COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY LAWRENCE DAVIDSON IN
CONSORTIUMNEWS
"It is
anti-Semitic to “deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination
(e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist
endeavor)"
A definition written in Tel Aviv. Completely meaningless
since no one on the planet denies Jews their democratic rights. No one.
That is a strawman argument, and it is so clearly intended
to fog up the genuine issue of Israel’s denying millions of their every right –
democratic rights, human rights, rights to peaceful lives, and even the right
of secure home ownership.
It is so patently false and twisted that I think such
lobby-induced efforts serve only to offend fair-minded people.
Most of us know when people are being seriously disingenuous
with us or attempting to manipulate us, as with cheap scam artists or
Bible-thumping tent preachers.
This kind of nonsense from Israel initiates exactly the same
kind of reaction in any informed and reasonable person.
I do not even understand what Israel thinks it achieves with
such clearly manipulative and dishonest stuff. It is as effective as Don
Quixote tilting at windmills, and the truth is it seems a one-way trip to
nowhere.
I do know that, try as desperately as you will for years,
long term, you can't keep a badly leaking boat afloat with mumbo-jumbo.
All Israel has to do is clean up its stinking human-rights
mess, stop imposing on and abusing others, stop stealing homes and farms and
gas fields and water, and return to its accepted 1967 borders.
There is nothing unreasonable in those expectations, and
absolutely nothing anti-Semitic either, since anti-Semitism, as with all
extreme prejudices, is just unreasonable superstition. We are talking about hard
facts here, not superstition.
Most criticism would end immediately. But Israel
deliberately chooses not to do so. It won’t even seriously discus doing so.
All such measures as those imposed on America’s State
Department only scream growing desperation in the campaign to defend what
cannot be defended.
Short of creating a Stalinist set of institutions in
America, you cannot stop people from criticizing what richly deserves being
criticized.
In the end, criticism of Israel is not, and can never be,
anti-Semitism.
Israel is a state, and if it wants to be viewed as a
legitimate state and not some kind of Crusader Fortress Enclave, it must meet
the international standards and laws set for all states.
But it does not do so. It does not follow the most basic rule
of law, it abuses millions, it wages aggressive war, seemingly without end,
always safely protected by an American government which creates such bizarre
institutions as the U.S. State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat
Anti-Semitism.
