Right. But my question was why you regarded the “occupation is the root of the problem” as being the “most pertinent points”, when the article and quote by Robinson indicated otherwise.
Yes. (The problem I had with your first post is that by isolating the issue as being criticism of the occupation you distorted the issue and made your own rejoinder more apt than it actually was.)
Possible. However, it is also possible that the same words take on a different meaning when viewed in the context of what was an attempt to accuse the Israelis of conducting a Holocaust and genocide of their own.
Well you’re portraying yourself in the context of someone responding to a specific incident, in which case you’d be right. But if you are someone charged with dealing with the overall situations and you tend to see things in a one-sided manner your position does not hold.
If you are a policeman who arrests a black person who commits a specific crime there is no reason to think you are a bigot. If you are a policeman who only arrests blacks, there is.
For the record, even the student who started the petition doesn’t think she’s anti-semitic. His reasoning for not wanting her to be the speaker seems more related to the fact that she’s controversial, and he wants more student input on future commencement speaker selections.
If somebody excessively and non-proportionally criticized Affirmative Action constantly, I’d wonder about his motives, too. I’m not saying you’re an anti-Semite, and you don’t have to balance every criticism you make of Israeli policy with one condemning suicide bombing, or something like that.
But, for as bad as some of the stuff that goes on in the Occupied Territories is, it’s not the only injustice in the world, and its not even the worst injustice that goes on. Yet, there are people who gladly condemn any questionable action by Israel who ignore or downplay the other, more severe human rights abuses happening elsewhere
There are also those who seem willing to attribute the worst possible motives to Israel, and who see every Israeli action in the worst possible light, and every Palestinian action the best possible light. They’re willing to rationalize the bad stuff that Palestinians do, but not the bad stuff the Israelis do. For these people, you need to wonder if they are making legitimate criticism, or if it’s an expression of anti-Semitic feelings.
While this was presented as Ms. Robinson “equating” the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the reader should be aware of the context. Prior to the opening of the conference the agenda had been hijacked by anti-Israeli activists. At that point. Israel (understandably) and the U.S. (somewhat less understandably) chose to stay home and not make the effort to turn the agenda back to the broader goals for which it had been called. The comparison of the two situations had been raised by the people turning the agenda, so it would appear that Ms. Robinson was responding to an existing issue.
It is possible (though not demonstrated) that Ms. Robinson has some anti-Zionist bent, but nothing provided by the folks at Emerson supports a claim of anti-Jewish bias.
So you’re saying documenting human rights issues in the occupied territories is a bad thing?
In her role as advisor to the UNHCR, was she dealing exclusively with Israel/Palestine? Or was her work in Somalia and with the ICJ what got her the job?
Good or bad, it is an advocacy group representing one side in a conflict. Representing the head of an advocacy group for one side does not suggest an evenhanded approach. (I especially like the way you casually dismissed the Zionists Organisation of America earlier, but are so enamored with al-haq, including their description of themselves on their website. ;))
But this is actually something I’ve discussed here, with posted links and whatnot. Which contrasts with your “curiously” remark earlier.
Sorry if I’m making you uncomfortable.
TwistofFate, they can say this or that on their website (much like the ZOA) but you can look through their website and it is pretty obvious who they are after. I couldn’t find a single example of them highlighting any abuses by the PA. Further, although you bold the part where they claim to disregard the identity of the victim of abuse, I could not find anything that suggested that they care about attacks on Jews in the territories, of which there have been many. And elsewhere (e.g. the Human Rights section) they are explicit in saying that their work is “advocating for the protection of Palestinians’ human rights”.
(They have another section in which they claim that they also document abuses by the PA. But they go on to say that their role here is to work together with the PA.)
While it is certainly true that not all Semites are Jews, the term “anti-semitic” has had its present meaning (that being “anti-jewish”) for well over a hundred years. Indeed, that is the only meaning the term has ever had, as it was coined in 1880 to mean exactly that. I don’t care if someone uses the term “anti-jewish” instead, if you feel the need to for some reason, but to object to the normal use of “anti-semitic”, as you seem to do parenthetically, is just silly.
As a current student at Emory University, I feel like I need to chime in here. I admit I have not been following the debate, having no real problem with Robinson as the commencement speaker. But the Jewish population here is ~30-40% of the undergraduates, so it’s understandable that any controversy about her views regarding Israel come under scrutinty.
Here is a link to the Emory Wheel (the newspaper on campus). Do a quick search for “Mary Robinson” on the right side and you’ll get all the articles and editorials written about her in the past month or so (and there have been many on both sides).
Interesting note, she actually visited our campus briefly a week ago and spoke to small invited group about their various concerns. Obviously the people against her as speaker were not appeased, but it’s still admirable (I think) that she’s willing to go out and talk to people about issues like this.
Heh. And I always thought it was when unprovoked Arab nations attacked Israel in 1948. I also thought that this occupation started because of Arab nations’ hostility. Strange. You have to wonder how knowledgeable this woman is about this conflict.
As for the title of this thread, I hate how things like this always give anti-Israelis an excuse to claim in almost every damn thread on Israel that “Jews just love to use the anti-semite card when talking about Israel.” Few criticize them when they say this, too.
“Anti-Israelis” like Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman, who said that American Jews are sometimes too quick to assume that antisemitism is at play?