How I Went From Mostly Disengaged To Ardent Zionist

One thing about me is that I constantly seek out opposing viewpoints and new sources of information, and reevaluate my opinions if warranted.

Profound issues that I have changed my mind on over the course of my life include gun control, affirmative action, the death penalty, and vegetarianism.  Of those, I have moved in what would be considered the more stereotypically "conservative" direction on three, and the more stereotypically "liberal" direction on one of them.  My point here is that I am very open minded about issues.

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Before around 2005 Israel did not occupy a large part of my thought space.  When it did, I was a firm believer in a two state solution based on the 1967 borders, and would have probably, if asked, said that I thought there was plenty of blame to go around on both sides.

Around that time, Israel began to loom much larger in my life because I began to be exposed to virulently anti-Israel rhetoric at the blog Daily Kos.  As I've discussed here many times, this rhetoric was often explicitly antisemitic.

As the Israeli-Arab conflict started to loom larger, I started exploring many of the common anti-Israel resources.  This included popular websites, lectures, and videos.

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What I found back then, and what I have continued to find since then, has been profoundly disappointing.  The anti-Israel side just simply doesn't have much of a worthy case, or if they do, they are certainly not making it.

The main problem is that a huge portion of anti-Israel rhetoric is based on pseudo anthropological nonsense.  Rather than new and interesting perspectives on, say, the Six Day War or the Oslo Accords or somesuch, what I have encountered is mostly ill-informed babble and transparently ridiculous analogies.  If this is what the anti-Israel side has to make their case, then their case is simply not worth making.

The most common of these are appeals to Arabs being "indigenous" and Jews being otherwise, like they are Amish in Bolivia, which completely misunderstands the millennia of Jewish connection and presence in The Land, not to mention the complex patterns of migrations in the Levant with the ebb and flow of empires over the past 200 years.  There is also incessant simplistic and incorrect application of very particular mid 20th century American racial paradigms to places where it doesn't belong.  There are constant - apparently straight faced, self confident, and seriously intended - references to "brown" and "white" people, revealing that those who peddle these notions have never been to Israel or the territories and have no idea who lives there.

I have been shocked at how many times I have seen anti-Israel discussions refer to Arabs as being "the real Semites" or somesuch.  This is conjuring a ridiculous and self-parodying pseudo-anthropological notion out of thin air.  There is no such thing as a "Semite" - Semitic is simply a language family that includes the highland Ethiopian languages, Hebrew, Arabic, and Maltese.  Nobody creates such false categories out of other language families, such as claiming that Hungarians are the "most Ural-Altaic" people, since such things are transparently absurd.  Languages are simply languages, and mean nothing more.

Then there is the constant embrace of anti-scientific garbage such as the Khazar hoax, which continues to stump me.  It is like debating with creationists or climate deniers, no amount of evidence will sway people from their factually indefensible position.  It is a profound truism that if your position depends on disproven nonsense, or even if you perceive that your position is dependent on disproven nonsense, then your position is not valid.

When actual historical events are discussed, they are almost always done so with apparently no understanding of important context.   What I have seen makes me doubt that most anti-Israel people are aware of very important and basic facts such as the UN Partition plan and the Jewish acceptance thereof, or the Peel Commission report, or other important events in the history of the region.

This is all not even mentioning the explicitly and unambiguously antisemitic content, such as the USS Liberty Hoax that is an unavoidable staple of anti-Israel advocacy, and the constant Holocaust revisionism, recently laid bare by the Greta Berlin episode.   

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The bottom line is that while I began my search for opposing viewpoints several years ago with a largely open mind, what I found has shown to me that apparently the anti-Israel position has little of serious value to offer.  If there is a valid case to be made there, they are not making it. 

What began as an exploration of an issue that previously had little sway for me has moved me toward being a very committed pro-Israel partisan.  The case for Israel that I have seen is based on the decades-long quest on the part of the Jewish side to reach a mutually acceptable solution, going back to the Peel Commission report, and the constant moves by the Arab side not to accept anything but complete victory and even genocide.  Nothing I have encountered among anti-Israel viewpoints, in now several years of searching, has made a worthwhile case.  Instead, I have mostly seen transparently silly pseudo-anthropological nonsense and Farrakhan-esque ranting devoid of any relevancy to the actual situation.

In spite of my considerable efforts to find it, there really seems to be no serious there there on the anti-Israel side.  Therefore, I have become a committed pro-Israel partisan.  So much so that I now seek out wine from the Golan Heights, and buy my chick peas from halfway around the world.  And of course I had to finally go there.  It is an irony that this whole path began with my initial online encounters with the anti-Israel side, half a decade ago.

The Logical Inconsistencies of Antisemites and Israel Bashers

Like any other extremists, antisemites and Israel bashers (and really, I can stop pretending there is any distinction there) have an extraordinary capacity for doublethink.  Doublethink was George Orwell's term for happily believing who mutually contradictory things at the same time.  Lately I've been pondering some of these things that antisemites and derangers believe and claim in tandem, which elementary logic dictates cannot be true in combination.

Not that logical consistency is a hallmark of antisemites and Israel bashers, but consider:

1) Jews aren't a people / Israel is racist

Denial of Jewish peoplehood is a staple of antisemites and Israel bashers.  We see it constantly on internet forums such as Daily Kos, HuffPo, and elsewhere that antisemites congregate in any numbers.  The fact that Jews are a people is supported by every shred of genetic and historical evidence.  But denial of such is so prevalent that it is functionally the "gateway" opinion to full fledged antisemitism.  If there is one thing in this world that David Duke, Hamas, and the Green Party of Australia agree on, it is that Jews are not a people.

Which is quite puzzling considering that often the very next thing out of their mouths is that Israel - sometimes its practices but usually its very existence - is "racist."  Such a charge can only mean that Israel advantages one ethnic group or race over others.

So if Jews aren't a people, then what ethnic group or race is allegedly "racist" Israel advantaging over others?  Am I supposed to believe that Israel just assembled a random collection of unrelated Khazars, Yemenis, and Ethiopians and decided to grant them privileged group status?  Ridiculous.

At this point Israel derangers might think they have an out by claiming that "racist" can mean favoring a particular religion over another, and while Jews are not a people in their minds they are a religion.  However such a dodge can be taken down trivially:  Israel is full of secular and atheist Jews who do not believe in Judaism the religion at all.  Even the great deranger "right wing" boogeyman Avigdor Lieberman is a secular atheist, and in fact has a political party based on that position.  And yet in spite of not being adherents of Judaism, these people are supposedly part of the advantaged segment of Israeli society.  Can you think of any theocracy or religious based state in the world where atheists are included in the privileged class?  Of course not.

The only way Israel can be "racist" is if Jews are a people or a race.

Now of course, I believe that Jews are a people and that Israel is not racist, which is logically consistent if one considers Israel to be a nation-state like most in the Old World, no different than Italy or Greece in that regard.  But for both of those to be untrue simultaneously is a logical impossibility.

2) Israel is a military juggernaut / Israel is a paper tiger utterly dependent on the USA

This one just makes me laugh.  In one breath we are regaled with all of the terrible sins of Israel's seemingly all-powerful endlessly ass kicking military - how they bomb innocent Gazans to smithereens, pre-emptively attack everyone under the sun, and even have nuclear weapons.  Not to mention that they militarily conquered and occupied all of this land in 1967.  Then in the next breath we are told how Israel would be nothing without America and always gets America to "do its fighting for it".  The later obviously ignores the many times that Israel achieved stunning military victory against much larger powerful neighbors with no outside help, such as in the 1948 war, the Six Day War, and so on, but whatever.

So which one is it, bashers?  Cuz it obviously can't be both.

3) Jews are an alien presence in Eretz Israel / The Dome of the Rock is on the site of The Temple

The later is not generally in the circle of concern of Western antisemites, but their Islamist allies are fond of it.

But let's look at the former first.  We constantly hear from the likes of Hamas - and misguided Western useful idiots (but interestingly not usually right wing antisemites) - that Jews are a foreign presence and don't belong in Israel, and will have to return to their "countries of origin."  This is fairly representative of Islamist (and even some secular Arab) extremist attitudes toward Israelis.

Yet somehow they have no problem maintaining that the Temple Mount where the Dome of the Rock sits is the genuine site of the ancient Israelite temples, not to mention many other episodes mentioned in The Bible.  This is just absolutely inconsistent with the position that Jews are usurpers living in Israel, since all of these episodes are obviously associated with Jews.  But hey, as we are seeing, consistency is not their strong suit.

4) The Green Line is an international border / Israel is not recognized as a state

Whatever your feelings about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, it is clear that anti-Israel rhetoric constantly appeals to the pre-1967 Green Line as an international border between two polities which was violated and then occupied.  We are told that Israel must evacuate its illegal settlements from beyond the Green Line, as this is conquered land, and return everyone to behind the line.  Fair enough, as far as it goes.

But for the Green Line to actually demarcate one state from another, that would necessarily mean that there was a state on both sides.  However, until 1979 no Arab state recognized Israel as a state within any borders, the Green Line or otherwise.  No diplomatic relations, no name on maps, nothing.  The armistice that ended the 1948 war which established the Green Line in the first place, on Arab insistence, made it clear that the Green Line was only a cease fire line, and did not imply any sort of permanent border.

Even today, only two Arab states, Egypt and Jordan, recognize Israel as a state.  For the rest, and for all of their sympathizers in the West, since Israel isn't a state, how can the Green Line have any significance?  Logically, there should be no difference between one side of the Green Line and the other.

(on the last point, we know this is what they truly believe, but they rarely come out and say it directly to a Western audience)

5) Israel is a theocracy / Israel promotes homosexuality and promiscuity

Israel bashers like the Iranian regime and others in the Middle East frequently attribute the presence of sexuality and other libertine behaviors that they don't like to the nefarious influence of Israel.  Big, bad, sinful, satanic, atheist Israel.

And yet we are regaled all the time, by their sympathizers in the West, with charges that Israel is a theocracy or religious-based state, largely from people who don't or can't grasp the concept of Jewish peoplehood.

So which is it?  Is Israel a theocracy or a decadent secular Sodom.  Cuz logically it can't be both!


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So there you have it, a sampling of idiotic, inconsistent doublethink when it comes to Israel.  It is strange because there is plenty of ammo if derangers wanted to rhetorically assault Israel, which, while being incorrect and misleading, at least would not be inherently logically inconsistent.  All they would have to do is pick one item from each of the pairs I mentioned and disregard the other.  They would be wrong, but at least they would be consistent.
 
But they can't even do that.  Sometimes even the most jaded among us can be surprised by the depths of mental laxity some people are capable of.

Pioneer of Global Peace Studies Turns Out To Be Anti-Semitic Bigot

COURTESY OF IAN REIFOWITZ OVER AT DAILY KOS

This news is beyond disappointing and disheartening. Not much to add, other than to share the story.
From Haaretz:

Johan Galtung, Norwegian sociologist nicknamed the “father of peace studies,” made anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli remarks while lecturing at the University of Oslo, in an article published afterward in the Norwegian press and in an interview with Haaretz that followed.

Among other statements, Galtung claimed that a possible connection exists between the terrorist responsible for the massacre of children in Norway last summer, and the Mossad. “The Jews control U.S. media, and divert for the sake of Israel,” wrote Galtung in an article published in Norway.

He pointed out that one of the factors behind the anti-Semitic sentiment that led to Auschwitz was the fact that Jews held influential positions in German society. Galtung also recommended reading “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” – one of the most popular anti-Semitic texts in the world.

Who is Johan Galtung? From wikipedia:

Johan Galtung (born 24 October 1930) is a Norwegian sociologist and the principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies. He founded the Peace Research Institute Oslo in 1959, serving as its Director until 1970, and established the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. In 1969, he was appointed by the King-in-Council to the world's first chair in peace and conflict studies, at the University of Oslo. He resigned his professorship in 1977, and has since held professorships at several universities around the world. Galtung is a prolific researcher, having made contributions to many fields in sociology. He has published more than 1000 articles and over 100 books. He was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize in 1987, and has received many other accolades.

The details of Galtung's statements are even beyond what you are thinking. He claims as his authority on Jews the writings of white supremacist William Luther Pierce, leader of the white separatist organization National Alliance.  Pierce is the author of The Turner Diaries, which the Southern Poverty Law Center called the "bible of the racist right," and which inspired Timothy McVeigh.

As for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it is a well-established fact that it is a forgery. From wikipedia:

The Protocols is a fabricated document purporting to be factual. It was originally produced in Russia between 1897 and 1903, possibly by Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky, head of the Paris office of the Russian Secret Police, and unknown others.

Source material for the forgery consisted jointly of Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu or Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, an 1864 political satire by Maurice Joly and a chapter from Biarritz, an 1868 novel by the antisemitic German novelist Hermann Goedsche, which had been translated into Russian in 1872.

Galtung, however, stated: "It is hard to believe that the Russian secret police was able to be so specific," and when Haaretz followed up with him he continued to hold on to this sickening fantasy: "I don’t know exactly who wrote the protocols."
For those unfamiliar with exactly what the Protocols are and have meant in history, again from wikipedia:

Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were major proponents of the text. It was studied, as if a factual document, in German classrooms after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, despite having been exposed as fraudulent years before. In the opinion of historian Norman Cohn, the Protocols was Hitler's primary justification for initiating the Holocaust—his "warrant for genocide."

As I said, I have nothing to add. This is a truly devastating thing to hear, in particular coming from someone who has been such a strong advocate for peace.

Strange Times We Live In: The Red-Brown-Redneck Alliance

One of the most fascinating things for me as I have explored the depths of blogdom and activism is the ideological alliance that has coalesced among the strangest of bedfellows, who find common cause at the intersection of antisemitism and Israel hatred.

It has often been mentioned how Israel exercises power far out of proportion to its tiny size - economically, militarily, and culturally - and to that list we can also add the extraordinary way it has brought together Jihadis, survivalists, and supposedly secular far-leftists.

Attend any ANSWER-type political rally nowadays, or look at almost any web-based discussion of Israel - whether it be in the comments section of a CNN article or Youtube video, or at a blog such as Daily Kos, or a dedicated anti-Israel and antisemitic website such as Mondoweiss - and you will notice three distinct and seemingly incompatible affiliations, all brought together:

1) Jihadis: Their motivation in the game is clear, and they have an unhidden genocidal hatred of Jews and Israel. Online, their presence is characterized by mangled spellings and grammar (e.g. the famous "BUT can yoo handle the truth with facts??!!"), copious broken links to Jihadist and Iranian regime websites, and random interjections of 100 variations of AhaLlu AkBar, all featuring different spellings and capitalizations. At ANSWER-type rallies, they can be seen waving Hamas flags, dressing children up in suicide bomber regalia, and doing those ominous "Yehuuuudi" chants.

2) Survivalists: They are obsessed with Jewish and Israeli influence in the US government, and are tweaked by all of the insane conspiracy theories, from 9-11 to the USS Liberty and beyond. This group is mostly middle aged and older Caucasian males, usually bearded, who are on the margins of society. Online they are obsessed with the USS Liberty and display significant support for Ron Paul. At ANSWER-type rallies, they have the barely coherent often hand-made signs charging vast conspiracies of Jews and Israel.

Many would think of these people as some sort of Neo-Nazis, but while there are similarities, I think there is a distinction because they are not usually affiliated with actual Neo-Nazi groups, and they have a completely different aesthetic and age distribution - tending toward older, bearded, health-afflicted, and lazy, rather than young, built, and looking for a fight. They really exist at the aesthetic intersection of redneck, hippie, and petty paranoia. However, they are far lazier than those who would act physically on their hatred. The best word I could think of to encompass all of the converging strands is 'survivalist'. Basically BigAl (for those familiar with Daily Kos) is the model for this person, but they can be seen all over fringe rallies and websites.

Why would people who are fundamentally pretty racist be so eager to ally with Arab and South Asian Islamists? I think it is because the survivalists' combination of racism and laziness manifests in a desire not for race war but for America to completely withdraw from contact with the rest of the world, and Jihadis of course are their allies in this. But it gets even stranger with group #3:

3) Secular far-leftists: The secular far-leftists tend to be the organizers of, and strive to be the public face of the alliance. They are the ones who organize the rallies, who form the leadership of far-left organizations such as ANSWER, and who run the websites such as Mondoweiss and Adalah at Daily Kos. They thrive off the support from, and in turn provide rhetorical support to, the Jihadis and the survivalists. Without the Jihadis and the survivalists, ANSWER-type rallies and Mondoweiss and Adalah would have a small fraction of the bodies that they do now, with the accompanying irrelevance.

It is tough to discern the actual core values of this group of secular far-leftists, because they have absolutely no problem making common cause and perpetual alliance with the awful people described above, not to mention other fundamentally illiberal villains such as the Cuban or Venezuelan regimes. They also, to put it mildly, tailor their message to the audience, speaking of "human rights" and "peace" when speaking to liberals, and speaking of "revolution" and "resistance" when talking to others.

So what do they actually believe and seek? I don't know, but it seems to be some sort of world anti-Capitalist and anti-American revolution that absolutely has to start in Israel, and somehow things will just work out from there.

The secular leftists are of course the most surprising contingent of the alliance, because it seems like they should know better than to make common cause with the other two. After all, they spend their time sitting around coffee houses reading Marx and Sartre, right? And they really care about human rights, alternate sexuality, and patriarchy, right? Well, I don't know.

What I do know is that they have adopted Muslims and Arabs, and in particular the Palestinian Arabs, as the major symbolic representatives of everything that is wrong with, and victimized by, American and Western military and economic power, Capitalism, and so forth. And in turn, the Arab world's major self-declared mortal enemy, Israel, has become the symbolic representative of Western, American, and Capitalist military and economic power.

Now I will be the first to state that there are many problems with the manifestations of extreme Capitalism and American military overreach - I am a liberal after all. However, I recognize the fundamental illiberality of Jihadists and conspiracy nuts, and of seeking to deny self-determination to only one ethnic group in the world - the Jews - which also happens to be the most persecuted group in human history.

But that's me. The secular far-leftists in question don't believe so. They see Israel - population 6 million, with gay rights, universal health care, environmental stewardship, and universal suffrage - as the necessary starting point for a world revolution. Unfortunately, this strange belief has been creeping in from the extremes of the far left into more mainstream leftist thought, at places such as Human Rights Watch and even Amnesty International.

The amazing thing is that all of this has already been tried before by the secular left, to disastrous results. They seem not to be aware of, or not to want to learn from, obvious history. Many people forget that the Iranian Islamic Revolution was initially largely supported by the secular liberals and Communists in that country and among its exiles. They figured that once the Shah was dealt with and the old order was overthrown, they could maneuver in the post-Shah system to achieve their goals.

Boy were they wrong! Iran's leftists and Communists quickly learned that their position once the Ayatollahs took over was not going to be at the negotiating table or in the Parliament, but rather in the prisons and torture chambers, behind veils, and for the lucky few, in exile. The same will no doubt be the case in the unlikely scenario that certain Western far-leftists succeed in bringing about revolutionary change through their alliance with Jihadis.

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This analysis applies to what I would call the 'true believers' from each camp - those that are genuinely convinced of the ideological righteousness of their cause. Of course beyond those types, in these sorts of movements, there are the opportunists who are willing to do anything to sell a book, become famous, drum up support for their regime, sell pot, or whatever else it might be. Those people would probably need an entirely different analysis, because their motivations are quite different than true believers.

Resources

Hello, thank you for your interest in combatting internet-based antisemitic rhetoric.

These collections are an extensive, but by no means complete, documentation of antisemitic rhetoric promoted by users and the management of the website Daily Kos. Many of the same users are promoters of the proposed Netroots Nation Panel on the Israeli-Arab conflict.

These collections are not exhaustive, meerly a representative sample of the rhetoric promoted and tolerated on Daily Kos by proponents of the Netroots Nation panel.

A) Links to many instances of antisemitic rhetoric, including:
1) Charging Jewish Americans with disloyalty to America
2) Promoting conspiracy theories involving Jewish control of finance, the media and government
3) Denying, minimizing, or revising the Holocaust
4) Promoting the debunked Khazar hoax


B) Links to instances of rhetoric such as:
1) Holocaust and Darfur genocide denial
2) Promotion of the elimination of Israel
3) Promotion of nuclear weapons in the hands of the Iranian regime and terrorist organizations

C) Links to more of the same, including
1) The elimination of Israel and possible genocide of its inhabitants
2) Accusations of Jewish control of the US government

On Useful Idiocy and David Harris Gershon

It has come to my attention that there are still supposed liberals and progressives (on Daily Kos, of course) maintaining that baptizing my dead relatives into the Mormon Church against theirs and my will is no big deal. Just, you know, shit happens and I should stop complaining. As usual, these supposed 'progressive' thinkers are defended, excused, and inspired by wannabe author and serial failure David Harris Gershon.

Apparently they also maintain that dog whistles about Jewish control of the government and disloyal Jewish senators that are drawn straight out of Neo-Nazi rhetoric are also just fine. After all, what a terrible, 'chilling effect on free speech' it would be if one were to insist on norms of respectful behavior that have long ago been accepted in regard to every other ethnic group. Without being able to insinuate in polite company that Jews or Jewish interests control the government and that Jewish-American politicians are disloyal... well how in Earth would people be able to insinuate that Jews or Jewish interests control the government and Jewish-American politicians are disloyal?? Down with censorship!

And I am also told that in spite of a mountain of convincing evidence that includes, well fuck, everything, many people who claim to be on the side of the political aisle that favors rationality are simply unable to wrap their heads around the simple concept that Jews are a people, not a religion. Nope, in spite of a mountain of genetic and historical evidence, they can't process it. I kid you not, there are seriously people seemingly unable to understand this.

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Now, I learned long ago not to be surprised at these attitudes from supposedly "progressive" quarters. Still, it does still manage to amaze me that a few Jewish people themselves (or at least those claiming on the anonymous internet to be Jewish) often love to provide cover for their own haters. For purveyors of antisemitism, Jewish useful idiots are the most useful idiots of all.

One particularly prominent useful idiot (as prominent as one can be in a web-based echo chamber filled with a rapidly diminishing number of readers such as Daily Kos), who goes by the affore mentioned name name of David Harris Gershon, recently tried the "look over there!" tactic, where when an episode of antisemitism is pointed out the person says 'oh yeah, but these other people have it way worse than us successful happy educated Jews'. Often the 'other people over there' are Muslims, as it was in this case. Now I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about who suffers worse discrimination, other than to refer to this chart or the hundreds like it that are readily available from 2 milliseconds of web searching:

See that, not even in their worst year right after 9/11 were anti-Muslim incidents anywhere as common as anti-Jewish incidents in the US. And this is not privileged information that you have to be a genius like me to get. It is just right there for everyone. And yet, the statements of useful idiots asserting exactly the contrary go unchallenged and accepted in a forum that is supposedly for the 'reality based' side of the political aisle.

Again, I shouldn't be surprised. I do recall that this person is so eager to be useful to antisemites that he would write a diary with a title such as "Criticism of Israel is not Antisemitic" only to be presented with myriad examples where criticism of Israel was in fact highly antisemitic, you know of the "Israeli vampires are harvesting our childrens' organs and blood" variety. Instead of, say, admitting a mistake, Gershon would simply change the title to something less dramatic so that nobody would know he made a boo boo, and go on earning the accolades and twitter follows of antisemites and his fellow useful idiots. Par for the course.

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But this David Harris Gershon character is a useful idiot that not only excels in the useful part, he is also an overachiever in the idiot part (Jews are known for overachieving, after all). See, he would have us believe that in spite of being thus far unable to obtain a much coveted book deal, the thing he wants more than anything and writes about every day, he actually turned down the chance to have a national TV interview on the leading newsmagazine regarding his experience as the spouse of a terrorist victim, and will claim with with a straight face (to the extent that faces are relevant in anonymous web forums) that he did so out of some sort of principle.

While this explanation may fool the sort of feeble minds who can't even understand the simple concept of Jewish peoplehood or why one might justifiably be the slightest tad offended at having their dead relatives baptized against their will, in the real world, outside of the bubble, normal thinking people see right through that unbelievable bullshit.

For those that don't know (which can't be very many people because he says it every two seconds) a hate filled terrorist tried to blow up Gershon, did injure his wife, and killed several other people. Now, let's think about this: Within in the bubble that exists in forums such as Daily Kos, "I am a lowly middle aged male substitute kindergarten teacher who wants to hug the rage filled America-hating person who maimed my wife and did kill several other people" earns a bunch of oohs and aahs and "OMG I love you so much you brave brave man."

But outside of the bubble, in front of a national TV audience? Not so much. If that story ever got airtime, the same story that is peddled within the bubble, Gershon would become the most reviled laughing stock in America. Forget Bill O'Reilly, I'm talking Bill Maher and Ed Shultz and every other person with a pulse and a shred of dignity would be making fun of this guy. He would be our version of the recent Italian sea captain, only about 100 times more reviled. The butt of jokes and true scorn. "I want to hug him" might become the new "Don't touch my junk". We're due for a new buzzphrase, anyway.

It is obvious why he backed out of the TV interview, if one was ever actually on offer. And it is also painfully obvious, for the same reason, why mainstream publishers do not want to touch his book with my ten foot pole. But he thinks that that the rest of us don't see that big chunk of obviousness before us. He has confused the bubble with the real world. Unreality has taken over from reality. And that, my friends, is idiotic.

Norman Finkelstein Pulls a Finkler

In the recent book The Finkler Question, author Howard Jacobson explores the current politics of antisemitism in the UK. The character Professor Finkler is a Jewish philosophy professor who is obsessed with being publicly "ashamed" about Israel in order to stay trendy. However, due to a culmination of events, this national figure has a shocking pro-Israel outburst during a conference. The outburst is in response to a woman who segues from anti-Zionism to antisemitism one too many times, as such anti-Zionists tend to do. It is a very interesting scene.

In a case of life imitating art, I was reminded of the whole thing in the protracted outburst of Norman Finkelstein against the BDS movement that has just come to light. A video which BDS didn't want to get out is making the rounds, in which Finkelstein is being interviewed by some BDS person and absolutely rips into their entire movement for 30 long, awkward minutes.

For a bit of background, Norman Finkelstein is a notorious Israel-bating figure, who for some time was faculty at a number of schools. He has expressed solidarity with Hezbollah and Hamas, criticized what he calls the 'Holocaust industry', and called Israel a "lunatic state". So he's like an extreme - and much less successful - version of the fictional professor Finkler. Even the names are eerily similar.

In short, Finkelstein is almost a prototypical Jewish antisemitic deranger, in the mold of Gilad Atzmon. And yet in the recently obtained video, he savagely calls BDS to task for many of the exact same things that pro-Israel commenters, neutral observers, and many others have over the years! Specifically, Finkelstein:

1) repeats over and over that BDS is trying to play it cute but fooling nobody about their ultimate plans for Israel itself - not the occupied territories - and the Jewish people living there.

2) repeats that BDS is alienating mainstream people and has achieved no success

3) repeats that BDS is "a cult" so many times that I lost count

4) takes BDS to task for its selective use of 'international law'

It is absolutely fascinating to watch the whole video, and also to wonder what caused this seeming abrupt direction shift for Finkelstein. Watching the video, as it focuses relentlessly on his face, he also seems generally disturbed, ready to be hauled off to a mental institution at any minute. He readily admits several times that he was in his own "Maoist cult" in his youth, and alternates between righteous indignation and whiny self-pity.

I would hesitate to say that Finkelstein has had a change of heart in regard to Zionism, the Jewish state, and antisemitism, but it seems that something has pushed him over the edge in the same way that something pushed Professor Finkler over the edge, at least temporarily.

I will say this to BDS and like-minded folks. If you are too deranged for even Norman Finkelstein, it is time to pack it in!

Now of course the accusations have started to fly about Finkelstein being a Zionist plant the whole time, about how he betrayed people, and is a Jew anyway so why is he allowed to say anything. For once, it is time to sit back and enjoy.

Update: All Youtube versions of the video appear to have been removed for "copyright violation". However the video at the link above is still available.

UK Academic Union Rejected EU Definition of Antisemitism

This story is slightly old but it is the first I have been made aware of it:

Mirroring the less credentialed antisemites and Israel derangers who blog from basements, Britain's largest trade union of academics, the University College Union (UCU), has voted to disassociate itself from the European Union working definition of anti-Semitism.

The reasoning given by this union of PhDs is the same that one encounters from the barely literate Israel-derangers in the blogging world, namely that accusations of antisemitism prevents "legitimate criticism" of Israel. The objection must relate to this portion of the EU definition of antisemitism:

• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
• Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

It is obvious why antisemites and Israel-derangers don't like this definition - it implies that singling the Jewish people out as not deserving self-determination is antisemitic, which it of course is.

Because Israel is the subject of incessant criticism from certain supposedly progressive and academic quarters repeatedly day after day, far out of proportion to its tiny size and without any recognition of the complexity of issues involved with the Israeli-Arab conflict, I find it the height of dishonesty and banality for anyone to claim that criticism of Israel is being in any way prevented or stifled. Criticism of Israel is indeed a full time job and obsession for too much of the world, whether the halls of the academic humanities, or in the basements of suburban houses where keyboard warriors ply their trade.

Whether one is a substitute kindergarten teacher in Pittsburgh or a PhD at one of Britain's top institutions, Israel obsession and excessive demonization is antisemitic. And of course, Israel derangers don't stop there - they routinely accuse their Jewish countrymen of being more loyal to Israel, and of controlling the media and government. These things are virulently antisemitic, and this prejudice is uniquely allowed to flourish in certain quarters of the academy.

I hope that Britain's silent majority of reasonable academics reject what the UCU has done. As someone who spent an extended research visit in the UK - albeit in a science and not the humanities - my experience was that the academic environment there was not at all compromised by Israel derangement and that the faculty, postdocs, and others were politically moderate, reasonable, and inclusive. I believe that the UCU does not speak for British academia as a whole, and I hope that they are marginalized by this step.

World's Oldest Hate Increases As We Enter Another Year

Getting into the season, here's sufganiyot (donuts) representing each officially documented antisemitic hate crime recorded in the United States of America just over this past year (as of October 2011) -

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We'd need a lot of oil to fry those up. Perhaps even enough to run America's energy needs for a week? If only that energy could be directed towards aims other than the centuries-old game of hating Jews, of course. The age-old problem, eh? The world's oldest disease.

Jump with me below the fold.

The Antisemites and Derangers Won the Battle, But Not The War

At first glance, it would seem that the antisemites and Israel-derangers have cobbled together a victory. In a gradual battle of attrition over the past few years at Daily Kos, they have managed - through Markos' and Blades' ineffective and biased moderating, and their own unceasing use of zombies and sock puppets - to mainstream Israel derangement, and further the tolerance of antisemitic dog whistles there. More importantly they have driven off a very large number of Jewish (and other) posters who have either quietly or not so quietly stopped coming by, thus making that site even more aligned with their ideology, and less likely to push back.

But it has been a Pyrrhic victory.

Because as that site has changed to become more dominated by them - and even moreso by the other derangers like the Paulbots and the legions of people who think that Obama is absolutely identical to Bush and that the US is absolutely identical to North Korea - it has necessarily become less mainstream, and less relevant.

Think about the number of politicians and public figures who used to post at Daily Kos - back in the 2004 to 2009 era. Congressmen, Senators, and even ex-Presidents. And the way that back then Markos was on MSNBC, Bill Maher, and Colbert. And even the way that Daily Kos served as a boogey man for right wingers like Bill-O and Beck. All of that has changed. The politicians have noticeably dried up, Markos is out of the media eye, and the right wingers have even stopped noticing. That site is just not the central part of American liberal and/or Democratic politics that it was several years ago. Some of that might be related to the lack of a competitive Democratic Presidential primary this year, but I think most of it is not.

So the antisemites and the Israel-derangers, in their victory, have gone from being a minority at a mainstream and politically relevant site to the power brokers at a more fringe and less politically relevant site.

The antisemites and Israel-derangers have succeeded in obtaining a Daily Kos that is more like Mondoweiss in atmosphere and rhetoric, but in the process Daily Kos has also become more like Mondoweiss in relevance. So in a sense they now have themselves two Mondoweisses instead of one. And what was the original Mondoweiss getting them, as far as advancing their agenda in American politics and discourse? Nothing. They probably could have more actual effect on American politics and discourse if they continued to be a vocal minority at a mainstream and politically relevant site. That's why they've won the battle but in doing so may have lost the war.