XPost: soc.culture.israel, alt.politics.liberalism, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: talk.politics.misc   
   From: thickirish@cunt.com   
      
   Zionism and Anti-Semitism:   
   A Strange Alliance Through History   
      
   Allan C. Brownfeld   
      
   It has, for many years, been a tactic of those who seek to silence   
   open debate and discussion of US Middle East policy to accuse critics   
   of Israel of “anti-Semitism.”   
      
   In a widely discussed article entitled “J’Accuse” (Commentary,   
   September 1983), Norman Podhoretz charged America’s leading   
   journalists, newspapers and television networks with “anti-Semitism”   
   because of their reporting of the war in Lebanon and their criticism   
   of Israel’s conduct. Among those so accused were Anthony Lewis of The   
   New York Times, Nicholas von Hoffman, Joseph Harsch of The Christian   
   Science Monitor, Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, Mary McGrory, Richard   
   Cohen and Alfred Friendly of The Washington Post, and a host of   
   others. These individuals and their news organizations were not   
   criticized for bad reporting or poor journalistic standards; instead,   
   they were the subject of the charge of anti-Semitism.   
      
   Podhoretz declared: “… The beginning of wisdom in thinking about this   
   issue is to recognize that the vilification of Israel is the   
   phenomenon to be addressed, not the Israeli behavior that provoked it   
   … We are dealing here with an eruption of anti-Semitism.”   
      
   To understand Norman Podhoretz and others who have engaged in such   
   charges, we must recognize that the term “anti-Semitism” has undergone   
   major transformation. Until recently, those guilty of this offense   
   were widely understood to be those who irrationally disliked Jews and   
   Judaism. Today, however, the term is used in a far different way — one   
   which threatens not only free speech but also threatens to trivialize   
   anti-Semitism itself.   
      
   Anti-Semitism has been redefined to mean anything that opposes the   
   policies and interests of Israel. The beginning of this redefinition   
   may be said to date, in part, from the 1974 publication of the book   
   The New Anti-Semitism by Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein,   
   leaders of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. The nature of   
   the “new” anti-Semitism, according to Forster and Epstein, is not   
   necessarily hostility toward Jews as Jews, or toward Judaism, but,   
   instead a critical attitude toward Israel and its policies.   
      
   Later, Nathan Perlmutter, when he was director of the Anti-Defamation   
   League, stated that, “There has been a transformation of American   
   anti-Semitism in recent times. The crude anti-Jewish bigotry once so   
   commonplace in this country is today gauche … Poll after poll   
   indicates that Jews are one of America’s most highly regarded groups.”   
      
   ‘Semitically Neutral Postures’   
      
   Perlmutter, however, refused to declare victory over such bigotry.   
   Instead, he redefined it. He declared:   
      
   The search for peace in the Middle East is littered with mine fields   
   for Jewish interests … Jewish concerns that are confronted by the   
   Semitically neutral postures of those who believe that if only Israel   
   would yield this or that, the Middle East would become tranquil and   
   the West’s highway to its strategic interests and profits in the   
   Persian Gulf would be secure. But at what cost to Israel’s security?   
   Israel’s security, plainly said, means more to Jews today than their   
   standing in the opinion polls …   
      
   What Perlmutter did was to substitute the term “Jewish interests” for   
   what are, in reality, “Israeli interests.” By changing the terms of   
   the debate, he created a situation in which anyone who is critical of   
   Israel becomes, ipso facto, “anti-Semitic.”   
      
   The tactic of using the term “anti-Semitism” as a weapon against   
   dissenters is not new. Dorothy Thompson, the distinguished journalist   
   who was one of the earliest enemies of Nazism, found herself   
   criticizing the policies of Israel shortly after its creation. Despite   
   her valiant crusade against Hitler, she, too, was subject to the   
   charge of “anti-Semitism.” In a letter to The Jewish Newsletter (April   
   6, 1951) she wrote:   
      
   Really, I think continued emphasis should be put upon the extreme   
   damage to the Jewish community of branding people like myself as   
   anti-Semitic … The State of Israel has got to learn to live in the   
   same atmosphere of free criticism which every other state in the world   
   must endure … There are many subjects on which writers in this country   
   are, because of these pressures, becoming craven and mealy-mouthed.   
   But people don’t like to be craven and mealy-mouthed; every time one   
   yields to such pressure one is filled with self-contempt and this   
   self-contempt works itself out in a resentment of those who caused it.   
      
   A quarter-century later, columnist Carl Rowan (Washington Star, Feb.   
   5, 1975) reported:   
      
   When I wrote my recent column about what I perceive to be a subtle   
   erosion of support for Israel in this town, I was under no illusion as   
   to what the reaction would be. I was prepared for a barrage of letters   
   to me and newspapers carrying my column accusing me of being   
   “anti-Semitic” … The mail rolling in has met my worst expectations …   
   This whining baseless name-calling is a certain way to turn friends   
   into enemies.   
      
   What few Americans understand is that there has been a long historical   
   alliance — from the end of the 19th century until today — between   
   Zionism and real anti-Semites — from those who planned pogroms in   
   Czarist Russia to Nazi Germany itself. The reason for the affinity   
   many Zionist leaders felt for anti-Semites becomes clear as this   
   history emerges.   
      
   Theodor Herzl   
      
   When Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, served in   
   Paris as a correspondent for a Vienna newspaper, he was in close   
   contact with the leading anti-Semites of the day. In his biography of   
   Herzl, The Labyrinth of Exile, Ernst Pawel reports that those who   
   financed and edited La Libre Parole, a weekly dedicated “to the   
   defense of Catholic France against atheists, republicans, Free Masons   
   and Jews,” invited Herzl to their homes on a regular basis.   
      
   Alluding to such conservatives and their publications, Pawel writes   
   that Herzl “found himself captivated” by these men and their ideas:   
      
   La France Juive [of Edouard Drumont] struck him as a brilliant   
   performance and — much like [Eugen] Dühring’s notorious Jewish   
   Question ten years later — it aroused powerful and contradictory   
   emotions … On June 12, 1895, while in the midst of working on Der   
   Judenstaat, [Herzl] noted in his diary, “much of my current conceptual   
   freedom I owe to Drumont, because he is an artist.” The compliment   
   seems extravagant, but Drumont repaid it the following year with a   
   glowing review of Herzl’s book in La Parole Libre.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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