For American Jews, Dissent Against Israel Has Become Mainstream »
Posted By dissent 6 months, 2 weeks ago in NewsFirst, a confession: It may tell me that I hate myself, but I can't help loving Masada2000, the website maintained by militant right-wing Zionist followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane. The reason I love it is its D.I.R.T. list -- that's "Dense anti-Israel Repugnant Traitors" (also published as the S.H.I.T. list of "Self-Hating and Israel-Threatening" Jews). And that's not because I get a bigger entry than -- staying in the Ks -- Henry Kissinger, Michael Kinsley, Naomi Klein, or Ted Koppel. The Kahanists are a pretty flaky lot, counting everyone from Woody Allen to present Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on their list of Jewish traitors. But the habit of branding Jewish dissidents -- those of us who reject the nationalist notion that as Jews, our fate is tied to that of Israel, or the idea that our people's historic suffering somehow exempts Israel from moral reproach for its abuses against others -- as "self-haters" is not unfamiliar to me.
Read Full Story at alternet.org »
413 Views Share Story 90 Comments Report
Submitted By:
dissent
we live in a culture of war.
let's make it a culture of peace.
"my country is the world. and my religion is to ...
RSS Join the Discussion
+ Add CommentComments So Far: 90 (view all)
-
78%
dissent6 months, 2 weeks ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
a slightly dated article but one that remains relevant all the same. from my pov, one that is well-reasoned and discussed
Reply
fta
"When I arrived in the United States 13 years ago, I was often surprised to find that people with whom I seemed to share a progressive, cosmopolitan worldview would suddenly morph into raging ultranationalists when the conversation turned to Israel."
progressive, cosmopolitan....... ultra-nationalists.
hmmmmm...... sound like any of the propeller members you know?-
83%
dissent6 months, 2 weeks ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
fta
Reply
"More immediately threatening to the Zionist establishment, however, is another reality: Many Jews are beginning to make once unthinkable criticisms of Israel's behavior. If you want to bludgeon Jewish critics with the charge of "anti-Semitism" when they challenge Israel's actions, then it's hardly helpful to have other Jews standing up and expressing the same thoughts." -
100%
bgamall6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
My natural father was Jewish. I am adopted and raised by Gentiles. Yet I hate what the neocons have done and some of them were Jewish descendents. I want those who support Israel like I do to realize that Israel should not tie her future to neocons as they are very unethical, even amoral people. Study about Leo Strauss and you will see that what I am saying is true, since he was the intellectual father of PNAC (who wanted a 9/11 type event and got it) and of the neocons. Much but not all of Zionism is atheistic, like Strauss, who embraced Nazi principles before coming to the University of Chicago where he taught Paul Wolfowitz. http://hubpages.com/hub/George-Bush-Legacy
Reply
-
-
71%
Justice4All6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
A good example would be the movie "Religilious" by Bill Maher. It was sold as a movie that mocks religion but about three quarters of the way through Bill Maher interviews a Jewish leader who proudly claimed he was not a zionist. At that point Bill Maher turned into one of those raging untranationalists.
Reply
It's difficult being Jewish and standing up to Israel, but I applaud those who do it.
And yes, this does remind me of a few Propeller members. -
-
Neutral
Thinker226 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
>Remember his famous letter to the New York Times where he compared zionism with facism.
Reply
Somehow I can not remember such letter, "Justice", probably because there never was one. You see, Einstein NEVER compared Zionism with Fascism, he complained about the actions of Jewish militants... just like those complaining about the actions of Arab militants do not necessarily claim that ALL Arabs are terrorists.
Besides, if you believe that Einstein was NOT a Zionist how come the Zionist leaders of Israel offered him to become the President of the Zionist state? -
100%
Natureboy6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
If we are to be agonizingly correct, Einstein was calling out the revisionist zionists, most particularly the Irgun Zwei Lumi, on the occasion of the terrorist and fascist Menachem Begin visiting New York.
Reply
Some will be eager to point out that the Irgun, the Stern Gang, etc did not and do not represent all of zionism. It is important to note, however, that the vast majority of Israel's leaders since its inception have been just such fascists, terrorist members of the Irgun and the Stern Gang, and followers of their ideological father, Zev Jabotinsky.
The government of Israel has been, and is, a fascist state. And the ultranationalism, racism and ethnic supremacy which its leaders subscribe to has been and is a shame and a disgrace to Judaism.
-
-
-
22%
engineer6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
All the BS from a fringe rag. There is a tiny fringe group of mostly Hasidic Jews who have always been antiIsrael. The population of Jews in the US is 6 million of which Hasidic Jews represent 180,000 or about 3 percent. There are a few others, but hardly mainstream
Reply-
100%
dissent6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
firstly, to counter your attack on both the author and news source....
Reply
fta
"Tony Karon is a senior editor at TIME.com."
"Tony Karon is a journalist from Cape Town, South Africa and has been living in New York since 1993 after leaving South Africa.
He studied at the University of Cape Town in the 1980's where he was a prominent anti-apartheid and anti-Israel activist in student movement NUSAS." (source: wikipedia)
from alternet.org's "about us" page:
"AlterNet is an award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of hundreds of other independent media sources. AlterNet's aim is to inspire action and advocacy on the environment, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, media, health care issues, and more. Since its inception in 1998, AlterNet.org has grown dramatically to keep pace with the public demand for independent news. We provide free online content to millions of readers, serving as a reliable filter, keeping our vast audience well-informed and engaged, helping them to navigate a culture of information overload and providing an alternative to the commercial media onslaught. Our aim is to stimulate, inform, and instigate.
AlterNet receives more than 3 million monthly visitors and more than 7.5 million monthly page views. AlterNet's readers comprise a strong base, who help virally spread AlterNet content to their networks by forwarding stories and emailing links. Many of AlterNet's readers come from search engines (like Google) and news aggregator sites (such as Digg or Reddit), a testament to the fact that AlterNet reaches beyond the typical "choir" of progressive readers."
secondly, are you saying that jews that critize israel's actions are hasidic jews? is that how you dismiss such criticism? by drawing ethnic divisions?
is specific jewish ethnicity really such a key factor in the determination of jewish loyalty, or for that matter, the lack of it, to israel? or is it possible that individuals who happen to be jewish are able to think freely and independently for themselves and not be subjected to the "group think" of any specific ethnic subdivision? what is the specific jewish ethnicity of what you believe to be the "mainstream" of 6 million american jews? is this particular ethnic jewish subdivision uniformly and unquestioningly loyal to israel? -
100%
Dionys6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"There is a tiny fringe group of mostly Hasidic Jews who have always been antiIsrael. The population of Jews in the US is 6 million of which Hasidic Jews represent 180,000 or about 3 percent. "
Reply
Do you know where the name ' Hasidic ' comes from? Who the hassidim are? -
100%
AnteUp6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
engineer -
Reply
"A TINY fringe group" ?? Have you looked at their election results - have you
seen the results of the survey of high school aged students' preference......Avigdor Lieberman!
It may not be reported here - but you can find other news sources online........
and it is NOT all anti-Semitic propaganda.
The extreme rightwing uses fear to gain popularity - the Bush years should
be a reminder of just how far a nation can stray from it's stated ideals if you
can frighten the public.
-
-
-
0%
Thinker226 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
>I think, it´s quite normal, not to agree with every governmental action of "your country", but this doesn´t mean to hate it.
Reply
This is correct. This is the reason millions of Jews in Israel and other places criticize these or other actions of Israeli government and no one would suggest they are anti-Semites. Those who "criticize" the VERY EXISTENCE of Israel are indeed hateful racist anti-Semites.
-
-
100%
Progressive6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
FTA:
Reply
"It's worth remembering in this context that anti-Zionism was originally a Jewish movement -- the majority of European Jews before World War II rejected the Zionist movement and its calls for a mass migration from Europe to build a Jewish nation-state in Palestine."
Thanks for the invite, dissent. I'm not Jewish, but all of the people I know "who happen to be Jewish are able to think freely and independently for themselves and not be subjected to the 'group think' of any specific ethnic subdivision."-
100%
dissent6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"I'm not Jewish, but all of the people I know "who happen to be Jewish are able to think freely and independently for themselves and not be subjected to the 'group think' of any specific ethnic subdivision.""
Reply
my maternal grandfather was a zionist who died shortly after ww2. while i haven't been raised as a jew or have any sense of jewishness other than my mother's fundamentalist reverence of biblical israel, hitler probably would have classified me in the affirmative.
but frankly, it's of no great importance to me. i don't care whether someone is jewish or not, unless it becomes an impediment to themselves and/or others.
a person's race, ethnicity, religion, gender, socio-economic status or even nationality and the 'group think' they all can engender, should never take precedence over their humanity and their ability to think for themselves. of course we, including our thinking, can't help but be shaped by the group/s in which we are nurtured, but as long as we're aware of that the process of critical and thus independent thought has begun.
-
-
-
50%
Edmar146 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
This is the perfect example of the first amendment at work. It is just another article written by another author with another viewpoint. I doubt strongly that he can give factual statistics, but whatever he wants to write, the first amendment will back him up. I am a proponent of the first amendment and recognize that our founding fathers realized that they could not regulate what people wanted to say, even if it could be counter pointed by another person. Another author would and could give an entirely different view point.
Reply -
14%
Commodore16 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
I've never known a Jew to act as if they are above moral reproach. Maybe I should get out more. I guess it can have a strong effect on you if someone tried to exterminate you and your race knowing there are still millions out there who want to try again. Let's face facts. There are million who agreed w/Hitler. Today the Muslims will only accept annihilation of the Jews as a whole. A sense of nationalism is probably necessary in order to ward off such attacks. Knowing there are that many who want to destroy U would make U paranoid wouldn't it? W/more and more people seeming to take a stand against Israel, the Jews will probably have no choice but to unite. It would be the best way to avoid extermination.
Reply-
0%
aceofspades16 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Commodore - I usually give you a hard time, but I have to side with you here.
Reply
These fools who say "my father was Jewish" or my family was once Jewish will always live under the spectre of the notions used from time immemorial - from ancient times to Hitler - Jewish blood will out & you are marked whether you deny it or not.
For once in history there is a safe haven . -
100%
Dionys6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"I've never known a Jew to act as if they are above moral reproach."
Reply
You and those that support Israeli action no matter how heinous and immoral tend to act exactly that way when speaking of any conflict in the middle east where Israel is involved.
"Today the Muslims will only accept annihilation of the Jews as a whole."
This is a baldfaced lie about Muslims. So much for ' morality', huh.
"A sense of nationalism is probably necessary in order to ward off such attacks. "
There's pride and then there's nationalism, but when you cross that line, you cross that line. Israel can ward off attacks without crossing that line. -
100%
dissent6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"W/more and more people seeming to take a stand against Israel, the Jews will probably have no choice but to unite. It would be the best way to avoid extermination."
Reply
this is precisely what karon discusses in the article!.... how zionism has successfully defined what it means to be jewish and how the state of israel and its existence has become synonymous with it and essential to it. in other words, according to zionism, there is no jewishness without israel!
yet what has been established on this thread is that there are many definitions to jewishness, and many of them conflicting, even among the traditional jewish ethnic subdivisions. however it is zionism that has triumphed to become the dominant and universal "brand" of all things jewish. while the others have been shown, according to karon, to fall in line to one degree or another depending on how much they benefit from it
so the threat you put forward is that any jew who does not have this unquestioning loyalty to israel and its dominant brand, zionism, and is indeed critical of israel's frequently questionable actions must override or negate their own conscience and humanistic moral code for fear that if they don't unite with the "group think" they will face extermination. and only because they fall under a constantly mutating definition of jewishness. so they must submit to the "group think" demanded by this moveable feast of what they are told they are supposed to be..... whether they like it or not
it probably hasn't dawned on you, and i suspect it is unlikely to, but that's really quite insane. this is the kind of "group think" mentality that has been the fundamental ideological premise of history's greatest horror stories. and yet it is precisely what lies at the heart of the matter
-
-
0%
aceofspades16 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
To all you armchair pundits - This article is pure garbage because it chooses to use Kahane as the prime example of pro-Israel thought.
Reply
I knew Kahane for what he was, a fascist, racist,bigoted thug.
I knew him when he started the JDL in 1968 when he was rabbi of the Rochdale Jewish Center in Queens New York. He took the opportunity of the NYC teachers strike , during which some anti-Semitic statements were made, to start his movement. The catchphrase "Never Again" was very appealing to many who lived in Rochdale who were survivors or first generation - con't-
100%
hyperbola6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
But Kahane's ideology has become the state ideology of zionist isreal (and pretty much always was - how else to explain the ethnic cleansing of over seven million christians and moslems). Your devotion to racist totalitarianism is the only thing that keeps you from advocating american-style democracy in palestine: one state for all independent of race or religion.
Reply
Israels Racist in Chief
... Israel has changed. And the racist virus spread by Kahane, whose thugs were charged with the murders and beatings of dozens of unarmed Palestinians and whose members held rallies in Jerusalem where they chanted "Death to Arabs!" has returned to Israel in the figure of Israel's powerful new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman. Lieberman openly calls for an araberrein Israel-an Israel free of Arabs....
...Lieberman, a former nightclub bouncer who was a member of the Kach Party, has the personal and political habits of the Islamic goons he opposes. He was found guilty in 2001 of beating a 12-year-old boy and fined by an Israeli court. He is being investigated for multimillion-dollar fraud and money laundering and is rumored to have close ties with the Russian mafia. He lives, in defiance of international law, in the Jewish settlement of Nokdim on occupied Palestinian land. ...
...The Israeli leadership, following the assassination of Rabin by a Jewish extremist with ties to Kach, never again sought a viable settlement with the Palestinians. Successive Israeli prime ministers talked the language of peace and negotiations largely to placate the international community and Washington while they vigorously expanded Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, seized huge tracts of the West Bank, including most of the aquifers, and imposed a brutal collective punishment on the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinians have become, by Israeli design, impoverished, reduced to a level of bare subsistence and dependent on the United Nations for food assistance. They live ringed by Israeli troops in a series of pod-like ghettos in the West Bank and in Gaza, which is a massive, fetid open-air prison. And when these little Bantustans become restive, Israel swiftly turns off the delivery of basic food and supplies or uses F-16 fighter jets or heavy artillery to bomb the squalid concrete hovels.
The public embrace by a senior Israeli official of a policy of ethnic cleansing, however, is ominous. It signals a further evolution of the Israeli state from one that at least paid lip service to equality to one that increasingly resembles the former apartheid regime in South Africa. Racism, once practiced in private and condemned in public, has become to many Israelis acceptable.
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/04/13/israels-... -
100%
dissent6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
fta
Reply
"The Kahanists are a fringe movement, but their self-defeating list may nonetheless be a metaphor for the coming crisis in more mainstream nationalist efforts to police Jewish identity. The Zionist establishment has had remarkable success over the past half-century in convincing others that Israel and its supporters speak for, and represent, "the Jews." The value to their cause of making Israel indistinguishable from Jews at large is that it becomes a lot easier to shield Israel from reproach. It suggests, in the most emphatic terms, that serious criticism of Israel amounts to criticism of Jews. More than a millennium of violent Christian persecution of Jews, culminating in the Holocaust, has made many in the West rightly sensitive towards any claims of anti-Semitism, a sensitivity many Zionists like to exploit to gain a carte blanche exemption from criticism for a state they claim to be the very personification of Jewishness." -
-
-
50%
aceofspades16 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Hie first large meetings were held in the public school auditorium, complete with guards. As soon as he spoke any free thinking person knew him for what he was. I called him out in that public forum for exactly what he was & was roughed up & expelled for my efforts.
Reply
How many of you have put yourselves on the line beyond posting stuff here?
Kahane is not the voice of the American nor by far most of the Israeli Jews. Israel has been beset from all sides for 60 years & Israel will survive , no matter what you say -- it has to.-
100%
Dionys6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
I think I might know you.
Reply
"Israel has been beset from all sides for 60 years & Israel will survive , no matter what you say -- it has to."
Let's hope it does, but let's also hope that in the process of surviving it does not defile all that makes Judaism, Judaism.
" Kahane is not the voice of the American nor by far most of the Israeli Jews."
Absolutely true. He does not in any way represent the mainstream of Judaism or Israeli (or American) Jews.
But to be fair, the president of Iran doesn't represent Muslims, or even most Iranians, for that matter, and he's often quoted by the Israel-first-no-matter-what crowd. -
100%
Natureboy6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"Israel will survive , no matter what you say -- it has to."
Reply
Must it persist in its present form? And by that I mean a political entity that is Ashkenazim uber alles & the Mizrahim and the Christians and the Muslims who have ALSO lived in that place getting the short end, over and over?
Because if you mean that Israel as a racist state has to survive, I do not agree with you. Governments and states and even national borders are abstractions, constructs which should serve the governed. When they fail to do so, and those who are governed reject them, then they must change or they cease to exist. And that's as it should be.
-
-
0%
antibrainwasher6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Ah yes, apartheid Israel must survive, to preserve the purity of Gods chosen strand of DNA. Israel must survive as a pure tribal jewish state, where citizenship is based on DNA, and loyality to the racial purity of the master race.
Reply
I got news, there is no god, and there is no master race, and jewishness is nothing more than tribal heridity. Its DNA. If Israel survives, it will be because of hundreds of billions of dollars raised by AIPAC and RJC, right wing racists of the highest order.
If your worried about jews surviving, I would encourage jews to never marry another jew. Such inbreeding can't be good. Join the rest of the human race, and quit calling yourself a jew, think of your self as a human instead.
Jews and Arabs and Mormons. Religious brainwashing leading to tribal inbreeding leading to religious brainwashing. What's not to love. -
-
-
Neutral
ur-land-is-my-land6 months, 1 week ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Zionists be it athiests or religious!! can not perpetrate all these crimes against Palestinian people by themselves, their footsoldiers are Jewish extresmits and fanatics who go by the teachings of Torah and Talmud. It is Torah that has a VERY CLEAR instruction for ethnic cleansing Palestinians, the instruction for ethnic cleansing Palestinians is so clear that there is no two way of looking at it. Jewish fanatics use these verses from Torah and other teachings of Talmud to justify land theft, ethnic cleanisng and genocide. While the rest of the world considers their act horrible crimes , for them it is just their way of being GOOD JEWS and doing what God ordered them to do. The roots of evil lay in pages of Torah and more so in Talmud. Those Jews and non Jews, dissenting or not, need to address the roots of evil and its sources Torah and Talmud. You need to grab the bull by the horn. Dissenting Jews need to have an honest dialogue about their religious and holy books and teaching otherwise those murderers among them are better Jews than they are if you go by Torah and Talmud.
Reply
More News
LA Times
A story of shock, chaos and bravery unfolds in Ft. Hood shooting
Historic healthcare overhaul passes House
Afghanistan government says foreign officials are interfering
Unemployment rate rises above 10% ; Obama signs jobless benefit extension
Jason Rodriguez : Shooting at downtown Orlando office building leaves 5 hurt, 1 dead
Submit a Story
Advertisement
Add a Comment
Sign In With Your Propeller Account
Please keep your comments relevant to this story.
To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.