As regular readers of this blog know, comments are approved before they are published and deleted if they are not. Given the issues we cover, we receive a disproportionate amount of trash, much of it abusive and antisemitic. Today, though, there was a little more than usual, including such gems as, “I hate jews who do nothing but protect the illegal country of Israel,” and “neocon jews wield almost unchallenged power in republican party foriegn (sic) policy and control many op-ed pages in major american newspapers.” I wondered why. Then the penny dropped. Glenn Greenwald linked to us. Charming company you keep, Glenn.
Author Archive for Ben Cohen
UPDATE: Thanks to Elder of Ziyon for figuring out a way to copy the above map. Some of you have said that the link below isn’t working, so if you want to see the above online, go here.
As David Axelrod might put it, this is an insult and an affront. Visit the online route map of EgyptAir, the airline owned by the same state which signed an historic peace agreement with Israel in 1979, and you will see, once you click on the “Middle East & Gulf” section, that Israel has, well, disappeared.
Continue reading ‘Egypt’s National Airline Wipes Israel Off the Map’
Even if the Ramat Shlomo announcement and its aftermath is a salutary reminder of the old Yiddish proverb about not spitting in the well you drink from, that should not be the only lesson we draw from this week’s events.
Continue reading ‘Meanwhile, in Ramallah…’
This is a crosspost by Mark Gardner of the CST blog
On 2 March I posted an article expressing concern about John Pilger: and, more importantly, about what would appear to be the repeated failure of his publishers at the New Statesman to moderate or edit his rhetoric concerning Zionism and Jews.
This is a guest post by Kenneth Bandler of AJC.
The propensity of some Israeli political leaders to speak publicly or take action before thinking clearly of the consequences hit a new low this week during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit.
If Israelis were looking for reassurance that the United States is genuinely the Jewish state’s number one ally, the vice president couldn’t have been clearer. “The bond between the U.S. and Israel has been and will remain unshakable,” declared Biden. “Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel.” But, alas, there is a significant gap, on settlements, and it was an Israeli Cabinet Minister who decided to remind all with international media focused on every step of Biden’s visit.
After a week in which the Israeli government displayed its exquisite sense of timing, Vice-President Biden delivered a major speech at Tel Aviv University today. For those who don’t have time to watch the video, here are the bullet points.
This article includes a guest contribution by habibi from Harry’s Place.
A group of friends in London alerted me to this grubby little piece by a British Labour Party Member of Parliament, Bob Marshall-Andrews, concerning his recent visit to Gaza. Upon reading it, I was struck by various thoughts, not least the degree to which Marshall-Andrews words will be welcomed by the Hamas cheerleaders who compose the Palestinian solidarity movement, in marked contrast to the fierce condemnation with which this blog, and others like it, will greet his compendium of antisemitism-laced falsehoods. Why bother to refute such lies, one might ask, when those of us who defend Israel are at irreconcilable odds with those who demonize her, when any charge of antisemitism we make is bound to be dismissed as another tired attempt to muzzle debate? The most satisfactory answer I can come up with is that some things - and Marshall-Andrews article is one of them - are so odious that they cannot pass without rebuke.
If Vidal Sassoon lived in Gaza, he’d be in hiding now for two reasons. One, because he’s Jewish. Two, because he’s a hairdresser who works in women’s salons. More here. Someone please remind me: wasn’t there something, somewhere about Hamas being moderate and enlightened?
As the event known as “Israel Apartheid Week” (IAW) kicks off, here are some resources to combat the antisemitic, Soviet-inspired slander that Israel is an apartheid state.
Here are three good pieces which came out today. Robbie Sabel has written a detailed paper published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs debunking the apartheid analogy. Richard (don’t confuse him with Roger!) Cohen has an incisive column in today’s Washington Post. And, in a searing editorial, Canada’s National Post points out that a motion condemning IAW has been unanimously passed in the Ontario provincial parliament (H/T: Robin Shepherd.)
Going further back in the archives, Z Word published a path-breaking essay by South African writers Rhoda Kadalie, a South African Human Rights Commissioner, and Julia Bertelsmann, which challenged the analogy from the perspective of those who directly experienced apartheid in South Africa. I also wrote a monograph for AJC entitled “The Ideological Foundations of the Boycott Campaign Against Israel,” much of which is devoted to exposing the the blatant falsehood that Israel is an apartheid state.
Be sure to visit the “apartheid” tag on this blog, where you will find, among other pieces, Jonathan Hoffman’s guest post, “Lies, Damn Lies and the Apartheid Analogy.”
Finally, here’s another chance to see the film I produced last year, “Vilified: Telling Lies About Israel.” The falsehoods we uncovered here will doubtless be repeated at the various IAW events.
Here’s the latest video from AJC Reality Check, focusing on how the prejudices of one of Richard Goldstone’s lieutenants, Desmond Travers, played a key role in the distortions which followed in the Goldstone report.
This is a guest post by Adam Levick
Even before the birth of the modern state of Israel, Jews have stood accused of not possessing sufficient loyalty to the nations where they reside. Its contemporary manifestation however almost always centers around the notion of dual loyalty - a charge that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own nation. Often, such charges of dual loyalty are infused with a narrative imputing enormous power to Jewish communities which typically represent a tiny fraction of the overall population. Such a synthesis of disloyalty on one hand and exaggerated power on the other allows the accuser to charge the Jewish community of working to undermine their nation - often alleging that such Jews are dangerous aliens who represent nothing short of a Fifth Column.
Continue reading ‘Glenn Greenwald Keeps an Ugly Calumny Alive’
“Antisemitism cannot be regarded as just one more lazy, ill-thought-out bigotry. The anti-Semite hates and fears Jews because he interprets the world through them. Wistrich quotes the French monarchist Charles Maurras’s candid admission that anti-Semitism ‘enables everything to be arranged, smoothed over and simplified.’” From my Jerusalem Post review of Robert Wistrich’s epic new book, A Lethal Obsession.
This is a guest post by Dan Yurman of Idaho Samizdat, a blog covering nuclear energy and non-proliferation issues.
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed in a speech marking the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution that it has the capacity to make “weapons grade”uranium which could lead to the fabrication of an operational nuclear bomb. Iran has also been developing a 1,200 mile range ballistic missile which could be used to deliver one. The question for Western powers, and especially Israel ,which Iran has repeatedly vowed to destroy, is how credible are these claims?
This is a guest post by Christian Tau of NIJ.
Most Norwegian books are dearly priced and contribute to nothing except the prestige of their authors, yet still manage to capture the public eye. Meanwhile Eirik Eiglad’s recently published “The anti-Jewish riots in Oslo” is receiving no publicity whatsoever. For the sin of contrasting too sharply with Norway’s “goody two shoes” image of being a humanitarian superpower, Eiglad’s book is being quietly ignored to death.
John Pilger and the Enabling of Antisemitism
This is a guest post by David Adler.
To find journalist-ideologue John Pilger ranting about “the criminality of the Israeli state” and “the murderous, racist toll of Zionism” is all too routine. (Hat tip Oliver Kamm.) What’s new is this: Pilger trots out “the expatriate Israeli musician Gilad Atzmon” as a representative good Jew, emblematic of “the heroes of Israel” and “the moral courage of Israeli dissidents.” Either Pilger is fool enough to be unaware of Atzmon’s vicious anti-Jewish bigotry, or he has consciously praised an apologist for the Third Reich, who has declared:
Continue reading ‘John Pilger and the Enabling of Antisemitism’