I’m not a resident of the United States and I have a couple of question for Z Word readers who do live there: are intelligent people in the US who take an interest in such matters generally unaware that there have always been Jews that opposed Jewish nationhood and, in particular, that some 20th century Jewish intellectuals like Hannah Arendt (when she wasn’t busy making excuses for Martin Heidegger) were scathingly critical of Israel? Has this information been excluded from public debate? Does mentioning these facts here make me courageous? By mentioning them now do I risk the wrath of AIPAC?
Continue reading ‘Judith Butler and Anti-Zionist Charlatanry’
Seth Freedman is a regular in the role of Acceptable Jew at The Guardian’s CiF website. In this piece he looks at the controversy surrounding the allegations of organ harvesting fom dead Palestinians leveled at the IDF in a Swedish newspaper. He concludes that it’s all Israel’s fault, naturally.
Continue reading ‘The Swedish Scandal: Freedman Blames Bad Jews’
In an excellent post which we have already linked to here, Eve Garrard looks at the rise of the new, cool, politically-correct antisemitism and some possible ways of dealing with it.
Continue reading ‘The New Antisemitism: Sharpening the Debate’
David Hirsh responds to the absurd attack on him penned by Jacqueline Rose and Antony Lerman (you can read my own debate with Lerman here.)
Continue reading ‘Antisemitism: Hirsh Responds to Rose and Lerman’
Juan Gelman is a distinguished Argentine poet. In 2007 he was awarded the Premio Cervantes, the most important prize awarded for literature in the Spanish language. Gelman devoted a good part of his youth and middle age to participation various revolutionary Peronist organizations and was obliged to flee the country during the 1976 - 1983 military dictatorship. In recent years, as well as his work as a poet, he has devoted himself to fulminating in the press against what he regards as the two principle founts of evil in the world: the United States of America and Israel.
Continue reading ‘Gelman on Antisemitism’
Globes, the Israeli business daily, reports that the Histadrut trade union intends to ask the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) for assistance with the planned boycott of Israeli ships by dockers in South Africa. “The union in South Africa is against anything connected to Israel, and in the past even objected to a cooperation agreement we signed with the Palestinian transport workers union,” the paper quotes Transport Workers Union chairman Avi Edri as saying.
Continue reading ‘Boycotting Israel: Enter the Dockers’
This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.
I first met Paula Abrams at the “Republikanischer Klub,” a club founded in 1986 by Austrian intellectuals to fight the antisemitic campaign of Kurt Waldheim, who became president of Austria.
Continue reading ‘A “Good Jew” in Vienna’
There is a Holocaust abuse tactic that is really only available to Jewish anti-Zionists. Norman Finkelstein, the author of the “The Holocaust Industry,” often uses it. Gerald Kaufman, a British Member of Parliament, has started using it. Basically, it works like this: if your parents or grandparents perished in or survived the Holocaust, you invoke them when venting anger against Israel.
Continue reading ‘Holocaust Abuse Tactics’
According to the police, the violence in Oslo which followed an attack on a pro-Israel demonstration on Thursday was the worst the Norwegian capital has seen since the 1980s.
Continue reading ‘Pro-Hamas Thugs Rampage in Oslo’
This is a guest post by Michelle Sieff, Assistant Director of the American Jewish Committee’s Africa Institute.
The South African Palestinian Solidarity Committee (PSC) - which includes several self-described “prominent” South Africans, among them former Intelligence Services Minister Ronnie Kasrils, Professor Steven Friedman of the University of Johannesburg, Patrick Craven of the Cosatu trade union federation, and Eddie Makue, the General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches - has strongly denounced Israel’s attack on Hamas targets in Gaza. The group has called on the South African government to sever diplomatic relations with Israel and impose sanctions as well.
Continue reading ‘Gaza: From the Apartheid Analogy to “Genocide”’
All my talk of Shylock below prompted David Hirsh of Engage to alert me to this. Scroll down to the last letter. And fie upon you, Mr. Birnberg. Enough with the “As a Jew…”
