Joel Pollak at Guide to the Perplexed shows Nathan Geffen, Doron Isaacs, Jonathan Berger, Farid Esack et al. how they ought to have criticised Israel if they wanted to be taken seriously: This is how the left should respond.
He refers to an article at the Guardian from Jonathan Freedland, who opposed operation Cast Lead. Freedland recalls the impressive effort made by politicians, commentators and activists after September 11 to ask their fellow citizens not to take out their anger on the Muslim community.
Today in South Africa the Jewish community has been targetted for condemnation via various petitions and planned demonstrations. Criticism has not just been levelled at Israel (which anyone has a right to do and we support that) but at the Jewish community. Because of our support for Israel, we have been pressured into distancing ourselves from Israel's actions in a way that members of other nationalities or religions are never forced to do.
Freedland makes the point very well:
| But the logical corollary of this is that, if Jews refuse to dissociate themselves from Israel, then they are fair game for abuse and attack until they publicly recant. Liberals rightly recoil from the constant pressure on Muslims to explain themselves and denounce jihadism or even islamism. Yet they make the same implicit demand when they suggest Jews are OK, unless they are Zionists. The effect is to make Jews' place in British society contingent on their distance from their fellow Jews, in this case, Israelis. |
For more along these lines visit Mike Berger's recent post - Betrayal by any other name
I actually wrote a comment on Joel's blog in response to the Freedland article he posted up, heavily disagreeing with Freedland's take on it, and Joel (and now ipso facto IAS) for rubber-stamping it.
I think therefore since you blog approvingly on the same Guardian article of Freedland, it is worthwhile of me to repost my comment from Joel's blog here, so here it is....
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Joel I have to disagree with you.
First red flag is that Freedland writes for the visciously anti-Israel Guardian with a long history of anti-Israel propoganda and whitewashing of Palestinian terrorism. This has never bothered Freedland.
Secondly Freedland condemns Israel in the language of anti-Semitism, for example he writes "to condemn Israel's brutal action in Gaza while taking a stand" and "Israel's brutality in Gaza and the colossal number of civilian deaths that entailed."
Oh please one can certainly criticise Israel but his criticism is IDENTICAL to that of the Jew-haters he distances himself from, and the Jew-haters he calls the Left to distance themselves from!
What "brutal action", oh he means the strikes on Hamas, as for colossal number of civilian deaths, this has been greatly exaggerated as you yourself have alluded to! and those civilian deaths are largely the consequence of Hamas using them as human shields, something they openly booast about but you won't hear it at the Guardian, you yourself pointed this out Pollak! Freedland says the same predictable things about Operation Cast Lead that the Left and the anti-semitic Muslims he is so quick to criticise say, and he doesn't get the obvious implications of this - not at all.
Also Freedland writes "it is perfectly possible to condemn Israel's current conduct and to stand firmly against anti-Jewish prejudice. And it's about time liberals and the left said so."
What he means is it is perfectly possible to condemn Israel for eventually fighting back against Hamas terrorists who seek to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth, even though Israel does all it can to avoid civilian casualties which Hamas actively encourages by using them as human shields, a hypocritical condemnation that the anti-Semitic Muslim population and the anti-Semitic Left (and Freedland gives examples of both) share in! while at the same time stand firm against anti-Jewish prejudice!!
Talk about double think. talk about dissonance. Talk about tying yourself in knots.
When he writes "it's about time Liberals and the left said so" it renders me almost speechless. The liberals and the Left do not say so since they stand for, not against anti-Jewish prejudice! That is why they condemn Israel in the language of anti-Semitism (because they are anti-Semites like duh) and that is why they turn a blind eye to all the examples of naked anti-Semitism that Freedland gives us. Freedland is living in la-la land.
The difference between Freedland and Geffen and his gang is one of degree not of kind. Freedland bats for the other team, and he is blind to the implications of the fact that his anti-Israel language has so much in common with the anti-Semitic Muslims and the anti-Semitic Left of the Galloway variety he is so quick to condemn!
Which Left is Freedland talking about? I mean which non-racist Left that actually has a problem with anti-Semitism is he talking about? Freedland seems to only have a problem with naked honest anti-Semitism that doesn't bother to hide behind the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist mask, the anti-Semitism that hides behind UNFAIR AND UNTRUE anti-Israel invective he has no problem with, since he shares in it!
In other words Freedland is pining for yesteryear when the mask was still on re the new anti-Semitism, now that the mask has slipped as it always must, he wants it back on - so he can go back to bashing Israel with a good conscience. It is Freedland who does not want to see what the mirror is showing him, that anti-Israelism in the form that the Left have been propogating for decades now has always just been a cover for anti-Semitism, now that the cover has gone, now that the pretences are over, Freedland cries foul. The exposure cuts too close.
It is Freedland who understands nothing here, he thinks more like his fellow Leftists he is so quick to criticise than he could possibly know. There is so much dissonance and irony in his article that it renders me woozy. He even expands on how anti-Semitism in our modern age works, just like it always has, for he writes "Jew-haters have always made distinctions"...No kidding. A distinction Freedland himself fails to get, a distinction he himself makes with his cover of unfair Israel bashing, a distinction the Guardian as much as any other English language medium has always excelled at, even led the way! Leaves me punchdrunk.
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Posted by: Lawrence | February 05, 2009 at 09:47
In fact the name of Jonathan Freedland was very familiar to me and then I recalled that the above is just more of the same from him. Almost two years ago he had a major tiff with Melanie Phillips, the Jewish journalist in the UK who does more to expose anti-Semitism in its various guises than anybody else in the UK.
His tiff with Phillips only reinforces what I write above. This is what happened. Phillips published an article in the Jewish Chronicle (in early 2007) heavily critical of contemporary anti-Semitism in the UK, and the unwitting support lent to anti-Semitism by the likes of 'Independent Jewish Voices', the British equivalent of the Geffen, Isaacs et al gang in SA. Freedland wrote a scathing response attacking Phillips - in a sense shooting the messenger, saying that Phillips was the problem really, not the new anti-Semitism she was vociferously exposing and opposing!
Here was Phillips's telling response to Freedland
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=500
(pasted below) [note in light of Mike Berger's open letter to IAS, there are many similiarities to the point that Mike Berger makes about Geffen and Isaacs and the rest of them, to the point that Phillips makes about IJV in the UK. Also the point should not be missed that Freedland defends and justifies the rationale of IJV, the UK equivalent of the 'not in my name' types like Geffen et al in South Africa. This is why I write in my first post that Freedland bats for the other team, it is only a difference in degree not kind.]
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Jewish Chronicle, 6 April 2007
Last week, Jonathan Freedland devoted his entire column to an attack on me. At the risk of trying even further the patience of those readers who will have looked askance at the space this newspaper gave one columnist to denounce another, I’m afraid I have no alternative but to reply.
Jonathan makes three charges against me. The first is that, because I headlined an item about ‘Independent Jewish Voices’ on my website ‘Jews for genocide’, I have accused them of supporting genocide and being ‘eager to see the murder and eradication of the Jewish people’.
As Jonathan knows perfectly well, I suggested no such thing. We know he knows that, because he promptly contradicted himself by saying I meant that ‘by criticising Israel, IJV align themselves with a radical Islamism that wants Israel wiped off the map’.
That is indeed what I meant and — more to the point — what I actually wrote. Israel is currently menaced by a pincer movement composed of an Islamic enemy in Iran and Hamas bent openly upon genocide, and a western world that is softening resistance by delegitimising Israel through libellous demonisation. By publicly fuelling this delegitimisation, IJV is helping pave the way for the second potential Holocaust that is threatened.
This does not mean that IJV themselves want such a holocaust to happen any more than, say, those British left-wingers who supported Stalin actually wanted thousands of people to die in labour camps. It simply means that, whether through ideology, ignorance or personal pathology, they are incapable of joining up the dots between the fate of Israel — which many of them believe should not exist — and the fate of the Jewish people.
Jonathan’s attempt to turn me into a genocide denier is therefore as incoherent as it is reprehensible.
The second charge is that, in writing that the Palestinian cause ‘amounts to Holocaust denial as a national project’ I am outrageously denying Palestinian self-determination. But if all the Palestinians truly wanted was their own state, there would never have been a Middle East conflict.
Ever since 1936, they have repeatedly been offered the opportunity for self-determination but have always refused it and tried to destroy Israel instead.
It is not just the Hamas charter calling for the annihilation of Israel and every Jew. It is not just Mahmoud Abbas’s doctoral thesis denying the Holocaust. It is not just the Palestine Authority’s maps and insignia which show a state of Palestine not — as Jonathan would have it — in the disputed territories but replacing the whole of Israel as well.
To wipe out the Jewish state, the Palestinian cause seeks to erase the Jews from their unique history of peoplehood and victimisation, and replace them by Palestinians playing those roles.
That is why every single feature of the Jews’ return to Israel — their experience of genocide, the right of return that sprang from their persecution, their ancient claim to their own original nation state — have been claimed entirely falsely by the Palestinians as their own history, in the process turning Palestinians into Jews and Jews into Nazis.
The third charge is that I have somehow single-handedly convinced millions of American Jews that London is the Warsaw ghetto and Europe is heading for another Holocaust. It is beyond perverse to blame me for such exaggerated fears. I have never spoken or written in such terms.
American Jews have formed their views from seeing for themselves what is going on here — from the Parliamentary Committee on Antisemitism, for example, which said British Jews are now more vulnerable to abuse and attack than at any time for a generation or longer.
Yes, I say that a vicious mood towards Jews and Israel has developed in Britain. Yes, I say there is a rise in Islamist fanaticism which gravely threatens us. If Jonathan is saying that any of this is untrue, let’s hear his evidence.
And yes, I do think there are many echoes here of the 1930s, when there was a similar state of denial — not least among the leaders of British Jewry — which blinded people to the looming catastrophe abroad.
American Jewish leaders are aghast that their British Jewish counterparts are once again so supine. It is presumably those British Jews who have been thus taken to task who have been moaning to Jonathan that I’ve been whipping up America into hysteria. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that he has seen fit to promulgate such self-serving jibes.
Jonathan justifies his attack by claiming that I have massive influence. Would that it were so! I remain, alas, merely one journalist trying to tell the truth as I see it. Jonathan can breathe easily again.
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Posted by: Lawrence | February 05, 2009 at 10:17
The subheading of the Freedland article is: "It should be perfectly possible to condemn Israel's brutal action in Gaza while taking a stand against antisemitism".
It seems to me that is a precise statement of exactly the position that Geffen, Isaacs, Berger and Esack have taken. (Geffen, Isaacs, Berger challenging the Foreign Affairs DM even before the Board of Deputies and Esack leading the Muslims Against Racism petition.)
Only a propagandist prodigy (or is it propagandist's protégée) like Pollak could find a way to use Freedland's piece against Geffen et al!
On the contrary, whilst Geffen et al have loudly condemned both the attack on Gaza, and the antisemitism of the Foreign Affairs DM, Pollak has managed to conflate Jewish opposition to the Gaza assault with antisemitism (at least by my reading of a letter he wrote to Geffen which is posted on his blog); precisely the opposite of what Freedland is saying.
It seems obvious that when Ehud Olmert (in 2006 during the Second Lebanon War) says this is a war "on behalf of all the Jews" and locally we have the Chief Rabbi, BOD claiming that the "SA Jewish Commmunity firmly supports" the attack on Gaza, it is THEM who conflate the Jewish community with Israeli atrocities, before Cosatu et al have even said a word! All that is left for them to do is echo the Jewish community's own leadership. It is therefore the Chief Rabbi, Board, SA Zionist Federation who make Jews targets of legitimate opposition to Israeli atrocities. They endanger Jews.
Of course, were any violence against Jews in SA to happen, it would be the perpetrators who should be sentenced to lengthy prison terms, and not any Jews in dock, but why give the crazies ammunition?
Geffen et al, on the other hand, serve a vital purpose, by exposing the idea that all Jews support Israel unconditionally as a lie. Their anti-racism is the only proven way to fight antisemitism.
Posted by: Paul Nick Harmel | February 08, 2009 at 21:08
The subheading of the Freedland article is: "It should be perfectly possible to condemn Israel's brutal action in Gaza while taking a stand against antisemitism".
It seems to me that is a precise statement of exactly the position that Geffen, Isaacs, Berger and Esack have taken. (Geffen, Isaacs, Berger challenging the Foreign Affairs DM even before the Board of Deputies and Esack leading the Muslims Against Racism petition.)
Only a propagandist prodigy (or is it propagandist's protégée) like Pollak could find a way to use Freedland's piece against Geffen et al!
On the contrary, whilst Geffen et al have loudly condemned both the attack on Gaza, and the antisemitism of the Foreign Affairs DM, Pollak has managed to conflate Jewish opposition to the Gaza assault with antisemitism (at least by my reading of a letter he wrote to Geffen which is posted on his blog); precisely the opposite of what Freedland is saying.
It seems obvious that when Ehud Olmert (in 2006 during the Second Lebanon War) says this is a war "on behalf of all the Jews" and locally we have the Chief Rabbi, BOD claiming that the "SA Jewish Commmunity firmly supports" the attack on Gaza, it is THEM who conflate the Jewish community with Israeli atrocities, before Cosatu et al have even said a word! All that is left for them to do is echo the Jewish community's own leadership. It is therefore the Chief Rabbi, Board, SA Zionist Federation who make Jews targets of legitimate opposition to Israeli atrocities. They endanger Jews.
Of course, were any violence against Jews in SA to happen, it would be the perpetrators who should be sentenced to lengthy prison terms, and not any Jews in dock, but why give the crazies ammunition?
Geffen et al, on the other hand, serve a vital purpose, by exposing the idea that all Jews support Israel unconditionally as a lie. Their anti-racism is the only proven way to fight antisemitism.
Posted by: Paul Nick Harmel | February 08, 2009 at 21:09
Paul you offer SA Jews a choice we can not make. You are asking us to give up our Jewish national identity in exchange for freedom. We were offered the same deal in pre-Holocaust Europe. We know how it turns out. No thank you. We choose Israel.
Posted by: Mike | February 09, 2009 at 05:00
Mike, I would be interested to see if you, or anybody else, can explain to me what the three lines you have written above actually mean.
What identity am I asking Jews to give up?
Is supporting blatant racism part of your identity? Avigdor Lieberman campaigned on the basis that Arabs must take a loyalty test or lose citizenship. That is fascism. It reminds me of Jorg Haider. When Haider did fairly well, both the US and Israel recalled their ambassadors. I am sure you were pretty pissed too. I know I was. But I guess you can't raise a cry of protest now because it would be tantamount to losing your identity?
When Hamas won the Palestinian elections Israel attacked and imprisoned their leaders and the US and EU cut off aid. The justification? Hamas will never recognise the destruction of the state of Israel, and they use violence against civilians. Now Netanyahu (despite narrowly being pipped by Livni) looks likely to form the next Israeli government. His platform was that there will never be a Palestinian state recognised by Israel. He (along with Lieberman) also said Israel went too easy in Gaza. What will your response be? I guess that complaining about a turn of events likely to put peace out of reach would be too big a blow to your identity..
Mike, if that is your identity, then you're not part of the Jewish tradition that I am proud to associate with.
Posted by: Paul Nick Harmel | February 11, 2009 at 15:50
Paul,
Now you are putting words in my mouth. If you have taken time to read this blog you will know that both Steve and I strongly oppose the policies of Lieberman. I think he is a fascist. I am disappointed that he has done so well. My preference would be that he is not in the government. But as you yourself pointed out this phenomenon I not unique to Israel. European countries like Austria and France have similar problems.
Zionism is not mealy support for the Israeli government of the day. There are lots of Zionists who oppose strongly many of the policies of the state of Israel. But we support the rights of the Jewish people to their own state in Israel (their ancient homeland). The existence of such a state is extremely important to the identity of the vast majority of Jews.
You and the PSC are actually no different to Lieberman. You are telling SA Jews that if we want to remain citizens of South Africa we have to adopt your definition of loyalty by denouncing Israel.
Posted by: Mike | February 11, 2009 at 19:01