More on Israel and Anti-Semitism

In this case, I think for now I'll just provide a link to the discussion I've been part of on another blog. It's about a formerly left-wing group in Eugene OR which, through anti-semitism over Israel, has become more right-wing than left-wing. It's here.

For the rest of my stuff on this issue see two posts, one of which is linked to from the first, here.

Actually, although reading the discussion is probably worth your time, I guess I WILL post most of my comments here.

UPDATE 7/20/09 I just realized something. When the bigot talks about how atheist, non-/anti-zionist Jews shouldn't identify as Jewish, I think he was trying to accomplish something else in addition to genocide by decreasing the number of people who identify as Jewish. If non-/anti-zionist Jews stop identifying as Jews, it'll be even easier for people like these bigots to say that supporting Israel is characteristic of all Jews, and that will fuel anti-semitism on the left, and there will be more people susceptible to being recruited by the far-right.

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Tom Shelley said,

on May 13th, 2009 at 2:00 pm

I am sort of reluctant to tell people this, although I probably should when this comes up, and I have now told three people before this.

In my sophmore year of college, I was mildly anti-semitic. First, it was mild, I never used the K-word, I never thought “those f—ing jews,” I certainly as f— never bought in to Holocaust Denial, but I had some kind of negative attitude towards Jews.

It was largely about Israel. Although it wouldn’t matter if my estimate was right, I had an exaggerated sense of how uncritical J-As are. Same thing with how upper-middle-class they are. I also had two Jewish room-mates, one that year and one the year before, I didn’t get along with, one I even got in a fight with. And to a large degree I didn’t know many Jews till my freshman year of college (although my Mom’s best friend was Jewish).

I did basically nothing about it, I don’t know if it was connected to me organizing an event in support of the Palestinians (no one showed, there was another event on that issue, the same night). I’ve continued supporting the Palestinians, and the speaker I got, I have since learned is very much against anti-semitism, although possibly a little soft on Hamas, and I don’t think I was thinking at the time that he was anti-semitic.

About 3 years later I was organizing Students for Justice in N. Ireland at CU-Boulder with a Jewish woman as a fellow co-chair. Obviously it was not a great leap for me, my problem was pretty mild. I think what did it was that when I spent some time doing an AFL-CIO internship called Union Summer, the assistant site coordinator was Jewish (later on we were kind of friends at college) and there was an Irish-Catholic guy and they did this Catholic/Jewish rivalry thing for laughs, I’m not sure how to describe it, but about 5 years ago on Comedy Central Jon Stewart and Colin Quinn did it.

Not exactly the Angela King story, but I thought I’d mention it.

tom"
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Tom Shelley said,

on May 21st, 2009 at 4:28 pm

(apparently the comment I’ve been trying to post is too long. It’s been suggested that I edit it down, but I don’t know what the limit is, and I kind of hate doing that anyway, so I’m doing it in two parts, hope that’s okay)

I actually found the Pacifica Forum web-site, and found some things that contradict what I thought and some things that support what I thought, so I’m basically where I was earlier. Some things that contradict what I thought (or with the last one, makes them look okay, I mean, how many groups do that?):

1) Several links to progressive sources.
2) A link to jewishvoiceforpeace.org (of course for all I know they ARE self-hating, but I doubt it)
3) Fondness for United for Peace and Justice (if they’ve gone bad I probably would have heard about it unless it was the last 6 months)
4) probably 2-3 other minor things.
5) A willingness to feature links to articles critical of them and statements by former members who are critics.

stuff that supports the charges:

2) They had a speaker talk about his passion for the swastika. As far as I can tell it was the traditional swastika, but you do things like have David Irving speak and then have a pro-swastika event, you can’t complain if people connect the dots.

3) Attacks on Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, and Amy Goodman. Must be a coincidence that they’re all Jews. They support the Palestinians, but they’re attacked anyway. With Chomsky it’s specifically because he believes it’s possible that Israel can be preassured to change, but he doesn’t get it that Zionist hate is in the genes (or the talmud, or whatever these sick people at Pacifica think) (as I’m sure those three would agree, the point is that it’s possible to convince Jewish Israelis and their Jewish supporters elsewhere that Israel must dramatically transform how it relates to the Palestinians, and that is very possible- sort of likely, and will be more likely when those supporting the Palestinians make it more clear that anti-semitism is not tolaterated in their ranks). (I’m actually not a big Chomsky fan, Klein seriously annoys me, but I used to love Democracy Now, my not listening recently isn’t a protest).

4. The following is from a page on their site: “‘It is an inconvenient truth that for a section of the Western public, an increase in anti-semitism would lead to a decrease in support for Israel, so Zionism and anti-semitism are sometimes on opposite sides of the fence, rather than two sides of the same coin. It follows that it is impossible to be equally opposed to Zionism and to anti-semitism.’” This is clearly aimed at getting supporters of the Palestinians to be anti-semitic, and could easily be interpreted as hoping for an upsurge in incidents.
to be continued
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Tom Shelley said,

on May 21st, 2009 at 4:30 pm

part 2 of my comments above

5. I don’t feel like throwing myself into this, but will make a few comments on the page https://pacificaforum.org/posts/10
A: “Real fascists are against Zionism. Their genuine opposition to Jewish supremacy should be openly discussed, not slandered and suppressed.” Sounds like they’re friendly to fascists to me, although elsewhere the author claims to be against fascism, while at the same time making a major attack on anti-fascism (https://pacificaforum.org/mass).
B: “Britain’s main extreme right-wing party, the BNP, embraced Zionism at the same time it abandoned the last trace of anti-semitism - yet the left still calls it ‘Nazi’” This contradicts his claim that anti-fascism is pro-Jewish. I’m not sure how far the BNP has moved on anti-semitism and Israel, I mean, American Renaisance conferences had Jewish speakers as racist allies and anti-semitic speakers at the same time, but events have shown that they liked the anti-semites more than the racist jews, so they were basically anti-semites while providing kosher meals for their racist Jewish friends. Anyway, it does contradict the idea, ridiculous to begin with, that anti-fascism is pro-Jewish- it’s anti-hate, it’s pro-democracy, it’s pro-diversity etc. Also, his statement sounds like he’s complaining about people criticizing the BNP, like he’s still sort of fond of them even after they (to one degree or another) stopped being anti-semitic. It’s possible that without the anti-semitism, fascist is a more appropriate term for the BNP than Nazi, but who cares? The difference is so small that I’m not going to care when someone on the far-right uses that to criticise anti-fascists.
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Tom Shelley said,

on May 21st, 2009 at 4:31 pm

part 3

6. In a post at https://pacificaforum.org/posts/23 the pacifica writer writes: “I remember the folk singer Leon Rosselson once making a comment at one of his gigs along the lines of

“if you’re of Jewish origin but you’re not religious and you’re not a Zionist there’s not really much point in calling yourself a Jew”.

Unfortunately, he then fudged the issue by claiming to believe in some kind of ‘Jewish spirit’ and then sang a song about it.”

In general the post seems aimed at a method of genocide similar to what happened with American Indians and boarding schools, turning Indians into white people. And it’s stupid. As far as I can tell, (I got this largely from a Jewish-American who was a fellow Ethnic Studies major) being Jewish is also an ethnic/cultural identity, at least for some majority- some are atheists and identify that way solely. There are some others I’m iffy on, but I know of one Jewish person who is an atheist, identifies as Jewish, and supports the Palestinians. Of course she had to throw a wrench into this by telling me she identifies as a religious Jew, but that’s stupid and the facts are the facts: A) she doesn’t believe in God (this is all based on when we were friends about 7 years ago) B) she changed her first name to a traditional Jewish one, C) she talks about Israel by using the word Apartheid. So as far as I can tell, you can be a secular Jew who supports the Palestinians (I suppose to some tiny degree she might call herself a Zionist, but probably not and she does talk about Israeli Apartheid).

7. In that piece on anti-fascism, he makes all sorts of excuses for the killing of Seraw, the Ethiopian killed in Portland OR by boneheads in the late 1980s. More generally he suggests that hate crimes are often something other than hate crimes.

I think that’s about it. I might read more. Like I said, I’m still where I was before, although it was interesting to get some more details. There are basically two Pacifica sites which link to each other. https://pacificaforum.org/ and
http://www.geocities.com/pacificaforum/

Tom"