Anti-Semitism in the Peace Movement

http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9103-berkeley.html

As for anti-semitism within the peace movement, I think it's extremely marginal. There's plenty of anti-semitism, but you find it
elsewhere. So for example, let's take, say, the Republican party, [laughter] a more powerful organization in the United States
than the peace movement. In the 1988 election campaign, some of you may recall, a month or so before the election it was
revealed that folks called the Ethnic Outreach Committee of the Republican Party, that is the sector of the Republican campaign
that tries to mobilize support for the Republicans among ethnic communities, that the Ethnic Outreach Committee was, that is,
had on it, in very high places, in fact, prominent places in it, were outright Nazis. I don't mean that word metaphorically. I mean
outright Nazis, people who had served in the Rumanian Iron Guard, had been Nazi collaborators and denied the Holocaust, and
so forth, outright Nazis, unreconstructed Nazis. It's interesting that the Democrats never made an issue of it. You look back and
you notice it never came up in the campaign. Some of them were dismissed. A couple of them resurfaced in other high positions.
It was sort of dropped. Now there was a little discussion about this. There was some discussion about this in the New Republic
which is basically the journal of the Israeli lobby. It's the Israeli propaganda journal. It's interesting the way they dealt with it. Of
course, the Democrats never picked the issue up because the leadership of the Jewish community told them to forget it. It's not
worth pursuing. We don't care. The New Republic explained it, interestingly. There is, they said, this "antique and anemic
anti-semitism." It's a crime in the Republican Party. It's true we have this "antique and anemic anti-semitism," namely outright
Nazis, [laughter] people who gassed people and so on, but that's "antique and anemic anti-semitism." That's not a big concern.
They said the real anti-semitism was in the Democratic Party. Why? Because at the Democratic convention there was a
discussion of a Palestinian State. OK. That's the real anti-semitism. And, in fact, the Anti Defamation League, the B'nai B'rith,
the official monitor of anti-semitism, they both put out some really dirty news copy. It's called "The Real Anti-Semitism in
America," around the early eighties, and in it they agreed with the New Republic. We don't have to be worried about antique
and anemic anti-semitism, outright Nazis and Holocaust deniers, and so on. We don't have to worry about that. What we have
to be worried about is the real anti-semitism. Now, what's the real anti-semitism? Well, they define it. Real anti-semitism they
say is, I'm quoting now, I may be off by a word or so but this is essentially a quote, "The real anti-semitism is people who give
war a bad name and peace favorable press." Peace wreakers of Vietnam vintage, people who oppose the U.S. military budget,
oppose U.S. actions in Central America, that's the real anti-semitism. Why? Well, the logic is clear. By their standards the
interests of anti-semitism are opposition to the interests of Jews. The interests of Jews are the same as the interests of Israel, in
their particular interpretation of those interests, not somebody else's, their hawkish interpretation. The hawkish interpretation of
the interests of Israel requires a powerful U.S. military budget and U.S. militancy worldwide. Because they want to maintain the
military confrontation. They want Israel to be an embattled state in a military confrontation with its neighbors, not entering into a
political settlement, and that means powerful support from the United States. Well, that being the case, people who give war a
bad name and peace a favorable press, they're the real anti-semites. So, in a sense, there is anti-semitism in the peace
movement, yes. [laughter][applause]