I tweeted on this the other day but let me recap here: This NYT piece reported that the ships in the Free Gaza Movement flotilla were funded by something called the Perdana Global Peace Organization. Greta Berlin, a founder of the Free Gaza Movement, herself acknowledged this link to Perdana. Look around Perdana’s website and you’ll find the organization is chaired by Mahathir Mohamed, former prime minister of Malaysia and one of the world’s most notoriously outspoken antisemites — a man who said this at a January conference:
The Jews had always been a problem in European countries. They had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred. But still they remained, they thrived and they held whole Governments to ransom. Even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world. The Holocaust failed as a final solution.
And people accuse Jews of fabricating the issue of antisemitism as a smokescreen.
There’s been very little reporting on Mahathir’s ties to the Free Gaza Movement as far as I’ve seen. Lots and lots of discussion about “what Israel has become” and such. Very little discussion of what the Palestine solidarity movement has become.
As for IHH, the Turkish organization involved in the melee on the flotilla’s biggest ship, my friend Yigal Schleifer, in his must-read posts on the Turkey-Israel diplomatic crisis, describes IHH as an organization of the Islamist far right. Yigal’s coverage is some of the fairest, most non-ideological and rigorous you’ll come across anywhere.
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In last week’s New Yorker, Pankaj Mishra reviewed Paul Berman’s new book The Flight of the Intellectuals, about the widespread liberal-left acceptance of Swiss Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, and what this phenomenon says about intellectual culture in our time. Mishra, in short, offers a fine example of what Berman was trying to diagnose. He subjects Berman to a relentless drubbing over his liberal-hawk support of the Iraq war, thus shooting the messenger, while giving Ramadan a pass on his uncritical support of the extremist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
First of all, Qaradawi doesn’t simply justify suicide attacks against Israel, as Mishra notes, although this would be bad enough. Qaradawi says things like this:
Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place.
Mishra further tries to undermine Berman’s case:
[Berman] says that Ramadan not just “admires” but “worships” Qaradawi, although the citations of Ramadan that he produces to illustrate this claim reveal nothing more fervent than the standard lexicon of scholarly attribution: “Yusuf al-Qaradawi aptly notes that…”; “For details, see Yusuf al-Qaradawi….”
I very much doubt that Mishra would agree it’s benign for Ramadan to cite, whether calmly or fervently, the work of a man who believes Hitler put the Jews in their place.
And yet wait. Here is Paul Berman himself, responding to another negative review, in which he notes that
…Ramadan, who has contributed prefaces to two of Sheikh Qaradawi’s collections of fatwas[my emphasis - DA], has revered and applauded Qaradawi in every one of his major books, beginning with the book about [Hassan] al-Banna. Anyone who takes the trouble to read through Ramadan’s work will discover that Qaradawi has been the most important of his mentors—a distinguished and learned sheikh with his own history of ties to the Ramadan family, by the way (which I mention … because Ramadan himself, in his book on al-Banna, chooses to boast of it).
Mishra, it seems, is misrepresenting facts in order to burnish his conclusion: that Ramadan “may not be ideal, but the impulse to engage with him seems to exemplify the best kind of liberalism….”
By all means, engage Ramadan, but do it in the way that George Packer did in this exchange, in which he pressed Ramadan repeatedly on the issue of antisemitism. “[H]e couldn’t give me a direct answer,” writes Packer. “He hedged, he spoke about context, he suggested that the quotes were mistranslated, that they didn’t actually exist. But he refused to acknowledge that his grandfather and the Muslim Brotherhood in its origins were characterized by anti-Semitic or totalitarian views. It seemed clear that there was a limit to what he would allow himself to say or think, and that I had found it.”
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Last but not least, the fact that racists such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are blasting veteran White House reporter turned pundit Helen Thomas does not mean that Thomas’s remarks were anything less than disgusting. And racist.
In response to this disastrous incident at sea involving the Israeli military and the Free Gaza Movement, Roger Ebert, the movie critic and prolific liberal tweeter, wrote this morning: “Why isn’t Israel firing on a humanitarian aid ship worse than North Korea firing on a warship?”
This was quickly retweeted by Jeremy Scahill, who appended the word “Exactly.” Scahill, to remind you, is an apologist for Somali pirates, or “pirates” as he refers to them. In other words, Scahill in some instances has no problem with heavily armed people waging violence against civilian ships. Just saying. It seems clear that Israel handled this recklessly and its conduct should be investigated. Let me also state that Israel has pursued an immoral and counterproductive policy in Gaza for some time, and should rethink its blockade (which, to be clear, was instituted in response to Hamas aggression).
However, from video evidence here and here, it also seems clear that some of the Free Gaza Movement activists on that ship attempted to engage Israeli soldiers in hand-to-hand combat. At this stage it is rash to describe this as a simple matter of Israel wantonly killing civilians. But of course that’s what many people want to believe.
This post by Glenn Greenwald makes no mention of the Free Gaza Movement, which is something close to journalistic malpractice. More than the humanitarian aid business, the Free Gaza Movement is in the propaganda business. It is an outlet of the extreme anti-Zionist left, essentially a Hamas support group. It has engaged in this same cat-and-mouse game with the Israeli navy for a long time. The people on that ship knew full well they would be intercepted. That was the whole point. These are theatrical stunts intended to provoke the Israelis.
Why is this incident unlike the Korean one? Because the Free Gaza ship was warned repeatedly to desist and change course, and then it was boarded — not fired upon, not sank. The North Korean regime sank a sitting-duck South Korean warship with premeditation and without a word of warning, apparently in order bolster the prestige and power of Kim Jong Il in a succession struggle. North Korea is a totalitarian state; Israel is a (deeply flawed) democracy.
What Ebert’s formulation says, sotto voce, is that the actions of totalitarian states shouldn’t bother us that much.
You have written approvingly (here and here) of John Mearsheimer’s recent speech in which he divided American Jews into three camps: “New Afrikaners,” or right-wing supporters of Israel; “righteous Jews,” i.e., critics of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians; and the “great ambivalent middle.” I’d like to focus on something that you glossed over entirely in your remarks: Mearsheimer’s inclusion of Noam Chomsky among the “righteous Jews.”
Clearly you are determined to wade into the muck that is the debate over Israel/Palestine, and on one level, more power to you — arguing for an end to Israel’s destructive and immoral settlements policy is much needed. No one can plausibly claim that you’re an antisemite for doing so. And yet I believe your antisemitism detector is in need of repair, and that you could be doing more to fight it. Let me explain.
You are of course familiar with Noam Chomsky’s profile as an arch critic of American foreign policy, for you have linked in the past to Oliver Kamm’s voluminous work showing Chomsky to be an unscrupulous demagogue. Incidentally, Chomsky is of Jewish descent but has never made a point of publicly identifying as a Jew, which makes Mearsheimer’s mention of him all the more suspect. But that is for another post.
What you need to know is that Chomsky is listed here as an honorary member of something called the BRussells Tribunal [sic]. (Hat tip Adam Holland.) His name appears alongside seven other prominent figures and fellow honorary members, including Cindy Sheehan and the late Harold Pinter. At the top of this list is Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, the former prime minister of Malaysia, whose record of virulent antisemitism is well known. In a speech delivered in January of this year, Mahathir said this:
The Jews had always been a problem in European countries. They had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred. But still they remained, they thrived and they held whole Governments to ransom. Even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world. The Holocaust failed as a final solution.
Now, while it would not be fair to ascribe these views to Chomsky himself, Chomsky has opted to lend his imprimatur to an organization associated with Mahathir — indeed, even to allow his name to be displayed right alongside Mahathir’s. I’m sure you will agree that this weakens the case for Chomsky as a “righteous Jew,” but I would argue that it also reveals, at best, a fundamental ignorance and lack of judgment on the part of John Mearsheimer. (It is equally disgraceful that Mearsheimer listed as a “righteous Jew” Norman Finkelstein, a declared supporter of Hezbollah.)
To conclude: The charge of antisemitism is not simply a ruse, a means of silencing critics of Israel. Mahathir Mohamed is not a “critic of Israel”; he is a Jew hater. Noam Chomsky and Cindy Sheehan, among many others on the anti-Zionist left, are enabling his hatred and giving it a veneer of legitimacy. For many of us in the “great ambivalent middle,” to attack the Chomskyite left, or to fail to condemn Israel with sufficient ardor, is to risk being labeled a “New Afrikaner” by the likes of John Mearsheimer. This is the silencing phenomenon that few commentators seem willing to address. I wish you would do so.
I am devastated to learn that Fred Halliday died while I was away and mostly offline in Florida. Halliday was a scholar of international relations, speaker of seven languages, one of the clearest progressive political thinkers of our day, a ruthless dismantler of nonsense from the right and extreme left. May his example live on for decades to come. His colleagues at openDemocracy pay tribute.
Proponents of an anti-Israel boycott have tried to pressure Amitav Ghosh, one of my intellectual heroes, to turn down the Dan David Prize. Ghosh has declined to do so, and his reasoning is characteristically eloquent. Margaret Atwood, Ghosh’s co-recipient of the prize, has also rebuffed the boycotters, and just as eloquently.
In marked contrast, Gil Scott-Heron seems to have knuckled under to boorish anti-Zionist protesters and canceled an upcoming concert in Tel Aviv. But did he cancel or “reschedule”? It’s not clear, as Nathalie Rothschild reveals in this incisive column.
There’s something a little disgusting about Glenn Greenwald, in this post, taking a cheap shot at Jeffrey Goldberg, portraying Goldberg as some sort of bloodthirsty oppressor of Palestinians, when Goldberg’s position on Middle East peace is in fact more admirable than most. Goldberg, today:
I’m for the creation of a Palestinian state on one hundred percent of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (or a Palestinian state that equals one hundred percent of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, through land swaps); a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem that mirrors the Israeli capital in West Jerusalem; an immediate end to all settlements; Israeli negotiations with Syria that would bring about peace and an end to Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights. I’m a defender of J Street and I’ve been critical of AIPAC on the op-ed page of The New York Times. And I’ve often written that the status quo is untenable.
I hardly need to state that I agree wholeheartedly, and if Greenwald has a problem with the substance of any of Goldberg’s positions, he should make them plain, rather than resorting to personal smears, trotting out thinly veiled dual-loyalty accusations and linking with implicit approval to this absolutist nutcase.
I’ve just delved into Michael Bérubé’s book The Left At War, and it’s reminding me how deeply influenced I am by the late Ellen Willis, in particular her 2003 essay “Is There Still a Jewish Question? Why I’m an Anti-Anti Zionist.” I should have linked to it much sooner.
Let me be clearer about why I raise the issue of antisemitism on the left as frequently as I do. It’s not because I think people need to feel our Jewish pain and be sensitive. It’s because, as Willis states, “Anti-Semitism remains the wild card of world politics and the lightning rod of political crisis, however constantly it is downplayed or denied.” Therefore, the left’s failure to deal with the issue — or worse, actually to aid and abet the phenomenon itself — is not just any failure. It has happened before in history and it is happening again.
Louis Farrakhan is not of the left, of course, but people on the left — most notably Jeremiah Wright in the recent past — have mistaken his championing of the black struggle for progressivism. And yet Farrakhan continues to say things like this, just yesterday:
“[You] can’t even engage in constructive argument over the veracity of the figures of the Holocaust. We know something happened, sure, but you can’t talk about [it]. In certain cities in Europe they arrest you and put you in prison for denying such.”
I think we can conclude that Farrakhan is less interested in “constructive argument” than in “denying such.”
Citing Cynthia McKinney as a victim of the all-powerful Zionist lobby, Farrkhan also said: “You can’t criticize, you can’t say nothing because if you do, you’re branded as an anti-Semite.”
Actually, this is what antisemites say to draw attention away from the fact that they’re promoting antisemitism. And it’s an attempt to stifle those who would oppose them.
A quick follow-up to my previous post: in the comments, a friend has reminded me about this lovely photo (scroll down) of Cynthia McKinney posing with her new pal, the raving antisemite and borderline sociopath Israel Shamir, who is arguably worse than Gilad Atzmon. In addition to falsifying his name and his background, “Shamir” has advocated coalition-building between Palestine activists and the neo-Nazi National Alliance:
The world is full of bad guys, and things are good only if and when the bad guys balance each other. Saddam would balance Sharon, while the White supremacists would balance the Jewish supremacists. If indeed these men are not supremacists, but cultural separatists, as they claim, we certainly can do things together with them, and with another group of cultural separatists, the Black Muslims, too.
This is close to McKinney’s view as well, if we can judge from her recent friendly appearances on radio programs of the racist far right. Let that sink in for a moment: an African-American former member of Congress, the standard-bearer for the Green Party in the 2008 presidential election, is all but a declared ally of the white supremacist fringe. Noam Chomsky, a near-deity to many on the radical left, endorsed McKinney’s presidential run.
It’s not news that some sectors of the radical left are in the antisemitism business. And then there are those who are more offended by justified accusations of antisemitism than by the antisemitism itself. So it remains the responsibility of the left’s more intelligent voices, people like Glenn Greenwald, to raise the red flag on this issue. McKinney, by the way, is another person who gets a free pass when she’s interviewed by Greenwald’s pal Amy Goodman.
To quote Greenwald again: “[C]heapening the charge of anti-semitism through frivolous and politically manipulative uses weakens the ability to combat actual, real anti-semitism, which does still exist.”
If he’s so very concerned about the ability to combat antisemitism, let him act on it, instead of recycling the tired claim that it’s all a neocon witch hunt.
To find journalist-ideologue John Pilger ranting about “the criminality of the Israeli state” and “the murderous, racist toll of Zionism” is all too routine. (Hat tip Oliver Kamm.) What’s new is this: Pilger trots out “the expatriate Israeli musician Gilad Atzmon” as a representative good Jew, emblematic of “the heroes of Israel” and “the moral courage of Israeli dissidents.” Either Pilger is fool enough to be unaware of Atzmon’s vicious anti-Jewish bigotry, or he has consciously praised an apologist for the Third Reich, who has declared:
“One of the things that happened to us was that stupidly we interpreted the Nazi defeat as a vindication of the Jewish ideology and the Jewish people.”
And:
“Carpet bombing and total erasure of populated areas that is so trendy amongst Israeli military and politicians (as well as Anglo-Americans) has never been a Nazi tactic or strategy.”
For more on Atzmon’s record of Holocaust revisionism, here. I won’t waste further time documenting Atzmon’s hate, because he continues to document it for us time and again.
As for John Pilger’s excuse, I’d love to hear it. And if Amy Goodman, who frequently greets Pilger as an eminence on her program Democracy Now!, weren’t a hack posing as a toughminded media critic, she would ask Pilger about his high regard for Atzmon next time she has him on.
I’ve said it often and I’ll do it again: the familiar complaint that critics of Israel are being silenced or cowed by charges of antisemitism is in some ways the reverse of the truth. It’s people who call attention to antisemitism, and the enabling or papering over of antisemitism so vividly illustrated by Pilger’s rant, who are being dismissed as Zionist agents, Arab haters, people who can’t possibly be arguing in good faith. We’re not opposing bigotry, the logic goes; we’re employing “the usual tactic,” as Caryl Churchill said of Howard Jacobson when he condemned her ugly play Seven Jewish Children.
The “tactic” charge has a long history. In 1972, Huey Newton, sounding very much like the communist functionary he aspired to be, wrote:
We realize that some people who happen to be Jewish and who support Israel will use the Black Panther Party’s position that is against imperialism and against the agents of the imperialist as an attack of anti-Semitism. We think that is a backbiting racist underhanded tactic and we will treat it as such.
In other words, we categorically refuse to discuss or acknowledge antisemitism, and we will greet anyone who attempts to do so with unthinking hostility. This attitude dies hard.
Today, in a very different political context, the debate has flared up in an epic, nasty and long-brewing exchange between Leon Wieseltier and Andrew Sullivan, which is way too labyrinthine to deal with here. But one thing that struck me was Glenn Greenwald’s reaction, which included the argument — also familiar — that reckless accusations of antisemitism pose an “obvious danger.” “[C]heapening the charge of anti-semitism through frivolous and politically manipulative uses,” wrote Greenwald, “weakens the ability to combat actual, real anti-semitism, which does still exist.”
Well, Mr. Greenwald, here’s your chance to combat actual, real antisemitism, which does still exist. Will you call out John Pilger, your fellow frequent guest on Democracy Now!, for praising an avowed antisemite? Imagine if John Pilger, in the pages of the New Statesman, praised someone who had said: “Stupidly we interpreted the defeat of slavery as a vindication of black ideology and black people.” Greenwald would have piped up immediately, no?
