You equate fighting (with inevitable, but small civilian casualties) anti-semitic Holocaust-denying fascist Islamist terrorists (who were originally created by a Nazi that helped organise the Holocaust) with the original Holocaust of 6 million Jews, 100,000s Roma, and millions of Slavs?

Latuff is an anti-semite ppl. I distinctly remember a cartoon by him in which a stereotypical Jew was pulling the strings on the globe and on puppets of presidents. Gee... what does that remind me of? Nazi propaganda?

Ahmed, Hamas was founded in 1988. Which members of the Nazi party helped in this process?

People generally consider the Palestinian movement to be the PLO. The PLO since about 1969 has been run by Fatah (or whatever), of which Arafat was the leader. Fatah was created out of the remnents of the Arab Higher Committee. This was led by a mufti whose name is hard to remember, that organised pogroms against Jews in the 20s and 30s, first as a British puppet, then from the 30s as a Nazi agent. He organised the revolt in 1936, paid for with Nazi money, created with Nazi arms. During the war Mussolini proudly welcomed him to Italy and he proceeded to go to Nazi Germany and meet with Hitler. He inspected concentration camps and said he was pleased with their work. Hitler assured him that he would invade the Arab world to deal with the Jews, and the mufti would be made ruler of the Arab world, and upon the Nazi invasion the mufti would unleash the operations against the Jews that he had prepared. The mufti set up and recruited 10,000s volunteers for Bosnian Islamist SS units that massacred Jews, Serbs, and other civilians throughout Europe. Some of them also fought at Stalingrad. In 1941 the mufti organised a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq that was put down by the British. He continued to lead the Palestinian movement after the war. Arafat has described himself as his 'loyal soldier'.

As for Hamas, they repeat the usual Nazi propaganda about how Jews started the World Wars to make money, Protocols of Zion crap, etc.

The 'security fence' has nothing to do with security and everything to do with expansionism and ethnic cleansing. Gaza and the West Bank will become the world's largest prisons (except N Korea?), the West Bank will be cantonised by the remaining settlement blocks and their interconnecting israeli(jewish?)-only roads.

Comparing this to a concentration camp is a valid comparison. Israeli officials talk openly of 'the palestinian problem', an awful phrase reminiscent of Hitler's 'jewish problem'. The Israeli operation in Rafah that launched after the murders of Tom Hurndall, Rachael Corrie and James Miller was called 'Operation Final Solution'. Methinks the Israeli authorities know what they're up to even if their apologists don't.

People keep slandering Latuff as an anti-semite, a term so over-used it is disrespectful to those who genuinely suffer from that particular kind of xenophobia. If Latuff genuinely drew an anti-semitic cartoon then find it, post it here and lets see what he has to say for himself. Does a racial caricature equal racial racism? What about the cartoons of Bush as a cowboy in all the papers? I personally find such stereotyping counterproductive and oversimplified . . . is it racist? Let the accuser produce Latuff's cartoon and we'll see.

Tom reckons that "The 'security fence' has nothing to do with security and everything to do with expansionism and ethnic cleansing."

The security fence is about security AND expansionism AND ethnic cleansing.

It has effectively defended against vicious ARAB expansionism and ARAB ethnic cleansing of Jews in Israel. It's saved countless Palestinian and Israeli lives.

The fence isn't intended to be permanent - the moment the Palestinian leaders are willing to abandon their desire to exterminate every last Israeli, and are willing to negotiate as equals, rather than demand the ridiculous and refuse compromise, it can be removed.

The originator of the Palestinian love of Naziism was Haj Amin al-Husseini, who Arafat has falsely claimed was his uncle. Whether they have blood ties or not, Arafat venerated him. Husseini was given a personal guided tour of Auschwitz by Heinrich Himmler. Testimony at Nuremberg and subsequent trials stated that Husseini upbraided the Nazi leadership that the extermination of the Jews was not proceeding fast enough, although he was keen to bigger, more efficient extermination camps built in the Middle East - a policy that Arafat and his cohorts hold dear to this day.

"The originator of the Palestinian love of Naziism..."

To say Palestinians are in love for Nazism is similar to arguments of Nazi-era anti-Semites who said that Jews were in love for money. Just another Zionist excuse for killing civilians "by accident" during raids in high populated areas. Can we take seriously someone who start an statement with "The originator of the Palestinian love of Naziism..."?

Some questions are important when discussing Palestinian affairs:

1 - Is Tel Aviv or Haifa occupied by Palestinian troops?
2 - Are there Jewish stone-thrower kids being shot to death by heavly armed Palestinian soldiers and tanks?
3 - Are there Palestinian jets and helicopters firing missiles against urban areas in Tel Aviv or Haifa?

Ask yourself who is the occupier and who is the occupied. Then you are ready to properly answer those pathetic Zionists and their clichés...

Arabs are Semites too, which you would know if you were really an Arab, "Ahmed".

By the way, those "inevitable, but small civilian casualties" you casually speak of presently stand at between 8,893 and 10,743 as I write this:

 http://iraqbodycount.net/

Bet it wouldn't seem so "inevitable" or "small" if it was YOUR family being cluster-bombed.

1 - Is Tel Aviv or Haifa occupied by Palestinian troops?

If the Palestinians could, as they keep declaring in their demonstrations, they would return to Jaffa and Haifa and slaughter the Jews

2 - Are there Jewish stone-thrower kids being shot to death by heavly armed Palestinian soldiers and tanks?

You don't need to throw stones in order to die by a Palestinians. Just be a Jew and enter one of their villiages and you'll get lynched and your body will be dragged on the streets by the croweds. Other ways of increasing your chances of dying by a Palestnian is frequently riding buses in Israel. Many Israeli children were murdered by Palestnians in this Intifida or in previous

3 - Are there Palestinian jets and helicopters firing missiles against urban areas in Tel Aviv or Haifa?

If they only could, they would. Tel-Aviv and Haifa were tergets of missiles in several wars, as were many other Israeli kibuttzim, towns and cities. Besides, suicide bombers are making enough death and carnage, more than most missiles.

And for all the commenters - just know - Arabs nations never hesitated to attack and bomb civilians (their enemies and their own) per se - as a mean of getting their to their aim. There is no reason to believe that when the Palestinians will get a series weapon they will hasitate to use it against Israel.

And that drawing is ugly.

tom your equation of the israeli's actions with the nazis means that either you no nothing of what the israelis do or you no nothing about what the nazis did. I thin the second option is obviously correct. do you think in auschwitz you could have gone to demonstrate? the fact that you think racially stereotyping jews is as harmless as presenting bush as a cowboy says a lot.

Still no sign of Latuff's mythical antisemitic cartoon then?

"your equation of the israeli's actions with the nazis"

Nope. I compared Israel's collective punishment of the palestinian civilian population with a concentration camp. The British invented the concentration camp incidentally, and operated them in Kenya in the 50's after the Nazis were defeated. This is not equating Israel with the Nazis per se any more than any other agressive expansionist power. I did however compare Israeli RHETOTRIC with the Nazis, which is a different comparison.

"the fact that you think racially stereotyping jews is as harmless as presenting bush as a cowboy says a lot"

I didn't say its harmless, I quote myself - "I personally find such stereotyping counterproductive and oversimplified . . . is it racist? Let the accuser produce Latuff's cartoon and we'll see."

LETS SEE THE CARTOON THEN

But hey, we can't expect Israeli apologists to actually engage with the argument can we.



And 'beineix', I think you'll find you're a blatant anti-semite: "vicious ARAB expansionism and ARAB ethnic cleansing" [Arabs are semites too]. Presumably if I repeated this sentance back to you with 'jew' substituted for 'arab', you would rightly label me anti-semitic. But of course I'm not anti-semitic, xenophobia of all kinds is reprehensible and there is no heirarchy i.e. slandering Jews is no better or worse than slandering Muslims. Why do Israeli apologists find the concept of universal human rights so difficult? Oh yeah, because they have an absolute right to persecute the occupants of 'their' land.

Israel is the occupier, the palestinian people occupied. A very small percentage of the Palestinian population engages in crimes against humanity (suicide bombings) which in no way justifies the continued occupation and oppression of the civilian population. In case you haven't noticed, the occupation predates the suicide bombings, and the occupation has not stopped suicide bombings - so end the occupation. If the Wall is for security - BUILD IT ON THE GREEN LINE and tell the settlers to leave their stolen land. Currently thousands of Palestinians are cut off from Palestine but can walk to Israel! so much for security!

Claiming the brutal occupation is to fight terrorism is a classic inversion of the causal order - Hitler claimed he annexxed the Sudetenland to 'fight terrorists', the Russians faked a terrorist attack which justified their 'anti-terror' mass slaughter in Chechnya, somehow invading Iraq became part of the 'war on terror', though nobody (including Colin Powell) is sure how.

Claiming the Israeli occupation is to fight terrorism is like saying Germany invade France in WWII to fight la resistance. Absurd. The suicide bombings in palestine are much more clearly a human reaction to the murder of hope than a perculiarly islamic phenomenom - there was a suicide truck-bombing carried out by jews during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Its a human reaction to desparation, SO GET OUT OF PALESTINE.

entering into debate with supporters of the present israeli [fascist] government or zionists in general.

they do not abide by the same constarints of logic fact or decency.

attempting to get them to accept the unacceptability of shooting to kill stone throwing kids will be met with hypothetical nonsense - such as [paraphrasing] 'if we didn't do this to them you can be sure that they would do it to us ... if we didn't use our tanks and million dollar missles on defensless civilians those defensless civiliains, were they somehow get hold of tanks and million dollar missiles, would use them on us'!

yes, a neat sumation of the philosophy of hatred ... we do it to them because they [would] do it to us otherwise ... impossible to measure or disprove and therefore immune from rational analysis and the usual legal interpretaions, this thinking inures the irrational hatred of zionists towards non jews, or the wrong kind of jews, and superceeds any argument made now or in the future.

the whole history of shitty little israel is a lie from start to finish ... from the homogenous genetic identity of the jew, to the invisabilty of the rights of those unfortunate enough to be squating in gods ordained homeland for those 20th centuary jews from new york to moscow.

and now even to be critcial of israeli racism and territorial expansionism is to be an anti-semite because one is therefore infinging on the aspirations of the zionist[jew] to control the land from the med to the euphraties, never mind that such an aspiration crushes the aspirations of the Palestians - who we are told are a fiction AND rabid supporters of nazism (and therefore have no rights)

this debating cul-du-sac is not only deeply depressing and unimaginative, but also extremly dangerous. it polerises the world into two distinct camps, those that support zionism and isreali aggression (SOME jews, zionists and the frightning christian fundamentalists that believe their best option of prostrating themselves at the foot of a second time around diety lies with creating the right conditioons in isreal - the right conditions being all encompassing warfare and perversly enough the destruction of the jews!) and those that don't support israeli aggression - all of whome will be classified as ant-semetic.

with this polerisation, those that have no qualms about expressing and acting on their irrational hatred of jews etc wil feel that they are blithly following a mainstream line and only encourage others of similar irrational outlook that it is ok to feel this way. the end result will be more isolation of israel culture and policy from the international community and more ammunition for the ruthless destruction of all opposition (the real rational kind, not the disturbing irrational kind)

this is entirely calculated by the present leadership of israel (and supposedly of all jews, ignoring that peculiarity - the self hating jew)

rightly so, people around the would, religious and not religious, see that this is one of the most pressing problem facing the HUMAN race.

shitty little israel is endangering our future

jewish only roads, disproportionate resouce use (as much as 75-80% in favour of jews), restrictions on the sale of property and land to non jews, the refusal of entry rights to non jews, the virtual slave labour conditions of the occupied west bank factories churning out luxury goods for the white western palette etc etc

this is not democracy, freedom or sustainable.

it is racism based on the perception of superiority, ordained by a religious mafia that claim to have the word of the supreme being emitting from the lips - god told me to do it!

tribal elitism based on the [false] claims of ancestry and belief - god gave them the land!

be jewish if you must, or christian or muslim - but don't tell me what to do!

I am a human being, capable of mating with anyother willing human being of the opposite sex, I don't traffic my genes based on superior quality or divine authorisation, I don't own my children or have the right to impose my beliefs on them regardless.

jews are not a race. I don't care if your mothers family converted on mass to judaism 700 hundred years ago - you don't have the right to steal land or terrorise the people that use it, you are not special or chosen

you will reap what you sow

death to religion

a one state solution is the only logical choice - no more pandering to the nonsense of religion, secular democratic accountable and free is how israel/palestine should be.

its either that or nothing

god did not tell me to write this, never indictaed approval of it and this is most definately not based on my interpretation of thousand year old books

Talking of the 'Palestinian problem' is like Nazi talk of the 'Jewish problem'? Riiiight. The Palestinian problem is that they keep attacking Israel, killing civilians, etc, and seem to show no interest in peace. The Jewish problem was conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world and using gentiles for their aims and corrupting the Aryan nation and so on.

I saw that anti-semitic Latuff cartoon I mentioned on IndyMedia aages ago. At the time I was pro-Palestinian. Underneath someone had claimed it was anti-semitic, I thought maybe slightly but not really, suppressing the reality. It was a rabbi Jew stereotype pulling the strings on the globe and pulling strings on puppet world leaders. Message? Jews control the world.

Israel moved/got rid of fences when it got peace with other powers and stuff. It will do the same here. 97% of it is fence, not wall.

Hmm I am an anti-semite?? Regardless of your claims that Arabs/Palestinians are semites, which I am no expert on and cannot comment on, the term anti-semitism has definitely come to mean anti-Jewish racism. You seem to be trying to minimise anti-Jewish racism by calling Arabs semites too. So by definition Arabs can't be anti-semites. How clever.

I am not anti-Arab either, and am not racist at all. I supported those Arabs and Muslims who support peace, and some even support Zionism (there was an interesting post on this recently). Some Arab leaders post-WW1 supported the Zionists and agreed to co-operate on an anti-imperialist alliance and a Jewish national home, but the Arabs were not given independence and they subsequently went back on it.

I never talked about Iraq anyway. I was talking about Israel with regard to civilian casualties. Btw compare the fact that Israel kills terrorists and accidentally civilians with the fact that Palestinians murder civilians on purpose.

"Still no sign of Latuff's mythical antisemitic cartoon then?"

I just saw these comments now, and strangely enough I don't keep an archive of this idiot's cartoons. Ask Latuff if he ever did it, tho he'd prob lie. Maybe he will try to defend it.

Those stone-throwing kids you so love are indoctrinated to go attack Israeli forces like this by schools and propaganda videos and the Palestinian media. Israeli soldiers have been killed by stone-throwing. Suppressing violence and rioting inevitably needs violence.

Btw karen I have recently posted many long refutations of the propaganda of other posters. My posts are usually deleted so as to give the impression taht the others won the arugment, or just not replied to. You lot never answer our accusations, you just repeat propaganda. We always answer your propaganda and show the truth.

comparing it to a concentration camp is also exagerated, and comparing israeli rethoric to nazi rethoric is stupid too- when did the israelis say that the solution to the "palestinian problem" is exterminating every palestinian from the face of the earth.(fringe groups of fanatics without parliamentary rapresentation don't count). i've heard people voice exterminationist views on how to solve the "israeli question" throughout the arab world though.
and anyway that cartoon is comparing the israelis to the nazis and that is offensive and unnecesary

Karen, first of all - I dislike discussing anything with you because you seem incapable of remaining lucid for more than a sentence or two. I understand that somewhere in your troubled mind you have convinced yourself that 'shitty little Israel', as you call it, is the source of your problems and the world's, and that someday it will be replaced with a race of ethnically pure, happily skipping women and children in Hamas shrouds and headbands, ululating, dancing on the mass graves of the Jews and anointing themselves with Jewish blood. But guess what? Your kind have been making those predictions for decades, and they've never seemed less likely than they do now. It will never happen. There is more chance of the Grand Mosque in Mecca being turned into a Coca-Cola bottling plant.

"they do not abide by the same constarints of logic fact or decency"? Too right - I have some concept of logic, fact and decency, whereas you and your kind clearly see all three as completely dispensable. If they get in the way of your drive for an ethnically cleansed fantasy state, your campaign for the Arab aggressors against Israel who would slaughter Jews and Arabs alike in their bid to 'purify' the Middle East of Jews, Jews who have lived there for millennia, long before the Arab conquest.

Your comment that Jews are not a race is not only wrong but irrelevant - 'Palestinian' is not a nationality, or a people, or a credible identity. The entire premise of a 'Palestinian' is totally dependent on Jewish identity, on the Jewish people, as you well know; until the 1960s those who now proudly claim themselves to be 'Palestinians' were loudly proclaiming their Syrian identity, or their Jordanian identity, or their Egyptian identity. In the forge of spite, greed and Jew hatred, the Palestinian was born.

Tom, your attempt to label me as 'anti-semitic' is laughable - regardless of the definition of semite, anti-semitic refers to Jews; it is in any case an inaccurate and misused term, which is why I describe people like you as Jew haters - then even mendacious Jew hating propaganda obsessives can't ignore the racist root of their bile by pretending there's no coincidence between Palestinian hatred of Jews and centuries old Arab hatred of Jews - the sons of apes and pigs - a hatred on which the Islamic religion was founded.

"Allah did not mete out the punishment of transformation on any nation except the Jews. The significance of it is actual change in the appearance of the Jew and perfect transformation from human to bestial condition... from human appearance to the form of genuine apes, pigs, mice, and lizards..." (Source: Falastin Al-Muslima (London), September 1996, series of articles by Ibrahim Al-'Ali, pp. 54-55.)

your long well thought out arguments are ignored and sidelined

a genius un-admired in his time

familiar lament - you are the victim,

not;

Those stone-throwing kids you so love are indoctrinated to go attack Israeli forces like this by schools and propaganda videos and the Palestinian media. Israeli soldiers have been killed by stone-throwing. Suppressing violence and rioting inevitably needs violence.

utterly necessary for the safety of the occupiers soilders, the need to shoot dead several hundred children of the occupied - who do it because they are indoctrinated and not because you are occpying and shooting them

breathtaking

wanker

but draws us further from the argument

your lurid fantasies on the nature of those you percieve as against you do not interest me

the nature of my regard for decent human beings is based on merit and merit alone, not some psuado-tribal/ethnic/religious loyalty

if you can't handle the concept then it is no suprise that your guilt is manifesting itself in a neurotic obsession with your own tribal/ethnic/religious adherence

The sooner Karen elliot finds herself a boyfriend and can stop venting her frustration on Jew hating the better place Indy media will be.

My questions were answered with suppositions.
Let's check:

1 - Is Tel Aviv or Haifa occupied by Palestinian troops?

If the Palestinians could...

2 - Are there Jewish stone-thrower kids being shot to death by heavly armed Palestinian soldiers and tanks?

You don't need to throw stones...

3 - Are there Palestinian jets and helicopters firing missiles against urban areas in Tel Aviv or Haifa?

If they only could...

Ok, if you found too much difficult to reply those questions with objective answers, I will give you a hand.

1 - Tel Aviv and Haifa are not occupied by Palestinian troops. Palestine have no army, navy or air force. Palestinian territories are occupied by U.S. funded Israeli armed forces.

2 - There are no Jewish kids throwing stones at Palestinian tanks. There are no Palestinian Merkavas or Palestinian Apache helicopters. Palestinian stone-thrower kids are being shot to death by heavly armed IDF soldiers.

3 - There are not Palestinian jets and copters droping bombs in high-populated areas in Israel. Palestinians don't have jets and helicos. Israel air force is firing missiles against urban areas in Palestinian territories.

You see? Zionist rethoric is cheap and poor. I present facts and Zionists shot back with suppositions (If the Palestinians could..., If they only could...). That's why I don't talk to Zionists...I FIGHT them!

Is it the so-called "anti-Semitic" cartoon?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
You Ziombies kill me!!!

"Israeli soldiers have been killed by stone-throwing"

Hahahahahahahaha!!!!
Zionists are not only baby-killers but also comedians!!!

If you go to Palestine Media Watch there are videos you can d/l showing the PA's indoctrination videos about how great it is for children to die for Allah attacking Israelis, throwing stones, etc.

Why don't you people refute the fact that Palestinians only invented their identity in the 60s etc, and that Jordan is in fact 'Palestine'? Or that the majority of Israelis are descended from the 100,000s of Jews expelled from Arab lands in the 40s and 50s? Or that the Palestinian mufti guy helped organise the Holocaust in the Balkans with great enthusiasm?

No thats not the cartoon. Like I said, it was a stereotypical Jew puppeting the globe and world leaders.

Its a fact that people have been killed by the stone-throwing. You think your face would withstand stones thrown at it?

Baby-killers? That is the charge that is always thrown at Jews.

Khalid Amayreh: Palestinian children killed by Israel

13/04/2004


Khalid Amayreh
Al Jazeera

One of the most disturbing aspects of the strife between Israel and the Palestinians has been the killing and maiming of children.

The Israeli occupation army and paramilitary Jewish settlers have killed 545 Palestinian children and minors since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000.

Among these victims, 266 children were 14 or younger while the ages of the remaining 279 ranged from 15 to 18. Moreover, as many as 20,000 Palestinian children were injured, with nearly 1500 sustaining life-long disabilities.

The total number of Palestinians killed by Israel during the current Intifada is around 2700, the vast majority of them civilians.

Casualties

On the other hand, the number of Israelis killed by Palestinians during the same period is around 840 soldiers, settlers and civilians, including about 100 Israeli children and minors.

Nearly 2500 Israelis were injured, mostly suffering from light wounds and shock. Many of the Israeli victims died in bombings inside Israel.

In 2003, a total of 130 Palestinian children and minors were killed by Israeli troops and a further 22 have been killed in the first three months of this year.

One of the latest Palestinian children to be killed by the Israeli army was six-year-old Khalid Mahir Walwil from the Balata refugee camp near Nablus.

He was shot in the back as he turned away from the window on the second floor of his house.

Khalid had reportedly stayed at home that day, too frightened to go to school because Israeli soldiers were "operating" in the area.

Targeting denied

Despite the facts, Israeli officials continue to vehemently deny that their army targets Palestinian children.

Amira Dotan, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told Aljazeera.net it was inconceivable that the Israeli army targeted Palestinian civilians, let alone children.

"We are a democratic state, our government would be toppled if it was proven that our defence forces had indulged in targeting Palestinian civilians and children," she says.

"This sort of thing just doesn't happen in Israel."

When asked to explain the death of nearly 550 Palestinian children and minors by the Israeli army during the past 44 months, Dotan said the deaths were "accidental, collateral but not deliberate".

However, when further pressed to explain how the Israeli army decided to drop one-tonne bombs on apartment buildings in Gaza and carry out devastating air strikes targeting markets and crowded streets, killing scores of children and women, Dotan invoked the mantra of terror.

"Yes, we knew there were children, but we had to kill the terrorists."

Like other Israeli officials and spokespersons, Dotan believe that these actions were justified so as to protect Israeli lives.

"If we hadn't killed those Palestinian children, then the terrorist would have killed three or four times as many Israelis."

'Macabre reasoning'

Palestinian officials, including jurists and human rights activists, strongly reject and condemn this "macabre reasoning".

"Killing knowingly is killing deliberately and premeditatedly. It is a war crime which no amount of verbal juggling can extenuate," said Hanna Issa, a prominent Palestinian legal expert and Director-General of the Palestinian Ministry of Justice.

"They know in advance that children are sleeping in the targeted building, none the less, they carry out the killing without batting an eyelash … and then they shed the crocodile tears and claim that the killing was accidental or happened by mistake"

"They are killing with malice aforethought … they know in advance that children are sleeping in the targeted building, none the less, they carry out the killing without batting an eyelash … and then they shed the crocodile tears and claim that the killing was accidental or happened by mistake …there is no such thing as killing deliberately by mistake."

Stressing his point, Issa argued that Israel would never even contemplate bombing a building or a market or a crowded street if it knew that Israeli Jews were in the vicinity of the target.

He gave as an example an Israeli decision to call off an operation to assassinate Hamas founder and spiritual leader Shaikh Ahmad Yasin last year after it was found out that Israeli journalists were interviewing him.

"My question is would the Israeli army have cancelled the operation if the journalists had been Palestinians, not Israelis?"

Yasin was assassinated by Israel along with 10 other Palestinian civilians outside a Gaza mosque on 22 March.

Issa condemned all attacks on civilians, Israeli and Palestinian alike. "Murder is murder, period."

However, he added: "I don't believe that Israel stands on a higher moral ground just because Israeli soldiers are dressed in khaki and use F-16s, apache helicopters and flechette shells (deadly dart bombs) to kill and maim Palestinian children while Israeli civilians are killed by suicide bombers."

'Deliberate killings'

Since the outbreak of the Intifada, several human rights organisations have thoroughly investigated the circumstances of thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths, reaching the conclusion that the Israeli army "kills civilians knowingly and deliberately".

One of these organisations is Physicians for Human Rights-USA, which investigated the number of Palestinian deaths and injuries in the fist months of the Intifada.

It concluded that "the pattern of injuries seen in many victims did not reflect IDF use of firearms in life-threatening situations but rather indicated targeting solely for the purpose of wounding or killing".

In some cases, the killing of Palestinian youths by Israel assumes a brazen and dastardly nature.

Nearly two years ago, Chris Hedges, a Western journalist covering events in Gaza reported how Israeli soldiers lured Palestinian kids to walk towards them for the purpose of hunting them down with their machineguns.

What is more shocking though is that virtually none of these killings has been investigated by the Israeli army or justice system, underscoring the striking ease with which the Israeli army kills Palestinians.

Twelve and up

Some Israeli soldiers have admitted that the army gives them "carte blanche" to shoot and kill Palestinian above the age of 12.

The noted Israeli award-wining journalist Amira Hass interviewed an Israeli sniper nearly two years ago in which the soldier described the commands he received from his superiors:

"The blood of their children is not more precious than that of our children. Let them stop killing our civilians, and we will stop killing theirs"

"Twelve and up, you are allowed to shoot. That's what they tell us," he said. "So," responded the reporter, "according to the IDF, the appropriate minimum age group at which to shoot is 12."

The soldier replied: "This is according to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I do not know if this is what the IDF says to the media."

Many Palestinians are convinced that these atrocities fuel the fire of further attacks against Israel.

"The blood of their children is not more precious than that of our children,” said the new Hamas leader in Gaza, Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi. "Let them stop killing our civilians, and we will stop killing theirs."

Israeli soldiers equipped with bullet-proof vests and Kevlar helmets, shooting full-auto rifles from armoured vehicles are being killed by stones thrown by 10, 12 years old Palestinian kids?

Do you really believe that anyone than Zionists will trust on this crap?
Face it, man...you run out of stupid excuses. Now you are using science fiction to justify the murder of Palestinian children...see why it's correct to call you a fucking baby-killer? Keep talking nonsense and exposing yourself as an apologist of murder of Palestinians...

And before to start publishing photos of blown-up buses and Hamas rallies, show me one or two pictures of Jewish kids being humiliated and brutalized by Palestinian soldiers...

It's really pointless answering your questions, as you, like those you support, are clearly not interested in discussion - but anyway:

1 - Tel Aviv and Haifa are not occupied by Palestinian troops. Palestine have no army, navy or air force. Palestinian territories are occupied by U.S. funded Israeli armed forces.

That Tel Aviv or Haifa are not occupied is, of course, not from lack of trying, but as you criticised a previous respondent for pointing that out, let's try a different approach. The disputed territories have long been the object of expansionist aims from foreign Arab states and they remain so to this day. Pro-Palestinians are never able to explain how an area that has never been controlled by 'Palestinians', and is no longer claimed by any government formerly responsible for it, can be considered occupied. Disputed, clearly, but occupied? As 'Palestinians' have only identified themselves as a people since the 1960s, and as their aims coincide with those of Israel's unceasingly aggressive neighbours, 'Palestinians' not only have an assymetrical 'guerrilla' style army, but the combined military forces of the genocidal Arab states of which they were originally citizens.

2 - There are no Jewish kids throwing stones at Palestinian tanks. There are no Palestinian Merkavas or Palestinian Apache helicopters. Palestinian stone-thrower kids are being shot to death by heavly armed IDF soldiers.

Palestinian stone-thrower kids are 'backed', i.e. used as cover, by Palestinian militia armed with assault rifles and rocket launchers. A common tactic is to have kids surround a tank to reduce its mobility and allow concentrated fire from militia. Palestinian terrorists regard the children as not just an expendable commodity, but more valuable dead ('martyred') than alive.

3 - There are not Palestinian jets and copters droping bombs in high-populated areas in Israel. Palestinians don't have jets and helicos. Israel air force is firing missiles against urban areas in Palestinian territories.

Palestinians regularly use explosives in highly populated areas in Israel - not to target military personnel without regard for civilian casualties, but to deliberately cause as many civilian causalties as possible. Explosive devices are usually packed with rusty nails and rat poison in the hope that even non-fatal injuries will cause a slow and painful death. Furthermore, al-Qassam missiles are regularly fired into Israeli homes and schools.

Oh, and Dotty...

An article from Al-Jazeera, the Mullah mouthpiece, the Salafi Station, the Islamic Der Stuermer, the Voice of Jihad, written by one Khalid Amayreh? That's 'shoving the facts up our arses?'

So if I find Likud article written by Benjamin Netanyahu that says the exact opposite, can I claim to have 'shoved the facts' up your arse?

Different from Zionist, who are payed to spend hours in front of a computer spiting all kind of excuses on killing of Palestinian civilians, I have better things to make.
I will quit my part in this everlasting useless discussion with my last comments.

To say Arab broadcasting AlJazeera is "the Mullah mouthpiece, the Salafi Station, the Islamic Der Stuermer" speaks volumes about your prejudice towards Arabs, as any other Zionist (oh no, not that old "Der Sturmer" cliché again). It would be enough to clarify things about yourself, but let's check some FACTS!

"This latest round of violence raises the overall toll since the September 2000 start of the Palestinain uprising, or intifada, to 3,925, including 2,956 Palestinians and 899 Israelis." (Source AFP)

Is France Presse also "the Mullah mouthpiece, the Salafi Station, the Islamic Der Stuermer". The numbers say all. More Palestinians are being killed by Israel than Israelis killed by Palestinians.
Palestinians killed: 2.956
Israelis killed: 899
Let's have these numbers in mind.

Again, my questions were not answered. I asked, "Are there Palestinian jets and helicopters firing missiles against urban areas in Tel Aviv or Haifa?". Are there or not? The answer is NOT, because Palestinians have not regular army, navy or air force. It's yet surprisingly that with one of the most powerful armies in the world, fueled by U.S. taxpayers every year, Palestinians show strong resistance. To compare a suicide attack in a pizzeria with a F-16 air raid is ridiculous. Obviously it's your duty as rabid Zionist to sell to public opinion that suicide bombers are as powerful as IDF war machine.

"Palestinian stone-thrower kids are 'backed', i.e. used as cover, by Palestinian militia armed with assault rifles and rocket launchers."

Interesting that Palestinian occupied territories are covered by international media 24h per day and I never seen any picture of armed Palestinians firing behing children. Perhaps because this idea came only from your twisted minds, following the Golda Meir concept that Palestinians don't love their children. Sure, they are barbarians, the bad guys, and Israelis the civilized keepers of the most essential Western values...
Ha!

"That Tel Aviv or Haifa are not occupied is, of course, not from lack of trying..."

Again, another detour. The fact is that Israel is NOT an occupied territory, don't matter your "not from lack of trying" excuse. West Bank and Gaza are occupied territories. THAT'S a fact, not a supposition.

I could spend my whole life "dueling" with you but I prefer to save my time for what really matters. To fight Zionists in the real world.

It's yet surprisingly that facing Israel with one of the most powerful armies in the world, fueled by U.S. taxpayers every year, Palestinians show strong resistance

You haven't seen much, Rabbi, because you choose not to look - you only ever see what the Palestinian propaganda machine wants you to. There are many more examples, assuming you want to look beyond the 'product' the Palestinians provide for the Western media.

"West Bank and Gaza are occupied territories. THAT'S a fact, not a supposition."

As the other guy pointed out, technically Israel isn't occupying anything, according to international law and so on, as no government claims those territories. Large parts of them are also run by the PA not Israel. And the PLO terrorists were created in 1964, when Egypt and Jordan controlled Gaza and the West Bank, and they said they had no problem with that.

Al Jazeera is extremely bias and acts as an anti-Israel propaganda piece for the Arab states. Its not racist to say that.

If Palestinians weren't killed, then fuckloads more Israelis would be killed. Palestinian terrorists are killed to stop them killing innocent Israelis. Like in all conflicts, civilians get caught up in it, especially as the Palestinians don't give a damn about human life, and even hide terrorists in ambulances.

Likewise I can't be bothered arguing as its not going anywhere, and besides, I'm not an expert on Israel so my arguments sound less cohesive and well-structured.

"Hamas terrorists fire at Israelis using schoolchildren as cover"

I see an armed guy firing from a dust bank. Is there any child in front of him serving as a child? Show me a picture of a Palestinian firing from behind kids, using them as shields.

"Yes, over by the graffiti in English... rub your eyes a bit... say cheese"

For Zionists, the tears of that Palestinian woman are just a reason for laughs...Perhaps losting more and more of their children in this senseless occupation, Israeli mothers will learn to respect the tears of Palestinian mothers...

Uri Avnery

17.1.04


Anti-Semitism: A Practical Manual


A Hungarian Joke: During the June 1967 war, a Hungarian meets his friend. "Why do you look so happy?" he asks. "I heard that the Israelis shot down six Soviet-made MiGs today," his friend replies.

The next day, the friend looks even more jubilant. "The Israelis downed another eight MiGs," he announces.

On the third day, the friend is crestfallen. "What happened? Didn't the Israelis down any MiGs today?" the man asks. "They did," the friend answers, "But today someone told me that the Israelis are Jews!"

This is the whole story in a nutshell.

The Anti-Semite hates the Jews because they are Jews, irrespective of their actions. Jews may be hated because they are rich and ostentatious or because they are poor and live in squalor. Because they played a major role in the Bolshevik revolution or because some of them became incredibly rich after the collapse of the Communist regime. Because they crucified Jesus or because they infected Western culture with the "Christian morality of compassion". Because they have no fatherland or because they created the State of Israel.

That is in the nature of all kinds of racism and chauvinism: One hates someone for being a Jew, Arab, woman, black, Indian, Muslim, Hindu. His or her personal attributes, actions, achievements are unimportant. If he or she belongs to the abhorred race, religion or gender, they will be hated.

The answers to all questions relating to anti-Semitism follow from this basic fact. For example:

Is everybody who criticizes Israel an anti-Semite?

Absolutely not. Somebody who criticizes Israel for certain of our actions cannot be accused of anti-Semitism for that. But somebody who hates Israel because it is a Jewish state, like the Hungarian in the joke, is an anti-Semite. It is not always easy to distinguish between the two kinds, because shrewd anti-Semites pose as bona fide critics of Israel's actions. But presenting all critics of Israel as anti-Semites is wrong and counter-productive, it damages the fight against anti-Semitism.

Many deeply moral persons, the cream of humanity, criticize our behavior in the occupied territories. It is stupid to accuse them of anti-Semitism.

Can a person be an anti-Zionist without being an anti-Semite?

Absolutely yes. Zionism is a political creed and must be treated like any other. One can be anti-Communist without being anti-Chinese, anti-Capitalist without being anti-American, anti-Globalist, anti-Anything. Yet, again, it is not always easy to draw the line, because real anti-Semites often pretend just to be "anti-Zionists". They should not be helped by erasing the distinction.

Can a person be an anti-Semite and a Zionist?

Indeed, yes. The founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, already tried to enlist the support of notorious Russian anti-Semites, promising them to take the Jews off their hands. Before World War II, the Zionist underground organization IZL established military training camps in Poland under the auspices of the anti-Semitic generals, who also wanted to get rid of the Jews. Nowadays, the Zionist extreme Right receives and welcomes massive support from the American fundamentalist evangelists, whom the majority of American Jews, according to a poll published this week, consider profoundly anti-Semitic. Their theology prophesies that on the eve of the second coming of Christ, all Jews must convert to Christianity or be exterminated.

Can a Jew be anti-Semitic?

That sounds like an oxymoron. But history has known some instances of Jews who became ferocious Jew-haters. The Spanish Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada, was of Jewish descent. Karl Marx wrote some very nasty things about the Jews, as did Otto Weininger, an important Jewish writer in fin-de-siecle Vienna. Herzl, his contemporary and fellow-Viennese, wrote in his diaries some very uncomplimentary remarks about the Jews.

If a person criticizes Israel more than other countries which do the same, is he an anti-Semite?

Not necessarily. True, there should be one and the same moral standard for all countries and all human beings. Russian actions in Chechnya are not better than ours in Nablus, and may be worse. The trouble is that the Jews are pictured and picture themselves (and indeed were) a "nation of victims". Therefore, the world is shocked that yesterday's victims are today's victimizers. A higher moral standard is required from us than from other peoples. And rightly so.

Has Europe become anti-Semitic again?

Not really. The number of anti-Semites in Europe has not grown, perhaps it has even fallen. What has increased is the volume of criticism of Israel's behavior towards the Palestinians, who appear as "the victims of the victims".

The situation in some suburbs of Paris, which is often cited as an example of the rise of anti-Semitism, is a quite different affair. When North African Muslims clash with North African Jews, they are transferring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to European soil. It is also a continuation of the feud between Arabs and Jews that started in Algeria when the Jews supported the French regime and Muslims considered them collaborators of the hated colonialists.

Then why did most Europeans state in a recent poll that Israel endangers world peace more than any other country?

That has a simple explanation: Europeans see on television every day what our soldiers are doing in the occupied Palestinian territories. This confrontation is covered more than any other conflict on earth (with the possible exception of Iraq, for the time being), because Israel is more "interesting", considering the long history of the Jews in Europe and because Israel is closer to the Western media than Muslim or African countries. The Palestinian resistance, which Israelis call "terrorism", seems to many Europeans very much like the French resistance to the German occupation.

What about the anti-Semitic manifestations in the Arab world?

No doubt, typically anti-Semitic indications have crept lately into Arab discourse. Suffice it to mention that the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" have been published in Arabic. That is a typically European import. The Protocols were invented by the secret police of Czarist Russia.

Whatever inanities may be voiced by certain "experts", there never was any widespread Muslim anti-Semitism, such as existed in Christian Europe. In the course of his fight for power, the prophet Muhammad fought against neighboring Jewish tribes, and therefore there are some negative passages about the Jews in the Kor'an. But they cannot be compared to the anti-Jewish passages in the New Testament story about the crucifixion of Christ that have poisoned the Christian world and caused endless suffering. Muslim Spain was a paradise for the Jews, and there has never been a Jewish Holocaust in the Muslim world. Even pogroms were extremely rare.

Muhammad decreed that the "Peoples of the Book" (Jews and Christians) be treated tolerantly, subject to conditions that were incomparably more liberal than those in contemporary Europe. The Muslims never imposed their religion by force on Jews and Christians, as shown by the fact that almost all the Jews expelled from Catholic Spain settled in the Muslim countries and flourished there. After centuries of Muslim rule, Greeks and Serbs remained thoroughly Christian.

When peace is established between Israel and the Arab world, the poisonous fruits of anti-Semitism will most probably disappear from the Arab world (as will the poisonous fruits of Arab-hating in our society.)

Aren't the utterances of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Muhammad, about the Jews controlling the world, anti-Semitic?

Yes and no. They certainly illustrate the difficulty of pinning anti-Semitism down. From a factual point of view, the man was right when he asserted that the Jews have a far bigger influence than their percentage of the world's population alone would warrant. It is true that the Jews have a large influence on the policy of the United States, the only super-power, as well as on the American and international media. One does not need the phony "Protocols" in order to face this fact and analyse its causes. But the sounds make the music, and Mahathir's music does indeed sound anti-Semitic.

So should we ignore anti-Semitism?

Definitely not. Racism is a kind of virus that exists in every nation and in every human being. Jean-Paul Sartre said that we are all racists, the difference being that some of us realize this and fight against it, while others succumb to the evil. In ordinary times, there is a small minority of blatant racists in every country, but in times of crisis their number can multiply rapidly. This is a perpetual danger, and every people must fight against the racists in their midst.

We Israelis are like all other peoples. Each of us can find a small racist within himself, if he searches hard enough. We have in our country fanatical Arab-haters, and the historic confrontation that dominates our lives increases their power and influence. It is our duty to fight them, and leave it to the Europeans and Arabs to deal with their own racists.

the fact is that allthough israeli troops don't show too much care for civilian lives, just like any army, they don't actually try to kill as many civilians as possible, whereas hamas does. what's more the palestinians don't have helicopters and tanks, but arab armies do, and the west bank and gaza are occupied as a result of an arab attack in 1967.
anyway which army in the world should the israelis learn from when it comes to their conduct in conflict: the russians in chechnya? the indians in kashmir? try throwing stones against russians or indians. nobody would even try it...

Well, if calling Arab Al-Jazeera "the Mullah mouthpiece, the Salafi Station, the Islamic Der Stuermer" is not prejudice, I think you don't mind if I call The Jerusalem Post or Haaretz
"the Rabbi mouthpiece, the Torah Station, the Jewish Der Sturmer"?
:)

ANTI-SEMITES? WHO, US?
Steven Plaut
[Graphics and Layout Masada2000.org]
9/23/03
..

Say what? Anti-Semites? Who, us anti-Zionists? Us?

We have nothing against Jews as such. We just hate Zionism and Zionists. We think Israel does not have a right to exist. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such. Heavens to Mergatroyd. Marx Forbid. We are humanists. Progressives. Peace lovers.

Anti-Semitism is the hatred of Jews. Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism and Israeli policies. The two have nothing to do with one another. Venus and Mars. Night and day. Trust us.

Sure, we think the only country on the earth that must be annihilated is Israel. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

Sure, we think that the only children on earth whose being blown up is okay if it serves a good cause are Jewish children. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

Sure, we think that if Palestinians have legitimate grievances this entitles them to mass murder Jews. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

Naturally, we think that the only people on earth who should never be allowed to exercise the right of self-defense are the Jews. Jews should only resolve the aggression against them through capitulation, never through self-defense. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

..


We only denounce racist apartheid in the one country in the Middle East that is not a racist apartheid country. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.


....
We refuse to acknowledge the Jews as a people, and think they are only a religion. We do not have an answer to how people who do not practice the Jewish religion can still be regarded as Jews. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We think that all peoples have the right to self-determination, except Jews, and including even the make-pretend "Palestinian people". But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.


We hate it when people blame the victims, except of course when people blame the Jews for the jihads and terrorist campaigns against them. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We think the only country in the Middle East that is a fascist anti-democratic one is the one that has free elections. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We demand that the only country in the Middle East with free speech, free press or free courts be destroyed. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We oppose military aggression, except when it is directed at Israel. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

..


We really understand suicide bombers who murder bus loads of Jewish children and we insist that their demands be met in full. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

..


We do not think that Jews have any human rights that need to be respected, and especially not the right to ride a bus without being murdered. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.


There are Jewish, leftist anti-Zionists and we consider this proof that anti-Zionists could not possibly be anti-Semitic; not even the ones who cheer when Jews are mass murdered. These are the only Jews we think need be acknowledged or respected. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

.

We think the only conflict on earth that must be solved through dismembering one of the parties to that conflict is the one involving Israel. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We do not think murder proves how righteous and just the cause of the murderer is, except when it comes to murderers of Jews. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We do not think the Jews are entitled to their own state and must submit to being a minority in a Rwanda-style “bi-national state”, although no other state on earth, including the 22 Arab countries, should be similarly expected to be deprived of its sovereignty. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.
..
We think that Israel’s having a Jewish majority and a star on its flag makes it a racist apartheid state. We do not think any other country having an ethnic-religious majority or having crosses or crescents or “Allah Akbar” on its flag is racist or needs dismemberment. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We condemn the “mistreatment” of women in the only country of the Middle East in which they are not mistreated. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.



We condemn the “mistreatment” of minorities in the only country in the Middle East in which minorities are not brutally suppressed and mass murdered. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We demand equal citizen rights, which is why the only country in the Middle East in need of extermination is the only one in which such rights exist. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We have no trouble with the fact that there is no freedom of religion in any Arab countries. But we are mad as hell at Israel for violating religious freedom, and never mind that we are never quite sure where or when it does so. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.



So how can you possibly say we are anti-Semites? We are simply anti-Zionists. We seek peace and justice, that’s all. And surely that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.


..

To try to justify killing of Palestinian stone-throwing kids by IDF is the same than justify suppression of Jewish resistance in Warsaw Ghetto.
Zionists and Nazis...you deserve each other.
:)

"The best way to reserve "anti-Semitism" as a term of condemnation is to define it as hatred of Jews, not for what they do but for what they are."


There Are Much Larger Threats
CRITICISM OF ISRAEL IS NOT ANTI-SEMITISM
By MICHAEL NEUMANN


Jewish and non-Jewish commentators alike have deplored a recent upsurge in anti-Semitism. In Europe, journalist Andrew Sullivan says, "Not since the 1930s has such blithe hatred of Jews gained this much respectability in world opinion."

Yet, Jews like myself and the Israeli journalist Ran HaCohen feel quite differently. He writes in Antiwar.com: "It is high time to say it out loud: In the entire course of Jewish history, since the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC, there has never been an era blessed with less anti-Semitism than ours. There has never been a better time for Jews to live in than our own."

Why would a Jew say such a thing? What is anti-Semitism, and how much of a danger is it in the world today?

If both sides agree on anything, it's that the definition of "anti-Semitism" has been manipulated for political ends. Leftists accuse ardent Zionists of inflating the definition to include--and discredit--critics of Israel. Zionists accuse the left of deflating the definition to apologize for covert prejudice against Jews.

It's a sterile dispute. Even in this age of intellectual property, no one owns the word. But the definitional sparring does have its missteps and dangers.

The first tells against deflationists who claim that anti-Semitism is really hatred of Semites (including Arabs), not just Jews. This confuses etymology with meaning. You might as well say that, in reality, lesbians are simply those who live on the Greek island of Lesbos.

On the other hand, to inflate the definition by including critics of Israel is, if not exactly incorrect, self-defeating and dangerous. No one can stop you from proclaiming all criticism of Israel anti-Semitic. But that makes anti-Semites out of Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, not to mention tens of thousands of Jews.

What then prevents someone from concluding that anti-Semitism must be, at least in some cases, justifiable, courageous, highly moral? Is this a message any prudent Jew or anti-racist would want to encourage?

Similar worries arise when Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, tells us: "The classic canards of 'Jews control,' 'Jews are responsible' and 'Jews are not loyal' continue to be peddled in America. While anti-Semites have usually been on the fringes of our society, today we find they and their views have made it into the mainstream."

Well, it might be anti-Semitic to hold Jews responsible for everything, but it would be bizarre to claim anti-Semitism whenever Jews are held responsible for anything. In a survey conducted by Steven M. Cohen of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 87% of American Jews said that Jews "have a responsibility to work on behalf of the poor, the oppressed and minority groups"; 92% said that Jews are obliged to help other Jews who are "needy or oppressed." What Foxman calls an anti-Semitic canard is deeply rooted in traditional and contemporary Jewish thought. A Web search will find dozens of rabbis attributing to Jews, generally, not just responsibilities but collective responsibility.

We hold groups responsible for things, good and bad, all the time: The Germans started World War II, the French opposed us in Iraq, the British supported us. The strongly pro-Israel columnist Jonathan Rosenblum states, "The Jews have built an advanced, industrial state, while the Palestinians have built nothing."

Clearly, it is not just anti-Semites who attribute responsibility to the Jews. And just as clearly, this is neither racist nor to be taken literally. Rosenblum does not mean that every last Jew, including children and the mentally disabled, built that state. He means that most adult Jews made some contribution to it.

If so, should definitional inflation be allowed to make anti-Semites out of all those who hold Jews responsible for Israel's actions and character? My childhood, in largely Jewish suburbs of New York and Boston, was full of Israel bond drives and calls to support Israel. Can't Rosenblum say that "the Jews," meaning a substantial majority of adult Jews, have some responsibility for what Israel has become? And can't Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch say that Israel has committed war crimes and violated human rights?

One might justly call it dangerous to conclude that Jews, generally, had some responsibility for war crimes and human rights violations. But to call it anti-Semitic seems just as dangerous, because in some loose, though not unreasonable, sense, the conclusion is hard to escape. That's why there are whole Jewish organizations, like Not in My Name, that exist to enable Jews to dissociate themselves from Israel's actions.

In short, you can't have it both ways. You can, if you like, inflate the definition of "anti-Semitism" to capture even Jewish political opponents of Israel. But you can't do this and keep "anti-Semitism" as a term of intense moral condemnation. Nor will the inflationary gambit successfully isolate the truly reprehensible anti-Semites.

The best way to reserve "anti-Semitism" as a term of condemnation is to define it as hatred of Jews, not for what they do but for what they are. It is to hate them just because they belong to a certain ethnic group. Foxman is right to suggest that you can be an anti-Semite without expressing any racist sentiments: Many anti-Semites confine themselves to expounding false claims about Jewish control. But you can also, without harboring anti-Semitic hate, criticize Israel and even the Jewish community for its failures. To suppose otherwise would be to suppose an inexplicable wave of anti-Semitism among both American and Israeli Jews, both of whom figure prominently among the critics.

But the touchiest question is not what anti-Semitism is, or whether it has increased. It is whether Jews are in significant danger. Isn't that what matters?

To put it personally: Anti-Semitism may be important to me, but is it important, period? The answer cannot be dictated by "Jewish sensibilities."

My background certainly predisposes me to regard anti-Semitic incidents with alarm. But time passes. Concentration camp survivors still alive deserve sympathy and justice, but they are few. Myself, I'd feel a bit embarrassed saying to a homeless person on the streets of Toronto, much less to the inhabitants of a Philippine garbage dump: "Oh yeah? You think you know suffering? My grandmother died in a concentration camp!"

We should indeed guard against a resurgence of European fascism, and Jewish organizations are oddly lax about this. The ADL, for instance, did not comment on last month's electoral gains of Croatian nationalists who trace their lineage directly back to some of Adolf Hitler's most savage and willing executioners. But we Jews live not in the past but in a brutal present that forces us to reassess our moral priorities.

An appropriately stark reassessment might involve counting up the dead and wounded in the ADL's list of anti-Semitic incidents in 2002 and 2003. Its surveys include two Al Qaeda attacks. This is questionable: Al Qaeda's war on the United States, Israel, the West and pretty much everyone else seems independent of sentiment in the countries in which the attacks occurred. Include these attacks and the number of Jews killed in that period seems to be nine. Exclude them, and it falls to one, in Morocco. Jews hospitalized or incurring serious injuries falls to about a dozen.

On March 14, the BBC reported that the Honduran government would investigate the killings of 1,569 street children in the last five years. The killers may well be "police or army personnel," according to Amnesty International, and there have been virtually no prosecutions. Not even the alternative left-wing press gave the story any coverage. In the Congo, 3 million have died in 4 1/2 years. Perhaps anti-Semitism is not, after all, a high priority.

Michael Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Ontario, Canada. Professor Neumann's views are not to be taken as those of his university. His book What's Left: Radical Politics and the Radical Psyche has just been republished by Broadview Press. He is also a contributor to The Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at:  mneumann@trentu.ca.

This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

ABUSING "ANTI-SEMITISM"


by Ran HaCohen



The eve of the Jewish New Year is an excellent occasion for what Jewish tradition calls Kheshbon Nefesh, or soul-searching on so-called "anti-semitism", which has now become the single most important element of Jewish identity. Jews may believe in God or not, eat pork or not, live in Israel or not, but they are all united by their unlimited belief in anti-semitism.

When a Palestinian kills innocent Israeli civilians, it's anti-semitism. When Palestinians attack soldiers of Israel's occupation army in their own village, it's anti-semitism. When the UN General Assembly votes 133 to 4 condemning Israel's decision to murder the elected Palestinian leader, it means that except for the US, Micronesia and Marshal Islands, all other countries on the globe are anti-semitic. Even when a pregnant Palestinian woman is stopped at an Israeli check-point and gives birth in open field, the only lesson to be learnt is that Ha'aretz journalist Gideon Levy – who reported two such cases in the past two weeks, one in which the baby died – is an anti-semite.

Anti-semitism is an all-encompassing explanation. Anything unpleasant to anti-Palestinian ears is just another instance of anti-semitism. Jewish consciousness focused on anti-semitism has taken the shape of anti-semitic conspiracy theories, like that of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion: whereas the anti-semitic classic relates every calamity to Jewish conspiracy, Jews relate to anti-semitic conspiracy every criticism of Israel. As we shall see, this is not the only similarity between anti-Palestinianism and anti-semitism.

It is high time to say it out loud: in the entire course of Jewish history, since the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BC, there has never been an era blessed with less anti-semitism than ours. There has never been a better time for Jews to live in than our own.

Up to just two generations ago, anti-semitism was a legitimate political and cultural attitude in most of the world's leading powers. Anti-semitism was something you could express openly, even be proud of. Disliking Jews was as natural then as detesting cockroaches is today. Nowadays, anti-semitism is a taboo and a criminal offence in every developed country on earth. Even truly anti-semitic groups deny their anti-semitic character, knowing it is politically unacceptable. Unlike earlier centuries, where anti-semitism stood in direct proportion to the number of Jews in the pertinent country and thus constituted a real threat to them, the countries where anti-semitism is still thriving today – mostly poor Muslim countries – are virtually empty of Jews, so that the actual danger to Jews there is minimal; representatives of Muslim communities in the West have to give up their anti-semitism as a precondition for entering the political system.

Just a few generations ago – the Holocaust aside for now – Jews were treated as second-class citizens in all major Jewish concentrations. They were denied civic and religious rights almost universally. There were limits on access of Jews to universities and many professions, to public service and to any position of power; sometimes even marrying and making children was dependent on quotas and licences. Such institutionalised discrimination and oppression is not only totally extinct today: it is utterly unimaginable. With one revealing exception (Israel, where non-orthodox religious Jews are discriminated against), Jews enjoy full religious freedom wherever they are. They have full citizenship wherever they live, with full political, civic and human rights like every other citizen. This may sound trivial, but it was not so just a few generations ago and throughout the entire first and second millennia. Repressive regimes have either collapsed, or their Jewish population has left them.

Nowadays, an orthodox Jew can run for the most powerful office on earth, the president of the United States (I personally hope he doesn't win). A Jew can be the mayor of Amsterdam in "anti-semitic" Holland, a minister in "anti-semitic" Britain, a leading intellectual in "anti-semitic" France, a president of "anti-semitic" Switzerland, editor-in-chief of a major daily in "anti-semitic" Denmark, or an industrial tycoon in "anti-semitic" Russia. None of this was imaginable a century ago. Jews have free and unlimited access to every institution in every country they live in; Ironically, a converted Jew is even mentioned as a possible successor to the Holy See. At the same time, "anti-semitic" Germany (home to the world's fastest-growing Jewish community) gives Israel three military submarines for free, "anti-semitic" France has proliferated to Israel the nuclear technology for its weapons of mass destruction, and "anti-semitic" Europe has welcomed Israel as a single non-European country to everything from football and basketball leagues to the Eurovision Song Contest, and has granted Israeli universities a special status for scientific fund-raising.

The Holocaust has been the greatest catastrophe in Jewish history and among the greatest crimes in human history – but the very fact that these words sound so obvious is a great victory on anti-semitism. The term genocide, coined by a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust (R. Lemkin) and modelled on the genocide of the Jews, has found its way to international legislation and been affirmed as a crime by almost all the countries on earth, including eventually (with a shamefully long delay) the US. The Holocaust has (justly!) become the prototype of genocide, a synonym for Crime against Humanity. There were several other genocides in the 20th century – enough to mention the Armenian genocide by Turks (which preceded and inspired the Holocaust) or the Tutsi genocide by Hutu in Rwanda (which was even more "efficient" than the Holocaust). However, while other genocides are still struggling even to be acknowledged, the Holocaust is the only genocide which is considered unquestionable to the extent that its denial is in some countries a criminal offence. No other genocide even comes close to the 250 memorial museums and research institutes dedicated to the Holocaust around the world, and no other genocide survivors have been financially compensated like the persecuted Jews. In such a world, whoever cries "anti-semitism" twice a day has an extremely heavy burden of proof to shoulder.

The State of Israel has always been cynically exploiting allegations of anti-semitism, condemning purported and cooperating with actual anti-semites at will. Last week, to quote just a minor example, when the world was outraged by Italy's monarch Berlusconi's claim that his fascist predecessor Mussolini "had not killed anybody but just sent people to holidays in exile" – which comes fairly close to Holocaust denial – the only official Israeli reaction was that of an unnamed spokesman for the 2nd Minister in the Ministry of Finance, who mumbled that "If the words have been said (!), one can not agree with them, since History speaks for itself" (Ha'aretz 14.9, p.12 bottom). The reason for this ear-deafening outcry is simple: Berlusconi, like most right-wing extremists, has taken a decisive pro-Israel stand in Europe. So let him even deny the Holocaust if he likes, Israel will show understanding. After all, Israel was a closest ally of the most racist regime in the post-WWII era, South Africa's Apartheid: moral considerations have never played any role whatsoever in Israel's politics and diplomacy.

On a state level, some may excuse it as Realpolitik. The institutionalised pro-Israel lobby has compromised its integrity to such an extent, that I won't be surprised if, say, the Anti-Defamation League, which cries anti-semitic wolf on a daily basis, now hails the fascist apologist Berlusconi as a distinguished statesman; Actually, precisely this world-record of hypocricy has taken place this very week. Much more disturbing is the intensive resorting to "anti-semitism" claims by Jewish individuals and institutions who do try to maintain a look of integrity.Such claims take many creative forms: for example, some Jews have a morally repulsive pastime of looking for worst cases of oppression – Russian atrocities in Chechnya (whose veterans, by the way, join the Israeli army), Chinese in Tibet – which supposedly "prove" that the media focus on Israel is anti-semitically motivated. As if it were not outrageous enough to be on the shortlist of evil-doers, as if only the gold medal in this satanic competition, but not bronze or silver, is worthy of protest. And I wonder how many of those arm-chair pro-Israel Tibet specialists ever bothered to actually do something to free Tibet, except for exploiting its suffering to distract from Israel's atrocities.

The abuse of alleged anti-semitism is morally despicable. It took hundreds of years and millions of victims to turn anti-semitism – a specific case of racism which led historically to genocide – into a taboo. People abusing this taboo in order to support Israel's racist and genocidal policy towards the Palestinians do nothing less than desecrate the memory of those Jewish victims, whose death, from a humanistic perspective, is meaningful only inasmuch as it serves as an eternal warning to the human kind against all kinds of discrimination, racism, and genocide.

Moreover, portraying the victimisers as victims – a standard characteristic of anti-Palestinian propaganda – is precisely what anti-semitism has always done: in blood-libels which portrayed defenceless Jewish victims as victimisers of Christian children, or in the ultimate accusation of Christ killing, which abused the persecution of early Christians to legitimate the persecution of Jews once the balance of power changed. Thus, evoking Jewish victims of the past to defend Jewish victimisers of the present –remember that Israel has one of the mightiest armies on earth – is a moral fault on a par with, and embarrassingly similar to, anti-semitism itself.

"I see an armed guy firing from a dust bank. Is there any child in front of him serving as a child? Show me a picture of a Palestinian firing from behind kids, using them as shields."

You're not thinking about this much, are you? What do you want, a picture of a Palestinian terrorist wearing a schoolboy taped to his chest like a kevlar vest? Look at the picture again. To the left of the terrorist lying down on the bank is another masked terrorist who is surrounded by children. Why would they want the children in front of them, obscuring their view, when they can loose off a few shots and dive back into their crowd of human shields?

"For Zionists, the tears of that Palestinian woman are just a reason for laughs...Perhaps losting more and more of their children in this senseless occupation, Israeli mothers will learn to respect the tears of Palestinian mothers..."

The point is that the woman's tears are as genuine as Arafat's claim that he's not Egyptian. She's posing in front of the only piece of English graffiti in sight, surrounded by photographers, making an unconvicing attempt to look upset in a pantomime woe-is-me way.

How much more banal could your presentation of the anti-zionism/anti-semitism debate be? Can't you do any better than cutting and pasting articles, not in support of an argument, but instead of?

You can be a non-Jewish zionist, so it would seem reasonable that you can be an anti-zionist without being anti-semitic. That doesn't excuse the fact that, under pressure, a clear majority of pro-Palestinians resort to the 'sons of monkeys and pigs' style rhetoric of their Hamas masters, and seek to mask their naked hatred of Jews by roping in some poor mug from Gush Shalom to muddy the waters.

Is this - from your fellow 'anti-zionists' in Holland - anti-semitic, or anti-zionist?

"The outcome is that an astonishing axis has developed between Islamic Jew-haters and the Left, marching behind the banners of 'human rights' on demonstrations in Europe producing chants of 'Hamas, Hamas, all Jews to the gas'."
 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1153419,00.html
 http://haganah.org.il/hmedia/euasr-15.html

'Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom' that thing you posted tries to minimise Mahathir's blatant anti-semitism. He said that Jews control the world and get gentiles to fight their wars etc for them, and said that Muslims must create big armies etc and unite to fight the Jews. Typical Protocols of Zion stuff.

Look the fact is that Israel has constantly been attacked by Arab states that want to exterminate Jews. The facts are all there if you look it up. The Palestinian/Arab movement were all pro-Nazi and the mufti, their leader, helped organise the Holocaust, and felt that Jews needed to be killed faster. The vast majority of Palestine has been chopped off and made into Jordan. When the PLO was formed in 1964 Israel didn't 'occupy' the West Bank and Gaza, and the PLO did not claim them as Palestinian, it just called for the 'liquidation of the Zionist presence' (Israel and the Jews). Even today PLO text books say all of Israel and Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, and they shamefully indoctrinate and abuse their children, about 80% of whom now think its the best thing possible to die for Allah.

Saying this stuff is not anti-Muslim. As another article points out, there are Muslim Zionists. Islam foresaw the return of the Jews to Israel, and some Arab leaders thus originally supported Zionism and co-operated and so on, but then they were forced out by the extremists, who used other parts of Islam, such as the whole dhimmi status for Jews, which says they cannot be equal to Muslims. The Mufti of Russia is pro-Israel even today.

"Look at the picture again. To the left of the terrorist lying down on the bank is another masked terrorist who is surrounded by children. Why would they want the children in front of them, obscuring their view, when they can loose off a few shots and dive back into their crowd of human shields?"

Sorry dude...better luck next time.

"The point is that the woman's tears are as genuine as Arafat's claim that he's not Egyptian. She's posing in front of the only piece of English graffiti in sight, surrounded by photographers, making an unconvicing attempt to look upset in a pantomime woe-is-me way."

I think I can say the same regarding this Jewish woman...oh poor lady, probably is looking for an Oscar as the "best crying over a coffin".
:)
Moral relativism can be funny!

In the photo of the Palestinian woman, where is the coffin? Demolished house? Injured children? She happened to be walking along the wall, sobbing, and stopped - coincidentally - by English graffiti, whereupon a throng of photographers suddenly appeared? Or perhaps the photographers were there, and asked her to pose by the graffiti? Get real. It reassures me that you don't realise how much damage you do to your 'cause' with your ridiculous rantings.

people like this michael neumann who wrote the article on top may find it amusing and fashionable to be jews who say thing s which make other jews furious, but they are really silly. antisemitism is a danger, as history shows that when ordinary people really believe that jews are responsible for the bad things going on anything can happen. if people get convinced that the entire unrest sweeping the muslim world from morocoo to indonesia is due to israel ( a ridicolous explanation, but one ordinary people in france, italy or canada may be ready to believe) then it's dangerous.
and when he says that most jews are partly responsible for what israel is doing, what does he think of other countries who commit much worse human right violations?

While the Arab massacres continue in Sudan and Nigeria (etc.) without so much as a whimper from people like Latuff, the world condemns Israel for defending herself and killing mass-murdering terrorists a la Yassin and Rantissi.

The world is sick. Sick with hate.
The 'anti-zionists' are the 'root cause' of this sickness.

Are you saying that Palestinian mothers do not feel grief when their sons and daughters are murdered? Maybe they're just not human, after all, they're just arabs, surely they love death.

Imagine the only time you meet a Jew is when they are humiliating you at a checkpoint. Forcing you to carry heavy bags over piles of rubble, preventing you from getting to hospital, randomly beaten in the fields. It's not just the high numbers of Palestinians who are killed, a huge percentage of which are children, but there are those who are simply humiliated and beaten. When I was there, we came across a couple of soldiers simply beating people up at a checkpoint, high on adrenaline, we talked to them until they got bored, they wanted to chat up the girls in our group, and they let the Palestinians go.
A couple of other times in my trip guys came up to us having been brutally beaten. One had a boot mark on his face. Simple cruelty. It means their only contact with Jewish culture is with those people who routinely terrorise them, and they are not in any position to appreciate Jewish art, literature, philosophy, science. The things that make Judaism great are those elements. The thing that is poisoning it is Zionism. Anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism. Tell me, when you see a friend committing a crime, and you try and stop them, because you do not want them to become a criminal and face the consequences of what they will do, does that mean you cease to be a friend. Blind nationalism is polluting the culture. So much talent and energy is being wasted to build a state on someone elses land. And all these cries of anti-semitism against the critics of Israel mean that those who are genuinely anti-semitic feel safer, and freer to express their opinions, like that lady in the photograph. If someone who wants Jews and Arabs to live together in the same country in peace is anti-semitic, then what do you call the skinhead who wants to send all Jews to the gas? If the Palestinian who works with groups like Jews for Justice and has interest in inter-faith dialogue and mutual understanding is anti-semitic, then what do you call the memeber of Hamas who thinks all Jews are the sons of dogs and pigs?
You just throw the term around until it becomes meaningless, because you are completely blinded by nationalism, and you don't see how your actions are leading to yet another disaster for the Jewish people. If I have to associate Zionism with Judaism, then I will have a bad impression of Jews. What impresses me about Judaism is the high intellectual and mystical culture, Einstein, Buber, Pauli, the kabbalists of medieval spain, and the fact the Jewish people struggled for so long against such terrible persecution, and maintained their cultural heritage. The actions of the State of Israel are a complete anti-thesis of that, a complete denial of all that Jews have achieved and learned. It is a nationalism so crude, it makes me cry.

Tell me, what is a human shield? There's a photo on this site of a Palestinian boy being tied to the front of a jeep and driven around. Israeli forces routinely use Palestinians to go in front of them and search door to door. That is a human shield.
That last photo with the children and the fighter. Do those children look like they're being forced to be there? They LIVE there, as does the fighter. They are resisting in their homes. They live with their families, while foreign invaders come and invade their villages and cities. They are a part of the civilian population, because Palestine has no army to defend itself. It is a general culture of resistance against the Israeli Invasion Forces, and you have to ask yourself, what would you do if some foreign power invaded YOUR city. I would fight from where I live, I would be a part of the civilian population and resist from there. You cannot expect resistance fighters to all move out the cities into a camp somewhere outside where they can be conveniently bombed by F-16s. The Israeli army simply has no right to be in those cities and towns.

Hate to stick to the pont here, but it seems nobody's got a shred of evidence that Latuff is antisemitic.

Lets get something clear: no amount of historical 'Arab aggression' etc justifies the brutal repression and occupation of Palestine. No amount of Israeli oppression justifies the murder of innocent civilians in revenge.

So if we want these atrocities to end, we assess the causal order. What came first, occupation or suicide bombing? The Occupation. What drives people to blow themselves up? The occupation (PA propaganda may be a factor but there have been well educated, well informed suicide bombers like the Haifa bomber - a lawyer who saw her father and brother murdered with impunity by the IDF if i remember correctly).

Israel holds all the cards. Under the Geneva conventions, THE OCCUPYING POWER is responsible for security. Israel air-strikes PA police stations then accuses the PA of not arresting militants. Clearly this undermines popular support for negotiations as the death toll rises.

And while we're at it, attacks on soldiers in occupied territory is NOT terrorism. Suicide bombings are. Attacks on settlements, eg mortars, rockets are not terrorism. Breaking into a settlement and murdering unarmed people is. If the British army took their kiddies with them to occupied Basra would that make them civilians?

The pictures of militants amongst children are inconclusive. It is the nature of urban war that palestinian resistance will be seen with palestinian civilians. If Hamas are using kids as human shields, then THEY ARE JUST AS BAD AS THE IDF. That still doesn't justify collective punishment.

And the supposed 'anti-anti-semites' here do real anti-semitism a great service. Politicising and elevating one form of xenophobia above all others implies a superiority complex. I work with a group called 'jews for justice for palestinians' which fights anti-semitism, islamophobia and xenophobia generally. They are opposed to all attempts to use anti-semitism as a tool to censor critics of the policies of a nation state. As part of a stall a different group I was with ran at a conference on Palestine we distributed leaflets about the attrocities in Darfur too. Human rights are for all. There is no hierarchy of xenophobias.

End the occupation. Equal rights for all. Fight xenophobia in all its forms.

How dumb can you be? I'm addressing this to the individual(s) who claim that Nazi Germans created Palestinians or whatever the f*ck they said. If a Nazi found an Arab, who is Semitic, the Arab would go right into the gas chamber with the Jews.

Besides, what difference does it make, when you see a civilian with a severe head wound, if he's wearing a jewish skullcap or palestinian scarf? All blood is red. All tears taste salty.

As someone of Jewish heritage, I say: " 'Free Free Palestine' AND 'Am Yisrael Chai'. NO CONTRADICTIONS!!!!!!"