[tml] Anti-Semitism: A Practical Manual

[Tactical Media Crew]

Anti-Semitism: A Practical Manual

By Uri Avnery, AlterNet [http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17628]
January 21, 2004

A Hungarian joke: During the June 1967 war, a Hungarian meets his friend. 
"Why do you look so happy?" he asks. "I heard that the Israelis shot down 
six Soviet-made fighter jets today," his friend replies.

The next day, the friend looks even more jubilant. "The Israelis downed 
another eight jets," he announces.

On the third day, the friend is crestfallen. "What happened? Didn't the 
Israelis down any jets today?" the man asks. "They did," the friend 
answers, "But today someone told me that the Israelis are Jews!"

This is the whole story in a nutshell.

The anti-Semite hates the Jews because they are Jews, irrespective of their 
actions. Jews may be hated because they are rich and ostentatious or 
because they are poor and live in squalor. Because they played a major role 
in the Bolshevik revolution or because some of them became incredibly rich 
after the collapse of the Communist regime. Because they crucified Jesus or 
because they infected Western culture with the "Christian morality of 
compassion." Because they have no fatherland or because they created the 
State of Israel. That is in the nature of all kinds of racism and 
chauvinism: One hates someone for being a Jew, Arab, woman, black, Indian, 
Muslim, Hindu. His or her personal attributes, actions, achievements are 
unimportant. If he or she belongs to the abhorred race, religion or gender, 
they will be hated.

The answers to all questions relating to anti-Semitism follow from this 
basic fact. For example:

Is everybody who criticizes Israel an anti-Semite?

Absolutely not. Somebody who criticizes Israel for certain of our actions 
cannot be accused of anti-Semitism for that. But somebody who hates Israel 
because it is a Jewish state, like the Hungarian in the joke, is an 
anti-Semite. It is not always easy to distinguish between the two kinds, 
because shrewd anti-Semites pose as bona fide critics of Israel's actions. 
But presenting all critics of Israel as anti-Semites is wrong and 
counter-productive, it damages the fight against anti-Semitism. Many deeply 
moral persons, the cream of humanity, criticize our behavior in the 
occupied territories. It is stupid to accuse them of anti-Semitism.

Can a person be an anti-Zionist without being an anti-Semite?

Absolutely yes. Zionism is a political creed and must be treated like any 
other. One can be anti-Communist without being anti-Chinese, 
anti-capitalist without being anti-American, anti-globalist, anti-anything. 
Yet, again, it is not always easy to draw the line, because real 
anti-Semites often pretend just to be "anti-Zionists." They should not be 
helped by erasing the distinction.

Can a person be an anti-Semite and a Zionist?

Indeed, yes. The founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, tried to enlist 
the support of notorious Russian anti-Semites, promising them to take the 
Jews off their hands. Before World War II, the Zionist underground 
organization IZL established military training camps in Poland under the 
auspices of the anti-Semitic generals, who also wanted to get rid of the 
Jews. Nowadays, the Zionist extreme right receives and welcomes massive 
support from the American fundamentalist evangelists, whom the majority of 
American Jews, according to a poll published this week 
[http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/383671.html], consider profoundly 
anti-Semitic. Their theology prophesies that on the eve of the second 
coming of Christ, all Jews must convert to Christianity or be exterminated.

Can a Jew be anti-Semitic?

That sounds like an oxymoron. But history has known some instances of Jews 
who became ferocious Jew-haters. The Spanish Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada, 
was of Jewish descent. Karl Marx wrote some very nasty things about the 
Jews, as did Otto Weininger, an important Jewish writer in fin-de-siecle 
Vienna. Herzl, his contemporary and fellow-Viennese, wrote in his diaries 
some very uncomplimentary remarks about the Jews.

If a person criticizes Israel more than other countries that do the same, 
is he an anti-Semite?

Not necessarily. True, there should be one and the same moral standard for 
all countries and all human beings. Russian actions in Chechnya are not 
better than Israel's in Nablus, and may be worse. The trouble is that the 
Jews are pictured and picture themselves (and indeed were) a "nation of 
victims." Therefore, the world is shocked that yesterday's victims are 
today's victimizers.

Has Europe become anti-Semitic again?

Not really. The number of anti-Semites in Europe has not grown, perhaps it 
has even fallen. What has increased is the volume of criticism of Israel's 
behavior towards the Palestinians, who appear as "the victims of the 
victims." The situation in some suburbs of Paris, which is often cited as 
an example of the rise of anti-Semitism, is a quite different affair. When 
North African Muslims clash with North African Jews, they are transferring 
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to European soil. It is also a 
continuation of the feud between Arabs and Jews that started in Algeria 
when the Jews supported the French regime and Muslims considered them 
collaborators of the hated colonialists.

Then why did most Europeans state in a recent poll that Israel endangers 
world peace more than any other country?

That has a simple explanation: Europeans see on television every day what 
Israeli soldiers are doing in the occupied Palestinian territories. This 
confrontation is covered more than any other conflict on earth (with the 
possible exception of Iraq – for the time being), because Israel is more 
"interesting," considering the long history of the Jews in Europe, and 
because Israel is closer to the Western media than Muslim or African 
countries. The Palestinian resistance, which Israelis call "terrorism," 
seems to many Europeans very much like the French resistance to the German 
occupation.

What about the anti-Semitic manifestations in the Arab world?

No doubt, typically anti-Semitic indications have crept lately into Arab 
discourse. Suffice it to mention that the infamous "Protocols of the Elders 
of Zion" have been published in Arabic. That is a typically European 
import. The Protocols were invented by the secret police of Czarist Russia.

Whatever inanities may be voiced by certain "experts," there never was any 
widespread Muslim anti-Semitism, such as existed in Christian Europe. In 
the course of his fight for power, the prophet Muhammad fought against 
neighboring Jewish tribes, and therefore there are some negative passages 
about the Jews in the Kor'an. But they cannot be compared to the 
anti-Jewish passages in the New Testament story about the crucifixion of 
Christ that have poisoned the Christian world and caused endless suffering. 
Muslim Spain was a paradise for the Jews, and there has never been a Jewish 
Holocaust in the Muslim world. Even pogroms were extremely rare. Muhammad 
decreed that the "Peoples of the Book" (Jews and Christians) be treated 
tolerantly, subject to conditions that were incomparably more liberal than 
those in contemporary Europe.

The Muslims never imposed their religion by force on Jews and Christians, 
as shown by the fact that almost all the Jews expelled from Catholic Spain 
settled in the Muslim countries and flourished there. After centuries of 
Muslim rule, Greeks and Serbs remained thoroughly Christian. When peace is 
established between Israel and the Arab world, the poisonous fruits of 
anti-Semitism will most probably disappear from the Arab world (as will the 
poisonous fruits of Arab-hating in Israeli society).

Aren't the utterances of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin 
Muhammad, about the Jews controlling the world, anti-Semitic?

They certainly illustrate the difficulty of pinning anti-Semitism down. 
From a factual point of view, the man was right when he asserted that the 
Jews have a far bigger influence than their percentage of the world's 
population alone would warrant. It is true that the Jews have a large 
influence on the policy of the United States, the only super-power. One 
does not need the phony "Protocols" in order to face this fact and analyze 
its causes. But the sounds make the music, and Mahathir's music does indeed 
sound anti-Semitic.

So should we ignore anti-Semitism?

Definitely not. Racism is a kind of virus that exists in every nation and 
in every human being. Jean-Paul Sartre said that we are all racists; the 
difference being that some of us realize this and fight against it, while 
others succumb to the evil. In ordinary times, there is a small minority of 
blatant racists in every country, but in times of crisis their number can 
multiply rapidly. This is a perpetual danger, and every people must fight 
against the racists in their midst.

Israelis are like all other peoples. Each of us can find a small racist 
within himself, if he searches hard enough. We have in Israel fanatical 
Arab-haters, and the historic confrontation that dominates our lives 
increases their power and influence. It is our duty to fight them, and 
leave it to the Europeans and Arabs to deal with their own racists.

Uri Avnery has been a columnist, a publisher, a member of the Israeli 
Parliament, and a soldier. He is the founder of Gush Shalom, the Israeli 
Peace Bloc.




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