading movement of the PLO) has therefore accepted. By contrast, Hamas, whose supporters are among the Palestinian proletariat and mainly the refugees, opposes a solution that would not resolve their problem. For them the problem is Zionist dispossession. Hence their demand is the restoration of their rights in the whole of Palestine, to be achieved by struggle.

But even the minimal moderate demands of Fatah – a state based on the pre-1967 borders including east Jerusalem and some kind of solution the problem of refugees (sufficient to mitigate their resistance) – are inacceptable to Israel, which shows its real intention by persisting with its policy of dispossession and construction in the OTs. The rhetoric of the ‘peace process’ can deceive no one, not even Abu-Mazen.

The US supports in general terms this solution (which, as mentioned above, implies integration of the Palestinian state in the regional imperialist order), but dare not impose it on Israel, so as not to antagonize and destabilize its main protégé. On the other hand, the Netanyahu government not only rejects this minimum solution but keeps raising the ante by demanding fresh conditions that make it impossible even to start negotiations. It must be said that should a left-Zionist led government be formed – which is in any case an unrealistic prospect in the foreseeable future – it would be unable, and most probably unwilling, to implement such a solution because of the reality that has been created on the ground, and mainly because of the massive opposition of the settlers, whose political muscle is greater than their electoral weight.

The resulting political deadlock, and the adherence to it of the Netanyahu government, appears to be leading to a bi-national state or an apartheid state. According to warnings issued by persons belonging to various shades within the left-Zionist camp, that would be the end of the Zionist dream. On the face of it, they seemon in the OTs have created a void into which may be drawn the classical ultimate Zionist solution – ethnic cleansing. Groups of settlers, motivated by an open ideology of transfer, are already creating provocations in the OTs, designed to ignite a major flare-up that would allow transfer to take place. The fact that the ‘security forces’ refrain from stopping them is a pointer to where this is leading.

The Netanyahu government is aware that a confrontation, however great, confined to the OTs might attract international and internal opposition capable of preventing the implementation of the scheme. For this purpose what is needed is a regional large-scale conflagration lasting sufficiently long. The scenario of the nakba may be repeated: a rocket attack may panic the Israeli public into supporting, or at least accepting, any action justified by ‘security needs’.

It must be noted that the Zionist left and right do not differ regardienzion Netanyahu, the prime minister’s father, who quotes him approvingly in his Hebrew book The Road to Independence. This is how Zangwill put it: “There is, however, a difficulty from which the Zionist dares not avert his eyes, though he rarely likes to face it. Palestine proper has already its inhabitants.... So we must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the tribes in possession as our forefathers did, or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, muntry formed a new, Israeli-Jewish, nation. But unlike what happened in those countries, where the indigenous people were exterminated or overpowered and marginalized, the indigenous population here, part of the Arab nation, became a people possessing Palestinian national consciousness, whose specific identity was formed in the struggle against the Israeli-Jewish settler nation. This is why the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has the appearance of a national conflict over a piece of territory, to be resolved by territorial compromise.

The following two excerpts, taken from a Matzpen editorial of 10 December 1966, describe the essence of Israel’s regime; they are as topical today as they were then: “The policy of Israel’s regime is a consistent extension of that of the Zionist movement since its beginnings: it consists in creating new facts and entrenching them by all available means, while planning and swish immigrants.

Most of the leading circles of Palestine’s Arabs had no illusions about what the Zionist project meant for them. As far as they were concerned the danger became especially real following the Balfour Declaration, which meant that the British empire – the country’s new ruling power – supported the Zionist plan. As was to be expected, the Arabs’ reaction was implacable opposition. As in the aforementioned colonies, the settlers in this country formed a new, Israeli-Jewish, nation. But unlike what happened in those countries, where the indigenous people were exterminated or overpowered and marginalized, the indigenous population here, part of the Arab nation, became a people possessing Palestinian national consciousness, whose specific identity was formed in the struggle against the Israeli-Jewish settler nation. This is why the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has the appearance of a national conflict over a piece of territory, to be resolved by territorial compromise.

The following two excerpts, taken from a Matzpen editorial of 10 December 1966, describe the essence of Israel’s regime; they are as topical today as they were then: “The policy of Israel’s regime is a consistent extension of that of the Zionist movement since its beginnings: it consists in creating new facts and entrenching them by all available means, while planning and seeking to create new facts.” “Since the existing Zionist regime of Israel cannot impose itself on the Arab World by persuasion, it needs to resort to violence. But as its own force falls short of subjugating the Arab World, it must seek the support of the power or powers that it regards as dominating this region.” The ultimate solution: ethnic cleansing The dispossession of Arab tenant fellaheen started right from the early days of Zionist activity in Palestine: land was bought from absentee landowners residing in Beirut or Damascus, and the tenants, whose families had worked the land for generations, were evicted by the British police.

This is what happened in the Valley of Jezreel (Marj Ibn ‘Amer), in Hefer Valley (Wadi Hawarith), and wherever land inhabited by tenant fellaheen was purchased. The accumulated Arab indignation, caused by British-supported Zionist activity, resulted in the 1936–39 Arab uprising against the British authorities and the Jewish immigrants. The uprising was suppressed by the British forces, using tanks and aircraft. As a result, the Palestinians’ military, organizational and political backbone was broken and demoralization spread in their ranks. The leader of the Palestinian uprising, Hajj Amin al-Huseini, fled the country. (As is well known, he later collaborated with the Nazis against the British and the Jews.) The momentous ethnic cleansing, the Palestinian nakba, took place during the 1948 war. Sporadic terrorist actions by both sides turned into a war following the November 1947 UN partition resolution, and subsequently escalated. It must be emphasised that for the most part the Palestinian population had little interest or involvement in the clash, and wished only to be left alone.

Nevertheless, although the Zionist leadership was aware of the Palestinians’ powerlessness, it spread fear in the Jewish yishuv, as though it was in danger of extermination. This made it possible to expel the Palestinians from villages and mixed-population towns, which were conquered more or less rapidly, without the slightest protest even on the part of those Zionists who had supported a bi-national solution and were supposedly against ethnic cleansing. The Zionist leadership was indeed surprised by the feebleness of Palestinian resistance and the hasty escape of the population, but it knew how to exploit the situation in two ways. On the one hand it claimed that the the flight was ordered by the Palestinian leadership, wishing to prepare a clear operational arena for the Arab armies; on the other hand it intensified expulsions, especially from the areas conquered in the south following the Egyptian invasion. About 400,000 Arabs were expelled before the invasion of the Arab states’ armies, and about another 350,000 after it. It is important to understand that process of flight and expulsion in order to infer what may happen in future. Spokespersons of the Israeli authorities and establishment historians claim, first, that the Arabs fled and were not expelled; and, second (in support of the first claim), that there had not existed a plan for expulsion, so that the flight of the Arabs must have been spontaneous or a response to an instruction/recommendation of the Arab leadership.

As for the first point: indeed the Arabs generally fled, because they realized right from the start of the hostilities that Palestinian resistance was weak and unable to withstand the Zionist military organizations and their attacks on centres of defenceless civilian population. In those few places where there was resistance, or where the Zionist forces wished to accelerate the flight, massacres were perpetrated.

The second point is of special importance for our present consideration: a detailed and comprehensive plan for expelling the Arabs and destroying their villages did not exist, nor was it needed. Transfer was an integral part inherent in Zionist ideology and practice. Every commander understood what was required of him; and if he was not sure, a small gesture of the hand was sufficient to make matters clear to him. The same pattern was repeated in the 1967 war: immediately following the conquest of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, a ‘spontaneous’ process of transfer and destruction of villages was put in motion.

By the time this move was stopped under American pressure, about 250,000 inhabitants had been expelled (‘fled’) from the West Bank and about 100,000 from the Golan Heights. The facts that have been establwould perhap ground and the regretful ‘understanding’, llow continued sle tears.

Of course, this scenario depends on the occurrence of e classical ultinational conjuncture, and on the acquiescence of the ‘international community’ (the states obedient to the US). In such circumstances the Palestinians would not stand a chance. Israel’s role in the service of imperialism, and the international situation The idea of establishing a state for Jews in Palestine was mooted in the British governmeis is why the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has the appearance of a national conflict over e Herzl and the Zionist movement. At that time Bial compromise. othold in the Ar The following a was that a Jewish state, alien to the Arab peoplesecember 1966, describe the essence of Israelponsor and servey are as topical

This idea, proposed to Moses Montefiore, found little support among Jews at that time. When favourable conditions materializt consists in crstarted to be implemented in Palestine, it didn’t quite work out as planned: supng the Zionist aim: a ‘Jewish and democratic’ state over the largest possible territory with as few Palestinians as possible. The Zionist left supports territorial compromise when conditions do not allow this aim to be implemented in the entire area; but if that would become possible, some of them would give it their blessing, and others would perhaps accept it with regretful ‘understanding’, shedding crocodile tears.

Of course, this scenario depends on the occurrence of a suitable international conjuncture, and on the acquiescence of the ‘international community’ (the states obedient to the US). In such circumstances the Palestinians would not stand a chance. Israel’s role in the service of imperialism, and the international situation The idea of establishing a state for Jews in Palestine was mooted in the British government as early as the mid-19th century,(iv) in the heyday of British colonialism, decades before Herzl and the Zionist movement. At that time Britain had no foothold in the Arab east. The idea was that a Jewish state, alien to the Arab peoples, would be totally dependent on it British sponsor and serve its interests.

This idea, proposed to Moses Montefiore, found little support among Jews at that time. When favourable conditions materialized and the idea started to be implemented in Palestine, it didn’t quite work out as planned: support for Zionism created difficulties for relations between the British empire (and later the US) and the Palestinians, as well as the Arab states that tions, which depend on its sshed to annex it. (Tof the regiothemselves were created through the bing of internal American support for the strong-arm policy initiated by G W Bush in Afghanistan and Iran, as well as the capitalist crisis and the Arab spring, have created a new situation, inviting reassessment of US policy in the region. Unlike his predecessor, Obama is reluctant to apply American military force directly (although he has not hesitated to do so by proxy: using NATO in Libya, Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in Syria). He is attempting to apply softer force and more conciliatory policy wherever possible, so long as this does not threaten basic US interests, particularly in relation to the biggest and most important countries of the region, Egypt and Iran. In Egypt the change in the style of US policy was illustrated by its acquiescence in the overthrow of Mubarak and acceptance of the Muslim Brethren opposition. Regarding Iran, it is illustrated by readiness to negotiate with the regime and accept some accommodation with the latter’s interests.

These changes in the policy of the Obama administration’s policy may reduce to some extent Israel’s strategic importance, and increase the importance of P the Israeli regime virtually absolute military, economic and political support.

For its part, dependence on the US has become for Israel an existential necessity, so that continued US domination of the region is a vital Israeli interest. At the same time it must be noted that, notwithstanding all the fine talk of shared values, democracy etc., and the influence of the Jewish lobby, US support for Israel is conditionnviting reassessment of US policy in the region. Unlike his predecessor, Obama is reluctant to apply American military force directly (although he has not hesitated to do so by proxy: using NATO in Libya, Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in Syria). He is attempting to apply softer force and more conciliatory policy wherever possible, so long as this does not threaten basic US interests, particularly in relation to the biggest and most important countries of the region, Egypt and Iran. In Egypt the change in the style of US policy was illustrated by its acquiescence in the overthrow of Mubarak and acceptance of the Muslim Brethren opposition. Regarding Iran, it is illustrated by readiness to negotiate with the regime and accept some accommodation with the latter’s interests.

These changes in the policy of the Obama administration’s policy may reduce to some extent Israel’s strategic importance, and increase the importance of Py, and stability has not been restored.

It is also clear that the US has no intention of endangering the huge profits of the oil corporations, which depend on its strategic domination of the region. Obama’s re-election, the ebbing of internal American support for the strong-arm policy initiated by G W Bush in Afghanistan and Iran, as well as the capitalist crisis and the Arab spring, have created a new situation, inviting reassessment of US policy in the region. Unlike his predecessor, Obama is reluctant to apply American military force directly (although he has not hesitated to do so by proxy: using NATO in Libya, Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in Syria). He is attempting to apply softer force and more conciliatory policy wherever possible, so long as this does not threaten basic US interests, particularly in relation to the biggest and most important countries of the region, Egypt and Iran. In Egypt the change in the style of US policy was illustrated by its acquiescence in the overthrow of Mubarak and acceptance of the Muslim Brethren opposition. Regarding Iran, it is illustrated by readiness to negotiate with the regime and accept some accommodation with the latter’s interests.

These changes in the policy of the Obama administration’s policy may reduce to some extent Israel’s strategic importance, and increase the importance of Palestinian demands, as part of the new stability that Obama is attempting to promote in the region. The Netanyahu government, alarmed by these prospy one of these, Zionism is bps in an attempt to reshuffle the cards and lead back to the old stral current icy: it announced its intention to atree elements will perennially determine the reality created by Zionism and its consequences.

This is the essence of the problem; but Israeli politics, the Zionist parties and the media, do not address it but are engaged in debates about sorting out its symptoms. This forecast of the outcome of the process just described is not a prophecy; it is inferred from the whole history of Zionist practice in Palestine. The fact that Israel prefers political deadlock and continued colonization to any solution, albeit partial, that would dampen the flames of the conflict; the extremely asymmetric balance of power between Israel and the Palestinians as well as between imperialism and the ‘international community’ and the peoples of the Arab east – all these suggest a process that may lead to an apocalypse.

True, this is not the only possible outcome, and unforeseen circumstances may well arise, forcing all forecasts to be altered. But it would be wrong to bury one’s head in the sand and ignore the dangers. In any case, it is clear that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict will not be ssed in the present article: first, colonialism; second, ethnic cleansing; third, association with a foreign power that dominates the region. Without any one of these, Zionism is but an insubstantial idea. Therefore, irrespective of which ideological current is leading a Zionist Israel, these three elements will perennially determine the reality created by Zionism and its consequences.

This is the essence of the problem; but Israeli politics, the Zionist parties and the media, do not address it but are engaged in debates about sorting out its symptoms. This forecast of the outcome of the process just described is not a prophecy; it is inferred from the whole history of Zionist practice in Palestine. The fact that Israel prefers political deadlock and continued colonization to any solution, albeit partial, that would dampen the flames of the conflict; the extremely asymmetric balance of power between Israel and the Palestinians as well as between imperialism and the ‘international community’ and the peoples of the Arab east – all these suggest a process that may lead to an apocalypse.

True, this is not the only possible outcome, and unforeseen circumstances may well arise, forcing all forecasts to be altered. But it would be wrong to bury one’s head in the sand and ignore the dangers. In any case, it is clear that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict will not be resolved within the narrow framework of Israel-Palestine: it is inseparably bound up with the geopolitical situation in the entire region. Neither the existing imperialist order, nor nationalist or theocratic regimes, can genuinely solve the problems of the peoples of the region, which are basically social. The Arab Spring – a popular uprising that will re-emerge so long as the problems that engendered it have not been resolved – is a struggle against all the ills of imperialism and its partners, the reactionary Arab regimes and Zionism; it renews the relevance of internationalist socialism as the solution to the region’s social problems and conflicts. Far off as it may seem to be, it has no real substitute. Socialism (not modelled on the discredited Soviet regime) can also attract the impoverished Israeli working class, as well as the white-collar workers who are forced down into the ranks of the proletariat together with other disadvantaged strata, all those who came out in the social protest of 2011, to renounce Zionism, capitalism and dependence on imperialism, which shackle the Israeli people to endless wars, isolate it from the peoples of the region, and endanger its existence in confrontation with the Arab world.

I. Hebrew text posted 27 December 2012 on Hagada Hasmalit This translation by Moshé Machover

II. “Zionism and England’s Offer”, The Maccabaean (American Jewish journal), December 1904. Quoted in http://chaimsimons.net/transfer07.html

III. See, for example, Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992); Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (London: Oneworld, 2006). IV. See British Support for Jewish Restoration, http://www.mideastweb.org/britzion.htm

Voting against Palestine as a UN non-member observer state

… were the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Nauru, Panama, Czech Republic, Canada and… the US and Israel. ‘Nil Points’ to you lot.

Meanwhile Israel retaliates against the vote by approving of 3000 new settlement units.

The politicization of ‘antisemitism research’

Here’s an excellent article by Antony Lerman on the the ‘New Anti-Semitism’ and why it’s mostly politicizised bogus. I’ve snipped off the intro (check out the multitude of useful links). Here's the source text.

The politicization of antisemitism research

The institutionalized politicization of antisemitism by bodies claiming to be non-political or academic is not new. And with regard to a charity like the CST, it is very troubling.

We saw this politicization in the now defunct Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), which was closed by the university authorities after it became clear that it was primarily an advocacy body and not a serious research institute. And it was also apparent in the now almost defunct European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (EISCA), established, it seems, with a mandate to grossly exaggerate the problem of antisemitism (the inaugural lecture given by the then Labour Europe minister Jim Murphy was entitled ‘Antisemitism: a hate that outlives all others’). There has been no activity on its website since June 2011, and that was an article by the now disgraced former Labour Party junior minister Denis MacShane, first published in the Jewish Chronicle and cross-posted on the EISCA blog.

While still thinking about the manipulation of antisemitism for political purposes, I received information about a symposium on antisemitism taking place on 2 December at the Wiener Library in London. Though clearly planned long before the latest Israeli offensive against Gaza, the holding of the symposium at this time is an extraordinary coincidence. And it was immediately obvious from the programme that it fell squarely into the category of an event dressed up in pseudo-academic clothes but which is, in reality, an exercise in political advocacy.

Although the symposium is taking place at the Wiener Library, a highly respected documentation, research and educational resource on the Holocaust and the Nazi era, it’s not mentioned anywhere on Wiener’s website. This is no doubt because the event itself is being organized exclusively under the auspices of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA), with the library’s prestigious central London premises simply hired for the occasion. Wiener’s director, Ben Barkow, is not speaking at the symposium.

The Journal for the Study of Antisemitism: a home for the ‘new antisemitism’ notion

The JSA is a privately funded periodical founded four years ago. It has no institutional base and is privately published. It describes itself as ‘ the peer-reviewed work of a select group of independent scholars’. Even a cursory glance at the journal’s list of Board Members reveals a great preponderance of neoconservatives, Islamophobes, advocates of the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’, pedlars of the ‘self-hating Jew’ accusation against Jewish critics of Israeli policies and out-and-out political propagandists.

The individuals funding the event are Daniel Pipes, Mitch Knisbacher and Jeff and Evy Diamond. Pipes, the president of the right-wing Middle East Forum (MEF), is widely described as an ‘Islamophobe’. In 2009 his MEF established a legal defence fund for the far-right, populist, Islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Pipes reportedly claimed that President Obama is a former Muslim who ‘practised Islam’. Knisbach, who is the founder and owner of 800response (America’s leading provider of shared-use 800-number services), is active in the right-wing Israel lobby AIPAC and funds Tazpit News Agency, a service set up primarily to popularize a positive view of settlement activity in the West Bank. Jeff Diamond, who heads the Jeff Diamond Law Firm, which has six offices in New Mexico and Texas, was installed in January as chair of the New Mexico Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Board of Directors.

The journal’s editors — Neal E. Rosenberg, a criminal lawyer, and Stephen K. Baum, a clinical psychologist — and the journal itself were mired in controversy early in 2010 when they sacked Dr Clemens Heni, a Berlin-based academic, from the editorial board for criticizing the Berlin Technical University’s centre for research on antisemitism for what he regarded as its ‘neglect of Islamic anti-Semitism and Israel’s security’ — and this was in an article Heni wrote for the journal. Various members of the board resigned in protest. The editors say they were pressured by the Berlin centre, which, a Jerusalem Post article claims, threatened to engineer the resignation of seven German members of the Board and the withdrawal of cooperation with the journal by three German antisemitism research centres. The editors soon relented, reinstated Heni and asked some of the resigning Board members to return. Some did and some didn’t.

Heni vigorously attacked the decision to close YIISA. In the wake of its demise, and no doubt after his experience being sacked and then reinstated to the JSA editorial board, in 2011 he set up a new German antisemitism research body, the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), the main focus of which is ‘anti-Semitism in the 21st century, particularly hatred of Israel.’

The symposium: a one-sided affair

The curious thing about this incident is that it’s quite clear that the journal’s posture is very close to the line Heni took in his attack on the Berlin centre. The programme and speakers at the forthcoming symposium demonstrate this. (A note of caution: the programme sent to me looks like the last word on who is attending and speaking, but may not be. It differs from the version of the programme on the JSA website.) Titled ‘Contemporary antisemitism in the UK’, the symposium kicks off with a panel on ‘Defining the new antisemitism’, chaired by Kenneth Marcus. The panellists are Bat Ye’or, Richard Landes and Winston Pickett.

Marcus heads the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which was founded in late 2011 and took over where YIISA left off when it was closed down. YIISA’s director, Charles Small is on the advisory board, the honorary chairman of which is Professor Irwin Cotler, former Canadian justice minister, who has probably done more than anyone else to promote the idea of the ‘new antisemitism’. Other like-minded board members, who were also YIISA supporters, include Professor Dina Porat, Professor Ruth Wisse and Professor Alvin H. Rosenfeld.

The three panellists will find much to agree on. For decades Bat Ye’or has been banging the drum about the ‘Muslim hordes’ who were about to take over Europe. Rather generously referred to as a ‘self-taught Jewish intellectual’, she now believes that Europe is dead, and in its stead ‘Eurabia’ has risen. Richard Landes, director and co-founder of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, told the Herzliya IDC conference in 2007:

European democratic civilization can fall before the Islamic challenge. Do not say that this will never happen in Europe and that Islam will not be able to take control of Europe.

If Europe continues its current path, the fall will be sooner.

Winston Pickett was the director of the now non-functioning EISCA. He lavishes unreserved praise on Professor Robert Wistrich for his huge tome, Antisemitism From Antiquity to the Global Jihad, a book that, as its title suggests, sets out to justify the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’.

Panel sessions 2 and 3 — ‘Mapping the rise of contemporary antisemitism’ and ‘Antisemitism on campus’ — present much the same picture. Both chairpersons, Manfred Gerstenfeld and Kenneth Lasson, see no real distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Gerstenfeld’s crude and wild assertions about antisemitism are legion. A recent online article about antisemitism in Norway is a good example of his continuing attempt to portray European countries as riddled with antisemitism, no matter what the data say. Lasson’s views are clearly laid out in an 80-page paper, ‘Antisemitism in the academic voice’, in which he writes that ‘Anti-Zionism . . . has evolved into antisemitism’ and reveals how ill-equipped he is to comment on this subject when he says: ‘The misnamed “occupation” allegedly began after Israel’s 1967 victory . . .’

In panel 2, Mark Gardner of the CST and Robert Wistrich, who heads the Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA), should feel comfortable with each other’s role in justifying and promoting the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’, though it would be only fair to acknowledge that Wistrich’s influence in this regard far outstrips that of Gardner’s. Wistrich restated the classic definition of the ‘new antisemitism’ in a talk at the Hebrew University Jerusalem in June 2011 entitled ‘From blood libel to boycott: changing faces of British antisemitism’. A Cif Watch post summarised his remarks: ‘efforts to boycott and delegitimize Israel (the Jewish collective) as a form of exclusion from the community of nations [are] not dissimilar from historical efforts to exclude the individual Jew from the communities where they resided.’ Gardner’s use of the ‘new antisemitism’ argument is clearly apparent in his and Dave Rich’s analysis of Caryl Churchill’s short playlet Seven Jewish Children. (My refutation of their analysis is here.) It is also unlikely that there will be much disagreement in panel 3 between Clemens Heni, Ronnie Fraser (fresh from the tribunal hearing his claim of ‘institutional antisemitism’ against the University and College Union), who runs the Academic Friends of Israel, and Dave Rich.

Some dissent at last?

Some serious diversity of views then appears possible when Lesley Klaff chairs a panel discussing ‘Addressing current approaches’. This would be unlikely, however, were Professor Klaff to proffer her own views. Linked to BICSA and the Brandeis Center, she has made her opinions on the connection between anti-Zionism and antisemitism perfectly clear. As she writes in the journal of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs:

University codes of conduct and UK law recognize that an important university goal is the promotion of equality of opportunity for minority students and their protection from discrimination, including harassment. Given the growing consensus that anti-Zionism is in fact anti-Semitism in a new guise, this goal is flouted with respect to Jewish students every time that anti-Zionist expression takes place on a university campus.

So, no anti-Zionist views allowed on campus then. Period. While Günther Jikeli, co-founder of the International Institute for Education and Research on Anti-Semitism in London and Berlin, is under the false impression that the Federal Rights Agency of the EU endorses its predecessor’s ‘Working Definition’ of antisemitism, he, the PhD student Hagai van der Horst from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Professor David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck University of London will hopefully be able to offer a stark contrast with what will have gone before. Feldman’s approach at the Pears Institute is a model of inclusiveness and variety; he creates a safe space for the expression of sharply different opinions.

Worrying about the left and boycott, and promoting the EUMC ‘Working Definition’

The speakers on the final panel, ‘Strategic interventions: what can be done?’, are not on record, as far as I could ascertain, as specifically subscribing to the JSA‘s line on the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. The barrister Julian Hunt is described in the programme as ‘having experience defending pro-Israel activists’, which, from his July 2012 post on the Commentator blog, seems to refer to Jewish students on campus. With a title like ‘Criminalising the boycott bullies’, it seems fair to assume that he has an uncompromising attitude to anti-Zionism. Philip Spencer, an expert on the Holocaust and genocide, is director of politics and international Relations at the Helen Bamber Centre for the Study of Rights, Kingston University, and has a special interest in what he sees as the left’s less than glorious history of standing up to antisemitism. Francisco Garrett, a lawyer from Portugal, appears to have no significant track record as an antisemitism expert.

But there is little ambiguity in the position of the chair of this panel, L. Ruth Klein. In her 2009 report on antisemitism in Canada presented to the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA), the national director of the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada refers to anti-Zionism as ‘that unholy hybrid of age-old and new-age bigotry’, calls for the criminalization of boycotts ‘against the Jewish state’ and for the adoption of the EUMC ‘Working Definition’ of antisemitism.

Giving the political game away

A spirit of free inquiry does not seems to govern these proceedings. And this view is strengthened further by the sessions of the symposium that are not panel discussions. The former chairman of EISCA, Denis MacShane MP, is given the platform to himself to speak on ‘The politics of fighting antisemitism’. I and others have drawn attention to his woeful lack of understanding of antisemitism, his propensity to exaggerate what it represents – ‘there is no greater intolerance today than neoantisemitism’ – and his readiness to vilify Muslims and pro-Palestinian activists. For a man fêted as such a friend of the Jews, his ignorance about Jews and Israel, as displayed in his book Globalising Hatred: The New Antisemitism, is deeply disturbing.

But having written a book with that title he will certainly be at home among the JSA‘s ’select group of independent scholars’ at Sunday’s symposium. So much so that he is being presented with ‘The Award of Merit: Righteous Persons Who Fight Antisemitism’. (Whether the organizers still think he is quite so righteous after being found guilty of fiddling his parliamentary expenses, we do not know.) At the head of the page in the programme detailing this award, and two others, is a photograph of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the right-wing, revisionist Zionist ideologue, whose ideas have inspired much of today’s ruling political elite in Israel and, so it clearly appears, the organizers of this symposium. Manfred Gerstenfeld receives the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ and Shimon T. Samuels scoops the jackpot with the ‘Jabotinsky Award’.

Samuels is the director for international relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Paris and a long-standing promoter of the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’. In July 2011, after attending a UN meeting in Brussels titled ‘The role of Europe in advancing Palestinian statehood and achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians’, he wrote to the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon saying that the experience was akin to a ‘gangbang’. On 2 August 2012 he told the Jerusalem Post that the action of the Swiss Migros supermarket chain to label Israeli products from the West Bank was a boycott measure and must be viewed as ‘a continuation of Nazism’.

It shows just how far the academic study of contemporary antisemitism has become corrupted in some circles that the organizers of this symposium did not seem to feel a moment’s shame in so blatantly politicizing it by identifying so completely with the political ideology of Jabotinsky. As if this wasn’t enough to damn as bogus what’s billed as an academic event, the screening of Gloria Greenfield’s ‘documentary’, Unmasked Judeophobia, can leave no one in any doubt. The New York Times‘ reviewer Nicole Herrington wrote:

the film loses ground toward the middle, when it calls out individuals (often just by showing their images) and organizations for their passiveness or criticism of Israeli policies without giving a full account of the facts. The roster is long: the United Nations, feminists, the European news media, Alice Walker, human rights groups and American academics.

In the end the issues of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are conflated, weakening the filmmaker’s argument.

Less restrained, but equally reasonable, was this from James van Maanen’s film review blog:

I suspect there is some very good information in Gloria Greenfield’s new documentary, Unmasked Judeophobia: The Threat to Civilization (that sub-title alone should raise a red flag), but the repetitive, ham-handed manner in which it is presented is enough to make aware and thinking people — anyone, that is, who might find and be willing to admit as reprehensible some of the state of Israel’s current behavior toward its Palestinian residents — run for the exit.

This comment could equally be applied to the entire JSA symposium.

Anyone who disagrees with the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’ should always be prepared to discuss it with its promoters. And its promoters should always be willing to debate the notion with its critics. This is the only way that sense on antisemitism can be arrived at. By the nature and format of this symposium, the JSA has clearly shown that it has no interest whatsoever in such a dialogue, even if one or two brave souls may try to speak up for the values that underpin true academic exchange.

Reality trumps rhetoric

Another decent piece by Noam Sheizaf. He concudes:

 

The arguments about the meaning and importance of the Hamas charter are all but identical to the decade-long debate over the PLO charter. How much effort and time was put into forcing Arafat to change it, and how little did it matter when negotiations collapsed in Camp David and violence returned. The same goes for today: Given the right pressure, a certain Palestinian leadership could be made to promise Israel anything. Yet none of it would matter if you don’t address the fundamentals of the conflict: The occupation, the refugees, the holy sites, the settlements, the access to land and to water. The leaders would change their minds and if they don’t new leaders (“more extreme”) will come. Reality will prevail over rhetoric.

The fact that the West – even many well-intentioned liberals – continues to put Palestinians through litmus tests before acknowledging their basic human rights is further evidence of how biased the political conversation is. Rights shouldn’t be conditioned – that’s why they are called “rights” – and if anything, it’s Israelis who should explain why they deny them from millions of people, not the other way around. Instead, again and again we hear demands regarding things Arabs say, or write, or think, or feel. Taken together, they all feel too much like an excuse to avoid treating the Palestinians like equal human beings.