Trump
Regime Redefines Anti-Semitism
by Stephen Lendman
10.8.2019
Anti-Semitism in
the US and West is over-exaggerated, over-hyped, and overblown.
It serves the
interests of apartheid Israel, a racist police state run by fascist hardliners,
Zionist ideologues, and religious fundamentalists, masquerading as democratic.
For the past few
years, Anti-Semitism Awareness legislation was introduced in Congress but not
passed, including earlier this year.
It targets the
fundamental right to criticize Israel freely and demand accountability for its
high crimes — especially wanting it stifled on college campuses.
Equating
justifiable criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism aims to silence, maybe
criminalize, it. Anti-Zionism and anti-Israel are unrelated to hostility and
bias against Jews.
Israel is a
nation-state, Judaism a religion. Some of Israel’s fiercest critics are Jews,
clearly not self-hating ones.
Calling Jewish
state critics anti-Semitic is a long-ago discredited canard.
The same goes for
criticizing Zionism, tyranny by another name. The ideology is extremist,
undemocratic, hateful, ruthless, racist, destructive, and hostile to peace,
equity and justice.
It’s contemptuous
of fundamental legal, moral and ethical principles – a monster threatening
anyone and anything it opposes, a cancer infesting Israel, America, other
Western societies and elsewhere.
It considers Jews
and others unequal, Muslims especially demeaned, Palestinians viciously
persecuted and otherwise harmed by a ruthless occupying power.
Anglo-Zionism is a
hugely destructive force threatening everyone everywhere. Israeli persecution
of Palestinians is well documented.
The Netanyahu
regime is especially vicious, notably against Gazans, using live fire against
peaceful protesters, gunning them down in cold blood — willful and malicious
murder upheld by extremist Israeli Supreme Court justices.
Th IDF admitted
that nonviolent Palestinian protesters were killed despite posing no threat to
soldiers or Israeli civilians.
Settler violence
and vandalism against defenseless Palestinians is approved by Israeli
authorities and commanders.
When occurs it’s
called self-defense. When Palestinians defend themselves against hostile
Israeli actions, it’s called terrorism.
When the world
community fails to hold Israel accountable for its high crimes, it’s called
complicity.
In its latest
weekly report of Israeli human rights abuses in Occupied Palestine, the
Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said the following:
During the latest
Great March of Return protest last Friday, 72 Palestinian civilians were
injured from IDF live fire and other hostile actions against individuals
threatening no one.
Civilians were
injured in Occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank — 91 Palestinians arrested
for crime of praying to the wrong God, including 9 children.
Five Gazans were
arrested, including two children. Shooting incidents by Israeli soldiers and
police happen almost daily, house demolitions a regular occurrence, their
residents dispossessed to make way for exclusive Jewish development.
Five shooting
incidents happened against Palestinian fishermen for the “crime” of fishing,
one arrest made, the individual’s boat confiscated.
Nine other
Palestinians were arrested at 37 temporary West Bank checkpoints — established
to harass, intimidate, and terrorize nonthreatening Palestinian
civilians.
Throughout the
West Bank and East Jerusalem, soldiers rampage through Palestinian communities
multiple times daily, arresting adults and children, traumatizing others too
young to understand what’s happening.
Jewish Voice for
Peace executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson earlier said “(w)e’re enormously
proud to stand with over 30 Jewish organizations worldwide to say no to…harmful
definition(s) of anti-Semitism and yes to human rights and the freedom to
protest.”
These
organizations and countless numbers of Jews in the US and elsewhere oppose
equating anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel. One has nothing to do with the
other.
In Israel, Jews
and non-Jews are unequal in the eyes of the state, Muslims especially demeaned.
The power of Israel and interests supporting the Jewish state most often get
their way in the West – undermining efforts to hold its ruling authorities
accountable for high crimes too grievous to ignore.
According to the
State Department’s redefinition of anti-Semitism, it includes criticism “of the
state of Israel.”
It considers the
legitimate global BDS movement anti-Semitic, a Big Lie. It includes comparing Israeli
abuses against Palestinians to Nazi mistreatment of Jews.
What the Nazis did
to Jews on an industrial scale, Israel does to Palestinians in a slow-motion
fashion.
Nazi Germany
lasted a dozen years. Israeli persecution of Palestinians has gone on for over
seven decades — supported by the West, the world community doing nothing to
challenge it.
Stephen
Lendman is a writer and broadcaster, hosting The Progressive Radio
News Hour on The Progressive Radio Network. Lendman was awarded the Mexican Press Club's
International Investigatory Journalism Award in 2011 in an awards ceremony
televised throughout Latin America. His books, How Wall Street
Fleeces America and Banker Occupation have since
been published in China. He holds a BA from Harvard and an MBA from
Wharton.
VISIT MY NEW
WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman).
Contact atlendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
My newest book as
editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for
Hegemony Risks WW III.”
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