Antisemitism in the Labour Party – what’s going on?

“white South Africans living in the UK in the 1980s were vastly likely to have left the country specifically because they couldn’t stand apartheid…”

I have to point out that quite a number of white South Africans rather liked Thatcher precisely because she showed no interest in fighting apartheid, opposed sanctions vociferously and, in fact, went so far as to call the ANC terrorists. I encountered plenty of very obviously pro-apartheid white South Africans in British business circles in the 1980s and I would imagine that my experience was not untypical.

“lots of them are too dumb to understand that their behaviour is not OK”

The argument that low-information citizens say and do foolish things, especially in the tribal atmosphere of our current politics seems more credible than one that simply labels them “dumb”.

If, by the way, you want another illustration of anti-South African sentiment Tom Sharpe’s Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure published in 1971 and 1973 are memorable (and extremely funny, it must be said).

[Trying again because previous post disappeared:]

http://www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/news/item/statement-on-labours-problem-with-antisemitism-from-the-jewish-socialists-g>Statement on “Labour’s problem with antisemitismcFrom the Jewish Socialists’ Group
Letter to the Guardian from Jewish Labour party members and supporters
Jamie Stern-Weiner – Ken Livingstone: gobshite yes, antisemite no
The Naz Shah Scandal Shows that the Right Has an Anti-Semitism Problem By Sam Kriss

Gee, Brett, while you’re at it, what explains the correlation between Jews and the left almost everywhere?
Please enlighten me.

Just to add to Daniel’s list of causes and building on the point about South Africa, there’s an intergenerational element to it. You have the modern low-information trolling combining with Livingstone’s views apparently formed decades ago from his reading of Lenni Brenner (or so he says). And for that older generation, a lot of the other causes are gone. For example, the South Africa allegiances went along with support for Frelimo and the MPLA because of the way it lined up with the apartheid regime. But now keeping track of events in those countries requires getting immersed in the details of tuna bonds and linkages to Portugal’s banking crisis. It’s just not that satisfying any more. But I-P is still there that 70s-80s college cohort to vent about, and that validates the kids in their views on that issue, despite the numerous structural changes in international affairs since then. Everything thinks they’re coming at the issue with the same perspective, but they’re not.

Think about the historical anti-Semitism in America, with the discrimination etc., and ponder how well Bernie Sanders, a Jew with a Brooklyn accent, did in the Presidential primary. He raised a record amount of money in small donations. (Corbyn should study what Sanders accomplished.)

He didn’t do well in the South but that’s partly because he wasn’t well known there and Hillary was more of a known quantity and had a reputation as a grand foe of the Republicans.

It’s about contexts. I get that for many people the only context that matters in this discussion is the world of shit in which Palestinians are currently living. But antisemitism has extremely deep and strong roots in British society and culture, and antisemitic libels don’t have to follow precisely the lineaments of a Der Stürmer cartoon for it to be more than a ‘microaggression’. Ed Miliband, a Jew, was ridiculed on all sides for the way he ate a fucking bacon sandwich. Everyone agreed, chuckling, that he was kinda funny looking. His face didn’t fit. His Dad’s military service during WW2 was discounted because he wasn’t really ‘one of us’. When Michael Howard was Tory leader (devout Catholic) Anne Widdecombe attacked him in the Commons because he had, she said, ‘something of the night about him’. Political satire routinely portrayed him as sinister, dracula-like, alien, inhuman. Might as well as have written JEW in large letters and pinned it to the back of his jacket. I appreciate that I’m talking about broader UK political culture, here, but the Labour party has its own particular problems in this respect. It’s been a long time since my personal experience of in-party Labour politics, but I remember the way people on the left talked about Mandelson when he still had the beard, before Labour came back into power and Blair brought him into government (never mind afterwards): he was a double target because he was both a Jew and gay. A lot of working class Labour and CP people used to be startlingly small-c conservative in social and cultural terms, and not only saw the world through a panoply of stereotypes but felt uninhibited about mocking and deriding people on these terms: women, foreigners, the Irish, Jews. Some of that culture persists in the modern Labour party. My sense is that part of this is more or less consciously informed by the old anti-semitic libel that Jews are all wealthy, that they dominate banking and the media and so on … they in some sense are the 1%. The gnomes of zurich.

But the more immediate context is Israel. Livingstone’s ‘Hitler was a Zionist before he went mad and decided to kill the Jews’ line was only of several things he said during that day of rolling interviews. He also said that Einstein himself had equated Zionism and Fascism, stressing that because a Jew had said this it inoculated the comment against the charge of antisemitism. And that was Ken’s message, as I read it: present-day Israel is morally equivalent to Nazi Germany because of the way it treats the Palestinians. It was ‘yes Hitler was bad, but Netanyahu is the real Hitler now’, which blurs uncomfortably, it seems to me, into ‘Jews are the true Nazis’, which is another way of saying that Jews were responsible for the Holocaust. There really is nothing ‘micro’ about such aggression.

Daniel, you are my favorite writer.

@12
Livingstone did not, in fact, say that Hitler was a Zionist. I know that’s what a lot of the right wing media (AKA ‘the media’) said he said. But he didn’t.

@16 His actual words were that Hitler ‘was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews’. Happy to split hairs over the difference between being a Zionist and supporting Zionism.

Thanks very much for writing this, Daniel. I had not heard about this particular case. It certainly is strange to hear about Hitler’s zionism being re-litigated! I mean, who cares, right? Good Lord people. On the other hand, I do think it’s super important that people remember certain facts about US policy toward blacks in the early 1900’s including redlining etc …. So I ask myself, Why is one set of historical facts so important and timely in this moment, and another is just pointless rehashing?

Maybe this is taking things in a too-boring direction, but …:

What would it look like, and how would we do it, if we resolved to try to stop being the kind of people who do this kind of thing? In other words, if we stopped seeing politics as akin to rooting for a football side?

What would a comments section in a blog post even look like, if someone like Brett Bellmore didn’t jump in trying to score points for his football team – and then others reply trying to score points against?

Not to say that I don’t know what team I’m on … and I find myself a little disturbed at how low my IQ seems to dip when contemplating offenses against my team and/or looking for reasons to commit offenses against the other team.

If we try to step back and not be quite such a mindless supporter of Team X, do we have any choice other than to be a technocratic centrist of some type? And once we’ve done that, how do we avoid making technocratic centrism our new team? Gah the very thought makes me bristle with anger with anger based on all the offenses that have been committed by the technocratic centrist team’s supporters!!

The brilliant Nick Cohen in the WSJ…..

One of these things is not like the others
One of these things
Doesn’t belong.

But was the support (from sections of) the British left for Irish nationalists in NI as much an outgrowth of general opposition to British imperialism and support for the anti imperial movements of the 50/60/70s? (I’m not saying one way or the other if that’s an accurate description of NI, just that was the frame) ‘Anti Imperialism’ also explains why the European left could sympathise with Israel up to roughly the 67 war, and then more towards Palestinians after. (Also worth noting this was true of the old IRA, afaicr, who had links with and helped inspire the Stern Gang. The shift towards support among Irish nationalists for Palestinians primarily came with the Provos etc)
All of this is to say that which conflict gains resonance is contingent. Why has the Palestinian conflict gained such notoriety? IMO because (like South Africa, and Ireland) it’s easy to frame (rightly, IMO) as a consequence of western colonialism. You have two highly politicised (and articulate) diasporas, and revolutionary movements led by a charismatic* leadership who explictly made it their goal to develop international solidarity. It’s happening in the Middle East, where western militaries are still involved, and is a conflict that is superficially easier to understand than most ethnic conflicts.
I don’t think this neccesarily contradicts anything in the OP, but perhaps it’s a slightly different angle. I think it goes deeper than ‘picking a football team’, anti Imperialsm has deep roots among the left, I think it tends to lead to bad decisions but it’s a consistent, morally supportable political tendency. The question then becomes why does one conflict become more prominent than another, and the answer to that (imo) is how easy it is to slot into (and understand through) domestic political categories, and the specifics of the conflict itself.

* This is true in NI where the Nationalist face became the articulate, urban young (nominally Marxist) revolutionaries rather than the Catholic, conservative rural demographic who were much less easy to sympathise with from a left perspective. True also In Israel/ Palestine, up until the rise of Hamas, where the opposition to Israel was much more superficially easy to sympathise with than the reactionaries looking to retain their dwindling privileges.
I would generally agree that rather than picking sides in a conflict it’s better to try ad understand it, and if you’re going to support anyone, support the majority of the population caught up in the maelstrom. A lot of the people at the coalface have less opportunities to ‘opt out’ of picking a side. The non involved have the option.

Not really, it’s just a commonly used short English word meaning “acting in a way which doesn’t make sense, respect rational priorities and/or distinguish between fantasy and reality”.

Though there are of course significant overlaps between the categories, I wish we could distinguish sharply between 1) antisemitism 2) opposition to the policies of the state of Israel 3) opposition to the existence of the state of Israel and 4) denial or minimization of the Holocaust.

For instance, Netanyahu’s statement quoted upthread was neither antisemitic nor anti-zionist in itself. On the other hand, it was a rather outrageous instance of holocaust denialism. The extract of the Facebook meme I saw (I just clicked on it upthread) about relocating Israel in the US was an instance of 3), but not as far as I can tell of either 1) or 4).

Not really, it’s just a commonly used short English word meaning “acting in a way which doesn’t make sense, respect rational priorities and/or distinguish between fantasy and reality”.

Then I gotta say it seems unhelpful to describe things this way (why not just say “irrational”?), given that, yes, although the intention to call something “mad” is not to defame those with mental health problems, the word has obvious connotations which are intrinsically linked to mental health issues, and given that the whole big palaver that’s happened this week has been about comments of Livingstone’s about exactly when Hitler did/did not go “mad”. Similarly, I wouldn’t describe someone being stupid as “retarded” or something I don’t like as “gay” – or at least I try not to, these words were ingrained in me negatively as a child.

Very thoughtful piece, although there are some things I don’t agree with and some things that I think need to be addressed. Here’s a few of them:

1.) Naz Shah has an incredible life story, and I believe her apology was sincere. However, it wasn’t just the “Israel in the US” thing, but also comments about “Jews rallying to the cause”, etc. etc. and other comments that suggest she’s not simply guilty of an isolated post, but a system of community thinking that’s a bit too prevalent in Bradford that’s generally hostile to Jews and, at least, makes us particularly wary. I’m glad she apologized, but the whole manner of thinking is particularly unpleasant.

2.) It’s not just about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. There is a systematic attempt within the “intersectional” movement (critical theorists, gender/queer/anti-racism activists/etc.) to downplay or even erase Jewish concerns. THat’s why, in the U.S., openly anti-Semitic professors have been elevated or praised (see people like Joy Karega, or Jasbir Puar), while those advocating for Jews are often ignored, mocked or even sometimes intimidated by aspects of the left [note: I’m on the left too, but I see a lot of this].

Same sort of things is going on with the NUS, and the election of Malia Bouattia. She may not personally “hate Jews”, as it were, but her language is openly hostile, and she invokes the “anti-Zionism” mantra to absolve herself of any responsibility at all while marginalizing Jewish people. She may not “hate Jews”, but her actions are most definitely anti-Semitic. They are also reflective of aspects of the Labour party and the hard left.

3.) Corbyn probably doesn’t have too much personal animosity towards Jews either, but the vigor and focus of anti-Zionist activism within his circles, and his–dodgy at best– associations with a number of people who are purely exterminationist in their rhetoric, certainly gives Jews cause for concern. While it’s true that the right-wing, and Blairites, are ALSO exploiting all of this to weaken him politically, it is also a legitimate concern.

Labour DOES have a problem. Obviously the Tories do as well, but that’s another hwole set of issues.

I imagine some of the commenters might find the following analysis of anti-semitism in Britain by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research interesting:

http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/JPR.2015.Policy_Debate_-_Contemporary_Antisemitism.pdf

I came upon it embedded in a piece at opendemocracy by an author, Jamie Stern-Weiner, “a dual British-Israeli national,” which I think augments Daniel’s piece here:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/jamie-stern-weiner/jeremy-corbyn-hasn-t-got-antisemitism-problem-his-opponents-do

Again there’s nothing “slightly offensive” about Northern Ireland or football sectarianism.

As far as saying that it doesn’t make sense to call Ken Livingstone an anti-Semite how does that square with saying that Ken will eventually realise that he performed an “anti-Semitic dick move”?

This is OT, but one thing I found out the other day is that Sanders lost the Jewish vote to Clinton in the New York Democratic primary, but has been beating her among Muslim voters everywhere quite handily.

One fairly obvious effect of Sanders’ ethnic background that he has felt comfortable doing things like skipping the AIPAC conference, which every gentile American politician seems to think is mandatory to attend.

This seems about right to me. I know very little about politics in Britain, but based on what I see in comment sections on largely American sites, you see racism against Palestinians on the pro- Israel side, but also some dimwits and outright antisemites on the pro – Palestinian side. I had never heard of a Gilad Atzmon before I became a regular reader of comment threads on this subject. I was happier never having heard of Gilad Atzmon, who appears to be a genuine honest to goodness example of a self hating Jew. No links. You can google him for yourself.

On the US side of the Atlantic the antisemites are largely in the shadows, or mostly anonymous people in comment threads. Sometimes they can be insensitive college activists. But our mainstream form of bigotry, the one you see in politicians in both parties, is aimed at Palestinians. For example, when Hillary Clinton in her AIPAC speech implied that BDS supporters were part of a global tide of antisemitism just as Brett claimed. The idea being that if you wish to impose pressure on Israel, it can’t be that you think Palestinian rights matter or feel disgusted by US policy– you have to be an antisemite.

On the other hand there are even well meaning people who try to draw lines in the wrong places. See this piece in the Guardian, which so far as I can tell seems not too bad ( not as good as Daniel’s) until the paragraph where she condemns ethnic cleansing and then talks about Israel’s ” right to exist”.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/28/antisemitism-rocked-labour-self-belief

Israel’s ” right to exist” usually comes up in connection with a Palestinian right of return and Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Whatever you think about the Palestinian ROR, it seems at best clueless to condemn ethnic cleansing and then write about Israel’s right to exist if you know what the argument is about.

Of course Israel doesn’t have the “right to exist”. No country does, because countries don’t have rights.

People have rights. Countries infringe them.

Daniel forgot one aspect that explains most of this nonsense:

We’re voting for mayor next week and the Tories are playing dirty again.

Donald,

Yes, I know that. I know how it is generally used. Just saying it doesn’t really make any sense in that situation, and that most people don’t know “Arabs” are Semitic, too.

(Then, again, Simone Weil was often accused of anti-Semitism. A Jew herself.)

The scare quotes are there because, of course, the Middle East is filled with far more than ethnic Arabs . . . . and “Muslims” encompass still more ethnicities, etc.

Your second comment is spot on.

Excellent OP. The link to football support is spot on. Too often left wing politics is about the good guys beating up the bad guys, as if it were that easy.

The Labour Party dynamics are interesting and relevant here. The threesome in charge of Labour are Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonell, and Ken Livingstone. Politicians, particularly ones who aspire to govern big countries, need to show they have got the basic skills to do the job, so being relentlessly hounded by the media is part of the testing process and applies to all politicians.

Corbyn is, as predicted, coming up short. He shows no awareness or interest in the part of his job which is about managing the story and handling the messaging. He looks for all the world like someone who wishes he could just go back to his old job of sitting in the corner moaning about the leadership.

Ken Livingston is looking like a maverick heading toward the exit. Who cares whether Ken Livingston is technically correct in what he says? He is not running a pub quiz team nor is he an entertainer who has encyclopaedic knowledge of interesting but irrelevant facts; he is a political who is meant to lead, inspire, motivate and organise, and recently he’s been scoring 0/4 in that department.

The really interesting one of the trio is John McDonnell. He dropped Naz Shah as his PPs extremely quickly, and has been saying all the right things. Since the Little Red Book fiasco he hasn’t put a foot wrong. He is deftly throwing Corbyn and Livingstone under a bus, and positioning himself as the leader who can take organise Labour to attack the conservatives at the next election. With a Tory collapse into infighting after the EU referendum no matter what the outcome quite possible, the odds being offered by of 33/1 for McDonnell to be the next PM look good value.

“I don’t believe that the British population or the British left are fundamentally anti-Semitic. I think they’ve chosen a side”

I think this is true, both in this case specifically and as as a more general rule. Too often our politics seems to start from the assumption that bigotry or prejudice are a societal or individual pathology, rather than a cleavage and ideology utilised for specific purposes by specific groups at specific times. (This is also true of its cousin, politicised “anti bigotry”)

” I think they’ve chosen a side, and that lots of them are too dumb to understand that their behaviour is not OK. Which means that if the actual underlying conflict reaches resolution one day, there will be no more problem on the British left. That’s what happened with respect to South Africans”

I guess this is really my only objection, if it’s even a meaningful one. I wouldn’t say dumb, and I don’t think (if it is the implication ) that “picking a side” was a thoughtless or simply tribal act. Afaict a lot of people(outside of the conflict) who picked sides in NI or south Africa genuinely believed in the cause, and knew a considerable amount about the situation. This is also true of Israel palestine, from what I can see anyway.
The fact that the rhetoric dissipates when the conflict comes to a resolution doesn’t necessarily imply (if it’s the implication) that their initial position wasn’t genuine or thought through. It’s more a consequence of the resolution, the politics changing from within the conflict, emotions tempering, etc
I guess I’m just not sure on the “picking a football team” analogy. If It implies triviality or , on the other hand, almost atavistic tribalism, I agree that can be the case, but generally isn’t.

“Well, the first way is that if you had an existing interest in the Northern Irish conflict, then your side basically got picked for you. Lots of things in British politics which are otherwise incomprehensible, make sense when you realise they’re really about Northern Ireland. ”

But afaict a lot of the outside support on both sides in the I/P conflict comes from demographics who are too young and/or culturally removed from the NI conflict for it to have made much of an effect on them . A lot of them (admittedly not the individuals in the OP) made the decision with no prior commitment to either side in NI.

Ronan@29, 32: I do agree with you on (what I think you are saying about) the moral equivalence, and topical difference, of tribalism and hatred in left- and right-wing politics; and I think we would agree with Daniel’s original wise comments that “Lots of things in British politics which are otherwise incomprehensible, make sense when you realise they’re really about Northern Ireland”. Where there is also much tribalism, of course.

But I wonder whether there are not also a couple of aspects not mentioned in Daniel’s admirable analysis. One is the relatively minor Falklands factor. Many on the far left of British politics have never forgiven Thatcher for defeating the Argentines, who were fighting for the righteous subjugation of colonialists who had displaced the indigenous population; or at least not forgiven her for defeating the non-colonialist Argentines, well less said about that the better but they anyway deserved support for being um, er, not allied to the imperialist Americans, or …. Well, at least they were opposed to Thatcher! That being so, suggestions that the Falklands problem could best be solved by deporting the existing population to somewhere else (I have seen the Outer Hebrides mentioned) did become acceptable to some on the left: accept that for one case, it becomes acceptable for another. As in the solution proposed for NI protestants: learn to swim.

Much more important: left-wingers are, for a variety of reasons, inclined to support national borders being as open as possible, with as much immigration into the UK and other similar places as may be. In the UK, a great deal of immigration has been from Asian or African Muslim states. Many though of course not all such immigrants are profoundly anti-Jewish. Criticising their anti-Semitism is, from one left-wing point of view, unacceptable because it might give aid and comfort to The Enemy, who oppose immigration solely because it involves foreigners. The same argument, of course, also works against criticizing Muslim immigrants because some of them are are violently against homosexuals and equality for women. I do hope Labour will sort themselves out of this tangle.

Actually Plume terrorism against Israel started long before the Occupation of the territories. It was not until the 1990’s that suicide terrorism in Israel proper assumed the dimensions it did now, and that was due to the PLO signing the Oslo Accords, which were going to produce an independent Palestinian state. Hamas really does want to kill all the Jews: how many times do they need to say that, and act on it, before you will believe them?

Terrorism against Israel started before the occupation because there were atrocities on both sides long before 67. Palestinians engaged in pogroms in the 20’s and apparently on a small scale the earliest Zionists were engaged in racist violence in the 1890’s according to early Zionist Ahad Ha’am ( cited in Tom Segev in One Palestine Complete on page 104). Then in 1948 there were massacres and ethnic cleansing and according to Benny Morris, a few thousand mostly unarmed ( with some terrorist exceptions) Palestinians were killed trying to cross back into Israel in the years immediately following.

I sometimes see people pull Watson’s stunt of citing Palestinian terrorism before the occupation to ” prove” it was really antisemitism that was the real motivating problem , but you commonly see violence against civilians on both sides when outside Westerners try to take over a land which already has inhabitants.

As for Hamas, they are antisemites, just as the idea of a Jewish state in a land inhabited by Palestinians required many Zionists to be racists.

Nice to see a little context in the last few comments. Livingtson, a former mayor of London, makes a statement in the midst of the campaign for the next mayor, who will be either a Muslim or a man of Jewish heritage. And what did he say? Blah-blah-blah-Hitler-blah-blah Zionist. “The Jews are the real Nazis” is a trope that’s been around for decades now. People who are parsing the literal meaning of his words are wasting their time. It was a whistle any dog could hear a mile away.

Context: the Naz Shah thing was leaked by rightwing blogger and Boris Johnson adviser Paul Staines days before the mayoral election in which the Tories candidate, who is Jewish, is lagging hopelessly behind. Shortly before the PM used question time to smear the Labour candidate, who is Muslim, as an associate of Islamist extremists. Livingstone makes a clumsy comment, that nevertheless not antisemitic and has a basis in historical fact and has been made before by none other than Netanyahu himself. As a result of this completely irrelevant gaffe a big discussion ensues about Labour and the left being antisemitic and how Corbin sucks as a leader. Lyndon Crosby collects his paycheck …

The overwhelming majority of them live in London; there is still what might be described reasonably as a “Jewish community” in Manchester and (albeit to a declining extent) Leeds, but that’s about it.

Tyneside’s an interesting example: Gosforth still has a small but significant Jewish community dating back a long time and very involved with local Labour politics (most notably Lord [Jeremy] Beecham, who’s still a Newcastle city councillor) while Gateshead has a Haredi community tied to the yeshiva, but no real involvement in politics or the broader local community.

Adam Roberts: A lot of working class Labour and CP people used to be startlingly small-c conservative in social and cultural terms, and not only saw the world through a panoply of stereotypes but felt uninhibited about mocking and deriding people on these terms: women, foreigners, the Irish, Jews.

Yeah, that’d be my dad. But he also grew up alongside Jewish tailors and jewellers and market traders, and was a happy customer of their businesses. While I’m not going to endorse a set of stereotypes that should have been buried in the 70s with The Comedians, that was the nature of working-class discourse: not necessarily ‘picking teams’ in direct competition, but ascribing and being ascribed social and cultural labels and either acting them out or rejecting them.

Hidari: another thing that our Atlantic cousins may not be aware of is that Corbyn literally has no friends in the media at all.

To put it another way, the London press has a template for ‘Labour civil war’ that it’s very eager to use because it involves not much work, and to be fair to the London press, plenty of those in the PLP who see Corbyn as an electoral liability are also eager for them to use it.

Stephen: Many on the far left of British politics have never forgiven Thatcher for defeating the Argentines, who were fighting for the righteous subjugation of colonialists who had displaced the indigenous population

[citation needed] [Dave Spart doesn’t count]

#66- Livingstone said: “When Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel.”

This is a false statement. Even if you replace “Israel” with “Mandatory Palestine” it’s a false statement. There was never any German “policy” to move Jews to Palestine. There was a deal that allowed a small number of Jews to emigrate to Palestine without confiscating 100% of their property, which is not remotely the same thing. So if by “has a basis in historical fact” you mean “is a gross distortion of historical fact,” we are in agreement.

He then doubled down, saying, “”I never regret saying something that is true.” And he claimed that “the Prime Minister of Israel said the same thing.” which is untrue. Netanyahu said that when he came to power, Hitler’s plan was to expel the Jews from Germany, which is a far cry from saying that Hitler supported Zionism.

So, “clumsy.” Yes, if by “clumsy” you mean “false.”

“the Naz Shah thing was leaked”
Leaked? It was a Facebook post. Facebook posts are state secrets now?

I’ve been hearing for decades about the right-wing press and their underhand methods so surely no-one can be surprised at this.

I fully expect my latest Labour Hero John Mcdonnell is now, even as we casually surf the inter web, going through his own contacts and posts, and all those of his future cabinet, and compiling a list of possible attacks and constructing reposts. And when he’s done that he will start on the likely next leader and their cohorts and be preparing the lines of attack. Boris Johnson and Liverpool for a start – oh hang on, no votes in that. Scrap it.

Fail to prepare; prepare to fail.

At root the whole problem is down the corruption of notions of universal human rights by the rise of identity politics and competitions over who is the most oppressed.

In one corner we have Israel, representative of the world’s original oppressed group. In the other, we have Palestinians and other Muslim populations, allegedly repressed by Western imperialism and its Israeli franchise. Israel has the upper hand in this unfortunate ideological battle, as it has the backing of influential establishment interests in many leading nations.

The ultimate victims in this row are individual Palestinians, who find themselves subject to restrictions on their civil rights in the occupied West Bank, subject to collective reprisals in Gaza, and exposed to use as expendable tools by genuinely anti-Semitic groups such as Hamas.

Ultimately all the talk over possession of land is another nationalist red herring, and a two-state solution merely leaves an enfeebled Palestinian nation-state open to the depredations of home-grown extremists and constant interference from a vastly more powerful Israel. Time for the Left to forget the futile chase for ‘self-determination’ and start supporting Palestinians by insisting that Israel incorporate the West Bank completely into its territory by giving all of its population full civil rights as Israeli citizens.

Phil – he was asked about Naz Shah without a historical reference in sight, and he blurted out, 1930s! Zionists! Hitler!
The only way to make sense of it is that he was spinning the “Zionists are the real Nazis” trope. Which in the context of his defense of Naz Shah (link to interview below) means that it wouldn’t be so bad if all the Jews of Israel were killed, because really, what else can you do with Nazis?
No, he didn’t quite say that. He hinted it. That’s how it’s done.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-anti-semitism-row-full-transcript-of-ken-livingstones-interviews-a7005311.html

#67 – yes, we know. Advocating the extermination of the Jews of Israel isn’t anti-Semitic because that would only affect 45 percent of the world’s Jews, not all of them.

As I see it good faith leftists have serious critiques lodged against Israel among a number of other States – Western and not – such as the US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Syria, Egypt, China, etc. But only one of those critiques has become magnified into a worldwide boycott + sanctions movement. Why? Because there are other actors who are antagonistic towards Israel for non-leftist reasons but who do not mind locking arms with leftists when the occasion is suitable. This is ultimately what the “singled out” argument amounts to in its iron man version – why Israel and not anywhere else? And the obvious answer is that the left can only marshall opposition when it comes to Israel. A self-critical and valuable left-wing recognizes this and calls out their own allies even when it’s not convenient. (This same dynamic occurs on the other side when one is calling out ISIS or Assad or Gaddafi or whomever where a ready surplus of Islamophobes are ready to jump onboard.)

Re Corbyn, he has moved fairly quickly to respond to these problems in his party and it is impossible to find Naz Shaw’s apology as anything but stellar. That said, he is not completely blameless – referring to Hamas as friends has been dismissed by Corbynites as slander but anyone else on the political spectrum recognizes that it was tasteless + indicative of at least ignorance if nothing else. Just ask yourself if he would say the same thing about Likud (or even invite them to the UK) and you’ll understand why it wasn’t just “diplomatic peace making” (or whatever other euphemism you prefer). (Though maybe it was anti-Western and not strictly anti-Semitic – the two cannot be entirely untangled, cf Judith Butler’s comment about Hamas + Hezbollah being members of the international Left. Antisemitism is the anti-colonialism of fools seems accurate here.)

“The vast majority of Muslims in the Middle East are Semitic. It doesn’t make too much sense to call them anti-Semitic.”

I can’t believe it’s 2016 and people are still making this argument. I really have to know – is it that you actually have not had it explained to you yet why this is a fallacy or do you feel like it has enough political value that it’s worth dragging it out again and again despite making you look like a fool?

That’s where this post ought to end. But it can’t end quite yet, because I need to explain why things have blown up right now …

Great post, but from a London perspective, I don’t think it delivers on this explanation. It’s blown up now because there is an election for Mayor of London next week. If Labour loses unexpectedly, the Labour hard right will attempt to launch a leadership coup. If Labour wins, Corbyn’s position will be perceived to have been shored up. That is why this has blown up now. It’s real recklessness by the Labour nasties.

But this is by no means even in the top ten worst party machinations that Labour has seen in my lifetime

I’d like to see that top ten. I’ve seen Labour since the late 80s and it feels to me like this should be in the top ten. It’s just so cynical and has such disregard for people. (I don’t count lying to invade Iraq as a ‘machination’ – that was a war crime.)

Israel gets singled out because it’s a country founded by Europeans, and filled with Europeans and decendants if Europeans. It’s true that if it was an intra Africa conflict that created Israel it wouldn’t be nearly as big a deal in the west.

(My block quote didn’t work so I’ll post it here:

“The National Antisemitic Crime Audit from the non-governmental group Campaign Against Antisemitism said that nearly 1,000 incidents were reported in 2015, representing a 25.7% increase in anti-Jewish crimes on 2014, and making it the worse year on record.

Data collected from all of the country’s police forces showed that during 2014, UK police forces recorded 746 anti-Semitic crimes; that figure rose to 938 in 2015.

Violent crime jumped to 196 incidents, a 50.8% rise, in 2015 and accounted for 20.3% all crime against Jews, compared to just 126 incidents representing 16.9% of violent crimes the year before.

However, “despite the growth in antisemitic crime, police forces charged 7.2% fewer cases in 2015 than in 2014, meaning that only 13.6% of cases resulted in charges being brought,” the CAA said. In total 138 charges were brought in 2014, but just 128 in 2015.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/hate-crimes-against-jews-sharply-increasing-in-britain-audit-finds/

But only one of those critiques has become magnified into a worldwide boycott + sanctions movement. Why?

Because South Africa, that’s why. That should be a sufficiently obvious answer — even if you disagree with the comparison — to make your circuitous alternative seem perverse.

Because South Africa is not an answer but I do accept that the left has structured much of its opposition according to its success in ending Apartheid there. Saying that South Africa is the reason for traction in Israel (as opposed to South Africa being the reason for comparisons between Israel and South Africa) is putting the cart before the horse.

Re using the Haavarah agreement as apologetics for Livingstone’s argument (as he himself does), Timothy Synder is unimpressed: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36165298 And if you read what Hitler had to say in Mein Kampf about Zionism you wouldn’t be impressed either:

“While the Zionists try to make the rest of the World believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organisation for their international world swindler, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.”

I think the confusing part to ppl like to me is that Jews went in 1938 from being a non-European cancer in the middle of Europe (even among many “Entente” nations) to being European in 1943 and the only thing that changed is that they left Europe. It’s like the Tuvia Tenenbom comment that graffiti that once read “Jews out of Europe” now reads “Jews out of Palestine.” It’s just a bit too convenient when the Jews meet the criteria of preexisting political villains.

In which case the “they’re European colonizers” argument is a bit of a red herring, no? It’s something that seems like it has been applied post-facto (and is awfully convenient if you’re using Algeria or South Africa as successful models of resistance). Non-Europeans colonize too obviously.

What racists 80 years ago said as rhetoric isn’t terribly important to why Israel is a salient issue in the west. The Jews living in Europe were European, the fact that racists said otherwise is neither here nor there, here in the United States plenty of racists want to claim African-Americans aren’t real Americans, there wrong too.

He said that it was over-the-top to “think of anti-Semitism and racism as exactly the same thing.”

No, he didn’t. Here’s the full quote, courtesy of Jamie Stern-Weiner

“Well, I mean, basically, you think of antisemitism and racism as exactly the same thing. And criticising the Government of South Africa, which is pretty unpleasant and corrupt, doesn’t make me a racist; and it doesn’t make me antisemitic when I criticise the brutal mistreatment by the Israeli government.”

What seems to have confused a few people is that he wasn’t answering the question (“what do you mean by ‘over the top’?”) but expanding on his previous point (“it was over the top but it wasn’t anti-semitic”). But then, this devious argumentative tactic is more or less unknown among British politicians, who are renowned for giving straight answers to every question an interviewer poses. (Smiley of some description goes here.)

I’ve listened to the audio of that first sentence, incidentally; it’s a bad line, and that ‘you’ could conceivably be ‘to’. But if it was it would make nonsense of the following sentence, which precisely equates antisemitism with (another form of) racism. So I think we can put this one to bed, alongside “she said what Hitler did was legal!” and “oh noes she said ‘transportation‘!”.

I don’t really see the relevance of the supposed PR campaigns about antisemitism in the UK that the OP refers to has to do with this particular incident. Guido Fawkes dug up a Facebook posting and some other dodgy stuff by Naz Shah, the newspapers picked it up, she apologised (fully and reasonably in my opinion), then the matter could have been dropped, except for Livinstone’s arrogance, ignorance and obsessions. I’ve read a whole lot about the anti-Corbynistas are weaponising this, it’s a Blairite plot etc. But if it’s been weaponised, Livingstone supplied the parts.

It’s absolutely no surprise that anyone involved in the pro Pal movement should go off like that. Many an activist in my acquaintance is desperate to tell you about the Rothschilds being behind World War I and punt around memes which originate from the Ku Klux Klan. So if Livingstone starts on a strain, the next step of which is to go on about most deaths being by typhus, there’s nothing startling there. Nick Griffin has been defending him on Twitter.

Nor is it a surprise that Corbynistas, when hearing crap about the Haavarah agreement don’t go Yeucchh but immediately start nodding that this should be looked into further and posting links to wikipedia articles on the Haavarah agreement on Simon Schama’s timeline.

Livingstone launching into this rubbish was equivalent to a mosgynist telling a rape victim who didn’t struggle for fear of a beating or murder that she must have been complicit.

I’ve read most of the OP, not all of it, and not all of the thread.

I just want to point out that Corey Robin’s quotation from Friedlander, above, includes a part that Corey does not put in bold (I’m bolding it here):

About Zionism itself, moreover, Nazi ideology and Nazi policies were divided from the outset: while favoring, like all other European extreme anti-Semites, Zionism as a means of enticing the Jews to leave Europe, they also considered the Zionist organization established in Basel in 1987 [sic; should be 1897] as a key element of the Jewish world conspiracy….

Of course. “Favoring” Zionism because it was a means to “entice the Jews to leave Europe” did not make one a Zionist of any sort. It simply meant you favored anything that would get the Jews to leave Europe and were, at one point in time, willing to help facilitate the exit of some of them.

I like the “picking football teams” analogy (even though dsquared and I probably have entirely different games in mind).

One factor that adds confusion is that the opponents don’t seem quite clear “who exactly compose my team?”

Possible line-ups:
First teams: Jews/Israelis/the Israeli government/Likud and the smaller nationalist parties
Second teams: Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims

It’s sort of like trying to argue northern Ireland, but not being in agreement whether England had anything to do with the argument. Jews vs Palestinians gives very different estimates of relative power than Israelis vs Arabs.

“Corey is doing nothing more nor less than explaining the background to Livingstone’s statements.”

Maybe we understand Livingstone’s statements differently but my impression was he was trying to make an argument that you can be anti-Zionism without being antisemitic, and can be pro-Zionist and be antisemitic. What’s weird is that he picked an example (the Haavara agreement) which doesn’t fit either of these rubrics. In Haavara, Hitler is an example of an antisemitic anti-Zionist who happens to do something that benefits the Zionist cause. So people I think are rightly wondering what the hell he was trying to say since it makes no sense as a piece of evidence, only as a dog whistle.

LFC @99 – it’s a bit more complicated than that, but it’s certainly true that the Nazis weren’t Zionists of any sort (nor has anyone claimed they were)*.

The complicated part is that I think it’s pretty clear that at least some of the Nazis, at least some of the time, wanted to send Jews to Palestine specifically. There’s that order from Hitler that Friedlander mentions, and Eichmann’s attitude to Zionism doesn’t seem to have been entirely cynical; he seems to have got quite misty-eyed about it when he was reminiscing in Jerusalem. This, of course, isn’t any kind of apologia for Hitler, and all it says about Eichmann is that he was a sentimental fraud as well as a mass murderer. But it does mean that we can’t really say that the Nazis consistently and exclusively wanted to destroy the Jewish people, or that that’s all they ever tried to do. Would that it were so simple.

*Incidentally, I’m getting quite tired of defending an irresponsible bomb-throwing dick against the charge of being an irresponsible bomb-throwing anti-semitic dick. Cheers, Ken!

Bloix,

“and he is tendentiously bolding and using ellipses in a block quote to lead the reader to the conclusion that The Zionists Were Nazis.”

Absolutely wrong. He is showing how Zionist dreams of a Jewish state, if realized, would sync up with Nazi and other anti-Semitic groups who wished to see Jews gone from Europe. He in no way is trying to equate Zionists and Nazis, beyond the accidental Venn-diagram part of both wanting a Jewish exit from Europe.

Obviously, while they wanted the same thing, in that case, and only in that case, they wanted it for profoundly different reasons.

You are projecting your own weirdly emotional meanings on to people, Bloix. Corey Robin is Jewish as well as passionate about the Palestinian situation, and accusing him of being some kind of raving anti-semite because this topic pushes your buttons is disgraceful.

Hitler might have decided to exile the Jews of Europe instead of killing them. Implicit in Ken Livingstone’s statement is that that would have been a shame.

Jesus. Ken Livingston’s a Nazi, Hannah Arendt’s a Nazi, Corey Robin’s a Nazi, the British and probably the Americans were Nazis — clearly everyone’s just a bunch of Nazis who can hardly wait to start shovelling Jews into the ovens again.

the literally Nazi-loving Arendt

Good god.

——

Anyway, as LFC suggested, I think the really highly unfortunate part of Livingstone’s comment is the “before he went mad”. Puts a rather distorted spin on things. And I say this as someone who, if he were picking football teams, would pick the other one. Luckily, it’s not what I’m doing.

(Whoops….I should have refreshed my browser before posting that, as it’s essentially already been said.)

Phil @107
I wasn’t trying to suggest that the history is not complicated. Obviously it is. I am not an expert on this subject, but I’ve read enough about it to know that an attempt at a sound bite, which is apparently what Livingstone initially did before issuing further statements in an effort to clarify, was very likely going to go wrong (as you say).

Livingstone is not anti-semitic, and if he were it is ridiculous to think that he is not smart or self-controlled enough to hide it (since if he were it would only harm him, and anyway he’s not). His comment is wry, and ironic — and he does have a history of saying wry, and ironic things. For reasons that Daniel gives it is ENTIRELY understandable why Jewish Britons (and Jews elsewhere) might not recognise the wryness and irony, and why, even if they do, they might entirely reasonably be offended and pissed off about it. And he shouldn’t have said it, and he should apologize. But his non-Jewish critics in the UK all understand exactly what he meant, and what he said, and their agenda has nothing to do with anti-anti-semitism or even anti-anti-Zionism, and everything to do with Corbyn, as Daniel explains.

Plume,

I’m surprised by your comment above that “if the modern state of Israel had never been (violently) imposed on the region, there is no conflict in the first place.” Let’s mention some pogroms that predate Western colonialism in the region:

1517 Safed
1660 Destruction of Safed
1834 Hebron Massacre
1834 Safed (again!)
1838 Safed (yet again!)

Jews were a majority of Jerusalem under the Ottomans in the late 19th century, and had in fact been trying to get back to Israel (despite being regularly forced out) for centuries.

I don’t understand how you think there was no animus or conflict before the state of Israel. If we take 1948 as the starting date, then you have to include the 1929 Hebron massacre as well.

I’m surprised that you think the creation of Israel is uniquely iniquitous. The creation of Pakistan, and then the creation of Bangladesh later (as a direct consequence of the creation of Pakistan), killed far more people (up to 1 million), and as a bonus, you get to blame the Brits for that one too. And to top it off, it’s one of the most dangerous places due to the real threat of nuclear annihilation.

So why are people clamoring for the one state solution in Israel/Palestine and not the one state solution in India/Pakistan/Bangladesh?

Why do people think Ken Livingstone is acting in good faith? Couldn’t he just be trying to sandbag Sadiq Khan in the mayoral election so that he gets a chance the next time it comes around? One doesn’t need to decide on Livingstone’s moral character on Judaism one way or another.

Seems a far simpler and easier way to go for me. Ken Livingstone’s always about looking out for number one and has never shown party loyalty before.

Ah, now I get it. It’s neo-Nazi white supremacists posing as Zionists, posting tactical anti-antisemitic comments so offensive as to give anti-semitism a good name. That clears it up once and for all!

He’ll be 75 at the next mayoral election. The next year or two (or three, depending on when Corbyn gets overthrown) are his only chance for real influence. And Khan losing increases the likelihood of Corbyn being overthrown sooner.

For what its worth, IF Zionists did work with the Nazis to facilitate Jewish emigration to Israel (and I am just going with Corey’s quote from Friedlander — I don’t know the history, so had no idea about this till now) it is very hard to think they did anything wrong. In the circumstances, what could be wrong with trying to get Jews out of Germany alive? It didn’t take a fortune teller to guess that things were likely to go pretty badly.

Yes, but if Sadiq Khan wins, he loses any influence at all. Why talk to the old gasbag has-been if you have a young telegenic mayor of London to chat with?

Ken Livingstone isn’t a fool. He has to have known what gasoline he was pouring on which fire. Sadiq Khan has been fairly clear that this is killing him.

Bloix: You’ve claimed here that I said that the Zionists are Nazis and that the Nazis were Zionists. That is an outrageous lie. You’re officially banned from commenting on any of my threads. I’m also going to give you one chance here to retract your statement and apologize to me. If you don’t, I’m going to move to have the CT collective ban you entirely from the blog. You’ve completely crossed a line with this one.

From our comments policy: “If your comments are blatantly racist, sexist or homophobic we will delete them and ban you from the site. The same goes for comments which are personally defamatory or insulting or which seek to derail a thread through provocation of one kind or another.”

“the phrase “singling out for criticism” seems to act as the bridge between the two; if you can find anyone who has ever been convinced by this rhetorical device, I’ll buy them a drink”

Oxford debate did. You owe me a drink.
https://youtu.be/5jqXEzplxeo

dark avenger @13
I assume you are not American ?
And therefore don’t understand how socially there is a lot of antisemitism, widesrpread across the country (I’ve never been able to find a source for the quote from President JFK’s mother, “when will the good people of boston let us (irish) into the clubs ?)
and at the serious Foreign Policy level there is support for Israel and at the extreme protestant edge there is support (apparently, the fruitcakes think the state of Israel is necessary precondition for the rapture or some such BS)

“for arguing with you too loudly”

It wasn’t “loudness,” Bloix. It was LIES.

an out-of-left field bizarre utterance by Ken Livingstone,

Is there any other kind?

Why it is specifically bullshit to try and tie this one on to Jeremy Corbyn

It’s reasonable to assume that Corbyn has nothing against Jews. Indeed a man of his age and background is probably very friendly with many left-wing Jews.

On the other hand, he employed and continues to employ Seumas Milne as his spin doctor-in-chief, who has publicly praised Hamas, an organisation that dislikes Jews.

From its charter:

“The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslim, O servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”

It’s not quite true that Corbyn is his own worst enemy, but it is almost true.

Hamas is unspeakably awful. Unfortunately it’s also the closest thing to a legitimately elected government anywhere west of the Jordan.

An interview with Leon Rosselson about the song Bloix @136 calls a “grotesque bit of doggerel”:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/writingfromtheedge/2016/02/comparing-nazis-to-jews-leon-rosselson-explains-the-ballad-of-rivka-mohammed/

Cohen: Your song about Rivka & Mohammed draws an equivalence between Gaza today and the Vilna ghetto in 1942. Is it the individual suffering or the political circumstances that you’re comparing, or both?

Rosselson: I am not the only one to see parallels between Jews in the ghettos of Warsaw and Vilna and Palestinians in the ghetto of Gaza. There’s a youtube video of photos of the destruction in the Warsaw Ghetto alongside photos of the destruction in Gaza with Paul Robeson singing the Vilna Ghetto song & a quote from a Nazi chief-of-staff to the effect that ‘Jewish terrorists’ are to blame for the death & destruction in the Warsaw ghetto alongside a quote from an Israeli functionary that ‘Hamas terrorists’ are to blame for the destruction in Gaza.

The racism of the Nazis, dehumanising Jews (and so making them disposable), is matched by the racism of prominent Israelis and government spokesman dehumanising Palestinians, calling them ‘little snakes’, ‘two-legged beasts’, ‘drugged cockroaches’ and suggesting – as in an article in The Times of Israel – that there are times when genocide is permissible.

That’s the background. But the song is a story about two children who share a common humanity and a common fate. The key line, for me, is ‘Then each took the hand of the other’. Given the contempt in which Zionism and Israelis hold the Jews of Eastern Europe for going passively into the gas chambers (as the myth has it), it’s not a stretch to show that this Jewish child sees – not an Israeli child – but this Palestinian child as her friend, her brother.

So the song is both personal and political.

Cohen: You must have known the song would be provocative and controversial, even outrageous, for some listeners. Was that your intention from the start or just where the creative process took you?

Rosselson: I don’t write songs to be controversial or provocative. Any song that implies criticism of Israel is going to be seen by Israeli supporters as provocative so that really doesn’t enter my consciousness.

I wanted to express my anger and dismay at what Israel was doing in this attack on Gaza, what those who called themselves Jewish were doing to another people. I don’t think that saying directly what I think, what I feel makes for a very good song so I looked for a story that would carry what I wanted to say. When I’d calmed down a bit, I changed the ending, omitting the curse.

Cohen: Does the ‘monster’ only represent Israel?

Rosselson: It seemed to me that it was an appropriate word for a state that uses its immense military power to crush a defenceless people. Doubtless there are other monsters in the world.

Cohen: What reactions have you had to the song as a recording and in performance?

Rosselson: I haven’t so far had any hostile response, probably because Jewish supporters of Israel don’t usually come to my concerts. Sometimes they do, particularly in America. Mostly audiences are moved by the song. My daughter can’t listen to it without crying and it took me time to be able to sing it without openly showing emotion. It is, after all, desperately sad.

Cohen: What for you would be a good outcome for Israel/Palestine?

Rosselson: I think now there is no 2-state solution however desirable some, like Uri Avnery and, of course, mainstream politicians think it would be. It’s not going to happen. It wouldn’t anyway solve the problem (the ‘demographic’ problem, as Israelis see it) of what rights Palestinians – 1 in 5 of the population – would have in a Jewish state.

I’m against a Jewish state as I’m against an Islamic state or any state that excludes, by definition, a minority of its population. So one state with equal rights for all its citizens would be the best solution. So no Palestinian state either. Until that happens,far off into the future, the conflict will continue.

#134 – Henry, well, I’m sorry about that. I don’t see that anything I said is beyond the scope of vigorous argument. I said that Robin was arguing in bad faith, and I explained why. I said that his comment was made in tacit support of a statement by Ken Livingstone that can only have been intended as an anti-Semitic dog whistle, and I believe that to be true.

I believe that anti-Zionism is a legitimate intellectual and political position that understandably attracts anti-Semites who can hide their beliefs behind the fig-leaf replacement of Jew with Zionist, and I think that that is a self-evident proposition. And I believe that many anti-Zionists find themselves in league with more or less “respectable” anti-Semites and wind up making excuses for them, and that Robin is just such an anti-Zionist.

I think he’s done that here. I think that Livingstone is a perfectly ordinary casual anti-Semite who knows that you can call Zionists “Nazis” and get away with it, and that Robin jumped in to cover for him.

On top of all this is Robin’s way of being incisively, definitively, aggressively wrong about everything he lays his hands on. Not just about Jews. Jefferson the Fascist. Clarence Thomas the Black Panther.

But I do take you seriously, Harry, so let’s look at the accusation. I am accused of saying that Robin “said that the Zionists are Nazis and that the Nazis were Zionists.”

Note that I am not accused of calling Robin an anti-Semite, which I certainly don’t believe. And I can’t see why he thinks that saying he called Zionists “Nazis” is beyond the pale. Hell, Steven Salaita called an IDF spokesman “Goebbels” and said that Israeli independence is based on Hitlerian “eugenics” (i.e. Zionists are genocidal murderers) and Robin led his defense. So I don’t genuinely believe in his indignation. He could have said I was mistaken, but the idea that I have defamed him is ridiculous.

What I do believe is that (1) Livingstone was dog-whistling, (2) what he was saying was a grossly distorted version of historical fact, and (3) Robin did not just quote a text, he excerpted and intensified sections of it to make Livingstone’s statement appear reasonable.

So when I said that Robin himself said that Zionists are Nazis, I was exaggerating for emphasis. What he was doing was knowingly supporting a person who intentionally implied that Zionists are Nazis. It was clever and it was disgusting and he deserved to be called out for it.

I’m not going to apologize, and I will miss Crooked Timber. Bye, all.

One think that might help these types of discussions, when you quote someone at length you might hint what you think the purpose of the quote is, and whether or not you agree with it.

Franck @117,

“I’m surprised that you think the creation of Israel is uniquely iniquitous.”

This kind of grotesque misreading is what happens when people bring all kinds of baggage into a new conversation and forget it’s new.

I never said it was uniquely iniquitous. I never implied it was uniquely iniquitous. I don’t believe it was, either. But it’s never a very effective form of defense/debate to claim that “other people do it too.” As if this might work at court when you go before a judge and say, “Your honor, I’m not the only person who breaks the speed limit!!” You would be better off acknowledging the old “two wrongs don’t make a right,” as simplistic as it may be.

It was a world-historical mistake, and intensely wrong, immoral and illegitimate to violently force the Jewish state into existence, and it has obviously made Jews far less safe than they would have been if they had immigrated to, say, the United States instead. Not only was it categorically wrong to impose that state on the unwilling; it was an abject failure if its aim was to offer a safe refuge for Jews fleeing from oppression elsewhere.

The violent conflict over the proposed Jewish state in Palestine goes back more than a century now, and it shows no sign of abating. All of this was preventable. No Jewish state there, no endless conflict between peoples fighting over that land. Period. End of story.

I just read the earlier post (from December 2013) that you linked to earlier, about ‘The biggest game in town’.

An excellent point. I never thought of that before. And it’s being exemplified, right here right now — isn’t it just?

It’s blown up now because there is an election for Mayor of London next week. If Labour loses unexpectedly, the Labour hard right will attempt to launch a leadership coup. If Labour wins, Corbyn’s position will be perceived to have been shored up. That is why this has blown up now. It’s real recklessness by the Labour nasties.

Correct.

Let’s also not forget that the current mayor, Boris Johnson, made blatantly racist remarks about Obama when he came to visit – but apparently nobody really cared:

Boris Johnson suggests ‘part-Kenyan’ Obama may have ‘ancestral dislike’ of UK

Not that anyone else cares, but after reflection I conclude that perhaps I’m coming at this the wrong way. Perhaps Robin is genuinely offended that anyone could think that he believes that Zionism is like Nazism. But I do think that before I apologize, it should be clear that an apology is owed.

So if Prof. Robin will say:
“It is defamatory to say that I believe that Zionism is akin to Nazism. No decent person could hold that view.”

Then I will say,
“I am astonished and delighted, Prof. Robin. You have my full and unreserved apology.”

Bloix @ 72

“Good idea – Europeans should force antagonistic ethnic and religious nationalities in the Middle East into single states. That works so well – look at Syria! Look at Iraq!

Seriously, premise of this idea is that the murderous, racist, neo-Nazi Zionists are also 100% enlightened, EU-style secular democrats. It’s a mash-up of two wildly inconsistent stereotypes about Jews.”

Where did I say that I thought that Israelis are ‘murderous, racist, neo-Nazi Zionists’? They seem to be able to allow Palestinians within Israel ‘proper’ to enjoy more or less equal rights, why shouldn’t they be able to extend this to the West Bank or Gaza? There is no contradiction between states that are liberal democratic at home and yet deny human rights to populations outside their official borders. Western countries have employed these double standards for years. What I’m suggesting is that Israel is capable of treating the Palestinian population more fairly, but it is going to need some pressure, from other countries but mainly from the Palestinians, to do this.

@ derrida derider

“Jeez, Corey, don’t ban Bloix. It is always enlightening to see what a paranoid idiot who on his own admission starts from the assumption that the poster and commenters are all crypto-Nazis, can come up with. Much better to have a simple DNFTT approach.”

Quite right. The topic of this very thread has its roots in the fact that people have demanded that other people be suspended/banned/silenced/forced to apologise for making ‘controversial’ statements. If you don’t like what someone says it’s much better to criticise rather than demand that they be shut up.

so yet again the foes of Labour up to their usual dirty tricks of quoting back words politicians have actually said or posted, and pointing out who politicians actually associate with.

Why not just be careful what you say in public and who you share platforms with? Why not have answers that deal with what you said/did and use the opportunity to put pressure on the opposition?

If something keeps happening to you (i.e. nasty press running a campaign against you), is it because subconsciously you want it to keep happening to you?

“Given this, your average British leftist is an empty vessel into which information can be poured on this subject.”

I stopped taking this article seriously here.

If every time a Turkish president did something that people in the west found objectionable they called into question the existence of the Turkish state…

Great analogy, Sparky.

When ever anyone asks you if you believe in Israel’s right to exist, the appropriate response is to look at them silently but with clear expectation. When they ask you if you intend to answer them, point out you’re waiting from them to finish asking the question, and help them out with the next word (of the four remaining), which is “as”.

Alternatively you can ask in response: Do you believe in Israel’s right to exist – as an Israeli state?

Plume,

You make a number of assertions. Since we know that violence against Jews in Palestine goes back far longer than a century, what makes you think that the conflict wouldn’t be a factor today even wihout the founding of Israel. Without the founding of Israel there would still be Jews there.

Immigrating to the US wasn’t an option of course, due to the attitudes of the US government in the 30s and 40s. though it is interesting that lifespan estimates in Israel are actually significantly longer in Israel than in the US.

I also don’t understand why other countries with forced partitions at the same time aren’t relevant. Why isn’t Indian Partition relevant. Turkey as mentioned above is also interesting, what with the genocide of the Armenians, expulsion of the Greeks, and continued persecution of non-Turks.

Can people point out successful use of the right of return without the refugees or their supporters winning a protracted war?

The EU accepted the Benes decrees after all, despite them being a textbook rejection of the right of return.l

levi9909 @154
There must have been many Jews who felt they could not avail of the Ha’avara agreement and they could have been (that is, they were) trapped in Germany because of that. Many must have lost their lives because of the Palestine focus of the agreement.

I don’t quite understand this statement. As was pointed out upthread, some (or at least two) of the main potential ‘receiving’ countries were tightening controls/quotas on Jewish immigration in the late 30s.

I also don’t see how the Haavara agreement, based on the description here, was esp. morally dubious — see harry b’s (sensible, I think) comment @125.

Sancho,

Prove it. You’re telling me that there are no leftist Zionists in Australia that support enforcement of Aboriginal treaty rights. I don’t believe you.

Collin Street @167
In terms of the way ‘sovereignty’ norms work, Israel does not have “dubious sovereignty.” No country that is recognized as a sovereign state by most or all other countries in the world has dubious sovereignty. Thus in the past West Germany did not have dubious sovereignty, nor did South Africa.

Taiwan, on the other hand, is recognized as sovereign by only a minority of countries. Different situation.

All this has basically nothing to do w the morality or legality of a particular country’s (or govt’s) policies, which is a separate question.

p.s. Although sometimes a distinction is drawn betw. empirical and juridical sovereignty, in terms of your comment and this one we’re talking about juridical sovereignty, i.e., it is a legal status determined mainly by the norms of mutual recognition.

Because Turkish persecution of Armenians is ongoing? Ever hear of Hrant Dink?

There are many comparable things in the modern era.

Pakistan’s treatment of Ahmadis, Christians, and Hindus. Regular pogroms, forced conversions, and clear second class treatment under the law.

Rohingya in Myanmar.

Chinese treatment of Tibetans and Uighers.

Syrian and Turkish treatment of Kurds, including wholesale denial of citizenship.

After WWII, we can look at the mass expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe. And the expulsion of Poles westward from the Soviet Union (Belarus and Lithuania).

Mass expulsion of Jews from Arab countries in the 50s and 60s.

Mass expulsion of South Asians from Uganda.

The wars in Yugoslavia, and particularly pro-Serb commentators in the West who excused ethnic cleansing.

Apologists for the Khmer Rouge both in the West and China.

Enough for you, or should I keep going?

As for Australia, Doesn’t Ameinu exist in Australia?

Sancho @171

‘Regarding the right of return, in Australia at least, the people who insist that Jews have an inalienable right to reclaim their ancestral lands because they lived on them a thousand years ago are the same people who insist that Australian aboriginals have no such right to lands they lived on two hundred years ago.’

I’m not clear on which people you’re referring to. Can you name them?

Yes there was a “plan” to send the Jews to Madagascar. It aped or mirrored 18th and 19th century German anti-Semites plans to send the Jews to some island somewhere.

The problem I have is that you basically can’t discuss zionism. You can only discuss Israel, and there’s not a lot to be said about israel, virtually none of it positive.

I’d like to be able to discuss potential jewish states and what forms they might take and how they could be engineered to avoid current-israel’s problems, but there’s no counterparty: all you’ve got is the israeli apologists, who seem unshakably convinced that it’s innate in the nature of judaism that the only sort of state jewish people could build is one that resembles Israel, and then call you an anti-semite for saying you thought jewish people could do better than that.

I mean, I know that there are people out there who are just itching for a chance to build a jewish state so fucking nice it’s a terror, but they’ve largely withdrawn from the debate and honestly I don’t blame them.

[maybe it’s the politician’s syllogism: “I support a jewish state / israel is a jewish state / therefore I must support israel”. With something similar for the anti-zionists who do the same thing, that I’m too tired to write formally]

Couple more come to mind.

Fijian treatment of Indian Fijians.

Soviet treatment of Crimean Tatars and Caucasians, with increased repression and forced deportation now that Russia is in control of Crimea again. You can bet that Crimean Tatars won’t be able to return from Uzbekistan to Crimea now.

Collin Street,

Why isn’t this just counter-factual history? Sure, it would have been great if the US and other countries had accepted Jewish refugees in the 30s and the Arab states hadn’t expelled all their Jews after decolonization, but that’s not the world we live in.

Maybe the best thing to do is just deal with the world we have and make it better. There are a ton of simple things that could be done now that would improve the lives of many, many people even without “solving the conflict”.

JHW: Most people on this thread seem to agree that Zionism and Nazism had completely different ideological commitments and any collaboration between particular Zionists and the Nazi government was a purely tactical, instrumental arrangement done for wildly different purposes on each side. If that’s true (and it is), then I don’t see how it even partially excuses what Ken Livingstone said, at all.

I think it explains what Livingstone said; his point was precisely that you can’t infer the absence of anti-semitism from support for Zionism, or anti-semitism from opposition to Zionism. (Which is also true. Surprised nobody’s mentioned the Bundists yet.)

I’ve got no desire to excuse what he said, though. I don’t think it’s remotely arguable that the man’s an anti-semite (see this article from 2012), or that he said what he did in a weirdly misguided attempt to engage in anti-semitic dogwhistle politics. Nevertheless, nobody made him say what he did on Thursday, and it was entirely predictable that what he said would be offensive to Jews. He’s become a liability, and a good long period of silence on his part would be welcome.

Plume,

No, I’m trying to understand why we should care whether Israel was a “mistake” if most other countries in the world are “mistakes” as well. Who cares? Why bring it up? It’s exactly the same as your weird “Anti-Semitism” comment, which everyone on this thread has seen a hundred times before.

I maintain that Israel isn’t any more of a mistake than many other messy post-colonial partitions, the most notable one being India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, which has caused and likely will continue to cause many more deaths and larger scale suffering. I blame the British (and others) for being total incompetents at leaving their colonies, as we see over and over again.

What’s your point, beyond not liking Israel?

All nation-states are a ‘mistake’ from a certain point of view. It is indeed one of the problems with ideas of national-self-determination that two nations should argue over the same area of land, and it is more unfortunate for the people of one of those nations when they have so little power compared to the other. But that doesn’t make Israel unique as there are a myriad other examples.

> Yes there was a “plan” to send the Jews to Madagascar.

One thing I hadn’t really realized prior to the current controversy was that the plan with Madagascar was very much _not_ to help them to set up a settler state ruling the locals. It was more to ship them there, put them in camps, and _then_ kill them.

That way, they would not be murdering citizens, but just following the well-established customary international law for dealing with imperial subjects.

Plume: “I think it explains what Livingstone said; his point was precisely that you can’t infer the absence of anti-semitism from support for Zionism, or anti-semitism from opposition to Zionism. (Which is also true. Surprised nobody’s mentioned the Bundists yet.)”

It doesn’t even “explain[]” it on this level, because working instrumentally with Zionists for your own reasons doesn’t constitute “support for Zionism.” The Nazi regime worked instrumentally with lots of people who wanted to save Jewish lives, when it made sense for it to do so in specific circumstances. That doesn’t tell us very much about the Nazi regime’s ideological commitments. Any argument trying to infer anything about the relationship between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism from the premise that “Hitler supported Zionism” is wrong-headed and repulsive from the start.

Bundism is a much better example to make the abstract point. The problem with Bundism is, as admirable as it was (and I say that not sardonically but as someone whose basic politics share a lot with Bundism), its actual plan for the Jews of Eastern Europe was a miserable failure. Almost all of the Bundists were murdered by Hitler and Stalin between them and the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe were destroyed first by Nazi Germany and then (what was left of them) by decades of Soviet persecution. That wouldn’t have happened if Israel had existed in 1933 instead of not until 1948. These are the kinds of historical experiences that have led the vast majority of the organized Jewish community to support Zionism, a level of consensus that certainly did not exist in the 1920s and 1930s. That’s not to say that anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic: it’s not. But that’s a history that has to be taken seriously, not ignored in a political game of gotcha.

As far as Ken Livingstone, I cannot see into his heart, but the fact that he is willing to utter generically positive platitudes about Jews while running for office is neither here nor there on the issue of whether he is an anti-Semite.

@ franck, yes, that’s more or less what I thought you’d say.

franck @192,

Israel is unique in this way: It was not a partition of an already existing nation. It was not a breakaway portion of an already existing nation. It was an external imposition, for the most bizarre reasons imaginable. That a widely scattered ethnic group, gone for nearly 2000 years, dispersed into dozens and dozens of nations, should have the right of return to its supposed former homeland — which most historians contest was their homeland in the first place. As in, there is no real evidence to support Zionist claims to that part of the world, even if we concede the premise that the nearly 2000-year-absence shouldn’t matter.

Most historians believe Israeli tribes lost, or migrated from, or were expelled from, lost again and again, any claim to the area of Palestine more than 2000 years ago. That they were frequently defeated in ancient times, and never were remotely as powerful, at any time in history, as their bible would suggest. As in, their claim to that area of the world has no legitimate backing beyond myth and legend. And because of the mad desire to return to their mythic origins, hundreds of thousands of people have died and will continue to die, including Jews. It was a massive mistake for them as well, and it’s made them far more existentially vulnerable.

(And, yes, I know, Jews have lived in that region for well over two thousand years. But, so have all kinds of other ethnic groups, and they don’t get to have their own nations, etc.)

That said, it’s a done deal. So from this point on, what matters is that the Jewish state end its occupation, its oppression toward the Palestinians, return to pre-war (1967) borders, and do whatever it can to make the “two-state solution” happen. It must end racial apartheid and accept full human rights for all citizens. Palestinians and the larger Arab world must, in return for this, live in peace with Israel, accept them as a neighbor, etc.

As to the abject silliness of “What’s your point, beyond not liking Israel?” I don’t like any of the governments in that region, frankly, franck. I can’t find much of anything to like about any of them, and see them all as “the bad guys.” That, of course, is quite different from saying one doesn’t like the people there. I’m talking about states, not “the people.”

CR @129
I’m curious: in the age of unlimited instant free email addresses, how do you ban someone ?

you can ban an “identity” – eg, Bloix as Bloix, but surely if Bloix cared a whit, he or she could find other identities ?

seems like there should be an xkcd on this, or that old meme from slashdot, your idea for banning spam wont’ work (check all that apply)
followed by a check list of maybe, iirc, 15 items

I think the OP is full of sense.
I’d add in a couple of bits of context:

1) British society has made great strides regarding all forms of racism in my lifetime, but there are still older people who are very resistant to change. And they influence younger people who they have other things in common with. One might think of a Jim Davidson (comedian), or Nigel Farage or a Ken Livingstone who all tend to run to dog-whistle territory (or worse) now and then. (In passing part of the oddity is that outlets like the Mail on Sunday will print stuff from Davidson with a nod and a wink, every now and then.) So there’s anti-semitism and racism lurking in all sorts of communities.

2) This is probably inflammatory whataboutery, but as a brown person (who isn’t Muslim, but kind of looks a bit stereotypically like one) there do seem to be asymmetries. It’s apparently not a big deal for Theresa May’s goon squad to stop me at Stratford station and demand to see my passport, to prove I’m British, because I look like an immigrant. (Brown skin, scraggly beard, not very expensive M&S suit that day). And be pretty physically forceful about it. (Luckily for a very random banking reason I happened to have my passport with me.)

Yet some vile words (some stupid, some apparently intentional) can dominate the national debate for days.

Plume,

I think you are overstating the case quite strongly. Jews had been a majority in Jerusalem since at least 1845. There were consistent efforts to return to Palestine by Jews throughout the Middle Ages, despite common efforts by both Muslims and Christians to expel them. There definitely was a Jewish community there in the early part of the 20th century, before Western colonialism had control of the country.

I absolutely do think it was a partition of two extant peoples, who were both living in the same land, engineered by the British. Do you think the Protestants in Northern Ireland are a foreign imposition on Ireland, for example? How long must a group live in a place and successive generations be born there, before they gain any native rights?

You don’t think biblical Jews lived in Jerusalem, or had a kingdom there, or exercised control over the area at any time? I don’t understand your point here.

I don’t believe the Israel/Palestine issue is really that unique or special, and I don’t see why people insist on seeing it as a sui generis thing.

Metatone,

Unfortunately, the Conservative party is quite clearly happy to put up with discriminatory treatment of ethnic minorities when it suits their purposes or their inner views.

The Labour party is the one who is supposed to be above this, along with the Liberal Democrats (theoretically). The problem is that for some Labour voters, casual anti-Semitism is just fine around the dinner table. For other Labour voters, casual anti-immigrant feeling is also there, though many of them are starting to vote UKIP.

One reason people should be concerned is that it is a delicate dance to appeal to the casual anti-semitism of Muslim Britons in one district and appeal to casual anti-immigrant sentiments in another district and still get enough votes to win control of Parliament. Better to go the high road on both sides.

Sorry for the typo that should be Haredi.

Franck @207,

Jews were a minority in the region when Zionists first starting pushing for the Jewish state. They were a minority in the region from the beginning of “Great Powers” calls for that state, right up through the actual establishment by force and ethnic cleansing.

And I never said Jews didn’t live in Jerusalem, in ancient or modern times. I said they were never as remotely powerful or dominant as their legends and myths would have us believe, and that they had no (legitimate) claim to the region, given how often they were defeated in battle, expelled, relocated, or emigrated from, etc. etc. Given the long history of myriad nomadic peoples there, coming and going, voluntarily or forced to flee, etc.

In short, I can’t think of another incidence in history — though I may be missing it — where an ethnic group was given the keys to a new kingdom, after (majority) absence for nearly two thousand years . . . . or when this was done, at least in part, because of ancient texts recounting myths and legends about that region. This is akin to, say, rounding up Romano-Celts from around the world and handing them the British Empire, because Arthurian legend.

Of course, the Holocaust added urgency to all of this, and I fully understand that. It added something beyond words, inexpressible, a tragedy almost beyond comprehension, to previous Zionist dreams of a homeland. But, again, it made no sense to place this homeland in the Middle East, given the obvious reactions to this, given that other ethnicities had their own long-standing claims. A far better course (IMO) would have been the United States opening up its borders to Jews, embracing them as refugees, doing everything they could to save them. It might (also) have been a good idea to find an area of land, perhaps part United States, part Canada, which had so few inhabitants that they would willingly accept a new nation in their midst. Put it up for a vote. Get the world on board. Part of Montana, North Dakota, say. Part of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, perhaps.

No place would have been safer for Jews. It’s quite possible that, in 1948, no place was more dangerous for them than the Middle East.

Donald Johnson @208,

Definitely agree. It’s not up to us. It’s up to them — the Palestinian people. An important point, obviously. And most of this could have been avoided in the first place if we hadn’t thought it was up to us, the West, the “Great Powers,” etc. etc., going back to the early 20th century and beyond.

JHW

working instrumentally with Zionists for your own reasons doesn’t constitute “support for Zionism.”

It does, if by ‘support for Zionism’ you mean ‘doing things which further the goals of Zionist organisations’, which (if you read the transcript) it’s pretty clear is what Livingstone meant. I believe in not accusing people of worse things than there is actually evidence for, and I think if he’d meant ‘ideological support’ (over and above practical ditto) it’d be possible to identify some sign of it.

As far as Ken Livingstone, I cannot see into his heart, but the fact that he is willing to utter generically positive platitudes about Jews while running for office is neither here nor there on the issue of whether he is an anti-Semite.

This is unnecessarily ungenerous. Here’s Livingstone on his own record as Mayor in that article:

We can view my record through press cuttings or we can judge it through what I did as mayor: developing a housing policy to address the issues of the Charedi community; publication of the Jewish London Guide; the Chanucah menorah lighting on Trafalgar Square; marking Holocaust Memorial Day; delivering Simcha in the Square, since abolished by Boris Johnson; working to make the North London Eruv possible; changing the day of London’s “Rise” anti-racist festival so that Jewish people could play their part; opposing the academic boycott of Israel; regular Jewish community events and meetings.

But he may have been lying about all that, I dunno.

JHW 201

Clearly you’re too in denial to reason with. If youre truly interested in the evidence scroll up to Corey Robin’s comments. Google key words and expressions like “negation of the diaspora”. Compare the Zionist attitude to the holocaust with how Golda Meir dealt with Poland in the throes of an antisemitic campaign in the 1960s. She requested that they stop sending elderly or infirm Jews over. Subscribe to Haaretz. They run stories on these things from time to time. But above all, gather the facts together before you make your mind up. Don’t make your mind up and then fit the facts or fill the gaps to fit your prejudice.

Plume,

You’d be surprised how tenuous most nations are when founded. The Czech people (as a group with an independent language and culture) almost died out in the 19th century and only survived through deliberate language and cultural creation. Slovenian nationalists were even worse off.

Again, I suggest that you continue to put Israel into some special category that is not justified. All nation-states are constructed and most of them have ugly histories, written in blood.

franck @222,

Please deal with the elements of the Jewish state, which you keep avoiding. Again, I can’t think of a single nation in history that was formed for remotely similar reasons, or with such an immense gap in time. Nothing comes close — not in rationale, circumstance or method.

Yes, it is unique. Not unique in the violence used to create nation-states . . . . which is virtually always a grotesquely bloody affair. But unique in the circumstances leading up to it, the external players involved, the myths and legends used to claim the right to a new nation, the massive gap in time. It’s sui generis.

Palestinian negotiators have long given up on The right of return as a meaningful expectation. What they want is primarily a symbolic gesture, a recognition of the dispossession and the return of a tiny group. The rest of the refugees would be dealt with through international (not solely regional) repatriation, or movement into the be *Palestinian* state.

Sorry repatriation isn’t the word. But you get the idea.

No Plume, the right Israelis (who are distinct nationality) have to reside in Israel is the right of conquest. This is exactly how every other country in the world exists. And yet, the legitimacy of this right is constantly question for Israel. We do not endlessly rehearse the history of colonialism in the Sinhalese vs. Tamil question in Sri Lanka. Malaysian discrimination against Chinese is never discussed as justice against interlopers except by the Malay racists. I have never heard settlements in North Cyprus raise more than an eyebrow.

Why is Israel so different? Why must the existence of an Israeli nationality, and its right to reside where it now resides, be questioned in ways that no other country is?

franck makes his perspective clear in 197: Palestinians should live somewhere else, be citizens of some other country. If they insist on more, he says, they can have Gaza, but better if they just become Egyptians. Arguing with him is a waste of time.

Watson @229,

Be honest. Without American backing, Israel wouldn’t have “won” a single war with its Arab neighbors. Without the “Great Powers,” the Jewish state never would have been established in the first place. Without American support, the Jewish state couldn’t be sustained until quite recently. It now has overwhelming military superiority in the region, and likely more than 200 nuclear warheads. But this doesn’t happen without endless American aid which now totals more than 3 billion a year — which certain Congress critters now say still isn’t enough.

In essence, key Western nations ganged up against much weaker, smaller nations and imposed their will on them. Forced them to eat dirt. Forced them to accept a new nation in their midst. I blame the West for this, far more than Jewish dreamers after Zion, and it’s just one more case where we should have minded our own business. That, of course, also means we shouldn’t have forced our own conception of Arab nation-states in the region, either, like Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

None of this is defensible.

Plume, re “right of return”: I think it depends on the Zionist. Some people do appeal to what happened in the first and second centuries (or even earlier). But others are happy to rest the claim on modern, secular justifications: Jews needed a place to exercise self-determination, and for a variety of cultural and historical reasons, Palestine was the best choice. This is a separate question from the specific issue as to whether Jews are a foreign implant into the region, which is false for the reasons franck has given even if you think it matters (I’m skeptical that it does).

There is no doubt that Israel bears a large share of the responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem, and as much as it will rankle, if the conflict is ever to be resolved it is likely it will have to admit this. But the existence of a wrong does not dictate the shape of the remedy, here as in many other cases. Probably the most workable proposal is for Israel to admit some relatively small number of Palestinian refugees (maybe in the tens of thousands) and to compensate the others, who would of course be entitled to live in the Palestinian state.

Plume,

Israel didn’t have significant American backing until the 67 war and after. Early wars were fought with some French support – that’s why the Israeli Air Force used Mirages. In fact, Israel definitely did not have significant military backing from the US in 1948. Have you actually read any histories of the period?

I’ll also mention that the Arab states had significant Soviet support (who were officially anti-Zionist and often anti-Semitic). Jordan had a lot of British support in the creation of the Arab legion, which was the most effective Arab military unit in the War of 48.

I’ll also mention that the power in Palestine before the British was the Ottoman Empire, which specialized in ganging up against much weaker, smaller nations and imposing their will on them, like the tribes of Arabia, Greece, Bulgaria, Egypt, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, the Kurds, etc.

“It’s not up to us. It’s up to them — the Palestinian people.”

Ah, well this is where I depart. People really need to think more about this kind of simplistic national self-determination. I can completely support the civil rights of Palestinians, but I can hardly back them if a majority decide they want to drive Israel into the sea or wipe out the Jews. Self-determination is also very difficult when you consider that over a million Palestinians actually live within the pre-1967 borders of Israel. You are either looking at ‘self-determination’ for some Palestinians or a programme of ethnic cleansing.

Yes, it was a case of a “foreign implant into the region.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine

According to Ottoman statistics studied by Justin McCarthy, the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000, in 1860 it was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of which 94% were Arabs. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews.

Jews last held majority status in Palestine in the 1st century.

Layman,

I haven’t said anything about how to solve the problem of the West Bank. Because it is hard! I don’t have any good ideas beyond the bog-standard ones. What’s your solution?

I was asked to provide a list of immediate things that would improve the situation without solving the whole problem. I gave them. What’s your response?

@ franck, I think it’s pretty fucking obvious that the way you solve the problem of a foreign military occupation, backed by the importation of settlers to displace the existing indigenous population, is to get the foreign military occupiers and the settlements out. Over to you.

Layman,

And how are you going to do that? How many people are you going to kill or deport, and with what army? And why start with Israel? Much of North America, western Turkey, eastern Turkey, parts of Burma, etc. would seem to be reasonable candidates.

Plume,

I’d encourage you to actually read some of the history of the period. Almost everything you’ve said about the founding of Israel and the War of 1948 is wrong in the details.

Layman,

Ok, so what are you going to do in the West Bank precisely? Are you going to create a Palestinian state there, create some kind of land corridor to Gaza, join it to Jordan? What about the descendents of refugees in camps in the West Bank? Are you going to follow the Arab peace plan for recognition of Israel? What’s the status of Jerusalem? What are the borders of the West Bank?

And with what enforcement, and how are you going to force the parties to terms? With what army?

Plume,

I agree that Jews were not a majority in Palestine in 1948. So? Hungarians weren’t a majority in the lands of St Stephen in the late 19th century. The French language wasn’t a majority spoken language in France until the 19th century.

Again, why does it matter, and why do you insist that Israel is unique. How do you explain the founding of Guyana, for example? Or the creation of the Burmese national state?

There aren’t any neutral sources. You just have to read different ones.

The reason I mention it, is that you seem to believe that Israel had significant American military support in the War of 1948, which they did not. That the Palestinians did not have significant outside military support, when they did.

That suggests to me you haven’t read any histories of 1948, or didn’t remember what you read. So it doesn’t really matter what you read, as long as it is factually based.

“You decided that before I said anything.”

This is a false statement. Your responses demonstrate your biases quite clearly. As just one example: you say other countries must grant citizenship to resident Palestinians without considering ‘what army’ can be employed to enforce that suggestion, but reject that Israel should abandon settlements in the West Bank because ‘what army’ could be employed to enforce that suggestion. All your suggestions involve concessions by other parties, none by Israel. Is that not so?

You offered, you said, suggestions short of a comprehensive solution. But when I suggest the obvious step you somehow left out, you reject it because, you say, it isn’t a comprehensive solution. If that’s an objection, then none of your one-sided suggestions are viable, because none of them represent comprehensive solutions.

Layman,

What precise step are you suggesting? Return to the 1967 border and forced removal of all the Jewish settlers? How about you spell it out clearly. You still haven’t done that.

Layman,

Independence for Gaza is very much a concession by Israel, by the way. Israel would lose control of the sea borders with Gaza, lose overflight rights, etc. Israel would no longer be able to control access to Gaza, and military intervention in Gaza by Israel would be an act of war against a neighboring state, which has much higher costs for the Israeli government.

franck:
Return to the 1967 border and forced removal of all the Jewish settlers?

Not exactly. Return to an approximation of the 67 border w/ land swaps so that certain of the most built-up and established settlements wd not be dismantled. In return the new Palestinian state wd get some compensating territory. This solution has been on the table for years. Unfortunately, neither side at present thinks it serves its interests sufficiently to reach an agreement on and implement.

@franck: Really, this is childish of you.

1) of course I mean return to the 1967 borders and evacuate the settlements,

2) Israel concedes nothing in Gazan independence, because everyone knows that Israel will disregard Gazan independence whenever and however they see fit, in violation of any international norms, and we know this because it is what they do right fucking now.

Good grief.

Layman,

You keep talking to me like we’ve talked before, I understand your position clearly, and we are just reiterating what was said before. I have no idea who you are, what your priors are, or what you believe. Stop saying “don’t be obtuse”, or “Of course”. Spell it out clearly.

Conceding Gazan independence would be a big step. I disagree with you strongly on this, and I think the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority would as well.

Let’s stop here. You can have the last word.

Like I said, you can’t discuss zionism; you can only discuss israel, and there’s nothing interesting to say about israel.

I mean

Why isn’t this just counter-factual history? Sure, it would have been great if the US and other countries had accepted Jewish refugees in the 30s and the Arab states hadn’t expelled all their Jews after decolonization, but that’s not the world we live in.

Franck here can only frame alternative zionisms in terms of alternate histories; alternate zionisms going forward, israels that, say, don’t have a JNF or the legally-entrenched racial discrimination that that represents are beyond his conception. He can’t conceive of any different forms of zionism as anything beyond an arcane theoretical exercise and we’re supposed to discuss zionism with him? How? what’s there to say?

Here’s one interesting alternative Zionism. The Israeli government allowing Israeli nationality on ID cards. Almost happened in the 60s with the Canaanite movement. Could still happen today.

@franck
Are you and Layman the same person? Because you are replying to a question for him.

Well, that sometimes happens here — someone may ask someone else a question and a third person may decide to respond, if that person has something s/he thinks is responsive to say. It’s not that unusual on a comment thread.

Sancho @ 177: there has been at least one leftist, Zionist, pro-Mabo Australian because I know her. At the risk of outing her somewhat, she’s one of the Stolen Generations who converted on marriage and when I stopped speaking to her had become a vehement Zionist (and prone to the “criticism of Israel is anti-semitism” fallacy). I expect she supports Mabo, but if not it’s because she’s on the “bah, treaty or GTFO” side of it (I’m a New Zealander, you can guess where I stand on that issue). I found it hard to understand how she reconciled “a land without people…” and “Terra nullius” but she seemed to have done so. I found it impossible to deal with, so I don’t see her any more.

For me, a lot of it comes down to the claims that Israel is a modern pluralistic democracy. Most Israelis apparently *want* to be held to a higher standard than other middle eastern countries, and consider themselves white/European not arab/middle eastern. But then we get “one in three people in Israel are not allowed to vote” (and those people are overwhelmingly Palestinian), and so on.

The labelling and politics are what puts me right off this whole debate. But I’m learning some interesting things by reading the thread. (Sorry for the late reply, not camping the thread 24/7)

@note[1] in OP. Probably irrelevant trivia. An Australian Aboriginal, Charles Perkins, trained with Everton in 1957.

I do enjoy what it turns out is the utterly limited, to one country, right for a religious minority to expel everyone else into stateless refugees and then have no one try to address the ongoing human-rights catastrophe it created without first having some totally consistent theory of the ethics of state formation. I mean don’t you know about what happened in Burma?

there is no group of people for whom taking offence is almost a hobby.

Stuff White People Like: #101 Being Offended

[..] Naturally, white people do not get offended by statements directed at white people. In fact, they don’t even have a problem making offensive statements about other white people (ask a white person about “flyover states”). As a rule, white people strongly prefer to get offended on behalf of other people. …

engels @282

The statement ‘As a rule, white people strongly prefer to get offended on behalf of other people’ is not true.

I don’t know which measures are most likely to produce improvements in the current situation, but one thing I do know is that one measure that is guaranteed not to produce improvements is public debate about the allocation of blame for the situation. That can only inflame the sense of grievance on both sides and thereby make the situation even less tractable.

JHW @ 285:

I’d go with a quote by the SF author John Scalzi: “The failure mode of clever is ‘asshole’.”

While I might quibble about some points earlier on in the piece, the author makes a lot of very good points.

However, and quite appropriately, considering the title of one section, that section is unfettered bullshit of the highest order.

Jeremy Corbyn may well have – hell, I’ll admit that he has – a reputation throughout his career of fighting racism. Odd then that there doesn’t seem to be much record of him criticising anti-semitism throughout that long career Fyrther, there doesn’t seem to be any record of him criticising an individual or organisation for their anti-semitism. Any criticism has been of ‘anti-semitism’ only ever in the abstract. At no point has he criticised anyone as an anti-Semite. How odd. It’s as if he thinks anti-semitism exists in and of itself without there being any anti-Semites. (That’s entirely alone of course from how some choose to define the term.)

I have severe doubts he’d criticise someone as an anti-Semite if they killed someone in front of him while screaming “kill the Jews!”

I ask people to consider the following hypothetical:

A right-wing MP, proud to be on the hard right of the Conservative Party never makes a racist statement himself, but platform shares with known racists, hosts them in parliament, says it’s his “pleasure and honour” to host his “friends” and that it’s a pity the government banned other white pride racists (he thinks that a big mistake). He gives tv interviews to affiliates of white power organisations, and defends white pride people as “honoured citizens” who are “dedicated to peace and justice”.

This man on the hard right of the Tory party makes statements against racism, but only in the abstract, condemning lynchings but never criticising those who carry them out. The closest he comes is saying in interviews that he doesn’t always agree with them.

This right wing Tory MP says a man who wrote that “blacks are racially inferior & want to take over the white race” is an honourable man and he looks forward to having him for tea at the Commons.

What would you say of this right wing Tory? Racist or no?

@290 I agree! I wish if comments were deleted, a blank was left, with the commenter’s handle. Without a thread tree, it’s quite hard to follow conversations here at the best of times, no need to aggravate the situation.

http://www.leninology.co.uk/2016/05/yes-it-is-witch-hunt.html?m=1

I can’t make up my mind on how I feel about the “but the Right is worse!” response. A few scattered thoughts.

If the point is to keep people from voting for the Conservative Party, that’s a worthy cause. And I do understand that that’s an important part of the political context in which this is occurring. It’s also true that anti-Semitism is in some ways more at home in the basic instincts of the Right than in the basic instincts of the Left. To be sure, the Left has a long history of problems with anti-Semitism, which can be tricky for leftists to get. But right-wing ideas about nationhood, religion, and cultural difference can often be pushed fairly straightforwardly into overt anti-Semitism.

But then there’s the whiff of whataboutery to it. I accept that sometimes whataboutery is necessary. But the impression you get from some people is not just, oh, the media is biased against Corbyn so they’re portraying anti-Semitism as exclusively a feature of the Labour left rather than being widespread throughout British society. It’s also: this isn’t a real problem, it’s a fake controversy being ginned up by the media and by people who think Israel can do no wrong. And that idea, I think, is dangerously wrong. The simple fact of the matter is that the anti-Zionist left, in the UK and elsewhere, is full of anti-Semitism. That’s not because “anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism” or any such formalistic equivalence. It is perfectly possible to be anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic. It’s because each attract the other in many of their present forms, and the two can be mutually reinforcing. What to do about that, if you think that opposition to Zionism is morally required by support for the rights of the Palestinians (a reasonable but not inevitable inference), is a genuinely tricky question. But the answer surely isn’t pooh-poohing it.

Finkelstein is a serious scholar and sometimes has thoughtful things to say, and he is less susceptible to the sort of political tribalism the OP discusses than many other people. That said, his particular blinders, especially excessive fondness for rhetorical bomb-throwing and an instinctive opposition to certain kinds of invocations of anti-Semitism, are very much on display in that interview.

Like many images and many jokes, the meaning of this one is filtered through context, and the further it travels beyond its original context, the less its social meaning is controllable. If you and I both know that “Jews out of Palestine” is practically impossible and morally execrable, totally nonviable and off the table, and we both know the other knows this, etc., then me sending you the image is exactly the kind of benign joke Finkelstein describes. It’s not literally about moving Israeli Jews to the US (lol who would take that seriously?), it’s just making fun of the US-Israeli relationship. But take it out of that narrow context and put it into a broader public context where there are lots of people who do really think that the Jews in Israel-Palestine should just go “back” to Europe or the United States, who fantasize about destroying Israel by force of arms, and so on, and the “joke” (which never was that funny or clever to begin with) looks a lot less benign.

I doubt anyone will care (I mean who wants to know what they have to say, right?) but here’s a view on the ‘crisis’ from a Palestinian.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/02/a-palestinian-view-on-the-antisemitism-row

Yes, sometimes people pick sides for arbitrary reasons. But Britain’s pattern of the left siding with Palestine and the right with Israel is the same pattern across all of Europe. A large phenomenon probably has a common cause and not a particular cause. Thus I reject Northern Ireland as an explanation. South Africa is more plausible, but I still don’t find it very likely.

(I didn’t read the whole thread, but I tried to look for others making the same point. Ronan@24 was the closest.)

I think the reason that the Israel-Palestine war (let’s not be coy and call it a conflict) gets so much attention was clearly stated in the OP:
‘The role of the public relations industry in the Israel/Palestine debate is another key part of why there are so many problems in responding to genuine anti-Semitism. I don’t think one needs to postulate anything in particular about the media – just that a PR person for biscuits is capable of placing stories about biscuits in the press and a PR person for Israel is capable of placing stories too. The UK has one of the world’s biggest and best media industries and a lot of very good PR people. And so you regularly get launches of a somewhat odd kind of campaign, which has a four stage life cycle. First, it launches as a campaign about antiSemitism in British life. Second, it decides that the best use of its resources is to monitor the British media for antisemitic tropes. Third, it starts mission-drifting into straightforward defence of Israeli policy. Finally, it falls apart acrimoniously as Israel has just invaded somewhere and the members of the campaign disagree about the extent to which they are prepared to provide unconditional support to the resultant war crimes.’

It may (or may not be) true that countries other than Israel have worse human rights records. But what is unquestionably true is that there is no other country on Earth where such human rights violations as there are gets so violently defended (not even the human rights violations of the United States or the UK). I can attack the human rights record of Saudi Arabia, or North Korea, or China. But no one is going to accuse me of being an anti-Arab racist, or an anti-Korean racist, or an anti-Chinese racist for so doing, even though anti-Arabic and anti-Chinese racism undoubtedbly do play a part in why people ‘single out’ these countries for criticism.

Likewise I may criticise Saudi Arabia and North Korea, in such a way that I question these countries ‘right to exist’ (and most people clearly do question or deny this) but no one is going to accuse me of that, using that phrase.

Similarly, most people dislike, or at least find questionable, Chinese behaviour in Tibet (which is probably the closest analogy to what Israel is doing in the West Bank). Or I might like it, or whatever. But no one proposes that it would be a good idea to have a fund raiser for the Chinese military featuring Grade A Hollywood stars (as happened recently) nor does the United States given billions of dollars of ‘aid’ to (de facto) assist China in its colonisation programme.

Nor does the British media give such decontextualised reporting of the foreign policies of other countries from self-appointed interested parties. For example, in the Guardian today we get this:

‘“Zionism is a movement celebrated by people right across the political spectrum, all over the world….

“But to those people who have nevertheless sought to redefine Zionism, who vilify and delegitimise it, be under no illusions – you are deeply insulting not only the Jewish community but countless others who instinctively reject the politics of distortion and demonisation.”

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/03/labour-antisemitism-inquiry-chief-rabbi-ephraim-mirvis-

Again, the Chinese actually have arguments as to why Tibet is ‘obviously’ part of China (you won’t know them as they never get reported in the Western media). But they would never get reported with no comment or context in the Western media, assuming they were reported at all, which, generally speaking, they aren’t.

To continue with my outrageous whataboutery:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/04/bill-forcing-people-to-prove-nationality-slammed-as-discriminatory

“Government measures making people prove their nationality or face prosecution risk damaging community relations and are discriminatory, critics have warned.

The Conservatives want to give police and immigration officers the power to order people who have been arrested to state their nationality and require those believed to be foreign nationals to produce their nationality documents, such as a passport.

Failure to do so within 72 hours would become a criminal offence under the policing and crime bill currently going through parliament.”

@306,

One man’s “outrageous” is another’s “obvious”. I might quibble with some of Mirvis’ language but his’ first sentence seems incontrovertible. And the one about requiring no endorsement of Israeli politics.

One can no more separate it from Judaism than separate the City of London from Great Britain.

If there isn’t already a Facebook meme showing the City of London relocated in Panama there needs to be.

Jim Buck @312

‘ “We very much believe in the justice of our cause, but not everything we do is just,” Golan said. ‘

So, is he a Zionist? is he an anti-Zionist?