I define Anti-Semitism as the individual or structural condition, practice, or belief that denigrates, dehumanizes, or disadvantages Jews vis-a-vis non-Jews. It stems from a variety of sources (the “not quite White” flowing out of a particular branch of Enlightenment anti-Semitic ideology) and manifests itself in a variety of ways. Obviously, in a racist polity being seen as “not quite White” is one way of accomplishing anti-Semitism, but it’s hardly exhaustive (it also renders problematic your original assertion that the European Jews in Israel are “Euro-Whites”. Are we part of White Europe or are we not? This phantom like ability for the oppressors to place Jews in whatever category is most convenient for our ongoing domination is quite annoying). Such a restrictive definition makes very little sense for a variety of reasons, the first being that European anti-Semitism chronological predates the establishment of European White Supremacist ideology (see George Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History [Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003]), the second being that it obliterates (though this almost goes without saying at this point) the existence of anti-Semitism against non-European Jews, the third being that it doesn’t seem to speak to even many of the most well-known forms of anti-Semitism (shadowy world-dominating Jewish cabals or Jewish bloodlust, for example, fit only hazily). Certainly, one can be anti-Semitic without being a White supremacist, as the strong presence of anti-Semitism in communities of color make clear (just as you can be Jewish and still racist or sexist, all oppressions cross-cut in this way, again, we’re stuck at 101).

My point about affirmative action was simply to note the old progressive demand that context is critical. You forget about the context of American racial apartheid, and affirmative action looks really bad. You put it in context, and it becomes essential to equality and liberation. You forget about the context of Jewish experience (in Europe, in Africa, in the Middle East, and elsewhere), and Israel seems like an unnecessary thorn in the world. You put it in the context of centuries of (on-going) anti-Semitic ideology, oppression, and domination, and it becomes central to the Jewish liberation project.

It strikes me that this open letter basically says “there are women in these countries that are being oppressed. Therefore, this should be an inssue for feminists.”

That has the effect of stripping feminism of any meaning. The central conceit behind feminism, though obviously it plays out in different ways, is that there are structural objects and mechanisms that deny women the ability to receive treatment that comports with the actor’s chosen concepts of justice in a way that differs from those objects and mechanisms as they relate to men.

This open letter, unless I’m reading it wrong, seems to say that “feminism is about justice, and there’s injustice here, so it’s an issue for feminism” without discussing how the structure of the various conflicts, and particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, affects women in a way that is substantially different from how it affects men.

To my reading, this post obviously indicates that I sympathize with Israel, and so to round out that fact, I’d just also like to point out the ways that the resistance methods of Palestinians affect Israeli women disproportionately (for example, by often bombing markets, mid-day, when religious women who work mainly as home makers are the ones most likely to be killed). Rallying feminists to this conflict cuts both ways, and pretending that any action against Israeli women is justifiable because their male-dominated government institutions are acting against Palestinian society does exactly what feminism is dedicated to avoiding: punishing women just because they live in a societal structure that disenfranchises them.

Secondly, why would people who are anti-semetic (which i believe is based on the idea that European Jews are “not quite white enough”) favor Arabs, who are not European by definition?

Some of the Zionist language does have parallels to White American language around extermination of Native peopls – that they “don’t use the land productively like we do”, and also animalization “two legged beasts”, “bloodthirsty savages”.

Or hell, let’s make it “since 2005″, in which case most people who were kicked out of their homes were Gazan Jews (replaced with an entirely Judenrein territory). Anything can be argued out of context. Insofar as the PA demands that Jews leave the West Bank and Gaza (or all of Israel, depending on their mood), is that a call for ethnic cleansing? Was the Gazan pullout ethnic cleansing? Or is that a gross misreading of the situation?

We don’t selectively “forget everything else”. We situationally locate events, including the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, within histories and matrices of oppression including anti-Semitism (and Orientalism). To talk about Israel without locating it within the entire history of the region and the peoples who inhabit (including the mass Jewish exile from the Arab world after 1948) is just a silly way to do history or ethics.

Yeah I actually agree “the Jews are plotting genocide in Palestine” Sounds anti-Semitic.

not if it’s true.

a simple test might be to forget about all this balfour declaration crap, and everything afterwards just tell me:

who has been kicking who out of the land since 1967? who’s been bulldozing homes and replacing them with homes for themselves? arabs aren’t kicking jews out of their land. they aren’t bulldozing any jewish homes and replacing them with homes only for jews.

yet that is precisely what is happening in the w. bank and jerusalem (and up until recently gaza).

forget about everything else, and tell me that that is not ethnic cleansing.

Well Morocco and Iran actually have Jewish populations that AFAIK aren’t being persecuted, Morocco’s King has always extended an invitation to it’s Jews that left after the creation of Israel to return, so I suppose it depends on your definition of “warmly embrace.”

I keep hearing people refer to just Israel’s surgical strikes when they defend the proportionality of Israel’s governmental response to rocket launches.

But…that’s not all the action Israel’s government is taking against people on Palestinian territory.

So why do people keep saying that it is?

I JUST.DON’T.GET.IT.

No snark from the peanut gallery, please.
If any of you who’ve said such things are still reading the comments…PLEASE tell me why.

And when we question if Israel has the right to blockade, to prevent aid and services, consider first what role they consider Palestine. What do you consider terrorism? If they were to extend aid to women and children would it come back to harm them?

***

Girl Detective: Yeah, you are. How ’bout we channel some of that righteous indignation towards dismantling your privilege, rather than getting so very upset about being called on it?

Sabrina: Ditto. Annihilation of Jewish experience (including 3,000 years of unbroken presence in what is now Israel), condescendingly waving it away as “based on a book” (presumably, the actual Jewish bodies who inhabited the land and were violently exiled from it [stolen, you might say!] are non-entities) is anti-Semitism. Obliterating the actualities of how Israel was established, particularly its interplay with the Holocaust (was that just a book that most folks don’t believe in too?) is anti-Semitism. Ignoring the role of the Arab world, particularly the Palestinian leadership, in allowing (indeed, specifically supporting) the Holocaust (among other anti-Semitic acts) is anti-Semitism, as is ignoring their role in threatening Jewish bodies — Israeli or no — the world over today. Pinning the entire blame for the situation on Israel (are Qassam rockets manna from hell? Where do you think they come from?), with no acknowledgment of the existence of any countervailing forces is anti-Semitism (and frankly racist insofar as it denies Palestinian and Arab agency). This whole discourse is hell-bent on erasing Jewish experience and ultimately Jewish bodies as non-entities; it is viciously colonialist (ironically masked in anti-colonialist guise — but that’s because Jews, being eternal outsiders, can be nothing but a colonizer. Even in land they too have lived in for thousands of years, they are irredeemably foreign, eternally marked as an other whose lives are forfeit); it is marginalization and the exercise of privilege in its rawest and most crude form.

This obnoxious whine of the privileged — “you can’t criticize this group without being accused of prejudice! I’m so oppressed and silenced!” — is spectacularly grating. It’s grating when it’s used by right-wing hawks who are dehumanizing Arabs and Palestinians. It’s grating when it’s used by neoconservatives justifying racism against Blacks and sexism against women. And it’s particularly grating when it’s used by putative liberals who Just. Can’t. Fathom. that they might be complicit in the nexus of oppression that operates on Jews around the world.

Adopting from George Yancy: “[the gentile] admits of no ignorance vis-à-vis the [Jew]. Hence, there is no need for [gentile] silence, a moment of quietude that encourages listening to the [Jew].” It is assumed you can speak for us. It is assumed that you can define our own past, our own present, our own future, and our own reality for us. It is assumed that you have the right to roll dice with our bodies and our lives on the line. In short, it assumed that you have a right of dominance and control over us.

You don’t. And until you accept that, you’re every bit as complicit in a hierarchy of oppression as the settlers you loathe so much.

I wonder where were these blog posts when the Iranian president made similar threats against Israel.

The “President” of Iran is no more than a puppet. It’s the ayatollahs that run the show. Sometimes I wonder why the American media never mentions that.

Why were so many leftists so eager to explain them as mistranslations whereas here they insist the translation is what they want to see in it?

That’s a bit of a generalization. There’s several leftists that support a war on Iran, such as Clinton.