Is this anti-semitism?

(Still bad, of course)

i think the whole "rich hollywood jews" thing ties in w/ and stems from the whole "jews run the world" thing a bit

The problem with depicting all Jews as successful/rich/Hollywood/whatever is that it's really just a skip away from saying that Jews are behind powerful conspiracies or have unrepresentative influence on politics, or any number of claims that seem cribbed from the Protocols. Also, it's one thing to say, "many famous actors are Jewish," or "There are many Jewish lawyers" and another to say that Hollywood is controlled by the Jews.

xp what omar said

All bad slurs. But, you know, Jews do have a big presence in both Hollywood and the legal profession. Was it Louis CK (probably) who had the bit about how "Jew" is one of the only legit descriptions that's also a slur? Only in the world of anti-semitism can success be a failure. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

oh to be aryan and be successful (but not *that* successful)

I think that Joe Klein and Thomas Friedman's comments (in Time and the NYT respectively) indicate that being critical of Israel in America is safe and mainstream.

i dunno if i'd go that far.

if anything my big problem with the argument of "the israel lobby" (as far as i understand it secondhand) is that, in an american context, the window of conversation is not really driven by the influential jews in american political life, so much as huge chunks of the american public having generally warm feelings toward israel for various cultural and religious reasons, and generally cold feelings toward all of israel's antagonists likewise.

I think that's otm, goole, in that the support for Israel in Congress is not from some magical AIPAC powers but more from the fact that Congress' constituents tend to be pro-Israel, often Evangelical Christians. At the same time though, there has been this self-congratulatory thing that American critics of Israel have where they pat each other on the back to be so brave as to go up against the Israel Lobby (tm). I think that when Thomas Friedman is parroting some of your talking points, there's nothing edgy or dangerous left to stating those positions. And claiming that Americans soldiers have died for Israeli interests is a huge (and self-evidently false) talking point from critics like Stephen Walt.

I read the Walt Mearshimer piece in the NYRB (LRB?) way back when, and at the time I felt like it just slightly crossed into paranoia, as sophisticated as it was. E.g. I remember there was an example or two of AIPAC allegedly torpedoing a candidate for criticism of Israel. Political campaigns are pretty complex things and I think it's often difficult to prove that a single factor is solely responsible for a campaign's death, but even if that's the case, it's then extrapolated that AIPAC has the power to do this to any candidate any time. As big as the Israel lobby is, it so happens to not be the only powerful lobby in this country and I find that picture a bit unbelievably simplistic.

I also think there's a lot of assumption to the effect that Jewish politicians who consider themselves Zionists are somehow singlemindedly focused on Israel and indifferent to American interests, which is itself an assumption tinged with anti-semitism imo.

i never think i could possibly like glenn greenwald less but he constantly finds new ways to make me dislike him
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/01/a-question-from-glenn-greenwald-updated/251705/

greenwald demonstrates well why the discussion often goes to shit and makes no progress.

wonder if greenwald ever had to say the pledge of allegiance in class

The mainstreaming of hostility toward any group of Jews leads inevitably to the mainstreaming of hostility to Jews generally.

Wait, what? Does this mean I can't loathe Likud anymore?

"A Question From Glenn Greenwald" is a hilarious title for a post

"do these jeans make my ass look anti-Semitic?"

shit abe foxman says ^

still like jeffrey goldberg less i must say

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-big-lie-returns/

In our own time, these ownership rights have become largely uncontroversial, insofar as most minorities can expect a respectful hearing when it comes to claims of racism. With the Jews, however, the reverse is now true: Claims of anti-Semitism are so often disputed, scorned, and denied outright. This state of affairs faithfully reflects the perception of the Jews as socially privileged, disproportionately represented in the fields of glamour, intellect, and finance, and—crucially—as the agency behind the dispossession of Palestine’s native Arab inhabitants.

This perception is not limited to the extreme left (nor, for that matter, to the far right, which thinks in near-identical terms). It now sits as comfortably with a traditional conservative realist like Mearsheimer as it does with many others who have had little interaction with the New Left or the Chomskyite school of international relations. It leads, furthermore, to a conclusion with a distinctly postmodern twist: Those who truly suffer from anti-Semitism today are not Jews, but those who are accused of being anti-Semitic. Those mere speakers of truth, so the thinking goes, are being made to pay for centuries of hateful prejudice.

Are you asking if that's anti-semitism?

No.

most minorities can expect a respectful hearing when it comes to claims of racism

I can't speak for the US but this seems to be not entirely true. Don't disagree with the rest of the piece tho.

It's not remotely true in the US (and probably not true anywhere else.)

I think it is true of the groups he is primarily discussing in this piece (the far left and 'traditional conservative realists').

Also, despite the title of this thread, I figure discussions about anti-Semitism are appropriate here. Silly to start an entirely new thread for them.

The origin of this warped thinking lies in the left’s commitment to anticolonialism following the Second World War.

o i c

I think the piece is pretty silly myself. Gilad Atzmon is an anti-semite, John Mearsheimer blurbed his book, therefore Mearsheimer's book is anti-semitic, also Mearsheimer's not true because other prominent journalists are now saying the same thing and getting away with it.

Gilad Atzmon is an anti-semite, John Mearsheimer blurbed his book, therefore Mearsheimer's book is anti-semitic

Yeah, this is not his argument.

The modification rests upon a distinction between what I call bierkeller and bistro anti-Semitism. Bierkeller anti-Semitism—named for the beer halls frequented by the German Nazis—employs such means as violence, verbal abuse, commercial harassment, and advocacy of anti-Jewish legal measures. Certainly, the first and second generations of modern anti-Semitic publicists and intellectuals had no qualms about this sort of thuggery. Since the Second World War, though, this mode of anti-Semitism has waned sharply, along with the tendency to use the word anti-Semite as a positive means of political identification.

Bistro anti-Semitism, on the other hand, sits in a higher and outwardly more civilized realm, providing what left-wing activists would call a “safe space” to critically assess the global impact of Jewish cabals from Washington, D.C., to Jerusalem. Anyone who enters the bistro will encounter common themes. These include the depiction of Palestinians as the victims of a second Holocaust, the breaking of the silence supposedly imposed upon honest discussions of Jewish political and economic power, and the contention—offered by, among others, Mearsheimer’s co-author, Stephen Walt, of Harvard—that American Jewish government officials are more suspect than others because of a potential second loyalty to Israel.

beer-track and wine-track! lol strauss

The man whose book Mearsheimer called “fascinating and provocative,” a work that “should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike,” is an anti-Semite, pure and simple. A saxophone player by trade, Atzmon was born and raised in Israel but subsequently moved to London. He proclaims himself either an “ex-Jew” or a “proud self-hating Jew” and was quoted approvingly by Turkey’s Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the Davos conference in 2009: Denouncing Israel in vociferous terms before a horrified Shimon Peres, Erdogan quoted Atzmon as saying, “Israeli barbarity is far beyond even ordinary cruelty.”

Atzmon fixates upon the irredeemably tribal and racist identity he calls “Jewishness.” The anti-Gentile separatism that compels Jews to amass greater power and influence is manifested, he preaches, in any context where Jews come together as a group. The Wandering Who finds Atzmon on territory well-trodden by anti-Semites past and present: Holocaust revisionism (one chapter is entitled “Swindler’s List”), the rehabilitation of Hitler (he argues that Israel’s behavior makes all the more tempting the conclusion that the Führer was right about the Jews), the separation of Jesus from Judaism (Christ was the original proud, self-hating Jew, whose example Spinoza, Marx, and now, Atzmon himself, have followed).

One would think this was categorically indefensible stuff. Yet, when the blogger Adam Holland e-mailed Mearsheimer to ask whether he was aware of Atzmon’s flirtation with Holocaust denial, as well as his recital of telltale anti-Semitic provocations, Mearsheimer stood by his endorsement of the book. Holland duly published Mearsheimer’s response: “The blurb below is the one I wrote for The Wandering Who and I have no reason to amend it or embellish it, as it accurately reflects my view of the book.”

Mearsheimer positively blurbed a book that promotes Holocaust revisionism, argues that Hitler was justified in killing Jews, and considers anti-Semitism an appropriate reaction to Jewish behavior. When he was asked why he blurbed this book considering what appears to be explicit anti-Semitic tropes throughout, he merely reaffirmed his blurb, that the material was "fascinating and provocative."

"Yeah, this is not his argument."

Really? Coulda fooled me.

Mearsheimer's book isn't anti-Semitic bc he blurbed this other book. His book may be anti-Semitic bc it traffics in classical anti-Semitic tropes. Also, the fact that he blurbed this other book certainly indicates that he himself may be anti-Semitic. You're just reading the causality incorrectly.

when this thread got bumped i thought i might be about this, blogger IOZ, today, writing about the NYPD using anti-muslim "training" videos put together by a right-wing Clarion Fund:

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2012/01/to-be-or-maccabee.html

Having been raised in the Jewish faith, I retain a sentimental soft spot for the religion . . . if you can get over The Prayer for the State of Israel that's wormed its way into the service, the high holy day liturgies are really quite lovely . . . my long-lapsed Catholic father even enjoys them, in keeping with his dictum that he enjoys all religions carried out in languages he can't understand. Saturday mornings still recall for me pretty fond memories of preparing for my own Bar Mitzvah, and I do still celebrate a raucous Passover; you can't beat the Seder as a festival meal.

But good god, I hate Jews. I hate this Israel shit. It drives me absolutely batty. This preening, violent desire for a damned national identity, this ragged, atavistic, vicious rejection of exile, and the unforgivable, unspeakable treatment of the Holocaust not so much as a sorrow but as a collective embarrassment . . . oh, watch us pay lip service to the magnitude of our catastrophe while uttering a pugilistic "never again" like a skinny kid who got knocked down by a bully at recess. Well the bully got killed when he was run over by a drunk Russian, so let's pick on some even smaller kid, some little faggot, in a demonstration of compensatory toughness. Oh, and it helps that our big brother is the biggest kid in school.

Anyway, there is a majestically kooky symmetry to the whole thing: a bunch of Israeli nuts producing cryptoeugenic hit job videos which are in turn aired as continuing ed for a gang of New York cops who aspire to get out of the frisking random nigger business and in on the next bad action movie plot.

apologies for that last line, yeesh

this piece would be more convincing if all the anti-semites he found in american society weren't jews

"One would think this was categorically indefensible stuff."

But amazingly he defends it pretty handily. But he's clearly an anti-semite because there is no other explanation for blurbing a book which I have summarized in likely the most oversimplified fashion above. But he hasn't been tarred and feathered yet so clearly no one can anti-semitic anymore in this awful new post-The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy world. Also poor Josh Block.

ioz is great on some things and reallllllllly iffy on everything else

whoa

xxxp to that ioz blog post

Oh, how does he defend it? xxp

IOZ seems like a charming young man

Mearsheimer positively blurbed a book that promotes Holocaust revisionism, argues that Hitler was justified in killing Jews, and considers anti-Semitism an appropriate reaction to Jewish behavior.

Without knowing anything about Atzmon beyond what's in this thread I would like to express very great confidence that his book is

a) bad and wrong and depressing;
b) not accurately paraphrased by Commentary.

Mearsheimer vs Commentary-type orthodoxy is annoying and I frankly wish a pox on both houses.

Time and again, this strategy of deflecting and denying anti-Semitism has proved reliable. Following the recent controversy over claims by Josh Block, a former AIPAC spokesman, that left-wing outfits like Media Matters and the Center for American Progress are pushing the dual-loyalty canard with growing brashness, the commentator David Frum wondered “whether it is more unacceptable inside today’s liberal Washington to use the language of anti-Semitism—or to protest the language of anti-Semitism.” Frum got his answer when Block was relieved of his title at the progressive Truman National Security project for issuing group e-mails citing Jew-baiters in the left-wing media.

this is, as i understand it, not an accurate gloss of what happened!

Justifying Hitler is for amateurs! Rabbi Nachman Kahane (Meir's brother!) explains why Pharaoh had no choice but to enslave the Jews.

http://nachmankahana.com/?p=648#more-648

Paro was indeed evil, but in the name of truthful objectivity, one must agree that the Jews themselves could not “wash their hands in innocence”.... The situation became so chaotic that Paro had no choice but to convene his inner cabinet and enslave the Jews in order to prevent social and political unrest, and by then it was too late for the Jews to escape to Eretz Yisrael.

Fast forward 3000+ years to today. The social unrest, unemployment, animosity towards those who “have,” and the ostentatious lifestyle of very many Jews – it’s all there today in the US. As King Shlomo says in Kohelet, “There is nothing new under the sun”.

But it is still not too late for the Jews of America to escape. The clock on the wall is ticking ever faster, and when the guillotine of history begins to fall, no one will be able to alter the outcome.

Things are going to change drastically beginning in November. If Hussein Obama will be re-elected, they will come about quickly and dramatically; if another candidate will be elected the downhill change will come about but a bit less quickly.

If anything, I tend to see all of this less as manifestations of anti-Semitism than as a huge internecine battle between various visions of Judaism and Israeli politics. Atzmon sounds an ass but he also sounds like a wind-up artist gone too far.

Man so much shit gets projected onto Obama, I wonder if it ever fazes him at all?

... this rabbi thinks Obama is going to enslave rich Jewish people in America? Am I reading this correctly?

Without knowing anything about Atzmon beyond what's in this thread I would like to express very great confidence that his book is

a) bad and wrong and depressing;
b) not accurately paraphrased by Commentary.

Sixty-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz we should reclaim our history and ask why? Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their next door neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East, surely they had a chance to open a new page in their troubled history? If they genuinely planned to do so, as the early Zionists claimed, why did they fail? Why did America tighten its immigration laws amid the growing danger to European Jews? We should also ask for what purpose do the holocaust denial laws serve? What is the holocaust religion there to conceal? As long as we fail to ask questions, we will be subjected to Zionists and their Neocons agents' plots. We will continue killing in the name of Jewish suffering. We will maintain our complicity in Western imperialist crimes against humanity...

The Holocaust became the new Western religion. Unfortunately, it is the most sinister religion known to man. It is a license to kill, to flatten, no nuke, to wipe, to rape, to loot and to ethnically cleanse. It made vengeance and revenge into a Western value.

Not many people are aware that in March 1933, long before Hitler became the undisputed leader of Germany and began restricting the rights of German Jews, the American Jewish Congress announced a massive protest at Madison Square Gardens and called for an American boycott of German goods...

....Jewish texts tend to glaze over the fact that Hitler's March 28 1933, ordering a boycott against Jewish stores and goods, was an escalation in direct response to the declaration of war on Germany by the worldwide Jewish leadership.

Fagin is the ultimate plunderer, a child exploiter and usurer. Shylock is the blood-thirsty merchant. With Fagin and Shylock in mind Israeli barbarism and organ trafficking seem to be just other events in an endless hellish continuum.

xp I wouldn't treat anything a Kahane said as indicative of anything. They're crazy.

Sixty-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz we should reclaim our history and ask why? Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their next door neighbours?

HEY BLACK PEOPLE ISN'T IT TIME YOU ASKED YOURSELVES WHY SO MANY OF YOU GOT SOLD AS SLAVES??

I was at an ADL fund-raiser w/Foxman once. It was really weird and I kept worrying that they would suddenly notice the liberal goy in the back and turn on me.

Atzmon's probably crazy too. Good clarinet player though. (xxp)