The Politics of Anti-Semitism

Rating:
Summary: I'm PROUD to be an Anti-Semite!
Review: As Gene Wilder said in The Frisco Kid, "That was just to get your attention!"

The meaning of words and terms change with time. For example, describing someone as "gay" 100 years ago is completely different then how it is now. Sixty year ago the term "Anti-Semite" had some bite and described the kind of people who saluted Hitler or those who wore white hoods and burned crosses.

This book points out how the term "Anti-Semitism" has been devalued and made meaningless since then because of its overly broad usage by Zionists and their fellow travellers to describe any criticism of their militant, expansionist policies.

Basically, since what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinian people is a crime by all humanitarian, religious and international legal standards, one is morally compelled to criticize the policies of the State of Israel. However, any criticism of Israel's apartheid policies is automatically branded "Anti-Semitism" by the ADL and other pro-Zionist hate groups. So, since one is morally compelled to object to Israel's Zionist-apartheid policies and since such objection is classified as "Anti-Semitism", therefore one is morally compelled to be an Anti-Semite.

Of course, if Anti-Semitism had a meaning today anything like what it meant 60 years ago, I would fight anyone who suggested I was one. But now I'll fight anyone who says I ain't!

Rating:
Summary: It is about time
Review: Excellent book that explores the differences between race based hatred of Jews and legitate criticism of Israel and Zionism. Half of the authors are Jewish, also known as "self hating Jews" to the Israel can do no wrong crowd who dismiss this book, and anyone who questions or criticizes Israel, as racist and anti-Semitic.

By refusing to differentiate between legitmate criticism of Israel's racist, apartheid policies (which are openly discussed in the mainstream Israeli press but not in the mainstream U.S. press)(...), these short sighted critics are giving a good name to anti-Semitism.

Rating:
Summary: Pure Racism
Review: I agree with the last two critiques, but I believe we need to call something what it is. We can recognize klan-like propaganda when directed against it's traditional targets. This is no different, but coming from a different source. It is racism plain and simple, and all good people need to call it that. The Israel-Palestinian conflict is complex, and any pretense at looking at the situation honestly is lost immediately upon reading this book. The glossing over of Jewish deaths and the author's constant implications that "anti-semitism" as far as it's directed against Jews doen't really exist (and never did) is simply revolting. The two sides in this horrible conflict will never find common ground if race-bating like this succeeds.
It may have been harsh, but it had to be said.

Rating:
Summary: I am impressed
Review: I am impressed how jewish people know what's happening and admit it, this means we still have hope the palestinians will one day be ok and take over about some of their stolen land back and give them freedom. This also shows that this war on terror is just a game for the big terrorists to keep on controlling and giving excuses to all of their deeds.

Rating:
Summary: Review by an actual reader...not a publisher
Review: I have to say that I thought I would have been completely in agreement with this book, being a strong critic of the Israeli government, but in the end I agree with the writers from Cambridge and Boston...this book is simply NOT what it claims to be. It is in no way an exploration of the "politics of anti-Semitism" except in as much as the back cover and the introduction assert that "the Jews" use the label to stifle genuine discourse. Being a left progressive myself, I can say that my experience is not that "Jews" have silenced the debate but rather that the Palestinian side, particularly its American and European left supporters has failed miserably to offer anything but shrill rhetoric on the issue. This book largely represents the kind of playing the victim done by privileged Euro=Americans in "solidarity" with real victims. Shame on these guys for basically using the rhetoric of the extreme right against Jews as if there were such a category as "the Jews" to start with.

As for the reviewers from Dublin and London, their reviews read like press releases (literally...one of them is actually nearly verbatim from the release which led me to this book in the first place). It's a pitiful and pathetic strategy to pretend to be a "reader" when in fact you're a capitalist trying to sell your own shi...product.

A much more honest and thoughtful collection on this issue is "Wrestling with Zion". I can say it is smarter, more wide-ranging and I doubt Tony Kushner, the editor, will log on Amazon and pretend to be a reader reviewing the book.

Rating:
Summary: On not being an anti-Semite.
Review: I purchased this book because the back cover suggested that a series of powerful essays by the likes of Alexander Cockburn and Edward Said would answer the question of "What constitutes genuine anti-Semitism--Jew-hatred--as opposed to disingenuous, specious charges of "anti-Semitism" hurled at realistic, rational appraisals of the state of Israel's poitical, military and social conduct?" The principle argument on which most of the essays are hinged is that supporters of Israel charge political critics of Israel with anti-Semitism as a means to squelch genuine debate and disarm popular disapproval of Israel's policies. Unfortunately, many, though not all, of the essays chosen for inclusion seem to be centered on the authors' personal victimization at the hands of what is presented as a very powerful and monied "Jewish" lobby. While their personal stories are interesting, even compelling, the resulting anecdotal argument by assertion does not offer much in the way of instructive discourse. Couple this with essays like Jeffrey Blankfort's which are filled with quotes like "Today though barely 2% of the nation's population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews" (p.102) or a reference to the Israeli government's proported mobilization of "American Jewry--which dominates congress and the media to a large degree" (p.103)one is left wondering what conclusions should be drawn about "Jews", "Jewry" and "anti-Semitism". I personally do not care if these authors are anti-Semites or not, and I am not interested in "hurling" that word against them: still it would be helpful if the essays actually explored the issue instead of exercising so much time and verbiage proclaiming how if they "dare" to say the things they will be called anti-Semites. In the end, it is the failure of the American supporters of Palestine to use the overwhleming injustice and cruelty of the Israeli policies to garner the sympathies and support of the public that needs to be explored, not the "power" of Jews to do the same for Israel.

Rating:
Summary: Lives up to its name
Review: I was curious: would this collection of articles discuss anti-semitism? Or would they merely be a collection of anti-semitic articles? It turned out to be the latter.

I looked at page 1 and found:

"I think we should almost never take anti-semitism seriously, and maybe we should have some fun with it."

Well, there might be an argument for this, I suppose. One of the times to have taken anti-semitism seriously should have been in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. But perhaps the point was precisely that deaths caused by anti-semitic attacks have been almost nothing in the past few years compared with deaths due to antisemitism in World War 2.

On the other hand, one aspect of today's anti-semitism is indeed serious, namely the incitement against Jews in the Muslim world. One symptom of this has been numerous suicide bombings. This is a global problem, and a problem for the Arab world in particular. Was this what the book would encourage us to trivialize and have fun with? Unfortunately it was.

Rating:
Summary: A Definitive and Courageous Book
Review: In the United States criticism of Israel has been deemed heretical by the high priests of hypocrisy. Anyone who dares to criticize Israel's bulldozing, land expropriations, torture, and gunning down of children is, ludicrously enough, labelled an 'anti-Semite'.

Here is a book that lays out, in scathing and clear-headed terms, the brutal policies and racist behavior of the Israeli state without any waffling or whitewashing of the truth. In line with numerous human rights organizations, growing international opinion, new Israeli historical works, and mountains of evidence, the many authors presented in this book - half of whom are themselves Jewish - point to the undeniable cruelty and injustice of Israel's military occupation of a people they have displaced and incarcerated in what Israeli historian Baruch Kimmerling has called "the world's largest concentration camp."

This is definitely a must-read for anyone interested in lifting the veil of lies that obscures the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the pernicious influence of the pro-Israeli lobby in America itself.

Rating:
Summary: Blame the Jews.
Review: In what can best be summed up as the Left goes all the way around the political spectrum and ends up meeting the Extreme Right, this little collection of highly repetitive essays reads like David Duke's web site. (Don't take my word for it, visit Mr. Duke's site and then read some of the essays included here at Amazon). Now, to be clear, I am not a supporter of Israel's violent war against the Palestinians, nor do I think that American Jews should blindly believe the crap shovelled out by Sharon and his cronies. And it is true that SOME Jews might label me anti-Semitic or self-hating for holding this opinion, but to argue as most of these writers do that "Jews" have a strangle hold on US foreign policy by virtue of their control of politics, culture, entertainment and the media, and then to argue that this is not a libel against Jews but just "realistic, rational appraisals" is a very big pill to swallow. One essayist, Jeffrey Blankfort, goes so far as to list Noam Chomsky among the Jews who willfully misunderstand the real power of the Jewish Cabal directed from Israel. Then again, Mr. Blankfort also attributes his failure to garner the support of a Guatemalan solidarity organization,NIC, for a rally he was organizing in San Francisco to the predominance of Jews on its Board (p.112)...Blankfort may not hate Jews but he definitely seems to think that World Jewry is out to get him. By far the strangest quality of this book is the way that it fails to offer, and even openly rejects, an analysis that ties US support of Israel to greater US policy agendas. Echoing the extreme Right, these authors see the current war against Iraq as the agenda of Israel and Jews, rather than the government doing the bidding of the Oil companies and the Corporatocracy, certainly with the full cooperation of right wing Jews, but at their bidding? Please. Claiming, as they do, that the Jews control Congress, the White House, US finances and the media...the authors seem to believe that the US is simply in business to support Israel, a very odd stance for the so-called Left to take. Add to this a very reactionary embrace of "patriotism" in which Jews who advocate for Israel are labelled unpatriotic by some authors and you end up with a book that doesn't feel "Left" at all. Two very notable exceptions to all of the clap-trap and speaking-from-the-victim-position are Norman Finkelstein's thoughtful analysis of German Political correctness and the resulting silence about Israel's abominable acts and Edward Said's outstanding essay which shows a sophistication and perceptiveness all too rare on any of the many sides of this question. As for the rest...David Duke said it first...and better.

Rating:
Summary: What would Kafka do?
Review: It's like a fable by Kafka:

Imagine Joseph K., a secular Jew, wakes up one morning to find that someone had been maligning Israel in his sleep. So he investigates the issue and is devastated to find out that Israel had not been maligned at all. In fact, the opposite is true. Israel has been protected by the mainstream media from criticism for countless atrocities, beginning in the 1948, for countless atrocities against the Palestinian people. Imagine if Joseph finds out that, particularly after it proved its muscle in 1967, Israel has been received billions of dollars in U.S. aid to arm itself to the teeth against it's neighbors and to better take advantage of and persecute it's now colonized Palestinian charges in the occupied territories. The list of atrocities include destroying Palestinian homes and ancient olive gardens; massacres at Quibya, Sabra and Shatilla (all perpetrated by the current Israeli Prime Minister) punitive curfews and sanctions; demolition of Palestinian homes; the murder of international protesters, including several American citizens; and unknown to most Americans, the strafing of an American reconnaissance ship off the coast of Egypt not once, not twice, but three times in 1967? Only the few U.S. Navel personnel who survived this act of war were punished by threats of dire consequences if they went public with the horrors they had witnessed. Imagine if Joseph K. began to ask questions like, "What depth of despair would drive the Palestinian people to blow themselves up in Israeli public locations? Despite the criminality of such acts, why is it that before they resorted to terrorism, no one [cared] about the Palestinians, agreeing with Golda Meier's position that there was no such thing as a Palestinian? Of course, you don't have to imagine what Joseph K. is called when he goes public with his findings: anti-Semite; self-hating Jew etc.

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's collection of essays by numerous international writers and human writes activists, including Palestinian Americans like Edward Said, Jewish Americans like Lenni Brenner, Dissident Israelis like Uri Avnery, and numerous other critics of Zionism and Israel's brutal record against Palestinians. These writers know that it is nearly impossible to criticize Israeli policy without being put on the defensive with the label "anti-Semite." But perhaps, as the essays in this book point out, Israel and its American Zionist supporters (Christian and Jewish) have cried "wolf" once too often by labeling critics who point out it's recorded, documented flaws with the same term one would usually reserve for Nazis[extremists]. I received death threats from alleged "supporters of Israel" merely for pointing out that Palestinians are human beings with human rights....

Kafka would be horrified by the Israeli record of abuse against the Palestinian people. But, like the writers whose essays are collected in "The Politics of Anti-Semitism" he would not be silenced.