Arabs are Semites, but the word "anti-Semitism" was coined specifically to refer to hatred of Jews, not of other people who happen to speak a Semitic language. Anti-Semitism does not mean hatred of Phoenicians or Tigrays or Babylonians.

Given that Jew-hatred is a prominent and distinct phenomenon in the Western mind (and the Islamic mind) it it sensible that it gets its own distinction. Muddying the linguistic waters does not serve intellectual honesty.

Americans know that Israelis aren't the only Semites, right? I know the Israel lobby's debate-halting "anti-Semite" slur has been used as if Israel owned a trademark on Semitism, but Arabs are Semites, too.

Hell, most of Southwestern Asia is culturally and racially Semitic -- many millions of Semites there, not just the Israelis. Seems like it's been trotted out to simply and swiftly derail any discussion of politics in the region, and it's been done for many decades.

Perhaps the Israelis' long-term security would be better served finding common cause with their Semitic Muslim cousins than allying itself militarily and diplomatically with a gentile nation from across the sea.

Just crazy talk, I know, I know.

Israel is the sum of world guilt for allowing the holocaust to occur. Europeans jews had no more right to Palestine than European had to "discover" America. They just took it. Lieberthing's jewishness is not his most salient feature; that would be cowardice.

The people who oppose Zionism and Israel's policies are all anti-semitic. And the people who opposed apartheid-era South Africa and its policies are all anti-white.

What more does Joe Lieberman have to do before the media and the people who voted for him will realize that he is more interested in promoting Isreal than the interests of the US?

Glenn is Jewish

So I don't think you can convincingly make the argument he is an anti-semite. Polemicists and propagandists do make those arguments about Jews (self-hating Jews) but I find them unconvincing nonsense. So Glenn is not a Zionist and has no bias in favoor of Israel or against Palestine. His only obvious bias is what is in his opinion best for his homeland, America.

--Anonymous

Look, Anonymous, I know what you mean here, and I respect the spirit in which you wrote it. But as a non-Jew, I do have to say a certain part of me takes offense to the notion that if I had registered the opinions Glenn had registered, it would somehow have been okay to at least level charges of anti-Semitism at me, and the burden would have been on me to disprove them.

That might not seem prejudiced or racist, but at its root it sort of is.

I'm jumping in late here, but thanks for your contribution. The most important fact that needs to be pointed out about Lieberman isn't just that his desires represent the desires of only the extreme right fringe within Israel, but also that they are NOT in the best interests of Israel. With Hagee, he is buying into a narrative that involves Israel in endless wars with her neighbors, wars that she is 'pre-ordained' to lose. That is good for Israel, how? Criticizing that narrative makes one an anti-semite, how?

It's very much like the Right Wing Authoritarian minority in the States noisily driving this agenda which has been puzzling to the sensible busy majority who struggle for a good meaningful life the best way they know how.

Thank you for this:

God, I hope that the people who read Lieberman's garbage do not think it represents the thinking of any but the most minute fringe in Israel.

I never met anybody in Israel who believed this sort of junk.

I am US/Israeli dual-citizen. That is my experience, too. To all,

Shalom,

Gordon Ginsberg

Hagee as Moses? I want to puke. Just f***ing puke.

The only thing sicker their "end of days" bullshit. I worry that as they see ALL of this as leading up to their "armageddon" and they'll see themselves as doing the work of "God" when they push the button.

This is a sick, sick, sick, mythology. Glenn, you are SO RIGHT to bring this up.

This should be Moore's next documentary and he needs to get it done, quick. Even when the Dems are back in power, these a**holes will still be about their task. At least we'll have a president who understands the value and strength of the Patriot Act and all of the wire-tapping and stuff. We'll use their own weapons AGAINST THEM. Imagine the uproar when Hagee just vanishes into.....

OOPS! I forgot that people are going to treat whatever I say as representative of the "Loony Left"...... Or like my ideas are Glenn's ideas. Hell no. I'm not THAT smart, or calm...

Sorry - Peace! Love!

Mind, I am not reading and interpreting you like this [should be obvious from my past letters, especially the first one in this thread]; I am just saying it can be done. And believe, it is done in Germany often enough, attenuated by the fact that many actual anti-Semites here find our allegiance to Israel 'outrageous'.

-- Dierk Haasis

Yeah, and Al Gore saying, "I took the initiative in creating the internet" can be taken as him saying he "invented the internet" if liars and lazy so called journalists choose to write it that way. Or, if then lazy and or disingenuous pundits and lazy or disingenuous so called journalists keep the lie going, well then, that's how "it can be done".

Now, if people should choose to be honest and not purposely distort or completely misrepresent another's words, well then, the lie won't find it's way around the world before the truth gets it's socks on.

So what's your point, Deirk? Beware of dishonest pundits twisting one's meanings? No shit, Sherlock, what's new?

Anti-Semitism In The Zionist Movement

To anyone familiar with the history of the US elites the efforts of American historiography to hide the racism of anti-Soviet and pro-US forces should not be surprising. But that the Zionist movement itself has historically been as anti-Semitic, in essential ways, as any fascist will shock many, so well has this fact been concealed by "scholarship."

I recall the sense of amazement I felt when I learned of the involvement of the Zionist movement in helping SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann ship 500,000 Hungarian Jews to the death camps. Despite universal condemnation in the "respectable" press of Ben Hecht's book Perfidy, and later, of Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, the truth could not be entirely squelched. Recently even The Jerusalem Post publicized the fact that Yitzhak Shamir, successor to Begin as Israeli prime minister, was involved in seeking "an alliance with the official representatives of Nazi Germany during World War II and the Holocaust" (Int. ed., Sept. 18-24, 1983). Liberal representatives of Zionism are increasingly concerned with what Professor Y. Leibovitz, editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica, last year called "Judeo-Nazism"; witness the publicity given to Amos Oz's recently published book, In the Land of Israel.

But that mainstream Zionism has historically promoted views of Jews identical to those of the most vicious anti-Semites -- this will be met with shocked disbelief in most quarters. Yet a book published this year documents it with convincing thoroughness.

Lenni Brenner, author of Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (Lawrence Hill, 1983) is apparently a Trotskyist of some kind. His own analysis of the evidence is often faulty. But the evidence itself is damning. Some of his citations from the Zionist press:

It used to be fashionable for Zionist speakers (including the writer) to declare from the platform that 'To be a good Zionist one must be somewhat of an anti-Semite ...' (Chaim Greenberg, editor of the labor Zionist Jewish Frontier, 1942)

The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both physically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligations, knows nor order nor discipline. (Hashomer Hatzair, journal of a Zionist youth group, December 1936)

The fact is undeniable that the Jews collectively are unhealthy and neurotic. ( Jewish Call, 1935) [link to citation]

29

Brenner cites more briefly many other statements by Zionist leaders and writers. An example:

"For Micah Yosef Berdichevsky the Jews were "not a nation, not a people, not human." To Yosef Chaim Brenner they were nothing more than "Gypsies, filthy dogs, inhuman, wounded, dogs." To A.D. Gordon his people were no better than "parasites, people fundamentally useless." (Brenner. p. 23)

Such statements are as racist from the pen of Jewish writers as they would be from non-Jews.

These and many other citations in Brenner's remarkable book show that the roots of "Judeo-Nazism" and Zionist anti-Semitism go back to the beginnings of the Zionist movement. Amos Oz's book examines the resentment of Sephardic Jews against the racist treatment afforded them by the Israeli elite, overwhelmingly of European origin.

The lesson is clear. The elite groups in American society "attack" anti-Semitism not wherever it appears. but only where it suits cold-war strategies. Thus Soviet anti-Semitism is loudly denounced. while that of the Hungarian, Polish, and Zionist forces is hushed up because they are useful allies in the cold war against the Soviets.

Does the publicity given to Brenner's book, or Oz's, or David Irving's recent work, denote an increased dedication on the part of elite publishing houses and journals to exposing anti-Semitism where it has hitherto been all but hidden? I fear the opposite is true. It rather coincides with increasing tensions between the Israeli ruling elite and that of the United States. These tensions can only increase, leading to a sharp break between Israel and the U.S. in the future.

At that time (and, in preparation for it. well before then) anti- Semitism will again be openly promoted to “justify” the turn of U.S. foreign policy towards the (equally racist) Arab states. As in the Iranian hostage crisis the U.S. elite will use racism to crush opposition, this time from Jewish groups to the shift in foreign policy. Those who, for whatever reason, belittle, ignore, or apologize for the racism of the U.S. or Zionist elites are unwittingly helping to set the stage for a renewed anti-Semitic program. Only unyielding, multiracial opposition to all forms of racism and the business, governmental, and intellectual elites who benefit from it constitutes genuine opposition to racism.

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/furrlethal84.pdf