Jo Goldenberg’s restaurant in Paris on the day it was attacked in 1982
Now that Siné has been fired from his post at Charlie Hebdo (see Elif Kayi’s posts here and here), he’s become a cause celebre for those parts of the left which insist that antisemitism is a scurrilous tactic designed to divert attention from the Palestinians by suppressing free speech.
“Lenin” has drawn up a list of apparently relevant examples from France. His springboard is an article on the unctuous Counterpunch website which concludes - what else? - that the outrage with Siné “is part of an ongoing polemical charade of blackmail and incitement against anyone who dares to criticize Israel. And because Siné is known for his anti-Zionist views, that alone is enough to call him an anti-Semite.”
Never mind the chutzpah of a journal which promotes terms like “Neo-Jew” and publishes articles by Eric Walberg - a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and collaborator of The Adelaide Institute, a Holocaust Denial outfit - deciding what is (more precisely, is not) antisemitic. The Counterpunch article is yet another example of the tactic of muzzling concerns about antisemitism by raising the Palestinian issue. And because the author is so keen to defend Siné’s integrity as a principled anti-Zionist, she ignores his more foul ravings, like this one, uttered after the terrorist assault on Jo Goldenberg’s, a Jewish restaurant in Paris, in 1982: “I am an antisemite and I am not afraid to say so. I will paint swastikas on all the walls. I want each Jew to live in fear except if he is pro-Palestinian. They should all die!”
For good measure, in drawing a contrast between the Siné Affair and the publication of the Danish cartoons which lampooned the Prophet Muhammed, the Counterpunch author dismisses anti-Islamist commentators like Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali as “tokens,” clearly not seeing the inherent racism and sexism in the implication that these two Muslim women are just too dumb to realize that they are being manipulated by the dreaded neo-cons. After all, that has to true, surely? It couldn’t possibly be that the two of them, you know, decided not to toe the line? Really, this is gutter journalism.
What of “Lenin’s” other examples? Well, apparently the writer Jean-Christopher Rufin was promoting censorship by observing that anti-Zionism “legitimises the Palestinian armed struggle even when it targets innocent civilians…Thus it could also legitimise violent acts committed in France.” Actually, that’s entirely correct. The most obvious example? The attack on Jo Goldenberg’s which triggered the antisemitic rant from Siné quoted above!
“Lenin” also believes that Alain Menargues, the former news editor of Radio France International (RFI), was the victim of free speech repression when he resigned after publishing a book which described Israel as a “racist” state and recycled Soviet antisemitic tropes about the racist essence of Judaism forming the basis for Zionism (for example, “I was very shocked by the wall… Read Leviticus in the Torah. What is it about? Separation between pure and impure. To pray, a Jew must be pure and whatever comes in the way of this purity must be separated…Where was the first ghetto? In Venice. And who built it? It was the Jews themselves, in order to be separated from the rest. After that, Europe put them in ghettos.“)
Jews think they are better than everyone else. Jews are the authors of their own misfortune. Yep, freed from the orthodoxies of the far left, I think we can all agree that those ideas are antisemitic. But even if “Lenin” isn’t persuaded, perhaps he’ll grasp the fact that RFI isn’t Pravda in 1924 or Radio Moscow in 1973. As a public sector broadcaster, its journalists are obliged to be impartial. So if a senior news executive decides to smear one of the participants in a major regional conflict as a “racist state,” it’s a safe bet that he’s risking the reputation of his employer. And doing so will get you fired or put you in a position where you have to resign.
Such details are, of course, something of an inconvenience when you’re pushing the myth of the “antisemitism card.” But those same details help everyone else to understand why it’s just that - a myth. No doubt, “Lenin,” Counterpunch, and the rest of them will carry on pushing it regardless.
the most amusing part of lenin’s post (and blog in general), is that he often accuses groups he doesn’t like of being antisemitic in his diatribes against them.
i’m too lazy to go back and look, but there was something like that just last week.
as if anyone who regularly reads lenin’s blog really takes him seriously when he pretends to be an anti-racist.
It is nonsense to claim that Lenin and company (which I take to mean those socialists who understand the threat posed by islamophobia)”insist that antisemitism is a scurrilous tactic designed to divert attention from the Palestinians by suppressing free speech”.
The first point is that Sinés commens were not antisemitic but an attack on the opportunism of Sarkozy’s son Jean who, it was rumoured at the time, was readying to convert to Judaism in order to marry a rich heiress. Far from being antisemitic, Siné is an old-fashioned anarchist who detests ALL religions, including Islam. (Siné did not, unfortunately, protest when Charlie Hebdo editor Philippe Val decided to publish the Danish cartoons).
The second is that you imply, naively or dishonestly, that Lenin and his co-thinkers claim that antisemitism “IS” a scurrilous tactic “DESIGNED” to divert attention from the oppression of the Palestinians by the State of Israel, when if course what they are saying is that (usually false) ACCUSATIONS of antisemitism are being deliberately USED to this end.
Nobody is denying that antisemitism exists, though it is generally to be found elsewhere than in the Palestine solidarity movement. Worse, making false and obviously unfounded accusations of antisemitism is clearly the best method of weakening any opposition to real antisemitism when it rears its head.
By the way, the petition in support of Siné now has 12 000 signatures.
“The first point is that Sinés commens were not antisemitic but an attack on the opportunism of Sarkozy’s son Jean who, it was rumoured at the time, was readying to convert to Judaism in order to marry a rich heiress. Far from being antisemitic, Siné is an old-fashioned anarchist who detests ALL religions,”
It is hard to believe that, in light of his past expressions of acute hatred and distaste towards Jews:
“Je suis antisémite et je n’ai plus peur de l’avouer, je vais faire dorénavant des croix gammées sur tous les murs… je veux que chaque juif vive dans la peur, sauf s’il est propalestinien. Qu’ils meurent !”
“I am anti-Semitic and I am no longer afraid to own to it… I want to paint swastikas on all the walls… I want all Jews to live in fear, unless they are pro-Palestinian. Let them die,”
Or:
“Moi, honnêtement, entre une musulmane en tchador et une juive rasée, mon choix est fait !”
“Honestly, between a Muslim woman in a chador and a shaved Jewess, my choice is made!”
It’s important to note in these comments that Sine is not expressing intense hostlity towards JUDAISM. Unlike the Danish cartoons, which mocked the historical religious figure of Mohammad, meaning that the satire was aimed indeed at the religion, Sine clearly trains his arrows on Jews qua Jews, with stereotypes that instantly appeal to the vulgar imagination: the rich Jewish heiress, the shaved Jewess, and the young Sarkozy, already showing all the pushy ambition of a Jew… Had he mocked a rabbi, or some Biblcal figure, or the Torah, or the Talmud, sacred to Jews, that would have supported the opinion expressed by Colin F Saint-Denis. As it is, Sine chose to speak in classical antisemitic code which suggests that his anumus is motivated by much lesser ideals than the longing for perfect laicite.