Shlomo Sand, Israeli historian
When Jim Rutenberg and Serge Kovaleski refer to “books like The Invention of the Jewish People and March of the Titans: A History of the White Race,” should we assume that these are just ignorant journalists making a grossly inappropriate association, or are they purposefully trying to mislead their readers?
In their New York Times hatchet job on Ron Paul we are told that “white supremacists, survivalists and anti-Zionists who have rallied behind his candidacy have not exactly been warmly welcomed.”
White supremacists, survivalists and anti-Zionists? In the minds of these reporters, anyone who promotes the idea that Israel should become a state of all its citizens — Jews, Arabs and others — apparently looks like a political bedfellow of the likes of Stormfront or the Militia of Montana.
The article reports on the appeal that Ron Paul has among some white supremacists and survivalists and yet says nothing on the anti-Zionist element. Rutenberg and Kovaleski were apparently content to merely insinuate that there is a link between criticism of Israel and racism.
The closest they come to providing evidence of such an association is the article’s opening sentence where the two books are linked.
March of the Titans: A History of the White Race is by Arthur Kemp, an advocate of white separatism and foreign affairs spokesman for the ultra-right and racist British National Party. Kemp is a Holocaust denier and was “linked to the murderer of the South African Communist party and ANC leader Chris Hani in 1993,” The Guardian reported in 2009.
The Invention of the Jewish People, first published in Hebrew in Israel with the title, Matai ve’ech humtza ha’am hayehudi?, is by Shlomo Sand, Professor of History at Tel Aviv University. The book was a bestseller in Israel for several months before being translated into French and English.
Tony Judt wrote: “Shlomo Sand has written a remarkable book. In cool, scholarly prose he has, quite simply, normalized Jewish history. In place of the implausible myth of a unique nation with a special destiny – expelled, isolated, wandering and finally restored to its rightful home – he has reconstructed the history of the Jews and convincingly reintegrated that history into the general story of humankind. The self-serving and mostly imaginary Jewish past that has done so much to provoke conflict in the present is revealed, like the past of so many other nations, to be largely an invention. Anyone interested in understanding the contemporary Middle East should read this book.”
Of course Rutenberg and Kovaleski would be unlikely to attach much weight to Judt’s assessment of Sand’s book — Judt was after all one of those dubious anti-Zionists.
The irony about linking anti-Zionists with anti-Semities is that Zionism is a philosophy that has obvious appeal to anti-Semites. Encourage all the Jews to move to Israel — why would the anti-Semites object?
Indeed, the emerging political convergence on the extreme right has been between anti-Semites and Zionists and that’s an unholy alliance that probably finds Ron Paul the least appealing among the GOP presidential hopefuls.
Can anyone identify any significant differences between Jewish nationalism, white nationalism, Arab nationalism, Japanese nationalism, etc.? All ethnic nationalist movements tend to look alike and promote the same narrow xenophobic (and often racist) values. It’s the nature of the beast. And messianic ethno-religious nationalist movements tend to be exceptionally bestial — they foster a high level of self-righteous fanaticism.
Put another way: what is the difference between Avigdor Lieberman (a Jewish nationalist) and David Duke (a white nationalist)? Why is one brand of ethnic nationalism more acceptable than the other?
I noticed this NY times piece earlier today. The lesson I garnered is that the establishment is approaching hysteria in the resonance of Ron Paul’s message of non-intererence in other countries civil wars. To link anti-Zionism with white racism is beyond extreme. But to link Ron Paul’s foreign policy ideas with either is simply absurd. Of course it makes sense that many who value American interests over those of foreign powers may tend to support Paul; I disagree with him on so many issues but I must admit supporting him because of his non-interventionist ideology. There is even a possibility that I will vote for him even though the rest of his policies are unsupportable.
Zionism is a classic example of Jewish supremacy ,chauvinism , jingoism and what have you. They cry “wolf ” everytime somebody dares to point that to them, and make the person, who is pointing, a bad, anti-Semitic (nad white supremacist) guy.
Good, old tactic. Less and less efective , people don’t fall for it anymore.
Although the article did not speak to the headline:
Anti-Zionism (as distinct from criticism of policies), is often a form of anti-semitism.
There are varying descriptions of what anti-semitism is:
1. The hatred of Jews by virtue of their “race”, the family that they were born into. Jews in the left are subject to this anti-semitism, and are therefore sympathetic to opposing this unearned condemnation and often persecution.
2. The hatred of Jews by virtue of their voluntary association, their continued identification and external association as Jewish. The left is on the fence as to this form of anti-semitism. Some indulge in it, in thinking and communicating that Judaism at all is understood as archaic, superstitious, racist, and that therefore anyone that currently practices such a superstitious practice, life, philosophy is an enemy.
3. The hatred of Jews’ asserting our identity as Jews, then extends into the form of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism. The question of whether Jews should have a state rather than just a confidently free residence, and the question of whether any Palestinian should ever have been displaced by Jewish residence or state are potentially valid questions with a potentially alternative just outcome. When the harrassment of Jews by Palestinians made itself institutionally apparent in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and a critical mass of yishuv Jewish residents determined that a state was necessary to survive, then the attitude that the Jews associating as Jews (even “new Jews”) to the thickness of a state, became abhorrent to the left and the Palestinian solidarity right.
Zionism is a form of Jews associating as Jews.
The hatred of “enough Zionism” is an anti-semitism, as relevant as addressing the individual conflicts remain.
A hatred of Jewish association.
The hatred may not have originated in Jew hatred, and emerged from a different path. To the extent that a Palestinian, a Palestinian solidarity, the left, the right, or anyone that has come to hate those Jews that desire to associate in the form of self-governance, are expressing a form of anti-semitism.
Sadly, unlikely to be considered seriously, for the conflict or tension with other noble values, and the failure of imagination to realize nation and democracy by its proponents and by its critics.
The key distinction is between hatred and criticism. They are different originally, but don’t always stay different.
Another point: neoconservatives and Christian Zionists continue today to spew a much greater torrent of Islamophobic hate speech in the mainstream media than those repulsive remarks that appeared in Ron Paul’s newsletters years ago (and which were reportedly instigated and penned by Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell).
When are the mainstream media going to renounce and apologize for their own behavior and demand renunciations and apologies from the bigots for whom they have provided a platform? The double standards here are absurd.
In the last GOP debate Michele Bachmann warned about the dangers of a “world caliphate” — a propaganda meme that could have been lifted directly from Nazi anti-Semitic tracts, with the substitution of Muslims for Jews. Rupert Murdoch continues to provide Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer with an opportunity to promote the most extreme forms of Islamophobia. Why isn’t the New York Times discussing this issue?
The New York Times could begin by delving into all of Newt Gingrich’s Islamophobic statements and associations during the last year or two. Get crackin’, Times. There is a goldmine of material to explore on this subject.