Are you a liberal anti-Semite? : IMC Maritimes

Are you a liberal anti-Semite? Take this quiz and find out!
JOE LANZMANN, National Post
Published: Friday, February 16, 2007
After years of rising concern about left-wing anti-Semitism, The New York Times reported recently about a study for the American Jewish Committee. Written by professor Alvin Rosenfeld of Indiana University, the study describes the spread of a virulent anti-Zionism in many quarters of the Western left that has helped legitimate anti-Semitism. Some people have seized on the study to argue that these extreme anti-Zionists are really anti-Jewish bigots. Critics reply that criticizing Israel, even harshly, doesn't prove animus toward the Hebrew people.

So, how can you tell if you're a good liberal who simply thinks the West Bank settlements are bad policy -- or a closet Judeophobe whose progressive views mask a serious attitude problem? Take this quiz and see.

1 Who deserves the most blame for the Iraq war?

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Font: ****a) George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. b) Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Bill Kristol. c) Blame? Don't you support the troops?

2 Which group exerts too much influence on America's Mideast policy?

a) Conservative jingoes. b) Not the Jews per se, but a "pro-Israel lobby" composed mainly of wealthy New York financiers (who may well all attend the same shul). c) Arabists at the U.S. State Department.

3 Which state's offences against humanity bother you most?

a) Sudan. b) Israel. c) Massachusetts.

4 Criticism of Israel is: criticizing Israel?

5 Jimmy Carter's use of the term "apartheid" in his new book is:

a) intended to provoke debate but clearly ill-considered. b) a gutsy, rare example of someone "speaking truth to power." c) more of the same from the putz who put Andy Young at the UN. tragedy that, incidentally, gets far more hype than the Turks' slaughter of the Armenians or the white man's annihilation of the Indians. c) Child's play compared with what Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has planned.

YOUR RESULTS

Give yourself one point for each (a) answer, two points for each (b) answer, and zero points for each (c) answer. 0-2 OK, you're not an anti- Semite. But you're not a liberal either. You win a lifetime subscription to Commentary magzine and this sheaf of old AIPAC newsletters. 3-5 You display trace elements of atavistic fears. Your prize: a copy of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. 6-8 Phew! You're an unbigoted liberal -- painfully capable of striking a middle ground and excruciatingly tolerant of all points of view. Please enjoy this complete set of Barack Obama's speeches. 9-10 You're clearly not nuts about Zion. Please claim two tickets to My Name Is Rachel Corrie! 11-12 You're an anti-Semite! You win a tour of synagogues in Italy, Argentina, and Turkey bombed by militants who are merely anti-Israel and not anti- Jewish. Also, an extended director's cut DVD of The Passion of the Christ. http://www.slate.com
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=b68cb437-463a-4e49-b035-7360b11f24dd

Not a LIBERAL anti-Semite. He is a classic dyed in the wool white-supremiscist anti-Semite

Take a look at this website, focusing on that problem

http://www.blue-truth.blogspot.com/

Hmmm... This ridiculous trash was published in today's National Post. The author didn't even sign his name to it, and when you consider how ridiculous it is, I'm not suprised.

Here's my response to the Post.

You can direct your own letters to letters@nationalpost.com

I'd like to thank the Post's editorial staff for publishing the poll entitled "Are You A Liberal Antisemite?" (Editorials, February 16), by an unnamed Zionist Propagandist posing as a "liberal Jew".

I think it's important that Canadians are exposed to the kind of deceitful rubbish the Zionists have been forced to resort to in answering their rapidly-swelling Opposition - since they cannot mount counter-arguments which depend on any reference to the facts.

The Zionists seem to have become their own worst enemy, endlessly resorting to the very behaviour they are accused of, and validating everything said about them by this Opposition. No wonder this angry little supremacist cult is on the fast track to irrelevancy.

My only disappointment is that this only appeared the pages of the National Post, ensuring that very few Canadians will actually be exposed to it!

Little Johnny was in his 5th grade class when the teacher asked the children what their fathers did for a living. All the typical answers came up --- fireman, policeman, salesman, etc...

Little Johnny was being uncharacteristically quiet and so the teacher asked him about his father. "My father's a welfare queen who frequents gay bars. Sometimes, if he gets lucky at closing time and he catches the eye of someone desperate, and if the offer's fair, he'll go out to the alley with some guy and make love with him for money."

The teacher, obviously shaken by this statement, hurriedly set the other children to work on some coloring or Play-Doh, and took Little Johnny aside to ask him, "Is that really true about your father?

"No," said little Johnny, "He's an editor at the IMC, but I was too embarrassed to say that in front of the other kids."

What utterly puerile claptrap, repititive, too.

Hmmm... This ridiculous trash was published in today's National Post. The author didn't even sign his name to it, and when you consider how ridiculous it is, I'm not suprised. No wonder the Plant - who never utilizes credible sources, for they don't support his indefensible position - wouldn't attribute this Spam to its source.

Here's my response to the Post.

You can direct your own letters to letters@nationalpost.com

I'd like to thank the Post's editorial staff for publishing the poll entitled "Are You A Liberal Antisemite?" (Editorials, February 16), by an unnamed Zionist Propagandist posing as a "liberal Jew". I think it's important that Canadians are exposed to the kind of deceitful rubbish the Zionists have been forced to resort to in answering their rapidly-swelling Opposition - since they cannot mount counter-arguments which depend on any reference to the facts. The Zionists seem to have become their own worst enemy, endlessly resorting to the very behaviour they are accused of, and validating everything said about them by this Opposition. No wonder this angry little supremacist cult is on the fast track to irrelevancy.

My only disappointment is that this only appeared the pages of the National Post, ensuring that very few Canadians will actually be exposed to it!

This Propaganda was already refuted, prompting the Plant to post it again:

"After years of rising concern about left-wing anti-Semitism"

Translation: concern about increasing condemnation and criticism of Zionist Fascism & Apartheid in the Middle East, as the ease of information-sharing has allowed more and more people to cut through the media veil on the subject.

"the New York Times reported this week about a study for the American Jewish Committee"

Another Zionist Lobbying Organization/Israeli Spy Front, posing as a body which represents the interests of American Jews (such groups in England have prompted Jews opposed to Zionism to denounce them as a movement).

"Written by professor Alvin Rosenfeld of Indiana University"

A man known for his Hasbara against anti-Zionism, and critics of Israel and its criminal, racist policies.

"the study describes the spread of a virulent anti-Zionism in many quarters on the left that has helped legitimate anti-Semitism"

In other words, arguments he cannot refute, so he Distracts instead.

"So, how can you tell if you're a good liberal who simply thinks the West Bank settlements are bad policy—or a closet Judeophobe whose progressive views mask a serious attitude problem?"

There is no mistaking the two.

A biased "quiz", created by Zionists, and disseminated by Zionism's Propagandists, which is designed to blur this line, will not provide any answers.

"1. Who deserves the most blame for the Iraq war?
a) George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld
b) Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Bill Kristol"

All of the above.

"2. Which group exerts too much influence on America's Mideast policy?
b) The Zionist Lobby.

Dual Loyalties
The Bush Neocons and Israel
By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON
Former CIA political analysts

Since the long-forgotten days when the State Department's Middle East policy was run by a group of so-called Arabists, U.S. policy on Israel and the Arab world has increasingly become the purview of officials well known for tilting toward Israel. From the 1920s roughly to 1990, Arabists, who had a personal history and an educational background in the Arab world and were accused by supporters of Israel of being totally biased toward Arab interests, held sway at the State Department and, despite having limited power in the policymaking circles of any administration, helped maintain some semblance of U.S. balance by keeping policy from tipping over totally toward Israel. But Arabists have been steadily replaced by their exact opposites, what some observers are calling Israelists, and policymaking circles throughout government now no longer even make a pretense of exhibiting balance between Israeli and Arab, particularly Palestinian, interests.

http://www.counterpunch.org/christison09062004.html

"3. How would you characterize debate about America's Mideast policy?"

b) Nonexistent, since all criticism of Israel is "taboo", and the word, "Zionism" isn't even understood.

"4. Which state's offenses against humanity bother you most?
a) Sudan
b) Israel"

All of the above. Israel's have been ongoing and excused for much longer than anyone else's.

5. Criticism of Israel is:

There is no correct answer offered by this Zionist "poll".

6. What do you think of Joe Lieberman?

Israeli spy in American clothing. His actions do not lie.

7. On what basis is Iran a threat to world peace?

It isn't. This is another feigned justification for a US-Israeli attack, which has been planned for years.

8. Jimmy Carter's use of the term "apartheid" in his new book is:

Correct, according to the definition of the word.

9. Which describes your view of the Holocaust?

I have none. It is an irrelevant issue when discussing Zionism and Israel in the current context.

10. The term neoconservative suggests:

That people are afraid of properly using the word FASCIST.

How not to explain suicide bombing (by Eve Garrard)
Suicide bombers disturb us, in more ways than one. And this disturbance is reflected in the kinds of explanation some people grasp at, as they try to understand how others can come to do such horrifying things. It's a commonplace to say that they must have acted out of terrible despair, or crushing poverty. How else could one explain the horror of their acts? Certainly someone at the BBC seems to have been gripped by this line of thought in putting together the report of the recent Tel-Aviv bombing, which focused hard on the mourning relatives of the bomber while keeping his victims and their relatives firmly offstage. And this focus on the pity of it all from the bomber's perspective fits well with a general feeling about these acts widely shared amongst bien-pensants of various political stripes: it's all so terrible that we must explain it in terms of a response to terrible things which have happened to the bombers themselves. 'Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return' just has to be the only story in town.

These explanations are generally used in such a way as to excuse what the suicide bomber does. The thought seems to be that we can't unreservedly condemn those who act out of such motivations: so dreadful must be the poverty or despair that drive these terrible acts that we can't simply dismiss the bombers as vicious murderers of the innocent. From this position it's a fairly easy slide to thinking that what they do isn't, after all, entirely terrible - that the desperation out of which they act to some extent purifies and legitimizes what they do. And if we sympathize anyway with the political cause for which the suicide bomber acts, then all the more are we likely to think that what he or she did is, if not justified exactly, to be condoned.

One obvious response to this kind of explanation is that the evidence doesn’t support it. Suicide bombers are often not poor at all; are better educated than average; are often moved by religion or romantic thoughts of heroism, and the praise they'll get from their families and peers. (In the case of women bombers, the motivations may be still more complex, ideologically tangled, and far removed from impoverished desperation.) If these empirical claims are true, then the account of suicide bombing in terms of despair and poverty will have to be abandoned in favour of less sympathetic explanations. But there's an implication which needs to be examined before we leave the poverty-and-despair approach to suicide-murder. It's the implication that if the bombers were impoverished and despairing, then this would indeed explain, and to some extent excuse, their actions. It's that implication I want to question. So for the purposes of the rest of this post, I will just assume that most suicide bombers are indeed impoverished or despairing or both, and try to see what follows from that view.

Do we then have a plausible explanation of suicide bombing, and does it to some extent excuse it? If we take poverty first, one problem immediately arises: all over the world there are impoverished people, many of them highly politicized; but only a very few engage in suicide bombing. This alone is enough to show that impoverishment isn't a sufficient condition for suicide bombing. And though I am assuming for the sake of the argument that most suicide bombers are impoverished, nonetheless even on this restricted assumption it can't be ignored that there are some who notably are not, such as the respectable middle-class Saajid Badat, a wannabe suicide bomber from Gloucester, or the all-too-successful British suicide bombers Asif Hanif and Omar Sharif, who blew up a bar in Tel Aviv in 2003. So being impoverished isn't a necessary condition for becoming a suicide bomber either. At best, then, poverty is a contributory factor. But given the appallingly widespread prevalence of poverty, and the relatively narrow occurrence of suicide bombing, citing poverty as a contributory factor doesn't explain very much. We still need to know why a few poor people, though not most, respond to their poverty by killing themselves as a way of killing and maiming other innocents. And since most poor people would think it appallingly wrong to blow others to pieces alongside themselves, it's hard to see how the poverty of suicide bombers could excuse what they do.

Exactly the same form of argument is available in reply to the explanation of suicide bombing in terms of despair. Many people live in despair, for political or personal reasons; a small number of them escape their misery by killing themselves. Very few indeed of these suicides take innocent others with them. So the appeal to despair has little explanatory force. It's implausible to suppose that the suicide bombers in Gaza or Iraq have more cause to despair than the many people who suffered under apartheid in South Africa, but no cases of suicide bombing occurred in the struggle against apartheid. Those who feel that the despair of the bomber to some extent excuses what he does, are likely to do so because they already sympathise with his cause: very few people want to excuse the final murderous spasms of the Nazi regime because of the despair rightly felt by those Nazis who could see that their cause was doomed. But we need to acknowledge that inexcusable things can be done even in pursuit of good causes (the argument about the fire-bombing of Dresden depends on exactly that thought), and the rightness of the cause (if it is indeed right) doesn't disinfect the vileness of the means.

Poverty and despair are terrible things, with which we rightly sympathise and which we should strive to alleviate, but they don't explain suicide bombing. Other forms of explanation need to be appealed to, most obviously ideological and cultural specificities of the suicide bombers' milieux (and there are interesting reasons why such explanations aren't usually mobilised as excuses). It's a lack of moral and cultural imagination that leads some to suppose that the suicide bomber must be driven by poverty or desperation; they fail to realise how powerful other motivators can be, though history alone should remind them how ready men and women can be to give up their lives, and for how wide a range of causes.

However, there is one other form of the poverty explanation to be considered; it is sometimes put forward not merely as an excuse but as a full-blown justification. This version says that the suicide bomber, like other terrorists, does what she does because, being poor, she has no other way of achieving her political aims. Her rich adversaries have air forces and smart bombs and all the military paraphernalia of the affluent nation-state: she only has her life, and her Semtex, to achieve her goals.

Again, there is considerable evidence to suggest that this claim is false. There are many ways of pursuing their political goals open to Palestinian and Iraqi suicide bombers (and their controllers) apart from the murderous route which they decide to take. But again, on the supposition that this There-Is-No-Alternative claim is true, does it explain, and does it condone? I think perhaps it might explain, if it were true. Even if it were false, it might still explain, so long as it was believed to be true by the suicide bomber: if he genuinely believes that nothing but suicide and murder will advance the cause to which he is committed, perhaps that explains his readiness to kill the innocent along with himself. (I don't know how many people share this kind of belief about their political causes without taking similar actions, but clearly that will be relevant to the explanatory power of the claim.)

But will the belief excuse him? Only on two conditions: firstly, we'd have to think his cause is just (the dictator's belief that he can only secure his political aims by killing his opponents doesn't at all excuse his murderous actions). And secondly, we'd have to think that what matters, morally speaking, about actions is whether they produce the best consequences. Those who think that suicide bombers are justified, or at least excused, by the fact that, hideous though their killings are, they're the only way for poor people to achieve justice, have bought into a broadly consequentialist view of morality. There's a lot to be said for consequentialism, though there's a lot to be said against it, too. But people who accept this justification of suicide bombing (or terrorism more generally) may find themselves pressed by consistency to sign up to a justification of torture, since a similar logic is available there. There are good reasons for not wanting any of us to go down that road.

Explanations of suicide bombing in terms of poverty or despair, or the lack of any other way of achieving political goals, seem to be empirically false - many, maybe most, suicide bombers are neither appallingly poor nor desperate nor unable to access other forms of political progress. But, so I've argued, even if none of that were true, poverty and despair would still be weak and unsatisfactory explanations and excuses for this particularly horrible form of murder.
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/03/how_not_to_expl.html

Of course I am.

I also pack fudge.

I fellate terrorists.

I'm a mindless cretin who couldn't write his way out of a porta-potty. But I can copy and paste.

Have I shouted "COINTELPRO" yet?

If you'll get my cesspit up and running I'll suck you in a back alley. Well, actually, we'll forget the web site for now....