anti-Semitism, the Dual Purpose Slam

My last post was about the failure to count Jews in the tally of Congress by religion by the New York Times. For this I was accused of coming "dangerously close" to anti-Semitism.

Right now, in Israel, a Palestinian family in East Jerusalem is being ordered to open their residence so that Jewish Israelis may move in. The subtitle is Authorities expected to force Palestinian family to evacuate house after 11-year court battle leans in favor of American millionaire and settler patron.

Though I haven't read the current issue of the New York Times, I would be willing to bet this story from Jerusalem will not be mentioned in it, or any other American newspaper.

There could be no better occasion to look at the function of anti-Semitism. I have touched on it before here and here, but today I want to address its dual purpose of diverting attention from the real thing, the racism in Israel, while at the same time gagging those who speak against Israel in the United States. In fact, the word has become so over-used for this dual purpose that you should use it as a flag to read deeper when you see it mentioned. Read deeper because you may well find that within the story, there is a very good lead worth following on legitimate criticism of Israel and the accused may well be a responsible party worth finding out about.

I'll call this dual-use of the word anti-Semitism the Dual Purpose Slam (DPS) for short.

To use DPS is like throwing peanut butter - some of it is bound to stick to the target and it takes a while to wash it off. Nowhere is this more effectively used than in defense either of Israel itself or of those who support Israel.

If there is anyone who holds a copyright on the word, it is Abe Foxman, a man who has built an empire from a word - the mighty Anti-Defamation League, a well funded organization that sets itself up as the finger-pointer in chief to call out anti-Semites in the United States. It looks like it is spreading out into "bullying" these days from the look of the website. Could any organization appear to be more benign?

For an excellent look at Foxman, please view the movie Defamation, made by a native Israeli who sets out to find out why anti-Semitism is constantly used in the Israeli press yet he has never encountered it. Coming to the U.S. to interview Foxman, he has a difficult time substantiating any of the cases of anti-Semitism he is given by the ADL, though he finds it in other places. This is a must-see movie.

The red herring function of DPS is to keep the Jew in the mind of Americans as the eternal victim worthy of the benefit of the doubt, while in far off tiny Israel, deliberate expulsion of Arabs, never to be seen as victims but only as terrorists, presumed aggressive and guilty, can proceed without interruption. Arabs, like Jews are Semites so the bald fact is that the most virulent form of anti-Semitism is being practiced by Jews on another group of Semites, on a massive scale, picking up momentum and actively supported by the United States.

So we have suppression of any and all discussion of Jews that is not flattering and fawning in the United States, while at the same time Jews as Israelis perform the ungliest project of anti-Semitism in the world today.

My post on the failure to list the number of Jews in Congress is a perfect example of this in action. Jews are members of a religion, just as are Catholics and Protestants and Muslims, but unlike Catholics and Protestants they are not mentioned. If they are not mentioned they are not noticed. If they are not noticed then what they may do in Congress will be more likely to pass un-noticed. To draw up a list of Jews is, thanks to thorough schooling on the Holocaust in America, to think of Nazis taking identities for shipment to the death camps! You can see how this works - it's a fool-proof cover that relies of images in the head completely pushing facts off the stage.

Jews in the United States may not be mentioned as a group - any attempt to do so will result in protests, perfectly reasonable, that Jews are not a monolithic group but just Americans like the rest of us and should not be characterized as holding any one view.

That's true! But in Israel, we have a group of Jews who ARE together in pushing an odious project of ethnic-cleansing and a major financial support for that effort along with a significant support in Jews making aliyah to join in the settlement project come from the United States.

So the perfect cover is achieved. You have a large group that is heterogeneous but that contains a dedicated (to the point of fanaticism) sub-group within it that can definitely be characterized as supporting everything that Americans should detest and reject.

It is the project of Abe Foxman and others who use the DPS (Dual Purpose Slam) to take advantage of this mixing of the Israel-first folks with the general group to protect the Israel-first folks.

Think of it as paint.

You have many cans of paint, most are filled with white or off-white paint. But there are also some cans of coal-black paint. Mix all the paint together. That coal-black paint is still in there but the mix looks pretty much white. Someone says, "there's black paint in there!" and you respond with outrage - "BLACK PAINT! Why any fool can see that this paint is white!"

Now here is the critical difference in my paint analogy from the American Jews it represents. There is no way the black paint can come out of the mix. American Jews who are wholeheartedly racist, filled with hate and eager to see the eviction of Palestinians from Palestine can easily come out of America, go to Israel, become Israelis with dual citizenship and be kicking out Palestinians with a matter of weeks. Or they can remain in America funding Israel or calling out supporters of the Palestinians as anti-Semitic.

Do you see how this works? It's truly a marvel, works only for the Jews and is a direct result of Holocaust education. It's an invisible force-field.

The ultimate irony is that Jews in America will only be fully American when they can no longer use this invisible shield, yet Holocaust education is a deliberate attempt to keep the shield up - keeping Jews a people apart.

Many American Jews are revolted by Israel claiming to represent them and are acting to make the distinction between Judaism and Israel very clear, but, though growing in number, they are still a minority. They have a majority of American Jews working against them by doing all they can to support Israel.

I fully support the former group of Jews and oppose the latter. The Jewish group conducting a racist experiment in the Middle East will ultimately collapse, I hope in the way that South Africa did, with the acceptance of the futility of the effort rather than through violence.

In the meantime - I encourage all Americans, Jewish or not, to deny support to the state of Israel, because what it stand for is un-American.

It is sustained only because of American support and the Dual Purpose Slam of anti-Semitism in the United States is Goliath - on Israel's side.