The Politics of Anti-Semitism (Paperback)

by Alexander Cockburn (Editor), Jeffrey St. Clair (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
"Antisemite!" How did a term, once used accurately to describe the most virulent evil, become a charge flung at the mildest critic of Israel, particularly concerning its atrocious treatment of Palestinians?

One answer is that there‚s no more explosive topic in American public life today than the issue of Israel, its oppression of Palestinians and its influence on American politics. Yet the topic is one that is so hedged with anxiety, fury and fear, that honest discussion is often impossible.

One source of honest discussion over recent years has been the print and online journal CounterPunch, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. It has become a must read for hundreds of thousands a month who no longer believe anything they read in the mainstream press beyond the sports scores. On the subject of Israel and Palestine, the Israeli lobby in the U.S., the current Middle East crisis, and its ramifications at home and abroad, CounterPunch and Counterpunch.org have been unrivaled.

Starting with a brilliant and witty dissection by the Canada-based philosopher Michael Neumann, "What is Antisemitism?" several the essays in this book, by Lenni Brenner , Scott Handleman and Linda Belanger, address the issue of what constitutes genuine, rancid antisemitism ? Jew hatred ?as opposed to realistic, rational appraisals of political, military and social conduct.

Essays by Robert Fisk and Norman Finkelstein among othbers offers first hand accounts, of just how malignly or comically lunatic the "antisemite!" baiting can be. Alexander Cockburn offers a caustic and lighthearted cmemoir of his own experiences of being attacked as an anti-Semite, consequent upon his criticisms of Israel. Shaheed Alam describes the campaign against him.

In the US there‚s a broad political culture of opposition to Israel‚s conduct and to the US role in sponsoring it with political, military and budgetary muscle. Vivid essays in The Politics of Antisemitism offer ground-zero accounts by those who have been part of that opposition. In "Jews Like Us" Bruce Jackson, for example, offers a spirited dissent from the notion imposed by the Israel lobby that American Jews are as one in endorsing Israel‚s conduct. Will Yeomans describes the divestment campaign he helped launch.

After 9/11 it became apparent to many that Sharon‚s government was exploiting the new political terrain to further its own objectives, and that senior members of the US government had long career histories as promoters of the Israeli interest in Washington DC. Essays by a senior congressional staffer, and by former senior CIA analysts, Bill and Kathy Christison, cover this issue of dual loyalty.

So powerful is the Israel lobby that it was even able to bury a US congressional investigation into the deliberate attack on the USS Liberty by the Israeli Air Force, a attack that left 34 US sailors dead and 172 wounded. Jeffrey St Clair recalls this astounding demonstration of the clout of the Israel lobby in official Washington.

The bottom line is Israel‚s denial of Palestinians‚ right to a nation, living within secure borders, just like Israeli Jews. Many of the contributors to this book, like the veteran peace activist and journalist, Yuri Avneri, have born witness to the savagery of that denial. Just how awful the occupation is, and how cruel the onslaughts on the Intifada are eloquently described by a Palestinian, Edward Said, and an Israeli Jew, Yigal Bronner. Both, please note, still nourish a vision of a future in which Israeli Jews and Palestinians live peaceful and tolerant lives, side by side.

This first book in the new CounterPunch series, is a timely anthology on the compulsion of silence and complicity in crimes against a betrayed people.

About the Author
Nationally syndicated journalists Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair have co-authored numerous bestsellers, including Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs And The Press, Washington Babylon and Al Gore: A User's Manual.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: AK Press (October 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1902593774
• ISBN-13: 978-1902593777
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #455,796 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

174 of 222 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It is about time, April 6, 2004

By A Customer

Excellent book that explores the differences between race based hatred of Jews and legitate criticism of Israel and Zionism. Half of the authors are Jewish, also known as "self hating Jews" to the Israel can do no wrong crowd who dismiss this book, and anyone who questions or criticizes Israel, as racist and anti-Semitic.

By refusing to differentiate between legitmate criticism of Israel's racist, apartheid policies (which are openly discussed in the mainstream Israeli press but not in the mainstream U.S. press)(...), these short sighted critics are giving a good name to anti-Semitism.

145 of 187 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Putting Things in Perspective, December 16, 2003

By	Joanneva12a (USA) - See all my reviews

18 various essays from astute writers explore the recent claim that Anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide. Without a doubt it is clear that most of the authors attribute the new claims of anti-Semitism in response to the heightened worldwide awareness and moral criticism of Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza, along with its special nation status the world's only superpower has bestowed upon it.
The essays are in no way meant to trivialize true anti-Semitism, and the book does not ignore that true anti-Semitism exists.The real thing is explored and deplored in this book, but the focus is on what should constitute true anti-Semitism with what is merely a convenient way to silence anyone who criticizes Israeli policy, thus threatening open debate and democracy.

This is not a book you will just breeze through. I had to read several of the essays multiple times because of the varying philosophical and moral perspectives offered. Some were better than others and made very sound arguments.

A Jewish professor of philosophy inflates the definition of anti-Semitism to include just about anything a philo-Semite could ever hope for, then through a brilliant moral narrative shows us that in doing so, only cheapens and trivializes the real thing.

A BBC journalist wants to know why a certain actor wants to kill him, and why numerous people who engage in factual journalism are suddenly the object of hate mail so vile it far exceeds any crime they are supposedly guilty of.

A SUNY upstate professor pulls the curtain away exposing the myth that the right-wing noise machine speaks for the majority of American Jews and writes that ever increasing Jewish organizations are forming to counter the vocal militant minority that manages to bully not only non-Jews, but moderate and left leaning Jews as well.

A Taayush member in Tel Aviv takes us into a refugee camp in Beit Jalla to remind us what all the fuss is about, lest we start believing that all this supposedly unwarranted and frivolous criticism for humanity's sake is after all true anti-Semitism.

One essay explores why philo-Semites are no better than anti-Semites, because they hold one group higher in esteem and value than the rest of humanity.

Perhaps the frivolous slur of anti-Semite aimed at legitimate moral criticism of Israeli policy, is no different than the unwarranted slur of "anti-American" or "unpatriotic" that are hurled at people in this country who either question, criticize, or oppose the morality or soundness of the current US administration's foreign policy. In either case, it is at worst, a blind nationalistic allegiance to a government - right or wrong... and at the very least a departure from thoughtful debate and a sad decline into two-dimensional thinking.

And finally, a former Israeli Knesset member points his finger squarely at the Sharon government calling it "a giant laboratory for growing the anti-Semitism virus" and claims, that with its crimes in the West Bank and Gaza, is the biggest generator of anti-Semitic feelings today, which implicates not only itself, but its entire Jewish population along with it.

67 of 88 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Useful stuff , June 1, 2005

By	CG (Washington state, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

The book has some relatively brief instructive stuff about the history of anti-semitism, anti-semitism in Europe, the Israeli Disinvestment campaign and a moving article by Yigal Bronner about Palestinian suffering.

One of the longest essays is by Alexander Cockburn. The latter gentleman has been involved in plenty of combat over the years with Zionist intellectuals and their libels, from the Commentary crowd to the New Republic. He discusses an article about him in TNR by an individual named Frank Foer. Comrade Foer discussed Cockburn's recent discussion of various stories circulating around, including that of the Israel Spy Ring and the harassment of an Arab scientist by a Jewish scientist, Dr. Philip Zack. The latter has been suspected in the post 9-11 anthrax scare which he, the scientist, may have perpetrated in order to blame it on Arabs. Foer allowed that Cockburn didn't exactly endorse these stories but since there wasn't even any credibility to them, it proves Cockburn is an anti-Semite because he spread them. Foer claimed to have done a Lexus Nexus search about the allegations against Dr. Zack and found nothing. Cockburn notes that such a search actually reveals articles on the subject from the Hartford Courant, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Salon.com. Anthrax samples and other biological agents had gone missing, about the same time Zack was videotaped sneaking into the lab after hours. He and another scientist voluntarily left Fort Detrick after they constructed and sent a poem to the Arab Scientist, filled with racist stuff and a drawing of a camel with various sexual appendages on it. On the Israeli Spy ring, Foer implied that only the right wing libertarian site Antiwar.com was spreading it, but in fact that story was covered in a four part series by Carl Cameron on FoxNews, also covered by Le Monde, and Jane's Defense Weekly. Cockburn makes an interesting point about the reaction to the 1989 revelations of Billy Graham's conversations with Richard Nixon. In one of them, the two men agree that Jews are bringing down the nation because they are producers of immoral tv shows and movies and incline towards the left. This sparked great outrage but in the same revelations Graham was quoted as arguing for the bombing of all the dikes in North Vietnam, which would completely obliterate the North Vietnamese economy and kill about a million. This advocacy of war crimes gained no outrage. Arthur Seys Inquart was hanged at Nuremburg for implementing such policies in Holland. Of course, Cockburn notes, the U.S. did such a thing during the Korean war, bombing dikes in order to flood rice fields in order to induce starvation.

Jeffery St. Clair writes about the U.S.S. Liberty attack by Israel, of June 8th 1967.. 34 U.S. sailors on that vessel were killed in the attack, and 170 plus wounded, many seriously. That attack was very notable in that Robert McNamara and his lieutenants blocked any plane from the U.S. sixth fleet from coming to defend the ship and it took about twelve or sixteen hours for any U.S. aid to come to the ship, some hours after a Soviet ship offered the crew assistance. James Ennes, one of the survivors in his 1980 memoir, pointed out the fact that the Israelis had jammed the ship's communication was classified as top secret by the initial Navy investigators-obviously the Israelis knew they were attacking an American vessel for one cannot jam the communications of someone of whose identity you are unaware. The initial Pentagon claim that it was all just an unfortunate accident but this caused some bureaucratic murming. The judge Advocate General of the navy and the navy's legal officer both reached the conclusion that Israel had purposely attacked the ship. The last two constructed a report about their conclusions but it was classified as were CIA, NSA, and other agency's reports that the attack had been ordered by Moshe Dayan. The co-leader of the Navy report that claimed it was all just an accident, admitted to the Navy Times in 2002, that he knew that the attack on the Liberty was intentional but that he had covered it up on orders from superiors. Ennes claims that the pilot of the first Israeli plane, Evan Toni, sent to attack the Liberty told him that he had recognized that the Liberty was an American vessel and had informed his superiors of this by radio. They had ordered him to go forward with the attack but he turned around and flew back to base where he was arrested for disobeying orders. Dayan had wanted to kill everyone on the ship and blame it on the Egyptians. Israel also probably didn't want the Liberty, an intelligence ship to discover its plans to break its cease fire and occupy Syria's Golan Heights. Also, in Al Arish on the Sinai Peninsula, the largest tower in which the Liberty was using to coordinate itself, Israel was in the process of executing about 1000 Egyptian and Palestinian POW's. The U.S. for its part already had a close alliance with Israel, and didn't want to offend them. Many powerful people wanted to remove the ban on arm sales to Israel and the Liberty affair was a nuisance. Since then the Pentagon has relentlessly persecuted the survivors of the attack and any effort to remember the victims has been smeared as anti-Semite.

Jeffery Blankfort has a rather clumsy essay where he tries to refute Noam Chomsky's thesis that the power of the Zionist lobby is greatly exaggerated. He implies that the U.S. would not support the oppression of the Palestinians if the Israeli lobby wasn't so vicious towards our politicians. He conveniently misses some of Chomsky's main evidence....He misses how Chomsky shows that both Labor and Likud support the subjugation of Palestinians while Israel controls the best part of the occupied territories. The only difference between them is tactics: Labor has the rational Allon Plan, where Jewish settlements take all the best land and maybe Palestinian population centers can elect their garbagemen; Likud despite its racist rhetoric thinks the same thing but has crazy schemes to build settlements in the most god forsaken places in the territories. The George H.W. Bush-Yitzhak Shamir combat of 1991 was simply about putting the boorish too blatant racist Shamir in his place. It was only about minor issues.. The labor party won the 1992 elections and put into effect the Allon Plan style Oslo accords-not dissimilar to the 1989 Shamir-Peres Plan that Bush supported.