January 20, 2012, 6:29 AM
| Comments (16) | | |
 |
| |  |
Anti-Semitism may not yet be a litmus test for social acceptability in the US, but it has certainly become acceptable.
Proof of this dismal state of affairs came this week with the publication of a supportive profile of University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer in The Atlantic Monthly written by the magazine's in-house foreign policy guru Robert Kaplan.
Mearsheimer is the author, together with Harvard's Kennedy School of Government's Prof. Stephen Walt, of the infamous 2007 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. Since the book's publication, Mearsheimer has become one of the most high-profile anti-Semites in America.
Kaplan's article was a clear bid to rehabilitate Mearsheimer in order to advance his pre-Israel Lobby theory of realism in international affairs. Mearsheimer's realist theory argues that the international arena exists in a state of perpetual anarchy. As a consequence, the factor motivating states' actions in international affairs is their national interests. Morality, he claims, has no place in international affairs.
This theory's considerable intellectual underpinning rendered Mearsheimer one of the most prominent political scientists in America during the 1990s. As a realist himself, particularly in relation to the rise of China as a superpower, Kaplan perhaps believed that by rehabilitating Mearsheimer, he would advance his goal of convincing US policy-makers to adopt a realist approach to China.
But whatever his motivations for writing the profile, and whatever its eventual impact on US policy towards China, Kaplan's profile of Mearsheimer served to mainstream a Jew-hater and in so doing, to give credibility to his bigotry.
It has become necessary to rehabilitate Mearsheimer because in the years since he and Walt published their conspiracy theory against Israel and its American supporters, Mearsheimer has actively embraced fringe elements in the US and the world in order to advance his campaign to discredit Israel and its supporters. As Alan Dershowitz highlighted in November, Mearsheimer wrote an enthusiastic endorsement of a psychotically anti-Semitic book written by British jazz musician and prolific anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon.
The book, titled The Wandering Who? is replete with Holocaust denial, claims that Jews control the world and America, characterizations of the Jewish God as evil and corrupt, and claims that Israel is worse than Nazi Germany.
In his endorsement, Mearsheimer called the book "fascinating," and said it "should be read widely by Jews and non-Jews alike."
As far as Kaplan was concerned, Mearsheimer's embrace of Atzmon was a simple mistake. But it wasn't. It was part of an apparent decision on Mearsheimer's part to use his own celebrity to legitimize his anti-Semitic views.
In a speech to the Palestine Center in April 2010, for example, Mearsheimer distinguished between "righteous" Jews and "New Afrikaner" Jews. The former are Jews who oppose and attack Israel and the latter are Jews who support and defend Israel. By sanitizing Mearsheimer's bigotry in his sympathetic profile, Kaplan mainstreamed his hatred.
And Kaplan is not alone.
KAPLAN'S PROFILE of Mearsheimer is part of a larger trend in US letters, politics and culture in which anti-Semitism is becoming more and more acceptable. As Adam Kirsch noted in an article in Tablet online magazine this week, The Israel Lobby's central contention, that a cabal of disloyal Jews and sympathizers has forced the US to adopt a pro-Israel policy against its national interests, has found recent expression in the writings of mainstream journalists including New York Times' columnist Tom Friedman and Time's Joe Klein.
Last week, The Washington Post-owned online magazine Foreign Policy - which publishes a regular blog by Stephen Walt, published an article by Mark Perry claiming that in 2007 and 2008 Mossad agents posed as CIA agents in a false-flag operation whose aim was to build a cooperative relationship with the Pakistani/Iranian Baluchi anti-regime Jundallah terror group.
Perry's report was based solely on anonymous sources. Its obvious purpose was to discredit the very notion of Israeli-US intelligence cooperation on Iran.
Following the publication of Perry's article, Israel abandoned its general policy of never commenting on intelligence issues. The Foreign Ministry denounced his report as "utter nonsense."
What Foreign Policy failed to tell its readers is that Perry is not an objective reporter. He is a former adviser to Yassir Arafat and an advocate of US engagement with Hamas and Hezbollah. By failing to mention his biases, Foreign Policy became an accessory to the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism. Like The Israel Lobby, Perry's report in Foreign Policy adds to the legitimacy of the attitude that there is something fundamentally wrong with having a close relationship with the Jewish state.
Perhaps if Mearsheimer and Walt had published their updated version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1997 instead of 2007 they would have been received in the same manner.
That is, they would have sat in the mainstream doghouse for a few years but then gradually acceptance and support for their bigotry would have moved from the margins to the mainstream. And within five years they would have been rehabilitated by the establishment. But in all likelihood, that wouldn't have been the case.
It is a fact that since the turn of the century, and particularly in the wake of the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in 2000 - a collapse precipitated by Arafat's rejection of Palestinian statehood; and in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the US, anti-Semitism has become far more acceptable in the US and throughout the world. The volume of attacks against Jews has skyrocketed and the intellectual war against Israel and its Jewish supporters has grown ever more virulent.
The rise of anti-Semitism in the US has many causes, but three parallel developments stand out. First, the development of Arab satellite stations like Al Jazeera has brought the open Jew-hatred of the Arab world into the Western discourse.
True, most Westerners reject the Arab annihilationist form of anti-Semitic propaganda as crude and wrong. But the Jew-hatred propounded by these broadcasts has had a corrosive impact on the Western discourse. It has deadened observers to the lies at the heart of the propaganda.
That is, whereas they may reject the daily calls to destroy the Jews, Westerners have increasingly internalized the basic claim that Jews deserve to be hated. Take for instance a Washington Post story last week on Egypt's decision to bar Jewish worshipers from making their annual visit to the grave of Torah sage Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira.
The story claimed that the Egyptians oppose Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians and because the Egyptian cross-border terror attack on Israel last August "led to the killing of at least five Egyptian border guards as Israeli troops pursued alleged militants."
That is, according to the Washington Post, just as the pan-Arab media claims, Israel is entirely responsible for Arab hatred of Jews.
THEN OF course there is the European media.
This week, the Dutch Christian newspaper Trouw published an article about prenatal care in Israel written by Ilse van Heusden. Van Heusden wrote of the superior medical care she received in Israel where she lived temporarily and where she gave birth to a healthy son.
Rather than extol the dedicated care she received, van Heusden attacked it. She claimed that Israel's world class prenatal medicine is a product of its embrace of eugenics and its similarity to Nazi Germany. As she put it, "To be pregnant in Israel is comparable to a military operation. Countless ultrasounds and blood tests should produce the perfect baby, nothing can be left to the luck of the draw. The state demands healthy babies and a lot of them too."
Trouw's decision to publish van Heusden's anti-Semitic assault is of a piece with countless articles published in the European media portraying Israelis as evil Jews intent on using science and every other means at their disposal to advance the Jews' malign goals of global domination, genocide, apartheid, and general evil. When Israel dares to complain about these attacks, European politicians and media celebrities are quick to stand up and defend their right to freedom of expression.
So it was that Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt - who barred all the Muhammad cartoons from being published in the Swedish media - stood by Sweden's leading tabloid Aftonbladet when in 2009 it published an article accusing IDF soldiers of killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. In the mind of the anti-Semites, by trying to object to the blood libel, Israel was proving that it seeks to control the media.
The European media's lies about Israel have been translated into official government policies of lying about Israel. So it is that the French National Assembly published a report last month about the geopolitics of water that included a 20-page diatribe claiming that Israel uses water as a weapon of apartheid against the Palestinians.
To write the report, the French legislators had to ignore not only the content of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement on water in the 1995 Interim Agreement. They had to ignore the basic fact that Israel gives the PA far more water than the agreement requires it to give, and to associate malign intent to the Israeli government. That is, they had to embrace the irrationality of anti-Semitism.
Parallel to the penetration of Arab anti-Semitism into the Western discourse through the pan- Arabic media, and the embrace of overt anti-Semitism by the European media and political class, over the past decade, we have witnessed the development of an alliance between the West's political Left and Islamist movements.
The international Left's embrace of the likes of Hamas, the Taliban, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood has increased leftist and isolationist American policy-makers' comfort level in adopting hostile postures towards Israel. So it is that at the same time that the Obama administration is assiduously courting the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian regime, according to Channel 2, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has refused to meet with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during his upcoming trip to Washington. Channel 2 reported that senior US officials said that "Lieberman is an obstacle to peace. We don't want our pictures taken with him and with what he represents."
ANTI-SEMITISM IS a prejudice that is based on a rejection of reason. To fight it, it is not sufficient to disprove the contentions of the likes of Mearsheimer. He and his colleagues must be discredited and their enablers must be shamed.
But before this can happen, world Jewry and Israelis alike need to recognize what is happening.
Anti-Semitism is back in style. Its new justification is not race or religion. It is nationalism. Today's anti-Semitism is predicated on preferring Palestinian and pan-Arab nationalism to Jewish nationalism.
And like its racist and religious predecessors, its aim is to deny the right of Jews to be free.
In the face of this onslaught the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora have two choices. We can either succumb to our enemies, or we can fight back.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
| Comments (16) | | |
|
Israel's servitude and appeasement toward friend and foe has had the opposite of the desired and assumed effect across the globe.
Israel has tried so hard to be 'accepted' by the international community to the point of ceding sovereignty to her many peace pimp bullies who now tell Jews where they can live and surrendering land along with the expulsion of fellow Jews from their homes as a gift to Islamic terrorists.
The world rewards Israel for this the only way they know how.
Backstabbing treachery mixed with diabolical betrayal of the most evil sort that comes so naturally to the human species.
The many years of devotion and loyalty of Israel to her Washington masters has paid off in many unexpected ways.
The more Israel has capitulated to the demands of the West under their peace process the more Israel is despised and anti-semitism grows.
Weakness like blood in the water bring the many sharks in for the attack and final feast on the remains.
You can't leave God out and get good results no matter how willing you are to cut your own throat to appease evil forces.
Those who were not foolish enough to put their trust in mankind for a fair,unbiased resolution understand the dark and dire hour we are living in but are not at all surprised by the evil actions of all the nations.
They knew no matter what Israel did to appease evil ,it would never work as God has already laid out HIS endgame plan and as always He has the last word on everything including Israel.
Joel 3:2
I will gather all nations and will bring them down into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and there will I deal with and execute judgment upon them for [their treatment of] My people and of My heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations and [because] they have divided My land.
Actually Caroline, antisemitism has never gone out of style. It has reared its ugly head in every shape and form since time immemorial only today it has become more sophisticated. In some circles it is actually considered chic to bash Israel and the Jews. We will always have to live with the specter of antisemitism and the people who perpetuate this evil, but as you say either we fight back or succumb to our enemies. In the latter case we are surely doomed. Shabbat shalom and G-d's blessings on you and Klal Yisrael.
Caroline, no question about it Anti-Semitism is alive and well.
I had mentioned a number of times the need for Israel to implement a strong PR program to promote the truth, the truth not being told by the liberal left media in the U.S. and abroad.
Their aim is to discredit in every fashion Israel and her people.
It’s not space science to recognize Israel is our only true friend and trusted ally in the ME. The Arab world supports terrorism and organizations such as, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, the Taliban all proxies of Iran.
The Palestinians don’t really want peace, they are nothing more than an Anti-Semitic tool employed by Islam to harass, turn the world against and destroy Israel.
Anti-Semitism must be eradicated and it begins with each and every one of us to stop it in its track.
Israel is not our enemy, Anti-Semitism is.
I left a comment for Moment Magazine too, why in their discussion of pro-Israel did they include the antisemite Mersheimer among others. They have never answered me. I suppose it was the question I asked then if they were going to ask the KKK and the American Nazi Party for their definition of civil rights next, that must have annoyed them.
The problem that you have is the same we have been having here in the US with the Jewish American community for a generation now. So steeped in their leftist-progressive agenda they forget that we don't have to let Jew-haters define who the Jewish people happen to be.
I apologize for Ilse van Heusden
"ANTI-SEMITISM IS a prejudice that is based on a rejection of reason. To fight it, it is not sufficient to disprove the contentions of the likes of Mearsheimer. He and his colleagues must be discredited and their enablers must be shamed."
Yes, antisemitism is based and motivated on the rejection of reason. And reason has many manifestations, the most important one being history. Reason is something associated with science, but even science can tolerate the rejection of reason. Much of the practice of science is merely the exploitation of cold facts, things that can be observed by anyone for any reason. The Iranians are capable of building nuclear weapons, not because they represent progress in science, but rather because they can exploit the cold facts uncovered by those who apply reason to advance scientific knowledge.
History is the universal victim of the rejection of reason represented by antisemitism. Antisemitism is a lie based on the rejection of history and the fabrication of false history. Antisemitism is never manifest as embracing cold facts, but rather as a passion instigating violence.
The material world is rapidly crumbling under the weight of the increasing density of human population. Those least motivated to raise intelligent, reasoning human beings are reproducing at the greatest rate. Their allies in the industrialized world where reason has been the most productive and the most subversive to an old, sadistic order must be a host to these exploding populations that are real infections, not imagined. They represent a sickness that must be healed, else humanity has no future. It is no accident that they project their own qualities on a small, innocent group of people whose simple existence is constant testimony to their own depravity.
"The rise of anti-Semitism in the US has many causes" - One of them, surely, is the frightening activisation of the Israeli left metamorphosing its self-hatred into universal hatred of Israel as the collective World Jew. Nothing is new historically about Marxists with much enthusiasm raping their own country. Lenin and Stalin did it to Russia, Mao to China, Pol Pot in Cambodia and so on. In the tiny Israel the results may be even more catastrophic.
The election in the USA, 06 Nov, 2012, and the expulsion of the anti-American, closet Muslim POTUS from the White House, will help greatly in restoring at least a sense of balance (such as it is) in the continuing onslaught against Israel. When USA restores it's historical, total support for the free state of Israel on 20 Jan, 2013 with the inauguration of ANY of the Republican Presidential candidates, the road to normalcy between Israel and the US of A will commence, in spite of the Israel-hating, liberal US-resident Jewish community that will pour time and treasure into the re-election of the only man capable of making Jimmy Carter look good: Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
There are a few typos and grammatical errors in this article. Although they aren't sufficiently significant as to obfuscate your basic point, some careful editing might enhance readability.
It is unfortunate that anti-semitism will accelerate until the end no matter what steps are implemented to stop it. This is just another of the biblical prophesies that is proving true. There will be good that comes from it though as God loves to take what is meant for evil and produce some extraordinarily better for good. The nation of Israel will come to understand that the only option left is to turn back to God fully in their hearts so he becomes not only the solution but their Lord and Savior.
This does not mean that we shouldn't stand up for Israel and continue to support and fight for the Jewish people. We are commanded by Christ to bless Israel in our thoughts, words and actions. If you understand the heart of God you will not only feel an obligation to do this, you will feel a deep and abiding love which is tremendously more powerful than any other reason there may be.
I pray that God's mercy and grace cover the Jews and Gentiles so we all turn to him as the answer to this and every other challenge we face until Yeshua returns to set things as they should be.
Caroline,
I hope, you are archiving all of your work, so there is an historic record, regardless of what
ultimately transpires.
Umberto Eco just released a new book, " The Prague Cemetery." In it, he hopes to call attention to how over the last few centuries, emphasizing the compilation of lies comprising "The Elders of Zion," to bring the world's attention, especially, that of the Jews to the current anti-Semitism, its historic origins and how the lies are constructed and deciminated.
The protagonist is the only fictional character, I believe, is what he said.Eco is eighty and lived through the Italy of WWII.
The interview was on "Charlie Rose" show on PBS, whose website posts most of his shows interviews.
The show, also, is delayed a day on the Bloomberg channel on cable.
I suggest, that everyone writes letters on these articles to the magazines and papers and websites publishing the propaganda garbage,and sends today's piece by Caroline to their Senator and Congressperson and to the candidates.
Maybe, if the mainstream Jewish press, such as JTA and The Forwards would wake -up, that might be a beginning.But we must have a 24 hour Jewish cable news channel with aggressive promotion, once and for all.There is enough money in the Jewish Community to do it, and it is past do.
Caroline, the Anti-Semites don't just want the Jewish people not to be free; they want them not to be alive. We all forget this at our peril.
The Judenrat state has no objection to its foreign minister not being seen by the U.S. Secretary of State.
As a casual observor for over 30 years, I noticed anti-Semitism got worse starting with Carter's Iranian humiliation, became obvious when the Clintons became useful idiots for Arafat, and blatant with Obama's bungling. The common thread appears to be the Democrats, who morphed after Carter to the rainbow party we see today where islam found a home, though I know they are hedging their bets. That might have been where American Jews got tangled. Carter started the Dept. of Ed.and the NEA began the destruction of education. Education in the US, along with other union-driven occupations, is heavily Jewish in northern urban areas, likewise their voter strength. I hope there is an upside in the growing awareness in the US to the danger of islam. But, I have to say, in my lifetime I have not seen a tolerance for anti-Semitism as open as it has been over the last three years.There is something seriously wrong and American
Jews need to wake up.
Wow, can no one laugh at the emperors clothes? I thought this was a Democracy in Israel. If I don't tow the party line I don't hate myself. It is obvious, the old line about Hebrews loving Israel but hating Israeli's. Now we can narrow that down to Zionist's hating Israeli's.
Dear Caroline Glick,
I have commented on this subject before, to you either here or on JPost, subsequently deleted & or censured.
Again and again the point is missed ignored or deleted, the problem is Socialism.
Modern anti semitism at its core is fueled by socialism. Apostate Jews are almost 100% socialist self haters & the worst of the anti semites.
Until socialism is faced out the problem will not go away.
Fudging the issue of socialist fueled anti semitism won't work. Socialism at it's core is all about envy, anti semtism is envy in the raw.
I say this not as a philo semite but as a concerned westerner concerned for our basic Western Freedoms derived from our shared Judeo Christian Enlightenment heritage, where Israel is 'the point of the spear' in this regard.
Regards.