We’ve witnessed first hand the power of “The Lobby,” the well-organized campaign of Ziocons to silence any criticism of the Israeli government and its treatment of Palestinians.
So we had to laugh at a deft bit of satire posted by The Onion Friday under the headline “Government Official Who Makes Perfectly Valid, Well-Reasoned Point Against Israel Forced To Resign”:
WASHINGTON—State Department diplomat Nelson Milstrand, who appeared on CNN last week and offered an informed, thoughtful analysis implying that Israel could perhaps exercise more restraint toward Palestinian moderates in disputed territories, was asked to resign Tuesday. “The United States deeply regrets any harm Mr. Milstrand’s careful, even-tempered, and factually accurate remarks may have caused our democratic partner in the Middle East,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an unequivocal condemnation of the veteran foreign-service officer’s perfectly reasonable statements. “U.S. policy toward Israel continues to be one of unconditional support and fawning sycophancy.” Milstrand, 63, will reportedly appear at an AIPAC conference to offer a full apology as soon as his trial concludes and his divorce is finalized.
Perhaps the most effective strategy of the Ziocons has been their relentless campaign to equate criticism of Israel’s actions with antisemitism.
Never mind that the Palestinians are a Semitic people, or that while some critics of Israel are racists, many more are simply folks who are rightly concerned that Israeli politics are themselves increasingly infused by a virulent form of racism.
The notion of transforming critics of Israel into latter-day Nazi’s was refined by Nathan Sharansky in his 3-D doctrine [previously], and has been relentlessly deployed to silence critics, as in the case of the advertising boycott [previously] of the Berkeley Daily Planet, where it was specifically invoked by Jim Sinkinson in letters to the paper’s advertisers. [For our Daily Planet stories on the campaign, see here.]
Now, finally, we are seeing some action in Great Britain, where the 30 May congress of the 120,000-member University and College Union will be taking up a resolution to reject the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia’s “working definition of antisemitism.”
Here’s the text:
Congress notes with concern that the so-called ‘EUMC working definition of antisemitism’, while not adopted by the EU or the UK government and having no official status, is being used by bodies such as the NUS and local student unions in relation to activities on campus.
Congress believes that the EUMC definition confuses criticism of Israeli government policy and actions with genuine antisemitism, and is being used to silence debate about Israel and Palestine on campus.
Congress resolves:
- that UCU will make no use of the EUMC definition (e.g. in educating members or dealing with internal complaints)
- that UCU will dissociate itself from the EUMC definition in any public discussion on the matter in which UCU is involved
- that UCU will campaign for open debate on campus concerning Israel’s past history and current policy, while continuing to combat all forms of racial or religious discrimination.
H/T to Jews sans frontieres.
The sad reality is that the Ziocons are emulating the strategies of that master propagandist Joseph Goebbels, and court a potential global backlash as their list of enemies they seek to demonize and delegitimize through a campaign based on a double standard grows ever-longer and encompasses more and more reasonable people whose motives are not racism but simple humanitarian concern.
Yesterday, we posted a headline from a Simon Wiesenthal Center opposing President Barack Obama’s insistence that Israel withdraw to the 1967 borders, boundaries the center described as “Auschwitz borders.”
We would argue that the center is engaging in its own 3-D politics, given that the Palestinians could rightly claim that they’re the ones stricken with concentration camp boundaries, as exemplified in this West Bank map from the BBC, via Informed Comment:
Compare with this map, depicting the Nazi dismemberment of Poland [pre-invasion borders in yellow], via Scrapbookpages:
Those are the real “Auschwitz borders.”
You ignore the historic fact that the Palestinian refugee camps were perpetuated by the powers illegally occupying the Gaza Strip (Egypt) and in the West Bank (Transjordan; later Jordan). What kept the establishment of a Palestinian State when these territories and East Jerusalem were under Arab control? Could it be that the Arab Governments had more to gain by keeping the refugees in a constant state of impoverishment and crowded conditions? Did not they not use the refugee issue as a means of deflecting attention from their own despotism and domestic problems by blaming Israel for the creation of the refugee problem? Did not the Arab refusal to accept the UN Partition Plan of 1948 and their failure to destroy the nascent Israeli State generate the bulk of the refugee problem? Did not the corruption of the Palestinian leadership and the embezzlement of international donations perpetuate the problem? You ignore the fact 875,000 Jews were forced to flee Arab countries and were successfully assimilated in Israel and other countries. Why did not Syria, Egypt, Jordan, etc. offer to assimilate the Palestinian refugees instead of keeping them in camps? You ignore the fact that if the Arabs truly wanted peace with Israel and not its destruction then the refugee problem could have been settled generations ago. I suggest that your portrayal of the Israel-Palestine problem shows your personal bias. I also suggest that you and your co-travelers learn a bit more about the history and origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in genreral.
Learn a bit more about the history of the Holocaust and antisemitism in general? I would wager I’ve read more about these subjects than you. My personal library on these subjects runs to over 700 volumes, and is constantly expanding.
And you start your history very selectively, after the partition of the Ottoman Empire. I would go back to the Crusades, the first partition of the Arab world by an alliance of European powers.
The refugee problem was initially created by the Western powers and their decision to unilaterally create a Western colonial state in the Middle East in precisely that region which had the most charged colonial history. While I can certainly sympathize with the plight of European Jews and abhor the vicious racism and slaughter conducted under the cover of World War II, nothing about the war gave European powers the right to seize and give away lands belonging to others.
And none of this deep history justifies the relentless ongoing seizure of Palestinian lands and resources.
And the only reason that Jews fled Arab lands was the creation of modern Israel by the West, a vicious circle of history which continues to reverberate to this day.
As for corrupt nations, I happen to live in one, where the richest are getting richer by the minute and the great mass of humanity is being steadily impoverished for the benefit of the few.
According to a UN address at the time of Israel’s creation, part of the “justification” for creating that state was that the United States, Canada, and Australia did not have enough space to accommodate a mass migration; you know, those being the most densely populated and overcrowded states in the world. Just one of a series of awful farces that have fed into this vicious cycle. And to think that Arabs helped sheltered Jews who were being persecuted during the Inquisition.