I can’t think of “mainstream American political commentary” which likens Palestinians terrorists to Nazis. Perhaps there are ready examples which could be cited.
I don’t find such comparisons viable or useful. It is worth noting that some Palestinian activists/bombers did in fact collaborate with the Nazis during WWII, which would not excuse continually linking the two in this day and age, assuming that’s being done to any extent.
I’m not sure Harvard’s President should have made those particular remarks, in part because I don’t know the people involved and I would not want to be seen as chilling legitimate acts of protest, whether or not I think them wrong. But when you make especially virulent, hateful and one-sided attacks against Israel (including charging it with apartheid, as did the founder of the “disinvestment” movement), you lay yourself open to suspicion that your motivations go beyond outrage at treatment of Palestinians. And we have not been completely immune from such postings on the SDMB.
Here is a quote from a George Will column where he seems to be saying that Arab and European(!!!) critics of Israel seem the extermination of Jews. The original title of the column in WaPo IIRC was Final Solution Part 2 or something like it. I can’t think of anything more absurd or hysterical; yet Will seems to have carried along merrily as a nationally prominent pundit.
"Today many people say that the Arabs and their European echoes would be mollified if Israel would change its behavior. People who say that do not understand the centrality of anti-Semitism in the current crisis. This crisis has become the second–and final?–phase of the struggle for a ``final solution to the Jewish question.’’ As Wisse said 11 years ago, and as cannot be said too often, anti-Semitism is not directed against the behavior of the Jews but against the existence of the Jews. "
Don’t just stop at one quote. What Will appears to me to be saying is that some of the criticism directed against Israel, including gems like this one, smack of anti-Semitism:
"An example of this is the recent cartoon in La Stampa, a liberal Italian newspaper–depicting the infant Jesus in a manger, menaced by an Israeli tank and saying ``Don’t tell me they want to kill me again.’’
Will nowhere equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. He does note a persistent strain of European anti-Semitism, (in part manifested by the recent rise of far right political movements and attacks on Jewish institutions), which he believes has an influence on anti-Israeli feeling.
I would point out that if there was as much coverage of these issues by the medias as there is for the palestinian issue, there would certainly be plenty of people criticizing Russia/Syria (and by the way I consider the she situation in Lebanon as much less serious than in Palestine). People criticize Israel (or the Palestinians, depending on their side) because they hear about Palestine all the time.
I would also point out that there isn’t many people around supportive of Syria, so there can’t be much of a debate.
Um if all Will wanted to do was give instances of European bigotry he could have done that.
Of course he is going for much more than that and arguing that Arabs and Europeans have some kind of agenda of a second “final solution” which is hysterical nonsense. How else would you interpret the quote?
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This is a good point and I should have thought of this before my post. It at least refutes the “equally vocal” part of my post. However, if Dershawitz were asked about Tamil terrorism in SL, and said he did not have a problem with it, one could very well suspect his opinions about Arabs (or Sinhalese). That is assuming, of course, all other things being equal - if he did not have a problem with Tamil terrorism, but did with Palestinian terrorism, because he thought Palestinian terrorism was more brutal or the Palestinians have less of a case, that would be a different issue.
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Yes and no. It is generally inappropriate to call your opponent a Nazi or draw a comparison to the Nazis. However, I said it was “particularly offensive” to compare the Israeli leadership to Nazis. It is particularly offensive because they are Jews, and I think that’s a valid issue.
Comparing a Palestinian terrorist/terrorist sympathizer to a Nazi is appropriate when they sing Hitler’s praises or use anti-Semitic justifications for their positions, as has been ]known to happen.
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I don’t think it’s quite the same thing when a Jew says it. For instance, I would never call somebody a “nigger”. I don’t think it’s appropriate for black people to call each other that, but it’s far more offensive for me, as a non-black person, to do it.
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Both of these statements are true. But you must admit that there are a significant number of people critical of Israel because they are anti-Semitic.
Also, in respond to tomndebb’s post, I do not know anything about Professor Kanwisher’s previous positions on Israel, or Jews, and so would not accuse her of being an anti-Semite. I do consider it foolish, anti-intellectual, and most likely indicative of an anti-Israel bias to sign a petition which places the blame 100% on Israel for the current situation. In any case, I was not referring specifically to Professor Kanwisher, but more generally to those who disparage Israel on a consistent and one-sided basis.
Again, I don’t see the rationale for saying that his remarks are directed against all critics of Israel. He sees a “final solution” promulgated for the state of Israel in European calls for an unlimited “right of return” for Palestinians, which many think would overwhelm the Jewish population and lead to elimination of Israel.
And when you hear members of the Palestinian Authority joyfully anticipating the day when they take over Palestine, consider this: they are not speaking just of the West Bank.
Wow, you have really never bothered to read anything I have ever posted, have you. To put it simply, I was adressing the OP, who had asked if crticizing Israel was necessarily anti-Semitic. I answered in the negative, and gave an example of valid crticism that was not anti-Jewish.
The situation in Israel and the West Bank is deplorable, and both sides are to blame; their intransigence and refusal to compromise has allowed this second intifada to continue. Israel’s refusal to stop supporting settlements on the West Bank and Arafat’s refusal to make the hard choices that would allow a Palestinian nation to be born continue to fule the conflict.
And no, this situation has not gone on for centuries. This has gone on since 1948. I suggest that anyone wanting to post on this topic read [War Without End by Anton La Guardia and Thomas Friedman’s latest, Longitudes and Attitudes.
“He sees a “final solution” promulgated for the state of Israel in European calls for an unlimited “right of return” for Palestinians, which many think would overwhelm the Jewish population and lead to elimination of Israel.”
Huh? He is not simply talking about the right of return ending Israel as a Jewish state but the “existence of Jews”. Again there is no ambiguity about what he is implying.
No he is not literally saying that every single European critic of Israel is seeking Jewish extermination but critics of Israel who use Jewish-Nazi comparisons don’t necessarily say that every single Israeli or Jew is a Nazi. That is not the point.
Will is saying that ending the “existence of Jews” through a “final solution” is central to the “current crisis”. If this isn’t hysterical nonsense I don’t know what is.
Hmmmm, currently Arabs make up 20% of the population of Israel proper. I think it will take longer than 20 years for them to outnumber the Jews. Still the demographic point is a very good one, even if the time frame is a bit concise. Annexation of the West Bank, with the consequent citizenship to West Bank Arabs, would be disasterous to Israel, as would be a “right of return” to Israel proper. And sooner or later the current excess birth rate among Israeli Arabs, if maintained, will result in the plurality which you predict.
The selfish solution for Israel is
an independent Palestine that is economically viable and with tight economic ties.
investing in education of, and in improving the economic lot of Israeli Arabs, especially the lot of Arab Israeli women. Educated people, especially if women are educated, with economic futures, tend to have fewer children … (Israel does better at offering eductional opportunities and rights to it Arab citizens than most Arab countries offer their Arab citizens, but sometimes not by much. And such is faint praise anyway.)
The alternatives are unpalatable - either Israel as a Jewish state eventually ceases to be, or it maintains its Jewishness at the expense of any semblence of secularity and democracy … becoming a theocracy of the minority. (Unless one predicts a huge new Aliyah movement of Jews worldwide to Israel, or a Jewish Israeli population explosion.)
Oh, get off it, gobear. I also was making a point; that point being that Israel really isn’t occupying the West Bank like so many anti-Israel paint it out as: like Germany occupying France et al during WWII. It’s a completely different issue.
OMG. Before I reply, I must first ask: Are you joking?
As for the Anti-Zionism/Anti-Jewish debate, Summers is full of it. While it is not impossible (but very likely) that someone who has Anti-Jewish leanings will also have anti-Israeli leanings, Anti-Israeli leanings does not equate to Anti-Jewish.
It’s our Cecil-damned right and duty to criticize Israel’s highly abhorrent, oppressive, and racist policies toward the Palestinians and Israel’s entire history of aggression and militarism in the region. Just like it is our right and duty to criticize Saudi Arabia’s current oppressive rule. One shouldn’t be accused of Anti-Jew/Arab/Islamism unless one is making Anti-Jewish/Arab/Islamic statements (that is statements against Jews/Arabs/Muslims as a whole or in general) something that I sadly see very often on this board.
On the other hand, making comparison with nazism os a rhetoric tool, and can be a pretty efficient one when adressing Jews : “look! What we’re doing is exactly the same the nazi did to us in Warsaw”. For instance, this argument has been used by the so-called Israelis “refuzniks”. Would you say they shouldn’t have used this comparison?
I would argue about the words “significant number”. An antisemitic person is likely to criticize Israel, of course. But I don’t think it’s true the other way around. I’m pretty convinced that (in the west at least) the overwhelming majority of people criticizing Israel aren’t antisemitic. So, I would tend to ask you : what makes you think that a “significant number of people are critical of Israel because they’re antisemitic”? On what exactly do you base this opinion (once again, I’m refering to western countries).
This may be no more than a demonstration of a firm grasp of the obvious.
First the anti-Semite tar brush is a variant of one of the oldest games in politics. The game is simply to scream that anyone not on your side is your enemy. He who is not with me is against me is another way to put it. In this country the Bush Administration and its deniable mouth pieces, e.g., Rush and Ms. Coulter, are playing this game as hard as they can and with enough success that Congressional opposition to war with Iraq has been completely cowed. Thus we see Black criminal suspects claiming racial discrimination because they are prosecuted (it worked for O.J. Simpson), Pakistani motel keepers screaming that their over extended motel did not receive a bank loan because the banker is prejudiced against Pakistanis, in the former Yugoslavia we saw the head of the Serbian government bellowing that any criticism of it’s ethnic cleansing policy was an expression of anti-Serb prejudice. To see people as sophisticated as President Summers and Professor Dershowitz resort to this sort of fundamentally dishonest argument is disappointing.
Second, I’m not sure that it is fair to justify what looks to me like an Israeli terror campaign in the occupied territories with Palestinian terror. Israel is, after all, an organized Western State. I don’t see anything going on in the occupied territories that can be fairly called a Palestinian government. Rather, I see a series of antagonistic factions all of whom want Israel out but which are hardly under any unified leadership or control.
As a modern state you would think that there should be some restraint on the Israeli government’s impulse to inflict every degree of retribution it can think of on the occupied population. So far as I can tell there is no Palestinian State, certainly not after the events of the last few days. How anyone can think that Arafat and his outfit have any power to influence events is beyond me. From what I see in the news papers it looks as if the factions that are claiming to have done the last few atrocities have nothing to do with the Arafat’s defunct government. If Hitler comparisons are offensive, maybe Kaiser Bill and the Rape of Belgium analogies will pass muster.
Third, as intractable as the situation in Israel-Palestine might be, everyone concerned seems to acknowledge what the ultimate solution to the mess is–an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank. I’m not sure what is holding up the solution but I’m pretty sure it isn’t criticism of the Israeli government inspired by anti-Semitism.
Ok, so it is our “right and duty” to criticize Isarel’s policies, and to criticize Saudi Arabia’s oppressive rule (nice try, throwing that red herring in), but you seem to have left out a particular group.
Can’t criticize the Palestinians, nope, can’t do that. Take a step back, and see how one-sided your arguments are.
Spavined,
Too many people (on both sides, but IMHO more on the Arab side) have too much to gained by perpetuating the conflict. Arafat gets to maintain his feifdom. Oppressive Arab “leaders” keep the attention of their oppressed citizenry distracted from their oppression by their own.
…although hardly from a “neutral” position as a full reading of the “About” part of their website makes clear. I.e., they have a very definite point-of-view.
