He doesn’t call them antisemitic outright, just accuses them of using every antisemitic trope in their paper. He has an MO of doing this to anybody who criticises the Israeli regime. He’s done the same thing recently to Chas Freeman, Richard Goldstone, a US Senator, and Desmond Tutu, all of them for either not coming out in favour of the Israeli regime or supporting, in the case of Tutu, a disinvestment programme in Israel to protest at their horrible regime :
That’s just one link for Archbishop Tutu, a man who spent decades working agains t apartheid and was Chairman of South Africa’s Holocaust Remembrance Society and who suddenly discovered he was antisemitic because he pointed out some truths about Israel and organised an Israel disinvestment campaign.
That has it backwards. Someone expressing hatred towards someone else because of the use of a phrase has the obligation to show that the hatred is justified.
I don’t think it is too much to ask that someone criticizing the “chosen people” claim actually know what it means. :dubious:
It isn’t like there is some sort of live controversy about this, that there is some sort of reasonable doubt here. Two seconds worth of googling would tell anyone who actually cared what the term actually means to Jews.
Nor do I think that a claim is somehow inherently offensive, merely because of the use of the word “chosen”.
You are attempting to justify the unjustifiable - hatred based on ignorance.
As BG pointed out the ADL has been respected for years and they’ve never been accused of faking their studies.
If you’re going to claim that they forged this study or that they have a record of forging studies then you’re going to need to provide evidence.
Anyway, according to that same study nearly 40% of all British citizens think that British Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the Israeli government.
Do you think it’s anti-Semitic to claim that British Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the British government?
So you’re basically admitting that when you claimed that Dershowitz defines any criticism of Israel as being anti-Semitic you were making a claim that turns out to be false.
The “Chosen people” isn’t a Zionist term - it’s exclusively a Jewish one. Thus, criticizing it has absolutely zero to do with Zionism and 100% to do with Judaism.
Moreover, he must know it - and know that it doesn’t mean what he’s claiming - he can hardly claim ignorance, given that his speciality is the study of religions and philosophy.
He’s deliberately using an anti-Semitic smear that he must know has no foundation in fact and that has nothing to do with the state of Israel.
I dunno why so many are attempting to support him in this. It is about as blatant as can be.
I did not actually make the former claim. The latter is Dershowitz’s own account. So, no.
I do think that some American advocates for Israel feel that anyone who criticizes actions of the Israeli government is an anti-Semite. Here, I believe I just mentioned that Lynne Withey characterized his attitude thus.
For myself, I’ll just say that Dershowitz’s advocacy for the Israeli government–his justifications for certain conduct which has been condemned by every government in the world except those of the United States, Australia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, and Palau–gets a lot more notice than his criticisms of same. I’ve read a number of Dershowitz’s own writings, and I don’t recall these criticisms that you mention. Perhaps you’d like to provide a link to what you see as his most pointed ones.
I’m not fully aware of everything Finkelstein, or Dershowitz, has ever said and done, no. The politics of Israel and Palestine are only one of many interests, and tracking the contributions of these two men in turn are only a small part of that. It’s been all I could do to read a book and several articles and interviews, from each. (Dershowitz has made some interesting remarks about torture at other times.)
If you’re under the impression, despite what I said in previous posts, that I’m some kind of fan of Finkelstein’s, that is not the case. I just came in to say that I found Beyond Chutzpah a persuasive, fact-based case for Dershowitz’s intellectual dishonesty with respect to Israel.
A documented assertion of fact is just that, regardless of whether it comes from someone whose interpretations I agree entirely with, or partly, or not at all. In Finkelstein’s case, it’s partly.
With respect to Counterpunch, all I’m aware of there is that Dershowitz accused Alexander Cockburn and the site of anti-Semitism in response to their openness to criticisms of his analyses, such as a book review by Neve Gordon. (The denial of having tried to stop the UC Press from publishing Finkelstein’s book is contradicted by Withey and others.)
Perhaps it would be most accurate to say that Dershowitz feels that anyone who criticizes Alan Dershowitz is an anti-Semite.
I find Finkelstein’s Hezbollah remark ill-considered at best, but my understanding is that it was in the context of discussing Israel’s last incursion there which killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians including many children. Hezbollah at that moment was acting primarily as a defensive army and aid organization. He later said,
I largely agree with this (at least from “I don’t live in Lebanon”), as I think most people do as a general proposition. I wouldn’t have chosen to frame that point at all the way Finkelstein did, with his other remarks; I probably would flatly disagree with some other things he said.
Not just Jewish. What do you think he was going to say at that conference–deny that his own parents were in death camps? Why do you think the Iranians wouldn’t give him the time he wanted? Why do you think he declined to participate on their terms?
I don’t know for sure, but I think reasonable people can conclude that his purpose in all this was not to advance anti-Semitism. In any case, it’s grossly unfair to criticize a man for what he didn’t say at an event that he didn’t participate in.
Spar, I’m a bit confused by your dodging the fact that Counterpunch is a truther website which had long promulgated the myth that Jews were behind 9/11 to take another swipe at Dershowitz.
I notice you also are conceding that Dershowitz was correct that Finkelstein does associate himself with vicious anti-Semites and Holocaust Deniers.
Finally, I’ll simply add that deciding that Beyond Chutzpah is reliable strikes me as extremely foolish since Finkelstein has a long history of lying.
There’s a reason Depaul denied him for tenure and he can’t get a job in academia.
He’s viewed as an unreliable crank by most.
Now, if you want to argue that truthers and other assorted cranks make good sources of information go ahead, but most of us don’t.
Readers should note that Dick is arguing in a rather curious manner and wildly distorting the actual facts. Those reading along should check out just the first few words of the article and see if Dershowitz’ complaints against Tutu are, as Dick would have you believe, because Tutu disagrees with him politically. Or if, instead, it’s because Tutu has said some rather anti-Semitic things but Dick is trying to excuse them while beating the drum for the “You can’t ever criticize Israel ever or they try to shut you up as an anti-Semite!” meme.
Curious errors on Dick’s part. Just one of them thar coincidences.
I believe the move in the playbook at this point is to claim that different people have different versions of the truth, and we’ll just leave the actual facts up against the claim that Tutu “suddenly discovered he was antisemitic because he pointed out some truths about Israel”, and people can choose which to believe.
Oh yeah, and Tutu also trotted out the ‘you can’t be anti-Semitic if you’re not anti-Arab, because they’re Semitic too!’ line. Oh, yeah, and one of his [del]best friends[/del] doctors is Jewish, too!
Yes, they’re respected bullshitters. Like that bullshit poll they came up with. Do you know who did the poll for them? A Washinton-based lobbying/political consultancy owned by Likudnik Jewish-Americans half of whom used to work for the ADL, which is basically a lobbying organisation itself these days.
Dershowitz calls an Archbishop who is Chairman of the South African Holocaust Rem,embrance Society an “anti_jewish bigot” because he called for disinvestment in Israel and called the Israeli regime an apartheid regime. So my cite is an exact qualification of my original point, that Dershowitz calls people who criticise Israel antisemitic.
The chosen people thing is something you hear from the nuts in the Israeli governing coalitions to justify their actions and it’s this that the author of the articvle is referring to. I think Americans who justify anything they and their country does because they’re god’s chosen people are nutters, I think the same of the Afrikkaans people who used the same chosen thing to justify their actions over the last century. I don’t think either viewpoint makes me anti-American or anti-South African, just anti-violent/racist nutjobs. And I’m also, like the author of the article, against the violent/racist israeli nutjobs who use the chosen thing to justify their actions against the palestinians.
You’ve got to realise that the Israel-Palestine thing receives very different coverage in Europe and the rest of the world to the way it’s covered in America. most American media shows israelis under attack from all sides (gross oversimplification here) while most of the rest of the world sees the Palestinians under occupation for forty years and coverage of the Israeli government which you don’t see in America.
I’m not sure why being an “Archbishop” precludes one from being an anti-Semite.
That said, you clearly didn’t read the article clearly.
Dershowitz doesn’t accuse Tutu of having issues with Jews because of his criticism of Israel, but because of comments he’s made about Jews.
That’s a pretty anti-Semitic statement and it also uses classic anti-Semitic language.
He also has specifically accused Israel of behaving in an “UnChristian manner” which is something that most Jews would object to.
Finally, he’s claimed
Sorry dude. You really ought to read your sources closer before making claims they don’t back.
However, since you’ve criticized Dershowitz’s decision, then you must disagree
Please explain why you think it’s not anti-Semitic to refer to Jews as “a peculiar people” who should be judged by different standards?
Please explain why don’t think it’s anti-Semitic to say, “the Jews thought they had a monopoly of God: Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings”?
I wonder if that’s like how Dick heard that Dershowitz was trying to slander poor, innocent Desmond Tutu simply because Tutu had a different political opinion, even while Dick himself linked to an article where Dershowitz called Tutu on the carpet with regards to a series of blatantly anti-Semitic statements that he’d made.
Hrm… hard to tell, no cite at all this time.
Maybe one will be forthcoming.
Perhaps it will even bear a passing resemblance to what Dick claims it says this time, too.
Heh, you must be reading some different article. The one I read was full of specifically Christian criticisms of Judaism. There was no attempt, none, to make the critique specific to some political subset of the Israeli government. In any case, only a small subset of Zionists are even religious (and certainly the original Zionists largely were not).
Extracts:
There you have it - the “Jewish Rabbi” referenced here is, obviously, Christ; his religion - Christianity, characterised by “compassion and foregiveness” - is contrasted with “an archaic national and warlike religion” - obviously, Judaism - which is characterized by “the old rhetoric of war” which has " silly, stone tablets, burning bushes and a license to kill".
He’s Christian witnessing concerning the superiority of Christianity over Judaism, and in the most obnoxiously bigoted way possible. None of which is necessary relationship with the nation-state of Israel, other than it forms the traget for his anger. The state of coverage of Arab-Israeli issues did not cause this author to Christian-witness, surely.
Well but, yes and, you see, because, and now, obviously, of course, and so, it follows that, except, understandably, generally, due to certain…
I hope that this helps you to understand now, Malthus, that Dick and his fellow travelers are being persecuted simply because they’re critical of Israel.
And they’re forced, forced to defend anti-Semitism if the bigot in question has a bone to pick with Israel. Why, isn’t it a famous poem about the Holocaust that says:
First they criticized the racists, and I didn’t speak out because I was not a racist.
Then they criticized the bigots, and I didn’t speak out because I was not a bigot.
Then they criticized the wilfully ignorant and obstinately erroneous, and I didn’t speak out because I chose not to comprehend what was being said or change my conclusion.
Then they criticized those whose narratives were counter-factual and partisan, and there was nobody left to speak for me except much of the rest of the world. And then the Jewish-Lobby Dominated United States called me an anti-Semite! Well, they didn’t actually say it out loud, but they were totally thinking it.
I’m sure more than half of schoolchildren have heard the word “gay” used as an insult. I’m not denying that our societies are still homophobic to a certain degree, but it’s definitely getting better.
When we don’t use the word “gay” at all to mean “bad”, then we’ll be doing much better. But Ibn is right. There’s a reason that the suicide rate among gay teens, in particular, is to bad.
There are only 818 Jews in Norway, out of a total population of 4.9 million. How does antisemitism get any traction anyway?! How many Norwegians have ever seen a Jew?
