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Zio-ghastly
by Paul Eisen
Monday, July 23rd, 2012
In a comment to Who_Me, one of our commentators, I mentioned that I found Gilad’s “Anti-Zionist Zionist” a ‘poor description’. Who_Me. asked me to elaborate – so here goes:
First, the term ignores an important distinction between the relatively recent (but ongoing) crime of Jewish supremacism in stealing Palestine from the Palestinians and other, older examples of Jewish abuse of non-Jews. The most noticeable of these is the Jewish role in the crimes of Bolshevism against the Russian and other Eastern European peoples and the horrific (and also ongoing) crimes against the German people. Zionism, as I understand the term, refers to Jewish notions of political nationhood and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Neither the crime against the Russians nor the crime against the Germans were specifically crimes of Zionism.
I also think the term is inaccurate. I’ve met loads of Jewish Marxists who claim to be anti-Zionists (In fact few non-Jewish anti-Zionists can match the bile with which these Jews express themselves on the subject) and as far as I can see, they are indeed what they claim to be – they really do hate Israel and Zionism. The fact that this is an essentially family squabble about which group of Jews will lead the Jewish supremacist movement is immaterial – the anti-Zionist Jews really are anti-Zionist.
Who-Me doesn’t agree and, in a previous exchange, offered some very well-chosen examples of how Jewish anti-Zionists will adopt positions that end up protecting Israel. Of course he’s right and he gave the example of how Jewish anti-Zionists will violently object to any notions of American foreign policy being dictated by the Jewish lobby. These anti-Zionist Jews insist that American foreign policy is just part of general, all-round American imperialism.
But this is not protecting Israel or Zionism – it is protecting Jewish power from proper scrutiny – the fact that Israel may benefit from it is just collateral damage – a price that has to be paid to secure their own brand of Jewish supremacism. Sure, on this occasion they’re acting like Zionists but to use this to designate them as Zionists seems to me to be confusing.
Of course, it could be argued that unconsciously these anti-Zionist Zionists really DO want to protect Israel because, although they may not much like it, Israel is still a Jewish endeavour and therefore must be protected. I would be the last to argue against the power of unconscious motivations and there is something in this point. But the term as it stands, with its complete lack of accompanying analysis in our debates – serves only to mislead. The same goes for the notion that in the term ‘anti-Zionist Zionist’ the word ‘Zionist’ is used as an all-round word for Jewish supremacism much as Lenin used it when he described the Bund (The AZZs of his time) as “Zionists with sea-sickness”.
And this brings me onto my second reason why I dislike the term
It, and its even worse abbreviation of ‘AZZs’, is just one more slogan. It joins ‘one-state’, ‘two state’, ‘Free free Palestine’, and the ever-ghastly Zio-this and Zio-that as just something to chant at demonstrations and spatter the comments columns of internet journals. True, they’re easy to write and even easier to chant but, in the absence of any proper and accompanying analysis, what do they really mean? And how do they advance the debate?
deLiberation is just what it says: a place for measured (not compromised) thought, reflection, discussion and argument.
We need properly developed ideas – not soundbites.
Posted by Paul Eisen
on July 23, 2012. Filed under Ideology.
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23 Responses to Zio-ghastly
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Laura Stuart
July 23, 2012 at 4:54 pm
In Islam we are told that all deeds are rewarded by intention. The intention is what puzzles me about the anti zionist Jews. I think we all agree that Tony Greenstein hates Israel, but does he love Palestinians?
Paul Eisen
July 23, 2012 at 5:39 pm
I don’t think Tony would claim to love Palestinians, but he would claim to support and be in solidarity with them.
So far, so good. I also don’t love Palestinians – why should I?
Where you and I might differ from him, is in our belief that his solidarity with Palestinians extends only so far as it is consonant with his utopian vision of the triumph of world socialism. And where it would differ even further is in our belief that this vision is, like Zionism, just another Jewish messianic delusion.
In effect, this means that his real desire is for Jews to, once again, be proved to know what is best for everyone else and if that clashes with the well-being of the poor oppressed Goyim – tough!
Just look at the condition of the people in the ‘utopia’ of the Soviet Union.
Laura Stuart
July 23, 2012 at 9:40 pm
I think I came across badly there, I didn’t mean at all to question your motives only Tony’s since he seems to be latently Islamophobic.
It has often struck me as odd when lefties defend the rights of the Muslim people and at the same time they make it clear they detest everything we believe in.
Definitely the activities of people like Tony prevent the PSC using the J word or getting near to the real problem of J power.
Laura Stuart
July 23, 2012 at 5:51 pm
Why should I ? Well Paul it is one of the commandments to “love they neighbour” or as we are taught in Islam “love for your brother what you love for yourself”. So if you are doing something which is good such as activism against a genocidal state such as Israel but your intention is not out of love for your fellow humans then are you doing it for your own benefit but without the reward in the hereafter because the intention was wrong? Tony is a good example because of his obvious intolerance for religion and my religious clothing in particular which shows that he is not accepting of other human beings who differ from his own view. So do the AZZ’s (sorry) do what they do to possibly “save their own bacon” if another holocaust comes, they can say “we were with the good guys”? or do they seek to erase zionism only to replace it with some other ism whether the Palestinians like it or not? You seem to be implying the latter.
Paul Eisen
July 23, 2012 at 6:13 pm
Laura,
I have no quarrel with the AZZs (ah well, it is a useful bit of shorthand) selfish motivations. My quarrel is with their lack of honesty in admitting them.
My true motivations are complex, conflicted and the object of a lifelong enquiry. I don’t have your certainty nor, at the moment, am i looking for it.
But the future? who knows? As my dear late father used to say “You never know…”
Laura Stuart
July 23, 2012 at 9:35 pm
I think I came across badly there, I didn’t mean at all to question your motives only Tony’s since he seems to be latently Islamophobic.
A fact which came to light on the convoys after travelling under stressful conditions over thousands of miles, I began to feel that lefties did not like Muslims at all. As one Palestinian man once said to me “they are with us but we are not with them” – so it works both ways. On that occasion we were outside the Egyptian embassy at the height of the revolution and lots of groups like Stop the War came to protest. So there is a lot of support for a cause but I don’t feel the love.
Laura Stuart
July 23, 2012 at 6:18 pm
Can we expect Tony, Sue and Naomi to pop up during the opening ceremony of the Olympics to sing “Ode an die freude” and wave Palestinian flags?
Lasse Wilhelmson
July 23, 2012 at 7:21 pm
Paul, read my latest, the interview and my appendix. I think it is quite simple. The jewish marxists are by definition by themselves anti-zionists, and still they have one foot in each camp. They are antizionists and still work in only jew organisations and even those who support the idea of a jewish state eg a two-state solution. And never I heard of anyone of these “anit-zionists” support the right to return of all pal refugies.
Paul Eisen
July 23, 2012 at 7:30 pm
That’s not the way it is here. Here, they work in Jews-only cells (which may include soft Zionists) but they are still themselves anti-Zionist.
Also here, all the Marxist anti-Zionists support full right of return. Trouble is, they insist that the state to which the poor Palestinians will return will be to the correct specification – secular, socialist and democratic.
But guess what? In this secular, democratic utopia, on every street corner they’ll be a commissar (who’ll just happen to be a Jew) but who will ‘know’ exactly how everyone should live their lives
Lasse Wilhelmson
July 23, 2012 at 7:47 pm
But this socialist utopia is exatcly what moses hess and theodor herzl worked for since 1843, and they got it.
Paul Eisen
July 23, 2012 at 9:47 pm
Perhaps we can agree that Zionism meamns attaining Jewish supremacy in Palestine, anti-Zionism means attaining it everywhere else.
Actually, you;re right. The only reason they wanted Palestine was because they believed it was like Excalibur. He who held Palestine, held the world. It was like owning the Mona Lisa
Lasse Wilhelmson
July 23, 2012 at 7:48 pm
http://lassewilhelmson.wordpress.com/what-is-zionism/
Blake
July 24, 2012 at 3:08 am
Great article. Very informative.
who_me
July 23, 2012 at 10:02 pm
with regard to the question of whether one’s support for something that benefits zionism is intentional or unintentional, is there a way that support for zionism is not an extension of jp?
Paul Eisen
July 23, 2012 at 10:16 pm
Of course support for Zionism (in the formal meaning) is an extension of Jewish power.
But I’m not sure I fully understand your question.
Ariadna Theokopoulos
July 23, 2012 at 10:20 pm
If I understand you correctly the question is:
Can one support the state of Israel and NOT implicitly (irrespective of whether intentionally or not) support JP?
If so, the answer in my opinion is NO
who_me
July 23, 2012 at 10:44 pm
that was what i was asking.
since one of the things being discussed is whether azz types’ views supporting jp also end up supporting zionism due to that support for jp, i was wondering if there is some way to separate support for zionism from support for jp. if there is a way to separate (jewish) support for zionism from their general support for jp, it might be possible to use that as a litmus test to determine whether an individual is covertly zionist.
but then, that may not be all that important, since whether zionist, or jewish-supremacist, the problem of these people seems to be the same.
who_me
July 23, 2012 at 11:10 pm
prior to reading atzmon’s views on these people, i had used terms like fake leftist, pseudo leftist, crypto-zionist “left”, covert zionist “left” or simply “left” or “leftwing” with quotation marks to show i think they are not leftwing at all. to me it’s isn’t so much whether these people are covertly zionist or zionist by default of being jp, it’s that they pose as leftists when in fact they are rightwingers in reality. if they are crypto-zionists, they are also crypto-rightwingers.
before i was aware of the role of jp in all of this (late 1980′s), i had noticed that there was a very severe problem on the left with people who claimed to be left, and who stridently enforced their views on others as the way a leftist is supposed to be, who were really messing up leftwing groups, and what is thought to be leftwing ideology, on leftwing periodicals. they all seemed to be shifting towards the right and towards a very non-leftist form of divisive and authoritarian closed mindedness.
Paul Eisen
July 24, 2012 at 6:31 am
I also say NO.
The distinction between Zionism and other forms of JP is that Zionism is specifically about Jewish political nationhood and about a Jewish state.
Blake
July 24, 2012 at 3:11 am
Paul, I cannot disagree with anything you have said here. The only point I would like to make is that Judaism was hijacked by the Rothschilds political credo of zionism. They claim to speak for Judaism but have no mandate to.
Paul Eisen
July 24, 2012 at 6:29 am
I know what you say about Zionism hilacking Judaism has truth in it, but I’ve never much liked the idea because it suggests that there’s something new about Jewish supremacism.
Lasse Wilhelmson
July 24, 2012 at 7:37 am
Yes there is something new, and that is that at last it is at the top of the foodchain and the cirkel is “closed” between the Jewish entity in Palestine and JP, in at least the West. The jewish maffia dominates the elite of the western world, and can today be seen as the most important outcome of anglo-american imperialism.
And this is exactly what “the left” dont want to admit or are incapable to see because zionism and marxism have been used as a twosided startegy for survival of the jewish tribal group.
I think that all ideologies and religions have light and dark sides and can and have been used for different agendas. Sometimes for liberation nd somtimes for surpression.
But of course you are right, Paul, that Jewish supremacism is not new.
“Form Ester to Aipac”, by Gilad Atzmon, is probably the most important article ever written about this.
Alex
July 25, 2012 at 1:32 am
The common factor between Zionists, anti-zionists and anti-anti-zionist, low-calory zionists is a mind set to believe in their choseness. They are created to lead the “humanity” and decide whats right and whats wrong, what is convient, off course for them (whats good for Israel. They control besides the mass media most of the so-called alternative media.