Is Criticism of Israel "anti-Semitic"? Posted by Rosa Brooks

The American Jewish Committee is showcasing a new report called "'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism." The report, by Alvin Rosenfeld, rightly draws attention to the dismaying resurgence of anti-Semitism in many parts of the world (including increasing media stereotypes-- especially in the Islamic world-- of Jews as "a treacherous, conniving, untrustworthy, sinister, all-powerful, and inplacably hostile people," and an upsurge in assualts and vandalism against Jews in Europe and elsewhere).  But then it goes a step further, claiming that "one of the most distressing features of the new anti-Semitism [is] the participation of Jews alongside it, especially in its anti-Zionist expression."  Singled out for criticism are a wide range of Jewish scholars, writers, and activists, from Adrienne Rich and Tony Judt to Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen.

The report stops short of calling Jews critical of Zionism anti-Semites, but only barely; in an interview with the New York Times, Rosenfeld, the author, was coy: "Jews thinking the way they’re thinking is feeding into a very nasty cause.” 

On some level, this is the Mearsheimer-Walt debate redux; we've also seen this played out to some extent in the very public attacks on Human Rights Watch and Tony Judt. But with this new report, the American Jewish Congress is upping the ante still more.  I have written elsewhere about baseless claims that Human Rights Watch's coverage of the Israeli-Lebanon conflict was "anti-semitic," but this latest controversy threatens to send my blood pressure through the roof. Here's what I think:

1) "Anti-Semitism" is dislike of, or prejudice against, Jewish people because of their supposed "essence." It's hatred of human beings for no reason except that they are, or appear to be, "Jewish," leaving aside for now the complex question of what it means to be "Jewish."

2) There is plenty of real anti-Semitism in the world. It's nasty, scary stuff, and it needs to be condemned, promptly and vociferously, by people of all faiths and traditions. 

3) Being critical of Israeli policies is not the same as being "anti-Semitic," any more than criticism of US policy should be construed as "anti-American."

4) Being critical of certain understandings of Jewish identity is not the same as being anti-Semitic. People who self-identify as Jewish are an exceptionally diverse group in every respect-- ethnically, religiously, culturally, linguistically, philosophically, and ideologically. No one-- not the Israeli government, not a particular group of rabbis, and certainly not the American Jewish Congress-- has a monopoly on understanding what it "really" means to be Jewish, just as no one individual, organization or nation has a monopoly on what it really means to be a Christian or a Muslim.

5) Being critical of Zionism or the "legitimacy" of the State of Israel is also not "anti-Semitic." Principles of democratic self-determination not-withstanding, there is no human right to statehood. The nation-state is a rather recent human invention, and not a particularly happy one. Questioning the value of a particular social-political unit-- which is all the state is-- should not be equated with questioning the right to exist of a particular group of people. 

To illustrate that last point, let me put it a little differently: the statement "I do not think Kosovo should become an independent state" is not, on its face, "anti-Kosovar," just as saying, "I opposed the division of Czechoslovakia into separate Czech and Slovak states" is neither "anti-Czech" nor "anti-Slovak." And no, this does not magically change once a state is created: it is still neither "anti-Czech" nor "anti-Slovak" for a person to say, "I feel that the world would be a better place had the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic never been created out of the former Yugoslavia," or even, "I favor the  re-integration of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic into a single state." Any or all of those remarks may be controversial and they may even be stupid-- but there is no reason to consider them impermissible attacks on particular people or groups of people.

The same should be true with regard to Israel: people of good faith (Jews or non-Jews) who argue that the creation of Israel was a mistake or that the world would be better if the state of Israel ceased to be Jewish and became a "binational state of Jews and Arabs" (as Tony Judt has argued) are not automatocally anti-Semites.

Just to be clear: it is true that many anti-Semites make such arguments. But it does not follow that all those who make such arguments are anti-Semites.

On some level I feel that I am just stating the crushingly obvious. So why say it at all?

Well... Everything I have just said seems to me to be crushingly obvious. But in this political climate, it appears that this is not at all obvious to many people. I am hardly being controversial when I say that the issue of Israeli-Palestinian relations is a huge source of global instability.  We need to be able to talk about this issue bluntly and candidly if we are ever to have a hope of finding a peaceful resolution.

If progressives have to self-censor criticisms of Israel out of fear of being accused of anti-semitism, we're not going to get anywhere. And that will be a tragedy for all of us.

UPDATE: In the comments, Zathras notes that the creation of the state of Israel was a response to the deliberate slaughter of six million Jews. I agree that Israel statehood cannot possibly be evaluated without that context. But I don't think this alters the fundamental point, which is that questioning Zionism-- or the ongoing viability of the Israeli state in its current form-- is not the same thing as anti-Semitism. It can overlap with anti-Semitism, and unfortunately it often does, but it need not do so; from the beginning, Zionism sparked heated debates within the Jewish community.  Those debates continued throughout the 1940s and 50s, and they continue within the Jewish community today.

I do not mean, here, to take a particular position on these issues. But I am convinced that reflexively labelling as "anti-Semitic" everyone who articulates these positions-- regardless of their reasons, regardless of the context, regardless of whether they themselves are Jewish-- does a disservice to all of us. Just as we are appropriately outraged when the far right in the US accuses citizens opposed to the Iraq War of being "anti-American," we should be upset when kneejerk accusations of anti-Semitism are tossed out at any and all critics of Israel.

Global anti-Semitism is real and virulent, and needs to be fought. Let's not let the concept be watered down-- or discredited-- by those who prefer to use it as a handy way to avoid engaging the merits of good faith arguments.

Comments

[Zathras]

While we're on the subject of the crushingly obvious, the existence of the state of Israel was a direct consequence of the attempted and very nearly successful extermination of the Jews of Europe. For most people, the alternative to statehood is not extermination. One could certainly make a case that it isn't for the Jews anymore, either, Hitler (and, for that matter, Stalin) having died and all. But it would be an academic exercise. Among 20th century historical issues there aren't many more obvious than that one.

Having said that, I would expect an organization like the American Jewish Committee to be true to its name: American first, Jewish second. The United States does not ask a great deal of the many people it has given refuge from tyranny and barbarism, nor of the nations it has defended from the same. One of the things it is entitled to demand is respect for the primacy of American interests where these conflict with local causes or those motivated by esoteric religious ideas. I'm sorry to say that there is probably more understanding of this in Israel itself than among some of the most politically active Jews in the United States.

There is no American interest in Jewish settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Such settlements are at the core of a protracted international controversy damaging to the international position of the United States. It is therefore the responsibility of Americans to, at a minimum, discourage the expansion of settlements. This certainly includes Jewish Americans aware of how much Israel owes to the United States.

I regret that the vacuum in American foreign policy thought that appeared after the Soviet threat collapsed has from time to time been filled in the minds of some people with passionate attachment to Other People's Causes. Who governs what part of the West Bank of the Jordan River is certainly one of these. It is not our cause and it is not our problem, except insofar as American interests might be served by some reduction in the level of controversy in that part of the world. The commitment America has made to Israel is to its existence and security as a Jewish state, not to its expansion and certainly not to bearing in perpetuity the burden in international politics of its expansion.

This had been the position taken, though rarely held with tenacity of every American administration before this one. Congress, acting on sentimental considerations and a certain irresponsibility with respect to American interests overseas, has frequently been induced to demand acquiesence to expansion of West Bank settlements. In the political reality of Washington this has usually had much less to do with fear of being called anti-Semitic than it has with the not-unjustified identification of Palestinians with the odious Arafat and with terrorism generally (in earlier years it didn't help that among the loudest champions of the most unreasonable Palestinian demands were even less sympathetic Soviet Communists).

In the wake of the Iraq adventure, though, we Americans cannot afford to be so casual about the identification and pursuit of our national interests abroad. Other People's Causes are not a luxury we can indulge as we have in the past. It looks very much as if much of the debate over anti-Semitism as a charge, or as an epithet, is being conducted by Americans who have not yet come to understand that our national interests can't be taken for granted anymore; what matters is not the things Israelis or Palestinians are doing to one another, or to themselves, but only how what they are doing affects us.

[Don Bacon]

Baloney. There has been no vacuum. The US has consistently sided with Israel for many years in the face of dozens of UN condemnations and censures of the repeated Israeli aggression directed against Palestinians and Lebanese, because US politicians have been bought and paid for by Israeli agents who are also involved in spying against the US. The result of this, and other odious US actions, is the current well-earned disrepute we currently enjoy in the Arab and Muslim communities.

What the Zionists are doing to the Palestinians who were evicted from their lands with our support, and what they do to Lebanon with our bombs and aircraft may not matter to us, but it should.

[Guav]

"the creation of the state of Israel was a response to the deliberate slaughter of six million Jews."

The creation of the state of a Jewish homeland was the constant goal of the Zionist movement since 1890. Certainly the extermination of 6 million Jews at the hands of the Germans helped to enable that cause, but only by hurrying along what had been up until then a slower process—colonizing Palestine with mostly European Jews.

The Germans and other Europeans have also tried to exterminate the Roma, but nobody has advocated that we set up a Roma homeland in India for them—the very idea is absurd when you really think about it.

[hamilton]

As a person who is of Slovak nationality - I don't really understand the meaning of comparing Czechoslovakia with Israel. Please, do some more background check of the Czech and Slovak history.

[Guav]

It's an analogy—it's not meant to be a literal comparison.

[Hamilton]

I am aware of the fact that it is meant to be an analogy - BUT, how can you possible relate something which doesn't have anything in common?
It is like using analogy with apples and bananas.
Please if you write about something -> at least write about something you understand. Or be viewed as an ignorant American (or whatever you are)

[Guav]

They used Czechoslovakia in the same way they used the United States when they said "Being critical of Israeli policies is not the same as being 'anti-Semitic,' any more than criticism of US policy should be construed as 'anti-American.'"

It was NOT a comparison of Israel and US in any way, it was simply an analogy.

"It is like using analogy with apples and bananas."

The phrase you're thinking of is "It's like comparing apples and oranges." You don't compare apples and oranges. But you most certainly CAN make analogies with the two.

l'm an American of German Jewish and Croatian descent, not that it's remotely relevant to this conversation.

[SoldierOutOfIraq]

But certainly one could conjure up a notion of "anti-semitism" when reading the Mearsheimer-Walt effort in the London Review of Books.

It's one thing to suggest that perhaps American and Israeli foreign policies are not exactly working in sync all the time.

It's quite another to suggest that the reason why is because of a capital-L "Lobby" of Jews who suborn the issues of the US for those of Israel.

When I read Mearsheimer-Walt, and listen to their various and sundry comments on CSPAN and other fora, I see and hear what appears to me to be not a small amount of caricature and (why be polite?) hatred of Jews in the strained Walt and Mearsheimer polemic.

Sure, less pedigreed Jew haters use the same arguments. But sometimes what appears in Walt and Mearsheimer (hardly regional experts) still adds up to a slur against Americans who are Jewish.

[SoldierOutOfIraq]

Or you can just read what Jonah Goldberg wrote in LAT about Wes Clark's latest foot-in-the-mouth moment.

It's making me review my earlier -- albeit tepid -- support for Clark as a major Democratic thinker.

Ooops.

[J Thomas]

SOOI, do you have any reason to imagine there is not a zionist lobby trying to suborn US issues for israel? Whyever would you think that?

Would you think there isn't a irish lobby? A greek lobby? A cuban lobby thring to suborn US issues in opposition to the current government of cuba? A taiwan lobby?

It's absurd to argue that there's no zionist lobby. Simply absurd. To make that argument you have to assume your listeners are idiots.

As to how scared US politicians and bureaucrats are of the zionist lobby, whether they go along with things they know are against US interests in favor of israeli interests (as perceived by the israeli lobby), that's something we guess at from evidence. But certainly it isn't illegal for interest groups formed of US citizens to lobby for whatever they want. To the extent that we have an antisemitic lobby or an anti-arab lobby or an zionist lobby, they all have the right to do as they wish right up to the point they're about to pass military secrets to foreign governments. And it stops there.

People who get upset about things like Mearsheimer/Walt and who try to prevent discussion in the USA about how far our interests converge with israel's, are - well -- part of the zionist lobby.

And if they want to pretend they don't exist and can't stand to argue the issues, that does give the impression maybe they think they're working against US interests.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12394

[SoldierOutOfIraq]

Golly, J Thomas, I tend to believe that, politically, American Jews are just that. American first, then Jewish. But that doesn't mean Jewish = Support for Israeli foreign policy.

The mawkish W/M travesty of Harvard's good name stemmed from the absurd notion that official Israeli policy favored an American-led war in Iraq. As regional experts have sought to explain to the good professors, this was not an Israeli foreign policy goal, and the suggestion that a Jewish "Lobby" made it so, against the interests of the US, reeks of anti-semitism.

One sees the same sort of arguments about "those people" who were part of the civilian leadership at the Pentagon in the run up to OIF.

Perhaps because I'm a Jew who has long served in the military, I find it something of a Dreyfus moment.

But this isn't the Third Republic, W/M aren't particularly well-considered thinkers on the subject, Wes Clark no longer strikes anyone with a brain as being a serious candidate for president, and that, maybe, the interests of one western democracy (Israel) and another (US) might be more in line than even Rosa Brooks would imagine.

I get the feeling that if the Israelis and the various Palestinian groups made peace tomorrow, danced around the maypole hugging puppies and passing out lollipops, the many Middle Eastern issues that are so frequencly tied to the Palestinian Question wouldn't change one iota.

Just a thought.

[J Thomas]

SOOI, how would you know what (unofficial) israel government policy was regarding US war against iraq?

For that matter, how would you know what US government policy was about invading iraq? Were we going after iraq for 9/11, or for WMDs, or for democracy, or for oil, or what? It's been pretty incoherent from day 1.

You are attempting the same old travesty, calling names on people who try to seriously discuss the issue. By continuing to do this you begin to make antisemitism look respectable. Bad idea.

It's an open question to what extent our iraq invasion is in the worst interests of the USA. If we were to agree that invading iraq was the best thing the USA could do for ourselves, then it wouldn't matter whether the zionist lobby (different from a jewish lobby, let's not confuse the two) influenced it.

And it's an open question to what extent the zionist lobby persuaded us to invade iraq. Also, until the records get unsealed we won't find out how much of our dead-wrong information about iraq's WMDs came from Mossad. Cheney was claiming for awhile that Mossad had given him great info, and then he just shut up about that.

And it's an open question to what extent our invasion of iraq was in the best interest of israel It's only natural to blame it on them, to refuse to take responsibility ourselves. If they did have a lot to do with it and then it turns out that it was in israel's worst interest too, that would be sad for all concerned.

To my way of thinking these are all questions we have inadequate evidence about. People who jump in and claim they know the answers are lying or gullible.

When you say you know the answers and that people who raise the questions are antisemitic, you are lying or gullible. Which is worse?

I tend to agree with you that if by some chance israel actually made peace, it wouldn't affect the other middle east issues all that much immediately. People who have learned to think of us as utterly hypocritical won't change their minds immediately just because israel worked things out.

US middle east diplomacy is like a man who's had one leg shackled to a twenty ton weight for 40 years. Release us from israel, and we still aren't going to be running marathons any time soon.

[SoldierOutOfIraq]

I'm hardly suggesting that anyone who questions Israeli, or US, foreign policy is antisemitic.

I am saying that W/M's contention that a "Lobby" of American Jews conspiring to suborn America's foreign policy interests to better serve Israel's is not only dishonest, intellectual bankrupt and -- even in the forgiving realm of Middle Eastern Studies highly spurious -- is plain, old fashioned, creepy-but-made-almost-respectable-with-the-Harvard-imprint hatred of Jews.

The same old tropes, the same misguided ideas.

My point wasn't that Brooks was wrong to assert that liberal Jews, in good conscience, can protest Israeli policies. This Jews do all the time. If CSpan showed the Knesset, you'd get a sense of how nutty Israeli debate can be.

You know, Israel, the so-called Zionist enemy of Arabs that has an Arab, Islamic member of the cabinet. If you want to find a government in the region that provides the unblemished right to vote to all Arab citizens -- Christian or Moslem -- you probably should look first to the place wedged between Lebanon and Sinai.

The problem most academic experts in the fields of political science, Middle Eastern and Israeli Studies and military science have with W/M is that it's just not very persuasive. Facts are fuzzy. Conjecture becomes real.

Military scientists, including not a few Realists, have pointed out the most pressing problem with W/M's effort is that the Sharon government did everything but beg the US NOT to go to war with Iraq and, indeed, sent high-level emissaries to speak to policymakers here to convince them that the real state to stare down was Iran.

Seems prescient now, doesn't it?

If you want to find the real "Lobby" in DC, don't look to a so-called "zionist" cabal. Rather, check out the work the various Middle Eastern dynastic nations and their bagmen in the multinational petroleum corporations do on in the capital.

To my knowledge, I've never seen an American foreign policy goal in the Middle East that wasn't vetted first through either Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, not Israel. Oil, a strategic commodity, you see, is far more interesting to American policymakers than Israeli oranges, and always will be.

To their credit, W/M have retreated from some of their points, just as James E. Carter has had to back off of some of truthiness of his most recent published polemic. This has come not from a "Jewish" backlash, but rather from academics who have been critical of American or Israeli foreign policy for many years.

But if you wish to wear the W/M mantle as some sort of respectable opinion, go right ahead.

Just don't expect anyone to take you seriously, except maybe for David Duke, some blogger crackpots and, of course, the deranged Wes Clark.

[J Thomas]

SSOI, if you aren't saying that anyone who questions the zionist lobby is antisemitic, who questions the zionist lobby that you don't consider antisemitic?

I don't say that W/M are correct in all details or even many details. I point out though that they hit precisely the sort of antirational response that they describe. I've seen it before.

Like, a long time ago there was a paper that claimed a unilateral nuclear attack by the USA on the USSR might result in global climate change even if the USSR did not succeed in making any counterattack at all. "Nuclear winter." This got very widely denounced because it didn't completely prove its point. The argument was "The paper leaves several possible loopholes, therefore it's completely wrong." After centuries of resercher-years and many millions of dollars, the new consensus was that at some times of year and when the weather was right, it was indeed possible for a unilateral nuclear strike by the USA to have only a mild to moderate effect on climate, and this was interpreted as showing that the original idea was wrong. The original authors were widely blamed for asking the question. And that's what you're doing, you're blaming W/M for even posing the question.

When you say that the US government ignores the israeli government but doesn't ignore the saudi government, that seems excessive to me. I would naturally expect that our government would take both into account. It surely ought to.

Your approach of calling anyone who questions the zionist lobby antisemitic, has gotten old and stale -- as witness the note that we are responding to. You are reducing your own credibility by continuing to do it.

[Simon]

It's not the "American Jewish Congress" but rather the American Jewish Committee. To some they may "all look the same to me," but they are completely different organizations.

[SoldierOutOfIraq]

First, I highly dispute any organized "Zionist Lobby," and I certainly would condemn any notion that America's Jewry take their marching orders from Likud.
The only place one even finds this creepy term and the associated slurs are amongst the antisemitic propaganda mills in several Arab countries and the loopy Counterpunch crowd we, as progressives, should be distancing ourselves from as quickly as possible.

As I've made painfully clear to all but the most obtuse, it's not considered antisemitic to attack Israeli foreign policy or any American misadventures abroad.

One might make the claim, however, that the erroneous, particularly unresearched and spurious claim (without any evidence) that several Jewish groups duped the State Department, DoD, Congress and the president into fighting a war in Iraq is steeped in cheap antisemitism.

It's rather telling that W/M had to peddle their unsubstantiated lies in the UK because no serious publisher would entertain their trifle of a "study" here. Challenged by every reputable academic scholar who makes the region, Congress, military affairs and American Judaism their areas of research, W/M's work instead has found ready ears amongst the unsophisticated who love a conspiracy story when the truth isn't perfect.

I humbly submit that if you wish to see a real "Lobby" at work, check out what petroleum corporations do in Congress every day. They do so openly, their influence tracked by financial disclosure forms and on the record votes.

There's no conspiracy story here, just the plain machinations of government, industry and political life in DC.

But that's not good enough for conspiracy junkies. They must blame the Jews.

And it's best to use "zionist lobby" when doing it. Otherwise, polite company gets a bit uncomfortable.

[J Thomas]

"It's rather telling that W/M had to peddle their unsubstantiated lies in the UK because no serious publisher would entertain their trifle of a "study" here."

Well yes, it is. You are trying to spin that as saying that there is no zionist lobby. How silly!

I don't understand how you can keep repeating over and over, with a straight face, that you don't exist. Doesn't that kind of make your head explode?

Rosa says, "... questioning Zionism-- or the ongoing viability of the Israeli state in its current form-- is not the same thing as anti-Semitism. It can overlap with anti-Semitism, and unfortunately it often does, but it need not do so; ....

"I am convinced that reflexively labelling as "anti-Semitic" everyone who articulates these positions-- regardless of their reasons, regardless of the context, regardless of whether they themselves are Jewish-- does a disservice to all of us."

So what do you do? Just exactly that disservice.

You diss israel by this hamhanded stupidity.

[SoldierOutOfIraq]

"I don't understand how you can keep repeating over and over, with a straight face, that you don't exist. Doesn't that kind of make your head explode?"

That you just said that to me is sickening. I exist. I'm an American. I recently returned from fighting a war on behalf of this nation, not Israel.

I'm an American, then a soldier fighting for America, then a Jew who happens to live in America and has experienced various shades of antisemitism throughout my life.

Little of that, however, was as disgusting as what you printed. If you don't realize that, then I pity you.

See, Rosa, this is what you are silently applauding. Cheer on.

[SoldierOutOfIraq]

I would like to see Rosa Brooks present compelling, honest, factual evidence that such a "Zionist Lobby" exists. Furthermore, I verily would like to see how I fit into that scheme.

Just as every criticism of Israeli foreign policy isn't antisemitism, every sensible defense of our relationship with Israel isn't moonlighting for a "Zionist Lobby" in conspiracy to suborn America's best interests.

You know, J Thomas, I just got back from spending a very long time mostly with Shi'i volunteers in the Iraqi Army. They didn't care that I was Jewish, nor that other soldiers who fought and bled with them were Christian.

I sure didn't care that they were Moslem, and neither did my fellow soldiers, from the evangelicals to the lapsed Roman Catholics.

Some of these Shi'i became lifelong friends. Some of them died next to me.

It's a complex world. Don't cheapen it with tawdry conspiracy theories.

[Rosa Brooks]

Whoa, folks.... just to clarify:

1) J.Thomas: No, *nothing* makes "antisemitism look respectable." Anti-semitism is appalling and unjustified, period. And I think broad over-generalizations about Jews ("they think X...." "They always do Y....") verge on anti-Semitic, and have a distinct and dismaying tendency to slip over the border into outright anti-semitism.

2) SoldierOutOfIraq: slow down. You're making unwarranted assumptions. I'm not "silently applauding" anything at all, and I am certainly not making claims about a "Zionist lobby." My post expressed dismay about the fact that some individuals and organizations have been-- in my view-- way too quick to label all criticisms of Israel as "anti-semitic," regardless of motive and context. This makes me mad, because, as you say, it's a complex world, and when people turn to conspiracy theories or ad hominem attacks, we're not making our complex world any better off.

[J Thomas]

SOOI, you consistently misrepresent my point and you respond to things that are not there.

It's *OK* for you to be part of the zionist lobby. You have that right as a US citizen. You can lobby for anything that isn't illegal. That's part of the legitimate political process in the USA.

Similarly, it's OK for anybody who dislikes you to lobby for what they want that isn't illegal. If some of them want to talk like it's shameful for the USA to give unqualified support for (racist, or religiously intolerant, or culturally oppressive etc) zionism, that's just their political stand.

Similarly when you want the USA to use our military to destroy israel's enemies, that's a legitimate political stand and it deserves discussion.

But when you claim there *is no* zionist lobby and the issues mustn't be discussed, you are interfering with the political process in a bad way. This can only lead to trouble.

[J Thomas]

"No, *nothing* makes "antisemitism look respectable." Anti-semitism is appalling and unjustified, period."

Come on, you're overdramatising. Antisemitism is no worse than anti-black racism, or the anti-irish and anti-italian racism of earlier times, or the anti-chinese efforts in california of the 1800's.

Or the anti-serb/anti-slav/anti-muslim thing in Xugoslavia, the anti-shia/anti-sunni thing in iraq, or the anti-irish/anti-scotchirish in ireland etc etc.

We have lots of racists, and they don't feel shamed when they get called on it. They just feel oppressed. Tell Dixiecrats that they shouldn't be prejudiced against blacks and will they feel ashamed and decide they should treat blacks just like they treat their friends? No, they'll turn Republican. That's the political process at work.

If things got really bad we could wind up like Bosnia from that. But our political process helps stop it. We give the racists their say, and then we vote against them. They see that the numbers aren't on their side and if it comes to violence they're likely to lose. Then they lobby to keep from being mistreated themselves and we vote for them, and they accept that. Treat them too bad, convince them they have nothing to gain by lobbying instead of fighting, and it heads toward the bad side. And denying them their voice is about the second or third step in that direction.

Antisemitism in the USA is so weak that it can be easily suppressed. But it's a mistake to do that, because thn we lose our gauge for how weak it is. We don't get to see how strongly it's voted down when it doesn't get a vote.

"And I think broad over-generalizations about Jews ("they think X...." "They always do Y....") verge on anti-Semitic, and have a distinct and dismaying tendency to slip over the border into outright anti-semitism."

I strongly agree. Overgeneralisation about anybody is, well, overgeneralisation. People in masses are chaotic, and the attempt to see broad movements in the mass is always speculative before the fact.

Minimal generalisations can work. Christians believe in christ -- or they wouldn't call themselves christians. Mostly our soldiers believe in the US military -- or they wouldn't volunteer or re-enlist. American zionists believe in the ideals of zionism or they wouldn't call themselves zionists. (Except they mostly don't call themselves zionists, they mostly say there aren't any american zionists.) Democrats (small D democrats) believe in democracy. I am a democrat.

[SoldierOutOfIraq]

Thanks for your response, Rosa. J Thomas, your own words continue to indict you.

[SoldierOutOfIraq]

Thanks for your response, Rosa. J Thomas, your own words continue to indict you.

[J Thomas]

SOOI, you make indictments in your mind. My words are not illegal and are not indictable.

To my way of thinking, your repeated attempts to prevent democratic discussion indict you. You are attempting to disenfranchise those who disagree with you. Bad move.

[J Thomas]

SOOI, you make indictments in your mind. My words are not illegal and are not indictable.

To my way of thinking, your repeated attempts to prevent democratic discussion indict you. You are attempting to disenfranchise those who disagree with you. Bad move.

[J Thomas]

SOOI, you continue to indict me in your own mind, out of your own prejudices. But what I say is legal and not indictable that way.

Apparently you have no sense of irony whatsoever. What Rosa said not to do, is precisely what you're doing. You weaselly little bad example -- you call me antisemitic just for saying there is a zionist lobby! It's hard to imagine watering down the concept more than that.

[J Thomas]

Oops, Each of my posts appearsed to fail and then they all turned up at once.

Sorry about that.

[hassani1387@yahoo.com]

Actually, the creation of Israel was a project that pre-dated the Holocaust.

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