Nothing that Ivins wrote is factually incorrect. Putting someone with strong, specific ties to Israel could be seen as gratuitously sticking it to Iraq.
Is Ivins an antisemite? Hard to say. There’s a huge philosophical gulf between criticizing Israel and approving of the Shoah, and Ivins appears to be a lot closer to the former than the latter. Based on this one piece of writing, I would have to say she is not.
On the anti-semetic scale from -10 to +10 (the more negative, the more anti-semetic; the more positive the more rigidly Israel supporter) this looks like about a -0.5 to me. As is evident here, most people in this country are unclear of what a “Zionist” is. I have a rough idea, but wouldn’t bet my next paycheck that I could give the correct definition. Ivins know this (or she should), and using that lable to describe someone she obviously doesn’t like smells a bit like trying to drum up support from true anti-semites. If not intentional, she should be smart enough not to give the appearance that it might have been.
Having said that, I’d put this up there with a lot of the other needless demonizing that is done by the more extremes of both left and right whenever someone makes what might really be an inocent mistake. Referring to Ivins’ remarks, there.
>> Another quote from the column is, “So we’ve got a crook, a Zionist and an old spy…” Is being a Zionist as bad as being a crook?
december, quit misrepresenting things. If we need to build a huge suspension bridge and I say the satff we have is “a truck driver, a school teacher and a cocaine user” i do not think anyone can say I am equating a school teacher with a cocaine user but I am painting a picture which shows the people I have are not the best team to design and build a bridge.
There may be nothing wrong with beeing a zionist (whatever that may be) but it surely does not seem like the best person to lead a Muslim country. But I guess you would think a militant atheist would make a good ambassador to the Vatican or a militant pro-palestinian would make a good ambassador to Israel.
Your OP misrepresents the article but we’re already quite used to your doing that.
JFTR, december, I was born a few months after Israel became a state, and the only uses I’ve heard for “Zionist” in other than historical references (like Chaim Weismann) have been to people whose attitude is, roughly, “I’m for Israel, right or wrong” – i.e., those who would, for example, defend Israel committing a war of aggression and conquering Syria on the grounds that David once held part of it.
A person who is so strongly in favor of the present Israeli government’s policies as to have incurred the ire of Arab states is probably not a good choice to mediate or facilitate the establishment of a government in an Arab area. (Never mind the details on whether Garner fits that description or whether Iraq qualifies as “an Arab state” with its minorities – the point is whether Molly used the term in its contemporaneous sense.) And I will concede that this is merely the connotation I’ve consistently heard used for the term in modern use – just as the “liberals” you decry would not include William Ewart Gladstone or the Earl of Rosebery, both classic Liberals.
How can you claim that a so-called “Zionist” shouldn’t lead a Muslim country, without even knowing what the word means?
december why do you insist on playing dumb? I don’t know why you keep playing these stupid games. Please stop asking stupid questions. Are you reading the thread? there is a discussion of different meanings of the word “zionist” and none of them are the best qualification for leading a Muslim country. Just like we can discuss whether a person is an atheist or an agnostic and without getting into that I can tell he is not the best person to be appointed ambassador to the Vatican.
Dammit, not AGAIN december!
What Polycarp said. A Zionist is someone who believes in “Israel uber alles”, or something like that. Israel over everyone else, and all that happy crap.
The Ironic Phrase of the Year goes to…
Can’t say I’m a fan of Molly Ivans but her point is valid. Death, taxes and Muslims hate Jews. You have to remember that many of the Muslim nations do not have a free press so it doesn’t help to give them a reason to doubt the leadership of Garner.
I think december may find the use of the word Zionist unpopular. Kind of like referring to a Negro as colored as opposed to Black or African American. The word Zionist is often used as an insult unto itself so it becomes an insult over time. IMO, the use of a descriptive word is, in itself derogatory unless it is necessary to relate specifically and not generally to a subject. How many people cringed when I used the word Negro. If it were necessary for me to explain that BB King is a Negro, I would surely use Black, or African American. It would be unnecessary to mention BB’s ethnicity in the first place. By doing so, it makes the person appear different from others and will eventually make the descriptive word unpopular.
The fact that Molly Ivans used the word Zionist would normally be inappropriate but in this case I think it is germane to the subject. As much as I would like to report her to the PC Police, she did not deserve arrest in this case.
Thank you, Polycarp. I find this digression into the meaning of “Zionist” quite interesting. No doubt many others understand the word the same way as you do. On preview, I see Guinistasia does.
Your definition is not what the dictionary says. Dictionary.com defines “Zionism” more moderately:
m-w.com is almost identical:
So, on the one hand, the word merely means being concerned with support of the state of Israel. OTOH, it carries a connotation of extremism. That’s a handy duality, for someone who wants to imply that supporters of Israel are extremists.
Given Molly Ivins political leanings, I seriously doubt that she wants to imply that supporters of Israel are extremists. She is not stupid.
Please show where Ms. Ivins suggested that supporters of Israel are extremists.
This website goes into a little bit more detail than a dictionary and does serve as a reminder that there are anti-Zionist Jews.
My impression is that Ms. Ivans is describing the way Iraqis would view Garner. Perhaps it would have helped if she had put Zionist in quotation marks.
An aside:
Does Zionism rest on the notion that there is a God-given mandate for Jewish control of Palestine? (Just asking.) If so, I don’t see where not buying into that notion would be the same as being anti-Semitic. And certainly it would not be anti-Semitic to notice that someone who supports Zionist ideation would not be acceptable to Iraqis.
Furthermore, I think December has a (not-very-well) hidden agenda. Republicans are trying to woo Jewish voters in NY and FL in anticipation of the 2004 election. Part of their strategy seems to be to tag Democrats with an “anti-Semite” label every time they question whether the US should be marching in lock-step with Israel.
(Am I the only one noticing this?)
Putn me in the :rolleyes: column.
The “anti-Semite” label should not be used as a weapon to squelch debate on Middle East policy.
No. It’s secular, IIRC. from here:
“Anti-Semitic” is itself a pretty racist term, and for that reason it should be avoided all together. Like it or not, by asserting that Semitic implies Jewish, those who use the term are robbing other Semites of their linguistic and biblical linneage. I don’t recall racist intent being a necessary condition for an action to be racist, and just because some other jerks were racist that doesn’t mean that it’s okay for us to be racist, too.
js_africanus wrote:
*Anti-Semitic" is itself a pretty racist term, and for that reason it should be avoided all together. Like it or not, by asserting that Semitic implies Jewish, those who use the term are robbing other Semites of their linguistic and biblical linneage. *
Respectfully, you’re being disingenuous. While “Semitic” refers to all Semites, “anti-Semitic” is a specific reference to the Anti-Semitic League (of Germany, circa 1879), which referred solely to Jews. Claims to the contrary are a bit like claiming that “anti-Americanism” is aimed at Panamanians and Brazilians, too.
No, I’m being fully genuous. Just because some pig-fucking, racist scumbags coined a word, that doesn’t mean that we should continue to use it. Otherwise, we’d still be calling black men “boys”.
Oops, typo. Make that “ingenuous”.
An anti-Semite is someone who hates Jews. It is a pretty serious allegation which tends to get bandied about rather easily. Molly Ivins is about as far from an anti-Semite as I can think. You might as well call William F. Buckley a liberal.
Zionist is in my experience a word that some Arabs use as an epithet toward anyone who remortely supports Israel. There are a few Islamic groups that send me email, and they’re full of Zionist-this and Zionist-that. My personal favorites are ‘Zionist Stormtroopers’ or ‘Zionist Nazis’. One pictures a rather, um, confused individual…
As Ivins is not a militant Islamic terrorist, I believe she is using the old definition of Zionist, which has that '40’s flavor about it. It’s a loaded word and she should have picked another - ‘supporter of Israel’ would have done just as well.
December:
If Cal Thomas (just to use an example) wrote an article to discredit someone up for for a key education post in gov’t and said that one reason he was against this guy was that the candidate “supported Hip Hop artitist” and that Hip Hop is a danger to our kids. Then suppose some “lefty” on SDMB strarted a thread “Cal Thomas’s statement is racist”.
Wouldn’t you rush to defend Cal Thomas and claim that his statement was not racist? That bringing up the “racist” label was knee-jerk liberalism? Can you not see that you are completely on the other side of pretty much the exact same situaion with the Molly Ivins issue here?
BTW, I can’t believe I’m actually defending Molly Ivins. I find her brand of politics particularly unsavory.