It's Amazing How Speaking and Thinking Like an Anti-Semite Makes You Into an Anti-Semite
It's not exactly news that the most virulent anti-Semitic tropes are now heard regularly in the context of anti-Zionism. We're talking about the kinds of things that have really inspired massacres - accusations of baby-killing, well-poisoning, dual loyalty, etc. If these accusations were true, we would still insist that they were springing from something other than rational reflection (as philosopher Slavoj Zizek has pointed out, even if Jews had been controlling the banks in Germany, the role of the Final Solution in the Nazi project would still have been pathological). But the fact that these "anti-Zionist" accusations aren't true - but are being made anyway - makes even that analysis totally unnecessary. When you accuse the Jewish state of historically Jewish crimes and you happen to be mistaken, there's something else going on:
An article in a leading Norwegian newspaper last weekend lambasted Israel and Judaism and said Israel has lost its right to exist in its present form. Entitled "God's chosen people," the article by author Jostein Gaarder in Aftenposten is raising a storm in Norway. Gaarder, author of the book "Sophie's World," links the Israel Defense Forces' acts in Lebanon to Jewish history and foresees the coming dismantling of the state as it exists today, with the Jews becoming refugees...
The article compares Israel's government, the Afghan Taliban regime and South African apartheid, and states, "We no longer recognize the State of Israel" and "the State of Israel in its current form is history... We call child murderers 'child murderers,' and will never accept that they have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages," Gaarder writes. "Shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on every terrorist strike against civilians, be it carried out by Hamas, Hezbollah or the State of Israel!"
Before you deluge us with emails that we're trying to demonize this committed human rights activist as an anti-Semite just because he's criticizing Israel, answer this: why is he making these particular mistakes? If he was randomly making up crimes, how did he stumble upon and publish these particular accusations? There are by definition an infinite number of wild untruths that anyone can invent - why is it that anti-Zionists keep targeting the Jewish State with these quintessentially anti-Semitic accusations?
An article in a leading Norwegian newspaper last weekend lambasted Israel and Judaism and said Israel has lost its right to exist in its present form. Entitled "God's chosen people," the article by author Jostein Gaarder in Aftenposten is raising a storm in Norway. Gaarder, author of the book "Sophie's World," links the Israel Defense Forces' acts in Lebanon to Jewish history and foresees the coming dismantling of the state as it exists today, with the Jews becoming refugees...
The article compares Israel's government, the Afghan Taliban regime and South African apartheid, and states, "We no longer recognize the State of Israel" and "the State of Israel in its current form is history... We call child murderers 'child murderers,' and will never accept that they have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages," Gaarder writes. "Shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on every terrorist strike against civilians, be it carried out by Hamas, Hezbollah or the State of Israel!"
Before you deluge us with emails that we're trying to demonize this committed human rights activist as an anti-Semite just because he's criticizing Israel, answer this: why is he making these particular mistakes? If he was randomly making up crimes, how did he stumble upon and publish these particular accusations? There are by definition an infinite number of wild untruths that anyone can invent - why is it that anti-Zionists keep targeting the Jewish State with these quintessentially anti-Semitic accusations?
