Zionists’ inflammation of antisemitism - Pearls and Irritations - Guest Post by Ali Kazak

Zionists’ inflammation of antisemitism - Pearls and Irritations Zionists’ inflammation of antisemitism By Ali Kazak Nov 2, 2024 The primary focus of the Zionist movement and the Israeli lobby is not combating anti-Semitism but rather combating critics of Israel’s colonial apartheid regime and the crimes it is perpetrating against the Palestinian people. Zionists deliberately conflate Judaism with Zionism and assert every Jew is a Zionist, while Israel, on the other hand, calls itself a Jewish state. So when some people are deceived and view Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians as Jewish crimes and hold Jews accountable, the Zionists vehemently denounce them and scream anti-Semitism. By conflating Judaism with Zionism, committing their crimes and hiding behind the Jewish people, the Zionists intentionally blame Jews for the crimes Israel is committing in their name; in doing so, they instigate resentment, hatred and hostility toward Jews. Through this conflation, they also seek to achieve a number of other goals: brand critics of Israel as anti-Semites to silence them, launch campaigns to outlaw opposition to Israel under the banner of anti-Semitism, detracting attention away from Israel’s war crimes to “the threat of anti-Semitism”, inserting fear in the hearts of Jews to pressure them to immigrate to Israel and tighten control over Jewish institutions. However, people’s reaction is; if opposing Israeli colonialism, war crimes, apartheid and ethnic cleansing is anti-Semitism, then I am proud to be anti-Semitic. This is best expressed by the renowned Australian author, speechwriter, and film director the late Bob Ellis in his letter printed in The Australian newspaper on 29 October 2003: ‘Is it anti-Semitic to say it is wrong to bulldoze apartment blocks and leave the tenants with nowhere to live? Then I swear on the head of my grandmother Rachel Larkman that I am anti-Semitic too…’ Associating Jews with Israeli crimes, combined with the new Zionist definition of antisemitism, shows how little interest the Zionists have for Jews, not caring about the harm that causes them as long as it serves the Zionist colonial project in the heart of the Arab world. In fact, the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, didn’t perceive any conflict with anti-Semites. He even asked for their assistance and considered them allies for his colonial project in Palestine. In his diaries, he wrote, “The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.”[1] Since Israel is a settler colonial project, Jewish immigration is fundamental to its existence; without anti-Semitism, there would be no motive for Jews to leave their homelands and immigrate to Israel; that is why the Zionist project needs anti-Semitism to force Jews to go to Israel to keep it alive. Yoav Litvin, an Israeli-American doctor of psychology neuroscience, wrote, in an article titled “Ethical Jews reject Zionism”, that “Zionists have always had an interest in fomenting anti-Semitism worldwide, with the goal of driving Jewish immigration, preferably white, to Palestine/Israel as a means of battling the Palestinian ‘demographic threat’.”[2] The New York Yiddish newspaper Kemper, quoted the editor of Davar, a newspaper of the Israeli Socialist Labour (Mapai) party, in 1952, writing, “I shall not be ashamed to confess that if I had the power, as I have the will, I would select a score of efficient young men-intelligent, decent, devoted to our ideal and burning with the desire to help redeem Jews … The task of these young men would be to disguise themselves as non-Jews and plague Jews with anti-Semitic slogans such as ‘Bloody Jew’, ‘Jew go to Palestine’, and similar intimacies. I can vouch that the results in terms of a considerable immigration to Israel from these countries would be ten thousand times larger than the results brought by thousands of emissaries who have been preaching for decades to deaf ears.”[3] In an article by Amos Oz published in the Israeli daily Davar on 17 December 1982, he used the abbreviation Z. for a person he interviewed following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, who it is believed to be General Ariel Sharon, telling him, “Let me tell you what is the most important thing, the sweetest fruit of the war in Lebanon: It is that now they [the gentiles] don’t just hate Israel. Thanks to us, they now also hate all those Feinschmecker Jews in Paris, London, New York, Frankfurt and Montreal, in all their holes. At last they hate all these nice Yids, who say they are different from us, that they are not Israeli thugs, that they are different Jews, clean and decent…. The Yid has been rejected, not only did he crucify Jesus, but he also crucified Arafat in Sabra and Shatila. They are being identified with us and that’s a good thing! Their cemeteries are being desecrated, their synagogues are set on fire, all their old nicknames are being revived, they are being expelled from the best clubs, people shoot into their ethnic restaurants murdering small children, forcing them to remove any sign showing them to be Jews, forcing them to move and change their profession. “Soon their palaces will be smeared with the slogan: Yids, go to Palestine! And you know what? They will go to Palestine because they will have no other choice! All this is a bonus we received from the Lebanese war. Tell me, wasn’t it worth it?”[4] Thus, while Israeli leaders see the agitation of anti-Semitism as “worth it” and view anti-Semites as allies, as Herzl stated, and the more terrible anti-Semitism there is, the more beneficial for Israel, an increasing number of Jews around the world started to recognize the reality of Zionism and the Israeli regime it created in Palestine. The Zionists claim they wanted to create a state where Jews would feel safe, but in reality, they created an entity more dangerous for Jews to be in than any other country. It is much safer for Jews to be in New York, London, Sydney and Melbourne, than be in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. Recent events have shown the fragility of this regime, unable to protect itself despite being heavily armed to the teeth with the latest and most advanced American weapons, when a few Hamas fighters with light armaments inflicted a significant blow on its military units and security forces on 7 October. Israel was also unable to defend itself from Iran’s retaliation. It had to seek assistance from the United States, European countries and even Arab regimes for protection. In addition, the US sent American troops and deployed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (Thaad) to protect Israel, providing it with over $24 billion (36 billion Australian dollars) and an air bridge supply of weapons, without which Israel would not have been able to sustain its aggressive war. That is why the overwhelming majority of Jews refuse to immigrate to Israel, and a lot of Israelis are leaving which represents a fatal failure for the entire Zionist project. This explains the escalation of Israel, its lobby and the Zionist-controlled Jewish organisations’ campaigns to conflate Zionism with Judaism and accuse Israel’s critics as anti-Jews, claiming “the rise of anti-Semitism” and consolidating their outdated propaganda that Jews are threatened in their homelands and need Israel as “a safe place”. At a time when Israel not only can’t protect Jews, but is seeking outside protection! Since the inception of political Zionism in 1897, prominent spiritual, secular and political Jewish leaders, including the highly respected Australian Jewish Governor-General Sir Isaac Isaacs, opposed Zionism, and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, viewing Zionism as a deceitful savior and a potential danger to Jewish welfare, safety, and a resurgence of anti-Semitism. They ridiculed Herzl’s premise that Jews were a nation; some even believed Herzl was “mentally unbalanced.”[5] William E. Hocking, a professor of philosophy at Harvard University said, he believes “political Zionists are the chief enemies of the Jewish interest in the world of tomorrow.”[6] Today, Germany is one of the staunchest supporters of Israel. Its support is not limited to political and financial; it’s the second supplier of arms after the US, including advanced nuclear submarines, and is complicit with Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians. German police have arrested Jewish citizens for protesting Israel’s war of genocide – accusing them of anti-Semitism! Along with arresting writers, musicians, poets, and anyone who is anti-Zionist. Israel and its lobby can, through their influence over the media and politicians, mislead some people for some time, but they will not be able to mislead everyone all the time. More and more people are waking up to the colonial apartheid nature of Israel, and the genocidal war against the Palestinian people, despite the Western media’s complicity in covering up Israel’s genocide. Instead of following the golden rule of not doing to others what you don’t want to be done to you, the Zionists learned the ugliest racism and atrocities committed against them by the Nazis and Europeans and brought it with them to Palestine to practice against the Palestinians in a most brutal, hateful and sadistic manner. They skillfully refined Nazi propaganda into a sophisticated Hasbara industry that would have made Goebbels, the architect of Nazi propaganda, envious. Israel can commit massacres, kill thousands and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, demolish their homes and ethnically cleanse them, but it will not be able to eradicate, defeat or force a 14 million strong Palestinian nation determined to achieve its legitimate rights to surrender. Israel failed to do so in 1948, and it failed throughout 76 years of attempting to do so. Who does not see that is blind and deceiving themselves. Even if all the Jews of the world immigrated to occupied Palestine, and all the Arab regimes recognised Israel and normalized their relations with it, the simple fact is that Israel cannot live in peace and security while it is denying the Palestinian people peace, security and their inalienable rights of return, self-determination and equality in their country. If the Zionists were concerned about the interests of Jews and finding a safe place for them, they would have come to Palestine as friends to coexist with the Palestinian people, who were not against them coming to live in Palestine legally and peacefully as other people did, and not as colonists carrying with them hatred, racism and criminality. The time has come for Jews to choose between living equally in security and peace with the Palestinian and Arab people in the Middle East or in the ghetto of a Zionist racist colonial state with continuing wars and bloodshed until this monstrous entity is ultimately defeated. It is time for them to liberate themselves from Zionism and put their hands in the hands of the anti-Zionist Jews, the Palestinians and freedom loving people around the world against the common enemy, Zionism. Sources: [1] Theodor Herzl, The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, edited by Raphael Patai, Herzl Press and Thomas Yoseloff, New York Vol.1, 1960, p.84. [2] Yoav Litvin, an Israeli-American doctor of psychology/neuroscience, a writer and photographer, “Ethical Jews reject Zionism”, Mondoweiss, 1.8.2018. [3] Editor Sharon, writing in Davar Newspaper of the Israeli Socialist Labour (Mapai) party, 24.4.1952, p.2. quoted in “Kemper”, Yiddish paper (New York), 11.7.1952. [4] Amos Oz reproduced this interview, in his book in Hebrew: Poh va-sham be-Erets-Yisra’el bi-setav, 1982, republished by Am Oved, Tel-Aviv, 1986. The interview is on pages 70-82. Amos Oz uses the abbreviation Z. for the person he interviewed, who believed to be Ariel Sharon. [5] Moshe Menuhin, op.cit., p.39. [6] William E. Hocking, letter published in New York Times, 23.3.1944. https://johnmenadue.com/zionists-inflammation-of-antisemitism/