HOLOCAUST DENIAL AND THE LEFT

Holocaust Denial as an Anti-Zionist and Anti-Imperialist Tool for the European Far Left - Dave Rich (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
The growth of an antiglobalization, anti-imperialist political movement has created a political space on the Left in which Holocaust denial is no longer taboo, if framed in an anti-Zionist context.
Mainstream Holocaust commemoration is increasingly under attack as a Zionist or imperialist tool. For some leftists, the contradiction between their antifascism and their anti-Zionism is solved by casting Jewish communities and the European far Right as political allies.

ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE LEFT

Anti-Semitism and the Left that Doesn’t Learn By Mitchell Cohen (Dissent)
A DETERMINED offensive is underway. Its target is in the Middle East, and it is an old target: the legitimacy of Israel. Hezbollah and Hamas are not the protagonists, the contested terrains are not the Galilee and southern Lebanon or southern Israel and Gaza. The means are not military. The offensive comes from within parts of the liberal and left intelligentsia in the United States and Europe. It has nothing to do with this or that negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians, and it has nothing to do with any particular Israeli policy. After all, this or that Israeli policy may be chastised, rightly or wrongly, without denying the legitimacy of the Jewish state, just as you can criticize an Israeli policy—again, rightly or wrongly—without being an anti-Semite. You can oppose all Israeli settlements in the occupied territories (as I do) and you can also recognize that Benjamin Netanyahu, not just Yasir Arafat, was responsible for undermining the Oslo peace process without being an anti-Semite or anti-Zionist. You don’t have to be an anti-Semite or anti-Zionist to think that some American Jewish organizations pander to American or Israeli right-wingers.

The assault today is another matter. It is shaped largely by political attitudes and arguments that recall the worst of the twentieth-century left. It is time to get beyond them.

CHOMSKY'S LIES

Paul Bogdanor has compiled a handy list of Noam Chomsky's top 200 lies on topics ranging from Israeli-Arab wars and Communism to Latin America and himself. (Hat tip: Camera)

LEFT SILENT ON PALI V. PALI TERROR

Waiting Until It’s Safe By Seth Gitell (Political Mavens)
The events in Gaza reinforce a truth about much of the so-called human rights community and the Left: they care when the villain is Israel, but are indifferent to acts of violence committed by Palestinians against Palestinians.

As Hamas stormed Fatah strongholds in Gaza and began slaughtering members of its rival organization last Thursday, there were no Adam Shapiros racing to Fatah compounds to protect its members. Mr. Shapiro was the “peace” activist who made a beeline for Arafat’s compound in 2002 when Israel attempted to isolate the Palestinian leader in response to terrorism.

The Web site of a group Mr. Shapiro helped found, the “International Solidarity Movement,” was promoting “Freedom Summer 2007: Confronting Apartheid,” a campaign opposing Israel’s security fence.

Posts to the site, contemporaneous with the Hamas campaign in Gaza, display support for the effort to boycott Israel’s academic establishment and memorialize Israel’s “Occupation” since 1967.

A statement decrying last week’s violence was not found, if there even was one.

The television news channels and newspapers reported no present day version of Rachel Corrie rushing to place herself in between the Fatah and the Hamas gunmen. Corrie, purportedly in defense of a Palestinian home, was killed accidentally when she placed herself in front of an Israeli bulldozer, which was clearing brush and destroying arms smuggling tunnels.

On Friday, a Haaretz reporter, Avi Issacharoff, reported a few acts of violence in Gaza: “Two days ago, Hamas activists fired at a procession of unarmed citizens and killed two of them. On Tuesday they killed three women and a child. On Monday they threw a Fatah activist from the 18th floor of a high-rise building.”

Following these reports of Hamas violence, protesters did not take to the streets of cities in America or around the world. The television news was notably bereft of footage of candlelight vigils mourning the impending disaster.

As of Monday morning, the home page of Amnesty International, a group dedicated to “internationally recognized human rights,” didn’t mention the Gaza killings. But at noon yesterday, the group posted a statement calling for Hamas and Fatah to “end revenge killings, attacks and abductions.” The plight of the Palestinians is referred to in a May 31 report, “Enduring Occupation: Palestinians Under Siege in the West Bank.”

The report represents the group’s commemoration of the “40th Anniversary of the Palestinian Territories.” Israeli security checkpoints, constructed after a spate of terrorism and murder, are the centerpiece of the Amnesty International report. The open battle in Gaza, however, was missing in action.

America is also the subject of Amnesty International scrutiny. The home page highlights the plight of 39 individuals, alleged to have been “subjected to enforced disappearance by the U.S. authorities.” The group did not post anything about Palestinians attempting to flee Gaza, an event reported by Israel’s Channel Two. The station showed one elderly woman shouting, “We want to enter Israel. If they don’t, Hamas will slaughter us.”

There were those, such as Christiane Amanpour of CNN, who were asked to comment on the goings-on in Gaza. Ms. Amanpour acknowledged what was happening, but refused to speculate on what the change-over in control to Iranian-backed Hamas would mean. Asked whether the power shift represented a victory for Iran, which, it is, Ms. Amanpour said, “I really don’t think it’s a victory for anybody.”

Instead, she did what many in the world community do when faced with facts that don’t gibe with their preconceived views of the Middle East — she found a way to blame America. “What happened was then the U.S., Europe, Israel basically punished Hamas and the Palestinians because of Hamas policy and squeezed them and created this real division between Hamas and the PA, which has exploded now,” she said.

What Ms. Amanpour and most other commentators on Gaza fail to mention when they deign to at the least acknowledge the events, is that the seizure of Gaza by Hamas is the final happening in a chain of events that began with the Oslo Accords in 1993.

A former prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, opted to give the Palestine Liberation Organization — the Fatah faction — authority over Gaza and much of the West Bank in the hope that Yasser Arafat and his henchmen would crack down on Hamas. Arafat never complied, and Fatah focused on building personal villas on the Mediterranean Sea instead of building a nation.

The usual suspects will likely remain relatively mum. That is, of course, until such time as Israel finds itself unable to live with the situation and moves in. That’s when it will be safe, once again, to decry the horrible plight of the people of Gaza.

See also: Still, the Silence (CAMERA)

SF CONFERENCE ON ANTI-SEMITISM OF THE LEFT

‘Progressive’ anti-Semitism? S.F. meet considers phenomenon By Ben Harris (JTA)
NEW YORK, Jan. 23 (JTA) — Three years ago, Jonathan Bernstein received an e-mail from a distraught political activist in the San Francisco Bay Area concerned about rising anti-Semitism among fellow political progressives.

“The growing acceptance of anti-Semitic rhetoric is so commonplace it is not even recognized as anti-Semitism,” wrote the activist, who went on to list a number of anti-Semitic incidents in her community that had left her rattled.

Despite her opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, the woman had not attended a recent anti-war rally due to her reluctance to support the group organizing the protest.

“We’ve gotten calls for help like that almost weekly here for the last three years,” said Bernstein, director of the Anti-Defamation League office in San Francisco. “With each case we’ve helped put out fires by trying to get the right person to speak out about whatever the issue is.”

On Jan. 28 the ADL will try to do more than just douse fires when it convenes Finding Our Voice, a daylong conference in San Francisco aimed at empowering Jewish progressives to respond to anti-Semitism on the left.

Co-sponsored by more than 50 Jewish organizations from across the political spectrum — including the ADL, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, Americans for Peace Now and the Jewish Labor Committee — the conference aims to empower participants to respond to what organizers describe as an alarming trend.

Workshops will feature presentations by university professors, community activists, elected officials and religious leaders. Among the titles are “That’s Not Funny: Cartoons and Editorials — What’s Legitimate and What Isn’t”; Opposing the War While Opposing Anti-Semitism”; “Breaking Through the Myth of Jewish Whiteness”; and “Using Positive Messages to Challenge Hate: Advocacy on the Campus.”

The keynote address will be presented by Anthony Julius, a British Jewish attorney who successfully defended Emory University Professor Deborah Lipstadt in the libel suit brought by Holocaust denier David Irving.

While much attention has been paid to the so-called “new anti-Semitism,” in which antipathy toward Jews is masked as rabid criticism of Israel, the Finding Our Voice conference represents the first organized effort by liberal Jews to fight back.