Category: Antisemitism

Max Blumenthal: “To distract from Gaza slaughter, Israel lobby manufactures antisemitism freakout”

Max Blumenthal is one of America’s foremost investigative journalists.

He also happens to be Jewish, and has written two important books about Israeli militarism and the depth of Jewish Supremacy throughout the Jewish Israeli population.

I highly recommend his books, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel and The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza if you want a good picture of life in modern Israel and the Gaza strip.

Mr. Blumenthal is also the chief editor at The Gray Zone, an important, independent news site.

Today I discovered that he has written a story which I have been searching for.

In the heat of the current wave of accusations about “rampant” antisemitic attacks — all of them stirred up by pro-Palestinian demonstrations during Israel’s recent bombing of Gaza — I have been searching for someone who has investigated the details of these alleged attacks.

Today I found it.

Below is an excerpt from an actual investigation into the specifics of these charges. As I suspected, and as often happens, pro-Israel/pro-Zionist activists (like the Anti-Defamation League[ADL] and the Jewish Defense League [JDL]) have been manipulating and misrepresenting the evidence.

Yes, there have been isolated instances of antisemitic speech, like the  outrageous, offensive Tweets declaring that “Hitler was right.”

But for the most part, the facts are quite the opposite of what the ADL and JDL have been reporting.

Max’s article is entitled, “To distract from Gaza slaughter, Israel lobby manufactures antisemitism freakout.” Here is an excerpt:

With deceptively edited videos and dubious allegations, the Israel lobby has

The video of a man who said he was attacked for wearing a yarmulke shows that he was the aggressor and actually wearing a hoodie

manufactured an antisemitism epidemic to turn the media’s gaze away from dead children in Gaza.

Following an 11-day assault on the Gaza Strip in which the Israeli army killed over 220 people, including more than 65 children, and days of videotaped rampages of Jewish extremist mobs against Palestinian people and property inside Israeli cities, Israel lobbyists in the US and Canada have launched a carefully coordinated public relations campaign to deflect outrage.

Having failed to successfully defend massacres of entire families in their homes and the deliberate demolition of civilian residential towers and media offices in Gaza City, the US Israel lobby and the Israeli government it advocates for have manufactured an epidemic of antisemitic violence with the goal of portraying American Jewry as the true victim of the crisis.

These two veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces, living in New York City, went out looking for pro-Palestinian demonstrators to attack. They threw the first punch.

Led by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Israel lobbyists have portrayed a series of street scuffles between supporters of Palestine and pro-Israel activists as anti-Jewish pogroms. In nearly every case, no evidence exists to substantiate claims that Jews were targeted as Jews for violent assault. There is ample proof of deception, however, as video and photographic evidence reveals pro-Israel elements provoking demonstrators, initiating violence and falsifying or embellishing their testimonies. . . 

Now, as the Israeli police round up hundreds of young Palestinians citizens of Israel for participating in protests against their own dispossession, the New York Police Department has begun doing the same, arresting Palestinian American youth, jailing and investigating them for “hate crimes” over their involvement in videotaped tussles with pro-Israel demonstrators.

In many high-profile cases, however, video and photographic evidence examined by The Grayzone contradicts the allegations made by pro-Israel forces and reveals the stories of several accusers to be highly deceptive, if not entirely false. . . 

You can see the entire article here.

 

How Zionism Contributes to Antisemitism

Racist attacks against Jewish people, often in public and broad daylight, have increased in tandem with the worldwide demonstrations condemning

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, center, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, speaks in front of civic and faith leaders outside City Hall on May 20, 2021, in Los Angeles, condemning recent antisemitic attacks. (Marcio Jose Sanchez AP)

Israel’s bombing of Gaza. Support for the Palestinian people, in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, is more vocal and active than ever before.

But arguing for the equality of Palestinians is no excuse for antisemitism. Antisemitism is a form of racism.

The organization Jewish Voice for Peace defines antisemitism as “discrimination against, violence towards, or stereotypes of Jews for being Jewish.” They endorse the standard, historical definition of anti-Jewish racism. Racism demeans and violates others because of who they are in and of themselves.

Three suspects wanted in an antisemitic attack in Times Square on May 20 2021 according to police. (Credit NYPD)

Whenever someone attacks a Jewish person, whether overtly or covertly, simply for being Jewish, he is being antisemitic.

That mindset is unacceptable. It is sinful. It deserves to be condemned. Antisemites must be called to account. People guilty of this sin need to confess and repent, person to person, face to face, if possible.

Unfortunately, pro-Israel, pro-Zionist activists have introduced a new, troubling factor into the public understanding of antisemitism. And I am afraid that it is backfiring on the entire Jewish community.

Nowadays the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other, similar Jewish defense organizations have embraced a new definition of antisemitism that confuses the state of Israel and the policies of political Zionism with the Jewish people.

Israeli Zionism has consistently encouraged this confusion with its claims to represent world Jewry.

Israel defines itself as THE Jewish State for all Jews everywhere. It acts on behalf of the Jewish people.

Therefore, since it is a Jewish state, criticism of Israeli state policy equals criticism of the Jews. (This is not my formulation. Pro-Israel activists have a long history of arguing explicitly for this identification.)

But this argument creates a host of problems.

Logically, this identification of Israel = Jews is an example of something called a category mistake. It’s like identifying an elephant with an orange

Two suspects wanted in an antisemitic attack in Times Square on May 20, 2021, according to police. (Credit NYPD)

and saying they are the same thing. Elephants are in the mammalian-animal category. Oranges are in the fruit-plant category. Any argument that concludes by saying, “Therefore, elephants are fruit like an orange” would obviously be ridiculous.

But this is the same line of illogic followed by pro-Israel activists today when they condemn the recent outbreak of antisemitism. (Watch these two recent interviews with an ADL representative. He implies this same confusion here and here.)

A nation-state, like Israel, is a political entity. Jews are a collective of human beings, made as the Image of God. Criticizing the actions of a nation-state has no logical relation to discrimination against Jews as Jews.

I am afraid that this is where pro-Israel activists, like the ADL, have stabbed their fellow Jews in the back.

Anyone who attacks a Jewish stranger, believing that it is an appropriate expression of anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian commitment is guilty of the same category mistake as their pro-Israel opponents.

While I condemn all racism, discrimination, and violence, I have to point out that the antisemites now attacking Jewish citizens (and their property) are also following the pro-Israel line of argument to its illogical conclusion. If Israel represents all Jews everywhere, then any Jew anywhere can be held responsible for Israel’s crimes.

Yes, that is a thoroughly reprehensible conclusion, but it is no more reprehensible than the Zionist argument which says, “Israel is a Jewish State, therefore those who criticize Israel’s slaughtering of Palestinian civilians are antisemitic; they are also responsible for instigating the current outbreak of antisemitic attacks.”

Perhaps, the pro-Israel purveyors of this New Antisemitism (as it is called) should give themselves an ironic pat on the back.

Their deliberate, cynical conflation of Israel with world Jewry and Judaism has penetrated the collective subconscious of those pro-Palestinian activists who don’t stop to think any more clearly than they do.

The result is more tragedy and manipulation on both sides.