It takes me a while to understand stuff I see with my own eyes. In my post last night about CAMERA’s conference on Israel’s Jewish defamers (which I paid $40 to attend), I failed to linger on executive director Andrea Levin’s important speech about Ha’aretz. At some point I will transcribe her comments and provide them. But here is the gist of them.
No other newspaper in Israel matters, Levin says, because Ha’aretz is an elite publication and it has such an amazing English-language website. It is read by millions around the world. "None of the other papers is having international impact." All true.
"We feel directly affected by Haaretz… we feel we should be directly interacting as much as possible… putting more resources into that, because of its direct effect on all of us." I believe that Levin said she had even appealed to government bodies in Israel, including the IDF, to do something about Haaretz stories. The speech ended with the call to arms, for CAMERA members to start pressuring Haaretz. "Write, phone, challenge, speak out… Haaretz is now affecting all of us."
The heart of Levin’s concern was the American discourse. When Haaretz was just published in Israel, CAMERA didn’t care about its statements about the occupation and the destruction of Palestinian hopes and dreams and olive trees. "This all happened in Hebrew… causing little outward impact.."
Outward impact. She means: now Haaretz is affecting U.S. opinion and foreign policy. The most important statement Levin made was that she gets the brushoff from Amos Schocken, the Haaretz publisher, but with the American media, "there is an unwritten contract between them and us." (Verbatim transcript to come later, when I have a little time…) An unwritten contract: to be fair to Israel, to print CAMERA members’ letters, to pick up the phone.
Isn’t that amazing and scandalous? Levin is explaining why there is a free debate in Israel and not here. Because of the lobby and its "unwritten contract." Because U.S. support is crucial to Israel’s existence. And so Americans, who supposedly so love the Middle East democracy that they support it out of the goodness of their hearts, must not read the news from Israel.
Related posts:
- CAMERA Director: ‘Many, Many Times We Have Urged’ Israeli Gov’t to Take Action Against American Publications
- Haaretz Strikes Again; Condi Likens Palestinians to Southern Blacks
- Only in Haaretz: Khalidi Blasts ‘McCarthyite’ Tactics Linked to Israel Lobby
- Walt & Mearsheimer Must Be Brought Into the Mainstream (Just Ask Haaretz)
- Some Grownups Talk About the Israel Lobby
{ 16 comments }
Yup. You said it. I admire your candor about these things, Mr. Weiss. I hope you appreciate that what you write is actually *diffusing*, not encouraging, anti-Semitism. What you say in this case has been perfectly clear to me since I came of age and started following newspapers with any regularity. It's stunning, but even college newspapers consistently hew to the Israel line. Anyway, your voice helps to show that not all American Jews are in lockstep. Crazy but I don't know how many of my Jewish friends are with you…and I'd be nervous even asking. The social stigma of a disagreement wouldn't be worth it.
"you said it" points to an important point that I as a non-Jew encounter regularly. By merely revealing a particular worldview, one is almost immediately tagged as some sort of bigot and that even when trying to further a dialogue, it is virtually shut off by those not wishing to have their deeply held political beliefs challenged in the least.
Not too long ago, I asked a Hillel rabbi if I could forward his listserv comments comparing the "hatefulness" of Ann Coulter and Dr. Norman Finkelstein to Dr. Finkelstein and allow them to be published on his web site. He declined both requests. I asked him if he would care to have lunch sometime to discuss those areas where we disagree. He didn't even bother to reply. He once accused me of being a believer in "the protocols" because I was outraged by Israel's most recent bombing of Beirut (he had sent around an email proclaiming that the doctored smoke photos prove just how maligned Israel is). He told me I'd be more comfortable at a PLO terrorist website or one of white supremacists. I learned later that his approach was straight out of the Hasbara propaganda manual put out by the WUJS.
I wonder how these characters explain Jewish critique on israel such as one finds in Haaretz. "Self hatred" – who believes in that hoary chestnut any longer?
Some prominent public defenders of the Zionist cause have maneuvered themselves into an untenable position by maintaining that protests against Israeli deeds on the basis of anti–racism and a concern for human rights are basically just inspired by anti-semitism.
So, for instance, maintained Professor Robert Wistrich, Director of the Vidal Sassoon Centre for the Study of Anti-Semitism at Hebrew University. At a conference on “Anti Semitism and Prejudice in the contemporary media”, held at the Centre on 18th February 2003, he gave the keynote address.
In it he harked back at some things he had written during the first Lebanon War in 1982, declaring that he wouldn’t have to change a word today.
Well, what did he think in 1982 that had such enduring value? He thought then that there was a deliberate political campaign behind the unfavorable global publicity around this war, a campaign that had as its major aim the delegitimation of the state of Israel. The fact that it was this war during which the notorious Sabra and Shatila massacre took place (a massacre for which afterwards the Israeli Kahan Commission allocated personal responsibility to Sharon) counted apparently for nothing.
The hatred of Israel, so declared Professor Wittrich, expresses itself today in the name of the wretched of the earth. The pretext of the critics of Israel is that they are only against imperialism, colonialism and racism. But, so says the Professor in a logical jump of breathtaking audacity, the fact that this is merely an alibi is clear from the attacks on synagogues in Europe. The Professor probably deemed it a minor question whether the vandals that attacked synagogues were the same people who had voiced their criticism of Israel on the basis of human rights in a more civilized way.
Once he got going he couldn’t stop. This terrorism, the Professor exclaimed, threatens Western democracies as much as Israel. Antizionism subliminally legitimizes terrorism.
Yes, subliminally quite a lot can happen.
Behind this perverse line of reasoning there seems to be one axiom, the unshakable conviction that all gentiles everywhere have a primordial and inexplicable hatred of Jews. One finds the same conviction behind the statements of two other prominent public intellectuals, the Columbia historian Professor Simon Schama and the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut of the Ecole Polytechnique. Finkielkraut is not very well known in the US but in France he ranks among some of the most visible ‘media’ intellectuals.
Both professors were interviewed in the same year that Wistrich came with his allegations, on May 13 2003 by NPR. There Professor Schama declared that you can even find anti-semitism without Jews, and as examples he gave Japanese anti-semitism and, for many hundreds of years, that in Spain. Apparently it is wired somewhere in the gentile brain.
At this occasion Finkielkraut came up with the same line of reasoning as Wistrich. Today anti-semitism dresses itself up in the garb of anti-racism.
Today, he said, “we have to deal with new demons, and we have to be careful not to lug them into all debates, because the new anti-Semitism, the anti-Semitism of today, speaks the idiom of anti-racism. The Jews are not accused of being a dangerous race. They are accused of being racist, especially because of what they are supposed to do or to approve in Israel, and that's a very difficult task for us because we know how to deal with incitement to racial hatred, but (not) how to deal with incitement to anti-racist hatred, and that's what's happening every day in words and deeds.”
A few years after Finkielkraut caused quite a lot of controversy in France by an interview he gave to Haaretz a propos of the riots in the suburbs of Paris in which the migrants from the Maghreb were deemed to be the main guilty party. This interview was translated from the original Hebrew by Michele Sibony, president of the French Jewish Association for peace (“Union juive francaise pour la paix”) and Michel Warschawsky, president of the “Alternative Information Centre of Jerusalem”. Haaretz itself had also come up with an English translation but according to Sibony and Warschawsky that was sanitized, some of the most scandalous statements had been removed.
What caused a furor in leftist circles in France was that Finkielkraut, this erstwhile prominent spokesman for the left, came up with statements here that one would rather expect from an adherent of the National Front.
I have read this interview and since I have never known Finkielkraut as a spokesman for the left (in the same way as I have never known Dershowitz as a defender of human rights) I didn’t find it particularly surprising. It goes nowhere above the level of pub talk. But one statement that doesn’t seem to have attracted much attention seems to me the clue to the whole story.
This is what Finkielkraut said:
“But I think that the lofty idea of `the war on racism’ is gradually turning into a hideously false ideology. And this anti-racism will be for the 21st century what communism was for the 20th century. A source of violence. Today, Jews are attacked in the name of anti-racist discourse: the separation fence, `Zionism is racism.’
It’s the same thing in France. One must be wary of the `anti-racist’ ideology. Of course, there is a problem of discrimination. There’s a xenophobic reflex, that’s true, but the portrayal of events as a response to French racism is totally false. Totally false.”
Anti-racism is bad because it is bad for Israel and bad for Jews. Can Jewish egotism go any further?
P.S. Phil, you change your posts so often that hardly has one prepared a reaction to one or you are already on to a new subject. Give yourself a break.
As a non Jew who was educated in in the New York City Public School System and attended Stuyvesant High School and Hunter College I always admired the intellectualism and honest discourse of the Jews and it actually hurts to read such people as Alan Derscowitz actually promote and defend torture, while so many of the Jewish neo-cons actually call for the killing of all Arabs. How a people with such a trational liberal tradition can fall to such depths amazes me.It is matched by the fall of The United States to a country that has abandoned its traditions of a hemble foreign policy coupled with an expansion of personal liberties.
Whether we know it or not, both the United States and Israel have already been defeated morally. We promote and excuse torture;we are comfortable with genocide and apartheid; we are uncomfortable with free speech and do not bother to disagee by offering valid arguments but by personal attacks on the speaker;we are abandoned Habeas Corpus and the other protections in The Bill of Rights, and we are now a elected dictatorship. No invader aould have accomplished this.
The defenders of Israel have become very shrill. It is understandable because it has become obvious that Israel has become unecessary. After WWII, the homeless Jews of Europe needed a refuge away from European anti-Semitism and so, the state of Israel was cruelly imposed upon Palestine. But the last 60 years have proven that Jews are no longer being discriminated against. In fact, Jews live privileged lives in America and Western Europe. Jews enjoy high incomes, elite education (30% of Ivy League students are reportedly Jewish), and high political representation. Where are the Jewish ghettoes in America – Palm Springs?. The world needs a "homeland" for Jews like it needs a homeland for Episcopalians. I think a lot of people have figured this out and so persecution of Arabs in the Mid East for the sake of privileged people (who hate the Arabs anyway) makes about as much sense as persecution of black Africans just so privileged whites can live large in Africa. And this uncomfortable truth is driving all of this Islamofascist hysteria.
Lets have peace in the world.
http://www.zarinas.com
I would like to reinforce the above comment that this diffuses antisemitism–indeed! It is the Likud-lobby that is responsible for the most pernicious defamation and the most effective critiques of it will come from Israelis and the Jewish community. I know it is difficult but please do continue to speak out.
How a people with such a trational liberal tradition can fall to such depths amazes me.
Start some kind of colonial project, with the hope of establishing a sovereign, armed state composed of people from a competing culture. You'll be amazed at the ethical and moral depths you'll plumb.
And it's a sure bet your religion, even if it's Judaism, won't save you. You'll find yourself deep in the "mud and the blood and the beer" (As Johnny Cash put it in "A Boy Named Sue)!
The notion that Israel not any longer necessary is based upon the false assumption that Jews are welcome in other societies – and they are not. One of the reasons for the support Israel gets from the Western societies despite its horrific human rights record is the fact that these societies do not want an influx of large masses of people that are keeping to themselves even more than Muslims do in Western Europe. Adolf Hitler's antisemitic message would have not have resonated as well with the German people if there would not have been such a large influx of Eastern European Jews after WW1.
At the same time, Jews with their control of public opinion in these societies are not willing to give up their "fall back position" Israel, in case any of the societies they live in gets tired of hosting a seperate group of people unwilling to assimilate fully.
I can appreciate that Jews may want to keep Israel as an "insurance policy" in case Europe and America become fickle in their acceptance of Jews. But how on Earth, can abusing Palestinians establish any such dependable refuge? Israel only makes sense if it is a country blending Jews who accept Arabic people as equals with Arabs who can appreciate Jewish contribution. An Israel intent upon driving Arabs out of the part of the Mid East that they want is nonsense. It is like birds trying to take over a river and driving the fish out. The only long range solution is an Jewish/Arab Palestine (or call it Israel if you want). Those Jews who wish to live as equals with Palestinians have my support. But this Likudnik, racist Sparta that Israel is becomming is worse than unnecessary; it is
a menace to World peace.
Israeli commentator Ran HaCohen over at antiwar.com maintains that there's a definite DIFFERENCE between the English version of Ha'aretz and the Hebrew version. The English version is subtly CENSORED so as not to alarm the Gentiles too much. They're very aware of the effect the English version has on International public opinion, and they don't want to sway that opinion too far in the WRONG direction.
Zionists may be racist but Jews (at least in the UK) are not. They're marrying in at such a rate that they're disappearing as an indentifiable minority, the numbers counted are dropping fast. This is not "natural shrinkage", because the number of other minorities rises over time (eg 44 million Irish in the US). More likely, the efforts of the Zionists to incite anti-semitism in our societies (because it helps Israel) is backfiring disastrously on the existence of the Jews as a generally respected minority. More and more of those entitled to claim to be Jewish want nothing to do with a religion (ethnicity?) that's been hi-jacked in this unpleasant fashion.
Haaretz has been down the last few days for me, it looks like these Zion Fascists are having their way. Reporting too accurately = anti-semitism. lol.
Interesting. Very interesting.
Habib
http://www.theislamdir.com
It is with great sadness that have read some of the above commentary on the right to exist of the State of Israel. Do some of these readers not know the true history of Israel and of it's right to exist, or do they just feign ignorance. Do they really believe that Israel just came into existance in 1948? Where else in the Middle East can such freedom of thought and speech exist? No country on the face of the earth has perfect leaders, not here in the US or elsewhere. We are merely human and as such often make mistakes, whether it be in governance or in war. We as humans merely try to learn from these mistakes and grow whether as persons or as countries and try not to repeat such errors. Yes guys prejudice and anti-semitism do exist and all of us must fight it and rise above it but to say as some have that Israel has no right to exist either as a nation or a people is to spit in the eye of rationality. Please wake up and smell the coffee and be grateful that this wonderful creative nation continues.
Mary
December 30, 2007
War is really traumatic to come back from, and our troops take a great amount of damage in their lifetime for our country.
Matt,
http://www.Nawlist.com
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