Tag: Israel

Tell Your Senators That You Do Not Want to Pay $1 Billion for Israel’s “Iron Dome”

The US provides Israel with $10.5 million per day in military aid.

Yep, Israeli military might is primarily the product of US arms sales and foreign aid. We hand over approximately $3.5 billion to Israel every year. That’s more assistance than we give to any other country in the world, including the entire continent of Africa.

On Monday the Senate will vote on whether we should give Israel an additional $1 billion for its Iron Dome project. (Yep, that’s another billion on top of the $3.8 billion they already received in 2020!)

Rockets from Gaza and Iron Dome anti-missile rockets from Israel

Israel’s so-called Iron Dome is a “defensive” anti-missile system developed with US funding and expertise.  The record is conflicted over how effective it really is, but it figures prominently into Israel’s public messaging about its need to defend itself against rockets shot into Israel from Gaza.

How often do we hear this message: Israel has a right to defend itself!

But there are many problems with this picture.

First, let Israel spend its own money “defending” itself. Why not? The US has spent $300 million each day over the past 20 years on our foolish, destructive ventures in Afghanistan. More war mongering overseas is the last thing I want my tax dollars going to.

Let the Israelis pay for their weapons systems by themselves. They can afford it.

Second, yes, you read me correctly. I did write war mongering. The Iron Dome may be called a “defensive” weapons system. But a good many western visitors to Gaza have come away describing it as the largest open air prison in the world. In fact, others like the Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein have even compared it to a concentration camp.

I fully agree with folks like Dr. Finkelstein, in which case the Israeli military must be seen as the largest collection of concentration camp guards in the world.

So, here is my question: Do concentration camp guards have the right to defend themselves against prisoners who resist their abuse?

Think about it.

Would the guards at Auschwitz have had the right to shoot and kill the emaciated, dehumanized, Jewish prisoners starving to death around them had those prisoners revolted against their imprisonment?

The answer is, No.

Today we celebrate the stubborn, Jewish prisoners who revolted against their
German guards in the Warsaw ghetto. They are seen as heroes.

So, what makes Jewish concentration camp guards today any different from those German concentration camp guards in the past?

Nothing, my friends. Absolutely nothing.

Why, then, are American politicians asking US tax payers to finance the superior weaponry used by Israeli guards against the dehumanized and embattled people imprisoned within the Gaza concentration camp?

According to International Law, the Palestinians in Gaza have every right to resist their inhumane subjugation and strike back, even when that resistance includes rocket fire.

The truth of the matter is that the people of Gaza should have the US construct a Palestinian Iron Dome to intercept the innumerable rockets, bombs, missiles, and fighter jets that Israel launches against them on a regular basis.

Naturally, there is much more to be said about this situation. But I have already given reason enough for you and me both to call our senators in D.C. (either today or Monday morning) and insist that they NOT APPROVE another $1 billion for Israeli weapons systems.

Please click here and respond. The Palestinian prisoners will thank you.

Thanks.

Two New Publications Exposing the Many Failures of Christian Zionism and the State of Israel

The Rev. Dr. Stephen Sizer

The Rev. Dr. Stephen Sizer is an acquaintance of mine (I would call him a friend, yet we have only chatted on Facebook) who has written two very fine books about the dangers of Christian Zionism and the many injustices that Zionist Israel inflicts on the Palestinian people.

After receiving his MA in theology from Oxford University he became a long-time vicar in the Church of England at Christ Church, Virginia Water, in Surrey, England. He retired from parish ministry in 2017.

He is now the director of the charitable organization Peacemaker Trust.

Dr. Sizer’s two books are Zion’s Christian Soldiers? The Bible, Israel and the Church, and Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon?

Both books arise from Dr. Sizer’s doctoral research into the histories of dispensational theology (to which Christian Zionism has always been a favored handmaiden), the emergence of political Zionism in
Europe and Israel, and the relationships between the them.

I am very happy (and somewhat proud) of the fact that the publisher of my forthcoming book on Christian Zionism is also the publisher now reissuing both of Dr. Sizer’s important works.

Let me say again that I highly recommend them both!

Zion’s Christian Soldiers? is available for order HERE from the Wipf & Stock publications website. The second book, Christian Zionism Road-map to Armageddon?, will also become available from Wipf & Stock in the near future. So, keep your eyes open.

So why are Dr. Sizer’s books being reissued?

Both books were originally published by Inter-Varsity Press in the UK. Dr. Sizer quickly became public enemy #1 for the Israel Lobby and other pro-Israel, pro-Zionist apologists who immediately set their sites on him as their next target.

Consequently, he has been viciously slandered and attacked by people who care less about facts than they do about winning.

I suspect that the publisher, IVP-UK, came under great pressure to withdraw these books from their catalogue. I know that Dr. Sizer endured a tremendously savage campaign of pro-Zionist opposition, including all manner of slander and false accusations.

While I confess that I have not been privy to the details, I strongly suspect that, in the end, profit margins proved more important than principle to the publishing powers at IVP-UK.

Which now makes it all the more important that Dr. Sizer’s work is being reissued by Wipf & Stock in the USA. Hip hip hurrah!

As the voice of the Holy Spirit once said to St. Augustine, “take up and read.”

My New Book on Christian Zionism Can Now Be Ordered Online!

A prepublication ordering page is now available at the Wipf & Stock website for my new book, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People.

I hope that you will check it out and seriously consider buying a copy so that you can inform your Christian friends, and others, about the serious mistake the American church makes by endorsing Israel’s behavior in the Middle East.

You can place your orders (because I understand that everyone will want to place multiple orders for friends and relatives. Ha!) by clicking HERE.

Unfortunately, the fellow in charge of cover design has been very ill for some time, but whatever he eventually comes up with will be inserted into the order page.

Below is the description I wrote for the publisher’s advertising purposes:

When Christians collude in crimes against humanity, they betray their citizenship in the kingdom of God, demonstrating that Christ’s Lordship does not rule over every area of their lives. The popular ideology known as Christian Zionism is a prime enabler of such widespread discipleship–failure in western Christianity. As the state of Israel continues to violate international law with colonial settlement in lands captured by warfare, legalized racial discrimination, and the creation of what many have called “the world’s largest open-air prison” in Gaza, Christian Zionists continue their unqualified support for Zionist Israel. Though Israel advertises itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” it is actually a rigid ethnocracy–its entire society built on the foundations of Jewish supremacy over a Palestinian underclass. History will eventually judge Christian Zionist support for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians in the same way people of conscience now condemn the Christian church in the American South for its defense of slavery and hostility towards the civil rights movement. Just as the Southern Baptist church finally repudiated its pro-slavery past, so everyone genuinely devoted to Jesus Christ must repudiate both the ideology and the legacy of Christian Zionism.

Ethnic Cleansing Never Ends in Israel and the West Bank

The modern state of Israel was founded upon ethnic cleansing.

750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes by a Jewish military that freely committed war crimes just as every invading army has violated civilian populations throughout history.

Below is a video telling the story of only one Palestinian family whose home was recently demolished in order to make way for Jewish settlers.

Zionist ethnic cleansing has never ceased, not since it began in 1947.

The Israeli government refers to the process as “Judaization,” that is the replacement of native Palestinians with Jewish settlers.

It is also referred to as “redeeming the land.” For political Zionism, redemption is not God’s business. It is Jewish Zionist business. And it is accomplished by ridding the land of the pollution created by Palestinians.

I could post several such videos and articles every day and never run out of new material exposing the ongoing injustices of Israeli political Zionism.

So, here again is a new, representative story I have selected out of many, many possibilities this week alone.

Watch it and ask yourself, as well as your elected representatives, is this why the US subsidizes Israel to the tune of nearly $4 billion each year????

So they can destroy more Palestinian lives?

For Israel, the Murder of Innocent Palestinians Never Ends

US media regularly repeats Israeli talking points about “terrorist attacks” (the common description of unarmed civilians protesting in the streets) against Israel. Yet, these same outlets remain mute about Israel’s daily terrorist attacks against Palestinians.

It’s as if US corporate media is joined at the hip to the Israeli government propaganda department.

Israel may not be carpet-bombing Gaza at the moment — though bombing

Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy

has continued fairly consistently throughout the summer — but killing Palestinians in the West Bank continues apace without interruption.

Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy aptly labels the Israeli shooters as “death squads.”

Mr. Levy’s latest article in Haaretz newspaper describing the recent murders of 4 innocent, young men — stories you will never see covered by US corporate media — is entitled “The Media Yawns at the Israeli Army’s Death Squads.”

Israeli terror is at it again. The Israel Defense Forces’ death squads chalked up another successful week: four bodies of innocent Palestinians piled up between the two Fridays. There doesn’t seem to be a connection between the four incidents in which four sons were killed, but the link cannot be broken.

In all these cases, soldiers chose shooting to kill as the preferred option. In all four cases another way could have been chosen: Arrest them, aim for the legs, don’t do anything or simply don’t be there at all. But the soldiers chose to kill. It’s probably easier for them that way.

They come from different branches of the army with different backgrounds, but they share the incredible ease with which they kill, whether they have to or not.

They kill because they can. They kill because they’re convinced that this is how they’re expected to act. They kill because they know that nothing is cheaper than the life of a Palestinian. They kill because they know that the Israeli media will yawn and not report a thing. They kill because they know that no harm will come to them, so why not? Why not kill a Palestinian when possible?

They killed a 12-year-old boy and a 41-year-old plumber. They killed a 17-year-old youth and a 20-year-old young man attending a funeral, all in one week. An Israeli slogan during the 1948 war went “To arms, every good man,”

Israeli soldiers at the funeral of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Alami in the West Bank town of Beit Ummar Thursday. Credit Emil Salman

leading later to the concept of the IDF’s “purity of arms.” Four in one week, for no reason, with no hesitation, with no terrorist facing them. Four executions of young men with dreams, families, plans and loves.

None of the four endangered the soldiers, certainly not in a way that justified lethal fire. Thirteen bullets at a car driving by innocently, carrying a father and his three small children. Shooting a plumber holding a wrench and claiming that he was “moving rapidly toward the soldiers.” Three bullets at the stomach of a 17-year-old who was on his way to take his brother home.

All this can be called terror; there is no other definition. All this can be called the actions of death squads; there is no other description. It sounds horrible, but it really is horrific.

It could be less horrific if the Israeli media bothered to report on it, possibly shocking Israelis. It could be much less horrific if IDF commanders took the necessary steps given their army’s murderous recklessness. But most of the media believed that the killing of a child interests no one or is unimportant, or both, so this shocking incident wasn’t reported on.

If the soldiers had shot a dog – also a shocking act, of course – it would have attracted more attention. But a dead Palestinian child? What happened? Why should it interest anyone, why is it important?

“Are you working for the Arabs?” journalist Yinon Magal maliciously tweeted, addressing Haaretz’s Hagar Shezaf, virtually the only journalist who covered the boy’s funeral. This is the new journalistic ethos: Reporting the truth is tantamount to working for the Arabs.

Let’s leave aside the media of trivia and nonsense that was busy to the hilt with the modeling agent suspected of sexual misconduct and with lists of pedophiles – what does the media have to do with the killing of children? The question is: Where are the military commanders and the political leaders?

Their disgraceful silence leads to only one conclusion: They believe that this killing is acceptable. It’s exactly what they expect of soldiers: the killing of innocents. There is no other way to explain everyone’s silence without even a semblance of condemnation.

If the killers of the boy Mohammed al-Alami are still not in custody, then the IDF under Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi – a person known to speak in lofty terms about values – is saying that the soldiers acted correctly. If the paratroopers who killed Mohammed Tamimi by firing three bullets into his body from their armored jeep are still walking around freely in the West Bank, this means the army salutes them.

And if the IDF salutes them, we really are talking about death squads, just like in the most dreadful regimes.

Gideon Levy asks, “What would Israelis think of an ice cream company that boycotted South Africa?”

I am sure you have  heard about the Israeli ruckus occurring in the wake of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream company deciding to join the international BDS

Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy

movement by no longer supplying ice cream to the illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank.

Certain US news outlets have gotten this wrong. Ben & Jerry’s is not boycotting the entire West Bank, only the Jewish settlements now housing some 700,000 Jewish colonizers occupying stolen Palestinian land.

Israeli politicians, as well as the citizens they represent, are up in arms over this latest “antisemitic” attack against the Jewish state.

There is so much propagandistic malarkey at play in this recent Israeli temper tantrum, it would be funny were it no so tragic.

Gideon Levy, columnist for the Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, gives us the necessary perspective on this latest display of Zionist insanity. His article is titled “A Tempest in an Ice Cream Tub Revealed Some Truths to Israelis.” (All emphasis is mine):

If Ben & Jerry’s keeps to its word and pulls its product from the settlements in a year and a half (and there’s good reason to doubt it will, given the pressure expected from American Jews), I will start eating its ice cream. I will be able to enjoy a product that shows a little more caring, more involvement, more conscience and, above all, more decency.

Until then, one can only laugh at the summer frenzy that has broken out and will disappear when the next storm of vanity emerges. Do Israelis now need to boycott the ice cream to protest the company’s decision? Or should we buy more in a show of support for the patriotic local franchisee, who will continue selling in the settlements until its contract is up? Meanwhile, what we have is a tempest in a tub of ice cream that teaches us more about Israel than a thousand scholarly papers.

The Ben & Jerry’s affair has made Israelis happy. There aren’t a lot of things they love more than the appearance of an external threat. It brings us together, to wallow in the bitter fate that we of all peoples must face, to create a repulsive unity and groupthink, and to launch a bombastic counterattack, with the knee-jerk accusation of antisemitism for dessert.

When the franchisee of our beloved McDonald’s, Omri Padan, decided to boycott the territories, collective Israel shrieked a lot less. Why? Because Padan is a patriot who in no conceivable way can be tarred as an antisemite. He is untouchable. With an American company, it’s a lot easier.

Ice cream succeeded where the deaths of 67 children in Gaza failed – to remind Israelis of the occupation. Still, the madness remains: The occupation is a victim, the only victim. It boggles the mind that whenever someone dares remind Israelis that something is still wrong, the issue immediately becomes how Israel is the victim. Headlines, endless talk, and the only thing no one asks is – why?

Why would any reasonable person want to boycott Israel? Well, maybe because of the pressure exerted by BDS. Only because of such pressure. Otherwise, there’s no way an ice cream company might come to the conclusion on its own that it no longer wants to sweeten the lives of the settlers. There’s no chance of there being business people with values. It’s just the consequence of pressure. The mechanisms of repression and denial that Israeli society has developed won’t drink from the cup of Chubby Hubby. It’s society’s Iron Dome – it can’t be abandoned.

Therefore, the situation demands nothing less than a real boycott of Israel, of all Israelis, everywhere – a painful, costly, destructive one. Not a boycott-lite on the ice cream sold at the Rami Levy supermarket at the Etzion Junction, but one that all of Israel will feel in its pocket. Only one that can relieve Israel of its blindness and expose the lie it has been feeding itself for so many years.

Equally amazing is all the unity and groupthink that the affair has created. Suddenly, it has become clear that we’re all settlers. The Green Line has long ceased to exist. The Ben & Jerry’s affair has revealed that there’s no difference between the radical right and the left. Everyone is for the settlements. Everyone opposes their being harmed, even if it’s minor harm to the contents of their freezers.

But is it really so sudden? Yair Lapid talks about antisemitism and Economy and Industry Minister Orna Barbivai acts if she dreams of being Miri Regev when she grows up. Meanwhile, we can ask ourselves why we deserve ridiculous politicians like these and why no one has mustered the courage to thank Ben & Jerry’s for acting in their small way.

In any case, the step the company took is artificial: It’s no longer possible to separate the settlers and the rest of Israel. The tempest in the tub proves that.

We should praise the ice cream makers from Vermont: They won’t end the occupation – that’s not their job – but on a hot summer day they revealed a few truths to Israelis. Only one question remains for all reasonable Israelis to ask themselves: What would they think of an ice cream company that boycotted South Africa?

Israel is Worried About Young Evangelicals Opening Their Eyes to Its Crimes

I recently posted about Israel’s dependence on Christian Zionist support in this country.

The Brookings Institute (a conservative think tank) has also released a study examining Israel’s dependence on American evangelicals. The study also identified Israel’s new cause for concern — young evangelicals are

Israel bombs the offices of several news outlets in Gaza

turning away from their parent’s traditional pro-Israel politics.

Frankly, this article brings joy to my heart! I hope this new generation of evangelical young people will read my next book.

The article is entitled “As Israel increasingly relies on US evangelicals for support, younger ones are walking away: what polls show.”

Here is an excerpt:

As the recent eruption in Israel/Palestine brought attention to shifting Democratic attitudes toward Israel, including among younger Jewish Americans, Israel’s focus on the evangelical right as a cornerstone of U.S. support for the Jewish state has proven increasingly important. As our University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll research has shown, evangelical attitudes toward Israel account for most of the Republican Party’s support for Israel; without evangelicals, Republican attitudes on Israel do not substantially deviate from the rest of America.

These trends in American politics may explain the recent statement by former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer that Israel should spend more of its energy reaching out to “passionate” American evangelicals than to Jews, who are “disproportionately among our critics.” Criticizing Dermer,

Jewish settlers take over a Palestinian home in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah  April 16, 2021. (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP)

Israel’s former consul general in New York, Dani Dayan, added that “our embassy in the United States capital has invested most of its energy in the relationship with conservatives, Republicans, evangelicals, and a certain type of Jews only.”

But a new survey commissioned by University for North Carolina at Pembroke researchers, carried out by Barna Group, has exposed what we have been finding for some time: younger evangelicals are much less supportive of Israel than older evangelicals, by a widening margin. The poll found a dramatic shift in attitudes between 2018 and 2021: support for Israel among young evangelicals dropped from 75% to 34%. This raises questions about the sustainability of the strong evangelical support for Israel that the Israeli right has cultivated for years and that proved reliable during the Trump administration.

Read the entire story here.

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.

 

The Bombing May Be Over, But the Devastation Remains

Israel and Hamas may have reached a “ceasefire,” but Palestinian suffering continues unabated.

While Israel violated the ceasefire almost immediately, the western press says nothing about it. [I will be posting about this common scenario very soon.]

The recent missile exchange killed 12 Israelis and at least 288 Palestinians, including 69 children and 40 women. More than 8,900 others were injured in Gaza, many with life-threatening wounds.

Israeli bombing damaged or destroyed 187 Gazan schools, including 55 kindergartens and 132 elementary schools.

This man lost 14 family members in a single strike. Of course, all human lives are sacred. We are all created as the Image of God. But this one man lost more family members than were killed in the entire state of Israel.

Watch below to learn about his story:

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.