The New Republic

I will take this opportunity to remind Jonathan Chait that the most pervasive and pernicious form of anti-Semitism among the Western elite of today which excuses and apologizes for Israeli war crimes because Israel is a Jweish State. In doing so the Zionist anti-Semite seeks to share the blame for these Israeli war crimes among all Jews. But Jonathan Chait is far worse than a Zionist Anti-Semite since he stands fully behind The New Republic and its implicit, where not explicit, support of the premier exponents of neo-Nazism in the World today - the Israeli settlers whose foul ideology of racist supremacy and oppression has come to be the defining ideology of the State of Israel. No matter how many lies Jonathan Chait, Alan Dershowitz, Jeffrey Goldberg and Martin Peretz tell about the reponse of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Richard Goldsone to the Gaza pogroms they will still not be telling the truth. These organizations and individuals write what they write because Israel has indeed undertaken massive violations in international humaitarian law. The 500,000 Israeli settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories including East Jerusalem are indictable war criminals in a war crime that has become the defining goal of an evil ideology that once proud Zionism has morphed into. Jonathan Chait has allowed his intellect to be subsumed by the cause of nationalist (religiou) oppression of the Palestinian people. Of course, he is handsomely rewarded for this intellectual and moral betrayal. The thirty pieces of silver he so cherishes are stained in the blood of dead Jews and the blood of a far greater number of dead Palestinians. Far from being a "brave truth teller," Jonathan Chait shows just how easy it must have been for Germans in the 1930s to succumb to the sirens of evil. So, Jonathan, let's see you become that "brave truth teller" and leave behind the stinking ideology of this magazine and the Foer's the Wieseltiers and the Peretz's who run it. Let's see you free yourself to speak the truth instead of attacking those who are not bound by the shackles of nationalist (religious) bigotry that bind you.

- ndmackenzie

May 8, 2010 at 6:37pm

I'm sure Yglesias would be inclined to give Trent Lott a pass too. Or at least he would be if Yglesias criticized Israel.

- bigm

May 8, 2010 at 6:53pm

"As for Goldstone, again, I don't think his Apartheid history makes him anything like a Nazi." No, it makes him more like an "old Africaaner". BTW, Goldstone apartheid record is much worse than "acquitting police officers who broke into a white woman's home on suspicion that she was have sex with a black man". According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, "Goldstone sentenced at least 28 black defendants to death. Most of them were found guilty of murder and sought to appeal the verdict. In those days, he actually made sure he showed his support for the execution policy, writing in one verdict that it reflects society's demands that a price be paid for crimes it rightfully views as frightening. In another verdict, in which he upheld the execution of a young black man convicted of murdering a white restaurant owner after he fired him, Goldstone wrote that the death penalty is the only punishment likely to deter such acts. It should be noted that whites, granted superior status under Apartheid Law, were the ones calling that such a heavy price be exacted for violent crimes, while the black majority in South Africa consistently opposed the death penalty. Only in 1995 when Nelson Mandela took power was the South African constitution amended and the death penalty abolished. Hundreds of people sitting on death row were spared, including some that Goldstone himself sent there. Even when it came to far less serious offenses, Goldstone sided through and through with the racist policies of the Apartheid regime. Among other things, he approved the whipping of four blacks found guilty of violence, while he acquitted four police officers who had broken into a white woman's house on suspicions that she was conducting sexual relations with a black man – something considered then in South Africa as a serious crime. In another incident, Goldstone sentenced two young black men merely for being in possession of a video tape showing a speech given by one of the senior officials in Nelson Mandela's party. In response to sections of the study presented to him, Goldstone said that he has always been opposed to the death penalty, but because was acting within a legal system in which the death penalty exists, his hands were tied. He also claimed that he was obligated to honor the laws of the country, even under Apartheid rule, and could not find enough mitigating evidence to spare the defendants from execution." http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3885999,00.html "his hands were tied". Did anyone force him to be a judge under such a regime? At the very least he could have done as Socrates did, when the Thirty Tyrants asked him to arrest Leon of Salamis so that he might be executed. He refused to do so. He neither protested the decision nor took steps to warn Leon of Salamis, but at least he withstood the pressure to actively contribute to this kind of law-enforcement. Goldstone seems to be a conformist, a rhinoceros in the Ionescan sense of the word.

- noga1

May 8, 2010 at 7:22pm

From Wikipedia: -- During his tenure, Bush signed the execution warrants for more death row inmates than any other Governor in the history of Texas, averaging a death every nine days.[6] The only death penalty case among the 153 that came across George W. Bush's desk in his tenure as Texas Governor in which Governor Bush intervened and commuted the death sentence was that of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. I find the death penalty abhorrent. It is far better off the books but when it is on the books we must, alas, expect it to be used. Frankly, none of the hasbararian propagandists now attacking Goldstone for using the death sentence have any right to condemn him as long as they support an Israel which openly uses extra-judical execution as a matter of course. They fail, of course, to notice the irony in their attacking somone using the death penalty because they refuse to hold Israel culpable for the wanton butchery that was the pogrom in Gaza.

- ndmackenzie

May 8, 2010 at 7:38pm

A judge complicit in buttressing apartheid regime's laws in SA is invited, twenty years later, to write a report about the Gaza war. In each case he has God on his side. The first, when he was merely following the letter of the law. The second, he was merely following the mandate from one of the most corrupt bodies in the UN. "Professor Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, called the resolution "deeply one-sided and flawed", arguing that the resolution begins by assuming what the inquiry it mandated was supposedly meant to determine. Cotler further noted that Goldstone himself revealed that he had initially refused his own appointment for this very reason. He quoted Goldstone saying: "More than hesitate, I initially refused to become involved in any way [with the inquiry], on the basis of what seemed to me to be a biased, uneven-handed resolution of the UN Human Rights Council".[7]" The question is then asked, why did he become involved in an inquiry based on "what seemed to me to be a biased, uneven-handed"? To me it sounds like: "he was obligated to honor the laws of the country, even under Apartheid rule, and could not find enough mitigating evidence to spare the defendants from execution." In both cases, given that he was fully aware of the more than real danger to render injustice, he should have walked away. Why didn't he?

- noga1

May 8, 2010 at 9:10pm

What the hell is a "Zionist Anti-Semite?" A self-hating Jew who loves Theodor Herzl? So, given nd's actual anti-Semitism, this is probably not what was meant. Well, Arabs are Semites too, so I am guessing that he (or she?) is writing about Zionists who hate Palestinian Arabs, and probably all other Arabs, as well. What a bizarre, whacked-out formulation, but then, that is what we have come to expect from this nutter. Which leads me to a recurrent thought: what is nd doing here, an obvious anti-Semitic hysteriac, hyperventilating at the website of a pro-Israeli publication? Nd would not have been out of place writing for Der Sturmer. Does he (by his bile and aggressiveness I am surmising nd is male) enjoy getting put down repeatedly, that is to say, is he a masochist? It is disappointing to see Matt Yglesias writing dismissively of your views on the Middle East, Jonathan. Surely there is a political space between the Likudniks and Noam Chomsky that is legitimate to occupy. I myself have views on the Middle East that are very similar to yours, and I think they are quite tenable and defensible. I don't suppose that if I were launching missiles from Yglesias' back yard that he would go all soft and let me get away with that. Talk of international law and dialogue is often meant for other people than the writer or speaker. I know, I know, my analogy is incomplete. When Israel was founded, Palestinians were pushed off the land. I read Benny Morris' splendid revised history of all this last year, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, and I knew about this decades before I read that book. So we are dealing with injustices, any number of which cannot be redressed at this point in time. But time moves on, and generations come and go. A huge number of Israelis were born after 1948 and many wish to live in peace but the way of Hamas is not peace. So to win an Yglesias Award that Andrew Sullivan confers for intellectual honesty, I would like to see you, M. Yglesias, address these questions honestly. And it seems contrary to the spirit of a known anti-racist to go soft on Richard Goldstone's role as a judge. This softness has to derive from an anti-Israeli bias. Imagine Ygleisas and others on the anti-Israeli left soft-soaping Goldstone if he had been an Israeli judge and had had Palestinians whipped and executed. And while I have the floor, if you are tuned in, Andrew Sullivan, I would like to say to you that I love your blog and I visit it many times each day; it is one of only three sites that I go to 365 days a year - yours, TNR Online, and NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. As much as I love most of your blog, I think that you have gone over the top on Israel. A decade ago and even less, you were substantially the neoconservative and then of a sudden, you experienced a radical boulversement. I should think that a drastic change in perspective might cause you to go softly in that good night and hold your punches a bit. But oh no, not Andrew Sullivan, Mr. Moralistic. There is something wrong with someone who supports Dick Cheney one moment and then without any adequate explanation for such a stunning reversal (and no, your apologia in response to Leon Wieseltier was not convincing, even as Leon W. was way off the mark in certain respects, too), lurches to supporting Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, without missing a beat. I tend to shy away from psychological explanations as reductive and often unprovable, but here it certainly seems to me that you reacted spasmodically after you realized that you were supporting torture and policies that were literally mad at their worst, and Israel got into the crosshairs of your animosity. Jonathan Chait's views on Israel make a lot more sense than yours. He is for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as am I - aren't we all? - but there is not a large constituency for peace among the Palestinians and here I am probably less sanguine than Jonathan is about the possibility of an actual, workable peace accord between the two parties in the next, say, ten years, or so. Israel is the only real democracy in the Levant; for God's sake, Andrew. Lay off, won't you? And I say this as a gentile, half-Slav ethnic, lapsed Catholic and non-believer, one who is also critical of Israel for expanding the settlements, for staffing Shin Bet with thugs, for cutting down olive trees, etc, etc. But I know, you are on a Crusade; you are Andrew Blanking Sullivan and you will not be denied. Say, can I fire rockets at you and Aaron Tone from your backyard? I will give you thirty minutes to get the beagles out. Seriously, man, I love your blog, but you need to gain some perspective; Israel is the only real democracy in the Middle East and you must learn to lean against your radical decontextualization of highly complex geopolitical realities in the this region. This goes for you, too, Yglesias. By the way, Andrew, your beagles are adorable and I wish you and Aaron the best. I talk about your blog all of the time to my incredibly sweet wife. We were married in March of a last year and our love is amazing and transformational. I have never experienced anyone like my beloved Duck before. By all accounts, you and Aaron seem to have an amazing marriage, too, and we wish you well forever. Shalom.

- liberal reformer

May 8, 2010 at 9:50pm

Exactly, Noga. Though I'm not sure what you mean by an old Afrikaaner. Yes: "He also claimed that he was obligated to honor the laws of the country, even under Apartheid rule, and could not find enough mitigating evidence to spare the defendants from execution." Sounds very much like the jurists in Nurenberg.

- MOLLYSIMON

May 8, 2010 at 10:19pm

ND: By the way, do you rant to the Arabs who have no problem with terrorists killing civilians? the Or is your rabidity reserved for the Jews only? Of course, why bother asking. The you write as someone in the clutches of an obsessive mania.

- MOLLYSIMON

May 8, 2010 at 10:23pm

"..what you mean by an old Afrikaaner. " I was attempting an ironic play on Mearsheimer's revolting new linguistic coinage, dubbing supporters of Israel as the "New Africaaners". I assume Goldstone counts as one of Mearsheimer's "Righteous Jews".

- noga1

May 8, 2010 at 10:23pm

"...you write as someone in the clutches of an obsessive mania." I don't know about that. Prof. Eve Garrard described the new antisemites' obsession with Israel as a stalkers' syndrome and Anthony Julius, in his new book about antisemitism pointed to the connection between antisemitism and sadism (see k2K's link in the latest Spine post). http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2008/03/portrait-of-the.html Both these terms which describe criminal behaviour rather than mental illness could be attributed to schmakenzie here.

- noga1

May 8, 2010 at 10:30pm

-- ND: By the way, do you rant to the Arabs who have no problem with terrorists killing civilians? the Or is your rabidity reserved for the Jews only? Of course, why bother asking. The you write as someone in the clutches of an obsessive mania. I can assure you that I would be just as condemnatory were The New Republic to advocate for Palestinian "terrorists killing civilians" in the way it clearly advocates for Israeli terrorists, - sorry Defence Forces - killing civilians. Fortunately, there are no mainstream American publications advocating for Palestinian terrorism while unfortunately there are several American publications supporting Israeli terrorism. There are far too many Americans, Jonathan Chait included, who prostitute their intellect and morality for the latter cause.

- ndmackenzie

May 8, 2010 at 10:34pm

Does this make sense? "The first problem is that the law as defined by organizations like Human Rights Watch makes it not merely difficult to wage war, which is appropriate, but actually impossible." and ... "Human Rights Watch, while also making a lot of valid criticisms of Israeli military actions, turns out to slant its findings" Which is it? The first argument seems to dismiss HRW's standard (their idea of "international humanitarian law") while the second concerns the way it's applied. Is it both? I can see how one could objects to an element of HRW's idea of how wars should be fought, but Chait doesn't get into this ... just chucking their whole approach. Or is it just on the issue of fighting terrorists who hide amongst civilians that Chait and HRW differ ... on policy?

- NR851651

May 8, 2010 at 10:40pm

Liberal Reformer writes: -- Which leads me to a recurrent thought: what is nd doing here, an obvious anti-Semitic hysteriac, hyperventilating at the website of a pro-Israeli publication? Nd would not have been out of place writing for Der Sturmer. In general I define myself by positive statements rather than negative statements. I do make an exception for Nazis and their foul ideology and am proud to describe myself an anti-Nazi. I hope that in the 1930s I would have had the courage to stand up to those who advocated for Nazism in der Sturmer just as today I stand up to those who advocate the most pernicious form of neo-Nazism in the Western World - that of the Israeli settlers - in morally depraved magazines like The New Republic. I fully understand, Liberal Reformer, why you would feel threatened by someone who upsets the little cabal of Zionist Anti-Semitism and ZioNazism provided by The New Republic. But I find it a moral obligation to condemn the nationalist (religious) bigotry that is the lifeblood of commenatary at this magazine. The problem lies not with me but with those like you who seek to raise once again the specter of racist evil.

- ndmackenzie

May 8, 2010 at 10:54pm

Yglesias is a hypocrite when it comes to issues dealing with the Jewish State and its defenders. We all know what muck-enzie is... the rest is commentary

- jdyer

May 8, 2010 at 11:06pm

nd: "Frankly, none of the hasbararian propagandists now attacking Goldstone for using the death sentence have any right to condemn him as long as ...." Could you address Chait's central point? The issue is not that Goldstone's conduct as an Apartheid-era judge reflects on Goldstone's morals. The issue is that said conduct reflects on Goldstone's conduct within a system. Chait concluded with the following: His champions have portrayed him as a brave truth-teller, and his critics as a weak bureaucratic figure currying favor with the powers that be. The revelations about his history do lend more plausibility to the latter interpretation. In case you didn't get what he means by that, I fill in the blanks. His champions claim that he bravely stood up to the international Zionist lobby to tell the truth as revealed in the report. His critics point out that he joined a system that twists facts at every opportunity to condemn Israel, and to ingratiate himself to that system, produced a report that did the same. Now, the revelations of Goldstone's Apartheid-era activities show a history of currying favor with powers that be and of not standing up for the truth. Do you have any other interpretation of those facts?

- sighthnd

May 8, 2010 at 11:06pm

nd: I'd like to know, do you find the Pact of Umar to be a just document and that all of the problems of the Middle East is the Jews would just resubmit to it?

- sighthnd

May 8, 2010 at 11:09pm

Well maybe not everyone knows what muckenzie is. let me help you, here: "The Jewish Question: British Anti-Semitism" By HAROLD BLOOM " Anthony Julius has written a strong, somber book on an appalling subject: the long squalor of Jew-hatred in a supposedly enlightened, humane, liberal society. My first, personal, reflection is to give thanks that my own father, who migrated from Odessa, Russia, to London, had the sense, after sojourning there, to continue on to New York City...." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/books/review/Bloom-t.html?ref=books muck-enzie is a British antisemite who in the 1930's would have been marching with Sir Oswald Mosley's boys. Today he just blubbers on about Zionists and "Zionazis."

- jdyer

May 8, 2010 at 11:12pm

macscumbag is not only a Jew-hating AngloNazi genocidal maniac, he is also a dirty liar. He is also a coward who hides behind his keyboard because against Jews armed with guns, he is no ubermensch. And he is far from alone on his benighted island. If it sank into the surrounding waters, I wouldn't miss it a day.

- NR114746

May 8, 2010 at 11:18pm

sighthnd, building a fairly collossal straw man, asks: -- nd: I'd like to know, do you find the Pact of Umar to be a just document and that all of the problems of the Middle East is the Jews would just resubmit to it? Frankly, any document supposedly written in 717AD is "just a document" and has no validity legal or otherwise today. This is just as true of the Biblical justification for Israel being a Jewish state as it is for the Pact of Umar. However, Israel is subject to the body of international humaitarian law guilt up over the last 150 years or so. The decades-long Western appeasement of horrendous Israeli violations of international humanitarian law is probably the greatest moral failure by the Western World in the last 65 years. It is an appeasement that has helped Israel bring moral failure and depravity to Jews across the World - and, in particular, to those Jews who blindly support the evil that is THE Israeli national project the coloniation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. So, sighthnd, the Pact of Umma is irrelevant to everyone except imbeciles like you who use it as a straw man to divert attention from the actually relevant documents that Israel does ignore and which in doing so has made Israel an international pariah.

- ndmackenzie

May 9, 2010 at 3:22am

The immediate problem with Harold Bloom's review of Anthony Julius's book is that Bloom is too stupid to recognize that he should have refused the commission to write it. A symptom of the failure of moral and intellectual integrity in the American elite is its continued assumption that only Jews may review books concerning Israel or Jews. Perhaps The New York Times is unaware of the deep biases indicated by the use of Bloom for this review but I, for one, certainly hope both the Times and other media outlets end this pernicious habit. The only real question raised by this review is whether Bloom is an imbecilic bigot or a bigoted imbecile. The opening paragraph gets straight to the issue: -- Anthony Julius has written a strong, somber book on an appalling subject: the long squalor of Jew-hatred in a supposedly enlightened, humane, liberal society. My first, personal, reflection is to give thanks that my own father, who migrated from Odessa, Russia, to London, had the sense, after sojourning there, to continue on to New York City. Bloom is right to suggest that "Jew hatred is squalid." But he surely exposes bigotry and imbecility in equal measure by his lack of qualification of long squalor and his mockery in "enlightened, humane, liberal society." And then he goes full on to expose his own personal biases yet makes no suggestion that they should have led to his recusement. I think we can give him a bigoted imbecile for the opening. Then Bloom launches into a second paragraph that is a veritable parade of the lies and innuendo typically trotted out to appease the ZioNazism that is the central ideology of the settler movement and of an Israeli State that has allowed Zionism to be subverted by that evil ideology. Bloom writes: -- With a training both literary and legal, Julius is well prepared for the immensity of his task. He is a truth-teller, and authentic enough to stand against the English literary and academic establishment, which essentially opposes the right of the state of Israel to exist, while indulging in the humbuggery that its anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. Endless boycotts of Israel are urged by this establishment, and might yet have produced a counter­boycott of British universities by many American academics, whether Jewish or not. However, under British law the projected boycotts may be illegal. The fierce relevance of Julius’s book is provoked by this currently prevalent anti-Semitism. the English literary and academic establishment, which essentially opposes the right of the state of Israel to exist In writing this Harold Bloom shows himself to be a liar since the English literary and academic establishment certainly does not oppose the right of existence of the state of Israel. It does not recognize the right of the State of Israel to colonize the Occupied Palestinian Territories. That is an entirely different issue as Bloom surely knows. Yet he choses to ignore it because it did not fit his lie. He continues with another liewhile indulging in the humbuggery that its anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. This is merely the convenient lie of those who seek to provide moral cover to the ZioNazism of the settler movement and those who support it by attacking those who condemn Israeli war crimes. British and American intellectuals who do not share Blooms bigotry are well able to distinguish support for Jews from support for Israeli war criminals - Bloom seemingly is not. It perhaps shows just how craven the American Academy is that a plagiarism of this magnitude would see Bloom roundly mocked yet he suffers no consequence for these most hideous lies. However, under British law the projected boycotts may be illegal. It is certainly not illegal to boycott a pariah state. Instituational boycotts, however, require that voting rules be followed. It shows the craven bigotry of those who oppose this Boycott on the grounds that it would discriminate against Jews given that many of those who oppose it (Euston Manifestant, for example) were among those leading the charge for a war against Iraq that almost certainly was illegal under British law. Discrimination was certainly far from their minds then - I guess it is one law for Jews and one for Muslims. The fierce relevance of Julius’s book is provoked by this currently prevalent anti-Semitism. I will remind Harold Bloom that the most pervasive form of anti-Semitism in the Western World today lies with those who appease the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people because it is a Jewish state. In doing so they seek to share the blame for Israeli war crimes among all Jews regardless of their support for them. In writing this foul smear in support of the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people - and that is precisely what Julius did in writing this book and Bloom in reviewing it - Bloom shows himself to be merely a better educated version of the jack-booted thug writing foul smears on the shop window of a Jewish merchant. The rest of Blooms worthless screed continues in the same vein. It beggars belief that such a well-known academic would write such an ill-informed screed of mindless lies and bigotry. That he would do so shows the extent of moral rot the depravities of the State of Israel has brought to those who mindlessly support all its actions regardless of how bad they are. We have seen their likes before with the fellow travellers who supported Nazism and any of the many species of Communism. I'm sure we will see their like again - although perhaps never again quite so close to the center of the American intellectual establishment. Bloom rattles on about Shakespeare but the only relevant quote is from Henry IV Part 2 - "good uncle, hide such malice; With such holiness can you do it?" And Harold Bloom certainly tries to hide the evil of his malicious and ignorant bigotry behind the cloak of Zionism. Anthony Julius has been poorly served by this ridiculous review - but then perhaps that is his desert.

- ndmackenzie

May 9, 2010 at 4:28am

Israel was the closest ally of the apartheid SA regime. Israel was the largest supply of military equipment to the apartheid regime. Israel was the strongest defender at the UN of the apartheid regime. Now Israel is making a big deal of Goldstone's role with that same regime, as if his cooperation disqualifies him. It is the height of hypocrisy. While there is no doubt that Palestinian rocket attacks were a legitimate reason for the Isrealis to go in to Gaza, and while there is no doubt that Hamas used civilians as human shields, there is also no doubt that Israel disproportionately allowed civilian deaths. They treated Palestinian civilians as "collateral damage", as if Palestinians were cockroaches, ala the Hutus to the Tutsis and the Germans to the Jews. Israel(the government, not the IDF) has brought great shame on the House of Israel.

- bufatutu

May 9, 2010 at 8:34am

"In general I define myself by positive statements rather than negative statements. I do make an exception for Nazis and their foul ideology and am proud to describe myself an anti-Nazi. I hope that in the 1930s I would have had the courage to stand up to those who advocated for Nazism in der Sturmer just as today I stand up to those who advocate the most pernicious form of neo-Nazism in the Western World - that of the Israeli settlers - in morally depraved magazines like The New Republic. I fully understand, Liberal Reformer, why you would feel threatened by someone who upsets the little cabal of Zionist Anti-Semitism and ZioNazism provided by The New Republic. But I find it a moral obligation to condemn the nationalist (religious) bigotry that is the lifeblood of commenatary at this magazine. The problem lies not with me but with those like you who seek to raise once again the specter of racist evil." Does anyone recognize the insufferably pompous and tedious style of a poster who used to carpet the comments with long "philosophical" ponderings and self-adulation?

- noga1

May 9, 2010 at 10:01am

"Israel was the closest ally of the apartheid SA regime" Israel eventually put a stop to its alliance with SA Apartheid regime. Israelis were always against such an alliance. It was excoriated in the media and taught in schools. Mandela not only persisted but actually boosted his support for the arch terrorist Arafat and other stinky Arab and Muslim dictators. One might wonder why. Today South Africa is a fortress of antisemitic fulminations: "Nelson Mandela, aggressively defending his views in a television interview, described Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat today as "a comrade in arms" and said it would be "a grave mistake" to change his view of Arafat "on the basis of the interests of the Jewish community." During an ABC News "town meeting" taped before 1,000 people at City College in Harlem and broadcast hours later, the South African black leader also repeated his support for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Cuban President Fidel Castro, saying they and Arafat "support our struggle to the … " "The ZOA notes Mandela’s record of troubling statements supporting Arab and Muslim terrorist dictators: Mandela Endorsed Arabs’ Right to “Use Violence” Against Israel: Speaking to members of Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza on October 20, 1999, Mandela said that a “regional peace” must include a “full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders.” Mandela said that he, like Arafat, had endured criticism for engaging in negotiations with his enemies, but “if taking up arms is the only solution, that is what should be done,” according to Ha’aretz (Oct.21, 1999). The Jerusalem Post reported (Oct.21, 1999) that Mandela said: “All men and women with vision choose peace rather than confrontation, except in cases where we cannot proceed, where we cannot move forward. Then if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence.” Mandela Defended Iran’s Prosecution of Jews: Mandela publicly defended the government of Iran’s trial of 13 Jews on sham “espionage” charges, claiming “the trial is fair and just.” (Africa Eye News Service, May 17, 2000) The American Jewish Committee responded by canceling its plan to give Mandela its highest award, the American Liberties Medallion, and Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, noting Mandela’s praise of the government-appointed lawyers given to the Iranian defendants, said: “If you had to rely on such lawyers during your captivity, it is doubtful whether you would have been here today.” Mandela also called on American Jewish organizations to refrain from publicly criticizing Iran’s action. (Forward, May 19, 2000) " http://www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=421

- noga1

May 9, 2010 at 10:26am

Anthony Julius writes in "Trials of the Diaspora" [obviously also thinking of ndmack]: "...The Holocaust should have altogether put paid to anti-Semitism. It should have rebutted once and for all the principal anti-Semitic fantasy of malign Jewish power; it should have satiated the appetite of the most murderous anti-Semites for Jewish death. And yet instead it precipitated new anti-Semitic versions or tropes: (a) Holocaust denial, (b) the characterizing of Zionism as an avatar of Nazism, and (c) the cluster of allegations that the Jews are exploiting the Holocaust in support of false compensation claims, the defense of Israeli policies, the defense of Zionism, etc. Many Arab and Muslim anti-Semites somewhat promiscuously embrace all three tropes – denying the Holocaust, praising Hitler, and representing Israel as the successor to the Nazi state. ..."

- K2K

May 9, 2010 at 10:29am

"They treated Palestinian civilians as "collateral damage", as if Palestinians were cockroaches, ala the Hutus to the Tutsis and the Germans to the Jews." Either they were "collateral damage" or "cockroaches", unless the author of these interesting words wants to provide a new layer of meaning to the term "collateral damage"?? In which case shouldn't he perhaps look closer to home, assuming he/she is an American? Are the Afghans and Pakistanis killed by American attacks considered by Obama to be "cockroaches" as they are so obviously "collateral damage"? Or maybe "collateral damage" metamorphoses into "cockroaches" only when it is Israeli soldiers who do the shooting?

- noga1

May 9, 2010 at 10:37am

Goldstone's lasting anti-apartheid contribution was as the chair of the Goldstone Commission in the early 1990s. That Commission investigated the existence of the "Third Force"--allegations that the South African Defense Force, still under the command of the the National Party (the architects of apartheid) were actively funding some dissident African groups and importing other Africans on their payroll to engage in destabilization within South Africa. The purpose of the Third Force was to undermine the confidence of the public in the ANC's capacity to control its own followers and thus raise questions about the ANC's ability to rule. The Goldstone Commission found credible evidence that the SADF was in fact sponsoring such violence, which included massive killings on African commuter trains and some bombings in urban areas. It also included inciting increased violence between migrant workers who self-identified as Zulu and ANC "comrades" by arming Zulu workers and assisting attacks on townships. It was brave of Goldstone and the other members of the commission to come to these conclusions. There had been a previous Commission, led by a Justice Harms, that had in theory investigated these same issues and had come to a bland conclusion that the SADF was blameless. And this was the period when death squads were operating more or less freely in the South African countryside--death squads that were being run by the South African military and the police and that were killing opponents of the apartheid regime. This is no way excuses Goldstone for whatever else he may have done as a judge during the apartheid period; but one should not blithely dismiss the impact of the Goldstone Commission.

- psiegelman

May 9, 2010 at 10:59am

ndmackenzie “The immediate problem with Harold Bloom's review of Anthony Julius's book is that Bloom is too stupid to recognize that he should have refused the commission to write it. A symptom of the failure of moral and intellectual integrity in the American elite is its continued assumption that only Jews may review books concerning Israel or Jews. Perhaps The New York Times is unaware of the deep biases indicated by the use of Bloom for this review but I, for one, certainly hope both the Times and other media outlets end this pernicious habit. The only real question raised by this review is whether Bloom is an imbecilic bigot or a bigoted imbecile.” If this tawdry comment weren’t so funny, it would be libelous. Muckenzie calling Bloom, one of the most important American scholars and critics of the late 20th century stupid is like a refuse collector of recycled trash calling Orville Wright stupid. MUCKenzie is here at his best showing us the hysterical hatred of the antisemite when confronted with facts. His use of the term zionazis in his screed shows what he really stands for. Nothing this British bigot said in his hebetudinous screed is factually correct. For example, tt’s not true that the NY Times assigns only to “Jews” the task of reviewing books by ore about Jews or Jewish issues. How would Muckenzie know who is and who is not a Jew? (Antisemites like muckenzie think they can “smell a Jew.”) MUckenzie is beside himself with anger because for once someone wrote a book describing the Jew hatred that is prevalent in Britain. Great Britain is like Goldstone is as much as they think of themselves as just when in fact they have a history of injustice and unjust ruling that go back for many years. In each case they embraced the cause of “universal justice” in order to hide their past inequities. Each has made of Israel a scapegoat. MUckenzie’s long hysterical and worthless rant is a sign that Bloom hit a nerve. My reaction: good for Bloom.

- jdyer

May 9, 2010 at 11:32am

Bufatutu: “Israel was the closest ally of the apartheid SA regime. Israel was the largest supply of military equipment to the apartheid regime. Israel was the strongest defender at the UN of the apartheid regime. Now Israel is making a big deal of Goldstone's role with that same regime, as if his cooperation disqualifies him. It is the height of hypocrisy.” This is false. South Africa during the cold war was an ally of the NATO countries. There was no formal alliance between South Africa and Israel. After the fall of the Soviet Union the South African government realized that it could no longer claim to be an anti-Communist bulwark and hence the regime collapsed. “In 1988 - Following Britain, countries with the biggest number of companies still in South Africa were West Germany with 333; the United States, 164. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions survey said Britain led the field with 374 companies still operating in South Africa.” Israel did not defend SA at the Un and if it had, it wouldn’t have amounted to much since Israel itself had been under attack at the UN by the Soviet bloc and their Arab and Muslim allies. Bufatutu your whole post is a pack of damned lies. “They treated Palestinian civilians as "collateral damage", as if Palestinians were cockroaches, ala the Hutus to the Tutsis and the Germans to the Jews.” Comparing Palestinian Arabs to Tutsis not to mention to Jews under the Nazis is another one of your insane lies. The Nazis as well as the Hutus had policies of extermination in which they killed most of their enemies. The Jews were not collateral damage: they were the target. This is obviously not the case with the Palestinian Arabs whose number are increasing and not decreasing as was the case with the Jews (about six millions were killed) or the Tutsis (hundreds of thousands died at the hands of the Hutus.) In your zeal to condemn Israel you have filled your post with lies and half truths.

- jdyer

May 9, 2010 at 11:55am

jdyer: Thanks for your correction. You are right: the Hutus and Nazis wanted to systematically eliminate "The Other." The Israeli goverrnment and IDF did not have genocidal intent. Nonetheless, the numbers of civilian dead in the Gaza incursion versus the number of Israeli civilian dead before, during and after the incursion is way out of proportion(100 to 1) and shows a callous disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians. As a practicing Jew and supporter of Israel, this disregard for civilian lives brings shame on the House of Israel and does little to further Israel's long-term security or standing.

- bufatutu

May 9, 2010 at 1:20pm

I think there is a certain perspective on alliances that contain contradictory elements. For example, the juxtaposition of Mandela, whose democratic credentials were tested over many years of political imprisonment before he faced and mastered the problem of transforming South Africa while avoiding civil war, with the likes of Arafat, Castro etc. Likewise the cooperation between Israel and the South Africa, as the Boer/NP worldview was not friendly to Jews (partly because many Jews were influential in resisting apartheid) but was rather marked by provincial paranoia. Or perhaps the United States and the Soviet Union in WW2. Some elements of this phenomenon are mainly pragmatic, where two parties, themselves with contradictory values and interests, are put on a path to convergence by the same hostile third party. WW2, in other words. But I think the more general and pessimistic reason is the closing off of other potential alliances that might involve flexible thinking and a sense of the bigger picture, hence leading to "minimal-option" alliances that have the effect of locking stereotypes and assumptions into place. One classic exampe is Nicaragua after the defeat of Somoza. Despite the sewer-stream of lies that conservatives spew relentlessly at every opportunity right down to today, anyone who was watching at the time saw that the Sandinstas clearly did not plan a stalinist, Cuban-style system for Nicaragua. There was one old-communist element around Tomas Borge, and they had influence especially in the military/security area, but they were not a majority of the leadership. After the liberation, even after the Reagan administration tried to paint the country as some kind of Soviet-directed danger to the U.S. on the model of Cuba in 1961, Nicaragua drew much support from ordinary people here and in Europe who recognized that the overthrow of a central-casting evil dictator like Somoza was worth celebrating. In Nicaragua itself, even the nationalizing of property was modest in contrast to what happened in Cuba, and the conduct of elections was rather more above-board than Florida in 2000. (And, apparently. for the GOP and the Reaganites the rape and murder of American nuns were ok, provided they were on the "wrong" side). The point I'm making is that there was in fact no iron law but rather a set of unfortunate decisions and events (of which Reagan's election was one) that put Nicaragua on the other side of an ideological line from the U.S. Equally, If the ANC had been supported by the United States, for example, on the grounds that we should support a resistance movement fighting a white-supremacy oligarchy, the connections that the ANC had to Arafat, the influence of the CP etc would have been, at the very least, subject to some pressure. One of the greatest errors made in American foreign policy (Vietnam is one example) has been to allow ourselves to be cast in crude and distorted morality play and bracketed with European colonial interests and racial-supremacy regimes. (What I think Obama is trying to do is to reject that script, to show its crudeness and distortions, and to open up alternatives.) So while one can tut-tut and wag one's finger at connections such as those between Israel and apartheid South Africa, or between Mandela and Ghaddafi, the truth is that sometimes options become very limited. And what about Israel and Turkey? It seems odd on the face of it, but it worked for quite a long time.

- ironyroad

May 9, 2010 at 1:42pm

“Nonetheless, the numbers of civilian dead in the Gaza incursion versus the number of Israeli civilian dead before, during and after the incursion is way out of proportion(100 to 1) and shows a callous disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians.” Bufatutu, this is a fool’s calculus and it has nothing to do with either morality or the rights and wrongs of the conflict. During WW2 Germany lost close to 6 million people (civilians and soldiers) while Great Britain lost less than half a million. Does this mean that Great Britain was morally blameworthy while Germany was not? Give me a break! “As a practicing Jew and supporter of Israel, this disregard for civilian lives brings shame on the House of Israel and does little to further Israel's long-term security or standing.” Please, spare me your “as a Jew” comment. There are many other practicing Jews who would disagree with you. You don’t represent all Jews and certainly not Judaism and not for secular Jews.

- jdyer

May 9, 2010 at 1:46pm

"(What I think Obama is trying to do is to reject that script, to show its crudeness and distortions, and to open up alternatives.)" Perhaps, but it doesn't seem to be working out as planned, either, Irony. Your notion that events as they unfold tend to show the contradictions in State policy and unintended consequences is a good one (irony of history), however, this doesn't mean that current State policies will not reveal eventually another set of contradictions and unintended consequences.

- jdyer

May 9, 2010 at 1:51pm

ND: The fact that you come here with your bile about "Zionazis" is proof in and of itself that you could give a flying fuck about Palestinians. If you really cared, you'd come here without the stink of your rancor and try to convince us of your opinion. But the Palestinian plight is not what motivates you, clearly.

- MOLLYSIMON

May 9, 2010 at 2:14pm

I agree there's no guarantee of success, JD, and it may be that the successful part comes way down the line, and Obama doesn't benefit. I agree with you about unintended consequences, although this formulation has become a bit of a conservative bumper sticker, with as much thought in it. Yes there are those consequences, but there are intended consequences too. It's not like policy has no effects in the real world. What I was trying to get at was the -- in my view -- mistaken assumption (sometimes expressed, sometimes implicit) that countries or movements face a reshuffled pack of cards every time they make a strategic decision and that eveyone gets dealt a fresh hand (or that they can even choose how many aces). I believe it's more like people relieving each other during one long continuous game. That means that options are limited, sometimes quite severely, by your predecessor's hand. I'm not making an argument for icy pragmatism, but for a recognition of one's own and others' realities rather than a game of moral superiority only winnable from some non-existent position of virtue. For example, the ANC was the major organization challenging the South African apartheid system from outside the system's borders of legitimacy. Communists were significant within the ANC policy circles (including several Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe). Thus the global communist movement, including of course the Soviets themselves, saw the ANC as a useful tool for recruitment, a useful badge to wear to showcase one's anti-colonial credentials in Africa and elsewhere, and a way of putting pressure on a government that supplied a key military asset to the U.S. Therefore the ANC received some Soviet-sponsored financial and logistical assistance. So the ANC was a communist front organization? No, I don't think so. It was genuinely more than that. But the convergence of events and choices made it pretty impossible for the ANC to be cashing a check from Washington rather than from Moscow despite the fact -- and this is my point -- that there was nothing in the ANC's primary goal, the dismantling of the apartheid system in South Africa, that would necessarily conflict with American goals or values. But the way it panned out, the ANC did owe something to Castro, Ghaddafi, etc and I assume Mandela felt he had to at least go through the motions of validating their official alliance, irrespective of how he personally regarded them or how many contradictions were lurking in the shadows.

- ironyroad

May 9, 2010 at 3:00pm

If it weren't so sad it would be laughable that a fatuous entity who goes by ndmackenzie refers to Harold Bloom as an imbecile. Mr. Bloom is about a trillion times smarter than nd. He is also very gracious. When I rang him up at the end of August of 2004, he chatted with me for a fair while, not in the least chagrined that someone who theretofore had been a complete stranger called him out of the blue. By the way, nd, where is your equivalent of The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages? Or actually, since you call the Falstaff of Yale an imbecile, where is some writing of yours that is far superior? It never ceases to amaze me how the little nobodies out here think themselves smarter than the Harold Blooms and the Paul Krugmans. It is the revenge of the nobodies, I suppose. Noga1: You have to be more idiotic than even nd is to asseverate that I feel threatened by him. I am amused by wackos, of whatevertripe, of the left, the right, ufologists, et al. And you find me tedious because you don't know enough to comprehend what I have written. Further, what you inanely denominate as pomposity is just how I react when someone flings mud at me. I don't take myself all that seriously, which you would know (well, you being you, maybe you wouldn't) if you knew me. It is clear that you are humorless and lacking any sense of irony, just by the fact of what you wrote. You express concern for the Palestinians but I always suspect the putative tenderness of window-bashing brick-throwers like you. I really detest Pat Buchanan but he got off a great line about a quarter of a century ago during the horrible days of roapartheid when he said that left opponents hated the Boers more than they loved the Bantus. But of course. I don't suppose that nogacretin would allow me to fire rockets at your house from your backyard, would you? I suspect that there would be repercussions. There would be form just about all the BSers who prate on about the disproportionate damage caused by the Israelis in Gaza.

- liberal reformer

May 9, 2010 at 3:34pm

ironyroad "I agree with you about unintended consequences, although this formulation has become a bit of a conservative bumper sticker, with as much thought in it. Yes there are those consequences, but there are intended consequences too. It's not like policy has no effects in the real world." Ok, but it was an anti-conservative bumper sticker during the Bush years. Of course policies have effects in actuality. This is what intended and unintended policy consequences means. “I agree there's no guarantee of success, JD, and it may be that the successful part comes way down the line, and Obama doesn't benefit.” Or be around to take the blame when the full effects of his policies become obvious. True of any President, btw.

- jdyer

May 9, 2010 at 3:34pm

I don't know what happened but there are several typos in my above post that weren't there when I just carefully proofread it twice over.

- liberal reformer

May 9, 2010 at 3:38pm

It is great to see you here again, jackson. I must apologize to you one more time. Months ago we were about to have a colloquy on an essay by James Wood and once again my computer gave me fits. It is finally working far better, nigh on perfect, in fact, because of the work my wife did on it. What pieces of work, noga and nd are, jackson. I mean, we have long known that, but to witness their venom is amazing. You wonder which side the would have been on in World War II. The frightening thing is that I think I know the answer.

- liberal reformer

May 9, 2010 at 3:44pm

JD: "Of course policies have effects in actuality. This is what intended and unintended policy consequences means." I get that, believe it or not. My point was that there's a standard conservative meme that portrays only unintended (negative) consequences for policy reforms, e.g. as if the only consequence of Social Security has been to create a financial conundrum rather than to have provided an effective barrier against poverty for three generations of older Americans.

- ironyroad

May 9, 2010 at 3:50pm

"Noga1: You have to be more idiotic than even nd is to asseverate that I feel threatened by him. I am amused by wackos, of whatevertripe, of the left, the right, ufologists, et al. And you find me tedious because you don't know enough to comprehend what I have written. Further, what you inanely denominate as pomposity is just how I react when someone flings mud at me. I don't take myself all that seriously, which you would know (well, you being you, maybe you wouldn't) if you knew me. It is clear that you are humorless and lacking any sense of irony, just by the fact of what you wrote. You express concern for the Palestinians but I always suspect the putative tenderness of window-bashing brick-throwers like you. I really detest Pat Buchanan but he got off a great line about a quarter of a century ago during the horrible days of roapartheid when he said that left opponents hated the Boers more than they loved the Bantus. But of course. I don't suppose that nogacretin would allow me to fire rockets at your house from your backyard, would you? I suspect that there would be repercussions. There would be form just about all the BSers who prate on about the disproportionate damage caused by the Israelis in Gaza." Liberal reformer: I haven't a clue how I offended you. I didn't address even one comment to you or about you.

- noga1

May 9, 2010 at 3:51pm

Noga1, weren't you talking about ndmackenzie? These threads get confusing sometimes! Liberal Reformer on Andrew Sullivan - totally agree. I'm confused. I respect Andrew Sullivan and enjoy his blog - BUT I don't get the Mearsheimer/Walt thing, which is really antisemitic, and since The List speech that's totally obvious even if wasn't before. Well, I was agin' Andrew's support of Cheney and the Iraq war and equally I don't get how he's turned on Israel now that the Bush Administration is out and Obama is in. Oh well. As far as the above comments reflecting anger at Israel simply based on casualty figures from Gaza - this is bogus. In fact this kind of calculus is very common with asymmetrical warfare. The "Black Hawk Down" incident in Mogadishu resulted in a similarly or even more dramatically skewed body count and that happened in less than 24 hours, not over several weeks. Let's repeat that: in less than a day US forces lost 18 people and killed by their own estimates as many as 2000 people trying to rescue the downed and cornered soldiers. And, the motive, on Israel's part, was reasonable and clear: to stop rocket fire that had bedeviled its civilian population for years. I say this asajew who was uncomfortable with Cast Lead. I would have preferred a different reaction to Gaza in the first place but it's easy to say that, harder to make the decisions when confronted with the Hamas takeover but also the nonstop provocation since the withdrawal from Gaza. Destruction of infrastructure and terrorist attacks started almost immediately. Thousands of rockets fell, people's lives became untenable, civilians were terrorized and killed over a period of years, and non-Hamas Gazans were tortured and murdered. Peace demonstrations were fired on, the Egyptian border was stormed as well. So - what to do? And, re "international law," it's important to realize that ANYTHING Israel does, apparently, is wrong. Non-lethal sonic booms for example, intended to reduce attacks against Israeli civilians, were excoriated too and claimed to be "collective punishment," as if rocket attacks against civilians and attempted suicide bombings etc aren't collective punishment! So if non-lethal, non-violent means of counterterrorism aren't legal what is? This is the core of the problem with "legal" warfare. Either everybody is a peaceful person, and that means everybody, or there has to be a clear and rational understanding that war is bad news and per se violent, and that once a war is provoked it's too late to cry foul. Note this doesn't mean that people waging war shouldn't do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties and should try to be as precise as possible in achieving objectives but I think attacking states in the UN and the press for trying to protect their citizens is really wrong - why not call the terrorists to the Human Rights Council instead? The other thing is, Russia, the US, China, the Sudan - nobody drags our tuchases to the UN. Nobody calls the Palestinians to the UN either. Nobody at the UN demands to talk to Hezbollah or the Taliban. Iran is free to rant and also to chair the women's rights group, which is laughable and sad. Big powerful states and popular "oppressed people" plus it appears the "unaligned states" in general get a free pass on human rights apparently - which undermines the whole concept doesn't it.

- Sophia

May 9, 2010 at 6:43pm

Quite right, Sophia. Superior firepower always creates disproportionate casualties. But there is a rage against Israel for such disproportionality that is mostly absent in other conflicts, which says something about those who rage.

- liberal reformer

May 9, 2010 at 7:29pm

liberal reformer showing once again the dangers of pandering to "authority" writes: -- By the way, nd, where is your equivalent of The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages? Or actually, since you call the Falstaff of Yale an imbecile, where is some writing of yours that is far superior? It never ceases to amaze me how the little nobodies out here think themselves smarter than the Harold Blooms and the Paul Krugmans. It is the revenge of the nobodies, I suppose. Harold Bloom may well be a great Shakespearean scholar and a student of the Western Canon but his book review in the New York Times showed that he does not understand the real World. The fact is that Harold Bloom is too stupid to understand that he was too biased to write that review - even as he exposed these biases in the operning paragraphs of the review. Harold Bloom may well be a great Shakespearean scholar but he abused that greatness and that scholarship in proseletyzing the malicious lies that are central to his bigoted worldview. Harold Bloom may get an A for his Falstaff but he gets an F for this review. Signed a nobody. But a nobody who has no need to fawn on bigoted and lying somebodies.

- ndmackenzie

May 9, 2010 at 9:29pm

You are a piece of work, nd. But I am sure you have been told that many times. Harold Bloom is biased and you're not? I have some land on the moon that I want to sell you, as well as some prime real estate in the Okefenokee. What is the "real World?" (I can only guess why you capitalize the latter word). The mad thoughts racing around inside your cranium, following bizarre neural pathways through your cerebral cortex?

- liberal reformer

May 9, 2010 at 10:28pm

Harold Bloom writes: -- the English literary and academic establishment, which essentially opposes the right of the state of Israel to exist You are welcome to call this what you want but it is a flat-out lie. Harold Bloom is a liar. His review was poisoned by the malicious ignorance of the lies that merely served to demonstrate how beholden he is to a vile militant nationalist ideology that is ZioNazism. The Western World does not hold Israel in contempt because it is a Jewish State but because it is a pariah state for its decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people - an oppression which Harold Bloom provides moral succor to in this despicable review. He is too stupid to know that he should not have written it.

- ndmackenzie

May 9, 2010 at 10:51pm

Another "If you don't support Israel's political policies, if you judge Israel's policies based on U.S. interests, you are anti-semetic and hate jews" thread. Delightful.

- OscarPeck

May 9, 2010 at 11:28pm

from: The War and Peace Index survey conducted 3-4 May 2010: source:http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3887193,00.html "...An interesting though not surprising finding is that the overwhelming majority of the Israeli public sees no connection between Israel’s conduct and the criticism of Israel in the world. Indeed, 73% say that no matter what Israel does or how far it goes toward resolving the conflict with the Palestinians, the world will keep being very critical of it. Interestingly, among the voters for each and every party the poll found a majority (the smallest, as expected, was for Meretz voters at 55%) that holds this view. ..." which gets back to my theory that Israel should just do what they have to do because they can never win in the court of bizarro-world opinion. Yeah, yeah, I know, jackson, shame on me for even imagining what 73% of Israelis have in their secret dreams, although I still think cutting Gaza into an island and towing it to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is not such a bad idea, and I bet the Egyptians would help.

- K2K

May 9, 2010 at 11:36pm

Ndmackenzie "Harold Bloom writes: --'the English literary and academic establishment, which essentially opposes the right of the state of Israel to exist' You are welcome to call this what you want but it is a flat-out lie. Harold Bloom is a liar." It is Muckenzie who is the liar. From the Guardian: “British academic boycott of Israel gathers pace” “Evidence is growing that a British boycott of Israeli academics is gathering pace. British academics have delivered a series of snubs to their Israeli counterparts since the idea of a boycott first gained ground in the spring. In interviews with the Guardian, British and Israeli academics listed various incidents in which visits, research projects and publication of articles have been blocked. Colin Blakemore, an Oxford University professor of physiology, who supports a boycott, said: "I do not know of any British academic who has been to a conference in Israel in the last six months." Dr Oren Yiftachel, a left-wing Israeli academic at Ben Gurion University, complained that an article he had co-authored with a Palestinian was initially rejected by the respected British journal Political Geography. He said it was returned to him unopened with a note stating that Political Geography could not accept a submission from Israel. Mr Yiftachel said that, after months of negotiation, the article is to be published but only after he agreed to make substantial revisions, including making a comparison between his homeland and apartheid South Africa. The issue of a boycott was highlighted in the spring when two British academics, Steven and Hilary Rose, had a letter published in the Guardian supporting the idea. It was signed by 123 other academics. Professor Paul Zinger, outgoing head of the Israeli Science Foundation, said: "Every year we send most of our research papers abroad for reference. We send out about 7,000 papers a year. This year, for the first time, we had people writing back, about 25 of them, saying 'We refuse to look at these'."” http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/dec/12/internationaleducationnews.israel Like Muckenzie these British academic cowards deny publicly that they boycotting Israel while blacklisting Jewish and Israeli academics. There is lots more evidence. http://www.zionismontheweb.org/academic_boycott/ “Ministers, professors slam U.K. boycott of Israeli academe U.K. lecturers to boycott academics who fail to condemn Israeli policy; U.K. gov't says 'regrets' move.” http://www.haaretz.com/news/ministers-professors-slam-u-k-boycott-of-israeli-academe-1.188916 see also this: http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-36.htm It is muckenzie who is the liar as well as stupid.

- jdyer

May 9, 2010 at 11:59pm

I don't think Bloom is a liar. Unfortunately. I study this a lot and there's evidence that many in the British elite including state-sponsored media outlets and academia are anti-Israel, some are nakedly antisemitic. Jenny Tonge is a case in point but there are other examples - the canards about Jewish "tentacles", dual loyalty, too much power etc are all too common. The flip side is an Arabist state of mind going back generations. As much as Jews are portrayed as hideous, Arabs are romanticized I think; this goes back at least to the days of Gertrude Bell but probably long before that, it's a type of Orientalism that doesn't see real people or real societies, but rather odalisques, the imagery of robed horsemen. The Palestinians are in another category altogether: that of a modern day Jesus. Arafat even used this imagery at the UN (he referred to St. Peter as "the first Palestinian,") thus evoking the blood libel. This would get nowhere without centuries of antisemitism to back it up. There are plenty of examples of anti-Jewish action (not just thinking) toward Jews and subsequently Israel during and after the war years. The Yom Kippur War was a striking example of British bias against Israel on the highest state levels but so was British action after WWII when the Yishuv was disarmed and boycotted, survivors were sent to concentration camps, there was no British assistance to alleviate the siege of Jerusalem or attacks on the Yishuv; and even during the Israeli war of independence Britain armed the Arabs and British officers led the Arab Legion into battle. After the war Britain didn't recognize Israel for months but immediately recognized the annexation of the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem by Jordan (so much for the Palestinians) and also this involved the total ethnic cleansing of Jews from those regions. Bias in the Guardian and on the BBC is both obvious and pretty disgusting. It's getting worse, with an attack on an Israeli at Manchester and overtly antisemitic creations like "Seven Jewish Children." The good news - the British electorate pretty overwhelmingly trounced Respect and BNP and the Lib Dems who feature some vile bigots in positions of power didn't do all that well although Clegg apparently has acquired the status of kingmaker since neither Labour nor the Tories have a majority. But Galloway was defeated too, so hooray. Meanwhile, if somebody can show where Bloom is wrong I'm all ears. I think the bias he describes is real. Germany and Poland have had to confront antisemitism head on but Britain never really has and I think it's impossible to separate "anti-Zionism" from attacks on Jews per se. I myself can remember when Vanessa Redgrave came out in support of the PLO and was truly horrified. This was long before PLO was considered a "moderate" player, there was no mistaking their agenda as it was open and it was violent. PLO was established years before the "occupation" too so the real goal was obviously the destruction of Israel. In recent years Galloway has taken bags of money straight to the leaders of Hamas and also supported Saddam Hussein. There have been boycotts of classical concerts by Israeli musicians, cancellations of appearances by Israeli speakers, threats to arrest Israeli politicians and of course elite-driven attempts to boycott Israeli artists and academics. People pull Israeli products off store shelves and trash Starbucks because, apparently, it has some Jewish owners. None of this came out of the blue. "Anti-zionism" finds fertile soil in Britain. Fortunately not everybody in Britain thinks like this but plenty of people do, people in positions of influence and power.

- Sophia

May 10, 2010 at 12:57am

Jeff Goldberg is right on: “The Characteristics of English Anti-Semitism” “I've just finished reading Anthony Julius's startling and riveting book about English anti-Semitism, "Trials of the Diaspora," which concerns what Harold Bloom described in yesterday's Times as "the long squalor of Jew-hatred in a supposedly enlightened, humane, liberal society." It's a subject that's been of great interest to me lately, in part because we've been watching in real time as Great Britain's academic and intellectual elite turn comprehensively against Israel, even the existence of Israel, all the while claiming that the excoriation of the world's only Jewish state is not motivated by anti-Semitism, a claim Bloom describes as "humbuggery." Much of "Trials of the Diaspora" describes the deep tradition of English literary anti-Semitism, from Shylock to Fagin to Caryl Churchill, in a summary that leaves you wondering if it is possible for a properly-educated Englishman to avoid harboring certain stereotypical views of Jews, stereotypes and assumptions that manifest themselves in disproportionate hostility whenever Jews behave in ways the English find at all disagreeable.” http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/05/the-characteristics-of-english-anti-semitism/56441/

- jdyer

May 10, 2010 at 11:03am

Jeff Goldberg also quotes from the following review of Julius’ book: “Anti-Semitism creeps back on to English lawns Charles Moore reviews 'Trials of the Diaspora’ by Anthony Julius and finds the author's vigilance justified.” “On the whole, however, Julius's vigilance is justified. He meticulously shows how anti-Semitism, as well as being what he well describes as "a false alarm", is also a permanent temptation. Like Jews in its own fevered imaginings, it is sly. It knows how to reinforce a feeling of superiority, or relieve a feeling of inferiority, or seem to provide an explanation for what is puzzling. It endlessly reinvents what it sees as a "problem", for which it can offer a "solution" – even a Final Solution. And because we English see ourselves as tolerant, we may be too lazy to notice when the mood changes. Julius establishes that it has changed greatly from when the critic John Gross, in 1963, felt able to write that anti-Semitism was now "little more than a minor nuisance". In the psycho-drama of Muslim dispossession, Israel fills a central role. In a weird ideological alliance with Islamism, the secular Left now tries to argue that Israel is an "apartheid" state. There are many criticisms that can justly be made of Israeli policy, but criticism of Israel is often quite different from that of other countries involved in violent political conflict. It is existential criticism. It is against the Jews – seeing them, yet again, as the problem. This is anti-Semitic, and it is growing here, like litter, as Julius puts it, on our English lawns.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/charlesmoore/7499355/Anti-Semitism-creeps-back-on-to-English-lawns.html

- jdyer

May 10, 2010 at 11:04am