The New Anti-Semitism
Bernard Lewis
(first posted apparently at http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/21832.html )

The American Scholar - Volume 75 No. 1 Winter 2006 pp. 25-36

There is a well-worn platitude that we have all heard many times before: it is perfectly legitimate to criticize the actions and policies of the state of Israel or the doctrines of Zionism without necessarily being motivated by anti-Semitism. The fact that this has been repeated ad nauseam does not detract from its truth. Not only do I accept it, but I would even take it a step further with another formulation that may perhaps evoke surprise if not shock: it is perfectly possible to hate and even to persecute Jews without necessarily being anti-Semitic. Unfortunately, hatred and persecution are a normal part of the human experience. Taking a dislike, mild or intense, to people who are different in one way or another, by ethnicity, race, color, creed, eating habits--no matter what--is part of the normal human condition. We find it throughout recorded history, and we find it all over the world. It can sometimes be extraordinarily vicious and sometimes even amusing.

Not long after World War II, the Danes were seething with resentment against two of their neighbors: the Germans, for having occupied them, and the Swedes, for having stood by with unhelpful neutrality. A Danish saying current at the time was: What is a Swede? A German in human form. Another double-barreled insult, this one from the British army in the late 1930s, when it was concerned about two different groups of terrorists: What is an Arab? A toasted Irishman. I quote these not in any sense with approval or commendation, but as examples of the kind of really nasty prejudice that is widespread in our world.

Anti-Semitism is something quite different. It is marked by two special features.
One of them is that Jews are judged by a standard different from that applied to others. We see plenty of examples of this at the present time. But there too one has to be careful. There can be different standards of judgment on other issues too, sometimes even involving Jews, without anti-Semitism or without necessarily being motivated by anti-Semitism.

[...]

These examples show that even a wide disparity of standards of judgment is not necessarily in itself evidence of anti-Semitism. There may be other elements involved.
For example, the comparison is sometimes made between the world reaction to the massacre of Palestinians by Lebanese Christian militiamen at Sabra and Shatila in September 1982, where some 800 people were killed, and the massacre earlier in the same year in Hama in Syria, where tens of thousands were killed. On the latter, not a dog barked. The difference, of course, was in the circumstances.
In both cases the perpetrators were Arab, but in the case of Sabra and Shatila, because of the dominant Israeli military presence in the region, there was a possibility of blaming the Jews. In Hama, this possibility did not exist; therefore the mass slaughter of Arabs by Arabs went unremarked, unnoticed, and unprotested. This contrast is clearly anti-Jewish. In a different way, it is also anti-Arab.

We see other instances of differing standards and methods of judgment nearer home and in a perhaps less alarming form. We hear a great deal, for example, about the Jewish lobby and the various accusations that are from time to time brought against it, that those engaged in it are somehow disloyal to the United States and are in the service of a foreign power.

The Jewish lobby is, of course, not the only lobby of its kind...."

The Great Bulk at:

http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/ar.../00000008.html

The new antisemitism
Melanie Phillips
Talk to London Society of Jews and Christians, 29 April 2004

The resurgence of Jew-hatred in Britain should be a cause of concern for everybody. Instead, it has become the prejudice that dare not speak its name.

Last year, there were 375 anti-Jewish attacks in Britain—the second highest total since the figures were first collected and a 7 per cent increase on 2002. Jews are being attacked in the street; synagogues and cemeteries desecrated; schoolchildren bullied because they are Jews.

Of course, this is nowhere near as bad as it is in parts of Europe. However, what should concern us is that according to a new survey, while anti-Jewish attitudes are now going down again in almost every country, in Britain they have risen steeply during the past two years. This is surely because Europe is now alarmed enough to acknowledge the problem has arisen and try, however inadequately, to address it. Here, however, the very phenomenon is still denied.

Israel, of course, is the complicating factor in all this. When people think of antisemitism, they think of the Nazis. They believe they themselves think well of the Jews, as Jews. And they certainly don’t take kindly to being told they are antisemites when as far as they’re concerned, all they’re doing is criticising Israel. People like me, they say, are waving the shroud of the Holocaust to conceal the crimes of Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. And a number of Jews say the same thing, too.

But neither I nor anyone else says Israel shouldn’t be criticised, even strongly. What I’m talking about goes far beyond legitimate criticism and turns instead into irrational and malevolent hatred. What we’re seeing now is a new mutation of the virus of Jew-hatred. Whereas previously the aim was to eradicate the Jews, now it is to eradicate the Jewish state. Instead of Jews being demonised, the Jewish state is demonised. Israel, the one democracy in the Middle East, is now viewed with a loathing that is never applied to Arab dictatorships. Anti-Israelism and, in particular, anti-Sharonism are being used as a fig-leaf for hatred of the Jews. And this twisting of the narrative of Jewish victimhood into one of Israeli oppression has legitimised an eruption of explicit prejudice against Jews, which has resulted in a grotesque tacit alliance between progressives, the far-right and the Islamic jihad.

Presentation of Israel in public discourse is pathologically unbalanced, and morphs seamlessly into classic anti-Jewish stereotypes. I am talking here about a wholesale moral inversion..."

http://www.melaniephillips.com/artic...es/000498.html

Responses

European Union

[...]

In September 2004, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, a part of the Council of Europe, called on its member nations to ensure that anti-racist criminal law covers anti-Semitism. In 2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia offered a definition of new or contemporary anti-Semitism, one that the British government was urged to adopt by a 2006 all-party parliamentary inquiry.

*Denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor;
(abu note.. you know a state that is the "benefit/benefits from Criminal behavior".. indeed was the result of it!
In fact the above could accurately describe MOST of the prose of our two 'anti-zionists' here)

*Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation;
(abu note.. Nah.. none of that here! it's much Worse, it's a Unique Standard)

*Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis;
(abu note: Yep got this one in spades repeated here often "Murderers, Rapists, Looters".. constant Invocation of Massacres including right down to naming all the victims!!!
I've heard of many massacres in this conflict and others, I never saw someone post all the victims names... much less regularly!)

*Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis;
(abu note: Yep check we hear that too from our board 'anti-zionists')

*Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.
(abu note: again yes "benefitting from Criminal behavior, an apartheid Racist State, etc etc)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_antisemitism

No Introduction, no summary and no conclusions. Lots of cut and paste though.

Try using your own words and just give a link to the site to back your claims up we do not need the cut and paste just the link please.

What opinions have you formed Abu. Thats the full rebuttal to your work Abu, as you have done no work, only cut and paste.

May I refer you to previous strings?

http://www.politicalforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=23597

Funny how the rebuttal was done before you even started a fresh string on the same topic Abu.

http://www.nd.edu/~ndethics/archives...fanKhawaja.doc

And I’m sure that this link has been posted for you before, but what Ho, nothing like going round in circles.

The concept of using term anti-Semitism by the pro Israeli lobby has been criticised as an attempt to silence debate about the legitimate criticism of Israel.

Sorry I don’t believe in conspiracy theories about the “Jewish Octopus” I’m pretty well informed about the Holocaust. I know about Palestinian attacks and I do not set Jews and Jewishness apart. I consider all humans as part of humanity even the Palestinians. You on the other hand show marked signs of anti-Orientalism and positive discrimination of Israel.

Klug argues that the branding of anti-Semitism on to the discourse is a source of over inflated scale of anti-Semitic incidence. Being pro-Palestinian is not necessarily anti-Semitic and that jumping to conclusions about other people’s prejudices is itself a form of prejudice.

But it’s your cut and paste article so you must have read it or did you just cherry pick without looking at the rest?

I have never said that Israel should be disbanded; I do believe that Israel is not viable in the way it stands at the moment and that it needs to change. But your own prejudices get in the way of any reasoned debate.

I do not hold Jews collectively responsible, you hold the Palestinians collectively responsible.

Israel has the right of self determination but so does the PA. It is your claim that the Palestinians don’t have that right that is the root cause of the problem.

Norman Finkelstein argues that the Anti defamation league "not to fight anti-Semitism but rather to exploit the historical suffering of Jews in order to immunize Israel against criticism" Israel defines itself juridically as the sovereign state of the Jewish people that rather presupposes that not being a Jew in Israel is going to be problematic and that Israel’s claims of being a democracy is wearing rather thin that is supported by B’tselem and the UN bodies that deal with Human rights violations. But waving the anti-Semitism banner should soon sort the debate out. Hillel Halkin argues that "Israel is the state of the Jews ... To defame Israel is to defame the Jews,” Phyllis Chesler argues, on the one hand, that "anyone who does not distinguish between Jews and the Jewish state is an anti-Semite," but on the other that "Israel is our heart and soul ... we are family.” Finkelstein concludes, Both to identify and not to identify Israel with Jews would seem to be anti-Semitic.

We in the pro-Palestinian camp have become use to such tortuous tautology, a never ending circle of quantum leaps in an attempt to stifle legitimate debate.

These contradictory stances would seem to allow you Abu to slap a brand on all arguments against Israel as anti-Semitic. Your duality really doesn’t bother me, that is for you to sort out with a psychologist.

You Abu constantly refer to a discredited site of Israeli fiction, you constantly bring it up, I just point out its gross flaws. That is no “Blood debt” I just use Meir Pails quote containing ‘gazlanim’ ‘rozchim’. I don’t hold Meir pail guilty only those that were never brought to justice. Also Begin is hardly JC. And yes the émigrés that occupied Arab lands without title I do hold morally responsible for their actions and feel that full reparations should be made. I don’t go one as you do about an eye for an eye and blood debts; I say reparations that’s cash not blood. So your jumping to conclusions is showing your own prejudices.

That's actually too funny for words!
Actually my numero Uno flag for anti-semites is their use of Jewish anti-semites for cover.
Number one tip off by Far.

Quoting an anti-semite, Norman Finkelstein, on Anti-semitism's definition to exclude himself and cohorts.
See a summary of several articles here:
http://pnews.org/ArT/FrE/NF.shtml
and
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...e.asp?ID=19688
and
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...e.asp?ID=23995

Somebody get me an air-sick bag and send Ashley chapter II of Logic 101.
(even though he clearly hasn't read Chapter I)

I quoted among other sources, the EU's definition which I guess you can't handle, or perhaps see some of your own rhetoric in as you didn't respond to that at all! I even bolded each point and commented on it which is NOT Just a copy-and-paste.
.

Nice video clip showing a Settler abusing Palestinians in Hebron

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/guide?ca...791022#2791022

Melanie Phillips Talk to London Society of Jews and Christians, 29 April 2004
http://www.melaniephillips.com/artic...es/000498.html

Friday February 22, 2002
The Guardian UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Sto...654054,00.html

But then there are always two sides to every story. By your posturing it would seem that any presentation of facts is anti-Semitic unless you present them. You normally present a case with no conclusions just cut and paste then when your own article is used against you; you bluster and claim foul. Why am I not surprised at your aversion to Finkelstein; because it ends up looking at Finkelstein, Dershowitz and the Joan Peters Plagiarism/Hoax, which brings us back to your quote of Mark Twain that was never said, quoted by Joan Peters in Time Immemorial and then Plagiarised by Dershowitz. And used by you. Then you wonder why I keep on referring to Joan Peters being discredited by Porath, because you are always referring to her without knowing. Buy her book and have a look. Finkelstein also did a demolition job on her.

You go round in circles without even knowing where the circle began. I’ve had E-Mails from people snickering behind your back Jimmy. Your International Faux Pax is the talk of the town.

Notorious Jewish anti-Semite and Holocaust-justice denier Norman Finkelstein

Where does that statement come from, Oh yes Mr Dershowitz whom Finkelstine caught out as a Plagiarist. When the ADL (anti-defamation League) called Finklestine a Holocaust denier it was pointed out that he is the son of an Auschwitz victim and that he does not deny the holocaust but actually makes reference to it, so the term now has evolved to Holocaust Justice Denier. Why? Because he doesn’t think that the money obtained for Holocaust victims from the Swiss banks should get $4 Millions for administering the fund as they administrator had taken on the case pro bono.

You and Dershowitz should get on like a house on fire both cut and paste from Joan Peters and don’t realise it. You both call anyone that disagrees with you anti-Semitic even to the absurd point of calling Jews anti-Semitic.

I suppose you consider Meir Pail as an anti-Semitic Jew, A former Palmach soldier who fought for Israelis’ Independence, was a former General in the IDF, was a former Knesset member and is a Historian, just because he was an eyewitness to an atrocity and recorded it.

Your mendacity knows no bounds. Of course I am going to use a source that you don’t like, that’s the nature of the debate.

Most of your sources can be traced right back to Joan Peters and her Hoax book.

Hillel Halkin argues that "Israel is the state of the Jews ... To defame Israel is to defame the Jews,” Phyllis Chesler argues, on the one hand, that "anyone who does not distinguish between Jews and the Jewish state is an anti-Semite," but on the other that "Israel is our heart and soul ... we are family.” I conclude: Both to identify and not to identify Israel with Jews would seem to be anti-Semitic.

I have become use to such tortuous tautology, a never ending circle of quantum leaps in an attempt to stifle legitimate debate.

PS you should also notice that Benny doesn’t like Finkelstein either.