When does anti-Zionism become anti-semitism?

Excellent article on "when anti-Zionism becomes anti-semitism" in Shiraz Socialist.

“Absolute anti-Zionism” can be summed up as as a one-sided hostility to Zionism (ie: Jewish nationalism) that willfully refuses to place it in its proper historical context (the pogroms, persecution and genocide of the last century), that whitewashes bourgeoise Arab nationalism and reactionary, fascistic Islamism, applies double-standards to Israel and ultimately winds up denying Israel’s right to exist, even behind pre-1967 borders....
What needs to be spelled out plainly is that this sort of stuff is anti-semitism, pure and simple. The fact that the people putting it about regard themselves as “left wing” is neither here nor there. [Dan] Glazebook (book reviewer for the Morning Star, the British newspaper of the Communist Party of Britain], significantly, also writes in what is probably the world’s leading “left” anti-semitic publication, the US magazine Counterpunch. In fact, the roots of this type of “left wing” anti-semitism are in Stalinism and the Stalinist bureaucracy’s campaigns against “Zionism” from the 1930′s through the 1952-3 “Doctors’ Plot” in the USSR and the ”anti-Zionist” campaign in Poland in 1967-68.
In fact, given their political tradition’s foul history of promoting the “Socialism of fools“, Mr Haylett and his Stalinist colleagues really aught to be more careful about their pandering to ‘absolute anti-Zionism’: or, as it is more properly called: “left wing” anti-semitism.

Good comment also:

We could call it the anti-zionism of fools, but that sounds too mild, too much like the criticism of a few blameless ignorants. They aren’t blameless and they aren’t ignorant. They are racist scoundrels. And they have infected the left with a disease that should have died in 1945, certainly by March 5, 1953.

Daniel McGowan & Gilad Atzmon in upstate New York

I had been wondering what Daniel McGowan, the Holocaust denier from Geneva, New York, had been up to lately. (For my other posts on McGowan, click here).

David Adler of Lerterland, in a posting entitled "Don't Let Atzmon Hoodwink America's Jazz Scene," reports that Gilad Atzmon, the noted jazz musician and anti-semite, will be playing two concerts in upstate New York (Rochester and Geneva), that were organized by McGowan.

Atzmon is playing with someone named Rich Siegel, who seems to be as anti-Israel (and as forgiving of Holocaust deniers) as Atzmon is. Apparently the first gig in Rochester was kicked out of the original venue (a Unitarian Church) when a local rabbi got wind of the event. It's been rescheduled for another venue, but is still sponsored by the church and the Social Justice Council (according to Siegel).

(Both of the posts are from Mondoweiss - for a flavor of the site's wacko anti-Zionist politics, read Philip Weiss's anti-Elena Kagan rant; he's against her because former Israeli Supreme Court president Aharon Barak is one of her legal heroes. For a more rational article on Kagan's view of Barak, see today's Haaretz article).

Anti-semitic attitudes in the U.S.

The Anti-Defamation League does a survey every few years about anti-semitism in the United States. The first survey was done in 1964, the most recent in the fall of 2009. The survey asks the respondents for their responses to 11 "index statements."

Anti-Semitic Index:
• Jews stick together more than other Americans.
• Jews always like to be at the head of things.
• Jews are more loyal to Israel than America.
• Jews have too much power in the U.S. today.
• Jews have too much control and influence on Wall Street.
• Jews have too much power in the business world.
• Jews have a lot of irritating faults.
• Jews are more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want.
• Jewish business people are so shrewd that others don’t have a fair chance at competition.
• Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind.
• Jews are (not) just as honest as other businesspeople.

Those who agree with six or more of the index statements are regarded as "the most anti-semitic group of Americans." The percentage of Americans who fit into that category has diminished from 29% in 1964 to 12% in 2009.

The first three statements are the ones that the most people in the survey agree with. In 1964, 52% of the respondents agreed with the statement that "Jews stick together more than other Americans." 43% agreed with that statement in 2009, which was a drop even from 2007, when 50% of the respondents agreed with it.

In 1964, 54% of respondents agreed with the statement that "Jews always like to be at the head of things." 26% agreed with this statement in 2009.

In 1964, 30% of respondents agreed with the statement that "Jews are more loyal to Israel than America." Surprisingly, 30% of respondents in 2009 still agreed with this statement.

The survey covers more than responses to the index statements. A high percentage of Americans responding believed good things about Jews - 76% agreed that "Jews have a strong faith in God"; 71% believed that Jews "contributed much to the cultural life of America," and 78% believed that Jews emphasized the importance of family life.

Alongside these positive beliefs, about 29% of the respondents said that it is probably true that Jews were responsible for the death of Christ - the deicide charge based in the New Testament. 25% believe that Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust.

The survey also breaks down the respondents by race and ethnic origin. Of Hispanics born in other countries, about 35% fall into the "most anti-semitic group" category, while 28% of African Americans fall into this category (down from 37% in 1992).

Update (June 6): For a recent example of antisemitism in the United States, see Helen Thomas's remarks on May 27 at the White House celebration of American Jewish Heritage Month: Helen Thomas says Jews should get out of Palestine.

For the video, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQcQdWBqt14. Transcript of the relevant remarks below:

From "RabbiLive.com"
Rabbi David F. Nesenoff interviews Helen Thomas

RN: "Any comments on Israel? We're asking everyone today, any comments on Israel."

HT: "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine."

.....

HT: "Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. It's not German, it's not Poland."

RN: "So where should they go, what should they do?"

HT: "They'd go home."

RN: "Where's the home?"

HT: "Poland, Germany."

RN: "So you're saying Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?"

HT: "And America and everywhere else."

Are you a "righteous Jew" or a "New Afrikaner"?

John Mearsheimer's talk yesterday at the Jerusalem Fund, The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners does make one good point: that if a Palestinian state is not created alongside Israel, increasingly the "one-state" solution will occur of its own accord, leaving Palestinians in the West Bank totally disenfranchised. This is why I support two states, and oppose the current right-wing Israeli government, which seems to be totally unwilling to recognize reality and work towards the creation of the Palestinian state. As Mearsheimer says, if a Palestinian state is not created, then the Zionist dream of a Jewish state is dead as well. These are harsh words but I do not object to this part of his talk.

I do object, however, to the antisemitic part of his talk, the part where he has decided to take the gloves off and put the Jews of America on trial.

American Jews who care deeply about Israel can be divided into three broad categories. The first two are what I call “righteous Jews” and the “new Afrikaners,” which are clearly definable groups that think about Israel and where it is headed in fundamentally different ways. The third and largest group is comprised of those Jews who care a lot about Israel, but do not have clear-cut views on how to think about Greater Israel and apartheid. Let us call this group the “great ambivalent middle.”

Righteous Jews have a powerful attachment to core liberal values. They believe that individual rights matter greatly and that they are universal, which means they apply equally to Jews and Palestinians. They could never support an apartheid Israel. They also understand that the Palestinians paid an enormous price to make it possible to create Israel in 1948. Moreover, they recognize the pain and suffering that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967. Finally, most righteous Jews believe that the Palestinians deserve a viable state of their own, just as the Jews deserve their own state. In essence, they believe that self-determination applies to Palestinians as well as Jews, and that the two-state solution is the best way to achieve that end. Some righteous Jews, however, favor a democratic bi-national state over the two-state solution.

To give you a better sense of what I mean when I use the term righteous Jews, let me give you some names of people and organizations that I would put in this category. The list would include Noam Chomsky, Roger Cohen, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, Tony Karon, Naomi Klein, MJ Rosenberg, Sara Roy, and Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss fame, just to name a few. I would also include many of the individuals associated with J Street and everyone associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as distinguished international figures such as Judge Richard Goldstone. Furthermore, I would apply the label to the many American Jews who work for different human rights organizations, such as Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch.

I guess by Mearsheimer's reasoning I might qualify as a "righteous Jew," since I support a two-state solution. But who is it that Mearsheimer qualifies as "righteous Jews"? Almost all of the individuals he names are anti-Zionists (e.g., Chomsky, Falk, Finkelstein, Judt, Klein, Roy, and Weiss). Some of them (like Finkelstein and Weiss) traffic in anti-Jewish stereotypes (when William Safire, the New York Times columnist, died, Weiss engaged in the most bizarre attacks on the press, saying that not mentioning Safire's Zionist convictions in his obituaries was as a result of "Jewish power" over the press). Chomsky has defended Holocaust deniers like Robert Faurisson, and has a disgraceful record of whitewashing the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. Why would I regard these people as "righteous"? I certainly don't want to be in their company. I do not think that other American Jews should follow them.

On the other side we have the new Afrikaners, who will support Israel even if it is an apartheid state. These are individuals who will back Israel no matter what it does, because they have blind loyalty to the Jewish state. This is not to say that the new Afrikaners think that apartheid is an attractive or desirable political system, because I am sure that many of them do not. Surely some of them favor a two-state solution and some of them probably have a serious commitment to liberal values. The key point, however, is that they have an even deeper commitment to supporting Israel unreservedly. The new Afrikaners will of course try to come up with clever arguments to convince themselves and others that Israel is really not an apartheid state, and that those who say it is are anti-Semites. We are all familiar with this strategy.

I would classify most of the individuals who head the Israel lobby’s major organizations as new Afrikaners. That list would include Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Ronald Lauder of the World Jewish Congress, and Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, just to name some of the more prominent ones. I would also include businessmen like Sheldon Adelson, Lester Crown, and Mortimer Zuckerman as well as media personalities like Fred Hiatt and Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, and Martin Peretz of the New Republic. It would be easy to add more names to this list.

So even someone who supports a two-state solution can be called a "New Afrikaner" because he or she does not meet Mearsheimer's qualifications for being a good Jew? I do not like some of the people he names - Morton Klein in particular, who is extremely right-wing, or Hoenlein, who does his level best to pull the Conference of Presidents to the right as much as he can. But Foxman? Harris? Peretz? And how does he know what would they would think or do if Israel did "cross the line" into apartheid? He doesn't know. But because these people do not agree with him on Israel, he is willing to smear them as "New Afrikaners."

The key to determining whether the lobby can protect apartheid Israel over the long run is whether the great ambivalent middle sides with the new Afrikaners or the righteous Jews. The new Afrikaners have to win that fight decisively for Greater Israel to survive as a racist state.

There is no question that the present balance of power favors the new Afrikaners. When push comes to shove on issues relating to Israel, the hardliners invariably get most of those American Jews who care a lot about Israel to side with them. The righteous Jews, on the other hand, hold considerably less sway with the great ambivalent middle, at least at this point in time. This situation is due in good part to the fact that most American Jews – especially the elders in the community – have little understanding of how far down the apartheid road Israel has travelled and where it is ultimately headed. They think that the two-state solution is still a viable option and that Israel remains committed to allowing the Palestinians to have their own state. These false beliefs allow them to act as if there is little danger of Israel becoming South Africa, which makes it easy for them to side with the new Afrikaners.

This situation, however, is unsustainable over time. Once it is widely recognized that the two-state solution is dead and Greater Israel is a reality, the righteous Jews will have two choices: support apartheid or work to help create a democratic bi-national state. I believe that almost all of them will opt for the latter option, in large part because of their deep-seated commitment to liberal values, which renders any apartheid state abhorrent to them. Of course, the new Afrikaners will fiercely defend apartheid Israel, because their commitment to Israel is so unconditional that it overrides any commitment they might have to liberal values.

Mearsheimer's "righteous Jews," have in part, already made the choice he taxes them with - some of them already support the one-state solution (Chomsky, Finkelstein, Roy, and Weiss). All of the ones he names (not J-Street) already fiercely oppose Israel and its right to exist. What Mearsheimer labels "righteous" in a Jew is the willingness to see the state of Israel dismantled. He is living in a dream world if he thinks that a democratic bi-national state can be created under these conditions. And of course, missing entirely from Mearsheimer's supposedly "realist" viewpoint is any reference to the violence that Palestinians have inflicted upon Israelis. Hamas has disappeared from his world. The Palestinian-nationalist fantasy that a Jewish Temple never stood in Jerusalem doesn't exist.

The critical question, however, is: what will happen to those Jews who comprise the great ambivalent middle once it is clear to them that Israel is a full-fledged apartheid state and that facts on the ground have made a two state solution impossible? Will they side with the new Afrikaners and defend apartheid Israel, or will they ally with the righteous Jews and call for making Greater Israel a true democracy? Or will they sit silently on the sidelines?

I believe that most of the Jews in the great ambivalent middle will not defend apartheid Israel but will either keep quiet or side with the righteous Jews against the new Afrikaners, who will become increasingly marginalized over time. And once that happens, the lobby will be unable to provide cover for Israel’s racist policies toward the Palestinians in the way it has in the past.

Again, if the "righteous Jews" are represented by the figures he names (again, not J-Street, which is "pro-peace" and "pro-Israel"), I cannot imagine that the bulk of American Jewry will follow them. Most American Jews have enough decent self-respect not to follow the twisted ways of the so-called righteous Jews whom he names.

What Mearsheimer has done in this speech is to create a standard by which American Jews will be judged to be "good" Jews or "bad" Jews. In this, he follows in the dishonorable steps of Charles Lindbergh in September, 1941, when he made an antisemitic speech for America First which ruined his reputation. See this contemporaneous report by Time Magazine:

Hitler showed how attacks on the Jews can be used as a prime device for promoting discord, inciting bitterness, destroying tolerance and ultimately overthrowing the basic principles of civil liberties and personal freedom. Last week, continuing to divide the nation, Hero Lindbergh attacked the Jews as being one of the "three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war.'' The other two groups: the British and the Roosevelt Administration.

It is no news that Jews heartily dislike Hitler and would gladly see him frazzled. They would be less than human if they did not. Hero Lindbergh, piously declaring that "no person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany," offered U.S. Jews advice: they should suppress their natural opinion. He added: "The Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it [war] ... for they will be among the first to feel its consequences." The plain implication was that the Jews will be blamed for war if it comes and will be persecuted because of it when opportunity arises. If this was not a threat it was the next thing to it.

Next to blaming the Jews for a war (especially if lost), the most effective anti-Jew talk is to accuse Jews of having more than their share of wealth and influence. Hero Lindbergh did not accuse the Jews of financial and industrial dominance. That charge, as he may have learned from his late father-in-law, Morgan Partner Dwight Morrow, is too easily disproved. But Lindbergh did accuse the Jews of undue success in other fields: "Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our Government."

Mearsheimer has already accused the Israel Lobby of strangling all debate on the issue of Israel/Palestine in the United States - a more subtle version of the old lie that Jews control the media. Now he seems to be playing the role of Lindbergh in warning American Jews that they must follow those whom he considers "righteous" in order not to be equated with the arch-racists of apartheid South Africa. We must suppress our "natural opinion" (natural at least for most of us) to support Israel - not blindly, not in all of its actions, often critically - in order to retain our status as "righteous," and therefore, acceptable to Mearsheimer and "right-thinking" opinion.

If this is not antisemitism, then I do not know what antisemitism is. Mearsheimer has publicly crossed the line that Lindbergh crossed. May he be discredited as Lindbergh was.

For other takedowns of Mearsheimer, see:

David Schraub of The Debate Link: Mearsheimer Lists His Good Jews.

Judeosphere: John Mearsheimer Labels Jews as "The New Afrikaners"

Solomonia: Mearsheimer's List

Hussein Ibish: Mearsheimer's unhelpful, unrealistic, and disempowering message to the Palestinians.

Volokh Conspiracy: Some "realism" about John Mearsheimer

Noah Pollack: Mearsheimer makes a list

Meryl Yourish: John Mearsheimer’s speech on Jews: Echoes of the 1930s

Ken Walzer: Righteous Jews, Not So Righteous Jews and Just Damn Jews 

David Harris: Mearsheimer's Mere Slime

Trolling the racist right

Steve Sailer of VDare.com gives us his words of wisdom: Thoughts On America’s Jewish Ruling Class And Noblesse Oblige

Mr. Sailer is also the movie critic for the American Conservative, Pat Buchanan's paleoconservative rag which looks fondly back on Lindburgh and the America Firsters.

For more on him, see a SPLC Hatewatch article on on how he became a source for CNN's "Black in America" series.

Hate Crimes - FBI report for 2008

The annual FBI report on hate crimes for 2008 has been posted to the FBI website, and once again it is interesting to see what the most common hate crimes were (among those reported to law enforcement agencies, which certainly doesn't include all hate crimes committed in the U.S. in 2008).

The FBI reports:

Of the 7,780 single-bias incidents reported in 2008:

• 51.3 percent were racially motivated.
• 19.5 percent were motivated by religious bias.
• 16.7 percent stemmed from sexual-orientation bias.
• 11.5 percent resulted from ethnicity/national origin bias.
• 1.0 percent were motivated by disability bias.

Of hate crimes motivated by race (total 4,704), 3,413 were motivated by anti-Black prejudice (72.5% of the total). This means that 37% of all hate crimes reported were motivated by anti-Black prejudice. The percentage of the American population which is African-American is about 12%.

Hate crimes motivated by bias against people of a particular religious group break down as follows:
There were 1,606 hate crime offenses motivated by religious bias in 2008. A breakdown of these offenses shows:

• 65.7 percent were anti-Jewish.
• 13.2 percent were anti-other religion.
• 7.7 percent were anti-Islamic.
• 4.7 percent were anti-Catholic.
• 4.2 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.
• 3.7 percent were anti-Protestant.
• 0.9 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.

Therefore, 12.8% of all hate crimes were motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice and 1.5% of all hate crimes were motivated by anti-Muslim prejudice. I wonder what the "other religion" category includes. Jews are about 2% of the American population, while Muslims are less than that (when I looked this up a couple of years ago, the best figure I could come up with was about 2 million Muslims in the U.S. - claims that there are up to 6 million Muslims in the U.S. do not seem supportable by the evidence).

If we break down the statistics by type of crime, it's also interesting. Fortunately, in 2008, there were no reported murders on the basis of religion, and one rape.

For the remaining crimes against persons, these are the statistics:

Aggravated assault - total crimes 47
• anti-Jewish: 25 (53%)
• anti-Catholic: 1 (2.1%)
• anti-Protestant: 3 (6.3%)
• anti-Islamic: 5 (10.6%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 1 (2.1%)
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Simple assault - total crimes 114
• anti-Jewish:58 (50.8%)
• anti-Catholic: 3 (2.6%)
• anti-Protestant: 3 (2.6%)
• anti-Islamic: 30 (26%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 1
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Intimidation - total crimes 311
• anti-Jewish: 201 (64.6%)
• anti-Catholic: 3
• anti-Protestant: 1
• anti-Islamic: 46 (14.7%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 0
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Statistics for crimes against property:

Lumping together robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft - total crimes 83
• anti-Jewish: 23 (27%)
• anti-Catholic: 12 (14%)
• anti-Protestant: 8 (9.6%)
• anti-Islamic: 5 (6%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 5 (6%)
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Arson - total crimes 13
• anti-Jewish: 4 (30.7%)
• anti-Catholic: 0
• anti-Protestant: 2 (15%)
• anti-Islamic: 5 (38%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 0
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Destruction/damage/vandalism - total crimes 1029
• anti-Jewish: 742 (72%)
• anti-Catholic: 0
• anti-Protestant: 2 (15%)
• anti-Islamic: 5 (38%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 0
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Even though, according to polls, there is more prejudice against Muslims in American society (for example, the percentage of Americans who would not vote for a Muslim for President is far higher than the percentage who would not vote for a Jew), there are more actual crimes committed against Jews based on anti-Jewish prejudice.

The total number of victims of hate crimes in 2008 were reported as 9,683 (single-bias incidents). They included (among others):
3,596 Blacks (37%)
1,145 Jews (11.8%)
1,672 gay men, lesbians, or bisexuals (17.2%)
792 Hispanics (8%)

This means, just as I said in 2007, "From these statistics, we can see that the hatreds rampant in the United States are really the old tried and true ones - anti-black racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiments."

Some links: History, Jacobo Timerman, and Messianic Jews

Defending History by The Plump. A sample:

I am always concerned by historical attempts to make qualitative judgements between unambiguous evils - was Stalin worse than Hitler (thereby implying one was actually better), was Fascism the same as Communism etc. – as they are either a form of sloppy shorthand or an attempt to dissemble. Nor is it enough to quantitatively evaluate regimes by counting the corpses (there are always corpses; many, many corpses).

Jacobo Timerman smeared, at Z-Blog.  A sample:

Many readers will be familiar with the name of the Argentine journalist and publisher Jacobo Timerman. Kidnapped and tortured by agents of the 1976-1983 dictatorship, he was eventually allowed to leave for Israel where he wrote a book, Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without A Number that was to become a classic account of the horrors of military rule in Argentina.

I remember reading Timerman's book when it was first published - it was profoundly disturbing, a witness to the hellish tortures and murders committed by the Argentinean dictatorship.

Messianic Jewish Musings, by Derek Leman. Before the whole kerfuffle with Seismic Shock (Joseph Weissman) and the Reverend Sizer, I hadn't been very aware of Messianic Jewish groups (Jews who now believe that Jesus is the Messiah yet also hold onto their Jewish identity in various ways). Through my reading about his case, I came across this blog by the leader of a Messianic group in Roswell, Georgia. The blog tackles some weighty theological issues, such as supercessionism in Christianity, which Lerman (and Weissman) are particularly offended by, since it negates the value of any continued connection to Judaism on the part of Messianic Jews. (I personally object to Christian supercessionism, since it negates the continuing value of Judaism after the advent of Jesus as the Messiah).

Calvin L. Smith has also written in an interesting way about Stephen Sizer and Seismic Shock at his blog. He teaches at King's Evangelical Divinity School in England.

Reverend Stephen Sizer, Anti-Zionism, and Free Speech

Happily, in the United States, we have the First Amendment to prevent the police from showing up on the doorsteps of bloggers and telling us to take down our blogs on a dubious charge of harassment.

Unfortunately, this is not true in Britain, where the blogger Seismic Shock has been visited by the police on the complaint of a Reverend Stephen Sizer, a campaigner for the Palestinians and against Christian Zionism, who seems to be of the opinion that criticizing other people's actions and opinions on one's blog is a "campaign of harassement and intimidation."

Seismic reports on his visit from the police at Harry's Place. Go to his blog for further updates.

I've tried to read Sizer's blog and his other online writings, but since everything he pens is smothered in a thick flannel of ostentatious piety, it's rather hard to get through.

In this posting on Harry's Place, Seismic discusses Sizer's 2007 visit to Iran:

In October 2007, Stephen Sizer was invited to Iran by Zahra Mostafavi and Jawad Sharbaf of the Iranian institute NEDA, notorious for its links with Holocaust deniers. Not one to insult his hosts, Sizer’s main concern in Iran was to preach about the evils of Christian Zionism.

Faydra L. Shapiro of Wilfred Laurier University in Canada has written a slashing review of his latest book, Zion's Christian Soldiers. It appeared in the Review of Biblical Literature in November 2009 (published by the Society of Biblical Literature). I reprint it here for those interested in a scholarly approach to Sizer's anti-Zionist and anti-Judaic theology. I have emphasized the points I think most important.

In 2004 Stephen Sizer wrote Christian Zionism: Roadmap to Armageddon. Zion’s Christian Soldiers is Sizer’s attempt to reach a wider audience, by simplifying and shortening his previous work, taking out much of the detailed historical and political material to be found there. Zion’s Christian Soldiers is left with some scarce resources to make its point and is primarily a politically motivated theological critique of Christian Zionism.

In the introduction to Zion’s Christian Soldiers, the author sets out the basic terminology for his later discussion, most importantly contrasting covenantalism and dispensationalism. Sizer also takes the time to debunk what he refers to as the “three red herrings”: that dispensationalism is the only biblical literalism; the assertion that anti-Zionism is anti- Semitism; and the “straw man” of supersessionism. Sizer is careful in chapter 1 to emphasize that in his eyes the issue is not solely political; rather, “It is not an understatement to say that what is at stake is our understanding of the gospel, the centrality of the cross, the role of the church and the nature of our missionary mandate, not least, to the beloved Jewish people.” (19) In chapter 2 the author takes pains to distinguish what he deems a kind of acceptable biblical literalism from that of what he calls the “ultra-literalists.” The section on “five common mistakes made by ultraliteralists” is a brief but trenchant look at some of the creative reading techniques used to interpret biblical prophecies in light of current events.

Chapter 3 engages Sizer’s central question of the identity of God’s chosen people. For Sizer, the answer is unambiguously that believers of all nations are the real children of God and that it is thus “inappropriate to … claim the Jewish people have a separate relationship with God based on their ancestry or Mosaic Law” (71). Chapter 4 takes up the issue of “the Promised Land.” It is here that Sizer paints a utopic picture of the nature of the state following the return from exile in Babylonia, asserting that “The Promised Land under the old covenant was to be shared and inclusive. This is a biblical model many Christian Palestinians, who favor a one-state solution, long to see accepted within the modern State of Israel” (89)

Chapter 5 challenges Christian Zionist support for Jerusalem as the eternal and undivided capital of Israel, arguing that Christians ought not to focus on an exclusivist, physical city of Jerusalem; rather, their vision should be trained on the inclusive and eternal heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation. From here Sizer moves smoothly into a chapter sharply criticizing Christian Zionists who support rebuilding the temple. Chapter 8 examines the doctrine of the “rapture” and premillenialism generally as creating a “destructive culture of pessimism and fatalism in Western Christianity” (150). The book ends with a chapter of conclusion, followed by a reprint of a sermon by John Stott (Rector Emeritus of All Souls Church, London) entitled “The Place of Israel.”

Zion’s Christian Soldiers suffers from some significant weaknesses. Sizer not only overestimates the influence of Christian Zionism among American evangelicals and significantly overrates the importance of dispensationalism to their Zionism, but he utterly exaggerates the role of Christian Zionism in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and global politics more generally. Sizer’s suggestion in the introduction that Christian Zionism explains everything from the West’s concern about Iran’s development of nuclear capability to Arab terrorism in Britain and America (“despite our commitment to the rule of international law, democracy and human rights” [10]) is simply hyberbolic. On page 19 Sizer likewise asserts that “the movement [Christian Zionism] as a whole is nevertheless leading the West, and the church with it, into a confrontation with Islam,” as if were it not for evangelical support for Israel, the West and Islam would have nothing to disagree about. Statements like these reduce the author’s credibility to such a degree that any valuable parts to his argument are lost along the way.

Sizer clearly does not quite “get” Judaism as an entity that is neither “religion” nor “race.” This is clearly illustrated in his assertion that “The myth of racial purity is nothing new, nor is the desire to limit or exclude those deemed inferior. This is particularly so today when defining Israel, since national identity tends to be restricted to those who are Jewish by race” (46). Beyond the simplistic understandings of religion, ethnicity, and nationalism here, Sizer’s echo of Nazi terminology here is a cheap shot and utterly irresponsible. To paraphrase, Sizer is trying to argue here that, unlike contemporary Israel/Zionism, Israel of the Old Testament was not based in “racial exclusivity.” Yet such allegations of a program of “racial purity” in contemporary Israel are difficult to reconcile with the fact of a state with non-Jewish Arabs comprising some 20 percent of its population, together with the racially heterogeneous mix of Jews in Israel that includes Yemenite Jews, Russian Jews, Indian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, and Chinese Jews.

Zion’s Christian Soldiers never pretends to be the work of objective scholarship and should not be thought of as such. The author has a very strong opinion that is anti-Israel and highly critical of Christians (or presumably anyone) who support Zionism. Sizer’s passionate anti-Zionism and anti-Judaism give this work a great deal of energy, yet they harm any scholarly aspirations this book might have. Sizer writes in the preface that the “fear of being labeled an anti-Semite is a powerful disincentive” (8) to challenging Christian support for Israel. Rather than simple anti-Semitism, his work expresses something more complex, deeper, and ultimately more terrifying—a sincere, theological, Christian anti-Judaism. In several instances the reader hardly knows whether to laugh or cry. Bizarre assertions such as “If we have come to know Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior, we will read the Hebrew Scriptures with Christian eyes—the way Jesus and his apostles did” (27) or “The challenge the apostles faced was proclaiming this good news among the very people [Jews?] who had crucified Christ” (110) speak for themselves and make it difficult to take the work seriously as a contribution to scholarship.

The NYTimes doesn't want us to know that William Safire was Jewish?

So I guess the Jews really do control the media, according to Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss: Dowd breaks ‘Times’ seal on Safire’s ‘influential’ religion. The site seems to have an obsession with the NYTimes obit of Safire - there are three articles on the subject - and how its failure to mention that Safire was Jewish is part of some deep plot to minimize the evil Zionist/Jewish influence on the diabolical MSM. It's kind of embarrassing to read this classically anti-semitic trope on the website of someone who prominently mentions his Jewishness himself.

Farouk Hosny - the Jews are to blame

Farouk Hosny, the Egyptian culture minister who was not chosen to be the head of UNESCO, blames Jews for UNESCO loss. He said that "European countries and the world's Jews" wanted him to lose. Another statement from him: "There are a group of the world's Jews who had a major influence in the elections who were a serious threat to Egypt taking this position,"

Nothing like being convicted out of your own mouth of anti-semitism.

September 1, 1939

I should be grading map exercises, but instead I've been reading blogs, and like other people, have found George Orwell's entries in his diaries (now being posted daily on the Orwell Diaries website) very poignant. For September 1, 1939, the day that Germany invaded Poland, he wrote:

Invasion of Poland began this morning. Warsaw bombed. General mobilization proclaimed in England, ditto in France plus martial law. [Radio]
Foreign & General
1. Hitler’s terms to Poland boil down to return of Danzig & plebiscite in the corridor, to be held 1 year hence & based on 1918 census. There is some hanky panky about time the terms were presented, & as they were to be answered by night of 30.8.39,[1] H.[2] claims that they are already refused. Daily Telegraph [a]
2. Naval reservists and rest of army and R.A.F. reservists called up. Evacuation of children etc. begins today, involving 3m. people & expected to take 3 days. [Radio; undated]
3. Russo-German pact ratified. Russian armed forces to be further increased. Voroshilov’s speech taken as meaning that Russo-German alliance is not contemplated. Daily Express [b]
4. Berlin report states Russian military mission is expected to arrive there shortly. Daily Telegraph [a]

The site includes PDFs of the newspaper articles he refers to in the diary.

This is a good counter to Pat Buchanan's retrograde America-First anti-semitism, most recently expressed in a column published on his website and others, which contends that "Hitler did not want a war with Poland." The only possible response to this comment, it seems to me, is "why the hell did he invade Poland then?!" Why does MSNBC retain him as a commentator? How much more blatant does his anti-semitism and pro-Nazism have to get before they decide that he's more of a liability than a draw?

Update: see this good TPM article on Buchanan. Commenter jeffgee reminded us of Molly Ivins' stellar line describing Buchanan's speech at the '92 GOP convention: it "sounded better in the original German."

And here's a good takedown of Buchanan by Orac.

This is the stanza of W.H. Auden's poem about the beginning of the war that I find the most moving:

Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

And again, today was a beautiful early September day - not a cloud in the sky, warm but not too warm, the sky a beautiful blue as it was on that Tuesday eight years ago in New York City and Washington.

So that's what you meant, Rev. Wright!

Jeremiah Wright Walks Back "Them Jews" Remark: He Meant To Say "Zionists."

Shooting at Holocaust Museum

Brian Beutler, on Talking Points Memo, asks whether the "Holocaust Museum Shooting Vindicates the DHS Report." This is the report that was issued in April warning about the rise of right-wing extremist groups. He writes,

Let's take stock of what's happened in the months since President Obama was elected just over six months ago, and in the weeks since the DHS story broke. In November, the New York Times reported that "gun owning" Americans - responding to rumors that the incoming administration would confiscate their weapons - had embarked on a shopping binge and were hoarding guns and ammunition. By the time Obama was inaugurated, the climate of fear on the far right had grown hotter. In February, MSN's moneyblog noted that the surge in sales had led, unsurprisingly, to a surge in gun stock prices.

Then on Sunday May 31 of this year, George Tiller - a Witchita doctor who provided late term abortions - was murdered while attending church services, allegedly by a right wing anti-abortion zealot named Scott Roeder.

And today, a white supremacist, Obama birth certificate conspiracy theorist - and World War II veteran -named James W. von Brunn entered the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with a shotgun and opened fire, killing one guard.

Of course, the plural of anecdote isn't data--but this is just the sort of violent extremism the DHS report warned about.

And these two murders are not the only ones motivated by violent right-wing extremism. David Neiwert and Sara Robinson of Orcinus have followed many stories very closely since before Obama's election about right-wing violence and attempted violence against African-Americans and other racial minorities, Jews, liberals (remember the shooting at a Unitarian-Universalist church last summer?), and police ("Two months ago, Richard Poplawski, a right-wing extremist, allegedly gunned down three police officers in Pittsburgh, in part because he feared the non-existent "Obama gun ban"). See Neiwert's post today on Crooks and Liars about the killing at the Holocaust Museum.

Jeffrey Goldberg has a whole series of posts from today about the shooting. (And for an extra-added dollop of anti-semitism, see the comment by Jeremiah Wright on whether he'll be speaking to President Obama anytime soon - "Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office." Or never, one hopes).

David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, comments today in the Washington Post:

This represents something else that is perhaps distinct to Jews in America compared to other groups. Other religious targets may be subject to vandalism or even discriminatory acts, but there are few other religious institutions that day in and day out must be concerned about acts of terrorism in the form of bombs, gun attacks, etc. On many levels Jews have been and remain the quintessential victims of religious intolerance and hatred in western civilization.

I say that knowing that today Muslim mosques have been targeted for vandalism. We just had a murder take place against a doctor in a church this past week and others are subject to acts of prejudice, but the notion of an entire community being concerned that their house of worship, their institutions might be targets of violent acts anywhere in the country still haunts American Jewry today with all of the successes that America's freedoms have brought to us.

He's correct. It's worthwhile to look at the FBI's hate crime report every year, as I have commented before. Jews are the most targeted of all religious groups in the United States - and Jews are about 2% of the U.S. population. (The group that is most targeted of all in the U.S. is African Americans). In 2007 (the most recent year for which there is a report), 69.2% of the victims of an anti-religious hate crime were Jews.

Of the 1,628 victims of an anti-religious hate crime:

• 69.2 percent were victims of an offender’s anti-Jewish bias.
• 8.7 percent were victims of an anti-Islamic bias.
• 4.3 percent were victims of an anti-Catholic bias.
• 4.1 percent were victims of an anti-Protestant bias.
• 0.5 percent were victims of an anti-Atheist/Agnostic bias.
• 9.1 percent were victims of a bias against other religions (anti-other religion).
• 4.1 percent were victims of a bias against groups of individuals of varying religions (anti-multiple religions, group).

Adventures in Anti-Semitic Implicature — Crooked Timber

This is a very odd response to the study by Malhotra and Margalit about "Antisemitism and the economic crisis."

John Holbo writes:

Basically, a weirdly high number of responses to “How much to blame were the Jews for the financial crisis?” were in the ‘moderate’ to ‘a great deal’ range. 32% of Democrats and 18% of Republicans ‘blame the Jews’ at least moderately for the financial crisis. I realize there is such a thing as the crazification factor. But that’s still pretty high. (I’m guessing the Republican numbers are lower in part because high numbers of them don’t actually admit there’s a crisis. They might be more willing to blame the Jews if it were made clear that they weren’t thereby committed to conceding the existence of the thing the blame is for. But that’s just an unscientific guess.)

The weird thing, of course, is that people are willing to go with ‘the Jews’ as a cohesive, mass-noun sort of designation. In part, people must be responding the way they do on the basis of a vague awareness that there are lots of Jewish names in the stories about the financial crisis. Bernie Madoff, for example. That is, they are saying: among those responsible (if we assume those at the top of the financial world are responsible) there were a number of Jews.

Has Holbo never heard of anti-semitic conspiracy theories that Jews control the banking system? Has he never heard of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? He writes as if it is a new thing in human history that people refer to "the Jews." Unfortunately, this has been true since about the second or third century C.E., when Christian anti-Judaism really got into swing blaming "the Jews" for the death of Jesus. How could an educated person in our day and age not be aware of such conspiracy theories?

The original article appears at the Boston Review

Here's a couple of paragraphs on the statistics:

In order to assess explicit prejudice toward Jews, we directly asked respondents “How much to blame were the Jews for the financial crisis?” with responses falling under five categories: a great deal, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, not at all. Among non-Jewish respondents, a strikingly high 24.6 percent of Americans blamed “the Jews” a moderate amount or more, and 38.4 percent attributed at least some level of blame to the group.

Interestingly, Democrats were especially prone to blaming Jews: while 32 percent of Democrats accorded at least moderate blame, only 18.4 percent of Republicans did so (a statistically significant difference). This difference is somewhat surprising given the presumed higher degree of racial tolerance among liberals and the fact that Jews are a central part of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition. Are Democrats simply more likely to “blame everything” thus casting doubt on whether the anti-Jewish attitudes are real? Not at all. We also asked how much “individuals who took out loans and mortgages they could not afford” were to blame on the same five-point scale. In this case, Democrats were less likely than Republicans to assign moderate or greater blame.

Educational attainment also correlates with variation in anti-Semitic attitudes. Whereas only 18.3 percent of respondents with at least a bachelor’s degree blamed the Jews a moderate amount or more, 27.3 percent of those lacking a 4-year degree did so. Again, we get a similar reversal when examining the blameworthiness of individuals who took out loans they could not afford.

I think that these results are entirely in concert with past experiences of rising anti-semitic attitudes during times of economic crisis. Anti-semitic beliefs are like a subclinical infection - when the immune system is robust, the person doesn't get sick, but when it weakens, the person begins to have symptoms. These are beliefs that are "out there" in the body politic that people can have recourse to explain why things are so bad for them. I would suspect that a fair number of those blaming "the Jews" at this time would normally not exhibit anti-semitic prejudices.

It's interesting to compare an ADL survey from 2005. From the press release announcing the study:

The 2005 Survey of American Attitudes Towards Jews in America, a national poll of 1,600 American adults conducted March 18 through March 25, found that 14 % of Americans - or nearly 35 million adults - hold views about Jews that are "unquestionably anti-Semitic," compared to 17% in 2002, Previous ADL surveys over the last decade had indicated that anti-Semitism was in decline. Seven years ago, in 1998, the number of Americans with hardcore anti-Semitic beliefs had dropped to 12% from 20 % in 1992.

"When it comes to Jews, old stereotypes die hard," said Mr. Foxman, "especially about loyalty, the death of Jesus, and power. For over 40 years one of the most stable and telling indicators of anti-Jewish prejudice in America has been the question of fundamental Jewish loyalty to the U.S. The survey found that 33% of Americans believe Jews are more loyal to Israel than America, no change from 2002. In 1998, it was 31%; in 1992; 35%.

Thirty percent (30%) of the American people believe Jews were responsible for the death of Christ, up from 25% in 2002.

Stereotypes about "Jewish power" in the U.S. have replaced many of the classical ethnic stereotypes previously attributed to Jewish Americans. The survey revealed that while the percentage of Americans who believe Jews have too much power has diminished, Americans who hold the most anti-Semitic views are preoccupied with the perceptions of Jewish power:

"Too much power in the US"

* General population - 15%, down from 20% in 2002
* Most anti-Semitic - 70 %

"Too much power in the Business world"

* General population - 19% down from 23% in 2002
* Most anti-Semitic - 80%

"Too much control of Wall Street"

* General population - 17% down from 20% in 2002
* Most anti-Semitic- 75%

The 2005 study gives some indications of why the response to the recent study results in a higher number of Democrats responding in an anti-semitic way. It has to do with the population composition of people who identify and vote as Democrats: the fact that there is a much higher percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics in the Democratic Party than the Republican. (Let me hasten to say that this does not mean that the Republican Party is generally speaking less racist than the Democrats - the opposite is true, in my opinion).

Regarding one of the most significant and fastest growing segments of the American population, Hispanics, there continues to be an extraordinary gap between those born in the United States and those born abroad, though somewhat less than in 2002. The survey revealed that 35 % of foreign-born Hispanics hold hardcore anti-Semitic beliefs, (down from 44%) while 19 % of Hispanics born in the U.S. fall into the same category (down from 20%). The anti-Semitic propensities of Hispanics were significantly above the national average -- 29% for Hispanics; 14% for all Americans....

The number of African-Americans with strong anti-Semitic beliefs continued to remain high and stable since 1992. The 2005 survey found that 36% of African-Americans hold strong anti-Semitic beliefs, four times more than the 9% for whites. In 1992 it was 37%; 1998 – 34%; 2002- 35%.

Education and age are also important factors:

Education and age also continued to play roles in determining anti-Semitism.

Less educated Americans continue to be more likely to hold anti-Semitic views:

• Education - The more educated a person is, the less likely he or she is to hold anti-Semitic views: 35% of high school graduates hold strong anti-Semitic views, compared to 13% of college graduate and 5% of those who hold post graduate degrees.

• Age – The older a person, the more likely he or she is to hold anti-Semitic views: 24% of adults over the age of 65 hold strong anti-Semitic views, compared to 12% of those 18-29 years old and 11% of those 30-39 years old.

In a post on Crooked Timber, Malhotra and Margalit go into more detail about their methodology and how they arrived at their figures.

It would be nice if people who pontificate about anti-semitism actually knew something about it....

More on the UCU - "Jew-free Congress"

David Hirsh gives his conclusions about the UCU Congress meeting - "Michael Cushman is excited by his victory. He hasn’t noticed the significance of the fact that Congress is now free of Jews. Except for Jews like him, the Jews who speak 'as a Jew' but who are quite unable to recognize antisemitism. Haim Bresheeth. John Rose. Michael Cushman. These are the Jews now, at UCU Congress." (Michael Cushman is one of the leaders of the boycott Israel campaign in the UCU). See here for more on Cushman: "Mike Cushman's 'Protocols' Moment").

For more thoughts on UCU, see Flesh is Grass - UCU Congress Delirium.

Norm has chimed in - UCU steps back into the sewer.

UCU votes again to boycott Israel

David Hirsh, blogging live from the UCU Congress, reports on the course of the discussion and the votes on the proposals to boycott Israel academia. The boycott motion passed, despite the legal advice given to leaders of UCU that "to pass this motion would be unlawful because it is likely to be viewed by a court as a call to boycott Israeli academic institutions." The leading British academic union has once again disgraced itself by singling out Israel from all other nations of the world.

Reading through David's notes on the discussion it is very interesting to discover how obsessed the boycotters are with Israel. Several other motions were passed expressing concern with other war-torn parts of the world (for example, Sri Lanka), but the discussions were much less extensive and revealed a much lower level of personal engagement. Why are the academics of UCU Congress so personally touched by the Palestinian cause above all others in the world? Why do they continue to decide to engage in actions whose main effect is to alienate members of their own union? (It certainly isn't having any effect on Israel).

Why do Jews and (ex-)Israelis like Haim Breesheth bring to the fore their own Jewish identity, as if this gives them greater moral authority than others? David reports these words from Breesheth -

I am speaking as an Israeli and as a Jew.
Very many Israeli academics are supporting their government 96%
Do not rely upon Jewish academics in Israel.
This is not the way we will resolve the situation. Not the way South Africa was resolved.
three quarters of Israelis have education. three quarters of army officers and soldiers in tanks and planes and checkpoints have all been through academia.
out of 20,000 israeli academics less than 200 support bds.
To support Palestinians and Israeli academics who are against the war crimes committed you can make history today. I know Sally and Sasha are not looking forward to calling this null and void.
I urge you to take a moral position. vote for the amendment.

How does Breeshet know that 96% of Israeli academics support the government? Has he taken a poll? In the last election, the right-wing bloc certainly did not win 96% of the votes! And what does he mean by saying that three quarters of Israelis have education, including soldiers? He seems to be implying that they gained their political opinions from their university education. How true is that in Israel? I have my doubts - Israel is a highly politicized society, and the people I know in Israel who have gone to university generally leave with the same political opinions they entered with.

From my own experience of Israeli academics (anecdotal) many of them are opposed to the occupation - I don't know if it's a majority or not. It's not particularly surprising that fewer than 200 of Israeli academics support BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) - why would people support something that could cripple their own work? Yet he sees this as evidence to back his assertion that Israeli academics "support their government." BDS is not the only way to oppose actions of the Israeli government. I oppose many actions of the Israeli government, especially the current right-wing government, but such opposition doesn't require support of BDS! His is a very narrow definition of what it means to oppose the government.

This vote is not making history - except as further evidence for the moral degeneration of some British academics.

Anti-semitism in Venezuela

When I was growing up I believed that anti-semitism was an affliction of the past - it was not something that was going to affect me. It was something that happened before I was born - the Holocaust was over and Jew-hatred in the United States had come to an end after the horrific revelations of the Jewish deaths at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. I did not even know any survivors when I was growing up - the one time I saw someone at a family bar mitzvah with a number on his arm I was frozen with shock, and never talked about it with my parents. I hardly experienced any anti-semitism on a personal basis.

As I grew older, I began to read articles about attacks on Jews outside of Israel - for example, the attack on the synagogue on the Rue Copernica in Paris in 1980, which killed 4 people outside while 600 were at Shabbat services inside. Or an attack on August 9, 1982, the Goldenberg restaurant on the Rue de Rosiers in the Marais (Pletzl) in Paris was attacked by Abu Nidal - six people were killed and 22 were wounded. But it was clear that these were acts of terrorists, not of the government of France. I could still think - well, there may be occasional anti-semitic terrorist attacks on Jews outside of Israel by people who are twisted enough to think that all Jews should be blamed for whatever Israel does. I believed that outside of the Arab and Muslim world, governments will protect Jews, they will not conspire against them - and there are now hardly any Jews left in the Arab-Muslim world, so we are still relatively safe in the world.

The news coming out of Venezuela has shattered this illusion that I had still nurtured from my childhood. The Venezuelan government is consciously fomenting Jew hatred and the fruits of this teaching have issued forth in the form of direct attacks against Jews, Jewish schools, and synagogues. This is the first time I can remember in my lifetime that there has been a deliberate governmental anti-semitic campaign in a non-Arab or Muslim country.

Daniel Duqenal, of Venezuela News and Views, translates part of an anti-semitic article published in Aporrea, which is supported by the Venezuelan government: Teaching antisemitism in Venezuela. The anti-semitic article gives instructions to Venezuelans on how to conduct an anti-semitic campaign: boycott Jewish-owned shops or restaurants, or any shops where kosher food is sold; scream at Jews in the street about the Palestinians, denounce any Jew living in Venezuela, especially if owns a business, and questions whether a Jewish school named Hebraica should exist.

The synagogue in Maripérez was attacked a couple of days ago - it was desecrated by thugs.

As Daniel writes:

I did not think that yesterday's post would be validated that fast: the synagogue of Caracas was attacked last night by a group of pro Chavez thugs. They knew perfectly well what they were doing, they knew how to find the Torah and left taking with them the surveillance videos. The antisemitism of Chavez is now having serious consequences....

The government was prompt in taking its distances from the Synagogue attack. Unfortunately for the government even if it can prove that there is no direct links between its Red Shirted storm troopers and the attack, Chavez and his acolytes have been saying too many things against Israel (when not the Jews themselves) not to take blame from this attack. It also does not help the credibility of the government that the "condemnation" was emitted during a political act where the Venezuelan diplomatic expelled from Israel was received as heroes. As if they ever held a stone in some Intifada....

At least elsewhere the condemnation was certainly less ambiguous, showing clearly that any antisemitism in Venezuela is to be found almost exclusively in the chavista ranks. The Catholic Church, the dissident Student movement, the political opposition did not waste time. For many the finger is pointed to the hate speech coming from the government itself, something that this blogger has been writing for years now, and which is today quite open from scholars to some of the best legal minds of the opposition.

Hugo Chavez did "condemn the actions on the synagogue of Caracas" on Sunday, while hinting that opposition leaders actually plotted to attack the synagogue.

The ADL said the incident was not random, rather it was "directly related to the atmosphere of anti-Jewish intimidation promoted by President Chavez and his government apparatus." The ADL called for Chavez to "abandon the official government rhetoric of demonization of Israel and the Jews and to publicly denounce this wanton act of anti-Semitic violence."

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro condemned the attack and promised it would be investigated, while reiterating his government's opposition to what he called Israel's criminal government. "We respect the Jewish people, but we ask respect for the people of Palestine and their right to life," Maduro said in a ceremony called to welcome home two Venezuelan diplomats expelled from Israel this week. [RL: what does Palestine have to do with an attack in Venezuela?!]

The Israeli Foreign Ministry ordered the envoys to leave after Venezuela expelled all Israeli diplomats on January 6th, to protest Israel's offensive in the Gaza strip. Chavez labeled Israeli leaders as genocidal, as nearly 1,300 Palestinians are said to have died in the 22-day offensive in Gaza. [RL: And if Israel had actually wanted to commit genocide, many thousands more of Palestinians in Gaza would be dead now]

Leaders of Venezuela's estimated 15,000-member Jewish community warned that vocal denunciations of Israel by Chavez and the country's government-funded news media may have encouraged Friday's attack. "These declarations permeate society," said Abraham Levy, president of the Venezuelan Confederation of Israelite Associations. "We feel uncomfortable, threatened and intimidated," said Elias Farache, of the association.

The Argentine office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization, condemned the attack and warned of an anti-Semitic campaign in Venezuela.

Chavez in 2005 sparked outrage in the Jewish community by stating that those who killed Jesus Christ had become the owners of the world's riches. A Venezuelan Jewish organization later came to Chavez's defense, denying the statement was anti-Semitic.

And to think that good leftists in the United States and other western countries consider Hugo Chavez a wonderful revolutionary leader whose Bolivarian Revolution we should all emulate. He is nothing more than a fascist wrapped in the flag of socialism and revolution.

See also Adam Holland on the anti-semitic campaign of the Venezuelan government. And a report on Z-Word about the attack on the Caracas synagogue from Eamonn McDonagh, who usefully provides English translations from Venezuelan newspapers for the Spanish-impaired.

Dueling demonstrations

Youtube video of a pro-Hamas rally in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, a couple of days ago.



Another video of the same events.



I had read about the video of this rally on a couple of websites (for example, Harry's Place has a post about it), but until I watched it I didn't realize how disturbing I would find it. At a big intersection in the city, a large pro-Hamas demonstration faces a smaller group of pro-Israel demonstrators; they're separated from each other by a main street and the police. The demonstration lasted a couple of hours, and as it grew dark, the pro-Hamas side grew more numerous and eventually people from that group tried to cross the street to confront the pro-Israel group directly, rather than simply hurling insults at them. (The level of political discourse was not very high, let's put it that way). Fortunately, the police intervened and forced them back onto the sidewalk. Had I been part of the pro-Israel group, I would have found it very scary at that point. This was no peaceful demonstration in support of the Palestinian people.

I noticed some signs from A.N.S.W.E.R. in the crowd but wasn't able to see many slogans.

Some slogans - "Free free Palestine," "Allahu Akbar," the Shehada, "Palestine will never die," lots of cars honking their horns.

Update: The Miami Herald has an article about the Ft. Lauderdale rally, with their own video that covers the pro-Israel demonstrators much more thoroughly. One of the pro-Israel demonstrators held a sign saying - "Nuke Gaza Then Iran." They also chant "Stop the missiles," one man chanted "Palestine does not exist," another said, "Jail Hamas then you'll have peace." Most of the pro-Israel demonstrators were pretty aggressive young guys. I don't think I would have felt particularly comfortable standing with them either.

Buffalo anti-Israel demonstration

Just looking through the list of other related videos on Youtube, I found a video of a demonstration on Tuesday in Buffalo. The slogans are less disturbing but not particularly comforting. I certainly wouldn't participate in this rally either. Some slogans: "Down with the occupation," "Down with Israel," then there's a speech by someone with a hoarse voice, and some cries of "Takbir! Takbir! Allahu Akbar!" He says, "Please stop supporting Israel." "Long live Palestine!" And that hoary old chestnut - "The people united will never be defeated!" "Viva Viva Palestina!" "Viva viva intifada!" "Stop bombing Gaza now! Free free Palestine!"



See here for a longer video of this same demonstration in Buffalo.

Anti-war? Or pro-Hamas?

A photographer who goes by the name of redsquirrel08 has posted photographs of demonstrations in New York City that have occurred since the weekend to protest the Israeli attacks on Gaza. It is instructive to read the signs the demonstrators carried to determine how exactly they think about Jews and Israel, and what should occur in Gaza. Reading these slogans would cause one to have grave doubts that the demonstrators actually seek peace. Those represented in the demonstration include Al-Awda, the International Action Center (who, among other things, support the current government of North Korea; founded by Ramsey Clark), the Islamic Thinkers Society, Neturei Karta and some group called revolutionmuslim.com.

The slogans from the “Free Palestine” rally in NYC Dec. 28 include:

ISO - picture of six babies, holding up their fists – “Free Palestine."

Al-Awda slogans – "Long Live in the Resistance in Gaza," "Stop Zionist Genocide in Gaza"; "Long Live the Palestinian Resistance, Break the Siege on Gaza Now"; "Stop the Christmas Massacre in Gaza"; “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea” with a drawing of Palestine in the colors of the Palestinian flag and a fist in front of it holding a key, “Gaza is Today’s Warsaw Ghetto”; "U.S.-‘Israel’: Hands Off Gaza" (the scare quotes around Israel I presume because it doesn't really exist).

Some handmade signs: “Free Palestine – One State with Rights of all” - This one has a drawing of a man knocking down a wall with a sledgehammer. “Another Jewish Mets fan against the Occupation"; a couple of home made signs saying “Might Does Not Make Right” and newsphotos from Gaza; "Collective Punishment is a war crime"; “We are all Palestinians”;“End U.S.-Israel Racist Atrocities” with a swastika. A woman wearing a shirt saying “Jews against the Occupation”; "Holy Innocents Herod at 1st Christmas, Israel 2008 in Gaza" (the old anti-semitism meets the new anti-semitism - Israel representing those who crucified Jesus, the Palestinians representing Jesus).

International Action Center: "Gaza’s Blood is on U.S. hands"

The signs from the Islamic Thinkers Society are the most violent - I hope the FBI is keeping an eye on these guys. Their website is revolting.
“God will send the Mushroom Cloud from the Sky on Israel”
“Allah will destroy the Terrorist State of Israel” with an Israeli flag below the words – inside the Star of David is a Swastika
“Israel does not exist – Palestine is Islamic Land, not Arab or Jewish land.”
“Who ever calls for Two State Solution is the Enemy of Islam and Muslims.”
“The Holocaust was a hoax”

Revolutionmuslim.com also has a very violent sign, showing a torso with an explosive belt on it, and the slogan, “May Allah Give Victory to the Islamic Resistance in Palestine,” and a drawing of an AK-47, also a slogan in Arabic. I certainly hope the FBI is keeping an eye on these folks also. The front page of their web site quotes Ayman al-Zawahari (no. 2 in Al-Qaeda) on the Israeli attacks on Gaza.

At another rally a couple of days later, which seems to have been sponsored by the same coalition of groups, there are some new signs printed by A.N.S.W.E.R. (connected to the International Action Center). Slogans include: "Free Palestine; support the right of return." Neturei Karta showed up again as well. There were also some people from the Green Party. A woman held a sign reading: "Apartheid: Wrong for South Africans, Wrong for Palestinians." Below it was the iconic painting of Barack Obama with the slogan, "Yes, we can. End U.S. military aid to Israel!"

There's a particularly disgusting sign - a photo of a mutiliated body, with the slogan, "What JEWS do to Palestinians and Iraqis."

And across the street from them, a pro-Israel rally - guys wearing kippot, Israeli flags, and some slogans in Arabic which I imagine are pro-Israel. Slogans include: "Stop Hamas Killers," "Hamas Stop Attacks." Also a sign - "Support the West Not Islam." Other signs: One with the slogan "If 15 rockets bombarded NYC daily, you'd be pretty pissed too." It also says "Stand with Israel in their right to defend their citizens." A sign in Hebrew: "The disengagement - terrible danger to Jews." On the top it says, "The Rebbe of Lubavitch, the King Messiah, warns." I think I saw this same sign last summer when I was in Israel, right after the terrorist attack on King David St. the last day I was in Jerusalem. A handmade sign: "Israel is dying for peace; Hamas and Hezbollah celebrate murder." I can't tell who organized this rally, which seems intended to counter the anti-Israel protestors.

Links to articles on impact of Madoff on Jewish community

Minneapolis - Jewish groups reeling over Madoff scheme.

JTA article on Picower foundation and the groups it gave money to. This was a very large foundation - half a billion dollars in assets. In 2007 they gave about $2.5 million to Jewish groups.

Washington, D.C. - Local toll runs high in Madoff collapse.

Palm Beach, Florida, charities damaged by Madoff.

Baltimore - Jewish charities not struck by Madoff collapse.

Article on Boston and the views of Boston Jewish community leaders, in the Boston Globe.

And .... if you're curious to read an anti-Semitic article on Madoff, take a look at James Petras's article in Dissident Voice. His article is cloaked in a lot of Marxist and anti-Israel rhetoric, but is anti-Semitic nonetheless. (To get more of a flavor of his rhetoric, see his article, "Barack Obama: 'America's First Jewish President'"; see also this ADL article that includes a discussion of him). Dissident Voice, by the way, is the journal that has published Daniel McGowan's defense of Ernst Zundel, the convicted Neo-Nazi now sitting in a German jail for Holocaust denial. Update: McGowan has now written his own anti-Semitic take on Madoff for Dissident Voice: The Madoff Victims: Schadenfreude, not Anti-Semitism.