Any Criticism Of Israel Is A Form Of Anti-Semitism

[Itsthetruth]

CounterPunch
Weekend Edition
May 7 / 8, 2005

Lawyer: "Any Criticism of Israel is a Form of Anti-Semitism"
The Peculiar State
By JOHN CHUCKMAN

A lawyer gave a brief opinion piece on Canada's public radio, the CBC, in which he flatly said that criticism of Israel is a form of anti-Semitism. Calling people names because you dislike their views is not logic and is not any form of argument. It is not even decent. I can't see how this lawyer's words differ from American Senator McCarthy using the dangerously-loaded slur, Communist, applied to anyone he didn't want working in the State Department or in Hollywood.

This lawyer's fantasy argument is that the very selectivity of Israel's critics ipso facto proves their anti-Semitism. Why aren't these same people out criticizing China about Tibet he demanded? Apart from the fact that many of them do criticize other injustices in the world - a fact which makes the lawyer's words into the cheap trick of a straw-man argument - one has to ask just whom he includes in his indictment?

Does he include decent, honorable people like Uri Avnery, former member of the Knesset, a citizen of Israel who writes regularly of the injustices committed by the country he loves? Does he include the great pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim who grew up partly in Israel and has many times criticized its policies? Does he include the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom who expressed his rejection of Sharon's brutality? Does he include Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela who both have described what they see in Israel as the apartheid with which they are intimately familiar?

Is Israel the only country somehow magically immune to Lord Acton's dictum about power? I think not, but in saying that I risk being classified an anti-Semite.

http://www.counterpunch.org/chuckman05072005.html

[benburch]

1. Ummm... Posted in the wrong forum.

Should be in the asbestos-lined Israel/Palestinian Affairs section as that keeps the flamage out of the rest of DU.

[donco6]

2. I feel the heat rising already.

I'm outta here.

[Jim Sagle]

3. John Upchuck sucks.

[number6]

8. well thot out counter argument .....

:eyes:

[Double T]

4. If Anyone Or Any Group Screws Up In Any Way, They Should Be Open....

....for criticism for what they have done. To use a "Shield" such as "Anti-Semitic" for every criticism is BS.

[peacetalksforall]

5. I condemn the Jews in PNAC and other agencies who threaten

world peace by lies and corroboration with Sharon.

My hero-politician is Paul Wellstone. I am getting very interested in Barbara Boxer as President. Feingold, also.

I am for the survival of Israel, but not by stealth, imperialism - with the U.S. doing the imperializing for Israel-Sharon and their mutual benefits.

I condemn the the current Israeli regime who have not done diddly about finding peace, but who use any excuse possible to threaten and kill Palestinians. They have an eye-for-an-eye down pat.

I condemn all the secretiveness of the joint U.S.-Israel policies that are so volatile that it may all erupt in WW 3.

I love every Jew except the PNAC-cabal destroyers of the world.

I have more personal reasons for feeling total brother/sisterhood with people of the Jewish faith.

Semetic is an inept, hackneyed in use, inappropriate word. Just how many Jews are Semetic, anyway?

I don't want to hear the equivalent crap of 'you are either with us or against us'. It is juvenile and an appeal to the lowest level of professional dialogue.

I've had enough of that angle. I thought Mehlman was speaking againg when I started to read the article. They, the cabal, gave him the key leadership role in spreading that credo.

Don't fall for that crap.

[Coastie for Truth]

6. An invitation from a ZIONIST - in his non-Zionist, American persona

Higher Class - I like your attitude ---and since we are all humanitarians, I will repeat my invitation-->

This is an open invitation for all DUers who do more then post about working for peace and humanity -- and given enough of themselves to be invited to the American Red Cross's US National Convention (no, not Magen David Adom - but the Red CROSS:

The invitation at General Discussion is for real - if you are a DUer and volunteer significantly in NGO's (e.g., here the Red CROSS = not MDA) for service to humanity - join me for lunch. PM me - and we'll set up a time and place at the San Francisco Convention.

So, to repeat the invitation, any DUers going to the Red Cross National Convention in San Francisco on May 27-30 - please PM me---> I am on the "Local Chapter Convention Support Committee" and would like to chat with DUers who will be in our lovely "City By The Sea" (Second Bluest City of the Bluest Region of the Bluest State)

[Coastie for Truth]

7. Take this article back to the period from the 1964 Civil Rights Act

until David Dinkins' defeat by Rudi Giuliani, and substitute "minority" for "Jewish" and, as appropriate "affirmative action" or "school busing" for "Israel" and "racism" for "anti-Semitism."

To quote the inimitable Yogi Berra, "De j'vu all over again."

I lived in a "changing urban environment" during that time.