Challenging anti-Zionist Jews -- What do they want?

geoffff

I am a very occasional lurker at the blog of British author, novelist, broadcaster and cultural commentator Norman Lebrecht, Slipped Disc.  For me the most interesting way of seeing things is from the inside; in this case classical music and related cultures from the standpoint of the artists themselves. However that is not the reason I first went to this site.

That was because I was looking for a place to comment on a strangely spine tingling and bizarre incident at the Royal Albert Hall last September when "pro-Palestinian" agitators, mainly it seems musicians and other artists, including inevitably a number of Jews, disrupted a performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at the BBC Proms forcing a break in the broadcast. I had already had plenty to say on the subject elsewhere but Mr Lebrecht kindly provided the perfect place and all the space I needed.  Really.

This  may well have been the first time ever that musicians sought to tear down a performance by other musicians in front of their audience for any reason, let alone because of their nationality or citizenship. I do believe these creeps set a precedent.

The political class to which these people belong has been neatly nailed by Dr Mike Lumish here and at Israel Thrives. These are Jews who "represent the height of Jewish dhimmitude. They believe as fervently as any "Palestinian" that Israel is a racist, imperialist, colonialist, apartheid, racist state that must make way for yet another Arab state in the region. This is a form of dhimmitude so complete that the "Palestinian narrative" of perfect victimhood has taken over their thinking on the subject completely. They know with a clarity that Yassir Arafat would have admired that the Jews are guilty and that Israel was born in sin. The "New Historians," such as Ian Pappe and an earlier version of Benny Morris, did much to advance this toxic and false notion among Jewish people throughout the world."

Not just Jewish people of course. The anti-Zionist left always, repeat always, has had a few Jews upfront for cover for their antisemitic campaigns. They have always done this. Sometimes their tame Jews lead the charge. For some reason difficult to fathom the left thinks this is a winning hand.This is important for them; and not just the left. But it is the left that incessantly protests that because they have on board some Jews they could not possibly be antisemitic. 

As usual they protest too much. They do this without the slightest hint of irony. They have no concept they are proving the point against them. 

Each time I hear the "Jew defence" I think well ... duh ...

Jews are often fractious and outspoken. It's part of the culture. They challenge one another and they challenge others and by doing that they mean no disrespect.  It is not a random spray of destiny that Israel has over fifty political parties but at the end of the day is always able to form a government. It is difficult to imagine how Israel could be any other way. At the beginning of the twentieth century a large majority of the world's Jews lived in countries where their basic human rights, especially expression, were suppressed or denied. Now the vast majority live in liberal democracies. This is why you will find all sorts of Jews saying all sorts of things.

This is because they are allowed.

Nobody would think that a virulently anti-American US citizen had something worthwhile to hear solely by virtue of his nationality. A rabid hater of Catholicism deserves no more attention just because she is a lapsed Catholic. Yet with the Jews there is a different dynamic at work. Mike linked a diagnosis from this writer. Oslo syndrome. Says it all.

Norman Lebrecht has savaged the decision by the Israeli interior minister to bar former Nazi, Gunter Grass, from entering Israel; a matter also discussed on this blog and at Israel Thrives. Fine. I can respect the opinion, also shared by Alan Dershowitz, although I'm not sure how the Israelis are expected to feel about being lectured from abroad on matters pertaining to the state's sovereignty and security while at war. But what caught my eye was a near perfect example of a thoroughly Dhimminised Jew who commented on the thread of the article.

Here is his world view, informed by the Grass affair, and here is the man, Dr. Martin Gak is a Philosophy PhD from The New School for Social Research currently leading the Centro de Estudios Filosoficos y Fenomenologicos Acanzados, Buenos Aires.

Surely we can't get better than this. An academic, in the southern hemisphere, as far away from those whose lives are in the balance as you can get without leaving the planet, who has swallowed so  completely the Palestinian and left narrative that it is simply beyond him to understand that to oppose Zionism, 64 years after the Jewish state was founded, can only mean to oppose Jews and to support the hysterical brutal war against them waged by Arab Muslims who are explicit in their desire to see the destruction of Israel and the Jews. They say so again and again. Why don't they listen?

It's the dishonesty of these people that disgusts me most. Universities everywhere, including Australia, have "anti-Zionists" on staff with tenure and these often include Jews. If you will the destruction of Israel, why not say so? Why mumble your words? If you think that advocating the stripping of free people of all their civil and political rights, for no other reason than they are Jews, or perhaps more to the point, not Muslims, then please explain how this is not the vilest form of antisemitism? Please tell us how the dismantling of a hugely successful and productive liberal democracy in the face of Islamic totalitarian imperialism will benefit humankind.

They must know that Israelis, like free people everywhere, will fight to the death before they see their precious state destroyed and replaced by an abomination like the regimes that oppress the people of Iran, Syria, Gaza and a dozen other places. So would Australians. So would many others I suggest. How can anti-Zionists, including Jews, honestly deny that they are  pro-war?

Posted at Slipped Disc and The Radical Secularist.

Cross posted at Israel Thrives.