Orwellian anti-Semitism

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(YellowTimes.org) – George Orwell
understood the power of words, and he
understood the power of ideology to utterly corrupt their meaning.

He identified tyranny with expressions such as "war is peace" or
"ignorance is strength." But absolute government is not necessary
to experience the corrupted language of power and the abuses it
hides. A nasty democratic minority, supported by a population
choked with fear or prejudice, or a ruling majority full of hate or bad
intentions is perfectly capable of producing them.

We literally see this happening before our eyes, both in the United
States and in Israel.

Mr. Bush calls Mr. Sharon a man of peace. Mr. Sharon rockets and
bulldozes his way through the West Bank and Gaza, murders
suspects, arrests the families of suspects, threatens to deport
whole families guilty of no crime, and calls his dirty work a fight
against terrorism. North American defenders of his brutality call any
conscientious person questioning these actions an "anti-Semite."

It is impossible to understand how bulldozing homes of "suspects"
and the idea of rounding up their families for deportation reflect
anything but the most elemental hatred and vengeance. And just
so, the many assassinations of "suspects," along with the
countless violent arrests that include no trials, no proof offered,
just outright public murder and improper arrests.

I don't think it's possible to imagine what Britain would have
unleashed had she followed the same policies in Northern Ireland.
American public opinion would have exploded had she done so. It
was Americans, after all, who largely financed the IRA's guns and
bombs.

Imagine Spain's late General Franco, that unapologetic fascist,
behaving as Israel does to the neighbors and families of Basque
separatists. The world's condemnation would have been
deafening.

Apartheid South Africa did do the same horrible things, and America
with her racist leanings and mindless social-Darwinist ideology
never condemned them until the disapproval of decent people
everywhere had become overwhelming. Israel, to her shame, did a
lot of business with South Africa, sharing many defense interests,
apparently including nuclear-weapons technology.

Of course, one understands that hatred often derives from
ignorance and fear. This is what we teach our children when we try
to have them understand why hatred and prejudice exist.

But not everyone teaches children these things. We hear from
defenders of Israel's abuses that Arabs teach their children only
hatred. All Arabs? Only hatred? Now, I have no doubt that is true of
some Arabs, but is it any less true of some Israelis?

Judging by what I read, it is scarcely love and peace being taught
in a number of Israeli and North American Jewish homes. One finds
columns printed by major American newspapers using expressions
like "blood-libel," surely the kind language that would have brought
a knowing smile to Dr. Goebbels' deathly lips (For those unfamiliar,
this crude expression has been used many times by right-wing
American columnists in respectable, major newspapers).

What of Rabbi Kahane's violent, racist teachings? Or the teachings
of a number of lesser-known extremists both in Israel and the
U.S.? What of the Israelis who murdered Mr. Rabin? What of the
fundamentalist Jews who not very long ago desecrated the
temples of other Jews in Israel who do not share their extremist
views? Or the ones who burned some women alive in a Tel Aviv
house because they were regarded as prostitutes? (This act
wasn't political, but those who do such things are capable of
anything.) Or the Israeli who gunned down dozens of Palestinians
in a mosque? Or the settlers from New York or London who
swagger around with sub-machine guns in the midst of people they
have no respect for?

I am always disturbed by violent, senseless crimes. They tear at
the precious, delicate fabric of civilization. But when such events
take place at the hands of Palestinians, they do not warrant the
horrific vengeance Israel routinely inflicts in return.

The United States holds the record in the advanced world for
murder and violent crime. Disgruntled, sick, and frustrated people
abound in America. It wasn't very long ago that the annual murder
rate in New York City produced more victims than September 11,
every eighteen months. New York's rate was modest compared to
Houston's or Washington's or Atlanta's. Yet, the world would
regard it as savagery were the American government to bulldoze
the homes of these violent people, arrest their relatives and
threaten them with death or deportation. Imagine the world's
reaction to an attack with F-16s on a neighborhood in which some
of these people were suspected of living?

Not that there aren't a good many Americans who would willingly
do such things, but their vicious tendencies are checked by laws
and social pressure.

The word anti-Semitism, after the Holocaust, became a terrible
epithet imbued with the blood of millions of innocents. Now, less
than 60 years later, it is being twisted and abused, even trivialized,
by, of all people in the world, some Jews.

This word is carelessly, foolishly thrown around today, particularly
in the United States. Write something criticizing policies in Israel,
and you are anti-Semitic. Stand up for reason, justice, and decency
- applied to all, not just to some - and you are anti-Semitic. Point
out the fact that a murderous thug is now the prime minister of
Israel, and you are anti-Semitic.

I actually had one individual write me saying that he knew I was
glad Jewish children were being murdered. This was written to
someone who gave up the country of his birth rather than murder
children in Vietnam. The words are precisely the same kind of filth I
receive from true anti-Semites or black-hating racists aroused by
other issues.

Let any kind of violent crime be committed anywhere today, and if
the victim is Jewish, the crime is, ipso facto, anti-Semitic. The very
government of Israel becomes involved, as it did in the recent
murder in Los Angeles airport by a distracted, demented man.
Another example is the murder of a Jewish man with a beard and a
yarmulke by a young drugged-up thug in Toronto. Literally, teams
of people busied themselves trying to prove there was anti-Semitic
intent, their acts rendering the victim less important than his
identity. (Lest anyone misunderstand how unusual that murder
was, the murder rate in Toronto, a city proud of having the most
cosmopolitan, diverse population in the world, is a tiny fraction of
that for any American city.)

Undoubtedly, thanks to the immensely-heightened anxieties and
human misery generated by Mr. Sharon and an endless stream of
mind-numbingly dishonest rationalizations in his defense - stuff
that tirelessly repeats war is peace – anti-Semitism likely is on the
rise in the world. Always such violence and dissonance affect most
those on the margins of society. That is the group of people from
which the early Nazis recruited SA thugs for their street brawls.

This is all the more urgent reason for Israel to end her
morally-reprehensible practices in the West Bank, which are at the
very heart of the matter.

Talk about hideous language, language that loses its meaning to
ideology, consider the frightful words casually written recently by
an American Jew, a lawyer, advocating the execution of the
relatives of suicide-bombers.

This lawyer quotes scripture, the Torah, to justify a repulsive idea.
But you cannot hide behind ancient scripture, the stories of people
who lived twenty-five centuries years ago, to defend what is plainly
barbarism today. Do we quote the Incas on the appropriateness of
human sacrifice? Or the writings of the Holy Inquisition on burning
heretics alive? And why not? Because civilization's sense of
morality, thank God, develops over time.

Thus we see the kind of intellectual and moral debasement Mr.
Sharon's blood-soaked policies yield, with some using scripture to
defend serial murder. Others using epithets like anti-Semitism
against those who object. Not to mention a president of the United
States too intellectually and morally weak to say "stop, enough!"

[John Chuckman is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil
company. He has many interests and is a lifelong student of history.
He writes with a passionate desire for honesty, the rule of reason, and
concern for human decency. He is a member of no political party and
takes exception to what has been called America's "culture of
complaint" with its habit of reducing every important issue to an
unproductive argument between two simplistically defined groups.
John regards it as a badge of honor to have left the United States as a
poor young man from the South Side of Chicago when the country
embarked on the pointless murder of something like three million
Vietnamese in their own land because they happened to embrace the
wrong economic loyalties. He lives in Canada, which he is fond of
calling "the peaceable kingdom."]

John Chuckman encourages your comments:
jchuckman [at] YellowTimes.org

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