tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post8905101610441112035..comments2023-11-02T02:14:31.901-06:00Comments on ReadMoreWriteMoreThinkMoreBeMore: Parsing the "Anti-"sDoctor Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13189506916480012553noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post-24867175259106412562010-06-12T20:27:16.928-05:002010-06-12T20:27:16.928-05:00autoegocrat: your position is deeply silly. First,...autoegocrat: your position is deeply silly. First, 'Semitic' is a construction of European racial theory. If Jews and Arabs do not recognise it as a common identity (which they typically do not) then the claim that Arabs cannot be anti-Semitic because they are Semites is simply ridiculous. The term 'anti-Semitic' means 'Jew-hatred' and that is rife in the Arab world.<br /><br />Secondly, as for invoking Godwin's law, why do accusations of Jew-hatred get ruled out when I take it that accusations of racism against blacks do not? Unless one is to bar all accusations of racism and ethnic hatred your position begins to look at bit, well, anti-Semitic.<br /><br />On my previous point about complaints against Israel displaying a level of angst not seen against other countries, Eve Garrard has a good example of the pattern <a href="http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2010/06/israel-human-decency-common-humanity-by-eve-garrard.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>.Lorenzohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00305933404442191098noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post-20633513087360135772010-06-12T08:28:05.556-05:002010-06-12T08:28:05.556-05:00I'm a bit late to this party, but I just want ...I'm a bit late to this party, but I just want to point out how ridiculous it is to call Helen Thomas anti-Semitic, regardless of what you think of her remarks. She's Lebanese. She is semitic herself.<br /><br />That term gets used way too much. To my mind, it's the equivalent of Godwin's Law. Once someone uses it in an argument, they've already lost the argument.autoegocrathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03726708889208600414noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post-68097045540789629582010-06-09T07:29:16.315-05:002010-06-09T07:29:16.315-05:00This thread seems to ignore the group these discus...This thread seems to ignore the group these discussions normally ignore: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_refugees_from_Arab_lands" rel="nofollow">Jewish refugees from Arab lands</a>. The difference between Jewish refugees and Palestinians is that Israel accepted the Jewish refugees as citizens--so they have become a non-problem: indeed, a forgotten phenomenon. By contrast, the Arab countries preferred to keep Palestinians as stateless sticks to beat Israel with, so we get third, fourth, fifth generation "refugees".<br /><br />I think your interpretation of Helen Thomas's remarks is far too kind. The word "settlers" could have been used at any time, for example, and was not.<br /><br />Criticism of Israel only wanders into anti-Semitic territory when people put emotional angst into denouncing Israeli sins that is much greater than comparable sins elsewhere. Unfortunately, there is a fair bit of that about.<br /><br />Israel's policy does seem to show a mixture of the arrogance of success and the self-righteousness of grievance. Still, if the Palestinians choose to elect a government that explicitly denies Israel's right to exist, they are on weak grounds to complain if Israel's response is less than phlegmatic. Palestinian rhetoric, education and tactics is all to often not such as to encourage Israeli positive engagement. The contrast with, say, Nelson Mandela's tactics is instructive.Lorenzohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00305933404442191098noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post-90313242634284594192010-06-07T23:55:27.204-05:002010-06-07T23:55:27.204-05:00I don't think it would be anti-semitic in itse...I don't think it would be anti-semitic in itself to suggest that Palestine is occupied by a foreign power. There are many hard core fundamentalist Jews who would say the same thing that Helen Thomas said: “go home,” because in their religious view the children of Abraham aren't supposed to rule Jerusalem until the coming of the Messiah, and their “home” is to remain in exile.<br />Again, fundamentally, Jewish does not mean Israeli, nor does it mean Zionist.<br />The reason to accept the existence of Israel is not because they have any right to be there, but because they had very little choice. The Jews that Europe didn't kill, they actively forced into exile in Palestine. At that moment there was every expectation that the holocaust would soon flare up again, and these suspicions were confirmed when Stalin led his Pogrom beginning in 1948. French Jews returning to Paris from the death camps would often find a gentile family had taken their home, and there was no legal recourse. <br />There are lots of reasons Israel doesn't trust the international community, or necessarily feel as though they have to follow the UN's rulebook. And it's nothing new: in 1960 Mossad abducted a Nazi War criminal, Adolph Eichmann, who was living in Argentina who didn't want to extradite him. The world ignored that international law had been broken because a nazi war criminal had been brought to justice. But you can see how this encouraged Israeli officials to believe that they were above international law.<br />Ironically, it was the Middle East's, and Islam's, acceptance of the Jews that made the region appealing to Zionists. Antisemitism was unknown throughout North Africa and the Middle East until 1948. <br />What is done is done, but it is grotesque in the extreme not to acknowledge the deep wrong that has been done to the Palestinian People, from 1948 to the present. That was their land, and their parents and grandparents died there or were run off. It is refreshing to hear someone in the American press give a damn. <br />And the idea that Jews should return to Germany and Poland? I can't really defend that, except to plead surprised old lady.<br />But let's give a little thought to our reaction to this idea of Israeli's going "home." Is it because we have qualms about uprooting Jewish people, or is it because we can't see them being welcome in Poland?<br />How could any Israeli really believe that things would be different this time if they did "go home"? One's answer might depend on one's family history. Some of the outrage over what Mrs. Helen Thomas said must be a screen for Jewish suspicion of Europe. “Go back to Europe! Are you crazy?!” Is that fear warranted? I don't know, maybe. If you want to know if anti-semitism is alive in Europe, you could look at the anti-Arab sentiment there. It is the same French (et al) supremacists who hate Arabs who also hate Jews (though they know when to shut up about the Jews). (I can't recommend Mark Kurlansky's "A Chosen Few" highly enough-it's a history of the Jews who stayed in Europe after WWII.)<br />Are the grandchildren of death camp survivors afraid to have international Polish/Russian/French/German forces inspecting cargo ships that come directly into Gaza? It seems one could understand the fear, but does that make it right?John Doehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04451472439994554388noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post-71688595898502225422010-06-07T16:35:49.973-05:002010-06-07T16:35:49.973-05:00@Chet: [Heaving a reluctant sigh as I type this.....@Chet: [Heaving a reluctant sigh as I type this...] At the risk of making an already controversial bog-post even more provocative, let me say that I think the response to Helen Thomas' remarks are a bit overblown.<br /><br />First-- and not to be all age-ist here-- Helen Thomas <i>is</i> EIGHTY-NINE years old... that is to say, perhaps not always at her sharpest. (For that reason, I think she should have been removed from the White House press room a while ago.) Her remarks were clearly off-the-cuff and, in my view, taken a bit out-of-context.<br /><br />I don't see any problem at all with her response (to the question "Any comments on Israel?"): "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine." I mean, if that's a reason to dismiss someone from his or her post as a journalist, a lot of heads are going to roll. The problem, obviously, was in her subsequent comments. Thomas said: <i> "Remember these people [Palestinians] are occupied and it's their land. It's not Germany and it's not Poland."</i> <br /><br />The reporter, obviously "baiting" her, then asked: "Then where should they go?" <br /><br />To which Thomas replied: "They should go home."<br /><br />Here's where things get sticky, I think. It's seems obvious to me that Thomas was making (an admittedly over-vague) reference to post-WWII Jewish "settlers" in the state of Israel, who are treating the land as if it was not already occupied. <br /><br />So, when the reporter re-phrased her comment for her, and asked: "So you think Jews should go back to Germany?"... well. to be honest, I think that was playing fast and loose with a little old lady.<br /><br />Now, I'll admit, Helen Thomas is about as far as one can get from a stereotypical "little old lady." And perhaps her own history as a hard-hitting, tough-questions, shoot-from-the-hip reporter earned her the treatment she's gotten in this case. But I think-- again, given her own history-- it's more than a bit disingenuous to assume that she meant her remarks in the way they have been subsequently taken up. At the end of the day, it's her fault for not parsing her words more carefully, but anyone who has seen the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aeqb8h0I-Bg&feature=player_embedded#!" rel="nofollow">clip of those remarks</a> can surely tell that there's a lot of wiggle room there for a more sympathetic interpretation.Doctor Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13189506916480012553noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post-7819517466109671102010-06-07T15:16:53.268-05:002010-06-07T15:16:53.268-05:00Check this out: http://opiniojuris.org/2010/06/02/...Check this out: http://opiniojuris.org/2010/06/02/why-is-israels-blockade-of-gaza-legal/<br /><br />Basically, blockades like this one are legal in wars between sovereign nations. They are not, however, legal if used against one's own citizens. By claiming that the blockade is a legal response to rocket attacks, Israel grants that it is occupying Gaza as a hostile power and that Hamas is a lawful military combatant requiring Geneva Convention Rights, rather than terrorists.anotherpanaceahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08170804573665745672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post-60705118713627017562010-06-07T15:09:56.181-05:002010-06-07T15:09:56.181-05:00Beinart's piece in the NYRB was really good. ...Beinart's piece in the NYRB was really good. It incited a response from someone in the ADL that was interesting. <br /><br />So do you think Helen Thomas' comments were anti-Semitic? And if so, why? I am curious. I suppose I could see it both ways. But there are commentaries on the Washington Post that are very critical of her, presuming that she had no idea of the difficulties Jews had returning to their homes after WW2.Not Chethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post-5536010433327444472010-06-07T14:34:58.486-05:002010-06-07T14:34:58.486-05:00It has always amazed me that people associate supp...It has always amazed me that people associate support for Israel with support for Judaism and vice versa. If we were to criticize a government legally recognized as a "Christian nation state" like Georgia, it would not be perceived as an attack on Christianity. Similarly, the Vatican is under a lot of fire right now for its policy decisions FROM GOOD CATHOLICS. The criticism is not directed towards the faith but the contemporary policy makers. <br /><br />I do think it is important to note that the Israeli situation is mirrored in the Muslim world. Often, an attack on the Government of an extremely conservative Islamist state like Iran (our Israel counterpart) will be perceived as an attack on the Muslim faith, even by intellectuals in more moderate countries like Turkey, Egypt, and even the U.S.Allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02040489792653556709noreply@blogger.com