Yossi Schwartz, ISL the RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine, 10.11.2021
Some figures from Arab folklore are well known to many people in the West. Amongst them is Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba. A less known figure that is very popular in Arab society is Juha. An old figure that sometimes appears as a wise old man and at other times as a foolish old man. For example, Juha was resting in bed in the afternoon hoping to fall asleep. The sounds of the children playing outside prevented him from falling asleep. He called the children and told them a lie that at the far corner of the village there is a wonderful fig tree with ripe figs. The children ran to the far corner of the Village. Juha told himself if they ran it must be true that they would find ripe figs and he ran after them.
Once, the Zionists and their friends framed a fake definition of anti-Semitism: the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) that provides among other examples the following as anti-Semitism:
· Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
· Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
· Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
They see the manifestations of protests against the Zionist state crimes as an expression of anti-Semitism, and thus they believe that most of humanity is anti-Semitic.
For example, Lazar Berman in an article in the Times of Israel reports that a study of anti-Semitism in the US during Operation Guardian of the Walls in May found that Jewish communal organizations and leaders were taken by surprise by violence against Jews that took place during the conflict.
“This time the Jewish community was doubly surprised by the rapid transformation of protests by the American extreme left, especially the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli groups, into outbreaks of violent anti-Semitic acts that had broad geographic distribution, and by the increased criticism of Israel among larger circles within the Democratic Party than in the past as well as among several civil social organizations,” wrote Shahar Eilam and Tom Eshed of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.”… The report, titled “Increased Anti -Semitism in the United States Following Operation Guardian of the Walls: Permanent or Short-Lived?” also found that American Jews were surprised by the difficulty they experienced “in enlisting their natural allies and partners” in the fight against anti -Semitism. [i]
Reading Tom Eshed’s report we find:
“We perhaps can obtain a better picture of the trends by focusing more on violent anti-Semitic incidents. For example, the ADL documented 19 violent attacks against Jews in 2017; 39 such attacks in 2018, and 61 attacks against Jews in 2019 (ADL, 2019a)”
“According to the ADL reports, 131 incidents were reported in the week before the military operation, while during the actual operation, they received reports of 193 incidents, of which 11 included violent attacks against Jews (ADL, 2021)”
However according to Marti Cohen who writes for Jewish Currents the way that the ADL reported the increase in anti-Semitism created a problematic bias:
“As evidence of the “uptick” in anti-Semitism, the ADL says it has documented more than 17,000 tweets containing variations of the phrase “Hitler was right” between May 7th and May 14th, the week when violence broke out in Israel/Palestine. The organization also said it had received 193 reports of “possible anti-Semitic incidents . . . in the week after the crisis began, up from 131 the previous week.” But a closer look at these statements yields several follow-up questions. Online abuse by purported neo-Nazis or those adopting their rhetoric is unfortunately common; has the ADL tracked tweets glorifying Hitler for other weeks, to provide a baseline for comparison to the number of tweets it found in recent weeks? And had the organization yet reviewed reports of the 193 “possible incidents” to determine their legitimacy? What kinds of incidents were they? Assault? Harassment? Vandalism? How did the organization decide when to add an incident to its “tracker of anti- Semitic incidents,” which does not yet contain 193 reports for that week? Meanwhile, a May 24th ADL blog post, cited in The New York Times, used an entirely different set of numbers, reporting an increase from 68 the week before Israel and Hamas began exchanging fire to an eventual 124 the week of May 17th. What accounts for these competing datasets? The ADL did not respond to my requests for comment by press time”[ii]
It is not hard to understand that the ADL and Shahar Eilam and Tom Eshed of the right-wing Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, are considering any criticism of Israel as Anti-Semitism.
Needless to say, the evacuation of the Zionist Ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) under heavy security from an event at the London School of Economics on Tuesday evening amid a large protest by pro-Palestinian activists against her presence is considered by the Zionist and their friend’s major Anti-Semitic events.
Before she became Ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely served as Minister of Settlement Affairs, and as a member of the Knesset for the Likud party. She herself referred to her politics as religious right-wing in support of the Zionist settlers in the West Bank she sees as part of Israel. In an interview with the Jewish press, she said: “I realized that the most important decisions are created here [in the Knesset]. That was the reason I decided that whatever issues might arise concerning the settlers in Eretz Yisrael, I want to be here to raise my hand for whatever is good for the Jewish people” [iii]. She was in the Knesset’s Committee on the State of Women and Gender Equality in 2011 and invited representatives from Lehava (Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land), a group whose primary objective is to oppose any romantic relations between Arabs and Jews to a discussion on the tactics used by the organization to prevent romantic relationships between Jews and Arabs. In other words, a real far-right nationalist and racist. The fact that she is the Ambassador to the UK tells us that essentially Bennett continues the policy of Netanyahu.
The Jewish press says: “American philanthropist Adam Milstein tweeted in response: “Disturbing display of blatant Jew-hatred at LSE event on the anniversary of Kristallnacht in which Israeli Ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely is threatened and chased off-campus. Appalling.” [iv]
“But researcher Hadi Nasrallah (what a name) tweeted gleefully: Amazing. Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely was forced to flee London’s LSE university after students protested her presence and refused to give her a platform. This is how colonial war criminals must be treated everywhere.” [v]
What we have to say is on which side are you on? On the side of the Zionist racists who claim that those who oppose war crimes are Anti-Semites or the side of the colonized Palestinians.
That does not mean that there is no real anti-Semitism that the acts of Israel pour oil on their fire. However, to fight real anti-Semitism it is necessary to fight Zionism that is not only racist toward non-Jews and Palestinians in particular but it is also anti-Semitic. In its definition and examples of the IHRA it says:
“Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.”
In the real world, the Zionist state is using Jews around the world to protect her from any punishment it deserves and does not hesitate to use Jews to spy on friendly states to Israel, as the case of Jonathan Jay Pollard shows. Not only he spied on the USA but known right-wing Zionists protested his sentence. Alan Dershowitz has been among Pollard’s high-profile supporters, Dershowitz wrote an article reprinted in his book Chutzpah, where he said: “As an American, and as a Jew, I hereby express my outrage at Jonathan Pollard’s sentence of life imprisonment for the crime to which he pleaded guilty.” [vi] When he arrived in Israel on December 30, 2020, on a private jet owned by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson he was greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who handed Pollard his Israeli citizenship papers and the Israeli Intelligence Minister announced that Pollard would be granted a government stipend equivalent to the pensions granted to former Mossad and Shin Bet agents.
The IHRA also says:
“Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor“.
Someone has to be stupid or corrupted to the bones not to know that Israel is a racist state that denies the native Palestinians the right of self-determination, and that the Prime Minister of Israel openly supports a Zionist apartheid state from the river to the sea when he denies even a mini-Palestinian state. Bennett was forced to appear in the Knesset on Monday to refute the opposition’s charges that he was engaged in peace talks with the Palestinians, including over territorial concessions. “I was asked to respond… Here is my answer: There are no negotiations on establishing a terror state in the heart of the land,” [vii] Bennett said in very brief remarks from the podium. His government has also expressed its opposition to the reopening of the US consulate in Jerusalem for the Palestinians. [viii]
Thus, to go back to Juha, the Zionists are prisoners of their narrative, and the more they run after the figs that do not exist the more detached from reality they become and the more they dig their own grave.
Down with the Zionist Apartheid!
For a Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[i] The report, titled “Increased Anti Semitism in the United States Following Operation Guardian of the Walls: Permanent or Short-Lived?” also found that American Jews were surprised by the difficulty they experienced “in enlisting their natural allies and partners” in the fight against antisemitism.
[ii] https://jewishcurrents.org/a-closer-look-at-the-uptick-in-antisemitism/
[iii] https://web.archive.org/web/20090705092300/http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/39906
[iv] https://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/ambassador-tzipi-hotovely-flees-anti-israel-rioters-at-london-school-of-economics/2021/11/10/
[v] Ibid
[vi] Dershowitz, Alan M. Chutzpah!. 1992, p. 291
[vii] https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/forced-to-appear-at-knesset-bennett-says-no-talks-on-establishing-a-terror-state/
[viii] https://www.jpost.com/opinion/israel-must-stand-strong-against-reopening-of-us-consulate-editorial-684297