Israel/Palestine

Zionism’s problem with antisemitism

Published on January 28, 2019Leave a comment

So BBC Radio Four tweeted about Michael Rosen’s latest Word of Mouth programme, which prompted one Simon Myerson QC to complain about this:

Very sorry to hear Rosen being given a space. His support of the WRP and tolerance for the behaviour of the far left towards Jews who don't think like him (i.e. 99%) should place him outside these conversations.

Which in itself was bad enough because this dude took some petty political difference to a completely unrelated topic, but hey. Somebody else responded to him demolishing his argument:

1. Michael Rosen has never supported the WRP. 2 He has presented Word of Mouth for 20 years. 3 He has never used the programme as a “platform”. 4 He often celebrates Yiddish on the prog 5 He has helped 2000 children write poems for #HMD2019 in Cambridge tomorrow

To which he responded:

Interesting equation.
Alas it ignores - & thus approves - his v limited definition of Jew hatred. Educating children via such poor methods lets them down.
Rosen celebrates shtetl Judaism. Which was immolated, because Jews were powerless.
Your points 2-5 are utterly irrelevant.

Which struck me as rather antisemitic in its undertones. Tweeting on Holocaust Memorial Day that “shtetl Judaism” was immolated “because Jews were powerless” is pure victim blaming, of a sort you sometimes seem from Zionists, if not often this openly. Zionism is of course just another variant of 19th century nationalism, the idea that you need to have your own country to be a true nation or people. And if there were other peoples already living in your chosen land, that was of no importance. As such Zionism is really no different from e.g. Serbian or Polish nationalism bound in ethnicity and loath to recognise the rights of other peoples on the same lands.

At the same time Zionism was always opposed to those Jews who’d either choose to assimilate or to live their lives according to their own traditions, without wanting or needing a ‘return’ to Israel. You see that contempt here in Myserson’s dismissal of “shtetl Judaism”. It didn’t survive, it couldn’t defend itself against the Nazis, so it’s worthless, an attitude consciously or unconsciously shared by many Zionists, seeing a strong Israeli state as a shield against persecution. Israel and Israel only can save Jews from persuction, so any other way of Jewish life is suspect and needs to be torn down to save its people from itself. And of course the worst sort of Jewish people doing it wrong are the poor peasants of Eastern Europe, backward and humble and powerless in the face of the Nazis, so there’s a particular hatred among some Zionists for anything that reminds them of that.

Myerson taps into all that, going from trying to dob in Rosen for some imagined crime against Jews to dismissing entire Jewish populations as wrong in the space of two tweets. Interesting to see how quickly somebody like him dives head first into antisemitic ideas, completely unprompted. On Holocaust Memorial Day. While lecturing others about antisemitism.

Cartoonists urge Angoulême to drop Sodastream

Published on February 5, 2014Leave a comment

Dozens of well known cartoonists, including Joe Sacco, Tardi and Baru have signed an open lettre urging the Angoulême Comics Festival to drop Sodastream as a sponsor:

We, cartoonists, illustrators and authors from all countries, are surprised, disappointed and angry to find out that SodaStream is an official sponsor of the Angoulême International Comics Festival.

As you must know, SodaStream is the target of an international boycott call for its contribution to the colonization of Palestinian land, due to its factory in the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, its exploitation of Palestinian workers, and its theft of Palestinian resources, in violation of international law and contravening international principles of human rights.

Angoulême has had an important role in the appreciation of comics as an art form for over 40 years. It would be sad if SodaStream were able to use this event to whitewash their crimes.

We ask you to cut all ties between the Festival and this shameful company.

Sincerely,

This fight against Sodastream, for having established a plant in a Israeli settlement on stolen Palestian land in the West Bank, a plant Sodastream itself has admitted was a mistake, is just one small battle in the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) struggle against the Israeli Apartheid State. It’s similar in fact to that long struggle against South African Apartheid in the seventies and eighties and hopefully it can lead to similar results. Certainly the Israeli government fears the movement:

The movement’s economic impact is also becoming evident. The recent decision by the $200 billion Dutch pension fund PGGM to divest from the five largest Israeli banks because of their involvement in occupied Palestinian territory has sent shock waves through the Israeli establishment.

To underscore the “existential” danger that B.D.S. poses, Israel and its lobby groups often invoke the smear of anti-Semitism, despite the unequivocal, consistent position of the movement against all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. This unfounded allegation is intended to intimidate into silence those who criticize Israel and to conflate such criticism with anti-Jewish racism.

Getting Angoulême to drop Sodastream sponsorship, though welcome, is of course not going to change Israeli policies but seeing conservative pension funds start to drop Israeli investments, as much out of conviction as for legal concerns, that’s a game changer.

Footballers against Israeli apartheid

Published on December 3, 20121 Comment

The 2014 under-21 European Championships are supposed to be held in Israel, which is a bit awkward considering it just destroyed a football stadium as a novel new way of expressing its displeasure with the Palestinians. Sport, like art, is of course important to the well being of any peoples and it’s no wonder then that Israel regularly targets both.

To their considerable credit, more than sixty European professional footballers have protested against these acts and urged UEFA to withdrawn the competition from Israel:

We, as European football players, express our solidarity with the people of Gaza who are living under siege and denied basic human dignity and freedom. The latest Israeli bombardment of Gaza, resulting in the death of over a hundred civilians, was yet another stain on the world’s conscience.

We are informed that on 10 November 2012 the Israeli army bombed a sports stadium in Gaza, resulting in the death of four young people playing football, Mohamed Harara and Ahmed Harara, 16 and 17 years old; Matar Rahman and Ahmed Al Dirdissawi, 18 years old.

We are also informed that since February 2012 two footballers with the club Al Amari, Omar Rowis, 23, and Mohammed Nemer, 22, have been detained in Israel without charge or trial.

It is unacceptable that children are killed while they play football. Israel hosting the UEFA Under-21 European Championship, in these circumstances, will be seen as a reward for actions that are contrary to sporting values.

Despite the recent ceasefire, Palestinians are still forced to endure a desperate existence under occupation, they must be protected by the international community. All people have the right to a life of dignity, freedom and security. We hope that a just settlement will finally emerge.

Well done.

We didn’t start the fire

Published on November 21, 2012Leave a comment

No more mister nice guy

The London Review of Books looks at the context in which the new Israeli attack on Gaza is taken place:

Electoral considerations are likely to have played a role in Israeli decision-making, but hardly driven them. Both Netanyahu and his defence minister, Ehud Barak, had been smarting since March from a previous Egyptian-mediated ceasefire, according to which they informally agreed not only to stop attacking the Gaza Strip but also to discontinue assassinations. An Islamic Jihad leader I interviewed at the time reckoned this was a climbdown too far for Israel’s leaders and they were bound to renew hostilities sooner rather than later.

Pummelling Gaza yet again was intended to remind all concerned – not least the new Egypt – who makes the rules, though it would also reassure the Israeli electorate they need not fear the prospect of Obama punishing Israel for Netanyahu’s embrace of the Romney/Adelson ticket. As expected, the Obama White House has reiterated its commitment to Israel, and Congress has been busy passing unanimous resolutions supporting Israel’s right to self-defence in its colonial possessions. The positions of most European states have been only marginally less obscene.

One of the eternal failures of the news media is their ahistorical approach to the Israeli apartheid state: news coverage only begins when Israelis are victims and anything that comes before it is ignored.

Howard Jacobson’s pathological need to be persecuted

Published on August 30, 2011

There’s a disease that strikes English novelists of a certain age and fame, that makes them think whatever small talent they have at creating Times reviewed stories means they have an unique insight into human nature and the political realities of 21st century Britain. This usually manifest in rightwing babble about the problems of the day, as exclusively revealed to whichever newspaper with spare column inches to fill, as well as through novels that suddenly tackle big political issues in the way literary writers normally reserve for dabbling in science fiction: naively and ploddingly reinventing cliches better writers had long since abandoned and being proud of it. Martin Amis and Ian McEwan are the best examples of this disease, but Howard Jacobson seems determined to join them.

Jacobson is “best known for writing comic novels that often revolve around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters” as Wikipedia puts it. Not one to hide his Jewishness under a bushell and keen to let you know how his background makes him uniquely able to provide insights into the Israel/Palestinian conflict, he has been making a nuisance of himself for years in opinion pieces. As with Amis and McEwan, his politics also infected his fiction, metastasising in The Finkler Question, made unreadable by his politics.

So it comes as no surprise that when he saw the images of Asian shopkeepers defending their communities against the riots in London two weeks ago he saw something quite different from the rest of us:

The good thing that came out of the riots was a renewed sense of community. “How does one put this without sounding gross … it was terrific to see the Asian communities on telly and not to have to think about terrorism, and not to have to think about the thing I’m always thinking about… do they want to kill Jews?”

A remark on par with Amis’ similar ones on wanting to make Muslims suffer for 9/11. But there seems to be more going on with Jacobson, he seems convinced that pogroms could break out in London any minute and that like any good Jew he needs to be prepared. It’s not a mindset that’s not unique to him; I’ve stopped being surprised at the number of middleclass Jewish people living in England or America, never having suffered any discrimination in their lifetimes, convinced that it’s only a matter of time before the killings start again. If the most important event in your history is the Holocaust, it’s not surprising some people get a bit paranoid.

With Jacobson however it almost seems as if he would welcome persecution, that he feels agrieved that there are no pogroms in England and the number of real anti-semitic incidents (as opposed to people being accused of anti-semitism because they disagree with Israeli policies) is low and has remained low for decades. Hence remarks like the above, as to him it’s inconcievable that Asian people would not want to oppress him. Call it victim envy.