hasbara

March 15, 2023

Protests Assist Israeli State Propaganda

Guest Post by Yoav Litvin

Benjamin Netanyahu, in collaboration with Kahanist Itamar Ben-Gvir and a cohort of other fascists, has been executing a judicial coup which guts so-called Israeli democratic institutions and threatens liberal reforms.

Many Israelis are infuriated. They’ve always viewed Israel as either part of Europe or the United States’ 51st state. “The only democracy in the Middle East”, a “villa in the jungle” with its fancy boutiques, exquisite espresso bars, glitzy shopping malls, wild/sexy nightlife and world-class wineries and restaurants. Most liberal Zionists see themselves closer to “civilized” white Christian Europeans rather than their “primitive” Brown Muslim Arab neighbors.

Liberal Zionism promotes the notion of a left-to-right spectrum within Israel. Yet the differences between the extremes are merely tactical and cosmetic, maintaining an illusion of a humane society with a healthy democratic discourse. “Left-wing” and “Liberal” Zionist parties engage in civil liberties for members of the privileged class yet dare not address the nature of Zionism, whose adherents have terrorized Indigenous Palestinians for over seven decades.

For liberal Zionists, without LGBTQ rights and buses on Saturday, Israel would simply become another Middle Eastern theocracy in which women are rendered inferior and prayer is mandatory in schools. In contrast, they see themselves as trailblazing feminists who believe women should have every right men have, like the right to enlist into military combat units and kill Palestinians. And what about Palestinians, you ask? It’s complicated, they respond.

The “Pogrom” and B’Tselem

As with every fledgling Israeli regime, the current government seeks to market itself to the Israeli public, distracting from its own corruptions and inadequacies by massacring Palestinians and stealing their resources. However, in contrast to recent administrations, Netanyahu and his cabal now unapologetically incite vigilante and mass civilian settler violence in addition to advocating for military incursions, mass arrests, bombings of innocent civilians, sieges and assassinations.

On the night of February 26-27, supposedly in response to the shooting of two Israeli settlers, hundreds of settlers rampaged through the Palestinian town of Huwara, near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, killing, torching and wounding.

Israeli liberal society was outraged. Hagai El-Ad, Executive Director of B’Tselem, the Israeli Human Rights Organization said in response:

“As a Jewish person, we know what a pogrom is. Because Jews have been on the receiving end of pogroms for too many years. Now, after what happened here on Sunday night, there are hundreds of Jewish settlers that know what a pogrom is not from the side of suffering under it but from the side that has committed that atrocity.”

By comparing the events in Huwara to a “pogrom”, a word closely linked to massacres of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, El-Ad continues B’Tselem’s unfortunate framing of Zionism as a Jewish project enforcing “Jewish supremacy”, rather than the correct identification of genocidal western settler colonialism and white supremacy.

It is common practice for Zionist propagandists to promote the anti-Semitic fallacy that Israel is a Jewish state which represents Judaism and thus all Jews. Spearheaded by Netanyahu in 2018, Israel’s The Nation State of the Jewish People law enshrines this canard as an addition to Israel’s Basic Laws, which operate as a stand-in for a non-existent Constitution, pursuant to Israel having never declared its borders thus enabling continuous theft of Palestinian land. The fallacy serves as the cornerstone of Zionist propaganda (aka Hasbara), galvanizing support for Israel’s settler colonialism and attack of anti-colonial resistance.

Clearly, Zionists would much rather engage with accusations of carrying out a “pogrom” than a “white supremacist settler rampage”, ironically despite the obvious white supremacist nature of the former. Deploying its police, military and settler brownshirts, Israel has always been engaged in settler violence aimed at expansionism and resource acquisition. In fact, Zionism is a racist and settler colonialist movement, which opportunistically coopts aspects of Judaism in an attempt to justify its criminal practices against the Palestinian people. Zionism is based on a distinctly secular outlook, which embraces aggression and expansion as an acceptable response to trauma and denounces the traditional Jewish pacifist approach of viewing hardship as divine punishment for sins. Zionist strategists manipulate the past traumas Jews have endured to gain support for aggressive criminal policies that disenfranchise and evict Palestinians.

Unfortunately, El-Ad’s comments are in line with this Zionist tradition. However, the framing of Zionism as “white”, not “Jewish” enables and strengthens the formation of coalitions between all those opposed to settler colonialism and white supremacy and hinders Zionist attempts at sabotage by hurling cynical accusations of “anti-Semitism”.

The Israeli Flag and Zionist Propaganda

The ultimate propaganda goal of any nationalistic apparatus is to fuse the perception of “self” with that of “nation” into a cohesive identity that is loyal to the ruling class. Indeed, one symbol has reemerged in nearly every image and video from these liberal Zionist protests throughout Israel and the West Bank – the Israeli flag. These protests have become a nationalistic chest-beating contest in which protesters compete with Israeli police, and politicians – Netanyahu and his fascistic brethren – over loyalty to Israel and Zionism. Hence, it’s clear these protests are no real threat to the apartheid regime. Yet, they could pose a threat to Netanyahu’s solidification of the Nation-State law within the Basic Laws as he seeks to extinguish the power of courts to change or remove it, along with protecting him from corruption charges.

Meanwhile, millions of Indigenous Palestinians in Israel, the Occupied Territories and diaspora are excluded from this reactionary discourse. For them, the Israeli flag represents their catastrophe and can never symbolize justice.

Indeed, Zionist propagandists have recognized the immense propaganda potential in these protests. They can claim Zionism is indisputable within Israel, and is fundamentally liberal, even democratic, as it supposedly allows a range of opinions and tolerates opposition.

Not only have these protests failed to threaten the Israeli regime, Netanyahu and his government have unapologetically and confidently deployed police tactics against protesters normally reserved for Palestinians and occasionally ultra-orthodox Jews. These tactics, including flash grenades and skunk water are small potatoes for Palestinians who are murdered every day by Israeli occupation forces, including women, children, elderly folk and members of the press.

Further, amidst worldwide condemnations, including within Israel’s political spectrum, some Israeli politicians have maintained their emboldened inflammatory rhetoric. Betzalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister with sweeping civilian powers in the West Bank said the town of Huwara “should be erased”, yet not by civilians, but by the military.

Alternative Protest

The horrific oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian people will not cease as a result of actions by the Israeli/Zionist public unless Palestinian demands for justice are supported first and foremost. As with the 2011 social justice protests, these recent demonstrations reflect discontent from a class of Israeli society afraid to lose certain privileges. Inevitably, Palestinians will continue to suffer apartheid and genocide until the international community intervenes.

By contrast, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement has wisely adopted a strict anti-Zionist, anti-racist platform grounded in human rights. Built on clear understanding of oppressive systems, intersectional resistance and the path to liberation, BDS incorporates lessons of past anti-colonial movements, dismantling fictitious, divisive political narratives of white supremacy, imperialism, racism and patriarchy. The recognition that various oppressed peoples have common enemies serves to reinforce solidarity and cooperation between them, enhancing the growth and success of principled grassroots movements worldwide.

Yoav Litvin is a Doctor of Psychology/ Behavioral Neuroscience. For more info, please visit yoavlitvin.com/about/

January 11, 2020

Zionism and ‘Anti-Semitism’: A Chronicle of a Smear Foretold

With the 2020 Presidential elections fast approaching, the progressive campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is gaining traction. Several interest groups have grown increasingly
anxious of Sanders’ Democratic Socialist agenda, including ruling class Republicans, corporate Democrats and their joint ally – Zionists, both Christian and Jewish.

Sanders and BDS

The ongoing ‘anti-Semitism’ smear of Sanders and his grassroots following has been waged openly at least since last February, regardless of the Senator’s Jewishness and outspoken support for Israel.

The smear has included at its core an attack on his backers Congresswomen Ilhan Omar (MN), Rashida Tlaib (MI) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) as well as activist Linda Sarsour.

The fact these are all women of color, two of them Palestinian, is far from coincidental; Zionism is a white supremacist, settler colonialist project, which is threatened by intersectional alliances disrupting Israel’s divide and rule tactics.

In response to the escalating smear, Sanders penned an editorial outlining his stance on anti-Semitism, Israel and Judaism, which predictably failed to deter the smearers. However, his liberal Zionism and endorsement of the immoral and politically unfeasible apartheid two-state “solution” render him susceptible to ongoing assaults as he repeats Zionist propaganda talking points.

Yet these attacks on Sanders and his followers conceal a campaign in the making for some time; a Zionist strategy devoted to targeting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, as explicitly stated more than 10 years ago at the ‘Global Forum for combating Antisemitism’ and subsequently by ‘The Reut Institute’.

Although not a BDS supporter himself, Sanders has defended the right to engage in the movement and is clearly the best candidate on Palestine in 2020.

Thus, Sanders is targeted relentlessly by Zionist propaganda.

Zionist propaganda fallacies

Also known as ‘hasbara’, Zionist propaganda relies on several fallacies.

First and foremost, a conflation of Zionism with Judaism serves to deflect criticism of Zionist expansionist apartheid policies by means of repeated cycles of aggression and trauma and the agency of imperial enablers, whilst obfuscating the Nakba and Palestinian demands for equality and justice for those living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, within Israel’s 1948 borders, and refugees in the diaspora, who are guaranteed full right of return under international law.

This anti-Semitic conflation is reactionary, promoting right wing politics within the left.

The deliberately concocted manifest destiny connection between Zionism and Judaism thwarts resistance by deeming critique of Zionism and Israeli policies towards Palestinians as an attack on all Jews, ie anti-Semitic. Further, it fragments anti-colonial resistance by reframing a political struggle over land and resources between an occupying force and an occupied people as a “conflict” between two relatively equal parties.

This conflation promotes further tactical, Zionist appropriation and exceptionalization of Jewish victimhood and suffering. Israeli hasbara frames the Nazi Holocaust as a particularly savage genocide in history, which entitles its primary targets – Jews – with a special status among victims. In line with this facade, as exceptional victims, Jews deserve privileges, discounts and allowances. As the constructed “Jewish state”, Israel has been and continues to be the beneficiary of these favors and special relationships, which regularly come at the expense of Indigenous Palestinians. Notably, Zionist revisionism often ignores and diminishes Nazi crimes against other oppressed groups, such as communists and socialists, Roma, disabled people, LGBTQI, and African-Germans.

Zionist hasbara attempts to tarnish anti-colonial anti-Zionism by duplicitously merging it with modern white supremacist anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish religious bigotry, recasting principled leftist resistance to Zionist criminality as part of an ancient and exceptional form of human racism, which supposedly afflicts both left and right political spheres. This essentially anti-Semitic maneuver serves to whitewash Israeli criminality and ongoing collaborations with far-right governments worldwide and attack those who call them out, such as Representative Ilhan Omar and Senator Bernie Sanders.

Moreover, Zionist historical revisionism facilitates an erroneous presentation of Israel as a ‘normal’ democracy facilitating a left-to-right political milieu, instead of accurately acknowledging the entirety of the Zionist movement, including its “liberal” variety, as inherently reactionary, settler colonialist and genocidal.

Settler colonial projects generally rely on presentation of the desired territory as ’empty land’, along with dehumanization of existing inhabitants as barbarians undeserving of their land, who can thus be dispossessed without qualms in favor of a ‘villa in the jungle’. There is nothing ‘exceptional’ about Israel’s posture which has been marketed by other western settler colonial endeavors to sanitize their own land grabs, slaughter and denial of rights to Indigenous peoples as well as rejection of non-white refugees.

The Liberal flank of Zionism functions to absolve the reactionary essence of the movement and obscure its motivations – expansionism and apartheid. Dishonestly, it presents Zionism as compatible with democratic and progressive values and human rights, fictitiously possessing a true desire for peace, justice and complete integration into the Middle East.

All roads lead to Trump

The manufactured ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign waged against Sanders’ progressive camp began with liberal Zionist instigators in American media and was enthusiastically picked up by corporate Democrats and far-right wingers in Israel and the US, including Donald Trump himself (see here from recent campaign rally).

Significantly, the smear of Rep. Omar and parts of the left as ‘anti-Semitic’ is facilitated by the approval of the flawed and controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which adopts Zionist talking points regarding Israel as a ‘Jewish state’ and which was presaged again as strategic ‘lawfare’ in the Global Policy Forum in 2009.

The scapegoating of Omar by some in the mainstream media and prominent members of her own party provided a convenient backdrop for Trump to sign an unconstitutional Executive Order following his vicious anti-Semitic tirade at the Israeli-American Council National Summit.

This ongoing campaign against Omar, involving a host of dubious sources and social media accounts, has been adopted by key representatives of the Israeli government, such as UN ambassador Danny Danon. Notably, the Zionist portrayal of Omar as an anti-Semite shields real anti-Semites from accountability.

Israel’s racist policies complement Trump’s own xenophobic ambitions, as expressed by his senior policy adviser arch-Zionist Islamophobe Stephen Miller. Consistently, Congresswoman Omar has vocally opposed Stephen Miller’s white supremacy, fomenting further duplicitous accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’.

Defeating the smear

The fallacious ‘anti-Semitism’ accusations lobbed at those criticizing Zionist policies can be attacked successfully by avoiding Zionist propaganda traps and embracing the Palestinian, anti-racist call for BDS, a call which melds co-resistance and anti-colonialism, rejecting political Zionism.

To achieve justice, the focus on Zionist criminality and Israel’s shared settler colonial values and racist behaviors with other western settler colonial projects must persist. And the only relevant choice remains – are you a Zionist or an anti-Zionist? As veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote: “If you remain a Zionist, you can no longer be of the left; if you’re of the left, you can no longer be a Zionist.”

All those who claim to care about Palestinians, including liberal Jews and associated media outlets and organizations who avoid implicating Zionism or directly supporting BDS cannot continue to claim left-wing universalist values while simultaneously serving as the “liberal propaganda wing of the apartheid Zionist regime.

Recognizing Zionism as inherently reactionary is not a “purity test” aimed at excluding activists as recently claimed by Ran Greenstein in a piece for the liberal Zionist 972 Magazine. Rather, it is a necessary first step in attacking duplicitous ‘anti-Semitism’ smears by identifying their tactical origins and impact, rejecting rightwing sabotage of a principled struggle for rights and justice.

The onus of change and accountability is on the oppressor, not for the oppressed to endure. On the road to liberation, only a consistent and unapologetic anti-Zionist framework is effective and congruent with leftist, anti-racist values.

Analysis by Yoav Litvin – Source

May 11, 2019May 11, 2019

The Zionist 1-2 Propaganda Punch

Article by Yoav Litvin

Another round of Israeli violence inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza resulted in devastating consequences: twenty seven dead, including Amani al-Madhoun, a young woman in her final month of pregnancy, as well as 3-month-old infant Maria al-Ghazali and 12-year-old Abd al-Rahman Abu al-Jadyan, both killed alongside their parents.

The flare up comes as Palestinians are routinely sniped at by Israeli military while they demonstrate within their open-air prison, subjected to ever-worsening misery and restrictions – medical, material, economic, environmental, transportation and otherwise.

Since US President Donald Trump’s ascendency to the White House, Israel has received unprecedented US backing, including the transfer of the American embassy to Jerusalem and Trump’s seal of approval for the illegal annexation of the Golan Heights.

Unsurprisingly, in response to the recent Israeli aggression, Trump reaffirmed his unwavering support for Israeli violence characteristically victim-blaming Palestinians on Twitter:

“….To the Gazan people — these terrorist acts against Israel will bring you nothing but more misery. END the violence and work towards peace – it can happen!”

Meanwhile, in a ludicrous, knee-jerk response to Hamas’s retaliatory missile firing, Katrina Pierson, a Trump 2020 senior campaign advisor, tweeted a fake video of missiles fired in 2015 in Ukraine with an accusatory message toward progressive Democrat and Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar.

The ‘special relationship’ between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the most recent expression of American Imperial support for Zionist settler colonialism and genocide. The only novelty of the contemporary version is its unabashed, grotesque racism and corruption.

This white supremacist alliance benefits both parties: the US maintains an imperial foothold in the Middle East, smooth cycling of taxpayer money through Israeli military aid back to the US ruling class and a loyal consumer of its goods, while Israel illegally continues to colonize Palestine as well as brutalize and steal valuable resources from its Indigenous population with impunity courtesy of its American benefactor.

In order to dismantle this colonizing coalition for the benefit of all victims of white supremacy, including Jews and Palestinians, it is crucial to understand the propaganda enabling it.

Zionist fallacies

Zionist propaganda depends on the promulgation of two major fallacies. First, it ahistorically equates Zionism and Judaism as interconnected since biblical days, instead of correctly presenting Zionism as a modern European movement with Christian roots. This false equation serves to foil resistance by regarding any criticism of Israeli policies towards Palestinians as an affront on all Jews, i.e. anti-Semitic. Further, it reframes a settler colonialist movement which oppresses an Indigenous population as an unsolvable religious “conflict” among two relatively equal parties.

Second, Zionists claim and appropriate Jewish victimhood and suffering, presenting them as exceptional. Modern white supremacist anti-Semitism is conflated with anti-Jewish religious bigotry and portrayed as an ancient form of human racism, which supposedly afflicts both left and right political spheres. This essentially anti-Semitic manoeuvre serves to whitewash Zionist criminality and its collaboration with right-wing anti-Semitic forces and attack those who call it out, such as Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar.

Zionist historical revisionism enables an erroneous presentation of Israel as accommodating a left-to-right political milieu, instead of accurately recognizing the entirety of Zionism, including its “liberal” sort, as inherently reactionary, settler colonial and genocidal.

Zionist revisionism

Zionists have weaponized the exceptionalisation of Jewish victimhood in concert with the false and manifestly anti-Semitic equation between Zionism and Judaism as an extremely effective one-two punch against critique of Israeli criminality.

Israeli propaganda frames the Nazi Holocaust as a particularly savage genocide in history, which entitles its primary targets – Jews – with a special status among victims. According to this rationale, as exceptional victims, Jews deserve certain privileges, discounts and allowances. Notably, Zionist revisionism often omits and devalues Nazi crimes against other groups, such as communists and socialists, Roma, disabled individuals, LGBTQI, and African-Germans.

As the supposed “Jewish state”, Israel has been the beneficiary of these favors and special relationships, which always come at the expense of Palestinians.

In addition, the Nazi Holocaust facilitated the Zionist project by vitalising Jewish immigration to Palestine, thus providing manpower to fight the British mandate and the Palestinian “demographic threat”.

The recently observed Israeli ‘holidays’ of Yom hashoah (Holocaust remembrance day) and Yom hazikaron (Memorial Day for fallen Israeli soldiers), well illustrate the Zionist attempt to link and justify Israeli colonization, militarism and violence with reference to past anti-Semitism. Today, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu continues to exploit and revise the memory of the Holocaust for propaganda purposes.

The Holocaust is one example of genocide carried out by white supremacists. The long list includes, among others, genocide of Indigenous groups and African slaves in the Americas, Aboriginal people in Australia, Belgium’s atrocities in the Congo, and the ongoing genocide of Palestinians at the hand of Zionists. None of these victims have received appropriate recognition or compensation for their trauma and oppression. What’s more, while Israel uses Holocaust survivors as propaganda tools, it has a history of abandoning them later in life.

Palestine awareness week at Stanford University – a case study

Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) at Stanford recently invited the political cartoonist Eli Valley to speak as part of Palestine Awareness Week (May 6 – 10) to be held on campus.

Valley’s witty cartoons, which have been featured in The Nation, The Village Voice, The Daily Beast and The Guardian, among other outlets, are effective in addressing the differences between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism as well as in calling out the hypocrisies of American Jewish and non-Jewish Zionists and their role in perpetuating the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The event was advertised on fliers displaying Valley’s cartoons.

The images created an uproar among the Zionist community at Stanford. One of the students – Ari Hoffman – addressed these concerns in a passionate piece published in The Stanford Daily, in which he decried Valley’s cartoons as reminiscent of Nazi propaganda. At its conclusion, Hoffman claimed:

The cost of solidarity must never be so steep as to be bought with a hateful coin… Days ago, many of us mourned the murder of six million Jews. Just last week, at a Chabad in Poway, a life and a hand were blown away solely because Jewish blood flowed through them. Over 700 hundred missiles were launched by Palestinian terrorists at Israeli civilian centers last weekend, killing four Israelis. The Jewish vacation from history is over before it began. It is open season on the Jews, in word and deed. Everything is possible and permissible. Again.

And there you have it. Equating Zionism and Judaism in the above mentioned anti-Semitic propaganda manoeuvre, Hoffman deems Valley’s anti-Zionist cartoons as anti-Semitic, even Nazi-like, and utilizes the propagandist idea of exceptional Jewish victimhood to marginalize and villainize Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression, who are meant to be the primary focus of Palestine awareness week at Stanford.

Exceptionality versus intersectionality

Donald Trump has learned from fascistic movements, including Zionism. He effectively energizes his racist base with revisionist tales of exceptional American victimhood, which supersede, marginalize and propagate the oppression and targeting of immigrants, Indigenous people, Black and Brown groups, Muslims, Jews, LGBTQI and others.

In line with Umberto Eco’s seminal characterization of fourteen common fascistic attributes, Trump and Netanyahu present “others” as both strong and weak, thus perpetuating their own victimhood while promoting a vision of strength. This contradiction points to the irrationality and ultimate unsustainability of Zionist and imperial rhetoric. Eco wrote:

“By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”

The “special relationship” between Trump and Netanyahu perpetuates the age-old alliance between anti-Semitic forces and Zionism. Both Trump and Netanyahu use exceptionality of victimhood as a cudgel to beat down progressive agendas and opponents, while promoting their capitalist and expansionist goals.

In contrast, it is evident that an intersectional approach between marginalized groups, which galvanizes lessons of past anti-colonial movements and disregards hierarchies of oppression can disentangle the revisionist narratives of white supremacy, imperialism, and patriarchy, including attempts to exceptionalize victimhood. An acknowledgement of mutual oppressors reinforces solidarity and assists in principled grassroots movements, such as the Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

The recent questioning of the US-Israeli “special relationship” by progressive Democratic lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, as well as critique of Netanyahu by Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, among others, are welcome steps towards the ultimate dismantlement of this colonizing coalition. Regardless, a consistent refusal to quantify suffering and victimhood as part of propaganda which creates hierarchy and thus divides groups oppressed by white supremacy is essential for effectively combating all forms of oppression, en route toward a society promoting equality and justice for all, both in the US and Israel/Palestine.

April 11, 2019April 12, 2019

To be or not to be a Zionist?

Article by Yoav Litvin

Jewish American progressives are falling for the oldest trick in the Zionist playbook: the conflation of Zionism with Judaism. The ultimate victims of this propaganda ploy are always Palestinians.

Sheldon’s Party

Last Sunday, Sheldon Adelson’s Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) welcomed President of the United States, serial sexual harasser and inspiration to murderous white supremacists worldwide – Donald Trump – as a god.

Members of the audience brandished “Trump”-embroidered Kippahs, enthusiastically clapped at the President’s overt incitement against Rep. Ilhan Omar and swallowed whole his anti-Semitic reference to Benjamin Netanyahu as “your Prime Minister” – a clear suggestion of dual loyalty.

In an act comparable to the ancient Israelites’ worshipping of the Golden Calf, Senator Norm Coleman, who once called Trump: “A bigot. A misogynist. A fraud. A bully,” led a Passover Dayenu chant in which he replaced “God” with “Trump”.

Moses, where art thou?

Still, a drama unfolded during Trump’s speech. Ten members of If Not Now, a nonviolent American Jewish organization aimed at ending US support for the 1967 Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, stood up and chanted in protest: “Jews are here to say, occupation is a plague.”

A press release soon followed:

10 young American Jews disrupted Trump’s speech at the National Jewish Republican Coalition (RJC) Pro-Israel Rally at the Venetian Ballroom in Las Vegas. As soon as Trump began to speak, they stood up and chanted, “Jews are here to say Occupation is a plague. Jews are here to say white nationalism is a plague,” a reference to the 10 plagues remembered in the upcoming Jewish holiday of Passover. They then sang the Hebrew song Olam Chesed Yibaneh, “We Will Build This World With Love” as they were removed from the auditorium.

The Twitterati ask the wrong questions

Progressive American Jewish Twitter was abuzz about Sheldon’s party and If Not Now’s intervention. Several examples:

Yonah Lieberman (@YonahLieberman): Going after both #Birthright and Trump in 24 hours has got the Jewish right using Nazi rhetoric to try and intimidate the new Jewish Future.

Talia Lavin (@chick_in_kiev): there [sic] is nothing as contemptible to me as a jewish [sic] fascist. Nothing as myopic, as malleable, as cruel and shosrtsighted [sic]

Rafael Shimunov (@RafaelShimunov): Between Sheldon Adelson putting Trump’s name on his kippa [sic], and the @RJC replacing God with Trump in one our holiest prayers as Jews, Republican Jews have officially ______________?

The responses to Shimunov’s quiz included: sold out, Gone meshugganah and embraced extremism, among others.

However, these progressive American Jews do not implicate the real culprit.

In spite of its name and best efforts, the RJC is not a Jewish organization, but a Zionist one. Its members are not “the Jewish right” or “Jewish fascists”, but simply “Zionists”.

Only Zionists would worship an anti-Semite like Trump in return for unconditional support of Israeli apartheid, much like the vast majority of Zionist Israelis who adore Trump within the supposed “Jewish state” itself.

It is not Republican Jews who have “sold out” or have suddenly “embraced extremism”, but Zionists since the very inception of the movement, well before the establishment of the state of Israel and until today. In logical confluence, Neo-Nazis have been inspired by Israel’s policies and the term “white Zionism” has been used to describe the emerging “alt-right” neo-fascistic movement, the very one Trump spearheads.

Unsurprisingly, Ben Shapiro, a Zionist Republican who also happens to be Jewish, has inspired far-right Islamophobes, including the Quebec mosque shooter Alexandre Bissonnette.

Yet crucially, Zionist collaboration with anti-Semites and white supremacists crosses the aisle. For it was a Democrat, liberal Zionist Jew – Batya Ungar-Sargon of The Forward – who instigated the fallacious smear campaign against Rep. Ilhan Omar which she then used as a marketing tool to fundraise under the guise of a Jewish vanguard against anti-Semitism.

Ungar-Sargon’s smear was picked up by establishment Democrats, overtly racist Republican Zionists, the President’s son and Trump himself numerous times, including as a means to mock Rep. Ilhan Omar at the Sheldon Party.

The UK as a case study

The conflation of Zionism with Judaism serves to distract from the plight of Palestinians by focusing on a manufactured crisis within the “Jewish community”, downplaying the role of empire and other capitalist supporters of the Zionist project. The distinction between “Jewish” and “Zionist” here is crucial, and one only needs to glance across the pond at the United Kingdom to learn why.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has consistently shown solidarity with Palestinians and conveyed criticism toward Israeli apartheid in tune with socialist ideals, has been hypocritically vilified by Zionists for supposedly tolerating and even inspiring “anti-Semitism” within the Labour Party.

The campaign against Corbyn relies on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) highly controversial and flawed definition of anti-Semitism which in its examples, erroneously and opportunistically conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

What’s more, Jewish party members who support Corbyn and the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, such as Jackie Walker, have been abused, suspended and even expelled. Meanwhile, Ella Rose, who was featured in the Al Jazeera documentary ‘The Lobby’ threatening Jackie Walker with physical violence is still a member and was recently elected by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) as its new “Network officer”.

Unsurprisingly, the Zionist smear campaigns in the UK against politicians and activists who convey support for Palestinians and BDS and resist Zionist settler colonialism, apartheid and genocide show a striking resemblance to the recent defamation of Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and members of the women’s march and as part of a larger effort against Senator Bernie Sanders.

Much like Ungar-Sargon’s The Forward claim of progressive Judaism yet real loyalty to Zionism, the UK Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) is supposedly affiliated with the UK Labour party supporting “labour values”, yet it is truly a liberal Zionist organization.

It does not require its members to be either Jewish or from the Labour Party, yet has recently passed a no confidence motion of Jeremy Corbyn based on discredited charges of “anti-Semitism”.

The Question

The focus must remain on Zionist criminality. And the only relevant dilemma for progressive American Jews remains – are you a Zionist or an anti-Zionist? As veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy recently wrote: “If you remain a Zionist, you can no longer be of the left; if you’re of the left, you can no longer be a Zionist.”

All those who claim to care about Palestinians, including progressive Jews and organizations such as If Not Now who in their broad umbrella avoid implicating Zionism or directly supporting BDS cannot continue to claim left wing universalist values while simultaneously serving as the “liberal” wing of the apartheid Zionist regime.

Only a consistent and unapologetic anti-Zionist framework is effective and congruent with leftist values.

Source

Cover art by Banksy, Bethlehem, Palestine

Hasbaroid

Hasbaroid, he was a hasbaroid
Scummier than you and me
Hasbaroid, for a hasbaroid
Palestinians must not be free.

Hasbaroid, he was a hasbaroid,
One talking point too many
Hasbaroid, for a hasbaroid
Palestinians must not be free.

And he bored us a lot
and he had a job
of selling lies for Israel
to cover up its crimes.

He was a hasbaroid

Hasbaroid, he was a hasbaroid,
his friends were unaware,
hasbaroid, he was a hasbaroid,
nobody even cared,

Hasbaroid, he was a hasbaroid,
One talking point too many
Hasbaroid, for a hasbaroid
Palestinians must not be free.

and he bored us a lot
and he had a job
of selling lies for Israel
to cover up its crimes.

He was a hasbaroid
He was a hasbaroid

June 2015
(Apologies to Devo)

Tag: hasbara