- The issues involved in the war of words between author
Gore Vidal and editor Norman Podhoretz are of the greatest import. The
latter charged in a syndicated article that Vidal's piece in the Nation
[both articles were described in the May 19, 1986 issue of the Washington
Report] was "perhaps the most blatantly anti-Semitic article to have
appeared in a respectable American periodical since World War II."
This allegation points up the vital difference between what must be considered
"anti-Semitic" and what "anti-Zionist," a basic distinction
fundamentally affecting public understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
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- The biting, mocking Vidal article claimed that pro-Israel
lobbyists, including the American Jewish Committee, the employers of Podhoretz,
"make common cause with the lunatic fringe" to frighten Americans
into spending enormous sums of money for defense against the Soviet Union
and for the support of Israel. Podhoretz and his wife, Midge Decter, Vidal
insisted, were more interested in Israel than in this country. This may
be anti-Podhoretz, anti-Decter, anti-Conservative, even anti-Israel, but
it is certainly not antiSemitic.
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- An implication of dual loyalty is no proof of anti-Semitic
intent. Unfortunately, many Jews themselves confuse their allegiances to
religion and state and hence the word "Jew" has become widely
used to denote simultaneously a universal faith and a particular nationality.
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- No one but the most irrational would deny that there
are bigots and haters, that there was a Nazi Germany whose unpardeled genocide
still stings the conscience of Man, and that there is still anti-Semitism.
The latter is only one of an infinite number of prejudices that ought to
be eradicated. However, Podhoretz and other neo-Conservatives are using
the existence of this sociological phenomenon to suppress any and all criticism
of the Israeli state, the multi-fold Zionist organizations, and their actions.
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- Anti-Zionism Is Not Anti-Semitism
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- Anti-Zionism should not be equated with anti-Semitism,
the racist ideology directed against Jews as Jews. Nor should Zionism,
the political movement established to reconstitute Jews as a nation, be
equated with Judaism, the universal faith which knows no national boundaries
and constitutes a relationship between man and God, requiring no political
loyalty to any country.
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- While it has little bearing on the substance of the political
discussion in the U.S., the words "anti-Semitism" and "anti-Semitic"
are, in fact, semantic misnomers. Jews constitute no more than 10 percent
of the world's Semites. The overwhelming majority of Semites are Arabs.
Furthermore, most Jews today could not trace their ancestry back to the
Holy Land and, therefore, are not true Semites at all. Ninety percent of
the world's Jews are descended from converts to Judaism, mostly the Khazars
in what is now the southern USSR. The Khazars accepted Judaism as their
monotheistic faith. They did not have the remotest connection with the
Semites of the Holy Land.
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- Notwithstanding, the mere interjection of the label "anti-Semite"
halts discussion, mutes doubt and crushes debate on Middle East policy.
In fact, nothing has accounted more for the success of Zionism and Israelism
in the Western world than the skillful attack on the soft underbelly of
world opinion-"Mr. Decent Man's" total repugnance toward anti-Semitism.
The charge of this bias, bringing forth the spectre of Nazi Germany, so
totally pulverizes the average Christian that, by contrast, calling him
a Communist is a pleasant epithet.
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- Even the full-blooded Semite, the Arab, absurd as it
may be, finds it difficult to defend himself against this charge. The January
1978 Jerusalem peace talks were disrupted when Prime Minister Begin hurled
accusations of "anti-Semitism" at President Sadat and Egyptian
Foreign Minister Fahmy.
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- The emotional reaction engendered by Nazi genocide has
given rise to an Eleventh Commandment, "Thou shalt not be anti-Semitic,"
and to a corollary Twelfth Commandment, "Thou shalt be anti-anti-Semitic."
No Christian wishes to run afoul of these 20th century supplements to the
interdictions brought back by Moses from Mt. Sinai.
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- Renowned Harvard sociologist Dr. David Reisman once wrote
in the Jewish Newsletter:
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- The Zionists can muster not merely the threat of the
Jewish vote and the no-less important Jewish financial and organizational
skills, but also the blackmail of attacking anyone who opposes their political
aims for Israel, as antiSemitic.
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- For writing that "it is a sign of mediocrity in
people when they herd together," Boris Pasternak, the author of Dr.
Zhivago, was immediately stigmatized by responsible Zionists, including
then-Prime Minister David Ben Gurion of Israel, as an anti-Semitic Jew.
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- Beyond the Eleventh Commandment
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- Podhoretz is not alone in asserting that Jews in America
and elsewhere can accept two nationalisms. Washington Post columnist Charles
Krauthammer sharply criticized Pope John Paul in April of this year for
not recognizing Israel. Krautharnmer spelled out what Podhoretz has implied
in Commentary and elsewhere for many years: "Israel is the central
reality of Jewish life today ... it is now the hinge of Jewish life and
hope ... Israel is what is most dear to the Jew." Rarely has any Zionist
proponent publicly exposed the Jewish duality so bluntly. In the past such
references to the Jewish dichotomy have come from anti-Semites and bigots.
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- If the 1948 creation of Israel altered, as some claim,
the status of the Jew and gave him citizenship in a worldwide nation, the
American people may not accept this metamorphosis. Any group of people
may achieve something of a separate identity merely by believing they belong
together. American tolerance toward separatism ceases, however, when group
thought and group action run counter to the mores and interests of the
country in which they live. Spying for Israel in the United States by a
Jewish American, Jonathan Jay Pollard, and the Israeli attack on an American
Navy ship, the USS Liberty, are two obvious cases in point. If the political
problems of Israel become the political responsibility of American Jews,
disaster will eventually follow.
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- Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust can for a time be exploited
to obscure the realities and complexities of the Middle East problem. But
in the long run this can prove disastrous. If American policy for the Middle
East can be manipulated solely by raising the spectre of a man who died
41 years ago in a bunker in Berlin, and with total disregard for those
who are dying every day in the Middle East, we all, American Jews and Gentiles
alike, are in deep trouble.
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- Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal, a pioneer American Jewish critic
of Israel, edited the newsletter, Middle East Perspective, in New York
for 17 years. He is the author of four landmark books: What Price Israel?,
The Other Side of the Coin, There Goes the Middle East and The Zionist
Connection.
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- http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/071486/860714011.html
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