Anti-Zionism is not anti-semitic
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Beside supporting bourgeoise/reformist conception like Feminism are we going to support bourgeoise nationalism too?
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian journalist not without wide influence.
He was among the loudest and most hostile opponents of Corbyn throughout his time as leader and one of the chief purveyors and justifiers of the fabled antisemitism narrative against Corbyn.
Freedland argued that strenuous criticism of Israel was antisemitic by definition because Israel lay at the heart of any proper Jew’s identity. Freedland argued that Jews and Israel were all but indistinguishable, and to call Israel racist was to malign Jews who identified with it. Freedland pushed hard for Labour to be forced to adopt that new, troubling definition of antisemitism, produced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, that shifted the focus away from hatred of Jews to criticism of Israel. Under this new definition, claims that Israel was “a racist endeavour” – a view shared by some prominent Israeli scholars – was treated as definitive proof of antisemitism. If anyone weaponisation of antisemitism against Corbyn it was Freedland
It was because this back-drop aspect of politics that i believe this thread was first begun and the topic title was chosen.
In the broader debate of zionism, nationalism and anti-semitism and racism, the course of the exchanges would be of course different but it was centred upon an orchestrated smear campaign against Corbyn and the coordinated endeavour to get a misleading definition of anti-semitism to equate it with anti-Zionism in an attempt to protect Israeli government policy and its Zionist ideology.
Making such a conspiratorial accusation may well have had me up on charges of being anti-semitic if i was a Labour Party member.
A diplomatic victory for Israel, without a doubt
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53770859
Yet i see no mention of UAE’s military intervention in Yemen or Libya being one of the motivations, even though i think it is the anti-Iran alliance the major reason
An interesting take on Netanyahu’s divide and rule strategy
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/netanyahu-pitting-jews-jews-200901155252820.html
pitting Jews against Jews…Netanyahu has repeatedly depicted himself as a victim of persecution by the liberal left, which many dub “the Ashkenazi elites”…”forgetting what it means to be Jewish” given their penchant for Western, liberal values and left-wing politics…His son Yair tweeted against the founders of the kibbutzim and the state, calling them “damned communists who stole half state lands at the expense of the development towns”, referring to the towns built for Mizrahi immigrants in the 1950s…
Recent podcast on the Bund in Poland in the inter world war years of the last century which explains the rationale of their opposition to the Zionist project of setting up a “Jewish Homeland” in Palestine. Their view was that Jewish people should stay were they were and work to better conditions there — that was their homeland — in theory through socialism but in practice through pro-worker reforms within capitalism.
There is a transcript there too.
Interesting stuff here as well.
Yes, it is a political tradition that Zionists wish not to be known.
They will tell us that it was the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel which were the nails in the coffin for the Bund.
But the Bund arguments are once again gaining ground as the majority of Jewish people in the diaspora reject migration to Israel, that anti-semitism is no longer a widely held prejudice, and Israeli government policy alienates the traditional liberalism of the Jewish community.
For those who wish to engage in related discussions, don’t forget our own contribution to link to
I’m not at all surprised that Bahrein, the home of the American 5th Fleet, has now normalized relations with Israel.
Iran once more should be worried at this encirclement by its enemies.
Sir David Garrard, a large donor to the Labour Party, is rejoining now that he perceives it is dealing with anti-semitism within the organisation.
But one thing that struck me was this comment of his
“…It gave me further comfort to learn that the ending of the disproportionate obsession with Israel…”
Without any sign of irony he then continues by stating:
“Surely if the historic events of this week with two Arab nations signing peace treaties with Israel, it is time for the party to at least be seen to start to forge a positive and constructive approach…”
Thus he himself is happy to “obsess” over the foreign policies of Israel and associate it with the topic of anti-semitism
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/19/sir-david-garrard-quit-labour-antisemitism-rejoin
Zionist organisations have recently begun pressuring Facebook to include criticism of Israel as part of its own definition of hate speech. Their objective, in other words, is to force Facebook to alter the algorithms it uses to detect hate speech so the company’s own algorithms will automatically remove any criticism of Israel from the platform
On August 7, 120 organisations representing Zionist right-wing groups sent a letter to Facebook’s Board of Directors, calling upon them to fully adopt the IHRA definition as the “cornerstone of Facebook’s hate speech policy regarding antisemitism”.
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/redefining-anti-semitism-facebook-200920120123654.html
Annexation without citizenship
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/27/israels-silent-transfer-of-palestinians-out-of-palestine
Israel applies Israeli law to East Jerusalem and grants Palestinians “permanent resident” status, a status “accorded to foreign nationals wishing to reside in Israel”, except that Palestinians are indigenous to the land.
Palestinians of East Jerusalem do not have a right to automatic Israeli citizenship
The well-predicted trend that the accusation of anti-semitism would be extended to include any criticism of Israel continues
The Trump administration is considering declaring that several prominent international NGOs — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam — are anti-Semitic and that governments should not support them
Who did the smearing?
Jeremy Corbyn’s former chief of staff, Karie Murphy, said there had been an “extremely successful campaign to obscure the facts” about how the party handled complaints, claiming it was “primarily driven by political opposition to Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist, internationalist politics”
Mike Katz, chair of the JLM, said Murphy’s claims were a smear of Jewish members. Smearing the pain of our members and the wider Jewish community as part of a ‘highly politicised media campaign’ is shameful.”
A high profile scalp indeed.
Yes outrageous. Whatever else he is Corbyn is not anti-Semitic. His “crime” was to be pro-Palestine. While MPs call for an enquiry into Russian influence in British politics, they let Israel, with the aid of their supporters in Britain, get away with a coup the Russian intelligence services would love to be able to do.
I think it may be the moment to wind up this thread. It’s a losing battle. The Zionists have been able to get it accepted that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-semitism and it’s difficult to see that changing.
We have more important linguistic battles to fight as over the meaning of the word socialism. That’s one we mustn’t lose.
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