cancel2 2022
Canceled
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This describes McMoonshi'ite to a tee.
Left-wing anti-semitism never went away. It became the ‘anti-imperialism of idiots’ in the last third of the 20th century, when vicious, well-funded and long-running anti-Zionist campaigns were conducted by the Stalinist states, in alliance with the authoritarian Arab states and parts of the Western New Left.
Those campaigns laid the ground for the form taken by left-wing antisemitism today — I call it antisemitic anti-Zionism.
Antisemitic anti-Zionism bends the meaning of Israel and Zionism out of shape until both become fit receptacles for the tropes, images and ideas of classical antisemitism. In short, that which the demonological Jew once was, demonological Israel now is: uniquely malevolent, full of blood lust, all-controlling, the hidden hand, tricksy, always acting in bad faith, the obstacle to a better, purer, more spiritual world, uniquely deserving of punishment, and so on.
Antisemitic anti-Zionism has three components: a programme, a discourse, and a movement.
First, antisemitic anti-Zionism has a political programme: not two states for two peoples, but the abolition of the Jewish homeland; not Palestine alongside Israel, but Palestine instead of Israel.
Second, antisemitic anti-Zionism is a demonising intellectual discourse (as I outline in my chapter in Gabe Brahm’s and Cary Nelson’s book, The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel). The Left is imprisoning itself within a distorting system of concepts: ‘Zionism is racism’; Israel is a ‘settler-colonialist state’ which ‘ethnically cleansed’ the ‘indigenous’ people, went on to build an ‘apartheid state’ and is now engaged in an ‘incremental genocide’ against the Palestinians.
And there is the ugly phenomenon of Holocaust Inversion – the deliberate and systematic Nazification of Israel in street placards depicting Netanyahu as Hitler, in posters equating the IDF and the SS, in cartoons portraying Israelis as Nazis, and even in the language of intellectuals.
Third, antisemitic anti-Zionism is a presence within a global social movement (the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS movement) to exclude one state – and only one state – from the economic, cultural and educational life of humanity: the little Jewish one.
And this is the real concern about Jeremy Corbyn. Not that he indulges in antisemitism himself, but that he has a record of indulging the antisemitism of others when it comes wearing an ‘Israel’ badge. And these days, it almost always does.
For example, Corbyn defended the vile anti-semitic Palestinian Islamist Raed Saleh. Even though Saleh’s murderous Jew-hatred was a matter of public record (hell, a matter of court records, come to that) Corbyn called Saleh was ‘an honoured citizen who represents his people extremely well’ and invited him to take tea on the terrace of the House of Commons. Mind you, not many on the Left could rouse themselves to object to Saleh. Mehdi Hassan, then the Political Editor of The New Statesman, argued that the criticism of Salah was an example of the media’s ‘lazy and simplistic demonisation of Muslims.’
Today is springtime for left-wing antisemitic anti-Zionism.
https://fathomjournal.org/the-left-and-the-jews-time-for-a-rethink/
This describes McMoonshi'ite to a tee.
Left-wing anti-semitism never went away. It became the ‘anti-imperialism of idiots’ in the last third of the 20th century, when vicious, well-funded and long-running anti-Zionist campaigns were conducted by the Stalinist states, in alliance with the authoritarian Arab states and parts of the Western New Left.
Those campaigns laid the ground for the form taken by left-wing antisemitism today — I call it antisemitic anti-Zionism.
Antisemitic anti-Zionism bends the meaning of Israel and Zionism out of shape until both become fit receptacles for the tropes, images and ideas of classical antisemitism. In short, that which the demonological Jew once was, demonological Israel now is: uniquely malevolent, full of blood lust, all-controlling, the hidden hand, tricksy, always acting in bad faith, the obstacle to a better, purer, more spiritual world, uniquely deserving of punishment, and so on.
Antisemitic anti-Zionism has three components: a programme, a discourse, and a movement.
First, antisemitic anti-Zionism has a political programme: not two states for two peoples, but the abolition of the Jewish homeland; not Palestine alongside Israel, but Palestine instead of Israel.
Second, antisemitic anti-Zionism is a demonising intellectual discourse (as I outline in my chapter in Gabe Brahm’s and Cary Nelson’s book, The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel). The Left is imprisoning itself within a distorting system of concepts: ‘Zionism is racism’; Israel is a ‘settler-colonialist state’ which ‘ethnically cleansed’ the ‘indigenous’ people, went on to build an ‘apartheid state’ and is now engaged in an ‘incremental genocide’ against the Palestinians.
And there is the ugly phenomenon of Holocaust Inversion – the deliberate and systematic Nazification of Israel in street placards depicting Netanyahu as Hitler, in posters equating the IDF and the SS, in cartoons portraying Israelis as Nazis, and even in the language of intellectuals.
Third, antisemitic anti-Zionism is a presence within a global social movement (the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS movement) to exclude one state – and only one state – from the economic, cultural and educational life of humanity: the little Jewish one.
And this is the real concern about Jeremy Corbyn. Not that he indulges in antisemitism himself, but that he has a record of indulging the antisemitism of others when it comes wearing an ‘Israel’ badge. And these days, it almost always does.
For example, Corbyn defended the vile anti-semitic Palestinian Islamist Raed Saleh. Even though Saleh’s murderous Jew-hatred was a matter of public record (hell, a matter of court records, come to that) Corbyn called Saleh was ‘an honoured citizen who represents his people extremely well’ and invited him to take tea on the terrace of the House of Commons. Mind you, not many on the Left could rouse themselves to object to Saleh. Mehdi Hassan, then the Political Editor of The New Statesman, argued that the criticism of Salah was an example of the media’s ‘lazy and simplistic demonisation of Muslims.’
Today is springtime for left-wing antisemitic anti-Zionism.
https://fathomjournal.org/the-left-and-the-jews-time-for-a-rethink/