Re: [Marxism] The anti-Semitism workshop

["cleon42@xxxxxxxxx" <cleon42@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Joaquin Bustelo <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> But the most prominent examples of alleged anti-Semitism on the left,
> some
> statements by certain Black leaders, which --for example-- were
> immediately
> thrown at me on this list in the form of "when did you stop beating
> your
> wife" questions

This is NOT correct, by any means, and your presentation of the
exchange as such is extremely dishonest. 

You decided, without going through the pains of actually researching
the matter, that hatred of Jews held by some Palestinians is a
"righteous" hatred, due to Palestinians being oppressed by Israel.

Somebody--I don't recall who--asked, quite logically, if this same line
of reasoning applied to hatred of Jews from the Black community. There
has never been a special oppression of the Black community from
Jews--how this anti-Semitism reared its head in groups like the Nation
of Islam and prominent leaders like Jackson and Sharpton is a
*perfectly legitimate question* if we're talking about hatred of Jews
from oppressed nations.

To call this a "have you stopped beating your wife" question is just a
cheap way of ducking it.

> The claims of what constitutes "anti Semitism" were, frankly, also
> quite
> stretched in many cases. For example, Spencer said that statements
> that "The
> U.S. attacked Iraq to protect Israel" echoed or was based on the
> traditional
> anti-Semitic trope that Jews cause wars. Spencer admitted this was
> "gray
> area anti-Semitism" in that it didn't talk directly about Jews, but
> said
> "the movement" would be stronger without echoing the anti-Semitic
> discourse.

1. I agree that discussion of the subject from pure anecodotes is not
particularly valuable.
2. However, that doesn't mean that anecdotes are invalid; recently, at
a fairly well-attended meeting on the Lebanon crisis, someone (a white
guy, of course) raised this point: "I know that the media is basically
run by Jews; how do we fight the Jewish media?" Fortunately, the Arabs
and Palestinians in the room have not taken your position that such
anti-Semitism is "righteous" and led the way in explaining that he was
full of shit. He left right after that.

> The problem I have with it is that, --at least in my view--
> protection of
> the Zionist entity was central to Washington's concerns that led to
> the
> invasion,

Your view is incorrect. While concern for Israel was certainly a
factor, the reality is that if it were a *central* factor Washington
would have done better to go after Syria or Egypt. Iraq was not a
threat, direct or indirect, to Israel. Hussein didn't even crank up the
anti-Israel rhetoric the way Syria, Iran, and other countries do.
Saying that concern for Israel was a "central concern" in the invasion
is like the neo-cons insisting that the invasion of Iraq was to "fight
terrorism." It just doesn't make any sense on a factual basis.

Control of oil supply and increased imperialist domination of the
region were/are much more "central" concerns to the West.

> and it certainly was central in the propaganda leading up
> to the
> war. I guess we're supposed to rearrange our view of the world along
> the
> axis of fighting "anti-Semitism" which turns out to mean overlooking
> the
> centrality of Israel in imperialist domination of the Middle East.

Once again, you present a false dichotomy. Either we overlook Israel as
a central factor in the Middle East, OR we talk about the US attacking
Iraq for Israel.

First, let me explain why the "no war for Israel" line is problematic.
It creates space for Jewish conspiracy theories, which can and do raise
their heads--and they ARE anti-Semitic, they ARE reactionary, and they
DO set the movement back. Explaining the centrality of Israel in
imperialist affairs in the Middle East is fine; the question is how to
do this in a progressive manner that does *not* create space for
reactionary conspiracy theories.

Second, who are the people pushing this line? The National Fucking
Alliance, the National Socialist Movement, and other neo-Nazis. You
keep brushing this aside as a non-issue, and that's why I keep pointing
out that you're arguing from a position of ignorance. It's not the
Palestinians, Arabs, or Muslims who are pushing this. It's white
supremacists, ultra-rightists, and outright neo-Nazis. This is a real,
live, issue for the anti-war movement and for Palestine solidarity
work. Hell, we've had to face it in Atlanta, when Chester Doles
(then-fuhrer of the Georgia National Alliance) declared his intention
to join our protests at the Israeli consultate. (Again, it was an Arab
and Palestinian-dominated group that told him he was not welcome. And
mysteriously, the one voice that asked if we had the "right" to tell
him he wasn't welcome was a white guy.)

> Despite claims presented on this list that the workshop was done from
> an
> anti-Zionist perspective, that isn't the message I got. April
> Rosenblum,
> referring to the Israeli occupation, said it should stop immediately,
> that
> it should have stopped in 1967 -- as if the Zionist Entity's pre-1967
> borders and existence were not an occupation.

Again, you would do well to talk to actual organizers in Palestine
solidarity work before you make such ultra-left criticisms.

The question of how to address Israel's various invasions, occupations,
crimes, etc. has been a topic of discussion in the movement for many
years. We are faced with the challenge of trying to create a broad
movement, that includes both anti-Zionist and "soft" Zionist
perspectives, and come up with unifying positions. Exposing the 67
Occupation as the crime that it was, and the settlement, apartheid
policies, and military rule in those areas that has been going on
since, is hardly a contradiction with anti-Zionist politics. In fact,
it does more to expose Israel's nature as a colonial-settler state than
super r-r-revolutionary slogans about how "Israel IS an occupation!"

> She presented what were
> in
> essence apologetics for the State of Israel, saying --at least as
> best I
> understood it-- that while she would not have supported such a
> choice, the
> choice made by (many) Jews to create their own state was
> understandable
> after World War II.

I have not had a chance to listen to said recording yet, but you need
to be careful here, lest you lose historical perspective.

The Zionist movement, up until it got formal support from the
imperialists, was a tiny political cult in Europe. It had no
substantial support from the majority of the Jewish population.

The majority of the Jews who settled in Palestine after the Holocaust
were not, by any means, part of Menachem Begin's terrorist fanatics.
We're not talking about Brooklyn-born settlers, here. We're talking
about refugees from Hitler's death camps, whose original homes were
either destroyed or occupied by people who did not want them to come
back. None of the Allied countries would take more than a handful. The
imperialists, through the Zionists, gave them an option: settlement in
Palestine, and a "state of their own."

> But Israel was not created by Jews in response to
> the
> Holocaust, it was ALSO a response by imperialism to the struggle
> against
> colonialism.

You have "tail wagging the dog" syndrome. There is no "also"--it was
FIRST AND FOREMOST an imperialist response to anti-colonialism. Israel
was NOT created by the Zionists, and contrary to your earlier rants it
wasn't created by "the Jews," either. It was created by imperialism, a
force that USED the Zionists, that USED the Holocaust, that USED the
plight of the Jewish people for its own ends in the Middle East.

Which is why talk of "the Jews" as the enemy, whether in the solidarity
movement or by Hamas, is a reactionary idea and hardly "righteous." It
is IMPERIALISM that is the enemy, not the Jewish people. More Jews
moved to Palestine in the years after WWII than in the entire 50-year
period before that; they were refugees. In every sense of the word, the
Jews of Palestine are victims of imperialism as well as the
Palestinians. Which is why the solution is not blind, uncritical
support of some "kill the Jews" mantra, as you think, but by supporting
struggle against the *Israeli state*.

> But there is a very simple reason for only the two symbols being
> used,
> that's got nothing to do with anti-Semitism, which is visual balance.
> The
> Nazi flag wasn't painted, just the swastika, so the full Israeli flag
> wasn't
> used, just the central symbol, which Spencer can insist all he wants
> OUGHT
> NOT to be used as a symbol by the state of Israel, but it IS IN FACT
> used as
> a symbol by that state. Despite Spencer's assertion, the Star of
> David can
> stand for the Israeli state or all Jews.

Which is why equating the swastika with the mogen david is
problematic--because it CAN stand for "all Jews." (If it's in blue,
with the blue bars above and below, it's rather more explicit.)

The question is one of objective vs. subjective. Subjectively, it can
be either/or. Objectively, to some random person on the street, it
creates some fuzziness--is it talking about Israel, or Jews in general?
We (Atlanta Palestine Solidarity) tend to discourage such signs for
that reason. Not through denunciations, sign policing, or anything of
that sort--through discussion, through providing other signs, through
constructive engagement.

Adam


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism