One thing I agree with Charles Krauthammer about is that Israel gets a lot of criticism that is rarely applied to their neighbors, who are even more guilty of human rights violations and oppression. I think it’s true that there is an anti-colonial element to this, which basically sees it as worse for Europeans to mistreat Arabs than for Arabs to mistreat Arabs or Kurds or other more indigenous peoples. So, yes, there is a double standard involved that I don’t agree with. I think the lack of religious freedom in Saudi Arabia is appalling, for example, but I don’t see academics calling for a boycott of Saudi oil.
Having said that, the bad behavior of Israel’s neighbors is not an excuse for their own bad behavior. The insistence on building new settlements on land that is supposed to, one day soon, become part of a Palestinian state is not acceptable, and it creates a national security risk for the United States. It also fuels the rise of anti-Semitism that is the focus of Krauthammer’s column. Maybe it doesn’t occur to him that people like me are equally concerned about the rise in anti-Semitism but see Israeli’s settlement policy as one of the key drivers of that unfortunate development.
I think it’s clear that he doesn’t understand people with my point of view because he’s basically saying that I have to be an anti-Semite if I think a boycott of Israeli goods and services might help Israel change their policy and begin to repair the deteriorating reputation of Jews in the global community.
I am not someone who uses the word “apartheid” to describe Israel’s system, but I think we can learn some things from looking at what happened in South Africa after they ended the apartheid system. They went from an international pariah to a country that hosted the World Cup. That might be too much of a turnaround for Israelis to hope for, but it demonstrates that a nation can quickly recover from a bad reputation if they stop doing deeply unpopular things.
My biggest problem with Krauthammer’s argument is that he simply won’t acknowledge that Israel has the power to change how they are perceived. He acts like the rise of anti-Semitism is some inexplicable mystery:
The persistence of anti-Semitism, that most ancient of poisons, is one of history’s great mysteries. Even the shame of the Holocaust proved no antidote. It provided but a temporary respite. Anti-Semitism is back. Alas, a new generation must learn to confront it.
It might be difficult to explain all the causes of the strain of anti-Semitism that arose in the late 19th-Century, but the present rise in anti-Semitism is pretty clearly tied to political opposition to Israel’s settlement policies. You don’t see academics calling for a boycott of Jewish businesses. You don’t see many reputable people making anti-Jewish statements. That “respectable” kind of anti-Semitism is not what we’re witnessing. Opposition to Israeli policy is respectable, and it can morph into a broader condemnation of the Jewish people that is not respectable. Nonetheless, the cause and effect is not a mystery, and Israel isn’t helpless.
The best way to tamp down anti-Semitism is for Israel to change their settlement policy and make an agreement with the Palestinians. Until that happens, Israel will continue to lose supporters every day, and it will create more people who can’t differentiate between a Jewish state and a Jewish people.
If a boycott can lead to peace and a safer world for Jews, I think it’s worth trying.
I feel certain that my strong dislike of Israel’s settlement policy doesn’t make me an anti-Semite, but Israel’s actions are surely turning me more and more against the state of Israel with every day that passes.
Why is this so difficult for Bibi to understand?
I presume he understands it. Bibi’s a smart, if evil, guy. I presume that his calculation is that alienating people like you and me is in his political interest.
Did your strong dislike of the US’s foreign policy under Bush turn you more and more against the United States with every day that passed? The part that reads anti-Semitic is ‘against the state of Israel,’ not ‘a strong dislike of Israel’s settlement policy.’ Many Israelis share the latter feeling with you. But what does it mean to ‘turn against’ a country?
(Should clarify that I’m not saying you are anti-Semitic. Though I think that, as with most pervasive historical prejudices, we all buy in to some degree, just through cultural osmosis.)
I hold Israel to higher standards than other nations for the same reasons I hold my children to higher standards than the neighbor kids. 1) Israel is our ally and their behavior reflects upon us. We have asked them to do better, and as long as we are giving them support, we should have a right to expect some cooperation. 2) They should know better. I don’t know enough to judge the other nations in the area, but I know what the Jews went through. They should have learned from experience that bigotry and violence are not acceptable.
I do NOT blame the Israeli people, as a whole, for the actions of their government, any more than I blame all Americans for the Bush Administration. But I wish the rest of the world would have spoken up when Bush was President. I wish they had insisted that he stop. If a boycott might help the Israeli people apply pressure to their government, I’m all for it.
“But I wish the rest of the world would have spoken up when Bush was President. I wish they had insisted that he stop.”
I guess you don’t remember the EU dismissing Bush’s Iraq invasion, the RWNJ outrage against all things French (or ‘old Europe’), etc.
Millions of protesters around the world and in the US didn’t even slow Bush down. I’m not sure that anything short of WW3 would have done so.
It’s become obvious that protests mean nothing to the US government. Did any foreign governments try anything more than stern words? Did anyone try to make the point economically, as a boycott would? Could the UN take legal steps? You may very well be right that there was nothing to be done, but it doesn’t feel like anyone had the guts to actually try.
We’re Rome on steroids and meth.
No one is crazy enough to do that.
Yet.
Two definitions from the Merriam-Webster dictionary…
Main Entry: Sem·ite
Pronunciation: `se-“mIt, esp British `sE-“mIt
Function: noun
Etymology: French sémite, from Semitic Shem, from Late Latin, from Greek SEm, from Hebrew ShEm
Date: 1848
1 a : a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia, including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs
b : a descendant of these peoples
Main Entry: an·ti-Sem·i·tism
Pronunciation: “an-ti-‘se-m&-“ti-z&m, “an-“tI-
Function: noun
Date: 1882
: hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group
If Semites include “Hebrews and Arabs,” why is anti-Semitism just “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews” instead of all Semites?
No fear.
This is a super-dumb argument. Bigotry against Jews is called “anti-semitism” because a bunch of people who were bigoted against Jews in the 19th century decided to obfuscate their bigotry by casting it in terms of then-fashionable theories that linked ethnicity with language. The term caught on with pretty much everybody despite its disreputable origins, and now it just means “hating Jews”, and arguing otherwise is frivolous, and nothing but fallacious equivocation.
Defending yourself from charges of anti-semitism when criticizing the policies of the State of Israel is actually trivially easy. Presenting dumb and easily discredited arguments instead doesn’t do anybody any good.
You didn’t answer the question. Rude, derisive and condescending, you danced around the question, you obfuscated, while not answering the question, and in doing so showed yourself to be “super dumb”.
You can call me anti-semitic till the cows come home, I could give a rat’s ass, because I’m against, “anti”, all of them: Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs alike as well as the descendants of these peoples. If the bible, koran and torah are of any value at all, it is as documentation of one particular group of people’s, one race, refusal to get along with each other.
Israel is a Terrorist State. The Mother of All Terrorist States. An utterly foreign occupier perpetrating an American Taxpayer conceived, financed and morally sanctioned genocide upon the indigenous descendants of the “biblical hebrew”. It has no “right” to exist and this world will never know Peace until it does not.
That the vast majority of modern day Jewry is descended not from the “biblical hebrew” but of the Kazar, Russian mongols who in the sixth century pig era not so much converted but assumed the mantle of Jewry as at the time both Islam and Christianity held usury – the lending of money at interest – to be a sin while the Jews did not is moot in the generally accepted vernacular.
Master of Science, Master of Arts, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Arts, Associate of Science, Associate of Arts, Micro$oft certified, Apple certified, Cysco certified… I don’t put it out there if I don’t know what I’m talking about.
How ’bout you?
My inbox this morning: Israel announces plans for 1,400 new settlements
Depressing. Part of me hopes that Israel trying to torpedo our efforts with Iran will be a bridge too far for President Obama and the result will be a further reduction of Israel’s influence on our foreign policy.
Here’s my problem with the boycotts:
A business boycott will disproportionately hurt the productive sectors of Israeli society, who are less likely to live in settlements (very little of Israel’s GDP is produced there) and who are less likely to be part of Israel’s ultra-orthodox communities.
The academic boycott disproportionately hits people who actually think for a living, and I’ve had a hunch for quite some time that people who think for a living are not the problem over there, with occasional exceptions.
Yes, Netenyahu has ties to business, but he’s alive politically due to support from other groups.
Last thing I want to see is Israel disconnected from the modern world.
The long term solution is forcible American policy related to our financial support of the country, and secular Israelis realizing their way of life will disappear if they don’t figure this shit out.
The Palestinians, meanwhile, are in a terrible situation, but the longer they wait, the more the demographics move in their favor.
If it’s not apartheid, then what is it?
something different.
Well until you can define what that something else is, I and many others including Corey Robin, Max Blumenthal, and even Jimmy Carter will call it for what it is.
One of the things that makes it different from Saudi oppression of women or migrant workers is that Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories is an international issue by definition: it is alongside China one of the last major colonial powers and parallel to South Africa in that respect. You may not like using “apartheid” to refer to Israel’s treatment of Arabs inside Israel, but the fragmented bits of Palestinian territory that Israel sort of recognizes really are Bantustans. While most human rights issues are arguably what Chinese diplomats call “internal matters” linked up with national sovereignty, the Occupation is a problem for the whole community of nations.
Another reason for the focus on Israel is the particular interest in the matter of North American and European Jews and Jewish-identified people of a leftish orientation for whom the racism and cruelty of Israeli government policies are really a matter of personal shame: Israelis are family, in some cases quite literally, and we feel responsible. I don’t feel implicated in anything Saudi Arabia does but I share the horror of my Israeli nephew and his family at what he is made to be a part of, and as a noisily political American I can’t stop talking about it.
People hate Jews because they hate Jews. They hate blacks because they hate blacks, they hate gays because they hate gays.
We can point to real offenses perpetrated by some Jews, or some blacks, or some gays, and say, ‘that gives the haters an excuse. If only they stopped with that stuff, it would change how they are perceived.’
Perhaps that’s true, but so far on the margins as to make no difference. Conservatives love highlighting crimes committed by African-Americans, because it justifies their racism. If no African-American ever committed a crime, that would make it harder to justify racism, and presumably racism would decline–slightly. However, it’s racist to blame racism on black crime. There was racism before black crime; there was racism when blacks were the victims of systematic horror almost beyond the human imagination.
The analogy is obvious.
Also, it’s obvious why depicting Obama as a chimp is racist, while depicting Bush as a chimp was not. Targeting the only Jewish state for behavior that is not targeted in other states is anti-Semitic. That doesn’t mean that it’s not something that is mortally supportable. Maybe, overall, it is still wise. Sometimes doing something with racist or homophobic, sexist or antisemitic echoes is still the best thing: but we have to admit that’s what we’re doing.
I couldn’t agree more with the first part of your argument. I just don’t think it’s remotely anti-semitic to be more concerned about Israel’s conduct than that of other countries. For one, I think that the Israeli policies of expanding settlements, constant destabilizing attacks on Lebanon, and sabotaging attempts to bring an end to Iran’s nuclear program diplomatically endanger Israeli national security as well as US interests. Also, closes ties between the US and Israel translate into leverage that the US has to shape Israel’s conduct that just doesn’t apply well in other instances.
I think it’s inevitably (and probably definitionally) anti-semitic to be more concerned about the only Jewish state’s conduct than that of other countries. But I suspect we’ve got different definitions of ‘antisemitic.’
I think that, for various obvious historical reasons, singling out Jews for punishment is antisemitic. Even if it’s completely rational. Like for various obvious historical reasons, portraying Obama as a chimp is racist. Even if it’s completely rational.
So we argue about what is or isn’t antisemitic as if that’s reducible to rationality. It’s not. It’s about history and context and feeling. If a woman tells me I’m being sexist, I presume she’s right. If another woman tells me I’m not being sexist, I presume that the very same act wasn’t sexist to her but was to the first woman.
These things aren’t binary.
OK, but see, I’m particularly concerned about Israel because I’m Jewish, and like a lot of other American Jews, I have personal ties with Israelis. I think it’s a little strange to consider my own heightened concern around risks created by Israeli intransigence as anti-semitic[1], and I’m not all that receptive to the idea that the judgements of other Jews with regards to anti-semitism are more authoritative than my own.
I’m opposed to an economic boycott, and very strenuously opposed to an academic boycott, but I think arguing that either one is anti-semetic is both unfair and sort of illogical.
[1] Of course, I’m also very concerned about US national secuirity, which affects my judgement around actions by the US that compromise it. It’s one of the reasons I opposed the invasion of Iraq so strenuously.
The decisions must be made by both parties involved and should have majority support of both Israelis and Palestinians. It should not have been necessary for US involvement and Kerry brokering a deal. A negotiated deal for a two-state solution must be achieved as Israel is about to close the Jerusalem-Jericho corridor with more settlement building. Israel is faced with hostile neighbours, but that is due to failed policy on both sides and a lob-sided military might.
I lived through 50+ years of Middle-East wars, propaganda, successes and failures in diplomacy. Over the years I changed from a full-fledged supporter of Israel to someone who takes a critical stance on failure in leadership and long-term vision by Israel. The 1970s was an horrible period for Israel due to a number of Palestinian terror acts on civilians throughout the region. The 1980s and 90s was a period of Israel’s revenge and an accepted Zionist policy to annex Judea and Samaria through expansion of outposts and settlements. The internal hatred between political parties and the assassination of Yitzak Rabin changed my vision on Israel’s motives towards the Palestinians.
Failed leaders on Israeli side: Peres, Sharon, Olmert and Netanyahu (twice). My only hope is when a final deal is reached for peace in the greater Middle East, the economic boom will make people focus on their lives and not being bound by an ideology of destruction. There are some signs this will be possible, it’s time for peace. Secretary Kerry has my support and he is aware of extremists on all sides: PA/Hamas, Knesset/settlers and Congress/Aipac.
As final note, I especially abhor Israel’s support for Islamophobia and covert support for right-wing politicians in Europe and the US. This is incitement for hatred and retribution will follow like a shadow.
Nobody is singling out Jews for punishment.
Krauthammer’s article is filled with typical rebuttal by Israel’s hasbarist crowd and needs to be addressed. I personally have been cursed by a Palestinian envoy in The Hague: “You must be a Jew” and on this blog accused of anti-semitism. The Palestinian curse does me proud.
Krauthammer throws all items in one barrel and declares it’s anti-semitism. This undermines his own cause as is seen very often by Abe Foxman of ADL and Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.
A boycott is not by any means anti-semitic. The academic boycott is due to racism inside Israel and its Arab citizens who are doomed to be second class. See FM Avigdor Lieberman’s proposition to throw 300,000 Arab Israelis out by moving the Israeli border. Richard Silverstein and others have written many articles about the discrimination. This opinion piece in Jerusalem Post slams Lieberman’s proposal: “Let’s swap Lieberman and keep Wadi Ara.”
Another example is the French political activist, calling himself a comedian, Dieudonné. Hardly anyone heard of him until recently the gesture got attention through social media and by MSM coverage. The French government added controversy to have his “show” banned by the French court yesterday. A crowd of 5,000 were disappointed in Nantes, a half-hour before curtain time.
○ Catastrophic Official Dutch State Visit to Israel
○ Brandeis’ Shame: Severs Academic Ties with Palestinian University
○ Kerry Ends ME Visit – ‘EU Boycott an Anti-Zionist Conspiracy’
○ Dutch boycott is based on EU decision to separate goods from settlements as not of Israeli origin under free trade agreement and the recent UN report on the Occupied Palestinian Territories listing human rights abuse. The occupation has lasted 46 years and enough is enough.
○ OHCHR – Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories
The double standard meme is a load of horseshit.
That double standard meme might impress on a list of Likud talking points, but it falls apart under even mild scrutiny.
THANK YOU!
As a matter of fact, there IS a double standard, but it goes the other way. Israel gets away with murder and mayhem.
Netanyahu is the kind of Jew who gives Jews a bad name. That’s it in a nutshell. And where is this rabid anti-semitism that is the talk of the town. It’s discussed as a fact of life. Something like Saddam’s WMD and Iran’s nuclear bomb. Or are we dealing with a mass aberration? Manufactured hysteria because people criticize Israel? No one can in good conscience cite the Jewish genocide in Europe in support Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians (including those with Israeli citizenship). And Boo, ‘apartheid’ just literally means the state of being apart and that’s the practice and further goal of Israel. Separate roads, housing, schools, etc.
I don’t use the term apartheid in connection with Israel because it almost invariably derails the conversation and we end up in a quibble over semantics. But Desmond Tutu has said the situation in the occupied territories is worse than apartheid, and I guess he would know.
.
PM Netanyahu knew what was coming from the European Union. Due to a legal issue, Lieberman wasn’t sworn in as FM and Netanyahu in his absence made a mess of Israel’s relationship with other states. Arrogance or leadership failure?
Cross-posted from my diary – EU-Israel Trade Agreement, Funding Ban W. Bank July 16, 2013
Recalled an excellent diary over @ET – “The Israel Lobby” — overview and discussion May 2006
The glaring reason (and as yet unmentioned, natch) that Israel gets called out for their behavior more than their equally crude neighbors is because of the total propaganda presence their hasbara has in our culture and the blowback it engenders. In the media, our movies and academia, the Zionist story reigns supreme. You can ask Norman Finkelstein what it’s like to be attacked by the intellectual ‘Lobby’. All my life, I’ve been ‘dershed’. Outside of BandarBush and a Jordanian King or two, where is the Arab propaganda? I haven’t noticed Arab apologists, stacked multiple deep, in every major network and major paper of record. (And since BooMan would like to have a future beyond the frogpond, it’s wise not to use the A-word.)
Sure, there is ‘anti-semitism’, as there is racism, sexism, and probably a few more isms. People identify classes with individuals. But make no mistake. Calling people ‘anti-semites’ is an aggressive/defensive tactic of the Zionists to deflect attention from the ongoing crimes of Israel.
Of course, the close ties to our own warmongering elements doesn’t hurt either.
I think the lack of religious freedom in Saudi Arabia is appalling, for example, but I don’t see academics calling for a boycott of Saudi oil.
Both Israel and their neighboring dictatorships deserve to be boycotted. The problem is that oil is the only thing of value that the neighboring states have to sell. An oil boycott is meaningless because it is a commodity so unless the entire world joined the boycott the most that would happen is that some of the oil tankers would get re-routed – and likely even that wouldn’t happen.
I suppose you could try to boycott providing services TO the dictator-ship run oil states, but again that would be useless unless the whole world participated.
No, the only way to boycott those states is to stop buying any kind of oil. We have two electric vehicles, in part for exactly this reason.
And to the degree we can we don’t buy anything from Israel either.
Oh, I don’t know. 13 years of sanctions, eight of them led by Bill “I feel your pain unless you are Iraqi” Clinton was instrumental in putting an end to Iraq as a viable country.
eom
Guys like Krauthammer and Abe Foxman killed it and ran it through a wood chipper to dispose of the body.
When statements like “I don’t think innocent civilians ought to be shot in the head, just for being in the Occupied Territories” are equated with “all Jews should be gassed” then you know you are dealing with crazy people.
When a country loudly declares itself “a light unto the nations” it is announcing that it must be held to the highest of standards.
And yet Israel makes that self-satisfied announcement even as it competes with its neighbors in a race for the bottom, then whines about a double standard.