Back in the UK, the talk continues
Posted on February 13 2007 by Cecilie Surasky under Independent Jewish Voices.The Guardian’s Comment is free continues to publish opinion pieces on the launch of Independent Jewish Voices, the initiative that could otherwise be called “Communal Jewish leaders don’t speak for me.”
Richard Silverstein of Tikun Olam has added his voice this week with Cracks in the wall:
AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have enjoyed virtual hegemony as the voice of American Jewry on Israel. It is why presidents, senators and Congress members have voted AIPAC’s way (until recently) on virtually all legislation of interest to the group.
But now, if you put your finger to the wind, you can sense a change. Jimmy Carter’s book is a sensation, having sold 200,000 copies as of January 14. The more Jewish greybeards attack it, the more it sells. The book seems to have struck a chord.
The old Israel “consensus” and leadership approaches are ineffective. When AIPAC speaks, politicians no longer salute quite as crisply as they once did.
Well-known British feminist scholar Jacqueline Rose writes on The myth of self-hatred, the so-over-used-it’s-meaningless insult against Jewish critics of Israeli policies. Rose fights back:
To anyone who wishes to charge us with self-hatred, I would reply that it is not those who can withstand the pressure of internal and external criticism who hate themselves.
Arthur Neslen, in Let a thousand flowers bloom, says, “The Jewish establishment never spoke for us, nor allowed us to speak for ourselves.” He goes on:
Over the years, a highly conservative communal leadership has encouraged its flock to experience their Jewishness vicariously through an identification with Israel. Embourgeoisement, assimilation and a long-term decline in anti-semitism have eroded the basis of alternative identities once championed by the Jewish left.
In the current climate, any attack on Israel’s actions or ideology from within the Jewish community can easily be dismissed as, at best, lacking communal legitimacy. At worst, it is experienced by many British Jews as an attack on Jewishness itself. This gives an easy “in” to anti-semites in some sections of the pro-Palestinian camp, who blame Jewishness for everything from Israel’s expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948 to the Iraq war. A dangerous nexus is developing. One way to break it is to allow dissenting voices into the fray.
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February 13th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Virtual hegemony?
That’s a bit of an exageration. For the past few years everybody has been holding up various Jewish peacenik groups as examples and quoting them ad nauseum. Most people don’t even recognize the term AIPAC until you tell them “it’s the Jewish cabal that controls the US”. Only then do they nod their recognition.
February 13th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
let’s get this one straight; the dangerous nexus of anti-Semites within the pro-Palestinian camp (a phenomenon to which pro-Israel activists have been calling attention the past few years), is the fault of those same pro-Israel activists for not catering to the anti-Israel group?
Presumably, then, the similar dangerous nexus of Klan members within the anti-civil rights movement would have been avoidable if the NAACP had only accomodated those opposed to civil rights, correct?
Well, at least the author admits that there are anti-Semitic elements within the pro-Palestinian camp. Just what we’ve been saying all along.
February 13th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
To say that “there is no debate” in Britain, even on the terms that the anti-Israel crowd defines “debate” (i.e. unmitigated demonization without counterspeech) is just silly. Newspapers like the Guardian and the Independent routinely run articles hypercritical of Israel. MPs like Galloway can rant all they want about Israeli policy while saluting Saddam Hussein.
It’s clear that what the anti-Israel crowd wants is not “debate” but complete domination over the discourse, where anyone who supports Israel is marginalized as a “Likudnik” “neocon” or the like. Essentially, they are demanding the (nonexistent) situation that they claim to deplore.
February 13th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
AIPAC’s having a big meeting in DC in March. Very little evidence that there will be many protesters. We just had an anti-war march in DC in January…lots of people showed up. Sad thing is, few people seem to make any connection between AIPAC and US involvement in Iraq. Are legislators in Britain as scared of this org as the ones in the US?
February 14th, 2007 at 3:33 am
The IJV thread at Comment is Free was the single-most broad & comprehensive discussion in a single media source on the question of Israel-Diaspora relations I’ve ever seen (& I’ve been an Israeli-Palestinian peace activist for over 40 yrs!).
I was proud to have my essay published there. And since the Guardian is one of the first media outlets which has published any of my long-form ME peace writing (aside fr. my own blog) I think it confirms the ‘Cracks in the Wall’ thesis of my essay. We Jewish peace activists are gaining traction, gaining credibility. The further in the hole Israel goes w. its disastrous responses in Gaza and Lebanon, the stronger critics of the ‘IDF military solution’ become.
May we go fr. strength to strength.
February 14th, 2007 at 4:35 am
Looks like Mark Elf has been muzzled on “Comment is Free”, see:
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/
February 14th, 2007 at 5:47 am
self-muzzling reported in today’s NYT:
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=19264
Lazin, the Israeli professor of politics, recently attended a meeting of the American Jewish Committee in New York and said that if he wrote a favorable review of Jimmy Carter`s recent book equating some Israeli policies with apartheid he`d be `blackballed as a speaker in many American Jewish venues.`
February 14th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Derrick Bell, the legal scholar who is one of the developers of critical legal studies, wrote a series of “chronicles.” In one of his books, Faces at the Bottom of the Well, he talks about the “rules of standing” for African-Americans. One of these is that when a African-American speaker takes positions that are against the overwhelming majority of what African-Americans think, then the white establishment grants them “super standing” for their views.
Thus, blacks like Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, Armstrong Williams, Ward Connolly, and the like are given super-standing by the media, and regularly featured as courageous visionaries on behalf of their community, despite the fact that their views are overwhelmingly opposed by the majority of the black community, and that for each one of them, there are several dozen other black commentators, scholars, etc with equal or better qualifications that disagree with them. The reason for this, of course, is that by pointing to these individuals with “super-standing,” whites can take positions that adversely affect minorities, but justify it on the ground that these other African Americans agree with them.
So too with the so called “breaking of the consensus” on Israel. The Guardian, which has a notorious and pathological hatred towards Israel, similarly grants “super-standing” to an underwhelming and marginal minority group in the Jewish community. The purpose of this is not to actually report on the “intra-Jewish debate” as a news item, but to give comfort to those non-Jews who harbor similar hatreds, because “if some Jews agree with me, it must be ok.”
Take the example of the blog cited hear. “Tikkun Olam” is a lightly trafficked blog with virtually no significant discussion. It is replete with factual errors and largely consists of personal and vindictive attacks. The moderator deletes or redact comments that are clearly on point, but contain information which belies his initial entries (in some cases, he has deleted the comment, then posted an “Update” which concedes some of the counter-evidence, but desparately tries to put a spin on it so that he doesn’t look like he shot his mouth off without thinking the first time).
But hey, the site owner is Jewish, and can be routinely counted on to insult, demean, and attack not only Israeli policy, but anyone who dares speak out in favor of Israel in the current conflict. So this marginal figure gets cited as an authority and a demonstration of the “breaking of consensus.” The Guardian’s readers can rest assured that yes, they too, can smear anyone who dares speak in favor of Israel as a “neocon Likudnik PNAC AIPAC Zionazi stooge.”
Comment is indeed free. And nowhere has it been more free than the U.S. Still, this sometimes leads to the narcicissm that you see from sites like this and “Tikkun Olam.” It is the belief that “Consensus has not come to my side. That must be because my voice is not getting the attention that it deserves, because everyone would agree with me if only they could hear the pearls of wisdom that emenate from my mouth.”
Make no mistake. On balance, both the Jewish community and America are healthier for the open debate that exists. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t point out the combination of ignorance and arrogance that resides in those who claim that they are being “muzzled.”
February 14th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Hisashi Sakamoto is right, I have been banned by Comment is “free.” First up I criticised Linda Grant, then a zionist commentor twice referred to a time when Linda Grant threatened to sue me for libel. I responded to that and all my comments were deleted whilst attacks on me, by name, remained. Linda Grant then said that “the site’s editor has removed links to libellous material about this newspaper and will continue to do so whenever they are posted.” Taken with the remaining comments attacking me this was clearly a reference to my comments. My comments were removed on the day they were made. It took me five days of protest to get the libellous comments about me removed. I have also been banned from commenting on the site, I believe on the demand of Linda Grant. I tried to contact MW about all this but my email bounced twice.
I have posted details here:
http://tinyurl.com/36bczm
and here: http://tinyurl.com/2cdr99
Perhaps you could look into it. I have all of the correspondence between myself and the site editor. It doesn’t make for pretty reading and I haven’t published it because I think her siding with Linda Grant was a lapse on her part.
February 14th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Joshua, there’s a brand new blog out there that would welcome well-written analysis such as yours about the so-called “muzzling” of marginal voices; check out http://www.bluetruth.net.
February 14th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Sadly, the Guardian and its readership do not grant the same consideration to pro-Israel voices and middle-of-the-roaders that they demand for voices which are stridently anti-Israel. The fact that some Jews voice criticism of Israel is taken as a blanket approval by people who cannot possibly be mistaken for tolerant and balanced.
But thinking that the Guardian represents real journalism is as much a mistake as assuming that Neturei Karta speaks for a legitimate Jewish pro-Palestinian point of view.
One can indeed have legitimate concerns. Often voicing them becomes intellectual masturbation, a juvenile circle-jerk with sado-masochistic undertones. And one is left asking who let the neo-nazi fetishist into the bedroom.
February 15th, 2007 at 2:37 am
Oh God, it’s Joshua Parkhurst again! God’s gift to Jewish argumentativeness. Josh must have a lot of time as an associate at that NYC law firm to troll through my site & Muzzlewatch.
Oh, & Josh I hope you’re not using the law firm’s computers to send out this drivel. It might be a violation of firm telecom policy, esp. if the blog owner tells you, as I am now & have in the past, that yr comments are entirely unwelcome (at my site anyway).
He’s even claimed at my site that he’s a supporter of Peace Now. Read ‘em (his comments) & weep. Would anyone believe a guy w. views & manners like his would support Peace Now??
And btw Josh, you’ve really crossed the line by attacking my blog here at Muzzlewatch. But so be it.
So let’s address yr dreary charges. Imagine, I’ve already written these same things at my own blog in response to him. But here he has a new audience who hasn’t heard his drivel, so he thinks he can get away w. the same crap.
It’s “Tikun Olam.” I thought lawyers were supposed to be a little more careful in preparing arguments. But you see Josh is a little light in the attention-to-detail dept.
My “lightly trafficked” blog had around 250,000 unique visitors last yr. How many hits did yr blog have? Oh that’s right–you’re entirely too busy working at yr law firm to maintain a blog. Or maybe you’re so busy trolling other peace blogs saying dismissive things about them that you don’t have time to write yr own blog.
My blog with “no significant discussion” has 3,000 comments in its 4 yrs of existence. Unfortunately, too many of them come from you (alas for yr sake, no longer).
Gee, The Forward didn’t find any factual errors when they quoted Tikun Olam in a story last week. Neither did the Guardian when they published “Cracks in the Wall.” You must have superior fact checking skills than them.
Isn’t it funny that you focus on my alleged factual errors when it’s you who can’t seem to speak accurately & truthfully either about me, my blog or the I-P conflict. As for “personal, vindictive attacks” I reserve them for comment trolls like you. You see, certain folks like to visit progressive blogs and take dumps in the comment threads. And then they expect to be treated civilly & get all huffy when they’re not.
You mean I delete YOUR comments. Is that what you’re PO’ed about? My blog is not Muzzlewatch. My blog is a personal expression. If you don’t like what I write go create yr own blog. But I have no obligation whatsoever to treat you in a certain fashion.
If you assault me, insult me, impugn my motives, & besides speak a load of junk in both depicting Israeli and Arab political positions in my comment thread–what you do think I’m gonna say: “Please come back I’d like more of the same.” I have absolutely no obligation to publish anything I don’t wish to. And with you–I no longer wish to.
You’ll whine about how I do this to everyone who doesn’t agree w. me. Not true. Hundreds of commenters with views farther right than yours have criticized me in my blog. Those comments are right there for all to see, undeleted & unedited. Yours are there too. Scores of them. And scores of comments with views farther left than mine have done the same. It takes a lot for me to ban someone. But making yrself a goddamn nuisance as you do qualifies you as a comment troll in my book.
At least Josh concedes I’m Jewish. That’s rather nice of him. He’s right I attack Israeli policy when it levels an entire country or massacres Gaza civilians sleeping in their beds. What he omits is that I also attack Hezbollah or Palestinian militants who attack civilians. But you see this is inconvenient to his smear, so he won’t tell you that.
BTW, I do speak out ‘in favor of Israel in the current conflict.’ Does that mean I should be censoring myself?? But my speaking out in favor of Israel doesn’t mean knee jerk justification for every IDF assault on civilians, whether in Lebanon or Gaza. It doesn’t mean falling into lock step behind a policy of refusing to talk to enemies who repeatedly say they’re ready & willing to make peace w. you.
My being ‘in favor of Israel’ means supporting policies that will stop the killing on both sides. You see, I’ve been a lover of Zion since probably before Josh was born. But Josh thinks the only Jew who can be a lover of Zion must wear combat boots & serve in the IDF (or else be sitting comfortably at home in Jersey City, arm-chair-generalissimo-ing the I-P conflict fr the cozy confines of his own living room–that would be Josh himself).
Now Josh, it’s you who are smearing me by placing quotation marks around those phrases as if I uttered them. I have never called anyone a “Zionazi,” not even you.
But we peace bloggers ARE starting to get the attention we deserve, Josh. That’s precisely the pt. THe IDF and Israeli government have mucked things up so badly & their partisans like you have done such a bollicks in sticking up for them that the rest of the world is turning to alternative voices for an explantion of what is happening & what should happen to end the violence.
The fact that the world is listening to us (& me in particular) with greater attentiveness is the reason Josh is so worked up. It really gets his goat that I was published by the Guardian. How could The Forward or The Guardian validate someone like me whom he detests so? It’s almost a personal insult, isn’t it? So this is his rather pathetic attempt at comeuppance.
February 15th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
I’ve read just about everything on the IJV at “Comment is Free”. I didn’t see the wide-ranging discussion Richard is talking about; it looked for the most part like almost every IJV writer said the same thing.
And let’s be honest. In Britain it is the Zionists who are muzzled, not the anti-Zionists. At the School of Asian and Oriental Studies, Zionists were prevented by the student council from bringing speakers to campus. Major unions have tried to boycott Israel. People are attacked in the streets for supporting Israel. Anti-Zionists have the Guardian, the Independent, and the Times to turn to for editorial space and anti-Israel reportage, and by and large, Zionists do not.
Richard writes: “AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have enjoyed virtual hegemony as the voice of American Jewry on Israel. It is why presidents, senators and Congress members have voted AIPAC’s way (until recently) on virtually all legislation of interest to the group.”
Sorry, but these groups should not be lumped together. Each group is pro-Israel, but the ADL’s views differ from AIPAC’s, as does its emphasis, which is more on anti-semitism, civil rights and civil liberties than on Israel. And there is no hegemony. There is only good lobbying. If enough Jews felt the way Richard did as strongly as Richard did, I’m sure they would have more of a say on Capitol Hill.
I’m not impressed with the sales of Jimmy Carter’s book. It’s Jimmy Carter. His books sell. Queen Noor’s book said the same things and was also a best seller. Indeed, citing these sales statistics proves that no one is muzzling anyone here. Stating one’s opinion is not the same as muzzling.
The reason anti-Israel Jews get accused of self-hatred so often is that they seem not to have any interest in Judaism beyond attacking Israel. How many anti-Israel Jews go to synagogue on a regular basis, give money to non-Israel related Jewish causes, or even give their children Bar and Bat Mitzvot? I suspect the number is very small.
These same Jews seem also not to speak out against those in their movement who are openly hateful, such as Israel Shahak and Norman Finkelstein.
February 15th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Michael Brenner - the Guardian and the Independent are the only newspapers in the UK to criticise Israel at all and they do they do their criticism very sparingly. The Times is a Murdoch paper and even a zionist sympathiser (Sam Kiley) had to leave because he felt that Murdoch was too protective towards Israel over the Mohamed al Durrah case. You pulled the accusation against the Times out of thin air. The Guardian and Independent resident commentators all tend to be pro-zionist. The Guardian has more commentary on Israel/zionism by Jonathan Freedland than by any other of its residents. Linda Grant is a semi-regular feature in the paper and David Hirsh is a more or less permanent fixture at Comment is free. At the Independent, Eric Silver is their main correspondent in Israel. He is British but now lives in Israel under Israel’s racist Law of Return.
Back to the Guardian, it’s a sad fact that even you get letters published there so I don’t know how you can say that zionists are muzzled.
You actually said “In Britain it is the Zionists who are muzzled, not the anti-Zionists.” Both Tony Blair and David Cameron (leader of the Tory Party) are patrons of the main zionist fundraiser in the UK, the Jewish National Fund. Are they muzzled? Most Brits have never heard of Shahak and Finkelstein. We’ve all heard of Blair and Cameron. Perhaps you haven’t. Look them up. The Jewish Chronicle said that Conservative Friends of Israel danced in the aisles when Cameron won the leadership.
I know you’re a zionist Michael but at least pretend to have a grip on reality.
February 15th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
From the above, it seems like a subtle difference in the UK media outlets as to who feels muzzled or not. From what I see/hear on the BBC, I would characterize it as “pro-Palestinian” rather than pro-Israel.
February 15th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Academic studies have suggested quite the opposite, ie, that the BBC tilts towards Israel. Americans are often shocked by the coverage of the Middle East in the UK media in that it often seems pro-Palestinian to Americans. This says more about the sorry state of the American media than it does about the UK media.
February 15th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Academia has become tainted. Jewish students are harrassed by their professors for expressing opinions supportive of Israel. Hence “Campuswatch”, perhaps the inspiration for “Muzzlewatch.” So lets take “academic studies” with than just a grain of salt.
February 15th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
“Michael Brenner - the Guardian and the Independent are the only newspapers in the UK to criticise Israel at all and they do they do their criticism very sparingly. The Times is a Murdoch paper and even a zionist sympathiser (Sam Kiley) had to leave because he felt that Murdoch was too protective towards Israel over the Mohamed al Durrah case.”
You obviously have never read Stephen Farrell’s dispatches from the region, and I’d say you’re the one without the grip on the reality if you characterize the Guardian and Independent’s criticism of Israel as “very sparing”.
“Back to the Guardian, it’s a sad fact that even you get letters published there so I don’t know how you can say that zionists are muzzled.”
Getting letters published is not the same as getting pieces on the Comment page.
“Both Tony Blair and David Cameron (leader of the Tory Party) are patrons of the main zionist fundraiser in the UK, the Jewish National Fund. Are they muzzled? Most Brits have never heard of Shahak and Finkelstein. We’ve all heard of Blair and Cameron. Perhaps you haven’t. Look them up. The Jewish Chronicle said that Conservative Friends of Israel danced in the aisles when Cameron won the leadership.”
I presented my examples. Do you dispute their accuracy?
February 15th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
I had remembered a Guardian writer summing up the British press’ peculiar relationship with the Jewish state rather saucily several years ago. Her work is reproduced below. Needless to say, it still resonates.
Julie Burchill
Saturday November 29, 2003
The Guardian
As you might have heard, I’m leaving the Guardian next year for the Times, having finally been convinced that my evil populist philistinism has no place in a publication read by so many all-round, top-drawer plaster saints. (Well, that and the massive wad they’ve waved at me.) Once there, I will compose as many love letters to the likes of Mr Murdoch and Pres Bush as my black little heart desires, leaving those who have always objected to my presence on such a fine liberal newspaper as this to read only writers they agree with, with no chance of spoiled digestion as the muesli goes down the wrong way if I so much as murmur about bringing back hanging. (Public.)
Not only do I admire the Guardian, I also find it fun to read, which in a way is more of a compliment. But if there is one issue that has made me feel less loyal to my newspaper over the past year, it has been what I, as a non-Jew, perceive to be a quite striking bias against the state of Israel. Which, for all its faults, is the only country in that barren region that you or I, or any feminist, atheist, homosexual or trade unionist, could bear to live under.
I find this hard to accept because, crucially, I don’t swallow the modern liberal line that anti-Zionism is entirely different from anti-semitism; the first good, the other bad. Judeophobia - as the brilliant collection of essays A New Antisemitism? Debating Judeophobia In 21st-Century Britain (axt.org.uk), published this year, points out - is a shape-shifting virus, as opposed to the straightforward stereotypical prejudice applied to other groups (Irish stupid, Japanese cruel, Germans humourless, etc). Jews historically have been blamed for everything we might disapprove of: they can be rabid revolutionaries, responsible for the might of the late Soviet empire, and the greediest of fat cats, enslaving the planet to the demands of international high finance. They are insular, cliquey and clannish, yet they worm their way into the highest positions of power in their adopted countries, changing their names and marrying Gentile women. They collectively possess a huge, slippery wealth that knows no boundaries - yet Israel is said to be an impoverished, lame-duck state, bleeding the west dry.
If you take into account the theory that Jews are responsible for everything nasty in the history of the world, and also the recent EU survey that found 60% of Europeans believe Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the world today (hmm, I must have missed all those rabbis telling their flocks to go out with bombs strapped to their bodies and blow up the nearest mosque), it’s a short jump to reckoning that it was obviously a bloody good thing that the Nazis got rid of six million of the buggers. Perhaps this is why sales of Mein Kampf are so buoyant, from the Middle Eastern bazaars unto the Edgware Road, and why The Protocols of The Elders of Zion could be found for sale at the recent Anti-racism Congress in Durban.
The fact that many Gentiles and Arabs are rabidly Judeophobic, while many others are as horrified by Judeophobia as by any other type of racism, makes me believe that anti-semitism/Zionism is not a political position (otherwise the right and the left, the PLO and the KKK, would not be able to unite so uniquely in their hatred), but about how an individual feels about himself. I can’t help noticing that, over the years, a disproportionate number of attractive, kind, clever people are drawn to Jews; those who express hostility to them, however, from Hitler to Hamza, are often as not repulsive freaks.
Think of famous anti-Zionist windbags - Redgrave, Highsmith, Galloway - and what dreary, dysfunctional, po-faced vanity confronts us. When we consider famous Jew-lovers, on the other hand - Marilyn, Ava, Liz, Felicity Kendal, me - what a sumptuous banquet of radiant humanity we look upon! How fitting that it was Richard Ingrams - Victor Meldrew without the animal magnetism - who this summer proclaimed in the Observer that he refuses to read letters from Jews about the Middle East, and that Jewish journalists should declare their racial origins when writing on this subject. Replying in another newspaper, Johann Hari suggested sarcastically that their bylines might be marked with a yellow star, and asked why Ingrams didn’t want to know whether those writing on international conflicts were Muslim, Christian, Sikh or Hindu. The answer is obvious to me: poor Ingrams is a miserable, bitter, hypocritical cuckold, whose much younger girlfriend has written at length in the public arena of the boredom, misery and alcoholism to which living with him has led her, and whose trademark has long been a loathing for anyone who appears to get a kick out of life: the young, the prole, independent women. The Jews are in good company.
Judeophobia: where the political is personal, and the personal pretends to be political, and those swarthy/pallid/swotty/philistine/aggressive/ cowardly/comically bourgeois/filthy rich/delete-as-mood-takes-you bastards always get the girl. I’ll return to this dirty little secret masquerading as a moral stance next week and, rest assured, it’ll get much nastier. As the darling Jews them-selves would say (annoyingly, but then, nobody’s perfect), enjoy!
February 16th, 2007 at 3:52 am
M Brenner - what’s to doubt? You’ve told me who reports for the Times and you’ve repeated back (without comment or counter-argument)what I said about Blair and Cameron. The editorial policies of both the Guardian and the Independent are supportive of Israel. I showed examples (Freedland and Silver) that you cannot dispute.
An honest example would be for you to show in the case of Farrell what he has written that favoured the Palestinians. Bland assertion is no subtitute for political argument.
Jon Harber - the irony of the fact that Julie Burchill wrote what she did in the Guardian seems to be lost on you and on her. Curiously she refers to Johann Hari “in another newspaper.” That other newspaper is the Independent. I am guessing she didn’t name it because, whilst it is broadly pro-Israel, it is not as pro-Israel as the Guardian.
I said that Americans are shocked by what they see in the UK media. I should have extended that to zionists generally.
The problem with Israel is its sheer lack of legitimacy. There is so much to hide that if anything is exposed, zionists see the whole enterprise open to scrutiny, and a state based on colonial settlement, ethnic cleansing and racist laws can’t stand up to scrutiny, hence the muzzling of dissent.
February 16th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Lack of Legitimacy? What then makes a nation legitimate? Israel’s independence was recognized by the UN etc. There isno realquestion that it is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people and contains the sites of religious significance to Judaism. Zionism is simply a short hand phrase representing the natural expression on the part of the Jewish people of their right to national self determination. Are there any other nations that can make that claim?
As to the misguided use of the phrases “colonial setlement”, and “ethnic cleansing” , they simpy don’t apply or really even make sense in context. In Israel the Arab members of Kneset certainly don’t seem “muzzled” in their dissent. You should strongly consider the idea that your ideas are baseless and simply wrong.
February 17th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I think this particular exchange lays the “Muzzlewatch” definitions of free speech and balanced debate pretty bare. I will freely admit that there are institutions whose opinions tend towards support of Israel (including the US Congress and conservative churches) and others that lean more towards criticizing the Jewish state (such as universities and the US State Department). It’s a longer debate as to where “the media” stand on the issue (beginning with the fact that “the media” cannot be defined as a single entity).
However, there is no doubt that certain publications, including the UK’s Guardian newspaper, fully buy into the assumptions reflected by the owners of this site that the major (if not sole) reason for conflict in the Middle East is the Palestinian-Israeli issue with Israel the primary culprit. This assumption is built into not just the Guardian’s editorial stance, but also in its news writing. Certainly if the Guardian gives balance to the other equally compelling narrative (that the Palestinian problem is a symptom – not the source – of the real cause of problems in the Middle East: dysfunctional Arab governments who underwrite corruption and the exportation of violence via oil wealth), I’ve not read it even during many years reading (and even a short spell writing for) that paper.
For Mark Elf, however, the fact that Julie Burchill wrote something supportive of Israel for the Guardian proves that The Guardian is a Zionist paper. Never mind that what she wrote was a reaction to the paper’s overwhelming bias reflected by numerous other writers. Never mind the possibility that in this case, it might be Ms. Burchill who is the “voice in the wilderness.” No, according to Mr. Elf, the existence of one opinion not in lockstep with the Muzzlewatch line renders the entire Guardian Zionist controlled territory.
We have now moved beyond the protest that Jewish Voices of Peace feel that their opinions are excluded from debate. Here is a case where JVoP opinion is fully shared by an institution (The Guardian), yet the existence of any dissenting voice becomes part of the writ of Muzzlement, further proof that JVoP opinion is being “suppressed” because it is not given 100% of column inches (to the exclusion of all other opinions), even in news sources that support its opinions nine times out of ten.
February 18th, 2007 at 6:02 am
R says, “Jewish students are harrased by their professors for expressing opinions supportive of Israel. Hence “Campuswatch”,…
I hear and read these statement over and over, but have never ever experienced it nor have I ever seen claims of harassment (a serious crime) backed up by relating a factual incident.
Can you please give concrete examples of student(s) having been harassed by a professor for expression of opinion? When, where, by whom?
February 19th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Here’s the link to Campuswatch;
http://www.campus-watch.org/
February 21st, 2007 at 2:17 pm
AT UC Berekeley a few years back a class was taught “The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance,” Included in the class description a warning that “conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections.”
Snehal Shingavi, the teacher of the class, went on to put his experience muzzling free thought and free speech to good use as the Bay area head of the International Socialist Organization