State Department Falls Prey to Zionist Propaganda

It's one thing to deny the Holocaust and say things like Jews control the world. It's another thing to equate criticism with Israel's human rights record with antisemitism. Our State Department has failed to distinguish between what constitutes legitimate antisemitism and what constitutes critical examination of Israel's human rights record. Criticizing Israel's human rights record and its foreign policy are not antisemitism. It's antisemitism when someone calls Jews apes and pigs or when someone says Jews are money hungry - that is racism and bigotry. But when someone writes a book or a report documenting all of Israel's crimes against humanity - like say, Norman Finkelstein - then that is not antisemitism. Even if Finkelstein hated all Jews, as long as his work was objective and did not veer into ad hominem attacks or stereotypes about Jews there would be no way to object to his research despite his own ill feelings towards Jews. Facts are facts. Israel is a horrible abuser of Palestinian human rights.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

New forms of anti-Semitism are emerging around the world, promoting prejudice against Jews by attacking Israeli policy and Zionism, the philosophic underpinning of a Jewish state, the State Department reported Thursday.

While common throughout the Middle East and in Muslim communities, the new anti-Semitism is not confined to those populations, said the report, prepared by the office of the special envoy for monitoring anti-Semitism.

For example, the report cited frequent requests to the United Nations to commission investigations of reports of alleged atrocities and other human rights violations by Israel.

Unremitting criticism of Israel is mounting, the report said, and Israeli policy is sometimes likened to the Nazis. At the same time, the report to Congress said, there is a failure to pay attention to regimes guilty of grave violations.

This has the effect of reinforcing the notion that the Jewish state is one of the greatest sources of abuse of the rights of others "and thus, unintentionally or not, encourages anti-Semitism," the report said.

While Israel's policies and practices must be subject to criticism and scrutiny to the same degree as other countries', "those criticizing Israel have a responsibility to consider the effect their actions may have in promoting hatred of Jews," the report said.



This is a classic case of a state not taking responsibility for its actions. If Israelis and pro-Israel supporters are correct, that criticism of Israel leads to hate crimes against Jews, then what is the obvious solution to this?

I offer a few: end the occupation; stop murdering innocent Palestinians as well as suspected militants who have not even been a fair trial; stop flying F-16 fighter jets over the Palestinian population to terrorize them; stop house demolitions; stop sniping little Palestinian kids; clear out all the checkpoints where many Palestinians end up dying because they did not receive any medical treatment; stop hoarding up Palestinian tax money; stop restricting water and electricity to your occupied subjects; and stop dropping U.S. made precision guided missiles on suspected Palestinian militants in crowded public areas where innocents are always killed, and then once that is all completed we can all expect antisemitism to dwindle.

The moral repugnance of such an argument, by the State Department of all institutions, is appalling and disgusting. To blame antisemitism on criticizing Israel is beyond idiotic. If that is truly the case and antisemitism stems from criticism of Israel then instead of living in some fantasy land where Israel does no wrong, Israelis and pro-Israel supporters should look into the policies of the state that they support.

This is not about antisemitism. This is about deflecting criticism of Israel's human rights record. It falls in line with the same propaganda mustered by Alan Dershowitz, Abraham Foxman and others. Legitimate criticism of Israel's human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories is not only needed, but it is a favor to Israel. Like the great Muslim scholar Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali once said, if someone told you that you had a scorpion hidden within your clothes you would thank them for their advice for having removed from you a hidden danger. Pro-Israel supporters can't seem to understand that this criticism of Israel has nothing to do with Jewishness, but with salvaging the dignity of Israel from its own heinous actions against the Palestinian people.