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Anti-Zionism is hate, racism, bigotry

Anti-Zionism is hate

By Judea Pearl March 22, 2009

In January, four longtime Israel bashers were invited to the University of California, Los Angeles, to analyze the human rights conditions in Gaza, and used the stage to attack the legitimacy of Zionism and its vision of a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.

They criminalized Israel’s existence, distorted its motives and maligned its character, its birth, even its conception. At one point, the excited audience reportedly chanted “Zionism is Nazism” and worse.

Jewish leaders condemned this hate-fest as a dangerous invitation to anti-Semitic hysteria. The organizers, some of them Jewish, took refuge in “academic freedom” and the argument that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.

I fully support this mantra, not because it exonerates anti-Zionists from charges of anti-Semitism but because the distinction helps us focus attention on the discriminatory, immoral and more dangerous character of anti-Zionism.

Anti-Zionism rejects the very notion that Jews are a nation - a collective bonded by a common history - and, accordingly, denies Jews the right to self-determination in their historical birthplace. It seeks the dismantling of the Jewish nation-state: Israel.

Anti-Zionism earns its discriminatory character by denying the Jewish people what it grants to other historically bonded collectives (e.g., French, Spanish, Palestinians): namely, the right to nationhood, self-determination and legitimate coexistence with other indigenous claimants.

Anti-Semitism rejects Jews as equal members of the human race; anti-Zionism rejects Israel as an equal member in the family of nations.

Are Jews a nation? Some philosophers would argue Jews are a nation first and religion second. Indeed, the narrative of Exodus and the vision of the impending journey to the land of Canaan were etched in the minds of the Jewish people before they received the Torah at Mount Sinai. But philosophy aside, the unshaken conviction in their eventual repatriation to the birthplace of their history has been the engine behind Jewish endurance and hopes throughout their turbulent journey that started with the Roman expulsion in A.D. 70.

More important, shared history, not religion, is today the primary uniting force behind the secular, multiethnic society of Israel. The majority of its members do not practice religious laws and do not believe in divine supervision or the afterlife. The same applies to American Jewry, which is likewise largely secular. Identification with a common historical ethos, culminating in the re-establishment of the state of Israel, is the central bond of Jewish collectivity in America.

There are, of course, Jews who are non-Zionists and even anti-Zionists. There are also Jews who find it difficult to defend their identity against the growing viciousness of anti-Israel propaganda.

But these are marginal minorities at best; the vital tissues of Jewish identity today feed on Jewish history and its natural derivatives - the state of Israel, its struggle for survival, its cultural and scientific achievements and its relentless drive for peace.

Given this understanding of Jewish nationhood, anti-Zionism is in many ways more dangerous than anti-Semitism.

First, anti-Zionism targets the most vulnerable part of the Jewish people, namely, the Jewish population of Israel, whose physical safety and personal dignity depend crucially on maintaining Israel’s sovereignty. Put bluntly, the anti-Zionist plan to do away with Israel condemns 5.5 million human beings, mostly refugees or children of refugees, to eternal defenselessness in a region where genocidal designs are not uncommon.

Second, modern society has developed antibodies against anti-Semitism but not against anti-Zionism. Today, anti-Semitic stereotypes evoke revulsion in most people of conscience, while anti-Zionist rhetoric has become a mark of academic sophistication and social acceptance in certain extreme yet vocal circles of U.S. academia and media elite. Anti-Zionism disguises itself in the cloak of political debate, exempt from sensitivities and rules of civility that govern inter-religious discourse, to attack the most cherished symbol of Jewish identity.

Finally, anti-Zionist rhetoric is a stab in the back to the Israeli peace camp, which overwhelmingly stands for a two-state solution. It also gives credence to enemies of coexistence who claim that the eventual elimination of Israel is the hidden agenda of every Palestinian.

It is anti-Zionism, then, not anti-Semitism, that poses a more dangerous threat to lives, historical justice and the prospects of peace in the Middle East.

Judea Pearl is a professor at UCLA and the president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation. This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.israel22mar22,0,72685.story

German Court: Anti-Zionism May Be Anti-Semitism - Jewish World …”To give someone carte blanche for anti-Semitism because of Jewish origin or meritorious ancestors is racism,” continued the statement. … http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/127485

Anti-Zionism as a form of racism

Last update - 09:38 18/02/2008

By Bradley Burston, Haaretz Correspondent

It has been a staple of public discourse for decades, that those who criticize Israel specifically because they love the country and believe in the more lofty and challenging and just of its ideals, are routinely pilloried for it, berated by rightists as self-haters and anti-Semites and destroyers of Zionism.

Now meet a refreshing new phenomenon - bashing and negation of those same critics of Israel, but this time, the attacks are coming from Palestinians, other Arabs and Muslims, and their allies on the European ultra-left.

The message is: We don't care what you think, we don't care what causes you care about and advance, we don't even care if you think just like we do - You're Israelis, and that's good enough for us - in fact, bad enough for us - reason enough, in short, to boycott you.

We've seen it in the serial boycott obsession of elements of the British intelligentsia, who essentially seek to penalize and punish Israeli colleagues for little more than the original sin of being Israeli. It matters not at all to the boycott-bent if many of their targets are on-site leaders in the struggle for Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation.

Yes, we've come a long way from UN resolution 3379, adopted in late 1975, the declaration which determined that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination."

Now we have Anti-Zionism as a form of racism.

Actually, the clue to understanding the phenomenon may lie in the wording of the resolution itself, which included an explicit endorsement of the "elimination" of Zionism alongside "recognition of the dignity of peoples and their right to self-determination."

The bottom line, of course, is that the very idea of a movement to found and foster a Jewish state is illegitimate, and, by very short extension, such a state in the Holy Land - or anywhere, for that matter - has by definition no right to exist.

Though the resolution died a formal death when it was revoked in 1991, some of its spirit lives on. The most obvious and most widespread form is the rise of Islamist ideology, which in its most radical forms explicitly views the Jewish people in the Holy Land - and even in places like Buenos Aires - as a cancerous presence and a preferred target.

In its more subtle forms, the resolution lives on in such phenomena as the recent response to a decision by the organizers of the Turin International Book Fair to declare Israel as its guest of honor.

In an initial salvo, The New York Times reported, a local pro-Palestinian group "stormed the book fair offices in Turin, demanding that the invitation to Israel be rescinded."

They distributed leaflets reading "We are appalled to see the world of culture take the side of those who methodically operate to annihilate Palestine and the Palestinians."

It mattered not at all that among the authors to be most prominently featured at the fair are David Grossman, Amos Oz, and A. B. Yehoshua, writers closely identified with the search for peace with the Palestinians and for an Israel more closely committed to equality, democracy and human rights.

In a further move to underscore the idea that the only good Israeli is an absent Israeli, Swiss Muslim academic and activist Tariq Ramadan and British-Pakistani author Tariq Ali, along with Italian ultra-leftists are calling for a boycott of the entire event, slated to coincide with May commemorations of the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel.

Perhaps most remarkable in the Book Fair controversy - and the most direct recognition of the inherent racism on the part of the boycott proponents - has been the response of a group of more than 30 Italian intellectuals and artists. In an open letter, they called on Italian President Giorgio Napolitano to preside over the opening of the fair, and to speak out "against any discrimination and blind intolerance towards the citizens and culture of Israel."

Where does the line fall between legitimate criticism of Israeli policies on the one hand, and a racist anti-Zionism on the other? There is, in fact, such a line.

It is racist to suggest that all peoples have a right to self-determination in the land of their ancestors, with the exception of the Jews.

It is racist to maintain that Muslim historic and religious claims to Jerusalem and the Holy Land are absolute and date to antiquity, and at the same time to negate and dismiss Jewish historic and religious claims, to call Jews interlopers and usurpers and carpetbaggers in the land of their Bible, which is a sacred reference for Muslims as well.

It is racist to declare Zionism as an evil before which all other evils in the world pale, and to argue that any act of violence against non-combatants is justified in the service of defeating Zionism.

It is racist to take Israel and only Israel to task for its shortcomings in the areas of civil equality, sharing of resources, and the search for peace, while keeping silent or even taking pains to legitimize the same failures on the part of the countries and peoples one happens, as blindly as a pre-pubescent football fan, to support.

To seek to silence and boycott Israelis as Israelis is to violate human rights and acts, in the process, to undermine the cause of the Palestinians.

Fighting fire with fire is a tactic which, despite its dangers, often succeeds. Fighting racism with racism is a tactic which, despite its allure to the hothead, never does.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/955402.html

David Matas, famed human rights lawyer from Canada, in his excellent book Aftershock, written in 2002, reviewed the attacks on Jews and Israel throughout the world, and asked: How could this happen sixty years after the Holocaust? He answers:

“The root cause of the revival of antisemitism is anti-Zionism. Zionism is the expression of the right to self determination of the Jewish people. Anti-Zionism, by definition, denies and rejects this right by denying the right to a state by the Jewish people. Anti-Zionism is a form of racism. It is the specific denial to the Jewish people of the basic right to which all people of the world are entitled.

Is Zionism Racism? Is Israel an Apartheid State?

Judge for yourself: Mehereta Baruch, LaVon Mercer, Ismail Khaldi, and Azzam Azzam are Israeli personalities.

Mehereta Baruch

Mehereta Baruch is a Zionist and a Jew. Meherata came to Israel with her family from Ethiopia, traveling on foot to Sudan to get to Israel and suffering many hardships on the way. She has found a new home in Israel. She says, "Israel was always the place of our dreams. When we finally arrived it really felt like the paradise I was promised." Think about it - Is Zionism racism? Do you think Meherata is a racist? Mehereta Baruch Tells Her Story

LaVon Mercer

The man at right is LaVon Mercer, formerly a star player on Israel’s championship Maccabi Tel-Aviv basketball team, Israeli citizen, and former soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. LaVon is an orphan who came up the hard way. LaVon, now a basketball coach at Atlanta’s Spellman College, never misses an opportunity to speak out for his second country. His height is variously given as 6′8" or 6′11". He is "Israeli’s biggest ambassador." LaVon Mercer is a Zionist. Think about it. Is Zionism racism? Do you think LaVon is a racist? Read the LaVon Mercer Story

Ismail Khaldi is Israel’s Consul in San Francisco. Ismail is a Bedouin Arab. He says: Two years ago, a few proud Bedouin Israeli citizens like asked: what is our position and status in the State of Israel in the midst of its current situation? After all, Bedouin are part of Israel’s success story. During current times, when Israel is being attacked and accused of being a racist state, an ‘aggressor and an oppressor’, we decided that the smallest and probably most effective thing we could do is to spread our story as part of Israeli society. Read about Ismail Khaldi

Azzam Azzam - Israeli Druze - I am fortunate and proud to have been born in Israel." Read about Azzam Azzam

Is Israel an Apartheid State?

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