Collaboration With the Powerful is Never the Right Move
Anti-Semitism is an indefensible scourge on the earth and its history. Jewish people have been kicked around, displaced, and slaughtered for centuries and to this day anti-Semitic hate crimes are on the rise in the United States and in many European nations.
Tragically, some of the more vocal and visible people speaking out against Anti-Semitism are bad-faith actors who couldn’t seem less concerned with actual Anti-Semitism, and instead use the term as a smear against anyone who criticizes the brutal regime of U.S. client state Israel. This cynical tactic is not new.
Linguist Noam Chomsky reminds us of this propaganda tactic.
Fifty years ago, the distinguished Israel statesman Abba Eban wrote that ‘One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all. Anti-Zionism is merely the new anti-Semitism.’
As the examples he gives make crystal clear (e.g., the committed Zionist I.F. Stone), by ‘anti-Zionism’ he means criticism of the policies of the government of Israel and some sympathy for Palestinians.
That principle has become a last-ditch defense of apologists for Israel crimes under the occupation. Any critic, any proponent of Palestinian rights, can be tarred as an anti-Semite.
These last-ditch efforts continue, with fervor but without any real sense of awareness of attachment to reality. An organization claiming to be working against Anti-Semitism recently sent out a public appeal on Twitter for workers at the satirical newspaper, The Onion, to contact them anonymously to reveal the name of whoever was responsible for writing and distributing a cutting but fitting faux-headline and story (below) that highlighted the brutality of the Israeli military against Palestinian people.
“IDF Soldier Recounts Harrowing, Heroic War Story Of Killing 8-Month-Old Child,” the headline reads. The organization quoted this on Twitter and asked, “Work at The Onion and know who tweeted this? DM us for a prize. You can stay anonymous.”
The problems here are many. First, the IDF does indeed murder Palestinian children, and they do so with impunity, according to the United Nations.
In the winter of 2008-2009, Israeli forces killed over 300 children in Gaza alone, for example. The entire world, save for the United States, routinely condemns Israel for these very types of abuses.
Discussing these crimes against humanity committed by the Middle East’s hegemon is not anti-Semitism.
Second, what type of deranged intimidation tactic is it for a non-profit organization to attempt to reveal the identity of someone who tweeted a story out? More than likely at a place like The Onion, the person who tweeted the story is an intern or some low-level worker.
As it turns out, smearing people with a false charge of anti-Semitism and then sharing that slander with the world, along with their victims’ identities, is the purpose of that organization. When we see these types of attempt to single out our neighbors and punish them, we we should stand with them.
We are our neighbors, and they are us. We won’t be saved from their fates by turning them in to authorities.
The United States gives billions of dollars to Israel for it to carry out its apartheid regime in Palestine. It is our money that is used to kill Palestinian children, to set up open-air prisons like what Israel has turned Gaza in to, to carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and to force families out of their homes.
When the rare occasion occurs that someone or some outlet actually discusses this, the least we can do is stand with them, not turn them in to some bullying organization or, tech giant, to our own government…which is actually making it increasingly illegal to speak up and out against Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, making workers in state by state sign literal oaths to support Israel. Collaboration with power against those without is never the right decision.
I support Israel's right to defend itself but there is zero accountability at all. Asking for accountability isn't anti-Semitic. IMO Occupied land isn't Israel.
"When you have almost 90 percent of the people injured in the lower limb, it means that there is a policy to target the lower limbs"
- Marie-Elisabeth Ingres, Doctors Without Borders
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/shoot-maim-how-israel-created-generation-crutches-gaza