My Brush with Superman

Oh dear, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council's Jeremy Jones is at it again with his 22nd report on anti-Semitism in Australia - whether real or alleged - and we anti-Zionists have been scooped up in his net, aka Report on Antisemitism in Australia, November 2011, along with the usual suspects.

Mild-mannered JJ, you see, is apparently the Superman of the Israel lobby, capable of detecting an anti-Zionist insult sealed in kryptonite a thousand meters away (to adapt Circus Israel's wonderful line) and construing it as anti-Semitism. And his baleful x-ray vision, in the service of Zionist Propaganda, Israeli Injustice and the Apartheid Way, has settled on yours truly:

"6.5 The anonymous writer of Middle East Reality Check (MERC) often [!] used or hosted extreme and offensive rhetoric [hereinafter EOR]..."

Jones cites the following examples of MERC EOR (omission of context, of course, is a given with JJ, and the accusations of EOR are characteristically asserted, never demonstrated):

1) Commenter Syd Walker's use of the term "God-approved people of the Chosen Land."

Well, if that's an instance of EOR, would JJ care to comment on David Ben-Gurion's famous statement that "the Bible is our mandate"? JJ?

2) My reference to "Israel's Nazi-style blockade of Gaza."

JJ finds the following question - "How, other than Nazi-style blockade of Gaza, would you describe a deliberate policy of ghettoisation and enforced malnutrition reminiscent of the Warsaw Ghetto?" - a case of EOR. Well, JJ might care to answer that question. JJ?

3) My post Holocaust Studies Make the Grade. God knows I've puzzled over this one, but I just don't get the EOR label here. JJ?

4) A comment by "brian" that SBS "has long been ziionist [sic] central," based on his observation that, while SBS has inundated us with docos on the Nazis, it has screened "not one on Palestine," followed by his not unreasonable question, "how does that sort of programming happen?"

Now seriously, if JJ really found brian's comment EOR, why not hazard a rebuttal? Perhaps he could detail his (and other Zionist organisations') interventions with SBS over the years but go on to explain that these haven't had the least impact on the broadcaster. JJ?

5) A reference by that most windy of commentators, anonymous, to Israel as "a revival of Medieval Talmudic ghettoism at the expense of [Palestine's] indigenous population."

Sure it's categorical, but JJ really should read Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky's Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (1999/2004) before mounting his high horse on "Medieval Talmudic ghettoism":

"This book pinpoints the political importance of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel... Jewish fundamentalism is here briefly defined as the belief that Jewish Orthodoxy, which is based on the Babylonian Talmud, the rest of talmudic literature and halachic literature, is still valid and will eternally remain valid..." (p 4)

"The religious influence upon the Israeli right-wing of Israel B [the right & religious parties] is attributable both to its militaristic character and its widely shared world outlook. Secular and militaristic right-wing, Israeli Jews hold political views and engage in rhetoric similar to that of religious Jews. For most Likud followers, 'Jewish blood' is the reason why Jews are in a different category than non-Jews, including, of course, even those non-Jews who are Israeli citizens and who serve in the Israeli army. For religious Jews, the blood of non-Jews has no intrinsic value; for Likud, it has limited value. Menachem Begin's masterful use of such rhetoric about Gentiles brought him votes and popularity and thus constitutes a case in point. The difference in this respect between Labor and Likud is rhetorical but is nevertheless important in that it reveals part of a world outlook. In 1982, for example, when the Israeli army occupied Beirut, Rabin representing Labor, although advocating the same policies as favored by Sharon and Likud, did not explain the Sabra and Shatila camp massacres by stating, as did Begin: 'Gentiles kill Gentiles and blame the Jews'. Even if Rabin had himself been capable of saying this, he knew that most of his secular supporters in Labor, who distinguish between Gentiles who hate Jews and those who do not, would not have tolerated such a statement." (p 11)

JJ, get back to me when you've read that one, OK?