Anti-Semitism and Jews Behaving Badly
JVL Introduction
Vile as antisemitic acts are, affirms Tony Karon, they must not be used to distract attention from the war crimes Israel is committing in Gaza and elsewhere.
And indeed, there can be a connection.
For it is Israel that insists on erasing any distinction between Jews and Zionists. It insists that if you are against it, you are antisemitic.
“So, if you’re a Palestinian child in Jerusalem or Gaza or anywhere else, and your family is being abused, murdered, dispossessed, expelled, harassed, arrested, beaten or whatever by Israeli security forces or settlers who claim to act in the name of Jews and Judaism”, why shouldn’t you think Jews are responsible for it?
Karon’s formative experience in the Zionist movement in South Africa helped him to recognise how the deep racism on which Israel was based led to the dehumanisation of Palestinians, seen only as a “demographic/security threat”.
By the time he was 19 he realised that his anti-apartheid, antiracist and socialist beliefs were incompatible with his Zionism.
Indeed, fighting for Palestinian freedom, as he explains, is a necessary part of the struggle against antisemitism.
This article was originally published by Rootless Cosmopolitan on Wed 26 May 2021. Read the original here.
Anti-Semitism and Jews Behaving Badly
If, as the Zionists insist, no distinction can be made between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, then we Jews have a terrible problem
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Excellent article.
Loved Shtisel!
There is a whole thread that is overlooked and not addressed in the weaponization of anti-Semitism; and that is how it brings all faiths into disrepute. This voice is ignored by most present day activists who come from the secular humanist, atheist background. As a Christian the Hebrew Scriptures are an integral to that faith- people look at what Israel are doing and say I want no truck with that if that where faith leads. It has been said that the Labour Party owes more to Methodism than Marxism- there is a great deal of truth in that; one only needs to see the roots of the Socialist beliefs of Kier Hardie, RH Tawney, Archbishop Temple, Attlee, John Smith, Martin Luther King, not to mention the Liberation Theology movement- but the present day Socialists skirt around this, wedded as they are to their Marxist ideology. Christian/Ethical Socialists should be important allies in the fight against the weaponization anti Semitism, but there is no platform for their opinions and arguments; certainly the church is not interested nor the present secular left.
Mike Dixon
Name a policy that is wedded to our Marxist ideology
My solution to the weaponisation is simple
Vexatious claims of anti semitism are hate crimes and should be prosecuted