Friday 4th of April 2025

israel thrives on bad faith semantics: ....

I read the definition of antisemitism adopted by Australian universities and my first thought was “we need a list”, not of what is considered antisemitic, but of what is not considered antisemetic. Now it would be helpful to have a prescriptive list of what one can say about Israel without being smeared as an antisemite.

 

What can one now say about Israel without being smeared as an antisemite?    By Sawsan Madina

 

And I am not being facetious. Perhaps those who developed this definition could provide such a list. It would be a very short list. Nevertheless, it would be greatly appreciated by all those who are morally caught between the need to speak up against a genocide and the fear of losing their livelihoods and reputations.

“Criticism of Israel can be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions and when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel or all Jews or when it holds Jewish individuals or communities responsible for Israel’s actions.”

How will this vague statement be interpreted? And whose interpretation will prevail? Will calls for equal rights for Palestinians be labelled antisemitic? After all, these can be interpreted as calls for the destruction of Israel in its current form as a Jewish state. What about calls to end apartheid ? Antisemitic. Calls for freedom for Palestinians? Antisemitic. Call to end torture in Israeli prisons? Antisemitic (because we are holding Israel to a different standard to that we hold Saudi Arabia and Turkey)… and so it goes.

How would the universities’ definition deal with calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide? Despite being called a genocide by eminent Jewish and Israeli scholars, I would say such an adjective would be also be considered antisemitic. After all, we know that Israel has been engaged in self defence and the tens of thousands of Palestinian dead and amputees are collateral damage of a just war. And we have it on Israeli authority that the figures compare favourably with Hiroshima and Dresden. Protesting ethnic cleansing in Gaza? Antisemitic because the Palestinians have no business being in Israel and their presence contravenes “A land without a people for a people without a land”. Protesting the dehumanising of Palestinians by Israeli leaders as vermin, snakes, and human animals? Antisemitic. I cannot think of a reason right now, but I am sure one could be found.

Reading the definition, I also found myself thinking of German students who spoke up against the sacking of Jewish academics in the 1930s. Were they expelled because they made their German fellow students feel “unsafe”? Were they arrested for hate speech? And we know how those who spoke out against McCarthyism fared. Those communists who posed the greatest security risk to American liberty and democracy.

“For most, but not all Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity. Substituting the word ‘Zionist’ for ‘Jew’ does not eliminate the possibility of speech being anti semitic.”‘

I read this and thought of the consultation process that led to the definition. How rigorous was the consultation with those Jews who do not believe that “Zionist” is synonymous with “Jew”? How seriously were their views taken into consideration? I truly cannot understand the conflation of Zionism and Judaism. One is a comparatively recent political ideology embraced by some Jews and some non-Jews and the other is a very old religion. I have no doubt that when Palestinians criticise Zionism they are referring to the political ideology and not to Judaism. Muslims, Christians and Jews have co-existed in the holy land, long before checkpoints, sieges, and administrative detention. And they would have resisted all these had their oppressors had a different religion or a different ethnicity.

How many Palestinians were consulted? How many university scholars in the field, Jewish and non-Jewish, were consulted? A couple of weeks ago Peter Beinart wrote in The Perils of Universities’ Unscholarly Antisemitism Reports,“By relying on pro-Israel organisations’ analysis of antisemitism — rather than recruiting the scholars on their own campuses — university antisemitism task forces are enabling the assault on academic freedom.”

He criticised the reports saying “..the reports also classify as antisemitic many statements that aren’t directed at Jews per se, but simply challenge the legitimacy of Israel and Zionism. And that conflation reveals a basic methodological flaw. Understanding the relationship between antisemitism and pro-Palestinian activism requires understanding the experience not only of Jewish students who feel threatened by that activism, but of Palestinians – an experience that shapes the way pro-Palestinian activists of all backgrounds, including Jewish ones, talk about the Jewish state. The reports make no such effort. They are profoundly unscholarly documents.” And he concluded that, “The problem with spurning these scholars is that, in their assessments of what constitutes antisemitism, the task forces make many assumptions about Israel-Palestine – assumptions that aren’t rooted in scholarship. Often, they’re cribbed from pro-Israel advocacy groups.”

Wednesday was a sad day for academic freedom and for freedom of speech in Australia. People will lose their jobs and will be dragged through the courts for saying the emperor has no clothes. Others who, too, can see that the emperor has no clothes will self-censor. With the suppression of legitimate criticism comes resentment and that in turn will feed real antisemitic tropes. So the end result of the universities’ adoption of this definition will be to shield Israel against criticism while helping increase real antisemitism. A sad outcome of an endeavour that sought to protect students from antisemitism.

I will leave the last word to B. Michael, an Israeli journalist and a practising Jew, who sadly died a few days ago. In March, 2019, he wrote Hate: An Israeli Love Story – Opinion – Haaretz.com: “For anti-Semitism hunters, preserving paranoia and blurring the line between Judaism and Zionism is the best way to handle criticism of the country’s abominations” and “It is not hard to understand why this blurring is so important. After all, there is no better way to handle the criticisms of Zionism or protests against Israel’s abominations. But from the moment that the label of anti-Semitism is attached to the critic’s lapel, it is possible to attack him with all the tested clichés: Nazi, Auschwitz, ghetto, crematoria, Schindler, Eichmann, mufti – and the adversary will immediately shrink in panic into his corner and shut up. Tried and trusted.”

“This is how those who curse a professor with the insulting term ‘Zionist’ are anti-Semites. And those who hate the Jews because they control the global wealth and are conspiring in the shadows – they are Righteous Gentiles and guests of honour at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre in Jerusalem.” he wrote.

He concluded with, “So this is how after thousands of years of strict antisemitism, this indecent measure has been reduced to just the test of support for Israel’s tricks and crimes. This is to teach us how true the new and updated definition of antisemitism is: Once, an ‘antisemite’ was someone who hated Jews. Today, an ‘antisemite’ is someone the Jews hate.”

https://johnmenadue.com/what-can-one-now-say-about-israel-without-being-smeared-as-an-antisemite/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

yves engler.....

Canadian Author Yves Engler Released After Five Days in Jail for Pro-Palestine Social Media Posts

Engler was charged for criticizing a pro-Israel activist and then sharing the details of the case

 

by Dave DeCamp February 25, 2025 at 7:42 pm ET Categories NewsTags 

 

Yves Engler, a prominent Canadian author and activist, was released from jail on Monday after spending five days behind bars for social media posts that were critical of an outspoken supporter of Israel.

Last Tuesday, Engler, a contributor to Antiwar.com, was contacted by Montreal police to inform him that he would be arrested for comments he made on X (formerly Twitter) in replies to posts from Dahlia Kurtz, a pro-Israel activist and staunch supporter of the genocidal war Israel has waged on Gaza. 

After being contacted by police, Engler shared the news that he would be arrested for calling Kurtz a “genocide” supporter and a “fascist” in response to her “racist, violent anti-Palestinian” posts. Engler said Kurtz frequently “calls for state violence against those challenging Canadian complicity in genocide.”

Kurtz claimed that Engler was harassing her even though her posts were public and X has a feature that allows users to block other users. “Kurtz has chosen not to block me but instead pursue criminal charges,” Engler said.

After writing about his situation and getting thousands of supporters to call for the charges to be dropped, the Montreal police then claimed Engler was harassing them and trying to “interfere” in a police investigation, tacking on charges.

“Angry at receiving emails and my article — the police were seeking release conditions barring me from discussing the charges levelled against me — the police are now claiming I’m victimizing them,” Engler said.

After being hit with the new charges, Engler was imprisoned for five days until he saw a judge on Monday and was released on bail. He is due back in court on April 25.

“Rather than devoting policing and judicial resources to harassing critics of IsraelI violence, the police and crown should be pursuing Canadians who’ve been fighting in the Israeli military for potentially violating Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act,” Engler said in a statement following his release.

While he still has to appear in court, Engler said the terms of his release were a “free speech win” because there were no restrictions on his ability to discuss the charges against him. “The judge effectively forced the crown to drop its bid to muzzle me,” he said.

Engler said the “crown should immediately drop all charges against me, apologize & compensate me for my imprisonment.”

In an interview with Middle East Eye, Engler said his arrest was part of a larger crackdown on free speech in Canada meant to discourage pro-Palestinian activism. “Less than two weeks ago, I spoke on a webinar with a lawyer from the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, and it was titled, The New McCarthyism in Canada,” he told MEE.

“It was all about the targeting of those opposing Canadian complicity in Israel’s apartheid and genocide. We went through a whole bunch of examples of people who’ve been targeted. Canada has, for more than a century, provided all kinds of support for Zionism and for Palestinian dispossession. The targeting of those opposing Israel’s crimes is just one of the innumerable ways that Canada has assisted in Palestinian dispossession,” Engler added.

Throughout his career, Engler has been a staunch critic of Canadian foreign policy and Canada’s support for Israel, including in a 2010 book titled “Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid.”

https://news.antiwar.com/2025/02/25/canadian-author-yves-engler-released-after-five-days-in-jail-for-pro-palestine-social-media-posts/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

monsters amongst us.....

 

BY JONATHAN COOK

The monsters aren’t just in history books. They live among us. They’re everywhere
28 February 2025

Walter Salles’ new film on the disappearances of regime critics in 1970s Brazil is a powerful reminder that the ghouls who defend the slaughter in Gaza are biding their time

 

Walter Salles’ new film I’m Still Here, is a moving, true-story, Oscar-nominated portrait of a middle-class, leftwing family in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1970s struggling to come to terms with the father’s disappearance – 25 years later confirmed as murder – by the Brazilian military dictatorship.

 

The mother and a teenage daughter spend time inside a regime torture camp too, before being released.

What struck me powerfully in the film was the endless supply of compliant regime officials who impassively, conscientiously carried out the abuse of men, women and children.

It was a reminder that plenty of these people live among us – and that they have been doing very little to hide who they are over the past 16 months.

They are the politicians mangling language and international law by terming as “self-defence” the collective punishment of the people of Gaza through carpet bombing and starvation – crimes against humanity.

They are the police officers raiding people’s homes, and detaining and arresting independent journalists and human rights activists, including Jewish ones, for protesting the slaughter in Gaza.

They are the establishment journalists pretending the carnage inflicted on the people of Gaza is just another routine news story, less important than the death of an elderly actor, or the latest outburst from serial misogynist Andrew Tate.

And, more than anything, they are the army of ordinary people on social media:

  • Mocking the families of children shredded by US-supplied bombs;
  • Reciting endless claims of “Gazawood” (Gaza-Hollywood), as if the levelling of the tiny territory, visible from outer space, is a fiction and that the only victims are Hamas fighters;
  • Defending as a legitimate legal procedure the abduction of hundreds of doctors and nurses from Gaza’s hospitals into “detention camps” where torture, sexual abuse and rape are routine;
  • Justifying the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals – leaving premature babies, pregnant women, the sick and the elderly to die – on the basis of entirely unsubstantiated, and self-serving, Israeli government claims that each is a Hamas “command and control centre”;
  • Cheering the erasure of the only documentary on Gaza humanising its children because the father of the 13-year-old narrator is a scientist appointed by the Hamas government to oversee what was the agricultural sector before Israel destroyed all the enclave’s vegetation.

These people live among us. They grow more confident by the day.

And one day, if we don’t fight them now, they will be putting a hood over our head to take us to a secret location.

They will be across the desk, asking us the same questions over and over again, making us pore over photo albums to find faces we recognise, people we can inform on.

They will lead us to dirty cells, where there is a hard shelf for a bed, no blanket to keep us warm, no chance to shower, a hole in the ground for a toilet, and one meal to sustain us through the day.

They will escort us silently through long dark corridors to a room where they will be waiting for us.

There will be a chair in the centre of an empty room. They will nod for us to sit down. And then it will begin.

 https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2025-02-28/monsters-history-books-everywhere/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.