Let’s see the forest for the trees, part 5

“Often when there is dissent expressed in the United States against policies of the Israeli government, people here are called anti-Semitic. What is your response to that as an Israeli Jew?” Democracy Now‘s Amy Goodman asked Shulamit Aloni in 2002.

“Well, it’s a trick, we always use it,” Aloni replied. “When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country people are criticizing Israel, then they are anti-Semitic.”

Secular-leftist Jew Goodman is certainly no anti-Semite. And Israeli parliamentarian Aloni, who died in 2014, was certainly no right-wing hack.

Aloni served in Israeli’s governing body for 28 years and was the country’s Education Minister – a job from which she was forced to resign due to her remark saying that high school field trips to Nazi concentration camps were “turning Israeli youth into aggressive, nationalistic xenophobes.”

“And the ties between Israel and the American Jewish establishment are very strong … and they have power,” Aloni added. This is a fact, my friends. But sometimes opinions (and even facts) can get you in trouble.

Remember Charlie Hebdo artist Siné, who faced charges of “inciting racial hatred” for a strip he created for the French magazine in 2009? The cartoon addressed rumors that then-president Sarkozy’s son, Jean, was converting from Catholicism to Judaism in order to marry a Jewish electronics heiress and advance his social success. “He’ll go a long way in life, that little lad,” the piece stated drolly.

For that, Siné was asked to apologize for his “offensive” work by Philippe Val, the same editor who in 2006 published cartoons of Mohammed under the banner of “freedom of the press.” Siné’s retort? “I’d rather cut my balls off.”

So, the left-wing artist was fired and taken to court by the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, an organization which claims to promote “tolerance.” Fortunately, LICRA lost its quest in “hate speech” court, and in 2010, Siné won a judgment against his former publisher for wrongful termination. Still, such wasted time, wasted resources, wasted outrage.

Earlier this month, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar felt the Zionist heat when she was accused of disseminating “anti-Semtic tropes.” Omar has been known to criticize Israel, especially its treatment of Palestinians. But her thought crime was that she had the audacity to accurately depict lobbyists for who they are: people who buy influence and extort willing politicians in order to meet policy goals.

So what? Everyone knows that’s the corrupt K Street deal, right? Well, yeah, but Omar wasn’t offering controversial commentary on just anyone. She was calling out the seemingly unassailable American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, sending both Democrats and Republicans and talking heads of all stripes into a teeth-gnashing tizzy.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who himself faced push back last year for tweeting that rich Jews were attempting to “buy” the midterm elections, released a breathless statement promising that Republicans would “take action … to ensure the House speaks out against this hatred and stands with Israel and the Jewish people.” Deflect and destroy. Good goy, er, I mean, boy.

The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald then tweeted in Omar’s defense: “GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy threatens punishment for @IlhanMN over [her] criticisms of Israel. It’s stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans.”

Then Omar retweeted Greenwald’s post with these now infamous words: “It’s all about the Benjamins baby.” By referencing $100 bills, she insinuated that the pro-Israel organization is paying off politicians – an apparent no-no when discussing groups overwhelmingly comprised of Jews, even though that is precisely what all lobbyists do.

Because of the historical stereotype of Jews becoming lucrative financiers (as discussed in part 3), this sparked indignation and somehow morphed truth into trope. Politico‘s Joshua Zeitz claimed Omar may as well have called Jews “hook-nosed,” which the Minnesota representative then mockingly retweeted, causing even more of a firestorm.

Two Jewish Democrats circulated a memo to other Democrat leaders, calling on them to take “swift action” against anti-Semitism and to “confirm support” of Israel. And another hand-wringing Jewish Democrat from the House said that lawmakers must “be extremely careful not to tread into the waters of anti-Semitism or any other form of prejudice or hate.”

Not everyone dog-piled. In fact, some sensible folks pointed out the obvious. And I think the spectacle of hysteria actually jarred some normies out of their complacent slumber and into the realm of critical thinking. Huh, isn’t it peculiar that criticizing the secular-socialist State of Israel is said to be on par with anti-Semitic rhetoric? Isn’t it odd that the domestic backers of this particular foreign country are so untouchable?

“The bottom line is that AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress,” wrote University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer and Harvard professor Stephen Walt. “Open debate about U.S. policy towards Israel does not occur there” due to its “ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it.”

At first, Omar tried to deflect her AIPAC comments by likening their lobbying shenanigans to the “NRA and the fossil fuel industry” – juicy red meat for the plastic people of the left. After all, who wants to ally with a bunch of racist rednecks and uneducated climate-change deniers.

Eventually, Omar went on to apologize, dutifully bowing down to kiss the overlords’ boots. While explaining her original obstinacy and defensiveness, though, Omar revealed her true colors. She told The Daily Show‘s Trevor Noah about her journey of newfound sensitivity and empathy.

I had “the realization that I hope that people come to when we’re having a conversation about white privilege,” she told Noah. “You know, people would be like, ‘I grew up in a poor neighborhood. I can’t be privileged. Can you stop saying that? I haven’t benefited from my whiteness!’ And it’s like, ‘No, we’re talking about systemic, right?’ And so … that happened for me.”

Supposedly, the woke little princess realized the error of her ways when she saw how her actions and words were akin to those of evil whitey. Sit. Lie down. Speak. Good girl, Omar. Now for a treat, you get to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Omar is a case study of the “victim pyramid,” which I’ve referenced before. All the “aggrieved minorities” fall somewhere on this hierarchy, but “What binds them together is the sense of an enemy: white Christian society,” stated humanities professor Paul Gottfried.

They all comprise the do-no-wrong hammer constantly striking the nail of straight, white, Christian men. In common left-ese speak, you might say that crackers are most assuredly “less than” or “Other” – you know, marginalized.

Despite Omar being near the tippy top of this progressive caste system as a woman of color, a Somali-born refugee from Ethiopia, a practicing Muslim, and a self-described “intersectional feminist,” she still falls short. So who is at the the pyramid peak?

Well, as you may have surmised, I think it’s abundantly clear that “Jews” have the distinction of being uppermost on the pyramid. Their oppression, whether made up or real, is deemed worse than is anyone else’s. It is given more weight, more worth, more anger, more time and attention.

It comes with the price of not only downplaying true injustices other people may experience, but also giving Jews a false sense of righteous privilege. This is a level of power and influence that no humans should wield over others in a supposedly civilized society, and certainly no free people should accept or ignore.

This carefully crafted fiefdom infringes upon other group’s liberties, which are delineated according to the pyramid. Just ask French lawmakers, who recently proposed a bill making “anti-Zionism” illegal, even though France outlawed “anti-Semitism” years ago. That doesn’t even make a lick of sense.

Within this chaotic system, some folks have more civil rights and cultural cache than others, depending on their alleged suffering a la race, class, gender, religion, sexuality, ethnicity, immigrant status, ideology, etc. And being that the designation for grievance includes subjective and malleable language, it’s just easier to bend over and take it, than it is to try to figure this stuff out and resist. At least, that’s the hope.

Similar to the ad hominems of “racist,” “sexist,” “rapist,” “homophobe,” and “Islamophobe,” anti-Semitic is overused and intentionally mystifying. It’s a murky and convoluted term if there ever was one. According to the dictionary (as referenced above), I could be considered Semitic, since both my great-grandparents on my father’s side were natives of Beirut. Some Lebanese folks make this claim.

Some say it has to do with the Semitic language, others say ethnicity. Some say culture, others say race. Some say religion, others say secular humanism. Some say shared ancestry, others say shared historical oppression. Hell, even the hyphen (antisemtic vs. anti-Semitic) is debated.

According to Wikipedia, anti-Semitism can also be “characterized as a political ideology which serves as an organizing principle and unites disparate groups which are opposed to liberalism.” But that can’t be it, since Omar, Aloni, Siné, and plenty of other anti-Zionists all identify as leftists. Confused yet?

“Today, being a good anti-anti-Semite, like being a good Jew, means little more than being unswervingly pro-Israel.”
— Sheldon Richman, executive director of the Libertarian Institute and contributing editor at Antiwar.com

Martin Luther King, Jr. assessed some 40 years ago: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.” And modern newspapers editors like Aaron Kliegman bluntly declare today: “Anti-Zionism is, by definition, anti-Semitism.” Groups like the Anti-Defamation League, My Jewish Learning, the Holocaust Remembrance Alliance all echo this strange sentiment.

But this brings us back to what it even means to be Jewish, as discussed in part 3. How on earth can we know what anti-Semitism is and when it actually occurs when no one can even agree on what it means to be a Semite … or a Jew?

And what about Jews who are adamantly anti-Zionist? Like Norman Finkelstein, activist and author of “The Holocaust Industry;” the aforementioned Richman; and Gottfried, Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro (who I cite in part 2); and Tel Aviv-born Jewish jazz musician and political activist Gilad Atzmon.

In fact, Shapiro (who is ultra-Orthodox and considers Jewishness bound up in commitment to the Torah) and Atzmon (who calls himself an “ex-Jew”) debated the fluid topics of Judaism vs. Jewish identity and Zionism’s influence on them both. “If Jews insist upon being secular and humanist, they may have to drop their ‘J’ prefix and to operate as ordinary people,” Atzmon advised in seeking clarity.

And then there’s the question of whether ethnic Jews are white or non-white. “Jews are not white … (and) Jews are not a ‘religion,'” wrote Hila Hershkovitz in the Times of Israel.

To her and many secular Jews, it has to do with biologic lineage – which historically is determined by your mother – ancestral culture, and “whether you adhere to the laws of the tribe or not.” Those who disagree on political or theological grounds, she asserts, may as well be “Holocaust deniers.”

Yet, when Muslim-feminist activist Linda Sarsour proclaimed, “I’m talking to Chuck Schumer. I’m tired of white men negotiating on the backs of people of color and communities like ours,” she’s pushing the notion that the ethnically Jewish senator is somehow simultaneously part of what the cultural Marxists like to call “colonial hegemony.”

“Negroes are anti-Semitic because they’re anti-white.”
— James Baldwin, once considered “the greatest black writer in the world”

Obviously, Hershkovitz would label comments like both Sarsour’s and novelist Baldwin’s as anti-Semitic, but she also sees them as evidence of “Western imperialism.” And so go the games of the “Oppression Olympics.” It’s just how groups vie for top position on the entitlement pyramid, while simultaneously sending the white man to the back of the bus.

It’s gotten so dramatic that some leftist Jews are bemoaning “making anti-Semitism and victimhood our entire identity,” and pleading that “Jews must be more than victims” and should recoil at the “victimhood is a virtue” worldview of many modern Jews and other progressives. But why should they? Oppression is clearly political and social capital.

Now, it’s seen as anti-Semitic to point even out that someone is Jewish. Placing three brackets around someone’s name was sort of a Jewish indicator on alternative media a few years back, and anti-anti-Semites were incensed, likening the designation to Nazi yellow stars.

But why would someone care if he is labeled as a Jew, unless, of course, he wasn’t a Jew? I wear a Byzantine cross around my neck, which communicates to the world that I’m an Orthodox Christian.

Jewish identity could mean Judaism, which devout Jews proudly proclaim. But it could also mean secular Jewishness – an ideology utterly progressive in nature. Thus, leftists don’t like the correct labeling as they don’t want to call attention to this fact. So, even though Jews are the big enchilada, anyone who rightly points out the Jew-progressive connection must be roundly rejected and tarred an anti-Semite.

What is overwhelmingly obvious is that the more conflated the terms, the more Jews (whatever the hell that means!) are shielded from any type of criticism or debate or questioning, no matter what. That is the bizarre power of “anti-Semitism.”

It defies the boundaries of logic, language, history, race, religion, and common sense. And the more bewildering, the easier it is to befuddle and bamboozle people.

With pro-Zionist secular Jews resting comfortably atop the pyramid, a cornucopia of other self-appointed victims weighing it down, and the guilt-obsessed plebs propping up this malevolent mass, we’ve already learned throughout this series (and can see with our own damn eyes) that it’s “white Christian society” that is being crushed. Like Aloni said, it’s a trick.

Thanks for reading this series. I hope you learned as much as I have. Keep connecting the dots, y’all, and stay tuned for future blogs in which I’ll keep dissecting the trick.