are macshane & greenstein even living on the same planet?

What neither of these supposed leftists will admit is that the BNP is no longer an “anti-Jewish” party (if in fact it ever was); it is pro-Jewish and anti-Muslim. Like its sister parties of the European Far Right, it has been bought by moneyed interests for whom Zionism is merely a strategic instrument – RB

Global anti-Semitism demands a united response
Denis MacShane, Ottowa Citizen, Nov 2 2009

The recent desecration of a Jewish cemetery in south Ottawa should be a wake-up call. The beast of anti-Semitism is back. In Europe, politicians who deny the Holocaust or trivialize the massacre of Jews are elected to the European Parliament. The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet recently published an article claiming that Israeli soldiers kidnap and kill Palestinians to extract and sell their organs. This is the blood libel first put into circulation in the middle ages in England by anti-Jewish priests. Another of the old anti-Semitic stereotypes is that of the secret cabal or lobby manipulating events behind the scenes to the profit and interest of Jews. A US-based website called “Uncle Semite” has just published a 19-volume “catalogue of Jewish names” with 220,000 listed so that they can be sent anti-Semitic e-mails. In Britain, the leader of the anti-Jewish BNP has been elected to the European Parliament. There, alongside openly anti-Semitic MEPs from Hungary, France, Belgium and Italy, he enjoys parliamentary immunities and lavish allowances and expenses to spend peddling his poison.

Or take the Hungarian MP Oszkar Molnar, who speaks for the main opposition party, Fidez. He said Hungary was under threat from “global capital, Jewish capital if you like, which wants to devour the entire world, especially Hungary.” His party is set to win power next year, and his anti-Jewish remarks have been defended by the party leadership. Then there are the difficulties of Britain’s Conservative Party. Its leader Cameron supports Israel and is a sincere friend of Britain’s Jewish community, but his anti-EU associates have made an alliance in Europe with Latvian politicians who celebrate the Waffen-SS conscripts from Latvia, despite the widespread massacres of Jews in the country during WW2. British members of the European Parliament are led by a Polish politician, Michal Kaminski, who was a member of a neo-Nazi party as a young man, and has said Jews should apologize for killing Poles in WW2.

It is as if Europe’s nerve-endings on anti-Semitism have atrophied, and a new tolerance of what a few years ago was politics beyond the pale is now the norm. At the same time, global anti-Semitism has the endorsement of state leaders such as Ahmadinejad, and is propagated throughout Europe by a network of Wahhabi mosques and preachers financed by Saudi Arabia. Egypt recently tried to install its Culture Minister Hosni as head of UNESCO, despite his call to burn Israeli books at Cairo University. He was defeated, but only by a handful of votes, and nation after nation at UNESCO were ready to vote for a man with his record as the UN’s education and culture supremo. Dislike of Israel has permitted dislike of Jews to become tolerated politics again. Of course, to criticize Israel is not anti-Semitic, but Jews in Canada, Britain or elsewhere in the world should not be made to feel that their beliefs and affinities can face a new anti-Semitism, when other forms of racism are combatted. That is why the initiative of the Canadian Parliament to set up its own commission of inquiry into anti-Semitism, which will begin hearings today, is to be welcomed.

I have the honour of representing the British House of Commons, after I chaired a similar commission of inquiry which reported in 2006. There was no doubt, after our evidence sessions and visits outside of London, that British Jews faced levels of anti-Semitic pressure that were not acceptable in a modern democracy. Girls frightened to wear a Star of David chain, boys jostled on their way home from school if they sported a kippa, were minor incidents, if frightening enough for students. Worse were the attacks on rabbis or Hasidic students, and the organized network of anti-Semitic Islamist ideologues making university life a misery for Jewish students if they did not bow to the anti-Israel hate of Hamas and Hezbollah. Now is time for a fightback. Government departments, editors, university leaders, diplomats and all decent politicians have to wake up to the return of organized anti-Semitism in too many of the world’s democracies. Canada is showing a lead in North America, but the struggle against 21st-century anti-Semitism has to be global or it will fail.

Israel’s anti-Semitic friends
Tony Greenstein, Electronic Intifada, Nov 3 2009

There can be few supporters of the Palestinians, still less anti-Zionists, who haven’t, at some time or another, been accused of anti-Semitism. Accusations that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism have become little more than a ritual exercise in defamation. The danger in making such accusations is, to quote the former Director of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research, Antony Lerman, that it “drains the word anti-Semitism of any useful meaning.” Moreover, its purpose is to discourage criticism of Israel and support of the Palestinians, or risk being labeled as anti-Semitic. As I wrote two years ago:

If you cry wolf long and loud enough, when anti-Semitism does raise its head, no one will bat an eyelid.

The European political establishment, like its US counterpart, has taken to the idea that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are indistinguishable. According to the EU’s Working Definition, anti-Semitism includes denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination (e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor), drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, and holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel. It is ironic that the EU’s definition of anti-Semitism is itself anti-Semitic! But the idea that Jews, wherever they live, form a nation separate from the people they live amongst, because that is the meaning of self-determination, is itself an anti-Semitic concept. What is really being stated is that Jews form a race, not a nation. Moreover, if drawing comparisons between Israeli policies and the Nazis is anti-Semitic, then the late Marek Edelman, the commander of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, must have been an anti-Semite. In 2002, Edelman stated publicly that Palestinian resistance fighters in the second intifada were the inheritors of the Jewish Fighting Organization of the Warsaw ghetto. Similarly, since holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the Israeli state is indeed anti-Semitic, what then is one to make of the actions of the Board of Deputies of British Jews? On Jan 9 2009, the Board of Deputies held a rally under the title “Community to Show Support for Israel at Trafalgar Square Rally.”

Zionism held that Jews were strangers in other peoples’ lands, and that anti-Semitism was the natural, if not justifiable, reaction to an alien presence among them. It was but a short step from this to an acceptance that anti-Semitic characteristics and caricatures of Jews were essentially correct. Indeed, the conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism is yet another irony, as historically it was non-Jewish support of Zionism that was seen by Jews as anti-Semitic. What anti-Semites and leading Zionists said about Jews was almost indistinguishable. As A.B. Yehoshua stated in a lecture to the Union of Jewish Students:

Even today, in a perverse way, a real anti-Semite must be a Zionist.

And from Pinhas Felix Rosenbluth, a leading German Zionist, to Arthur Ruppin, head of the Jewish Agency, Zionists have not hesitated to employ anti-Semitic rhetoric to further their cause. This is not so strange, because what one is talking about are in reality two entirely different forms of political philosophy with the same name, anti-Semitism. Contrary to received opinion, there is nothing in common between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Certainly, the Zionist movement has deliberately confused the two, but the former is a form of anti-racism, whereas the latter is a form of racism. There can be no blurring at the edges or overlap. One is either an anti-Semite or an anti-Zionist. One cannot be both. Therefore, it is not surprising today, with the growth of far-right and neo-fascist parties in Europe, that almost without exception they are pro-Israel. Thus, the very people who criticize anti-Zionists and Palestinian supporters as anti-Semitic are rushing to hold the hands of Zionism’s far-right supporters.

For example, Israeli Ambassador to the UK Prossor was more than happy to share a platform at the Conservative Friends of Israel with Michal Kaminski of the Polish Justice and Freedom Party. Kaminski is notorious in Poland for openly opposing the call for an official apology for the 1941 massacre of hundreds of Jews in the Polish village of Jedwabne. Last month, Israel’s Ambassador to the EU Curiel paid the first visit by an ambassador to the Kaminski-chaired European Conservatives & Reform Group in the European Parliament. As quoted in an Oct 13 news post on ECR’s website, Curiel told the assembled audience:

After years of megaphone diplomacy between Israel and Europe, an open dialogue is the best thing we can do now. I highly appreciate the support of the ECR Group for the two-state solution to the peace process, which will fully ensure the security of the State of Israel and respect the borders of national states.

Curiel’s visit followed an earlier visit by Kaminski to Israel with the European Friends of Israel organization. It was Kaminski’s first visit to a non-EU country as Chairman of the ECR. According to a Sep 25 post on the Conservative Friends of Israel’s website, at a dinner held by the organization Kaminski explained that Israel was deliberately chosen as his first trip so that he could “deliver the message that there is a group in the European Parliament that will be a true friend of Israel.” Similarly, in the UK, Kaminski’s Zionist allies rushed to his defense last month. As the Jewish Chronicle reported on Oct 15, several members of the Jewish Leadership Council were outraged when Board of Deputies Pres. Wineman wrote a letter to Conservative leader Cameron questioning the Tory alliance with Kaminski and his far-right Justice and Freedom Party in the European Parliament. Andrew Gilbert, one of a number of deputies who believe the letter to Cameron ill-judged, stated:

Nobody in the Jewish or political community did enough research either to say that Michal Kaminski or Roberts Zile have suspect views, which means we should shun them, or to clear them.

Nor is the Conservative party alone in embracing Israel’s fascist allies. The BNP is a growing party, with more than 50 local councillors and two members of the European Parliament. On 22 Oct 2009, its leader Griffin appeared on the BBC’s premier program Question Time, to a wave of protests. How did he explain away his anti-Semitism and support for holocaust denial? By explaining that though he might not be too fond of Jews, he was a strong supporter of Israel, stating:

There are Nazis in Britain, and they loathe me, because I have brought the BNP from being frankly an anti-Semitic and racist organization into being the only political party which in the clashes between Israel and Gaza stood full-square behind Israel’s right to deal with Hamas terrorists.

As the Guardian reported in Apr 2008, Board of Deputies spokesperson Smeed let readers know:

The BNP website is now one of the most Zionist on the web. It goes further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel.

But Kaminski and Roberts Zile, of the Waffen-SS supporting Latvian Freedom and Fatherland Party, are not the exceptions. Dutch far-right anti-Islam politician and Member of Parliament Geert Wilders is another figure who combines virulent racism with Zionism. As reported in Haaretz on Jun 18, Wilders claimed:

Israel is only the first line of defense for the West. Now it’s Israel but we are next. That’s why beyond solidarity, it is in Europe’s interest to stand by Israel.

Wilders is facing criminal charges for inciting hate by comparing the Quran to Mein Kampf. After winning five seats in June parliamentary elections, Wilders’s Party of Freedom is now the second largest political party in the country. Wilders has also found common cause with the right-wing, openly racist Yisrael Beiteinu party of Israeli FM Lieberman. Wilders explained to Haaretz on Jun 18 2009:

Our parties may not be identical, but there are certainly more similarities than dissimilarities, and I am proud of that. Lieberman’s an intelligent, strong and clever politician, and I understand why his party grew in popularity.

Indeed, the only far-right party that I could find whose anti-Semitism is disguised as anti-Zionism is Jobbik, the Movement for a Better Hungary, a descendant of the pro-Nazi Nyilas. During WW2, Nyilas was responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 mainly Budapest Jews. Leaders of the party were executed by the Hungarian state after liberation. This is the party that the BNP, which “opposes anti-Semitism,” is joined with in the European Parliament. Therefore, when Israel’s Finance Minister Steinitz claims that Goldstone is an anti-Semite, and that it is possible for a Jew to be an anti-Semite, he is right: the history of Zionism is indeed full of such examples!