Last night was one of those rare occasions when I watched ABC television's daily news discussion program, The Drum. Among the items for discussion was the contrived anti-Semitism crisis which continues to swirl around Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
One panelist, Andrew West of ABC Radio National's Religion & Ethics Report asserted categorically that UK Labour "certainly has problems in its grass roots and among MPs who've taken their criticism of Israel too far."
Whether or not these "problems" were genuine, or were from cynical Zionist trolls using fake profiles to advance their cause, was of course, never entertained. Nor did West feel obliged to explain what "taking criticism of Israel too far" entailed. And as for explaining the elementary difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, forget it. I seriously doubt that the distinction has ever crossed his mind. No, the UK Labour Party had "problems" with anti-Semitism and that was that.
Never mind, Bob Carr was there to sort all of this out. Well, sort of:
"How [Jeremy Corbyn] allowed the monstrous phenomenon of anti-Semitism to get any acknowledgment from any small corner of the British Labour Party membership, I simply do not understand. It would have taken basic political skills - no more than that - to have made it clear from the very start of these controversies that it is possible to oppose the occupation of the West Bank, the spread of settlements, the cruelty directed at the Palestinian people, without entertaining anything that smacks remotely of anti-Semitism, systemic criticism of Jewish people."
Again, Carr bases his comment on the same assumption as West: the party has real "problems" with anti-Semitism, but only because Corbyn hasn't effectively combated them, not because the British counterparts of the Australian "Zionist Zealots," about whose bullying he complained in his recent memoir, are using the accusation as a weapon solely to prevent a leader sympathetic to Palestinian rights from becoming prime minister.
Asked if Corbyn ever stood up to said anti-Semitism, Carr replied:
"He did it too late. He did it strongly at the Labour conference in September last year and unapologetically laid out his commitment to recognise Palestine and repudiate anti-Semitism, but as leader you've really got a responsibility for seeing that these things get no oxygen at the very start, and I'm ashamed that a fraternal party, a social-democratic party, has even got to take a moment's time to say we're not anti-Semitic."
In fact, Corbyn has denied the smear of anti-Semitism on many occasions. Where he is at fault is in not pointing out that naming and boycotting Israeli apartheid for what it is has nothing whatever to do with hatred Jews as such. As anti-Zionist Jew Tony Greenstein, suspended from the Labour Party in 2016 after allegations that he may have breached party rules, has written in an expose of the matter:
"Corbyn's response to the accusations of antisemitism was to repeat that he wasn't an anti-Semite, which was of course true. What he didn't seem to understand, though, was that when his Zionist opponents used the term 'antisemitism' they were not talking about hatred of Jews but hatred of Zionism. In other words they were talking past each other. If Corbyn had stood up to his accusers from the beginning then he would have shot this fox. To a very large extent Corbyn has been the author of his own misfortunes. All he needed to have done was to say that yes, he condemned antisemitism but he also condemned those who weaponised antisemitism for their own advantage. He could also have noted how supporters of Israel repeatedly accuse opponents of Zionism of 'antisemitism'. It is not as if Corbyn was unaware of this. One of his Jewish anti-Zionist friends, the late Mike Marqusee, had written a book about this, If I Am not For Myself. Jeremy Corbyn of all people should have understood what was happening. He has been involved in Palestine solidarity politics for over 30 years. He cannot be unaware of the fact that the standard go-to accusation of Zionism is to accuse their opponents of antisemitism. There cannot be a Palestine solidarity supporter in the country who hasn't been accused of antisemitism. This is entirely understandable. If you have to defend the theft of land, the demolition of homes, the allocation of 93% of Israeli land to Jews only, coupled with torture, administrative detention and abuse of children, then it is much easier to cry 'antisemitism'." (The story so far... , in The Antisemitism Wars: How the British Media Failed their Public, Karl Sabbagh, 2018, pp 29-30)
Showing posts with label Mike Marqusee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Marqusee. Show all posts
Thursday, February 21, 2019
Monday, March 21, 2011
Jogging Uri Avnery's Memory
Spare a thought for that oxymoron, the progressive Zionist. The Israeli peace movement's leading luminary, Uri Avnery, in his latest essay, A dirty word (zope.gush-shalom.org, 19/3/11), uncritically hearts Western intervention in Libya - and manages, not surprisingly for a rusted-on Zionist, to forget all sorts of things along the way:
"On Thurdsay evening I could not think of anything except Libya. First I heard the blood-curdling speech by Muammar Gaddafi, in which he promised to occupy Benghazi within hours and drown the rebels in a bloodbath."
So Libya took your mind off the Israeli air strikes which have been pounding the Gaza Strip of late, Uri?
"I was extremely worried and extremely furious with the international community and especially with the US, which had wasted days and weeks of precious time with empty phrase-mongering, while the dictator reconquered Libya bit by bit."
Yeah, and while the Israeli air force was pounding Gaza... to bits.
"Then there was the almost incredible sight of the UN Security Council... unanimously adopting the resolution calling for military intervention. The scene that ensued in Benghazi's central square and broadcast live on Aljazeera reminded me of Mugrabi Square in Tel Aviv on November 29, 1947, just after the UN General Assembly had adopted the resolution on the partition of Palestine between a Jewish and an Arab state. The feelings of joy and relief were palpable."
Took you back, did it, to that glorious time when the Truman administration, acting under Zionist pressure, had to twist a few arms to ensure the passing of a resolution giving the UN's imprimatur to the dismemberment of Palestine, over the heads of its people, and on behalf of recently arrived Jewish colons such as yourself. (See my 25/6/09 post Now Honestly)
"The hesitation of the US... to intervene militarily in Libya was... monstrous... For me, 'non-intervention' is a dirty word."
Oh, really? It wasn't a dirty word in 2003 when you noted - sensibly then - just prior to the US's intervention in Iraq: "As for democracy: Americans don't give a damn. Some of their best friends in the Islamic world are dictators, some more, some less cruel than Saddam. As the old American adage goes: 'He is a son-of-a-bitch, but he is our son-of-a-bitch'" (The smell of war, 8/2/03).
And you were right in predicting then that: "For sure, Bush will try to set up some native Iraqi government, in order to disguise and lend legitimacy to the American occupation. There are any number of volunteers, ready to serve as Quislings. Then again, Bush may prefer some new Saddam Hussein, a dictator appointed by them." Their son-of-a-bitch, eh? But what you wrote then is of no relevance to the US's latest intervention in Libya now? Are you implying that the US is intervening there purely because, this time around, they do give a damn about democracy, and that they have no intention whatever, this time around, of instaling their son-of-a-bitch, whoever he may be? Not, of course, that Gaddafi hadn't been their son-of-a-bitch these years past.
Oh, and didn't you tell us back in 2003 that: "I do not belong to those who can speak of war with equanimity. I have seen war. I see the thousands who will be killed, the tens of thousands that will be wounded and maimed, the hundreds of thousands that will become refugees, the ruined families, the sea of tears and human suffering. I join the millions all over the world who say NO." How prophetic you were back then, but again, have those wise words of yours no relevance for US intervention in Libya today?
"It reminds me of the Spanish civil war, which took place when I was very young. In 1936, the Spanish republic and the Spanish people were viciously attacked by a Spanish general, Francisco Franco, with troops imported from Morocco. It was a very bloody war, with untold atrocities. Franco was decisively aided by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. German Air Force planes terrorized Spanish cities... The Western democracies adamantly refused to help the republic and coined the term 'non-intervention'. Non-intervention meant in practice that Great Britain and France did not intervene, while Germany and Italy did, and did their worst. The only foreign power to help the beleaguered democrats was the Soviet Union... At the time, it looked like a clear fight between good and absolute evil. Idealists from all over the world joined the International Brigades of the republic."
So, are you suggesting that the International Brigades of the Spanish civil war now the cruise missiles of Libya?
I've already had to remind you that Israeli warplanes are, even now, striking defenceless Palestinians in Gaza, but do I also have to remind you of what was going on in your 'own' backyard from 1936-39, when you were 13-15 years old? That's right, non-interventionary Britain, with the aid of Jewish mercenaries recently imported from Europe, were doing their worst to the Palestinians who had bravely risen up against their British masters. As Mike Marqusee, writing about his Avnery-like, progressive, but hopelessly Zionist, grandfather, EVM, pointed out in his memoir, If I Am Not For Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew (2008):
"The White Paper of 1939 - opposed in the House of Commons by the Labour Party and from the Conservative benches by Winston Churchill - was a concession [to the Palestinians] made necessary by British priorities after the brutal suppression of the Arab Revolt of 1936-39, of which EVM shows, unsurprisingly, no awareness. In contrast to the Spanish Civil War... the most intense and sustained anti-colonial insurgency of its time was ignored by the left in Europe and North Anerica, and actually denounced by the British Labour Party as 'fascist'." (p 127)
And, since Marqusee's open before me and your memory seems shaky, let's remind ourselves of the dimensions and significance of that insurgency: "The Arab Revolt had begun in April 1936 with a general strike of Arab Palestinian workers that ran for 175 days, throughout which the Zionist trade union federation, the Histadrut, acted as strikebreaker-in-chief. By the strike's end in October, there were 37 British, 80 Jews and 1,000 Palestinian dead. The revolt now spread into the countryside, and for the next 2 years much of Palestine was in the hands of the rebels who also controlled significant urban areas, including at times the old city of Jerusalem, and mounted constant attacks on the Iraq Petroleum Company's critical pipeline to Haifa. After the Munich Agreement in September 1938, the British were able to deploy sufficient forces to crush the revolt. Punitive expeditions were mounted against villages, which were also bombed from the air. Mass arrests were followed by torture and hangings. In all this the British were aided by the Haganah, the Jewish military 'defense' force in Palestine founded in 1920; it was at this time that its elite unit, later known as the Palmach, came into being under British supervision. Meanwhile, the Irgun, the Revisionists' military wing, mounted a terror campaign against Palestinians, bombing marketplaces in Haifa, Jerusalem, and Jaffa. The suppression of the revolt left 5,000 dead, the Palestinians leaderless, disorganized and largely disarmed, while the Yishuv emerged with a strengthened infrastructure and well-trained armed force. Thus the British laid the foundations for the Zionist victory in 1948." (pp 127-128)
My God, Uri, could it be that, by recalling your enthusiam for the Spanish republicans, you're actually trying to block out your choice as a 14-year old in 1938 to join the Irgun, which, as Marqusee reminds us, was busy at the time bombing Arab marketplaces ? (For a more detailed account of same, see my 27/6/08 post Breathtaking Zionist Hypocrisy)
"If I had been only a few years older, I would without doubt have volunteered, too. In 1948, we sang with gusto the songs of the International Brigades in our own war."
Oh, did you now? But are you sure you were on the right side in that dirty war of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people? (See my 1/6/08 post Uri Avnery's 1948: A Critique)
"On Thurdsay evening I could not think of anything except Libya. First I heard the blood-curdling speech by Muammar Gaddafi, in which he promised to occupy Benghazi within hours and drown the rebels in a bloodbath."
So Libya took your mind off the Israeli air strikes which have been pounding the Gaza Strip of late, Uri?
"I was extremely worried and extremely furious with the international community and especially with the US, which had wasted days and weeks of precious time with empty phrase-mongering, while the dictator reconquered Libya bit by bit."
Yeah, and while the Israeli air force was pounding Gaza... to bits.
"Then there was the almost incredible sight of the UN Security Council... unanimously adopting the resolution calling for military intervention. The scene that ensued in Benghazi's central square and broadcast live on Aljazeera reminded me of Mugrabi Square in Tel Aviv on November 29, 1947, just after the UN General Assembly had adopted the resolution on the partition of Palestine between a Jewish and an Arab state. The feelings of joy and relief were palpable."
Took you back, did it, to that glorious time when the Truman administration, acting under Zionist pressure, had to twist a few arms to ensure the passing of a resolution giving the UN's imprimatur to the dismemberment of Palestine, over the heads of its people, and on behalf of recently arrived Jewish colons such as yourself. (See my 25/6/09 post Now Honestly)
"The hesitation of the US... to intervene militarily in Libya was... monstrous... For me, 'non-intervention' is a dirty word."
Oh, really? It wasn't a dirty word in 2003 when you noted - sensibly then - just prior to the US's intervention in Iraq: "As for democracy: Americans don't give a damn. Some of their best friends in the Islamic world are dictators, some more, some less cruel than Saddam. As the old American adage goes: 'He is a son-of-a-bitch, but he is our son-of-a-bitch'" (The smell of war, 8/2/03).
And you were right in predicting then that: "For sure, Bush will try to set up some native Iraqi government, in order to disguise and lend legitimacy to the American occupation. There are any number of volunteers, ready to serve as Quislings. Then again, Bush may prefer some new Saddam Hussein, a dictator appointed by them." Their son-of-a-bitch, eh? But what you wrote then is of no relevance to the US's latest intervention in Libya now? Are you implying that the US is intervening there purely because, this time around, they do give a damn about democracy, and that they have no intention whatever, this time around, of instaling their son-of-a-bitch, whoever he may be? Not, of course, that Gaddafi hadn't been their son-of-a-bitch these years past.
Oh, and didn't you tell us back in 2003 that: "I do not belong to those who can speak of war with equanimity. I have seen war. I see the thousands who will be killed, the tens of thousands that will be wounded and maimed, the hundreds of thousands that will become refugees, the ruined families, the sea of tears and human suffering. I join the millions all over the world who say NO." How prophetic you were back then, but again, have those wise words of yours no relevance for US intervention in Libya today?
"It reminds me of the Spanish civil war, which took place when I was very young. In 1936, the Spanish republic and the Spanish people were viciously attacked by a Spanish general, Francisco Franco, with troops imported from Morocco. It was a very bloody war, with untold atrocities. Franco was decisively aided by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. German Air Force planes terrorized Spanish cities... The Western democracies adamantly refused to help the republic and coined the term 'non-intervention'. Non-intervention meant in practice that Great Britain and France did not intervene, while Germany and Italy did, and did their worst. The only foreign power to help the beleaguered democrats was the Soviet Union... At the time, it looked like a clear fight between good and absolute evil. Idealists from all over the world joined the International Brigades of the republic."
So, are you suggesting that the International Brigades of the Spanish civil war now the cruise missiles of Libya?
I've already had to remind you that Israeli warplanes are, even now, striking defenceless Palestinians in Gaza, but do I also have to remind you of what was going on in your 'own' backyard from 1936-39, when you were 13-15 years old? That's right, non-interventionary Britain, with the aid of Jewish mercenaries recently imported from Europe, were doing their worst to the Palestinians who had bravely risen up against their British masters. As Mike Marqusee, writing about his Avnery-like, progressive, but hopelessly Zionist, grandfather, EVM, pointed out in his memoir, If I Am Not For Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew (2008):
"The White Paper of 1939 - opposed in the House of Commons by the Labour Party and from the Conservative benches by Winston Churchill - was a concession [to the Palestinians] made necessary by British priorities after the brutal suppression of the Arab Revolt of 1936-39, of which EVM shows, unsurprisingly, no awareness. In contrast to the Spanish Civil War... the most intense and sustained anti-colonial insurgency of its time was ignored by the left in Europe and North Anerica, and actually denounced by the British Labour Party as 'fascist'." (p 127)
And, since Marqusee's open before me and your memory seems shaky, let's remind ourselves of the dimensions and significance of that insurgency: "The Arab Revolt had begun in April 1936 with a general strike of Arab Palestinian workers that ran for 175 days, throughout which the Zionist trade union federation, the Histadrut, acted as strikebreaker-in-chief. By the strike's end in October, there were 37 British, 80 Jews and 1,000 Palestinian dead. The revolt now spread into the countryside, and for the next 2 years much of Palestine was in the hands of the rebels who also controlled significant urban areas, including at times the old city of Jerusalem, and mounted constant attacks on the Iraq Petroleum Company's critical pipeline to Haifa. After the Munich Agreement in September 1938, the British were able to deploy sufficient forces to crush the revolt. Punitive expeditions were mounted against villages, which were also bombed from the air. Mass arrests were followed by torture and hangings. In all this the British were aided by the Haganah, the Jewish military 'defense' force in Palestine founded in 1920; it was at this time that its elite unit, later known as the Palmach, came into being under British supervision. Meanwhile, the Irgun, the Revisionists' military wing, mounted a terror campaign against Palestinians, bombing marketplaces in Haifa, Jerusalem, and Jaffa. The suppression of the revolt left 5,000 dead, the Palestinians leaderless, disorganized and largely disarmed, while the Yishuv emerged with a strengthened infrastructure and well-trained armed force. Thus the British laid the foundations for the Zionist victory in 1948." (pp 127-128)
My God, Uri, could it be that, by recalling your enthusiam for the Spanish republicans, you're actually trying to block out your choice as a 14-year old in 1938 to join the Irgun, which, as Marqusee reminds us, was busy at the time bombing Arab marketplaces ? (For a more detailed account of same, see my 27/6/08 post Breathtaking Zionist Hypocrisy)
"If I had been only a few years older, I would without doubt have volunteered, too. In 1948, we sang with gusto the songs of the International Brigades in our own war."
Oh, did you now? But are you sure you were on the right side in that dirty war of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people? (See my 1/6/08 post Uri Avnery's 1948: A Critique)
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Sheridan in Love 4
"Second only to the US, Israel is the most acute object of the hostility to the West that flourishes in Western intellectual life... [because] it is capitalist, Western, an ally of the US and uses military force when necessary to maintain its security. It rules, if temporarily*, over an occupied Arab population and despite its own racial diversity is a mostly non-Arab population in a predominantly Arab region... But there is another factor... and this is Israel's role as the homeland of the Jewish people... but which also gave full political, civic and human rights to all its citizens regardless of their religion or racial background... Israel's role as the Jewish homeland, when Jewish civilization was nearly wiped out by the Holocaust, gives it a special place in the estimation of those who love and admire Jewish culture... But it is the central reality for those motivated by anti-Semitism... Israel is called an apartheid state... Increasingly, anti-Israel demonstrations in the West include direct references to Jews as well as to the state of Israel... Every American Jew who supported the US intervention in Iraq was suspected without evidence, of doing so because of considerations for Israel, thus reviving the old canard that Jews cannot be loyal citizens of the state they live in because of their over-arching loyalty to Israel. Even when hostility is directed specifically at Israel rather than at Jews, when this hostility is extreme and beyond reason, it affects the social atmosphere for Jews." (Israel still looks good, warts & all, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, The Australian Literary Review, 6/5/09) [*42 years of occupation notwithstanding]
Sheridan here airbrushes Israel, the Jewish state which discriminates in law against its non-Jewish citizens, misrepresenting it as a warm and fuzzy "Jewish homeland," a mere repository of Jewish "civilization" and refuge in troubled times. Notably absent is any reference to what Israel actually is or does. He then goes on (after a long discussion of classical anti-Semitism, which I've omitted) to claim in effect that virtually ALL criticism of this "Jewish homeland" is either anti-Semitic in motivation or encourages and promotes anti-Semitism.
Mike Marqusee's recent (2008) memoir If I Am Not for Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew is only one of many critiques of the Zionist project which refute this canard. Given the comprehensive nature of his refutation, however, he's worth quoting at some length: "The European Union Monitoring Committee on Racism and Xenophobia has published a 'working definition' of anti-semitism which declares that 'anti-semitism manifests itself' in 'drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis' as well as 'denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg, by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour'. Former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky defined 'the new anti-semitism' by applying what he calls the '3D test': 'demonization' (comparing Israelis to Nazis), 'double standards' (measuring Israel by different yardsticks than are applied to other countries), and 'delegitimization' (denying the Jewish right to a state)... Irwin Cotler, the Canadian Justice Minister, claimed that acceptable criticism of Israel ends and anti-semitism begins when critics deny the Jewish people's right to self-determination, when they 'Nazify' Israel, or when they 'single out Israel for discriminatory treatment in the international arena'." (pp 24-25)
Regarding the issue of double standards and singling out, Marqusee points out that in determining a "single standard of human justice, it is necessary to engage in the process of analogy. And on this the Zionists place a priori restrictions. Israel demands exemptions: on refugees' right to return or compensation, on seizure and settlement of land acquired by military conquest, on torture and assassinations, on the indiscriminate use of violence in densely populated areas, on nuclear proliferation. These exemptions are embodied in hundreds of US vetoes on Israel's behalf at the Security Council. So who is really doing the 'singling out'?" (p 25)
"Of course," he continues, "Israel is not the only offender in today's world... But if no protest against a particular crime is to be admitted unless all crimes are equally and presumably simultaneously protested against, then there will be no protest at all, against any crimes. This is an acute form of moral relativism masquerading as its opposite. The upshot is to minimize or relativize Israel's crimes and to attempt to delegitimize those who would judge Israel by universal standards of human decency." ( pp 25-26)
On the issue of Jewish self-determination, Marqusee points out that "anti-Zionists, of course, do reject the idea that there should be a Jewish state in Palestine. In so doing it's said we are 'singling out' Jews by denying their rights to the statehood that others enjoy. Here the Zionists move from objecting to inappropriate analogies to insisting on analogous status with other national groups. A rejection of that particular analogy, and the preference for other analogies - other readings of history - is ruled anti-semitic, either in motive or effect." He asks, "Were those who opposed national self-determination for Afrikaaners... in post-apartheid South Africa 'singling out' [this] ethnic group by denying [it] this universal right?... Their claims were universally rejected by liberal and left opinion. [It was] recognized as [an] undemocratic, exclusivist nationalism... seeking to establish ethnic privileges. In the end, the bulk of the South African population decided that only majority rule across the country, not separatism, could guarantee minority rights. World public opinion was in complete accord, yet to advocate that self-same solution for Palestine is deemed - officially - anti-semitic." ( p 26)
He deftly underlines the uniqueness of Israel's position as a self-styled Jewish state, a real self-singling out if ever there was one: "There are currently no Protestant or Catholic or Hindu or even Muslim states that legally privilege members of those religions in the way that the state of Israel privileges Jews. There are Muslim states that give privileges to Islam and to Muslim citizens, but there is no Muslim state that offers all Muslims worldwide a homeland, or that endows foreigners with full (indeed privileged) citizenship, simply because they are Muslims. While religion may affect citizenship rights, it is not the determinant - which is birth or long residence within the borders of the state. Paradoxically, although the Jewish state is said to belong to Jews everywhere, it does not define Jewishness by religious observance. It claims to be a secular state, unlike those Muslim states that require public observance of specific forms of Islam." (p 28)
When it comes to adjudicating the world's many nationalisms, Marqusee insists on the application of the principle of "the democratic content of the national demand... In many situations it is unclear where the balance lies. But in the case of Zionism the verdict is dramatically stark: Zionism involves, unavoidably, a denial to others of democratic and equal rights. It is an obscurantist claim dressed in the garb of secular modernity, underpinned from the beginning by naked power... Critically, even in the most clear-cut claims for national self-determination, there is no right to build a state on land already inhabited by others, or to sustain an ethnic majority in a state through the dispossession of others. It is here the Zionists make for Israel an exceptional claim among the nations. Their case cannot be sustained by analogy, so they deligitimize the process of analogy. However, there is, even here, one analogy they do claim: that between Americanism and Zionism. Like Palestine, North America was a land without people for a people without land. Both Americanism and Zionism are settler-colonial ideologies infused with utopianism - and racism. Both the Israeli and the US state are presented as embodying extra-territorial ideas. The 'city on the hill' is an outpost, and in latter days an embodiment, of white European civilization. American exceptionalism and Israeli exceptionalism are mirrors and partners. Like the Zionists who founded Israel, the Protestant settlers who founded the USA were fleeing from and supported by an empire. They dispossessed the indigenous people while declaring them the beneficiaries of their good intentions. Among the charges the declaration of Independence makes against King George III is that he has blocked 'new appropriation of lands', failed to encourage migration from Europe, and sided with the 'merciless Indian savages' against the 'inhabitants of our frontiers', namely, the white settlers seeking to expand the colonial domain. The American Revolution, like the Zionist struggle against the British mandate in 1945-47, was partly a response by settler-colonialists to imperial restrictions on their right to dispossess natives. I've heard this analogy used to justify the Nakba, the Palestinian 'catastrophe' of 1948: terrible things happened to the Native Americans but these are the casualties of progress, and cannot be undone. Every people acquires its land, at one point or another, by conquest, so why should the Jews be any different? But that raises the less comfortable case of another settler-colonialism, white South Africa. When it comes to the apartheid analogy, what's decisive is not Carter's legitimizing of it but the fact that it arises, spontaneously and irresistably, to the lips of black South Africans visiting the Occupied Territories. What they see there - the Jews-only roads, the confinement of Palestinians in camps and villages, the checkpoints, the harassment, the second-class citizenship based on ethnicity - reminds them graphically of the system they suffered under and struggled against. The Afrikaaners were immigrants from Europe with a religious-nationalist consciousness whose racist assumptions about their right to the land were underpinned by superior European technology and weaponry. White settlers acquired control of the state thanks ultimately to British imperial power, with which, like the Zionists, they were often nonetheless in conflict. There is at least one major difference between Israel and South Africa, though it's not one that favors the former. Under apartheid, the dominant whites used the black population as a source of cheap labor. In contrast, Zionism has aimed to remove the Palestinian population, to replace Palestinians with Jews. And this has been evident from what Zionists called 'the conquest of labor' in the 1920s (when Jewish settlers campaigned for the non-employment of Palestinians), to the Nakba of 1948 and its aftermath, to the current calls within Israel for 'transfer', the final expulsion of the bulk of the Palestinian population." (pp 29-31)
Finally, Marqusee tackles the Nazi/fascist analogy, and makes the telling point that "the prime culprit here... is not the left. In my lifetime, every US military action, from Vietnam to Iraq (and now the threat against Iran), has been justified with analogies drawn from World War II. Every enemy is a new Hitler (Qadaffi, Noriega, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Mugabe, Ahmadinejad), every call for peace is Munich-style appeasement, and every challenge to Israel is an existential threat akin to that posed by the Nazis - from the days of Nasser down to Hamas and Hezbollah. Of course, the Nazis and the holocaust represent an acme of inhumanity, an evil so enormous that any comparison seems dubious. Yet if we remove them from history and treat them as sui generis, we debar ourselves from learning and applying the broader lessons. When the world discovered the extent of Nazi barbarism in the wake of World War II, the cry was 'Never again!' We cannot turn that cry into a reality, we cannot ensure that nothing even remotely like this happens again, unless we are permitted to draw appropriate analogies from the experience. Where there is Nazi-like behavior, a Nazi-like idea or a Nazi-like threat, then it is right that the comparison is noted. Is it permitted, however, to compare anything to the holocaust? Its industrial and ideological nature and scale seem to make it unlike anything in the annals of genocide. But even these salient features occur only within the broader phenomenon of imperialism, racism and colonialism. That's where the story of the extermination of European Jewry belongs and it does not in the least belittle or relativize the magnitude of its horror to say so. (pp 31-32)
And Sheridan's poor, misunderstood American Jews, who supposedly supported the invasion of Iraq because they thought it was the right thing for America to do at the time without being in any way influenced by the sabre-rattling of Israeli politicians, Israel-friendly American neocons in and out of the Bush administration, and the Israel lobby, and who therefore came under suspicion of dual loyalty? Even assuming the reality of such straw men, the very fact that Israel presents as a Jewish state, and that Zionists routinely conflate Judaism and Zionism, is bound to lead to such suspicions. As Norman Finkelstein has pointed out: "In some quarters anger at Israel's brutal occupation has undoubtedly spilled over to an animus toward Jews generally. But however lamentable, it's hardly cause for wonder. The brutal US aggression against Vietnam and the Bush administration's aggression against Iraq engendered a generalized anti-Americanism, just as the genocidal Nazi aggression during World War II engendered a generalized anti-Teutonism. Should it really surprise us if the cruel occupation by a self-declared Jewish state engenders a generalized antipathy to Jews?... [I]f many Jews themselves repudiate any distinction between Israel and world Jewry, indeed, if they denounce such a distinction as itself anti-Semitic; if mainstream Jewish organizations lend uncritical support to every Israeli policy, however criminal, indeed, abetting the most virulent tendencies inside Israel and muzzling principled dissent outside Israel; if Israel defines itself juridically as the sovereign state of the Jewish people, and Jews abroad label any criticism of Israel anti-Jewish - the real wonder is that the spillover from antipathy toward Israel to Jews generally hasn't been greater" (Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism & the Abuse of History, 2005, pp 81-82)
Sheridan here airbrushes Israel, the Jewish state which discriminates in law against its non-Jewish citizens, misrepresenting it as a warm and fuzzy "Jewish homeland," a mere repository of Jewish "civilization" and refuge in troubled times. Notably absent is any reference to what Israel actually is or does. He then goes on (after a long discussion of classical anti-Semitism, which I've omitted) to claim in effect that virtually ALL criticism of this "Jewish homeland" is either anti-Semitic in motivation or encourages and promotes anti-Semitism.
Mike Marqusee's recent (2008) memoir If I Am Not for Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew is only one of many critiques of the Zionist project which refute this canard. Given the comprehensive nature of his refutation, however, he's worth quoting at some length: "The European Union Monitoring Committee on Racism and Xenophobia has published a 'working definition' of anti-semitism which declares that 'anti-semitism manifests itself' in 'drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis' as well as 'denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg, by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour'. Former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky defined 'the new anti-semitism' by applying what he calls the '3D test': 'demonization' (comparing Israelis to Nazis), 'double standards' (measuring Israel by different yardsticks than are applied to other countries), and 'delegitimization' (denying the Jewish right to a state)... Irwin Cotler, the Canadian Justice Minister, claimed that acceptable criticism of Israel ends and anti-semitism begins when critics deny the Jewish people's right to self-determination, when they 'Nazify' Israel, or when they 'single out Israel for discriminatory treatment in the international arena'." (pp 24-25)
Regarding the issue of double standards and singling out, Marqusee points out that in determining a "single standard of human justice, it is necessary to engage in the process of analogy. And on this the Zionists place a priori restrictions. Israel demands exemptions: on refugees' right to return or compensation, on seizure and settlement of land acquired by military conquest, on torture and assassinations, on the indiscriminate use of violence in densely populated areas, on nuclear proliferation. These exemptions are embodied in hundreds of US vetoes on Israel's behalf at the Security Council. So who is really doing the 'singling out'?" (p 25)
"Of course," he continues, "Israel is not the only offender in today's world... But if no protest against a particular crime is to be admitted unless all crimes are equally and presumably simultaneously protested against, then there will be no protest at all, against any crimes. This is an acute form of moral relativism masquerading as its opposite. The upshot is to minimize or relativize Israel's crimes and to attempt to delegitimize those who would judge Israel by universal standards of human decency." ( pp 25-26)
On the issue of Jewish self-determination, Marqusee points out that "anti-Zionists, of course, do reject the idea that there should be a Jewish state in Palestine. In so doing it's said we are 'singling out' Jews by denying their rights to the statehood that others enjoy. Here the Zionists move from objecting to inappropriate analogies to insisting on analogous status with other national groups. A rejection of that particular analogy, and the preference for other analogies - other readings of history - is ruled anti-semitic, either in motive or effect." He asks, "Were those who opposed national self-determination for Afrikaaners... in post-apartheid South Africa 'singling out' [this] ethnic group by denying [it] this universal right?... Their claims were universally rejected by liberal and left opinion. [It was] recognized as [an] undemocratic, exclusivist nationalism... seeking to establish ethnic privileges. In the end, the bulk of the South African population decided that only majority rule across the country, not separatism, could guarantee minority rights. World public opinion was in complete accord, yet to advocate that self-same solution for Palestine is deemed - officially - anti-semitic." ( p 26)
He deftly underlines the uniqueness of Israel's position as a self-styled Jewish state, a real self-singling out if ever there was one: "There are currently no Protestant or Catholic or Hindu or even Muslim states that legally privilege members of those religions in the way that the state of Israel privileges Jews. There are Muslim states that give privileges to Islam and to Muslim citizens, but there is no Muslim state that offers all Muslims worldwide a homeland, or that endows foreigners with full (indeed privileged) citizenship, simply because they are Muslims. While religion may affect citizenship rights, it is not the determinant - which is birth or long residence within the borders of the state. Paradoxically, although the Jewish state is said to belong to Jews everywhere, it does not define Jewishness by religious observance. It claims to be a secular state, unlike those Muslim states that require public observance of specific forms of Islam." (p 28)
When it comes to adjudicating the world's many nationalisms, Marqusee insists on the application of the principle of "the democratic content of the national demand... In many situations it is unclear where the balance lies. But in the case of Zionism the verdict is dramatically stark: Zionism involves, unavoidably, a denial to others of democratic and equal rights. It is an obscurantist claim dressed in the garb of secular modernity, underpinned from the beginning by naked power... Critically, even in the most clear-cut claims for national self-determination, there is no right to build a state on land already inhabited by others, or to sustain an ethnic majority in a state through the dispossession of others. It is here the Zionists make for Israel an exceptional claim among the nations. Their case cannot be sustained by analogy, so they deligitimize the process of analogy. However, there is, even here, one analogy they do claim: that between Americanism and Zionism. Like Palestine, North America was a land without people for a people without land. Both Americanism and Zionism are settler-colonial ideologies infused with utopianism - and racism. Both the Israeli and the US state are presented as embodying extra-territorial ideas. The 'city on the hill' is an outpost, and in latter days an embodiment, of white European civilization. American exceptionalism and Israeli exceptionalism are mirrors and partners. Like the Zionists who founded Israel, the Protestant settlers who founded the USA were fleeing from and supported by an empire. They dispossessed the indigenous people while declaring them the beneficiaries of their good intentions. Among the charges the declaration of Independence makes against King George III is that he has blocked 'new appropriation of lands', failed to encourage migration from Europe, and sided with the 'merciless Indian savages' against the 'inhabitants of our frontiers', namely, the white settlers seeking to expand the colonial domain. The American Revolution, like the Zionist struggle against the British mandate in 1945-47, was partly a response by settler-colonialists to imperial restrictions on their right to dispossess natives. I've heard this analogy used to justify the Nakba, the Palestinian 'catastrophe' of 1948: terrible things happened to the Native Americans but these are the casualties of progress, and cannot be undone. Every people acquires its land, at one point or another, by conquest, so why should the Jews be any different? But that raises the less comfortable case of another settler-colonialism, white South Africa. When it comes to the apartheid analogy, what's decisive is not Carter's legitimizing of it but the fact that it arises, spontaneously and irresistably, to the lips of black South Africans visiting the Occupied Territories. What they see there - the Jews-only roads, the confinement of Palestinians in camps and villages, the checkpoints, the harassment, the second-class citizenship based on ethnicity - reminds them graphically of the system they suffered under and struggled against. The Afrikaaners were immigrants from Europe with a religious-nationalist consciousness whose racist assumptions about their right to the land were underpinned by superior European technology and weaponry. White settlers acquired control of the state thanks ultimately to British imperial power, with which, like the Zionists, they were often nonetheless in conflict. There is at least one major difference between Israel and South Africa, though it's not one that favors the former. Under apartheid, the dominant whites used the black population as a source of cheap labor. In contrast, Zionism has aimed to remove the Palestinian population, to replace Palestinians with Jews. And this has been evident from what Zionists called 'the conquest of labor' in the 1920s (when Jewish settlers campaigned for the non-employment of Palestinians), to the Nakba of 1948 and its aftermath, to the current calls within Israel for 'transfer', the final expulsion of the bulk of the Palestinian population." (pp 29-31)
Finally, Marqusee tackles the Nazi/fascist analogy, and makes the telling point that "the prime culprit here... is not the left. In my lifetime, every US military action, from Vietnam to Iraq (and now the threat against Iran), has been justified with analogies drawn from World War II. Every enemy is a new Hitler (Qadaffi, Noriega, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Mugabe, Ahmadinejad), every call for peace is Munich-style appeasement, and every challenge to Israel is an existential threat akin to that posed by the Nazis - from the days of Nasser down to Hamas and Hezbollah. Of course, the Nazis and the holocaust represent an acme of inhumanity, an evil so enormous that any comparison seems dubious. Yet if we remove them from history and treat them as sui generis, we debar ourselves from learning and applying the broader lessons. When the world discovered the extent of Nazi barbarism in the wake of World War II, the cry was 'Never again!' We cannot turn that cry into a reality, we cannot ensure that nothing even remotely like this happens again, unless we are permitted to draw appropriate analogies from the experience. Where there is Nazi-like behavior, a Nazi-like idea or a Nazi-like threat, then it is right that the comparison is noted. Is it permitted, however, to compare anything to the holocaust? Its industrial and ideological nature and scale seem to make it unlike anything in the annals of genocide. But even these salient features occur only within the broader phenomenon of imperialism, racism and colonialism. That's where the story of the extermination of European Jewry belongs and it does not in the least belittle or relativize the magnitude of its horror to say so. (pp 31-32)
And Sheridan's poor, misunderstood American Jews, who supposedly supported the invasion of Iraq because they thought it was the right thing for America to do at the time without being in any way influenced by the sabre-rattling of Israeli politicians, Israel-friendly American neocons in and out of the Bush administration, and the Israel lobby, and who therefore came under suspicion of dual loyalty? Even assuming the reality of such straw men, the very fact that Israel presents as a Jewish state, and that Zionists routinely conflate Judaism and Zionism, is bound to lead to such suspicions. As Norman Finkelstein has pointed out: "In some quarters anger at Israel's brutal occupation has undoubtedly spilled over to an animus toward Jews generally. But however lamentable, it's hardly cause for wonder. The brutal US aggression against Vietnam and the Bush administration's aggression against Iraq engendered a generalized anti-Americanism, just as the genocidal Nazi aggression during World War II engendered a generalized anti-Teutonism. Should it really surprise us if the cruel occupation by a self-declared Jewish state engenders a generalized antipathy to Jews?... [I]f many Jews themselves repudiate any distinction between Israel and world Jewry, indeed, if they denounce such a distinction as itself anti-Semitic; if mainstream Jewish organizations lend uncritical support to every Israeli policy, however criminal, indeed, abetting the most virulent tendencies inside Israel and muzzling principled dissent outside Israel; if Israel defines itself juridically as the sovereign state of the Jewish people, and Jews abroad label any criticism of Israel anti-Jewish - the real wonder is that the spillover from antipathy toward Israel to Jews generally hasn't been greater" (Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism & the Abuse of History, 2005, pp 81-82)
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