Israel lobby – Wis[s]e Words

Zionists crying wolf too often

Published on May 6, 20099 Comments

Via Aaronovitch Watch (Incorporating “World of Decency”) comes Tony Greenstein’s account of the debate on anti-semitism between Aaronovitch (Zionist / warmonger) and Gilad Atzmon (jazz musician / somebody who if he isn’t anti-semitic, doesn’t do much to deny the charge). Aaronovitch himself was furious that in the choice between two evils, the audience took the side of the jazz musician, but as Greenstein says “the wars and blockades that Aaronovitch has supported in different parts of the world have killed upwards of 2 million people. Atzmon’s anti-Semitism has killed no one because, as far as I’m aware, death by boredom cannot be entered as a cause of death on a death certificate“.

His main point is made slightly later:

When you attack Palestinians and anti-Zionists, not least Jewish anti-Zionists, as being anti-Semitic, then what you do is let the real anti-Semites like Gilad Atzmon off the hook. When you deliberately confuse and conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism it is not the anti-Zionists you hurt but the anti-Semites you help. The only reason Gilad Atzmon can pass himself off as an anti-Zionist, when he is politically at one with Zionism’s founding creed, that diaspora Jewry is a hideous thing and that being Jewish and Zionist is one and the same thing, is because anti-Zionists and anti-Semites are tarred by the Zionists with the same brush of anti-Semitism.

If you cry ‘wolf’ for long enough, don’t be surprised if people no longer believe or listen to you when the wolf makes an appearance. And that is the real contribution of David Aaronovitch and Zionism to the fight against racism and anti-Semitism.

I’m not sure how real this danger is; there have been various studies showing anti-semitism is on the rise in Europe (examples left as exercise for your googling skills) but many of those suffer from the same problem as Greenstein mentions, that they confuse criticism of Israel, anti-zionism and anti-semitism. Anecdotally there have been incidents here in the Netherlands where hotheaded demonstrators against Israel’s War on Gaza have shouted anti-semitic slogans, which have then been used to discredit legitamite attacks on Israel. It does make sense to assume that in a climate where anti-semitism as a charge has been devalued to the point that any criticism of Israel is anti-semitic by default, people will wory less about it as they see how ridiculous most charges are. It even makes sense that this will lead to more real anti-semitism.

From the point of view of the Israel boosters this may not even be so bad, as 1) it delegitamises genuine criticism and 2) it adds credibility to the idea that Israel is the sole defence Jews have against persecution and that therefore they should support it unconditionally. Which doesn’t mean this was a conscious goal of those that have made those accusations the most of course, just that it’s a not entirely unwanted side effect.

How Israel is like South Africa

Published on April 22, 2009

Supported by the western powers, treated with kid gloves in the media, but worried about grassroots boycotts:

Isolating South Africa through sanctions and boycotts was certainly not the choice of Mrs Thatcher or Mr Reagan, but their governments were eventually forced to take action by the outrage of their own electorates at the suffering apartheid inflicted. The international anti-apartheid movement began at the grassroots among religious, community and labour groups, but it grew sufficiently powerful to force governments to distance themselves from a regime that they had viewed sympathetically. And that is a lesson that terrifies Israel’s leaders.

Israeli government officials have spoken openly since the Gaza conflict of their growing sense of isolation. Despite their most strenuous PR efforts, the 1,417 Palestinian deaths they caused in Gaza (compared with 13 Israelis, four by “friendly fire”) made it hard to sell the idea that Israel was the victim in the conflict. Israel’s narrative did not fit the images of the Gaza clash. It’s hard to convince people that the guys with the F-16s and Apache helicopters and the tanks are little David, while those facing them with side-arms, mortars and a handful of improvised unguided missiles are actually Goliath.

Coddled in their own narrative in which they are the eternal victims, Israelis are not accustomed to finding themselves the focus of international moral opprobrium. And they see in it a mortal threat.

That’s of course the main difference between South Africa and Israel. Both are racist settler states which drove the indigenious population off the best land in the country and locked them up in Bantustans, but South Africa didn’t have the Holocaust as a justification. The founding myth of Israel is that it was created as a shelter for the people who through the centuries had always been the victims, created from land liberated by them from those who would want to repeat the Holocaust. With the establishment of Israels, Jews worldwide would finally have a safe haven and therefore they need to defend it no matter what its crimes. At the same time, anybody who criticises Israel obviously wants to destroy this safe haven and is therefore evil.

But World War II ended almost 64 years ago, the generations that survived the Holocaust is slowly dying and even their children are getting old. Israel’s existence hasn’t been under threat for decades, its military is the most capable in the region and it’s a nuclear power. the whole victim card just doesn’t work well anymore, either with western Jews themselves or with non-Jews.

The recent Gaza donor conference at Sharm el Sheikh was a familiar exercise of nations pledging large amounts of money while respecting taboos imposed by Israel that effectively block reconstruction. That was in marked contrast to the aid convoy led by the maverick British MP George Galloway that arrived in Gaza two weeks ago, comprising some 100 trucks and ambulances loaded with medical and humanitarian supplies funded and collected at grassroots level in churches, mosques, trade union branches and community groups all over Britain.

Sure, the amount of aid delivered was small potatoes relative to the need, but the gesture showed that hundreds of thousands of ordinary Britons no longer accept their government’s equivocation on the fate of the Palestinians. That is exactly how the international anti-apartheid movement was born, back when the governments of the US and Britain were happy to concur with Pretoria that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist.

Back when I started blogging, in 2002, online opinion even in leftist blogs was much more in line with official reality, in which both Israel and the Palestinians were to blame for the ongoing conflict but the Palestinians with their terror much more so and any attention to the root causes of the conflict characterised as anti-semitism and beyond the pale. Over the years this has slowly changed, especially after the Israeli invasions of Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza this year, but also through the way the Palestinian population was treated for daring to elect Hamas. Alternative news sources, especially online, have helped a lot in exposing the official reality for the sham it is.

Grassroots initiatives like the British aid convoy to Gaza cannot stop Israeli Apartheid, but they are a hopeful sign that it will be increasingly difficult to maintain.

Realist empire

Published on October 13, 2007

Jamie explains how the current backlash against the Israel lobby, even if limited, might help to strengthen the power of the (Bush) presidency and hence the American empire:

Take the famous Mearsheimer and Walt book. Responses have centred on whether its portrayal of the dimensions and influence of the Israel Lobby in the United States are accurate; at least when they haven’t been a competition for the most creative ways of suggesting that M & W are anti-semites.

Behind that there’s another point. Lobbies flourish in the US because the law permits them wide latitude to influence public affairs in whatever way they can. You can’t change the terms of trade for Israel without changing them for all the other lobbies. And one of the most efficient ways to do that is to limit Congress’s ability to respond to their lobbying. That in turn implies limiting its freedom of action, something which would automatically strengthen the executive.

I have noticed a … tendency amongst those American liberals brave enough to admit and object to the existence of a Israel lobby to believe that it was largely that lobby that was responsible for the War on Iraq. In a strange way, the wingnut insistence that liberals use “neocon” as an antisemitic slur (don’t bother with the reasoning behind that) also draws from this belief. Having an existing and clearly very succesful lobby to put the blame on makes it of course easier to ignore the flaws and malice in American politics itself that made it possible to start an illegal and immoral war on the flimsiest of reasons.

Recognising Israel

Published on July 16, 2006

Ellis Sharp explains why recognising Israel’s right to exist is not as simple as all that:

Now of course in one obvious sense Israel exists. But as anti-Zionist bloggers have repeatedly asked: which Israel is to be recognised? The Israel defined by the United Nations in 1948, which handed over land held by a majority Arab population to European Jews? The Israel of 1949, when the first major phase of ethnic cleansing had been completed, and Palestinians had not only been driven out of the U.N.’s defined Jewish state but a huge area of land on top of that? Or should it be Israel in 1967, when within Israel yet more ethnic cleansing had been surreptitiously carried out, and when the rest of historic Palestine was occupied? Or Israel in 2006, which has flouted innumerable UN resolutions and grabbed even more occupied land from the Palestinians? Israel 2006, presumably.

The Israeli writer Yizchak Laor once observed that as an ideology Zionism has always been closer to racism and fascism than to liberalism. But, historically, it has always succeeded in co-opting liberals to its cause, right back to the days of George Eliot and Daniel Deronda. The British Labour movement throughout its history appears (as far as I can tell) to have always been strongly pro-Israel.

To succeed in getting even Harold Pinter to demand “recognition of Israel” and to have the GMB passing blatantly Zionist motions is, to my mind, quite remarkable. Recognition of Israel’s right to exist requires beaten-up victims to recognise that thieves have a right to stolen property. But that’s not what recognition is really about. Recognition is about accepting Israel’s right to exist as a sectarian state which defines citizenship by religion and comprehensively discriminates against citizens who do not belong to the master religion. Israel has no general anti-discrimination legislation and no commitment to equality. Israel accords second-class status to non-Jews.

Decent people cannot recognise Israel as a state with a right to exist until it stops being an Apartheid state, like decent people could not support South Africa’s right to exist as an Apartheid state either. Now it may seem today that this will never happen, but it seemed that way with South Africa in the eighties as well, with its Black population herded into bantustans and only let out to serve as cheap labour, almost slave labour, the South African army rampaging across the Frontline states at will, Mandela and other resistance leaders locked up or killed and no negotiation with the ANC possible. Yet a few years later the system was broken down, South Africa made peace with its neighbours and Mandela became president. Israel could do the same, but will not do it voluntarily. Therefore, we need toboycott Israel like South Africa was boycotted.