Sherman accused them of antisemitism. “There’s blood on your hands for the genocide—you’re trying to kill every Jew.” That is the chief refuge for Democrats who excuse Israel’s actions. To say that critics of genocide are motivated by antisemitism. But
even liberal media are giving a platform to progressive critics. “The
United States is complicit in genocide,” Mehdi Hasan said this week on New York public radio,
and when the host pushed back and said Hasan was not blaming Hamas,
Hasan said of course he denounces Hamas, but his tax dollars are not
going to support Hamas. He also pointed out the inevitable consequences
of military occupation. “The oppressed will always rise against the
oppressor.” And in wonderful media news this week, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg withdrew from a speaking engagement in Kentucky after students questioned his record in the Israeli military nearly 40 years ago. Jeffrey
Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic, withdrew from a scheduled
speaking event at the University of Kentucky (UK) Wednesday, citing a
last-minute schedule change, amidst concerns from students about his
past as a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) prison guard and his views
on Zionism…. “We were informed that students expressed concern as to why
a former IDF prison guard would be speaking on democracy and journalism
at an event celebrating the integration of UK. Students were told he
withdrew to not cause harm on campus,” the representative [of a
Palestinian solidarity group] stated.
The
event was billed as “The Future of Journalism and the Health of Our
Democracy.” That’s a little bit of accountability. The editor of theAtlantic is finally being called out for his service for Israel. The writer Yakov Hirsch repeatedly explained on
our site that Netanyahu could not have maintained his faultless
reputation in the U.S. mainstream without Goldberg fostering “hasbara
culture.” And bear in mind, that Goldberg used to brag about
his military service. He wrote a whole memoir about it. Now, times are
changing. And other editors who carried water for Israel will surely be
called on to defend that work. This
process is just beginning. Zionists still have esteem in the U.S.
discourse. The view that Israel supporters promote bigotry against
Palestinians is still off-limits. Even as mainstream Jewish
organizations assert that those who support Palestinian rights are
bigoted against Jews. “Israel
supporters should be seen as on the same moral level as supporters of
Bull Connor, but in the U.S. and Western mainstream you can only point
to antisemitism— you can never point to anti-Palestinian racism on the
Israel side,” Donald Johnson has written on our site. “We
cannot make progress on this issue if the extreme racism of the
pro-genocide side is never discussed. People have to be able to say that
any group, whether white southerners or South Africans or Nation of
Islam members or Christian evangelical Zionists or Germans or, yes,
Jewish supporters of Israel, can be racists. They can make racism
central to their ideology. But Zionist racism is still a taboo subject,
automatically branded as antisemitic, because fundamentally Palestinians
are seen as lesser.” |