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Home Why Left Wing Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism

Why Left Wing Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism

In a clear demonstration of just how "progressive" they really are, the Anti-Israel left is hard at working trying to revive the medieval blood libel. First the Swedish daily Aftonbladet repeated Palestinian Arab propaganda about medically impossible organ thefts, and then the left wing Counterpunch magazine run by Saddam supporter Alexander Cockburn printed an article actually using medieval blood libels against Jews as proof. There is something striking about an Anti-Semitic radicalization on the left so extreme that after being accused of using organ thefts as a modern day blood libel, it actually tries to revive and legitimize medieval blood libels.


Leftists like Alexander Cockburn naturally claim they're not Anti-Semitic, but rather Anti-Zionist. Indeed Alexander Cockburn published a book "The Politics of Anti-Semitism" dedicated to that premise. But as implausible as the premise that an enthusiastic defender of Saddam Hussein like Cockburn and so many of the left, who nevertheless obsessively attack Israel for human rights violations, are not displaying a clear double standard... the Anti-Zionist, not Anti-Semitic argument flies out the window when you're publishing articles reviving medieval blood libels against Jews, sourced from the likes of "Israel Shamir", the pseudonym of a Swedish Neo-Nazi, and another regular at Counterpunch, who writes articles about Jews with charming titles like "The Vampire Killers," "Poisoning Wells," "Kugel Eaters" and "Bloodcurdling Libel".

Cockburn and his ilk though are simply the leading edge of left wing Anti-Semtism, dipping into the foulest wells of bigotry and unashamed to harvest the rotting fruit of Goebbels and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Like much of the European left, the American far left is beginning to abandon the "Anti-Zionism not Anti-Semitism" pretense for the pure "medieval" stuff, which helps them bring Muslims on board, while directly carrying the war to their Jewish critics. Embracing unabashed Anti-Semitism allows the left to discard any defensiveness regarding the double standard they maintain toward Israel, and simply damn Jews as a whole.

But that same attitude is pervasive in more subtle forms among the left in general. Take a visit by Mia Farrow to Gaza, where she naturally condemned Israel closing its border with the Hamas run territory. Did she stop to condemn Hamas' ongoing campaign of violence against Israelis? Naturally.

Farrow also criticized militant rockets, advising Gazans "not to give the international community ammunition to view you in a negative way." Stopping them, she said, could lead to greater international aid.

She did not condemn Hamas' rocket attacks on civilian towns because they're wrong. No, she condemned them because it gives biased people "ammunition" to see the otherwise non-violent and idealistic Hamas terrorists in "a negative way". And of course if Hamas were to stop, there would be more aid coming their way.

The inherent double standard speaks volumes about Farrow's view toward the right of Jews and Palestinian Arabs to live. But it's hardly unique to a moderately obscure Hollywood actress, it has become a commonplace attitude on the left to presume that Israel has no right to defend the lives of its citizens, because those lives are somehow inferior to those of their attackers. It is of course not a new attitude, only an old attitude coming to the fore among the left once again.

Historically Anti-Semitism was a common approach on the part of the European left toward Jews, damned for their unwillingness to assimilate into the stream of workers, lawyers and peasants so dear to the left, and of course for their capitalism. The pamphlets and books of Socialists and Marxists regularly contained Anti-Semitic invective... long before they had managed to seize on Zionism as the issue. Marx himself used language toward Jews not too distant from what Goebbels would propound in the next century. In the early 20th century, Communists routinely supported Russian and Arab pogroms of Jews. In fact that support led to a New York boycott of the Communist rag,The Daily Worker by newspaper sellers that effectively destroyed its circulation.

Leftist Anti-Semitism began to decline somewhat in the 20th century as the left achieved its goals of destroying Judaism in Europe and America, and recruiting large numbers of Jews into the ranks of socialist movements. A variety of tactics was utilized from the straightforward purges of the USSR which utilized its "Jewish Section" to shut down synagogues, imprison and execute Jewish clergy and outlaw all Zionist movements; to using Socialist Anti-Jewish newspapers in Europe and America, such as the Forward aimed at a Jewish audience, that routinely mocked Judaism and promoted Socialism as the only answer.

Israel however represented a fundamental breach of the Socialist agenda that demanded that Jews assimilate, abandon their religious beliefs and work to build socialism in the countries in which they live. Instead Israel's rebuilding gained a major boost from Jews who "turned their backs" on the German socialist and Russian Communist movements, and worked to build their own country instead. And that is a "Heresy" that the left has never forgiven the Jews for.

The agenda of the left was an end to ethnicity and religion, a one world government in which everyone would be brothers. Rebuilding Israel flew in the face of that agenda. It was separatist and nationalist, and when the USSR staked its bet on the Arab world-- for the left, the deal was done. Israel was to be the enemy of the left. Passing time has exchanged the labels to conform with political trends. But behind all of them is the old classic Anti-Semitism of Karl Marx who blamed the Jews for popularizing capitalism, writing, "The god of the Jews had been secularized and has become the god of this world... Money is the jealous god of the Jews"

H.G. Wells, that great believer that all of mankind must be ruled by a benevolent one world state, stated the position of the left very clearly in "The Shape of Things to Come". And that position is worth hearing, because beneath all the hypocritical nonsense about human rights violations that the left spews from every corner... it lays out the grievance of the left against the Jews... and how the left's Anti-Semitism is linked to its Anti-Zionism.

The Jews had been able to keep themselves a people apart, eating peculiar food and following distinctive religious practices, a nation within the nation, in every state in the world. They had been a perpetual irritant to statesmen, a breach in the collective solidarity everywhere...

It might have been supposed that a people so widely dispersed would have developed a cosmopolitan mentality and formed a convenient linking organization for many world purposes, but their special culture of isolation was so intense that this they neither did nor seemed anxious to attempt. After the World War the orthodox Jews played but a poor part in the early attempts to formulate the Modern State, being far more preoccupied with a dream called Zionism... It emphasized their traditional wilful separation from the main body of mankind. It irritated the world against them, subtly and incurably.

H.G. Wells' case against Israel is also his case against the Jews. They are one and the same, both damned for undermining the "collective solidarity", for failing to be "cosmopolitan" and helping to link together the world into Wells' envisioned socialist modern state.


And to this day, the left characterizes Jews as good or bad, based on their willingness to assimilate, abandon their distinctive religious practices and help create the "Modern State". Good Jews help enable the "Modern State". Bad Jews hold to religious practices and are Pro-Israel, and therefore undermine the "Modern State."

It is also noteworthy that for all of H.G. Wells' supposed progressivism and futurism, his view of the Jews was as filled with medieval bigotry as Counterpunch writing today about Jews drinking human blood. But then the progressivism of the left has always been a sham, its origins are rooted in a primitive dream of one state ruled by enlightened men who oversee the human rabble beneath their feet. A vision that is pre-modern and fundamentally hostile to the notion of individual rights rooted in independent republics.

And finally H.G. Wells envisions what the future of Israel and the Jews will be. It is also worth noting, because it is the same future that the left has been pushing Jews toward for a long time now.

And yet between 1940 and 2059, in little more than a century, this antiquated obdurate culture disappeared. It and its Zionist state, its kosher food, the Law and all the rest of its paraphernalia, were completely merged in the human community. The Jews were not suppressed; there was no extermination... but under the Tyranny there was never any specific persecution at all; yet they were educated out of their oddity and racial egotism in little more than three generations. Their attention was distracted from Moses and the Promise to Abraham and the delusion that God made his creation for them alone, and they were taught the truth about their race. The world is as full as ever it was of men and women of Semitic origin, but they belong no more to “Israel”.

That is the left's envisioned Final Solution. No extermination, no "specific persecution", just the end of the Jews as anything more than another DNA strand working its way through the genetic packaging of the human race. And they have succeeded all too well. The Soviet Union virtually wiped out Jewish identity in Russia and widespread secularism has done much of the rest in the West. Israel has become the holdout, the largest collection of Jews in the world.

And so the left is driven to destroy Israel. To wipe it out one way or another, and make room for the "Modern State", in which there is no G-d, no bible and no room for a bunch of Semitic nomads who had the presumption to try and talk to Him. In which men are no more than smart apes, G-d is a figment of the primitive imagination and the only gods are the enlightened rulers of the One World State.

To understand why Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism are one, we need look no further than H.G. Wells who wrote, "Zionism is an expression of Jewish refusal to assimilate."

That one sentence is the final thesis on the left's ugly legacy of hatred for Israel and the Jews. It demonstrates why Anti-Zionism cannot be detached from Anti-Semitism, because behind it is a denunciation of Jewish identity. That is the ideological fuel behind the Anti-Zionism of both Western liberals and their Arab allies. The Western liberals demand to know why the Jews just won't assimilate. The Arabs demand to know why the Jews weren't happy being second class Dhimmis in their own country. Anti-Zionism is the denial of the rights of the Jews as a people based on Anti-Semitism, the denial of the equality of the Jews. That double standard joins Anti-Semitsm and Anti-Zionism into two words for the same idea, that the Jews should not exist.

Comments

  1. I totally agree--and yet, there's one inconsistency--these same leftists who want the "sanitized" modern state continued to defend the indefensible Muslims at every turn, despite the fact that they refuse to assimilate at all.

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  2. Because they see them as leverage to gain power and destroy the more traditional remains of Europe, America, etc

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  3. They use the Muslims. They see Muslims as less than human really and use them to accomplish their goals. They will use them as the Nazis did until they have no more use for them and then they will clamp down on them.
    These people are so smug, so sure they are superior to all others that they see nothing wrong with what they do, or how they think or in harming and using other people.

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  4. Anonymous19/10/09

    They may be using the muslims, but what they fail to see is that they are giving power to the muslims. Do they really believe that once the Jews are gone that the muslims will be "quieted"? I wonder how they will feel if they were told "kneel to mecca or die"? The idiots living in Europe and America stupid, but somewhat understandable--all that gulf oil poured into higher education is paying off. The self-hating Jews in Israel are a still a puzzle.

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  5. Great artcile as usual. I saw the Mia Farrow interview on CNN and I think you are actually being rather kind to her. She said some far more ridiculous things than the particular quote you selected. When questioned by the interviewer about the suffering of Israeli children in Sderot she actually said that the Qassam rockets fired at them 'were only filled with mud'. I'm suprised that comment alone has not been picked up anywhere in the media. She also said - incorrectly - that only 3 Israelis civilians had ever been killed by these rockets, and - incorrectly - claimed that thousands of Gaza children had been deliberately killed by Israeli rockets.

    http://edgar1981.blogspot.com/

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  6. Anonymous,

    Rome thought it could use the goths too

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  7. Edgar,

    interestingly. I'll have to hunt down some clips of that

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  8. I looked for the Mia Farrow interview on youtube and the CNN site but it isn't up yet. Anwway, I have written more about it here:

    http://edgar1981.blogspot.com/2009/10/mia-farrows-insane-anti-israel-rant.html

    and have also linked to your article

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  9. Anonymous19/10/09

    Isn't the lefts' theory and activism based on the rights given to the Jews by Napoleon? After all this is where the assimilation begun. If you can't keel them give them possibilities, or love (Christians today) and they will assimilate, convert and disapear. Well it seems that G-d has a better plan for us.

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  10. Mia Farrow I'd divorce her.

    hey isn't that the count from Sesame Street? are they going to now say the count is a Zionist? death count 1,2,3,4,5... http://xrl.us/Goldstone ah ah ah ah

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  11. Farrow is still bitter at Woody. pathetic

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  12. I'll take a seat at the "Bad Jews" table, thank you.

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  13. Anonymous19/10/09

    Why bringing up Mia Farrow or Cockburn and Co - all small fries?
    Tell us about Jstreet, Haaretz, "Rabbi Lerner's" and other assorted Kapos which were listed (but unfortunately no more) on "masada2000.org" S.H.I.T. list.
    How about Soros and HRW boss Kenneth Roth, ACLU and the rest of big fish?

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  14. they're examples of a larger phenomenon

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  15. chernomor19/10/09

    "Anti-Zionism" has no coherent meaning today; it is a figleaf for antisemitism and nothing more.

    "The Soviet Union virtually wiped out Jewish identity in Russia"

    Not sure about this. Jews in the USSR always knew that they were Jews. It was in their passports! They could not escape anti-Jewish discrimination by denying their Jewishness. So in fact the Soviet Union with its post-WWII policies preserved Jewish identity all too well. The exodus of Soviet Jewry to the US and Israel is a testament to this.

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  16. This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 10/20/2009, at The Unreligious Right

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  17. Anonymous20/10/09

    another reason I absolutely hate socialism. I pray to God that Obama doesn't sign the Copenhagen treaty and usher in that one world government.

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  18. UNRR,

    that's great, thanks.

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  19. Nagy,

    the Peter Principle applies to political systems too

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  20. Anonymous20/10/09

    The Peter Principle? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that.

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  21. The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence."

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  22. Chernomor - it's true that the late (as in period, not as in deceased) Soviet system locked Jews into their identification, but it did much to erase any meaning of that identification. IOW many of the Soviet Jews were Jews in name only. That is because everything Jewish was forbidden by the authorities, starting with the Language, the Book and the History.

    All that was left was the restaurant music. Not for all, but for many.

    It was enough though, in the end, to just know yourself to be a Jew, even when not knowing exactly what it meant. Not for all, again, but for many.

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  23. Great stuff, as usual :)

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  24. Lemon: Many politicians, businessmen and social leaders in the past have "used" Muslims, except, almost without exceptions, it has backfired, the "used" Muslims ended up with the upper hand, and the "users" backed quietly into oblivion leaving future generations to handle the chaos.

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  25. good article, kol hakavod

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  26. Excellent article. I have been looking for a discussion such as this to gain some background in the phenomenon of the anti-seitism on the left. I am a scientist, and had not studied it, but patriot friends have asked me about this, as well as about the puzzling and stubborn connection of many Jews to the left. I can discuss the second intelligently, but am uneducated on the first. I will begin with this article and others at this blog.

    About this sentence:
    "Anti-zionism is the denial of the rights of the Jews as a people based on Antisemitism, the denial of equality of the Jews."

    This almost sounds like you are advocating group rights, whereas the American ideal enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution recognize only individual rights--including the right of individuals to freely associate. What rights are you talking about when you say "the rights of the Jews as a people" ?

    In any case, I am glad I found this blog and look forward to more enlightening discussions.

    Kol ha-Kavod!

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  27. Constitutional rights are individual and apply locally in the United States. I'm speaking about Jewish national rights as applied globally. Namely the right of the Jewish people to maintain our own nation on our own land. This does not relate to individual rights within the United States itself.

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  28. Anonymous21/7/13

    Hello sorry i am lazy to read this article - it is true that antisemitism is disguised as anti-israel i have no doubt about this

    just wanted to say that h.g.wells if its true what i read somewhere apologized about his view on israel and suported israel later on

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  29. The neo-nazi Golden Dawn party and why the Greek left does not confront them http://iakovosalhadeff.hubpages.com/hub/Greece-Israel-the-Arab-countries

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